Read Online Ride Around Shining by Chris Leslie-Hynan - Free Book Online Page A

possible. He clutched his knee with both hands, slowly, not like it pained him but like he wanted to gather it up and put it back together. Then he whimpered, once, a reedy, terrible sound, so distant from his ordinary voice it was like a note from a flute. He shook his head fiercely.
    â€œI’m hurt,” he said. “I’m hurt.” And then she was on her knees.
    The cat, sensing fun, bounded over and began to frolic. Antonia pushed it away, which only made it more rambunctious. Calyph shouted for me and I came out of the doorway and tried to grab the thing. I whiffed and it leapt away, chirping ecstatically, then rounded on me, waiting gamely for me to fail again. It led me from room to room, hunched over and mortified, locked in perverse and overmatched contest. The beast was spouting a sort of joyous horking sound. I remember thinking they must be able to see me hunching from room to room, the sounds of my hushed and desperate coaxing an absurd backdrop to their misery. At last I got the thing cornered in the kitchen and took it in my arms. I could barely keep from hurling it into the sink and running the disposal, just to see if a bit of limb might get nicked off. With the thing pinned writhing to my chest, I took back the house flyer and slipped it in my pocket. I guess I felt I’d done enough.
    â€œHush now,” I heard him say behind me, as I went up the stairs to lock the cat in. “It’ll be all right. Get the phone.”
    When I got the serval in a bedroom, it was bouncing and chirping all over. I looked around to see if the thing had a bed somewhere, like that would calm it, but all its things were in some other room. I tried the closet, and when I opened it the cat darted right in and plunged its front paws into a laundry basket, its hind still protruding into the room. It seemed occupied with snuffling the whites, so I made a move for the door. The next I knew the serval was busting past me into the hall, free again and horking joyously, a pair of Antonia’s dirty silks dangling around its neck. It ran round and round the upper floor, sounding its triumph. I was looking for something to club it with when it ran back into the bedroom of its own accord. I locked it in the closet, and when I got back downstairs Calyph had his T-shirt pulled over his face. They told me to go right home and talk to no one.
    He must have been on his way to Alabama already, but no one had called me. Someone else must have driven him to the airport. Throughout the night, while I slept, forces had been moving, and by dawn the panic was gone and agents of supreme competence had converged to handle everything. Hours before my first yawn of the morning I’d been cut from the loop and replaced.
    When afternoon came and there was no word, I called the house line and his brother Talib answered.
    â€œThis is Jess,” I said.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe driver.”
    â€œOh. Just, uh, sit tight. We’ll let you know when he get back.”
    â€œIs everyone else there with him?”
    â€œWhere with him,” he said curtly.
    â€œBirmingham. It’s in all the news.”
    â€œWhat do the news know?” he said, his voice aggressive with the strain of keeping up the cover.
    â€œI just want to know if I’ll be needed. How long does the surgery take?”
    â€œSurgery?” he repeated incredulously.
    â€œI was there .”
    He sighed. “Listen, people been callin’. Wantin’ to know. I don’t know who’s who—I’m just tryin’ to hold it down here. I wouldn’t expect anybody back for three, four days at least. All right?” Then he hung up.
    I tried to think of the time off as a luxury, but there was little to do. Some cloths I’d ordered for the car came in the mail and I touched the fine, soft fibers sadly. Once more I moved listless through the downtown streets, walking past the old happy-hour bars that had been nightly