Read Online Johnston - I Promise by Joan Johnston - Free Book Online
Authors: Joan Johnston
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pulled the trigger.
Delia gasped.
The gun clicked on an empty chamber. “Bang,” Ray John said with a ghoulish grin.
Delia shivered with revulsion.
It was something she had seen him do before when he had his guns out cleaning them. He almost always had a grin on his face, and he made a big production out of pointing the revolver at his head, knowing she was scared to death he would get hurt.
She would beg him to put the gun down. Before he did, he would pull the trigger while she waited with her heart in her throat to see if he really was going to splatter his brains all over the room. He never had. His behavior had always seemed stupid to her, but never sinister, as it did now.
He spun the chamber and put the gun to her temple again.
Fear constricted her chest, because as crazy as Ray John was acting, she wasn’t sure whether there might not be a bullet—perhaps more than one—in the gun. She squeezed her eyes shut and made a whimpering sound as he pulled the trigger.
It clicked on an empty chamber.
“Have you got the message, Delia, honey?”
“Y-y-yes, Daddy,” she said.
“Now get undressed for me and get in bed.”
“But Mama—”
“Your mama’s not home. She had to go to San Antonio to pick up some special medicine for that Grand Champion bull of hers. Don’t expect she’ll be back before midnight.”
Delia glanced at the wind-up alarm clock beside her bed. “It’s eleven-thirty now!”
“Then you better hurry on up, girl, hadn’t you. Ray John’s got an itch, and he wants it scratched.”
That night, for the first time, Delia dreamed of murdering Ray John Carson. She shot him in the head. His brains splattered all over her pillow.
Chapter Four
Marsh drove his pickup to the back door of the Texas dogtrot home that had been the North ranch house for generations. In the old days, the one-story house had consisted of a central hallway—a shotgun blast going in the front door would come out the back—with two large rooms on each side.
Years later, someone had added a shaded porch out front with a couple of willow rockers for sitting and watching the sun set. A kitchen had been appended to the back of the house and, more recently, a mud porch behind that. The yellow clapboard house, with its slanted porch, peeling paint, and lopsided shutters, looked every bit of its 150 years.
Marsh had spent a great deal of his youth sleeping on the screened-in mud porch, and he had fond memories of nights lying there on an iron cot listening to the crickets and the lowing cattle and the occasional raccoon that came by to raid the garbage can out back. Sleeping outside hadn’t been entirely a matter of choice. In the first years after his grandmother died, it had been safer to keep the back wall of the house between himself and his father.
Their relations hadn’t improved much since.
The kitchen door wasn’t locked, and Marsh let himself into the darkened house. He went directly to the knotted string that turned on the bare lightbulb above the sink. One of these days he was going to replace the broken bulb cover.
The red-and-white checkerboard linoleum laid over the hardwood floor in the 1940s had worn black in front of the sink and the refrigerator, where he retrieved a bottle of Pearl. He set the cap against the Formica counter and popped it off, then took a long, cold swig.
He found his father in the parlor. An eerie glow from the television provided the only light in the room. Cyrus North was sitting frozen, eyes glazed over, holding a longneck Pearl braced on the arm of a ragged, overstuffed chair. It looked like a scene from “The Twilight Zone.”
“I’m home, Dad.”
His father didn’t answer. Marsh was already headed toward his room when he heard his father’s favorite cop series, “Starsky and Hutch,” break for a Ford Mustang commercial. His father’s head swung around, and he said, “Where the hell have you been?”
“What the hell do you care?”
His father came
Delia gasped.
The gun clicked on an empty chamber. “Bang,” Ray John said with a ghoulish grin.
Delia shivered with revulsion.
It was something she had seen him do before when he had his guns out cleaning them. He almost always had a grin on his face, and he made a big production out of pointing the revolver at his head, knowing she was scared to death he would get hurt.
She would beg him to put the gun down. Before he did, he would pull the trigger while she waited with her heart in her throat to see if he really was going to splatter his brains all over the room. He never had. His behavior had always seemed stupid to her, but never sinister, as it did now.
He spun the chamber and put the gun to her temple again.
Fear constricted her chest, because as crazy as Ray John was acting, she wasn’t sure whether there might not be a bullet—perhaps more than one—in the gun. She squeezed her eyes shut and made a whimpering sound as he pulled the trigger.
It clicked on an empty chamber.
“Have you got the message, Delia, honey?”
“Y-y-yes, Daddy,” she said.
“Now get undressed for me and get in bed.”
“But Mama—”
“Your mama’s not home. She had to go to San Antonio to pick up some special medicine for that Grand Champion bull of hers. Don’t expect she’ll be back before midnight.”
Delia glanced at the wind-up alarm clock beside her bed. “It’s eleven-thirty now!”
“Then you better hurry on up, girl, hadn’t you. Ray John’s got an itch, and he wants it scratched.”
That night, for the first time, Delia dreamed of murdering Ray John Carson. She shot him in the head. His brains splattered all over her pillow.
Chapter Four
Marsh drove his pickup to the back door of the Texas dogtrot home that had been the North ranch house for generations. In the old days, the one-story house had consisted of a central hallway—a shotgun blast going in the front door would come out the back—with two large rooms on each side.
Years later, someone had added a shaded porch out front with a couple of willow rockers for sitting and watching the sun set. A kitchen had been appended to the back of the house and, more recently, a mud porch behind that. The yellow clapboard house, with its slanted porch, peeling paint, and lopsided shutters, looked every bit of its 150 years.
Marsh had spent a great deal of his youth sleeping on the screened-in mud porch, and he had fond memories of nights lying there on an iron cot listening to the crickets and the lowing cattle and the occasional raccoon that came by to raid the garbage can out back. Sleeping outside hadn’t been entirely a matter of choice. In the first years after his grandmother died, it had been safer to keep the back wall of the house between himself and his father.
Their relations hadn’t improved much since.
The kitchen door wasn’t locked, and Marsh let himself into the darkened house. He went directly to the knotted string that turned on the bare lightbulb above the sink. One of these days he was going to replace the broken bulb cover.
The red-and-white checkerboard linoleum laid over the hardwood floor in the 1940s had worn black in front of the sink and the refrigerator, where he retrieved a bottle of Pearl. He set the cap against the Formica counter and popped it off, then took a long, cold swig.
He found his father in the parlor. An eerie glow from the television provided the only light in the room. Cyrus North was sitting frozen, eyes glazed over, holding a longneck Pearl braced on the arm of a ragged, overstuffed chair. It looked like a scene from “The Twilight Zone.”
“I’m home, Dad.”
His father didn’t answer. Marsh was already headed toward his room when he heard his father’s favorite cop series, “Starsky and Hutch,” break for a Ford Mustang commercial. His father’s head swung around, and he said, “Where the hell have you been?”
“What the hell do you care?”
His father came
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