Bluebottle by James Sallis Read Free Book Online

growing from behind the switchplates and electric outlets. Least bit of wind, windows rattle
     like dry peas in a pod. Every morning I get up and come see my kids. Come back every afternoon, again at night. Maybe they
     know I'm here, like Daniel did. Maybe that way they know someone cares, at least."
    I remembered what he'd said about the nurse, Sandy. "Kind of a hero yourself."
    "Nah. I've seen heroes."
    He was quiet for a while.
    "You wanta walk?"
    We did. Back out into the lobby, onto Prytania. I heard the sound of heavy traffic from St. Charles a block away, smelled
     garlic from a restaurant across the street. A delivery truck of some kind pulled in hard, brakes groaning. Snatches of conversation
     again—
    "Man does that to my girl, he ain't safe nowhere!"
    "Hell of a day."
    "He love you, honey?"
    —as we walked.
    "Back in Korea?" Skinner said.
    I nodded. Waited.
    "There was a . . . Well, they still called it a powder-house. All the stuff we never used was stored there, all this junk
     the army kept on sending, God knows why, had contracts for it, I guess. Things we had absolutely no need for, never would have a need for, crates of sponges, cases of Sterno. Sterno, for godsake! Pencils in boxes the size of yachts."
    I sensed he'd come to a stop beside me.
    "You getting tired? Want to head back?"
    Reluctandy I nodded. Freedom sounded wonderful in theory, but like some third-world countries I could only handle so much
     of it. Have to ease my way in.
    We walked back through what seemed identical snatches of conversation. As we approached the front entrance Skinner said, "Whenever
     we got shelled? I'd go to the powderhouse, hide in there till it was over."
    T HAT YEAR WILL also be remembered as The Year Mother Came to Visit. Red-letter in every way.
    "Lewis. Came to help out till you recover," she said when I opened the door.
    In my mind's eye I saw her clearly: cheap red dress, plastic shoes, processed hair and her usual clenched expression, face
     set to keep the world out or herself in, you were never sure which.
    Back sometime when I was a teenager, Mother gave up on life. She walled herself in, began making her way so rigidly through
     her days that one became indistinguishable from another. Got up the same time every morning, drank the same two cups of coffee,
     had the same half-lunch and half-dinner, and when she talked, said pretty much the same things over and over again, modular
     conversation, giving what she said as little thought as she'd given those two cups of morning coffee.
    Any change, any variance from routine, could bring oceans of night crashing down on us all.
    My old man struggled awhile then gave up himself. He'd come home, have dinner with us, spend the rest of the night up to bedtime
     out in his workshop. Guess that's some measure of how much he loved her.
    Later in my own life I'd realize she was probably schizophrenic. No one in the family ever talked about it, though. And whenever
     I said anything to sister Francy, she'd just shrug.
    All of which is to say that finding Mom there, three hundred miles from home, its failsafes and barricades—she having in addition flown, as I soon discovered—astonished me. She might just as well have crossed Ethiopia on camelback.
    "You never gave me your new address, Robert."
    I was reasonably sure I hadn't given her my old one, either.
    "But then I remembered Miss Adams sending me a thank-you card, last year, maybe the one before. Same return address as that
     sweet note she wrote me when your father died, so I reckoned she must have some kind of roots here."
    Stopping suddenly:
    "You don't look so good, Robert. Lewis, I mean."
    "I'm fine, Ma."
    "Sure you don't need to sit down? Have something to eat, maybe? I could make you a cup of coffee."
    "I'm okay. Really I am. How'd youfind out?"
    Met with silence, I pushed against it. "Come on, Mom, it's not a difficult question."
    "I'm trying to recall. . . ."
    "Bullshit."
    After a moment she said: "Guess a