Read Online Thrown-away Child by Thomas Adcock - Free Book Online Page B

know.”
    “In answer to your question back there, I was thinking about the troubles we've had—and will have.”
    “You’re planning something awful?”
    “I don’t have to plan. Awful stuff finds me.“
    “Who am I talking to here—little Neil Hockaday wearing his short pants and his necktie on his way to Holy Cross School? The place where he first learned to believe that upon his choirboy shoulders rides the whole wide world? God Almighty, Hock! Those nuns really did the number on you, didn’t they?”
    “Well, there was Sister Bertice. She’d keep me after school and have me write a hundred times on the blackboard: I am personally responsible for the agony of Christ...”
    “Sister Bertice. Please—I’m supposed to believe this?”
    “I would steal from you, but I would never lie.”
    “Very clever. Just like your Uncle Liam used to say. This is the usual load of Irish codswallop you haul out when you want to hide your thoughts.”
    “Put it this way, sweet—I have to wonder if I’m the best guy for your plans.”
    “Now he tells me.” Ruby waved a hand in front of her nose again.
    “What smells?”
    “Self-loathing. It doesn’t become you, Hock. You’ve got troubles, more than your share. That’s like all the best people.”
    I had to pause for a second to figure out how to express myself in order not to sound like the Holy Cross kid of my lost youth that Ruby somehow knew so accurately. She is scary that way. Finally I came up with, “You’ve seen people in those gyms working out on those exercise gizmos?”
    “StairMasters? Rowing machines?”
    “Like that, yes. Those contraptions where you’re already at where you’re supposed to be going.“
    “What’s it to you, belly boy?” asked Ruby, looking at my thickening waist. “You’re no gym rat.”
    “No, but I am a cop. Meaning I am supposed to battle against crime. By the way, what I happen to have is a virile paunch.”
    Ruby rolled her eyes. “So you’re a crime buster. So what’s that mean?”
    “It means I’m on a treadmill. Like all those people on their StairMasters and whatnot. See what I mean? Sometimes I think hamsters all over America are laughing their asses off at me.”
    Ruby said nothing. She probably thought up another choice crack, then decided against letting me have it on humane grounds. She just sat there next to me, quiet and a little concerned, as if she suspected me of getting ready for a heart attack, or at least for throwing up. She looked particularly intelligent and beautiful in that still moment. I pictured us strolling through the French Quarter of New Orleans, Ruby in a lacy dress.
    “This cop universe,” she said, tenderly now. “It’s in you deep. Like you once said yourself, about Ireland, «’s in you deeper than you know.”
    “Deeper than I’d want you to know.”
    “Why? Because it’s not what I’d plan for myself?“
    “That’s a good way of putting it.”
    “Since when do you think I ever planned on hook- ln g up with you in the first place? But here we are
    anyway—married in the eyes of God, and duly witnessed by your cop universe. So deal with it. And listen to me very carefully: things you plan in life usually turn out to be meaningless, things you accumulate without knowing it become your real treasure.“
    “Quite a philosophy.”
    “It’s the human condition. Love it or leave it.“
    “Do I deserve you?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Tell me what’s deep inside of you, Ruby. What’s in you deeper than you know?”
    “Being a black woman in a white man’s country.” Ruby did not have to think about this for more than a second or two. “Or any color woman, for that matter.”
    When I made no response, she asked, “Did I shock you, dearheart?”
    “Not really. The Irish have a certain history of being on the outside of things.”
    Ruby smiled at what she doubtless took as naïveté. Sister Bertice used to give me this sort of smile when I said something goofy in