A Piece of My Heart by Richard Ford Read Free Book Online Page B

sat, the water got dark and creamy, and rose, and pieces of split-off pine timber came down the chute, and she got wringing wet watching the limbs batter the car and the water rise to the door locks. She said she believed Mr. Hewes did sense something was not right, because he opened the window and said something to her that she couldn’t hear and tried to open the door, but the water was against it and the other side was busted from before she knew him. And she said that he closed the window and looked out, laughing and grinning and making funny little signals with his hands, signals she said she couldn’t make out any better than what he’d said. She said for a long time, maybe ten minutes, the two of them sat and looked at each other, she on the bank underthe plum bush, wet, and he shut inside the car with the ugly water raging around, smiling and making signals, perfectly dry. Until, she said, the water seemed to wash over the car all at once, without a wave or a tree limb to hit it, or any inkling that it was losing purchase, and just suddenly, rolling, it rolled over and the water over it and it out of sight into the darkness.
    Robard felt himself to suffer the long breathless suspension, suspended between the moment of purchase and the moment when whatever it was had knocked him unconscious and made it feasible for him to drown in the floor of his own car, so that he felt that at any moment at all he could expect the impact and the long slow daze that ended by dying.

8
    Behind the house the clouds had piled against the sky. The sun had gone and left the sky indistinct and pinkish. In the east it had been dark a long time. He lay still in the smoky light. There was a chill in the room, and he could hear the girl outside teasing the raccoons onto the rungs of the cage. He rose quietly, dressed in the corner, and carried his shoes out the door. On the floor outside the girl had laid a blanket, and he brought it inside and spread it over the woman, covering her until her fingers clutched the basting and she drew it around herself and slept on. He slipped down the stairs into the store, where the cold box glowed and the compressor hummed in the gloom. He took a candy bar out of a plastic jar and a soda from the cooler and stepped into the lot, where the air was slow with the fragrance of sage.
    The little girl looked up when she heard the screen slap, and went back to tempting the raccoons when she saw it was him.
    â€œYou got a Butterfinger?” she said, keeping her eyes averted.
    â€œAnd a Grapette,” he said, squeezing candy out of his teeth and taking a look down the cages.
    â€œSeventeen cents,” she said.
    Her hair was full of fine gold threads mingled with what was almost white. “I set you a blanket out,” she said without looking up. “It’ll get cold. I knocked but didn’t nobody answer.”
    â€œWe must’ve dozed,” he said, taking an interest in what he could see of the cat’s cage, but feeling reluctant to go down to
    The raccoons nibbled and licked the girl’s fingers when the celery was gone. The rooster perched on a low branch and studied the raccoons curiously, as if he couldn’t understand anything about them.
    â€œWhat about your rabbit?” he said, stuffing the candy paper in his pocket.
    â€œWhat about him?” she said.
    He glanced down the list of cages. “His time must be about up?”
    She giggled and pulled a cellophane bag of peanut hulls out of her shirt pocket and began feeding hulls to the coons one at a time. “His time came and went,” she said.
    He looked at the girl quickly, feeling bested. “I thought you said he didn’t get hungry till the sun went down.” He walked up toward Leo’s cage.
    â€œI can’t tell Leo when to get hungry,” she said.
    â€œI didn’t hear nothin,” he said, looking up at the window with the chintz curtains flagging gently