When the Saints Read Online Free PDF Page A

their money. I guess he’d done it before.”
    “And?”
    He shovels another mouthful of food. “And he lost it. Or spent it, or whatever.”
    Something hits the window and West runs to the door, opensit and hollers out, “Did one of you little turds just throw something at my house? Well, what’s that in your hand, then? Yeah, you better run.” He comes back to the table, looks at me blankly.
    “Then what?” I prod. “After he stole the money.”
    He sits. “These men were out for blood, sent a posse out to the house to shake him down.”
    “Where did my mother go?”
    “I don’t know, and even if I did, I think I ought to be the one asking the questions.”
    “Fill your boots.”
    He leans back in his chair. “You say you haven’t seen anyone in your family in, what, ten years?”
    “Eleven.”
    “So, why now?”
    “Why not?” I shrug, but it turns into a shiver. “Maybe I want to see them.”
    He raises an eyebrow then leans forward again, scrapes his fork up the side of his bowl for the last bit of sauce.
    I look down into my glass. “Daddy ever rob you?”
    “Not really. I cut him off after he stopped paying his tab and he started sneaking beers from the backroom when I wasn’t looking. I kicked him out a few times, but he came in one day and settled up, so I told him I’d let him back in as long as he paid cash beer-for-beer. Then I shortchanged him a few times when he was drunk to even things up.”
    “Well, you’ve got a bit of thief in you too, then.”
    I reach over to brush the hair out of his eyes, but he pulls away, balls up his paper towel and tosses it onto his empty side plate.
    “I was just getting back what’s mine. I ain’t no thief.”
    The house fills with the sound of kids squealing outside and screen doors snapping up and down the street like Christmas crackers. Something hits the window again.
    Jared Smoke never sat across a table from me like this. He had a mind like I don’t know what, like it was all broken up in sharp pieces flying around in his head. He didn’t like it when I looked at him too long or too hard. He had a million secrets. I get the feeling West doesn’t have a ton of those. He’s staring back at me with those copper-penny eyes and I feel a blush spread across my cheeks and start creeping down my neck. I practically crawl across the table into his lap. Within seconds his belt’s undone and we’re tangled up on the floor.
    M Y SISTER P OPPY WAS THE BABY OF THE FAMILY, BORN two years after Ma thought Jackie wrecked her womb for good. I can still see the big brown ponytail bobbing on top of her head. We never spent much time together, partly because she was so much younger than me, and partly because she was a crazy little bitch. I remember one afternoon before she was old enough to go to school, she met me coming up the driveway and asked if I’d trade the rocks in her hand for my school bag. I said no, so she whipped the rocks at my face and grabbed it from me. That was Poppy.
    She had this squeaky voice and she hated taking baths more than anything. She was always covered in burdocks from running through bushes chasing boys and biting their chins. Shehad a vast collection of dead things: squirrels, raccoons, beetles. There was always a bird drying out on a windowsill or a caterpillar in the freezer.
    Once, when she was about four, she slammed her fist on the dinner table and told Daddy to shut his dirty trap. He looked at her as if he might smash her through the wall, but then he reached across the table, hoisted her out of her seat and planted a big raspberry on her belly. When he plunked her back down, she crossed her arms and said, “And I mean it, Buck.”
    Another thing she loved, I mean besides dead things and biting people on the face, was marshmallows. Daddy came home once with a stale bag and Poppy inhaled them like they were crack cocaine. Marchellos, she called them. She only had them that one time, but for two years she brought up