The Loves of Ruby Dee Read Online Free PDF Page A

every day, big brother.”
    Will swung his head around. “If you know so much, Lonnie, why don’t you just get yourself off to one of your girlfriends and let them put you up for awhile in the manner you’d like to live.”
    Will’s tone sliced into Lonnie. He gritted his teeth and then scooped his hat off the table, pointing it at Will.
    “It’s truth I’m not the brain you are, but I’m here to tell you that I know enough to know that you’re so damn afraid somethin’ you do or say is goin’ to give the old man another stroke that you’re turnin’ yourself inside out. You don’t even know who you are anymore, and neither does anyone else, and the old man is playin’ his ailments up for all they're worth.”
    It was so rare a thing for Lonnie to speak with raw passion that he startled himself, shut his mouth and breathed deeply through his nose. The next instant, he finished his speech. “And all your pussyfootin’ around him ain’t gonna make one bit of difference, because someday that old man is gonna have another stroke...or die from all the drinkin’ he does, or from the junk he eats, because he’s too stubborn to listen to anyone.”
    Will’s eyes could have started a fire. He said, “That old man is your father.”
    “Huh! He gave up bein’ a father to me a long time ago."
    Lonnie’s words rang in the air as he and Will glared at each other. But he wasn’t sorry. No, sir.
    But he was some frightened for having revealed so much of himself. Setting his hat on his head, he retreated into indifference. “You do what you want about the gal. I’ll do what you suggested and go somewhere I can get a friendly breakfast each morning. I’ll be out of here tomorrow.”
    Without meeting Will’s eyes, he ducked out the door, resisting the urge to slam it, though he let the porch’s screen door bang behind him.
    Running was what he was doing. He felt as if he couldn’t get away from the house fast enough.
    He glanced at the old man’s shop as he passed. The door was closed but the windows open, and he could hear the whir of the big steel fan. The old guy wouldn’t break down and buy an air-conditioner. He was so tight with a penny that he squeaked when he walked.
    Walking along the edge of the graveled drive, Lonnie headed for his pickup, parked beside the horse barn. He had to push to walk, since the edge was sandy the way the whole drive used to be when he was a kid. So many times he had come racing up it, churning up sand. He could still hear himself calling, “Wait for me, Will!”
    “Well, come on, squirt, we gotta get those calves fed.”
    “My legs ain’t as long as yours,” Lonnie would grumble.
    “They will be someday...someday you’ll be bigger than me.”
    Back then Lonnie hadn’t seen how that could happen at all. But he was taller than his brother now by half a foot, and his inseam measured thirty-six, where Will’s was just thirty-four.
    Pausing underneath the locust tree, he dug the tin of Skoal out of his back pocket and tucked a pinch in his lip. He had been dipping since he was fifteen, the year he had passed Will in height and had started running off with friends for the high times and the gals in towns and at rodeos. Will used to dip back then, too, but he’d had a fit about Lonnie’s starting, and he had even punched old Wildcat Burns for giving Lonnie the dip.
    Lonnie thought of what he had said to Will about the old man not being his father. That was truth—not pretty, maybe, but truth.
    There had been a time, dim in his memory, when the old man had set him on his first horse, and had taken him out and bought him his first pair of boots. But the old man had been fifty-five by the time Lonnie was born. He had had little patience for a wet-nosed kid. It had been Will who Lonnie had trailed after. Will who had taught him to tie his shoes and button his shirt. Will who had picked him up and held him, after their mama had slung him in the dust and driven off with that