Read Online Inside a Silver Box by Walter Mosley - Free Book Online Page B

the Silver Box go out of his way to make a place so completely and then leave bugs to hurt somebody like this?”
    Ronnie wondered too but he didn’t echo his companion. Instead he took her hands in his. “It’s just bug bites,” he said. “They’re swollen but they’ll go down. We should get some cold water on’em and I bet the swellin’ll go down soon.”
    “You think so?”
    “I do.”
    “How long could that take?”
    “When I get a mosquito bite, it usually lasts a day, two at most.”
    “Two days,” she wailed.
    “It’s okay, Lorraine. I’m right here wit’ you, girl. I promise you that.”
    He took her down to the stream and, using cupped hands, poured water over her eyes.
    “That feels really good,” she said.
    “Don’t it sting?”
    “No, the water makes it feel relaxed. I think you’re right about it helping.”
    “You think maybe we should wait here until you could see again?” Ronnie asked as he went about plucking the deep red ground berries.
    “No,” she said. “Silver Box didn’t give us a deadline but he made it sound like we had to act fast. We have to keep moving.”
    “But he said that time stopped until we get back.”
    “Maybe he meant it stopped until when we got here,” she argued. “We can’t take the chance.”
    “Okay. You just put your arm in mine and I’ll tell ya if there’s a rock or tree branch in the way.”
    Lorraine smiled and reached out for her killer’s crooked arm. They got to their feet and continued on the unlikely path of their lives.
    *   *   *
    A S THE DAY progressed they made good time, feeling energized by the sun and air, the ground berries and also somehow by their closeness.
    Ronnie noticed that a new kind of tree was appearing here and there. This new vegetation had dark bark on thick trunks with huge outcropping branches that bore light green leaves the size and shape of one-man kayaks. The wary side of Ronnie’s streetwise mind wondered what this new kind of tree might mean for them.
    “There’s a little light getting in between my eyelids,” Lorraine said before he could mention the trees to her.
    “That’s good,” he said. “That means you’re gettin’ better.”
    They walked arm in arm, as close as lovers or siblings or small children using the buddy system on a school outing.
    “Even though I was mad at you, I still wanted to jump your bones again last night,” she said after a while.
    “I never had a woman do that to me before.”
    “Did you like it?”
    “It was wild. You know like if you was a man.”
    “I thought you said you did that in prison.”
    “Yeah, but I was always the one on top. You know I never let a woman do too much with sex. I guess I never even wondered about what she felt.”
    “What do you think now?”
    “That I never knew nuthin’ before we met.”
    “Maybe you’ll regret it by the time this is over.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because of my great-uncle Phil Goldstone, my mother’s mother’s brother.”
    “What about him?”
    “He was in the war that Ma Lin fought in.”
    “Vietnam?”
    “There’s a rock in front’a your left foot.”
    They stopped and Lorraine nudged her left foot out until her shod toe tapped the four-inch-high obstruction. Stepping over the rock, they went on.
    “Uncle Phil hated everything about the war,” Ronnie continued. “He said that he hated the enemy and he hated the white government for sendin’ him there. But he made his best friends and had the greatest times of his life there. He hated it, but he loved it more’n anything too.”
    “And that’s how you feel about me?” She hugged his arm closer.
    “That’s how I feel about everything. My whole life’s been a war, and you the last fight in that war. I won the fight but then I lost it too. And now … now I’m free and I don’t regret a thing. I cain’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because it brought me here.”
    Three steps of silence and suddenly Lorraine pulled