Yellowcake Read Online Free PDF

with this?" Delmar says. "You ought to upgrade."
    Arnold digs in. Becky puts her hand over his and removes it from her arm. But she gets up. "We should go," she says. Arnold scurries up, grabs the pack, and hurries toward the car. He stands by the driver's door, waiting for Delmar to get out, which Delmar slowly does, though he doesn't move out of the way so Arnold can get in.
    "They've got good upgrades at Radio Shack. You can get surround-sound.
Reeally
nice car," he says again.
    Arnold smiles thinly.
    "How's
Shidá'í?
" Delmar says, leaning against the door frame, looking over the car top at Becky.
    "I don't know. Worse." Her father has started having burping fits, awful to listen to, a metronomic gasping or croaking that can go on for hours.
    "
Shimá sani
wants to come see him."
    "Shall I come pick her up?" Becky says.
    "Nah.
Shimá
will bring us." Delmar is saying that their grandmother is still mad at Becky for taking her father to the
bilagáana
doctors, who she believes have made her son sick. If her grandmother had had her way, Becky's father would have stayed far away from the hospital. The last time Becky saw her grandmother, the old woman gave her the silent treatment.
    Delmar looks over the door toward the lake. He says, "Hey, Stuck. Your kid's going to drown." Torry is standing at the water's edge, and now he's walking in, leaving his tennis shoes on the bank. Delmar steps out of the doorway, brushes by Arnold, who slips quickly into the driver's seat, slamming the door and starting the engine. Delmar runs toward the water's edge, chasing and grabbing the little boy.

6

    E VERY MORNING RYLAND'S breakfast comes with a pink pillbox. The pillbox has seven compartments. Each compartment has six pills. He empties a compartment a day, and on Sunday he empties the last. Monday morning the boxes are magically full again. He never sees Rosy refill them. Rosy keeps track of the pills and their aftereffects. She has a little notebook. Sometimes he peeks in the notebook to see how he's doing.
    The book is full of important words: Cipro, Prilosec, Vicodin, Percocet, Reglan, Furosemide. Pills that keep him running. He forgets on purpose exactly what each one does, but he knows that something in him will stop working if he skips a pill.
    He has lots of good days. It says so in his wife's scrawl, right there in black and white. Some days aren't so good. Some days, without warning, he'll react to one of the pills, or at least that's what Rosy says:
Got nauseous today, maybe the Cipro? Very hyper today, must be the Reglan. Check for allergies
? She's almost always right. He'll think back to one moment in the day when he got himself into a little temper, one moment when he thought he'd explode if he had to stay in the house any longer, and know it wasn't like him at all, and that it had to be the Reglan or some such.
    He has his favorites among the pills. Prilosec, that's a good one, though not as good as Xanax. Happy pills. The Xanax doesn't get a little pink compartment. The Prilosec does. Prilosec is for everyday, the Xanax for special occasions. Rosy keeps the bottle of Xanax on the top shelf above the stove, where the grandkids can't get it. He can help himself if he thinks he really needs one, though she advises half a pill, not the whole, and he ought to forgo it if he can, because Xanax can be a little meanie. Sometimes it calls to him like a siren, usually thirty minutes after he's eaten half of one. The other half, the amputated half, begins to whine, and if he were a stone, he could ignore it, but he is flesh and blood, contrary to what anybody thinks.
    Â 
    On Sundays he takes half a Xanax before church. This is routine because Mass is more an ordeal than a pleasure. Too many people. He wouldn't mind if the church were empty. Sometimes he takes the other half when he gets home, because most Sundays the family comes to dinner. He likes the family dinners better after he takes that little pill.
    Standard