The Last Woman Read Online Free PDF

front teeth. Her tears made glistening snail tracks through her freckles. But it was her eyes that held him. Washed of all confidence, they brimmed with something he would never have expected: a plea for his help.
He led her to the blue house, where Emma took down the box with the bandages and iodine. He knew what had happened was his fault, and the others seemed to feel that way too, for Matt was silent and Emma was mostly silent (she joked a little as she placed a pad and wound the tape) and her father, watching the proceedings through a scrim of smoke, was the most silent of all. The girl would not even look at Billy – she, who had looked too much, was acting as if he wasn’t in the room.
Later, slipping outside, he watched their boat grow small across the bay, and when he could no longer see it, he ran out to Gull Point to catch it again. But the channel, dark as blueberries between the islands, was empty.
His mother sat painting her nails, touching the tip of her tongue to her upper lip as she applied the bright red lacquer.
“So I hear you got yourself a girlfriend,” she said, pausing to examine her work.
Yvonne, making supper at the counter, said, “You promised not to say anything!”
“I never said nothing – what did I say!” his mother said, smirking. His mother was beautiful – everyone said so. Billy himself thought so. He liked to watch her when she was singing along with the radio, the way she pursed her lips and seemed to blow the words out. She sang as well as Dinah Shore, people said; she sang solos in the church choir. She would sing as she danced slowly by herself through the kitchen, jabbing at the air with her hips. Sometimes Billy danced with her. She would pump their arms as she whirled him around the room. But he had to be careful, because things could change. She might decide she didn’t like the way he was dancing. She might think of something somebody said to her last week. But when the change came, mostly he didn’t know what had caused it. She might suddenly slap him, in a rage: he would go off in tears, saying, “What? What? ”
The word girlfriend shocked him. The boys who hung around the dock had girlfriends: that was the meaning of all that pushing and laughing; the meaning of going off by twos into the bush. His mother had boyfriends. They appeared in the house without warning. They ignored him or demanded to know what he was up to. And his mother might say, “He needs a father. Don’t you, Billy?” There was no answer to that; for no man would stay for long, he knew it better than she did.
Now there was a new one: Hooch Robinson. Billy had even less use for Hooch than he did for the others, because of the way Hooch swaggered around the house and poked a sharp finger in Billy’s shoulder, demanding to know if he was the real McCoy. A few weeks ago, Billy had ridden in the back seat of Hooch’s convertible to his house on the Black Falls highway. Hooch and his mother went inside, leaving him in the car with four baskets of blueberries set out on the hood for sale. He had sat for a long time behind the wheel, pretending to steer, while transports blew past and Hooch’s dogs yapped in their pen behind the house. Finally a pickup had driven up, and a man in a black undershirt had got out. Taking two baskets, he drove off without paying. Billy went into the house to tell Hooch, but Hooch and his mother were busy. For some time he stood in the hall, listening to the sounds they made, the chuckling of the bedsprings, the banging of the frame against the wall, then he walked out of the house and down the highway. After a while, Hooch and his mother drove up and his mother got out, her hair all crazy, and demanded to know what he’d done with Hooch’s money. Then Hooch got out and kicked him. Then Billy’s mother said no one kicked her boy and she kicked Hooch. Then, his tires screeching all over the road, Hooch drove off.
They walked home. His mother stalked ahead of him and