Read Online What the Dead Men Say by Ed Gorman - Free Book Online Page A

the bed and just kind of hold each other and take it real slow. I like it better that way anyway.”
        “You do?”
        “Sure. More like we care about each other.”
        “You want to lie back now?”
        “You talk good, don’t you?”
        “Good?”
        “Proper-like.”
        “English is one of my best subjects.”
        “She laughed. “Honey, none of ’em was my best subject. I’m thick as a log.”
        “You ready?”
        “Any time you are.”
        “And I just lie back?”
        “You just lie back.”
        “I don’t take my clothes off yet?”
        “Not yet. I’ll do that for you later.”
        “And then we just… do it?”
        “That’s right. Then we just… do it. But maybe I should teach you a little trick.”
        “A trick?”
        “I ain’t a beautiful girl, honey. I know that. I got a nice set of milk jugs but that’s about it. So Miss Sue tole me about this little trick to pass on to men.”
        “What sort of trick?”
        She giggled. “You’re getting scared again, honey. It’s nothing to be scared about at all.” She leaned over and touched his chest. He liked the weight and warmth of her pressed against him. “You got a sweetheart?”
        James thought about it. Should he even mention Marietta’s name to a girl like this? “I guess.”
        “Well, then, while we’re doin’ it, you close your eyes and pretend I’m her. It’ll be a lot better for you that way.”
        “But isn’t that kind of-” He shook his head.
        “Kind of what?”
        “Won’t that kind of hurt your feelings?”
        She looked up at him in the soft flicking lampglow. How hard she seemed, and yet there was a weariness in her young gaze that made him sad for her. She was fourteen and no fourteen year old he knew looked this weary. “Nope,” she said. “It won’t hurt my feelings at all.”
        But for some reason he didn’t think she was telling him the truth. For some reason he thought she might be happy to hear what he said next.
        “I’m happy to be with you,” he said.
        “You are?”
        “Sure.”
        “Well, that’s nice of you to say.” She pointed to her mouth. “Let me finish chewin’ my gum so my breath gets good and sweet.” She finished chewing her gum, then set it with surprising delicacy on the edge of the bureau and lay back down next to him.
        “Would you like it better if I turned the lamp out?” she said.
        “Yeah, maybe that would be better.”
        So she turned the lamp out.
        He lay there in the darkness listening to both of them breathe.
        After a time she kissed him and it was awkward and he felt nervous and afraid but then she kissed him a second and a third time and it felt very nice and he began stroking her bleached hair and she took one of his hands and set it to her breast and then everything was fine, just fine, and all the whorehouse noise faded and it was just them in the soft shared prairie shadows.
        

3
        
        Tess was his littlest girl. She was four. Because of the heat she wore a pair of ribbed summer drawers. Her sister Eloise was asleep. Tess was at the doorway, giving Griff a hug he had to bend down to get. Her body was hot and damp and as always she felt almost frighteningly fragile in his arms. He kissed her blue eyes and her pink lips and then he hugged her, feeling the doll cradled in her arm press against him.
        “Will you kiss Betty, too?”
        “Kind of hot for a kiss, isn’t it?” Griff said playfully.
        “You kissed me, Daddy. Can’t you kiss her?”
        Griff looked over at his wife in the rattan rocker and winked. “Oh, I guess I could.”
        So he picked Betty up and kissed her on the forehead and handed her back.
        ‘“Night, punkin’,” he said, bending down and