The Deputy Read Online Free PDF Page B

me drying and putting them back in the cabinet. My mom had been big on companionable silence. Needless talk only causes trouble, she’d told me once. Maybe she was right because Doris and I sure got into it whenever one of us opened our yaps. Something was always eating one of us.
    I decided I’d better say something nice. “You don’t look so fat.”
    She frowned. “What?”
    “Your ass, I mean.”
    “Fuck you, Toby.”
    “Shit, that’s not how I meant it, okay?” She stood there in plain white panties and my Green Day t-shirt, and I thought she looked fine. “You were looking in the mirror the other day, remember? And you said you thought it was getting big. I’m just saying I think it’s fine.”
    “Whatever. You want this coffee now?”
    “Okay.”
    She poured two cups and brought them to the couch. She didn’t sit close to me but not so far away either. She handed me a plain white cup of black coffee. Her mug was bigger and with a sunset clouds scene and some scripture on the side. John 3:16, I think.
    I sipped. She sipped. We watched The Real World with the sound down.
    I tried some more conversation like this: “When do you go into work?”
    “You know what time. Seven like always.”
    Then I tried this: “How’s your sister?”
    “You don’t even like her.”
    I sipped coffee and shut up.
    Real World ended and Super Sweet Sixteen came on. Little girls having fancy birthday parties. This show made me pissed off and depressed at the same time. That these spoiled kids could have it so good and it still wasn’t enough. This one girl got a brand new BMW for her sixteenth birthday but pissed and moaned it was the wrong color. Jesus. Slap that bitch.
    “Oh, cool,” Doris said. “I wish I’d had a big party like that when I was sixteen.”
    We watched a few minutes.
    Finally she asked, “What was the problem?”
I looked at her. “With what?”
    “What do you think? Taking off at midnight with your pistol, that’s what. What did the chief want?”
    “Oh.” I sipped coffee. “Somebody killed Luke Jordan.”
    I saw the blood drain from her face. Like somebody pulled a plug and it all leaked right out, her eyes round with startled confusion. I wasn’t sure what surprised me more. Her reaction or that fact she was trying to hide it.
    “Dead?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Why did—” She paused, cleared her throat. “How?”
    “Wayne said he was making a play for some Mexican chick in Skeeter’s. Jealous boyfriend maybe. Shot the crap out of him.” I didn’t tell her the rest of it, losing the body and all. I didn’t have the heart for that conversation, maybe never would.
    Maybe I could get a job at the fertilizer plant. That was an hour drive each way, but I’d be full time with benefits too. Maybe I could go over there and get the job and then even tell Doris I quit the department on purpose to bring in more money. She’d be glad about that. Hell, it might even work. And if I made enough she could quit the waitress job and take care of the boy full time.
    “Maybe it was some kind of mistake,” she said.
    I blinked. “What?’
    “Maybe he was just talking to that Mexican girl, and it was some kind of misunderstanding.”
    I shrugged, didn’t see what difference that made. “Luke Jordan’s just as dead either way.”
    She got up and went into the kitchen. I thought about asking her for more coffee but didn’t. The Super Sweet Sixteen girl was pissing and moaning because her daddy got the wrong boy band to play at her party. It should be legal just to punch these people. No jail time. Case dismissed.
    Doris came back, stood at the end of the couch.
    “Toby?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Let’s go to Houston. My sister will put us up until we get work. I can waitress anywhere. We have to try something different.”
    That was my chance right then. I could tell her okay, let’s sell the trailer for moving money and go to Houston and remake our lives from the ground up. I was going to get