Read Online No Story to Tell by K. J. Steele - Free Book Online Page A

in Mr. Graves’s direction in several places. Furious, Mrs. Lyncroft had refused to pay, saying the order was for 12 heads not 12 cases. Mr. Graves had flown into a rage, insisting the girl had wanted enough lettuce for 250 salads and he had ordered no more than the appropriate amount. He was abruptly informed that it was 250 sandwiches, not salads, and that 12 heads would do just fine. Mr. Graves threatened to call the police, in his hysteria having completely forgotten Jimmy Smith was one. Mrs. Lyncroft had laughed rather brusquely in his wrinkled, red face and then stomped home to yell at her daughter. Who in turn yelled at her fiancé, who much to his detriment yelled back, and the whole wedding was promptly canceled, Mr. Graves stuck with the whole fancy red-leafed truckload.
    Being the entrepreneurial sort and not about to throw good money after bad, Mr. Graves had the works set up as a Lucky Dollar Super Special the very next day, hoping to mitigate his losses. But the townspeople had seen plenty of lettuce in their years and were wary of this pile painted with an unfamiliar hue. The old storekeeper tried all his angles—two for one, fifty percent off, buy one get one free; but he couldn’t entice them to buy. The housewives crowded around and poked at the pile. Picked heads up. Put heads down. But try as he might, they would not buy.
    “What’s wrong with this here lettuce?” was the inevitable question to which the visibly infuriated proprietor replied over and over: “Nothing. Nothing at all. Just a natural variation of color due to the extra vitamins in it. Very, very healthy for you.”
    But the townsfolk weren’t fools, and it wasn’t long before they’d determined the whole deviant lot had been sprayed with a toxic and probably banned pesticide. Mr. Graves, in a rare defeat, finally loaded the whole lot up and dumped it in with his pig. The pig, more than happy to oblige, gorged itself all night and promptly died, solidifying what the townsfolk had suspected all along.
    “Hmm, now what on earth could that be?” Elliot leaned forward against the steering wheel and squinted into the distance. Victoria followed his gaze with mild disinterest. A lump, nondescript and gray, lay on the road ahead of them. Victoria’s stomach tightened. She hoped it wasn’t an animal struck by a passing vehicle—dead or, worse, left to die of its own accord. She almost prayed it wouldn’t be anything that would cast waves across the calm of their day. As the truck pulled them closer, she saw the object was not sprawled out like an animal but rather sitting upright, rounded like a rock, with a stick curved as a winding stream resting against its side. To Victoria’s horror and revulsion, it moved as the vehicle sidled closer to it, the gray blanket creeping back to reveal the haunted, toothless face of Mrs. Spiller, a worn black bible held tightly in her hands.
    “Oh! Oh . . . it’s just that old Mrs. Spiller. Just go around her. She’s crazy as can be. Going to end up causing an accident one of these days,” Victoria hissed, drawing her face away from the window so she couldn’t be seen. Elliot put on his four-way flashers, pulled over to the side of the road and got out, either not hearing her words or choosing to ignore them. The truck, vacant without him, hissed her words back at her and, although she felt ashamed of them, it was justification that rose in her throat, not apology.
    The Second World War had wreaked considerable devastation on several of Hinckly’s families, but on none with such a severe vengeance as Mrs. Spiller’s. Never the prettiest flower on the wall, her prospects of marriage had almost been given up for naught when a chance introduction to a second cousin once removed had salvaged her from certain spinsterhood and a barren old age. Twin babies were soon delivered and, to everyone’s amazement, they grew to be handsome boys, well mannered and polite.
    Mrs. Spiller, already close to forty