Between Wrecks by George Singleton Read Free Book Online Page A

over.”
    Prison Tat Pat said, “Pat Taft. They call me Prison Tat Pat.” He spoke louder, obviously for the camera. “I got a good acquaintance who has developed bonsai grass. It’ll grow two inches, and that’s it. Never needs cutting, you know. You plant it, you water it, it gets two inches high, and you’re done. It’s going to revolutionize the lawn care business. Hell, once this spreads nationwide, it’ll cause enormous unemployment for people who cut grass for a living. It’ll knock out John Deere lawnmowers. Snapper. Husqvarna. Murray push mowers. There’s already a bonsai grass out on the market, but it ain’t as good as my friend’s will be.”
    Mal Mardis sat down at the nearest barstool and dropped his head on the linoleum. He didn’t bring up how he managed the Garden Center at Home Depot. Mal thought, It’ll knock out miniature golf courses seeing as everyone would have one on their front yard. Eventually, it’ll cause my unemployment, and then I’ll be stuck at home.
    Brenda kissed him on top of his head and spit gravel out of the parking lot, but not in an angry way, Mal understood. No, she left excited. Already he envisioned how her next project would involve taking up entire squares of sod and replacing them. He tried to imagine what his yard would look like with eight-by-ten photographs of the old lawn. Would Brenda nail them to the trees? Would she balance them right on the ground? Would she obtain and blow-up one of those satellite photographs of the housetop and surrounding land as it is now, and maybe glue it to the front door, the driveway, the mailbox?
    When Windshield returned muddy-kneed, wet, and bruised, Gus followed holding the grappling hook. Gus checked his bottles behind the bar and asked who’d gotten into the scotch. Mal thought, This is how people end up making what strangers call a rash decision. He thought, If we get that RV out of the water, I’m getting in.
    He asked for water. He said, “I need to lay off the chemicals and sober up.”
    Two weeks later he’d think the same thing, once he figured out that Prison Tat Pat viewed his own videotape, heard what Gus and Mal had to say about their marijuana plot, then snuck back onto the property and down the river—maybe with Maime at his side—in order to harvest their entire crop. Mal would tell Gus that maybe it was for the best. That’s the way things run around here. He’d point out that if he sold off the pot, then he’d have a bunch of money. Soon thereafter he’d spend that on scratch cards, and he’d win. Winning money, as he had learned, wasn’t necessarily good fortune, at least not for people like him.

WHICH ROOKS WE CHOOSE
    Luckily for everyone in the family on down, the mule spoke English to my grandfather. Up until this seminal point in the development of what became Carolina Rocks, a few generations of Loopers had tried to farm worthless land that sloped from mountainside down to all branches and tributaries of the Saluda River. From what I understood, my great-great-grandfather and then his son barely grew enough corn to feed their families, much less take to market. Our land stood so desolate back then that no Looper joined the troops in the 1860s; no Looper even understood that the country underwent some type of a conflict. What I’m saying is, our stretch of sterile soil kept Loopers from needing slaves, which pretty much caused locals to label them everything from uppity to unpatriotic, from hex-ridden to slow-witted. Until the mule spoke English to my grandfather, our family crest might’ve portrayed a chipped plow blade, wilted sprigs, a man with a giant question mark above his head.
    â€œDon’t drown the rocks,” the harnessed mule said, according to legend. It turned its head around to my teenaged grandfather, looked him in the eye just like any of the famous solid-hoofed talking