Winter's Bone Read Online Free PDF Page A

stand out here?”

    Floyd said, “She can come in. For a little.”

    Gail said, “Hear that?”

    “Yup.”

    Floyd sat in the front room of the trailer, lying back in his chair, holding a snow-day beer, headphones on a long cord resting in his lap. He was almost twenty and Ree knew most girls would call him handsome or dreamy or some such. Sandy hair, blue eyes, put together strong, with bright teeth and one of those smiles. He’d been steady in love with Heather Powney since junior high but once when Heather was away he’d gotten drunk and come across Gail at the Sonic in town and sat with her in his car listening to thrash metal while the windows fogged. He saw Gail the next night, too, but that was it until Old Man Lockrum came over months later redassed and huffing. Suddenly Floyd became a husband with a kid and Heather Powney didn’t always take his calls anymore.

    Ree said, “Hey, Floyd—been gettin’ any?”

    “Nope. Learned my lesson on that.” He raised the headphones and held them spread near his ears. “Don’t hang around too long. She’s got that kid now.”

    “Yeah, I noticed him.”

    Floyd let the headphones snap closed and waved her away.

    Gail stood in the kitchen with Ned held to her chest. Gail was thin in the hips and limbs with sharp smart features and freckles. Her long hair fell straight and was of a ruddled hue matched to the freckles dusted across her nose and cheeks. Somehow her skinny body had hid the baby behind a merely rounding tummy and she’d looked more pooched than pregnant until her seventh month. She never did get waddling pregnant and had been skinny again within a few weeks of delivery. She still seemed stunned by this sudden wife-and-mother business and disbelieving that it mightn’t all go away as quickly as it’d come.

    Ree smelled the grease leavings in the skillet and the cloth diapers soaking in the washtub. She saw plates gunky in the sink and pork for tonight thawing pink trickles on the sideboard. She threw her arms around Gail with the baby between and kissed Gail’s cheek, her nose, her other cheek. She said, “Aw, Sweet Pea, shit.”

    “Don’t start. Don’t start.”

    Ree brushed her fingers into Gail’s hair, pulled the long strands apart and picked between them, picked gently and many times.

    “Sweet Pea, you got sticky-burrs.”

    “Still?”

    “I sure keep findin’ ’em.”

    The baby was taking a moment to rest and slobber between outbursts and Gail hefted him along the narrow hallway to the main bedroom while Ree followed. Big posters of race cars shiny inside shrinkwrap were taped to the walls. A giant beer mug filled brown with pennies sat on the dresser. The bed was an unmade wallow of yellow sheets and patchwork blankets. Gail laid Ned on the bed, then sat beside him and said, “Been a while, Sweet Pea.” She fell stretched backwards beside the baby with her arms flopped wide and her feet on the floor. “It’s like I make you too sad for you to come see me.”

    “That’s only part of why.”

    “What’s the rest?”

    “Things stack up, is all.”

    “So talk to me.”

    Ree sat on a stick chair and lifted Gail’s feet to her lap. She hunched over with her eyes down, rubbed her hands along Gail’s calves and ankles, all the while telling of Dad and the law, Dad and the house, her and the boys and Beelzebub’s fiddle. The light in the window passed from dim to gloomy and back to dim while Floyd now and then raised his voice to join the chorus in his headphones and drone thrash lyrics unattached to music behind Ree’s words. She rubbed with bracing vigor until she’d said enough.

    “Reid’s Gap? Where exactly’s that?”

    “Past Dorta, on the Arkansas side. She’s a kindy-garden teacher.”

    “I got to ask him. He keeps the keys.”

    “Tell him I can spring for gas.”

    Gail rolled from the bed, fell to her feet, and walked toward the droning voice. She was gone but a moment. When she came back to Ree,