Read Online Shackles by Bill Pronzini - Free Book Online Page A

it brought a sudden, vivid image of Kerry. The hurt got so bad so quickly I had to move the dial to get away from it. I found another station, somebody talking, but it was so static-riddled that I could only make out random words and sentence fragments—not enough to understand much of what was being said. When I switched back to KHOT I caught most of a news broadcast. All sorts of things happening on the international and national and local scenes, but no mention of me. That’s not surprising, though. I’m yesterday’s news by now.
    The radio is still on, still playing country music. “Silver Threads and Golden Needles.” Very spritely, even though the lyrics themselves aren’t too cheerful. It’s good to hear the sound of another human voice, even a singer’s over a staticky radio. The silence was beginning to get to me a little. Much more of it and I might have started talking to myself just to relieve it.
    Music, and the sun shining off clean snow outside. This day won’t be too difficult to get through. Not too difficult.
    * * *
    There are forty-three books in the carton of paperbacks—forty-two different titles. Eleven mysteries, four by Agatha Christie, including two dog-eared copies of
Sleeping Murder.
Two spy novels. Five adult Westerns and four traditional Westerns and one pioneer-family saga. Two science fiction novels. Six historical romances. Three Harlequin romances. Two sex-in-the-big-city novels. Two show-business biographies. One book on organic gardening. One fad diet book. One history of jazz. And one book on how to avoid stress.
    In the carton of old magazines there are a total of thirty-seven issues and seven different titles. Five issues of
Vogue,
all from the late seventies. Six issues of
Sports Illustrated
from 1985 and 1986. Twelve issues of
Time,
random over a five-year period beginning in 1976. Two issues of
The Yachtsman,
dated June and July of 1981. Eight issues of
Arizona Highways,
six from the late seventies and two from 1980. Three issues of
Redbook,
dated March, May, and August of 1986. And one issue of
Better Homes and Gardens,
dated January 1985.
    I’ve put all of the them, books and magazines, into little separate piles along the wall next to the cot. No reason for that—I can’t reach most of them easily without sitting or lying on the cot—or for cataloguing them as I have, other than to pass the time. The first couple of days, I didn’t read anything. I tried once, the second day, but I couldn’t concentrate, could not sit still. Monday morning I forced myself to page slowly through an issue of
Sports Illustrated.
And Monday evening I looked at a couple of issues of
Arizona Highways,
until the photographs of wide-open spaces caused the loneliness and the trapped feeling to well up and I had to stop.
    On Tuesday I picked out a traditional Western novel called
Gunsmoke Galoot.
Silly title, but it was originally published in 1940 and that was the sort of title they put on Westerns back then. I managed to get through one chapter in the morning, another in the afternoon, and still another before I went to sleep. Yesterday I was able to sit still long enough to read two chapters at a time until I finished it. I remember very little about the plot or characters—just that the writing had a nice pulpy flavor that was comforting, almost soothing.
    I’ve never read Westerns much, books or pulps, though I don’t have the attitude of some people that they’re childish and inferior to most other kinds of fiction. Of the more than six thousand pulp magazines I’ve collected over the years—
    My pulps. What will happen to them if I don’t get out of here? What will Kerry do with them? Sell them off? Put them in storage? And the rest of the things in my flat … books, clothing, furniture, the accumulated detritus of a man’s life? And the flat itself, what about that? The rent is paid until the first of the year; my landlord is a generous sort, he won’t start pressing for back