Read Online The Glass Harmonica by Russell Wangersky - Free Book Online Page B

all on their own but that fit him perfectly. “Slim pickings”—“Fat chance”—“No way.” Not “No damn way” or “No fucking way” either—and Vincent had heard both of those before, from his father and from other men at the yard—but just “No way,” and the way Mr. Coughlin said it, it sounded far more serious than anyone else could make it sound.
    Glenn stopped the truck at the four-way stop and then turned onto Bond Street, passing the house he never seemed to be in, a narrow trench dug through the snow towards the front door like he felt the digging was hardly worth the effort. The back wheels of the truck slipped because the snow had melted and then frozen again overnight where it had run out in a long tongue just past the crosswalk.
    The sky was flat white and still, all the blue bled out of it by winter and the latitude, the sunlight thin and distant and struggling to throw down any heat at all.
    Vincent looked up at his father out of the corner of his eye. It looked like his father was going to say something else, but then it was like Glenn could read his mind. He gave a small shake of his head, raising both his eyebrows at once.
    Glenn Coughlin, Vincent decided, had eyebrows that were far more bushy than any he had ever seen.
    They drove in silence for a few more minutes, the streets still relatively empty, Coughlin taking the corners wide and fast, his side of the truck often in the other lane. When they met another vehicle, it was the other car or truck that acquiesced and coughed up the right-of-way. Glenn had no compunctions about sitting in the street, nose to nose with someone else and at a dead stop, until the other driver changed his mind and let Glenn go on.
    Then the pickup was in front of the school. It was an old school, a big, two-storey brick building with too-large windows, and there were scores of other children spinning up the sidewalk towards the front door like busy ants. Down among narrow streets of row houses, each house seemed to be disgorging more kids onto the streets every moment, the narrow sidewalks blocked with snow, and every child was producing his or her own tiny engine-like plume of steam as they moved in masses along the curb.
    Vincent opened the truck’s door, and as he did, Coughlin reached across in front of Keith and ruffled Vincent’s hair. “Work hard,” he said. “Do your best. Get good grades. You’ll probably end up down on the dock with us anyway, though.”
    And no, I won’t, Vincent thought even then. Vincent liked geography best of all, because it was the study of everywhere else. A study that made McKay Street, and even St. John’s, the smallest possible speck.
    Glenn took his hand away by giving the boy’s head a sudden little shove and then a sharp, harsh knock with two of his knuckles, as if suggesting any sort of kindness was a passing thing.
    â€œSee ya, Vincent,” his father said quietly.
    â€œSee ya, Dad.”
    Coughlin put the truck back into gear and was pulling away from the curb before the door was fully closed. Halfway down the block, the truck’s horn gave a forlorn little toot, as if remembering something it had forgotten, but Vincent’s hand was already on the big brass door handle to the school, and he barely bothered to look at the truck as it vanished downhill towards the harbour.
    The tide of children surged and pushed their way in through the heavy door to the school, jostling all around him and carrying him in through the door like he was a chip of wood suspended in a current, the direction he was going to travel already decided upon by everyone else.

188 A
McKay Street
    RON COLLINS
    FEBRUARY 18, 2006
    L IZ TOLD RON she was leaving their apartment the first time he managed to reach her on the prison pay phone. It was only a week after he’d been arrested, and it was as though every single thing about her had