Read Online Ask the Dark by Henry Turner - Free Book Online Page A

Maiden T-shirt, know the kind I mean? Me, I laugh too just to look agreeable, but boy I feel bad for Leezie. And before I even get back inside the door he’s got her in the car and then slipped through his window hisself not even opening his door and BOOM that GTO is five hundred yards up the street.
    Circus my ass, I think.
    I turn to go back in, but I stop, looking down.
    I still got them mittens in my hand.

Chapter Twelve
    I sat in the kitchen and ate a little and when Daddy got home I talked to him ’bout what he’d done all day, which was nothing, ’cept he gone to see that man who owns the fish shop and talked with’m all about what it takes to run a store like that, what sort’f papers you gotta draw up and how much stake you need to have a go.
    It was good hearin’ he really went so far as to actually meet the man and ask questions like he done, and I wanted to tell’m ’bout how I’d been goin’ around writin’ down addresses of empty stores I seen, but I figured it be best to wait till I called a few and found out just how much rent money they’d all want before getting Daddy’s hopes up.
    Daddy, he also found out you gotta have a truck to haul your stock up from them wholesalers downtown, and other things to boot you gotta own to get goin’, like ’frigerators to keep it all cold.
    He was pretty excited when he first started telling me, but after a while it seemed like there was so much to do and so much money needed for it that he got quiet and just sat there at the table. I told him it ain’t all that hard and not to worry ’cause I’d help’m, but he just sort’f shook his head and didn’t say nothing more, and I went upstairs.
    But I didn’t sleep.
    My head was all full of thoughts, especially thoughts about when to go to Miss Gurpy’s to check out them boxes, and really wishing she’d just let me clean her house on the inside, so I could take a look without no risk of sneaking in, and I figured I’d talk to Richie Harrigan about that.
    One thing I gotta say is when I thought about the man or the house or the boxes, I didn’t think ’bout what Leezie was doing out with Bad-Ass or worry ’bout Daddy moping downstairs—all that just slipped my mind. Ain’t that funny? It was the best damn way I’d had to get my mind off things since I used to go out late nights ridin’ on that old bike. ’Cept this time it was even better. ’Cause it was like a puzzle, with the only rule book the one I figure out myself, and nagging at me hard enough to make my worries just fade away.
    So I’m lying there in bed like that, sort’f dreaming almost about them boxes and the jewels and what to do to see’m, when just then I remember something and sit up straight like I been bit.
    Remember how today Skugger’d warned me when he was in a car with a man? That’s what I was thinking about now. At the time there’d seemed something familiar about that man. I don’t mean who he was, ’cause even though I’d never met him and didn’t know his name I’d seen him around time and again, always driving that same old car, and always with one boy or another who liked to get high.
    But right then in bed I knew what it was that I’d seen.
    It was his coat, or really the shirt he had on.
    I remember I was looking at’m through the smoke in the car, and he was smoking a jay and so high he was sort’f poking it at his face and missing his mouth, and sparks was falling on his shirt and he was rubbing’m out. And I saw it was a green shirt, green plaid, same as lumberjacks wear.
    It was the goddamn shirt I’d seen on the floor of the dark house, lying there with the puffy jacket. Shirt looked hot for the weather and his face was all sweaty but he was smokin’ so much reefer it didn’t seem to faze’m.
    I lay there staring, thinking ’bout that and all the other things I’d seen, and tryin’ my damndest to find a way to put’m together. And I must say it pissed me off not knowing just how to do