The Other Shoe Read Online Free PDF

husband’s, but he had a readier smile. He used this on her. Rather than reading his eyes she considered his boots, and these were slightly encrusted with dung. He seemed authentic. “I didn’t mean to raise such a fuss,” she said. “Well, I guess I did, but I couldn’t get anybody to come. I really needed to use the restroom. They said I could leave, but when I tried to I . . . I’m still okay to leave?”
    â€œThat’s what I came to see about.” The man’s glasses had been repaired at the bridge with a glob of solder; his hair, iron and oak, was just long enough to stand in disarray. “You should never have been behind a locked door. I’m sorry about this, Karen.”
    She knew him? From last night? Did she know him? No.
    â€œI really didn’t mind,” she said. “I was just sleeping, and I can sleep about anywhere if I’m really tired.”
    â€œIt’s an evidence locker, or it’s supposed to be, but they use it for a break room and every other damn thing.”
    â€œThey just wanted to talk to me,” she said, “which I can understand.” The officers had been, all in all and in their creepy way, gentlemen, and she felt she should be a little apologetic on their behalf.
    â€œGo through there.” The man lifted his chin toward another blue door at the far end of the corridor. “There’s a short flight of stairs, puts you in the lobby. There’s a lady’s room. It’s breakfast upstairs. You want some eggs? Sausage? Coffee?”
    â€œThat’s nice of you to offer, but no thanks.” Karen turned from the man and went off to a freedom she didn’t much want.
    Outside, she stood on the buckled sidewalk between the jail and the courthouse. There was no bus line here, no taxi, and she knew not a soul on earth whom she’d think of calling just now to ask for help. There were animals at home, waiting to be fed. There was Henry. Henry—she would have to go back into the sheriff’s office and ask, back into the jailhouse to ask for any news of him, because her husband might by now be a mess.
    A green pickup, Forest Service surplus, pulled into the parking lot and stopped just across the sidewalk from her. The man from the basement was behind the wheel with his arm slung over the door and his sleeve rolled almost to his elbow, nursing a toothpick that gave his lip a still more skeptical fold. “I’m headed up your way, you want a lift?” His engine rattled a homebuilt stock rack, galvanized pipe to which he’d lashed a shovel and a pitchfork and a kind of bunting made of bundled orange baling twine. “It’s no trouble.”
    â€œI should wait for my husband.”
    â€œHenry’s long gone. Didn’t they tell you? He left last night. Guess they offered him a ride, but he wouldn’t take it. They even offered to put him up in that new cheapo motel out by the old post office, but he didn’t want that either.”
    Her husband on the highway—slow, slow, and none too distinct in the dark. “So he took out walkin’? He’s got one leg three inches shorter than the other—it’s kinda bent in, got arthritis all through it. He’s stubborn, and he’ll try, but usually he don’t walk that much. He can’t.”
    â€œI guess he managed it last night, though. Climb in, don’t worry about that stuff.” The man swept a pile of documents from the passenger’s seat and onto a floorboard already furnished with a coil of rope and a horse-and-a-half motor leaking oil onto some Sunday’s glossy ads for lingerie. He offered her a baggy of withered ears; her gorge rose in her throat. “Turkish apricots,” he said. Firmly she showed him her palm, not “no” but “hell no,” and her throat flexed again. “I get ’emat the health food store when I’m in Missoula or Sandpoint, them and