Trying the Knot Read Online Free PDF

pregnant.”
    “Aren’t you being a little presumptuous?”
    “Not by you, dork,” she said and slugged his
arm. “It’s some other unlucky bastard’s little bastard.”
    “This town smells like winter all year
round.”
    “And everyone’s overweight, but they don’t
call this Porknorth for nothing.”
    “Don’t you ever think about leaving, starting
over?” Thad asked. Consumed with his own thoughts, he failed to
press the issue of her baby’s paternity as he looked over his
shoulder at the icy lake.
    “Fuck’n-A, I got big plans of sailing across
the Great Lakes, just me and this kid.” Vange patted her stomach.
“You went away to college, look how far you got.”
    “Ouch.”
    “You’re right back here, in this shit kicking
hellhole in case you haven’t noticed. What’s the plan, Thad, you
going to pick potatoes, clear-cut trees, or dig for rocks in the
quarry?”
    “How do you start over when you’ve never
started in the first place?” he wondered.
    The truck pulled into a gas station, and Thad
agreed to buy dinner with the last of his cash. Looking like total
crap was her excuse for staying behind inside the truck. As he
exited the vehicle, she clanked her head against the rear window
and punched away at the radio knobs. She finally settled on NPR,
where a congressman was discussing the U.S. led invasion of Iraq,
along with the heroic exploits of Generals Powell and Schwarzkopf
and the inevitability of at least one of them becoming a
presidential contender.
    “See, opportunities to be a hero abound,”
Vange said, pointing to the radio. “You should be in the Persian
Gulf, fighting for our rights to the world’s oil supply.”
    “Real funny.”
    “Hey, you never said what you think of my
predicament?”
    “You’ll get fat, and then out pops some brat
who’ll hate you in twelve years,” Thad said, and he cocked his
eyebrows and slammed the door.

    Once inside the minimart, peppy harmonies
belonging to the daughters of some washed up, drug-addled Sixties
superstars accompanied Thad’s hunt for dinner. They admonished,
“Release Me” as he gripped the stolen crucifix. The disproving
checkout woman monitored his every move. She wore a gray zippered
sweat suit and a bulbous nose dominated her face. Little hairs
encrusted with snot spewed from her snout, and whiskers compensated
for the sparse tuft of gray hair crowning her too large head. Thad
recognized her from going to church as a kid, and he guessed her
name was Bulbous-ski.
    Nothing seemed appealing, and he tried to
remember the last time he ate because his insides felt hollow.
Shocked, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection and barely
recognized the entity staring back at him. The overhead lights cast
a peculiar jaundiced glow. His hair hung in dirty strings, and his
eyes were tired from lack of sleep. What was the term, heroin chic?
His arms strained under the weight of the processed food as he
became increasingly aware of Bulbouski’s evil eye.
    Losing himself in the freezer department,
where Vange’s silky rayon shirt provided little warmth, he
remembered the two of them used to share pints of coffee ice cream
while reading about stampeding rhinos; he would spoon it into Her
mouth between paragraphs.
    “What the hell was the name of that
story?”
    How many times while driving her Mercury
Tracer had She whisked them to the outskirts of nowhere? Thad
closed his deep-set eyes, and they were parked next to some
suburban wasteland. She read aloud as he sat mesmerized. Her bobbed
copper-hued hair hid Her pale eyes that reflected a childhood
dulled by too many unrealized expectations. With the hope of
dissecting Her secrets, he listened intently to every word falling
from Her lips.
    Finished reading, She said, “One day the herd
will trample over us.”
    Before starting the car, She let him nibble
on her long fingers and applied Her purple lipstick to his lips.
She insisted on heavy petting as if it were 1951. Other times,