Read Online All Your Pretty Dreams by Lise McClendon - Free Book Online Page B

you’d never ask.”
Jonny set his cup by his feet. “Big controversy. Huge. Should they
move the dump.”
    “ Oh my.”
    “ Galvanizing the town.
Turning brother against brother. Lenny is running for mayor.
Thunder Rhodes, he calls himself. On the ‘move the dump and love
the Boss’ platform. There’s a thing tomorrow night. I have to
entertain the Lenny-ites. Everybody has missed the Jonster’s
squeeze box.”
    Artie choked on his beer.
“Exchanging one form of pollution for another?” Jonny punched him
on the shoulder. Everybody had an accordion joke.
    They watched the game in
beery silence until the Twins had three outs, no runs, and took the
field. Jonny slumped in his seat. “Cuppie came down for the polka
mass.”
    Artie glanced over. “How’d
that go?”
    “ How did I last this
long?”
    “ Don’t beat yourself
up.”
    “ It’s been three months
since I’ve seen her and I couldn’t wait to get away. There’s
nothing left between us. And you know what? I feel good about that.
Then I feel bad about feeling good.”
    Artie slapped his knee,
about as close to brotherly love as he ever got. But that was fine.
Artie was the doing type, not the talking type. For a lawyer he had
no taste for argument. He made himself available, without asking
any questions or trying to persuade Jonny of anything. Artie never
said a bad word about Cuppie but Jonny knew exactly how he felt.
Artie had seen through her saccharine charm long ago. A month
before he’d left the card of a divorce lawyer on the kitchen table.
Jonny watched the game then said, “I’m looking for a place to live.
I’ll be out of your hair soon.”
    “ No rush.”
    “ Come down for Lenny’s
bash tomorrow night. He’d love to see you.”
    Artie raised one eyebrow.
Despite being completely different in every way he looked more like
Ozzie every year, dark hair and bluish bags under his eyes. He
wouldn’t come. Jonny knew he hated the old hometown.
    “ I’ll talk to Sonya,”
Artie said.
    On the drive back through
the countryside the next morning there were grain bins everywhere,
tucked into groves of maples, along stream bottoms, cozied up to
barns. Tall ones, short ones, fat ones, squat ones. Jonny’s
sketching had slowed but he’d been driving around the farmland
around Red Vine for a couple days, taking pictures of grain bins
and getting ideas. One tiny burg near Red Vine had been hit hard by
a tornado three years before. Jonny had forgotten. It never
recovered, its businesses boarded up, its people gone.
    Could you use new grain
bins as temporary housing, like FEMA trailers? Or refurbish old
ones as vacation cottages or fishing shacks? You’d have to do a lot
to them: insulate, put in windows and doors, run plumbing and
electricity, but nothing that was impossible. The bins were a basic
shell. It was like having the aluminum siding before the house was
built. He had an itch to actually do something, build something after years of
drawing other people’s ideas. An itch to find a bin to refurbish.
To decorate it, to design it, to furnish it, to own it.
    Crazy
shit . Reality pushed back. How was he
going to do that? How much would it cost? It was a screwy idea. A
project without a practical basis. Plus Artie had warned him
divorce lawyers were expensive.
    The edge of Red Vine
appeared over the slight rise in the highway. A cluster of
weather-beaten buildings, brick crumbling, sinking into the earth.
A place of the past, not the future. He should be finding a new
apartment in Minneapolis. He should be talking to that divorce
lawyer and getting Cuppie out of his head and his life. He should
have called his boss at the architecture firm while he was in town.
He was just stalling, squatting in Red Vine until a bolt of
lightning streaked out of the sky to remind him that his life was
waiting.
    The Spoon River Retirement
Home hugged the lake, low and comforting against the onslaught of
weather and time. Jonny hadn’t seen his grandfather since