Read Online Sorrow Floats by Tim Sandlin - Free Book Online Page A

drinking in the afternoon as a nap inducement.
    How I doodle is I draw pages of wavery lines with arrows on both ends. I’m very careful—no lines cross each other and every single arrow is a perfect wing-like V pointing the way to look next. I don’t know why I doodle that way; I guess I never made the grade with faces.
    Halfway through my third page of arrows, a sneeze exploded outside my tent. I would’ve liked to pee my pants.
    “Who’s there?” No sound came except the slight swish of someone trying to walk on grass without making noise. “I’ve got a gun.”
    “It’s not loaded,” a voice whispered.
    Jesus, what good is a pistol if the whole county knows you don’t have bullets? “Who’s out there?”
    “Pud.” He waited a moment, then whispered again. “Pud Talbot.”
    Pud Talbot—all I needed was that retard sniffing around the tent. “Did Dothan send you out to bother me?”
    “Dothan’ll be real mad if he catches me here. Can I come in, Maurey?”
    The whisper action seemed to indicate he was telling the truth, the visit was unauthorized, but I’d known the Talbot family too long to trust anything that seemed the truth. “What do you want, Pud?”
    “I brought you food. Can I come in, Maurey? I don’t want Dothan mad.”
    “Okay, but try anything weird and I’ll break your nose with Charley.”
    Pud knew who Charley was. “I won’t try anything weird.”
    The zipper made its sound, then Pud pushed a greasy paper sack and a lit flashlight through the door. He crawled in head first. “I thought maybe you were hungry.”
    I hadn’t considered it, but he was right. “What all did you bring?”
    He shined the light on the bag. I picked it up and shined my own light inside—bologna and American cheese on white bread sandwich, a carton of chocolate milk, and a box of Milk Duds.
    “Thank you, Pud.” Maybe almost dying had made me susceptible to emotion, but I was kind of touched. Here was someone I hadn’t known about who cared whether or not I ate.
    “It’s what I had for supper,” he said.
    “Didn’t happen to bring anything to drink, did you?”
    He raised up on his knees and flashed the light beam down the bag with mine. Our heads almost touched. “I put milk in,” Pud said.
    “I meant alcoholic to drink.”
    He lowered himself again. His voice sounded disappointed, as if he’d failed in his good deed. “I didn’t think about alcohol.”
    “Wish I could say that. Thanks again, Pud. I do appreciate the food.”
    Pud sat quietly while I ate my sandwich. His flashlight beam explored the tent some, but he was careful not to illuminate me. He seemed to accept it when I shined my light on him. Pud was shorter than Dothan, with curly dark hair and eyes the same brown as the backs of his hands. I figured his age at eighteen or nineteen. I’d known him most of my life and married into his family, but I doubt Pud and I had ever had a real conversation. The guy in front of me was different somehow from the kid we’d mocked in junior high.
    “Thank you,” I said again. “This is what I needed.”
    He nodded twice. “I thought you might be upset and forget food. He took your baby.”
    What I saw when I looked at Pud that I’d never seen before was compassion. I never know what to do with compassion. Lydia had it, she’d give her right arm if you needed it, but she’d joke like it didn’t matter and call you trouble as she saved you. Her compassion had to hold the illusion of hard ass or the whole Lydia image would collapse.
    Pud’s compassion was straight. Men too simple to hide themselves get to me. Right in the middle of chewing bologna I suddenly got the urge to crawl into Pud’s arms and cry for six hours. I hadn’t touched a human, when I was awake, anyway, in a week. Having a baby, you get used to skin-touching affection, even when you don’t have a man.
    But I was afraid if I touched him Pud would take it wrong—all other men would. He might think he could touch