The Speed Queen Read Online Free PDF Page A

semester was worse. I took some summer classes and did all right, but that fall I got sick and fell behind and just stopped going. I forgot to withdraw, so I got all F's. My mom said that was it, my dad wouldn't have wanted her to throw any more money away. It didn't really matter that much to me; I was only going because he'd wanted me to. It was easier not to. Now all I had to do was go to work.
    You might say I was going to school to be an artist or a writer or something. That might be interesting. I never really declared a major, so technically it wouldn't be untrue. All I took were some business courses —statistics and economics, boring stuff. You could make me a painter, and I'd paint weird, runny pictures of my dad or the house near Depew, or Jody-Jo, or my tricycle out behind the chicken house. I could go inside my paintings, like in Rose Madder. I'd meet this other painter from New York City or Paris, and we'd have this unbreakable bond. All we'd do is drink wine and make love by candlelight, and then he'd be killed somehow or die of some rare disease, and I'd start drinking more wine and painting him over and over until I couldn't stand it. I could break a mirror with a bottle and I'd look just like one of my paintings, all runny and weird. Then I'd burn all my paintings and quit Mister Swiss and go work the drive-thru at Schlotzky's and meet Rico.

    Another thing about Jody-Jo is that he had a house. It was under the one tree in the front yard and had actual shingles on the roof. After he was dead, I'd sit in it and spy on the cars driving by. My dad taught me all the names —Javelin, Montego, Wildcat. You could still smell Jody-Jo; there was a dark ball of hair in one corner. Sometimes I'd close my eyes and pretend I was him. My mom said that he'd gone to heaven, and I wanted to go there too. I couldn't picture what it looked like, I could only see Jody-Jo walking this white path surrounded by cotton-ball clouds. Then I'd see the trash bag and his legs going into the cruncher and I had to open my eyes.
    My mom wanted another dog but my dad said no. It got to be a kind of joke between them, like when she saw a puppy on TV, but they were both serious. When my dad died, my mom went down to the Animal Rescue League and got Stormy. It's funny, she never said my dad went to heaven.
    Where am I going to go? I know you'll ask that later. But in case I don't make it to the end, let me say now that I'm going to heaven. I'm a prayer warrior, and I've had to fight my own evil heart to get there. If Jody-Jo and my dad are there, I'll give them both a big hug. But I don't want to live with them again. I'd like to have a place with Lamont if that's possible, and if for whatever reason it isn't, then I'd like a place of my own.
    Hang on, Janille wants something.
    Yeah?
    Double on the hot links, double on the beans. And lots of sauce. The hot.
    Hold the Texas Toast, or you can have it.

    Gimme the regular. I think it's too late for the diet.
    Sorry. That was Leo's double-checking my order. Last time they forgot the brisket, and Janille let them hear about it. You like barbecue? You should come out here. I could take you some places.
    The Last Supper, right? I'm Hire you can do something with that. I'll have to stop the machine for that. You've got to concentrate on good barbecue.
    I think I saw an "Outer Limits" where this guy who's going to the chair asks for this impossible last meal. He just keeps ordering and the cooks keep bringing the food and he's eating and eating and getting bigger and bigger until he's too big for the cell, and the bars bend and the concrete cracks and he breaks out. He's as big as Godzilla, and the guards in the towers are shooting at him, but he kicks right through the wall. In the end it's all a dream he's having while he's in the chair. You see him jerking. Rod Serling or whoever is talking about how a man finally becomes free and they zoom in on the guards unbuckling the straps. When they do that