Winter's Bone Read Online Free PDF

she said, “He won’t let me drive.”

    “You tell him I’ll spring for gas?”

    “I told him. He still won’t.”

    “Why not?”

    “He never says why not to me. He just says no.”

    “Aw, Sweet Pea.” Ree shook her head. The features of her face seemed to curdle together. “I hate that.”

    “What? What’s so awful wrong to make that face?”

    “It’s just so sad, man, so fuckin’ sad to hear you say he won’t let you do somethin’, and then you
don’t
do it.”

    Gail fell stiff like a tree limb to the bed, crashed her face flat into the sheets.

    “It’s different once you’re married.”

    “Must be. Must really be. You never used to eat no shit. No shit at all.”

    Gail turned and spun to sit on the edge of the bed. Ned gurgled, churned the air with tiny clenched hands. Gail’s head sagged and Ree leaned to pick at her hair, pinched between the long ruddled locks, brushed strands back with her fingertips, lowered her face and inhaled the smell.

    Gail said in a low voice, “What’re you doin’?”

    “Pluckin’ sticky-burrs, darlin’. You got a mess of sticky-burrs.”

    “No, I don’t.” She pushed Ree’s hands away but did not raise her eyes. “I don’t got sticky-burrs. And Ned’n me need our nap. I feel tired of a sudden. We’ll see you next time, Sweet Pea.”

    Ree slowly stood in the dimness, kicked a boot against the stick chair, pulled the green hood up around her head, then said, “Just, I’m
always
for you, remember.”

    When Ree came out the front door Floyd stood at the corner of the deck lashing an arc of piss to the junk barn wall. The piss hit the wall and steamed, steamed and bubbled brief suds sliding down the wall to the snowbank. Hot drops burrowed into the snow and left jaundiced dots and scrawls. He continued to piss, shivering in shirtsleeves, shoulders hunched against the breeze, and said, “Reckon it’ll ever turn cold today?”

    “If it don’t today it will tonight.”

    Steam rose from the barn wall in light wisps and Floyd glanced over his shoulder at Ree. He said, “You think you get it but you don’t. I mean, you oughta try it your own self sometime. Get drunk one night and wind up married to somebody you don’t hardly know.”

    “I know her real good.”

    “Yes’m, girl, you oughta go’n get yourself good’n drunk one night and have you a kid. I mean it.”

    “No thanks. I already got two. Not countin’ Mom.”

    Floyd’s arc of piss slackened and slackened until he shook the last drops loose.

    “Nobody here wants to be awful,” he said. He hopped a little as he zipped up. “It’s just nobody here knows all the rules yet, and that makes a rocky time.”

     
8

    R EE FOLLOWED a path made by prey uphill through scrub, across a bald knob and downhill into a section of pine trees and pine scent and that pious shade and silence pines create. Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could. She lingered. She sat on a big thinking rock amid the pines and clamped her headphones on. She tried to match the imported sounds to the setting and selected
Alpine Dusk
. But those wintry mountain sounds matched the view too perfectly and she switched to
The Sounds of Tropical Dawn
. Snow worked loose on branches overhead and sifted between pine needles to drift down as powder while she heard warm waves unrolling and birds of many colors and maybe monkeys. She could hear the smell of orchids and papayas, sense a rainbow of fish gathering in the shallows near the beach.

    She sat there until the big thinking rock made her butt too cold.

     
9

    G RAY NAILED down over the sky complete and all the windows. Mom’s head bent into the kitchen sink and her hair billowed to fill the basin. She seemed lost to an episode of splendid pleasure, given up entirely to the joys of being fussed over by a daughter, mewling as Ree’s fingers scrubbed her scalp, raised a shock of