A Far Gone Night by John Carenen Read Free Book Online

alone. Unless you count Gotcha on the foot of the bed, or on her tuffet on the floor at the foot of the bed. Snoring. I guess for me Romance has become a vagrant on the town.
    But I have nothing I really have to do . To some, that would be a good thing, and for me for a while, it was. Lately, however, I found myself considering adding something to my predictable routine of eating, sleeping, working out, running, and hanging out at The Grain. Of watching sports on my giant TV and movies I rent from Mulehoff’s .
    That need to expand my horizons was probably just one of the reasons I couldn’t sleep a few nights ago. Probably God getting me ready for craziness. Like finding a murdered girl in the river one night when I went for a walk because I couldn’t sleep because I had nothing important to do and God was pulling me into another set of “troubles.” God saying, “Here, Thomas, you wanted something to do ? Try this!”
    I am strong, rested, and pretty much recovered from the Soderstrom situation eighteen months back. Why shouldn’t I tiptoe into some more yuckiness ?
    The only problem is that every episode of trouble and pain brings with it, long after everything has been sorted out, a kind of residue of regret that the disasters leave behind. My family gone from me, all those people dead in Rockbluff because I moved up here, and now this murdered child.
    I was curious to see if the “suicide” made it to our local newspaper. Apparently The Des Moines Chronicle mentioned something about it. Might even be a coroner’s statement by now. I doubt if there was anything else on the agenda of Dr. Jarlsson , County Coroner. Small town. Quiet place.
    Back up at the house, I let Gotcha in, dipped a soupspoon into a jar of creamy peanut butter, placed her meds in the middle of the goop and held the spoon low for her. I watched in amusement as she worked through the peanut butter sticking to the various caverns inside her mouth and chops. Once that was accomplished, she went to work on her food as I filled her water bowl and set it down beside her food dish. I made coffee.
    Satisfied that my best bud was taken care of, I pulled out two tubes of hot sausage from the refrigerator, opened them up, dumped them into a big Teflon frying pan, and began browning them, pushing the meat around with a wooden spoon, breaking it into smaller pieces. While that was happening, I stepped away and reached up on top of the refrigerator and pulled down a box of powdered doughnuts and ate three while waiting for the meat to cook. I got out the Baileys and set it beside my big coffee mug and coffee maker, then returned to the sausage. When it was ready, I turned the pan at an angle over the sink and pressed my spatula on the meat and squeezed out as much grease as I could, running hot water all the while to keep it from coagulating in the pipes leading to my septic tank.
    Next, I poured the meat onto a big platter, withdrew a big jug of ketchup from the refrigerator, and set the platter on the small kitchen table. The coffee was ready, so I filled a hefty mug, dumped in enough Baileys to make the liquid a toffee color, and sat down. After a brief prayer of thanksgiving, I dribbled ketchup over the meat and began eating, unrolling the newspaper that caters to Rockbluff County High School news, yard sales, Help Wanted ads, auctions, bake sales, church bazaars, free kittens to a good home, and blocks of advertising.
    But this morning I was looking for news about the girl in the river. And there it was. I took in a forkful of browned sausage chunks and fully opened the paper, then folded it down to the relevant story.
    The headline read, “Suicide in the Whitetail.” And it went on to state that the nude body of an unidentified, white female of about fourteen years of age had been pulled from the Whitetail River. By Thomas O’Shea. That would be me. It went on to state that, according to Dr. Prentice Jarlsson , Rockbluff County Coroner, there was