Blood Kin by Steve Rasnic Tem Read Free Book Online Page B

surprised by the reaction. “Jesus, talk about The Sound and the Fury !” from a guy in the dorm, and, from the sweet-faced girl on the moonlight walk early in his freshman year, “Oh, Michael. It’s hard to believe you came from a place like that!” After that he played up the country background more — the women, some of them, at least, loved it.
    Something shiny across the dirt road caught his eye. Michael looked up and saw that there were a few kudzu leaves hanging from the outside edges of the nearest boughs, the moonlight reflecting off their surfaces. They gave the outline of trees a slightly furry appearance.
    Michael was just accommodating. Probably no other description was needed. He told people what they wanted to hear. If they wanted sensitive, he’d be sensitive. If they wanted aggressive, he could be aggressive. They didn’t even have to tell him what they wanted, usually; he felt it. But he understood that he couldn’t be touched, not really. He dropped out of college his junior year. He lived with, and off of, a succession of friends and girlfriends. He worked a string of odd jobs. He always got hired easily — sometimes it seemed all he had to do, really, was smile for them. But he never kept those jobs long. People found him easy to talk to, so they unburdened themselves, they let him know all about their problems. But the thing was, he really wasn’t that interested. They’d fill him up with their stories and after a while he couldn’t bear them. He’d move on, and they wouldn’t understand what had happened.
    As the kerosene lamp dimmed, the night air yellowed like anold lithograph. The light pulled back, away from the woods, the road, and the front yard.
    It was getting to be time for him to make plans for himself. With each week cooped up with Grandma he felt a year older. The intense claustrophobia — boxed in with her memories of the complicated lives and personalities of those long dead — had become increasingly aggressive, until he was beginning to feel anxious about his own life. He knew that if he stayed much longer he’d start drinking again; he’d find some source for pills, whatever he would need to get through the day. But she kept telling him that his self-preservation depended on his hearing her story out. Her tellings were coming to some sort of head.
    There was something in a crate beneath the kudzu out in that field on the other side of the woods, a crate that someone had felt the need to bind in iron, if Grandma had not lied to him. And Michael didn’t think she ever lied.
    She was up again at four. He could hear her stirring. He hadn’t even been aware he’d stayed up all night. He thought about slipping into bed before she knew he was up, but then the ache in his side intensifiedas she struggled to get to the screen door behind him.
    He could feel her thin lips begin to move.
    “We’d best get back at it. We lost last night.” He waited. “There’s little time left, Michael.”
    The wind was suddenly in the distant kudzu, and the thousand green leaves of it pushed against the wall of dark trees until they swayed.

 
    Chapter Four
     
     
    S ADIE DIDN’T WANT the preacher walking her home, but she didn’t know how to stop him. She didn’t even know how to talk to him, didn’t want to. The preacher wanted something from her, seemed like most everybody wanted things from her lately: her daddy, her momma, George Mackey. But she was sure that whatever the preacher wanted would put all those other wants to shame. The preacher hadn’t said a word to her for some time, but he didn’t have to. Although they were walking together he was leading her, just like he did everybody in the hollow. Some people said it was because he carried our Lord with him that he was such a natural-born leader, but Sadie knew it was something else entirely. She couldn’t have said exactly what it was; she didn’t even want to think about it.
    With her trembling left fist she