The Do-Right Read Online Free PDF

That it was heading toward him told Phelan enough. Most snakes light out for the hills. Cottonmouths come at you. Phelan ranged the light till it hit the bamboo couch and dumped the boy on it. “Keep your feet off the floor.” He scanned with the flashlight. Where the fuck was it? Shag. Spilt ashtray. More shag.
    Then the beam caught a section of sinuous black. He moved the light. There it was. Pouring toward him, triangular head outthrust.
    Phelan fired.
    The black snake convulsed, kept coming, tongue darting.
    He fired again. Still the black form writhed on the orange carpet. He blew its head off with the third round. Phelan stepped wide of the quivering snake, wasn’t dead enough yet to keep the head from biting. Ears ringing, he tossed the flashlight, pulled the boy’s arm around his neck, dragged him out of that room into the daylight.
    Bruises on the kid’s arm, high up. Been grabbed, for sure. Held? Phelan draped him in his own jacket, stuffed him into the passenger seat, and peeled out onto Concord.
    â€œHe rape you, Ricky?”
    Violent head shake. Negative.
    â€œHurt anybody else you know of?”
    The side of the boy’s head hit the window. The wheeze sounded less like creaking now, more like a tiny person lurking behind Ricky’s teeth, whimpering.
    Phelan blasted around Concord’s tight curves, spun a right, a left, and gunned onto the straightaway of 11 th Street. Delivered Ricky into the horseshoe entrance to St. Elizabeth’s and used a hospital pay phone to call Mrs. Toups. Then he left a message for Uncle E.E. about the wild kingdom on Concord.
    Mrs. Toups busted in the big glass doors, bony face lit up like stadium lights. She hurried off to her boy. Phelan limped to a chair in the waiting room, trying to remember when he last had a tetanus shot. He pulled off his sock. The front of his foot, tinged lavender with a garland of purple dents in it, drew two pig-tailed spectators.
    â€œOoo, what happen a you, Mister?”
    â€œLook ug-lee.”
    Phelan shrugged. “Dragon bit me.”
    â€œNo such thing,” said the big one.
    â€œUh huh, look at his hand,” squealed the little one.
    He held up his nine fingers. The girls bickered while Phelan thought about half-naked Ricky Toups up on that shelf gasping his lungs out.
    â€œMr. Phelan…”
    He looked up to see Mrs. Toups, petting his jacket.
    â€œYou saved our life, and that’s the truth.”
    Phelan took his jacket, scrounged up a bent smile.
    He opened his door. Delpha Wade sat in the secretary’s chair behind an idle typewriter. She gave him a once-over, no doubt taking in the limp, the single shoe and the torn pants, the jacket wadded in his hand.
    â€œBoy safe?” was all she said.
    Phelan pressed his lips together, nodded. “Way past five. You didn’t need to stay.”
    She pushed over his change, five ones and silver, and leaned over to pick up a sack from the floor. The brown hair parted. On the nape of her neck, an inch of scar tissue disappeared into the white blouse. She straightened, tugging up her collar.
    â€œDidn’t have a key to lock up. I started files on the Toups and the Lloyd Elliott cases. The phone call from Mrs. Lloyd Elliot, ’member that? Ran out and bought paper, carbon paper, and some file folders.”
    Phelan drew his key ring from his pocket. He jiggled off the extra office key, slowed down by the gouges from the baby gator’s tail that were stinging his sweaty palm. He laid the key onto the desk.
    â€œYou sure you want this job?”
    Her head lowered but not so far that he didn’t catch the tint spreading over the jailhouse-pale of Delpha Wade’s cheekbones.
    Or maybe that was just the sunset squeezing through the window.
    They settled the details of hours and salary. He listened to her departing footsteps, jingling the change in his pockets. He bent over and took off his lone shoe, chucked it in the