Read Online You Only Get Letters from Jail by Jodi Angel - Free Book Online Page A

maybe between the two of us we can get you back out on the road again.”
    My mother clapped her hands together and then brought them up to her face in a gesture of prayer. “Thank you, Casper. Thank you and thank you again. I don’t care what it costs. I just want the car fixed so we can get home.”
    â€œWe should be able to get her back on the road,” Casper said. “There ain’t a reason in hell this car shouldn’t make it home.”
    Fifteen hundred miles to go , I thought. Not fucking likely . I seriously doubted that I would see asphalt, streetlights, and the comfort of my bedroom anytime soon.
    Ruby came out from the side of the garage and walked to where we were standing. “Thumper’s getting close,” she said to Casper. “I bet the babies come tonight.”
    â€œBabies?” my mother said. “You got a cat out there in the barn?” I looked out at the empty green field behind the garage, at the nothingness.
    â€œRabbits,” I said. “She’s got rabbits in cages over there against the garage.”
    â€œThat is so sweet,” my mother said. “Baby bunnies. I just love little bunnies. They make me think of Easter, and all that candy everybody gets, those little chocolate bunnies and those hard candy eggs . . .”
    â€œWhy are your shoes all wet?” Casper said. The sharpness in his voice came out of nowhere, like the bottom of a broken bottle overturned in the sand.
    Ruby looked down at her shoes and the darkened hem of her pants where the water had crept up the fabric. “Thumper’s water was empty so I had to fill it up. I guess I had the hose on too hard.”
    â€œI don’t pay money for you to wear your good shoes out here to tend the animals,” Casper said. He looked at Ruby and she flinched, but only a little.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll go take them off.”
    Casper’s hands were gripped around the fender and his knuckles were white. “Go take out some more chicken to thaw for dinner while you’re up at the house.”
    Ruby walked past us. “We don’t want to impose on you,” my mother said. “Sonny and I can get a taxi and find a room in town.” She looked down the driveway toward the road and the fences and the grass that had started to bend in the rising wind. “There is a town here, isn’t there?”
    Casper loosened his hands from the fender and I half expected to see blue paint on his palms. He shook another cigarette from the crumpled soft pack in the front pocket of his shirt. “It ain’t a problem for both of you to stay until my boy can get over here. Me and Ruby could use the company,” he said. “It’d be a real good change.”
    I sat on the porch and watched the light change colors until dinner was ready, and we ate around a big oak table—Casper’s fried chicken with too much salt and my mother’s mashed potatoes with dirty gravy that Casper had made from the drippings left in the pan. He drank beer while they cooked, and didn’t slow down with dinner. My mother joined him, bottle for bottle, and the conversation started to seep like the grease. Casper tried to call Boone several times, but there was no answer. “It’s not likely that he’s home if it’s dark outside,” he said. “Him and his buddies are probably on the hunt for girls.” He looked over at me while he talked. “You know how boys are. Always sniffing around.”
    â€œSonny’ll be at that age someday,” my mother said. “Right now he just cares about being in his bedroom. That’s it. Just him alone in his room, building things. Isn’t that what you do, Sonny? Put things together?” When I was younger, I had put together models, classic cars, andI wanted to tell her this, remind her that it had been years since then, but she didn’t pause for an answer.