Read Online Fragile Beasts by Tawni O’Dell - Free Book Online Page A

says with a pout, “it’s just hard to see someone you like have a bad mother. Especially when you have a good mother.”
    I think about Rae Ann, pretty, vacuous, annoying, affected, misguided, overindulged Rae Ann. She has her flaws. She has many flaws, but neglecting her children is not one of them.
    “You understand what I’m saying, right?” Shelby asks. “You had a good mother, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “What was Great-Grandma like?”
    Her question catches me off guard. I don’t think she or her sisters have ever asked me about either of my parents. Cameron used to ask me about them when he was a child because his own father would never talk about them.
    “You know she died when I was young. Not quite as old as you are now.”
    She nods solemnly.
    “That must have been the worst thing in the world.”
    “It was.”
    I pause for a moment to gather my thoughts.
    My mother has long ceased being a person whom I can describe to others. I can’t remember the sound of her voice or the smell of her skin or even any of her physical characteristics other than a pink scar on her hand I used to trace with my finger when she would hold me on her lap and rock me to sleep and the long hair she used to unpin from the top of her head every night before bed and I’d watch pour down to her waist like a copper waterfall.
    She represents a certain time to me, a time when my life was filled with hardship and hunger, yet it was somehow more peaceful and enjoyable than any life I’ve known since, a time when I felt safe and could still hope.
    “We were very poor,” I tell Shelby. “What I remember most about her was that she was always working and she was always tired.”
    “But you knew she loved you?”
    “Yes, I knew she loved me.”
    We walk on in silence for a while. I scan the green hillsides looking forVentisco even though I know my search will be in vain. We won’t see him near the house. He’s a wild thing living among tamed people. He stays away not out of fear or even dislike but simply because he has no use for us.
    “Do you like this boy?” I decide to ask her.
    “We’re friends. That’s all,” she answers, but I detect a slight blush to her cheeks.
    “Do you like the other one?”
    The blush deepens.
    “I like both of them.”
    She stops suddenly and looks me directly in the eyes. Hers are genuinely pleading.
    “Aunt Candace, I can’t explain it to you. It’s just that … I know if they go live with her, she’s going to destroy them.”
    I’m listening to her and watching her face, when something beyond her in the field catches my attention.
    A heavy black shadow emerges from the tree line, tosses its head several times, then bounds forward at a slow, rollicking gait.
    “Look,” I whisper to her.
    She follows my line of vision and turns around at the fence to face the hills sloping upward and away from us.
    “I see him,” she says excitedly.
    The bull, silvered by the sunlight, raises his head as if he heard her. He stands perfectly still, a magnificent broad-shouldered ebony creature who obeys nothing but his own will.
    “He’s beautiful,” she breathes.
    He is so reminiscent of Calladito I can’t help but recall the first time Manuel pointed him out to me at Carmen del Pozo’s finca. “Éste es para mí, y yo para él,” he said.
That one is for me, and I’m for him
.
    In his heavy, muscled body was such a concentration of unthinking power that the only word that came to my mind was “beast.” Here was the beast of all beasts. What creature could possibly threaten him? I imagined it would be easier for a man to chip away at a wall of coal with a toothpick than to try and conquer this dense, black mass with only grace and a cape.
    I had seen bulls in America, but Calladito was my first exposure to El Toro.
    “How long will he pose like that?”
    “He’s not posing. He’s seen us and he’s deciding if he’s going to charge or not.”
    As if on cue, he takes a step