Read Online Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) by Randall Silvis - Free Book Online

back and forth, a barely perceptible answer.
    â€œHas he had any work lately?”
    â€œThree days last week. A big warehouse of some kind over in Carlisle. Fifty-two hundred square feet, he said.”
    â€œMust be well heated to seal concrete at this time of year.”
    She made no movement, offered no reply.
    â€œAnd you have no idea where he is today? No phone call yet?”
    â€œI haven’t seen or heard from him since the day before yesterday.”
    Gatesman nodded. He looked into the little kitchen area. Everything was spick-and-span, not so much as a dirty coffee cup. He wondered how many dozens of times in the past twenty-four hours she had wiped off the counter and tabletop. How many times she had rearranged the soup cans in the cupboard. She could clean the place a hundred times but not remember to change her clothes or brush her hair.
    Of course there was another reason for it too, he remembered that as well. You blame yourself for what has happened. You want nothing to do with yourself. Maybe you intend to punish yourself by showing your own body disrespect, by not feeding it or keeping it clean, not brushing your teeth. What you want is for your self and its goddamn consciousness to disappear.
    Gatesman remembered it all. He had done laundry. Day after day after day. Patrice’s and Chelsea’s underclothes. First the whites, then the bright colors. Patrice’s and Chelsea’s socks. The shorts. The jeans. The cotton items. The synthetics. He ironed everything whether it was wrinkled or not. Folded the items and put them in the drawers. Everything done, he started again.
    â€œSo you came home from the generating plant,” he said, “about a quarter after eight that morning. And then what? What’s the place look like when you get here? I’m sure it wasn’t as clean and neat as it is now.”
    â€œJesse’s cereal bowl is all,” she said. “On the kitchen table there. The bowl and the spoon. I washed things up and put them away. Then I went to bed to get a few hours’ sleep.”
    â€œYou didn’t happen to take a quick look in Jesse’s bedroom first, see if anything was out of place or, I don’t know . . .”
    â€œNot then,” she said. “Why would I?”
    â€œYou wouldn’t. There’d be no reason to. You thought he was at school.”
    â€œHe keeps his door closed usually. I always told him it’s his space and only his.”
    â€œThat’s something kids need, I think. Something everybody needs.”
    â€œEven after I got up,” she told him, “it never occurred to me that something was wrong. I made myself a sandwich, drank a glass of milk. I was at Mrs. Shaner’s place by 12:30. Finished up there and got back here in time to meet the bus.”
    â€œWhich is usually around 3:10 or so.”
    â€œGive or take a few minutes either way.”
    â€œI know you already told me all this, Livvie. I just need to hear it all again.”
    â€œThe bus didn’t stop,” she said. “Never even slowed down when it went by.”
    â€œWhich has happened before, though.”
    â€œA few times, yes. She gets distracted or something, you know. Misses the stop.”
    â€œSo you’re thinking she’ll let Jesse off down at the Conners’.”
    â€œAnd I go out and get in the car and drive on down, so he doesn’t have to walk the whole way back. And that Nolan Conner, he’s in the same homeroom as Jesse, when the bus starts pulling away I call out to Nolan before he gets into the house. And he tells me that Jesse wasn’t at school all day. Lori stopped the bus out front, beeped the horn. Jesse never came out, so she just drove on by without him. So now I’m thinking, okay, he’s playing some kind of game with me. He’s back home hiding under the bed or something like that. Plus, he knows he’s not supposed to be playing hooky anymore. He