The Onion Girl Read Online Free PDF

understand?”
    But in those days we was dating high school seniors and the dropouts that hung out at the pool hall. Rich was something you saw on TV, not something anybody who lived in our section of Tyson could ever claim to be, so we had to make do. We was white trash, plain and simple. I don’t mean we thought we was white trash, but that’s what we was all the same.
    See, we lived not only on the wrong side of the tracks, but past the Ramble, past Stokesville—which the ignorant still call Niggertown—all the way out on the butt end of Tyson in what the townies called Hillbilly Holler. Had us run-down clapboard houses that the wind was as like’ to blow over if we didn’t burn ’em down our own selves, with hand pumps in the kitchen and outhouses ’round back. We had phones, and power when it wasn’t being shut off, but the sewers and water mains stopped our side of Stokesville.
    What makes a body live there? you’re wondering. What makes you think any of us had a choice?
    Anywise, that night I was with Lenny Wilson, a handsome enough boy except for that spray of zits on his forehead. He wore his dirty blonde hair slicked back like he was right proud of those zits, but he dressed sharp and he was funny. Always made me laugh, leastways. He was a high school dropout like pretty near everybody in our crowd already was, or soon would be, and I guess he was going on twenty, but he was okay for an older guy. He settled for the hand job like it was all he needed and never pushed too hard for more.
    There was maybe eight or nine of us in the field that night. We had
the three pickups backed up to each other, nice and cosy like, a little fire burning in the middle where they met, shooting up sparks—hillbilly fireworks, Lenny called them. There was plenty of beer, a little pot, and good tunes coming in on the radio. It was still early so most of us was just dancing, or necking, or lying there in the bed of one of the pickups, looking up at the stars.
    The music was pretty loud, and I guess that’s why we didn’t hear a fourth vehicle come bouncing across the field until it was pretty much blowing gas fumes up our asses. By then it was too late to do anything ’cept shiver and quake.
    There was three of them sitting side by each in the cab. Russell Henderson, Bobby Marshall, and Eugene Webb. All of a kind, dark slick hair, weasel-thin, and about as mean as you can imagine, and if you’re like me, you can probably imagine pretty good. None of the boys we was with had a hope in hell of standing up to these hardcases. I’d bet even Del’d have backed off ’less he could take ’em on one at a time.
    â€œWe’re lookin’ for a party girl,” Russell said with a grin. He studied us, one by one, that cocky gaze of his finally settling on me. “Now you see, Eugene? I told you we was gonna find us some fresh meat tonight.”
    Pinky and me, we was sitting on the tailgate when they drove up. ’Bout now I was shaking so hard I thought I’d pee my panties, but Pinky just lounged against the side of the truck bed, hands in the pockets of her jacket.
    â€œYou sure this is the way you want it to play?” she asked Russell.
    â€œNow don’t you be frettin’,” he told her. “You and me, I ain’t forgettin’ the fun we had in the past. I mean, you don’t meet that many girls who’ll take it up both ends and still ask for more.”
    Pinky gave him a smile.
    â€œYour call,” she told him.
    He reached for me and the next thing I know she was swinging her feet to the ground. Her hands came out of her pocket and there was a switchblade in one of them, the blade popping out and locking in place like a piece of dark magic. What happened then happened so fast it took everybody by surprise, especially Russell. She stuck that knife in him, hard, deep in his gut, then gave him a little push. By the time he