The Haze Read Online Free PDF

dial for you. No long distance calls allowed.”
    â€œCall information, Raybun, West Virginia.”
    â€œWhat you want to do that for?”
    â€œIs my business your business?”
    â€œThere you go being nasty again.”
    Hazel punched in the numbers and handed him the phone.
    An operator came on. Her hillbilly voice sounded like the slow moan of a coondog.
    He told her he wanted the number for the Raybun Central Library.
    â€œThat library done closed ten years ago.”
    â€œIt did?”
    â€œYes, sir. I hated to see it shut down. But you know how it is, people don’t read books no more with the Internet and all. I used to go there my own self when I was a little girl.”
    â€œSo you remember the librarian in that library? Maybe she still lives in the area, she can answer some questions.”
    â€œOh, sure, I remember real good. Head librarian, it wasn’t no woman.”
    He waited.
    â€œLibrarian was a fine gentleman. I can’t recall his name but he was a nice man.”
    â€œWas it Connors?”
    â€œWhy yes, I do believe you’re right. It was Connors, Mr. Mo Connors. A small man with a big smile. We all called him Little Mo. He knew them books inside and out. Read everything in that whole library then started over and read them again. Got me started reading, got a lot of people started. He’d lead you right down all them aisles and pick out a book like he could read your mind and knew just what it was you wanted to read and he’d hand it to you and it was the best damn book you ever did read. He did that for me. Got me started on a lifetime of reading murder stories.”
    Two sunnysides came the next morning. Javi hung around waiting for him to take his pills. Hello, haze.
    Dense as the fog on a West Virginia morning, a white smoke that hung till noon some days, so thick nobody could go to work, everybody stuck at home reading the books Little Mo had suggested for them. In their shanty houses reading. Like the information operator in Raybun. That same little girl he’d been stamping her books.
    He opened one of the books his daughter brought from the West Virginia library. Ten pages in, then twenty, it’s Varla again and it’s the old retired hit man, same characters as the other book, only this one was a few years later on. The hitman had escaped the nursing home and he and Varla were living in a small hotel room in the West Village. An Orange Julius was across the street, Washington Square they could see from their window. They spent their days cleaning their guns and lying beside each other in the old saggy bed.
    â€œWe’re free,” Varla said. “We’re out of that two bit home.”
    â€œIf you can call this free,” Mo said. “Living in one room, drinking Orange Julius for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
    â€œI’d like to know what their magic ingredient is. Maybe we can hold the place up, take hostages, extract the secret from an employee.”
    â€œThe food was better before. I liked how they cut up my grapefruit.”
    â€œYou’re bored with me. I’m old and everything’s sagging. You’re through with me.”
    â€œWe need a mission. We just sit around without a mission. It’s the secret of life, the way to fill up your days.”
    â€œWe accomplished our mission,” Varla said. “This is how it is afterwards.”
    â€œWell, we need a new one.”
    â€œOkay, so if we get a new mission, we accomplish that one, then what?”
    Javier brought his breakfast. Little Mo was still lying in bed turning the pages of that book. In a hurry to see how it turned out.
    â€œHere’s your scrambled eggs,” Javi said. “And your fruit cup.”
    â€œWhere’s my grapefruit and sunnysides?”
    Javi didn’t know what he was talking about.
    â€œYou ever read a book, Javi? Start to finish, a novel.”
    â€œI gave up on it,” Javier said.