Read Online Twenty-Seven Bones by Jonathan Nasaw - Free Book Online Page A

haven’t been owned by the British since the Napoleonic Wars.”
    “But the wheel’s on the left,” Pender noted, as they slowed down behind an ancient pickup truck. “How do you pull out to pass?”
    “It helps to have a passenger. If not, you hit the horn. If you hear somebody else hitting a horn, you don’t go. Not that anybody’s in all that much of a hurry.”
    “God forbid,” said Pender.
    Coffee grinned. “You’re livin’ on island time now, me son,” he said. “You’d better get used to it.”

7
    Auntie Holly was late. Marley didn’t mind—it only gave him more time to practice penalty kicks in the field behind the school with his friend Marcus Coffee, the goalie on their championship Youth League soccer team. Dawn, however, sitting alone on the school steps with her backpack and Marley’s book bag beside her, grew more forlorn with every minute that passed, though it was not all that unusual for Holly to be late picking them up.
    Eventually one of the other kids—the schoolyard was by no means abandoned—told Marley that his sister was bawling out front. He’d been looking to one side and shooting to the other all afternoon, so this time he looked left, faked right, and shot left, yelled Goaaaal! one more time, then foot-dribbled the soccer ball Auntie Holly had given him on his birthday (the leather was already scuffed away in patches) around the side of the school to the front steps, stopped it on a dime in front of his sister, and sat down next to her.
    “Geez-an-Nate, gyirl,” he said gently, in the deep island dialect he and Dawn used at school, and sometimes among themselves. “Whatcha bawlin’ about now?”
    “I’m scyared somet’in happen a’ Auntie.”
    “Poppyshow,” he scoffed. “She be ’long soon.”
    “You promise?”
    “Sure.” He cocked his head. “I hear Daisy comin’ now.”
    “Doan mek naar wit’ me,” Dawn said, shaking her tawny plaits angrily—to make naar meant to tease.
    “Meyain’ mek naar—listen cyareful.”
    Then she could hear it, too, the distinctive I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can putt-putt of old Daisy’s engine. Dawn slung Marley’s book bag over his neck for him, then ran to the curb as the minibus came around the corner.
    “Sorry I’m late—I had to stop off to pay the rent.” Holly reached across the passenger seat to open the door. “What’s the matter, baby doll?” Dawn was still sniffling as she clambered into the back to open the sliding door for her brother.
    “She’s scyared something bad happen to you,” Marley explained, while his sister closed the door and fastened his seat belt for him.
    “Poppyshow,” said Holly, who’d picked up a little dialect herself, over the last couple of years. “Me so lucky, Mistah Rabbit, he want to wear my foot for luck.”
    Dawn laughed in spite of herself. “You cyan’ talk Luke, Auntie—don’ even try.”

8
    After the twin disasters of Hurricanes Luis and Marilyn in ’95, when housing was at a premium on St. Luke, Lewis had the interior of the overseer’s house on the old Apgard sugar plantation gutted and subdivided on the cheap into three smaller bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom, and sitting room, all with freestanding plywood walls that did not reach the high, lozenge-shaped ceiling.
    In the autumn of 2002, the Drs. Epp were the sole tenants, but the plywood dividers still stood, so each Epp could enjoy his or her own bedroom, as could their Indonesian companion, Bennie. Another advantage of the setup was that air flowed freely, allowing the house to stay cooler than it otherwise would have.
    A disadvantage was that sounds carried from room to room. Emily, who’d retired to her own bedroom for a nap after Holly’s delightful and healing massage, was awakened by the sound of typing in the next room. She wrapped a red-and-yellow lightning-bolt-patterned cotton skirt sarong-fashion around her waist (Emily preferred going topless in the heat of the day; letting the big ’uns