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

me back.
    “Can I ask you something personal?” I asked.
    His hands turned over, palms up, but he didn’t say anything, so I went on. “For as long as I can remember people have said you’re not smart, but I’ve seen you work on cars and stuff and you seem on the ball then. Why do people think you’re not smart?”
    He turned off his flashlight. “I can’t read.”
    I turned off mine. It was kind of nice in the dark. The moon outside was bright enough that I could make out Pud’s form, his arms and the outline of his head, but I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
    “Can’t read at all?” I asked.
    The head outline dropped and I could tell he was looking at the ground instead of me. “Not very good. I try, I used to try hard, but the letters don’t stay still.”
    We were quiet a long time, aware of each other’s presence. Reading books was important to me, maybe most important after Auburn, Yukon Jack, and horses. It was hard to conceive of not being able to read.
    I was curious about something else, too. “There’s this other thing people say you do, Pud, that I always wondered if it’s true.”
    “Mess around with animals.”
    I was glad he said it. Even in my frank frame of mind I’d have had trouble saying “Hey, Pud, do you fuck sheep?”
    Pud’s flashlight came on and he shined it on me for the first time, although he kept the beam out of my eyes. “Do you believe it?’’ he asked.
    “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
    “My brother tells everyone I mess with animals.”
    “I’ll ignore what Dothan says about you if you ignore what he says about me.”
    Pud slid closer. I needed to hold his hand, nothing more, but I needed a hand.
    He tapped a rhythm on the tent floor with his knuckles. “When I was a kid Dothan had a club, the Rough Riders, that he wouldn’t let me in. He said I was too stupid.”
    I saw a glimpse of what being Dothan’s younger brother must be like. I’d lived less than two years with him and already tried suicide.
    Pud went on. “Dothan said I could be a special cadet of the Rough Riders if I’d give Stonewall a jack job.”
    “Wasn’t Stonewall that God-ugly dog of yours?”
    “He wasn’t so ugly.”
    I didn’t see any reason to fight over it, but Stonewall was ugly. “How do you jack off a dog?”
    Pud held his hand in the light and made his thumb and first finger into an O. “I didn’t like being left out, so I did what he said. The boys in the club laughed at me.” His voice was sad. “Dothan said special cadet meant I had to jack off a different animal before every meeting. I wouldn’t do it.”
    How could I tell him Dothan was the screwed-up one, not us? Everyone in town had it backward. “Jacking off an ugly dog isn’t so bad, Pud. Hell, I’ve jacked off Dothan himself.”
    His head nodded. “He told everybody, too.”
    Pud’s eyes came up and met mine. He moved his hand toward me, I closed my eyes and felt his fingers gently touch the side of my neck. I almost groaned.
    Pud said, “You’ve got a tick.”
    “What?”
    “Hold still, I don’t want to leave the head inside.”
    I went rigid, afraid to even blink. Pud’s fingertips on my neck turned slowly counterclockwise. He exhaled and drew his hand back to hold the tick under the flashlight beam.
    “See,” Pud said. “I got his head.”
    The tick kicked its tiny legs into Pud’s palm, and its head rose and fell, like it was blind and wanted to re-enter my body. Pud pressed its middle with his thumb until the tick popped and blood splattered from the base of Pud’s fingers to his wrist.
    He wiped his hand off on his jeans leg and said, “You should check yourself. Stonewall used to get hordes of ticks this time of year.”

8
    Ticks and dead babies roamed the night. Bloated, sucking ticks, crawling-out-my-ear ticks—my dreams reeked of the buggers. I found them in my pubic hair, hanging off my breasts, imbedded in my lower eyelid.
    But the tick revulsion was diddly