Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology by Anthony Giangregorio Read Free Book Online Page B

refer to Pop Cook (out of his cups as wel as in them) as one stinky old bastid, but there was some good hardwood left on those two acres. Pop didn’t know it because he had gone to living on the mainland when his arthritis real y got going and crippled him up bad, and George let it be known on the island that what that bastid Pop Cook didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him none, and furthermore, he would kil the man or woman that let light into the darkness of Pop’s ignorance.
    No one did, and eventual y the Sul ivans got the land. And the wood, of course. The hardwood was logged off for the two wood stoves that heated the house in three years, but the land would remain. That was what George said and they believed him, believed in him, and they worked, al three of them. He said you got to put your shoulder to this wheel and push the bitch, you got to push ha’ad because she don’t move easy. So that was what they did.
    In those days Maddy’s mother had kept a roadside stand, and there were always plenty of tourists who bought the vegetables she grew—the ones George told her to grow, of course, and even though they were never exactly what her mother cal ed “the Gotrocks family,” they made out. Even in years when lobstering was bad, they made out.
    Jack Pace could be domineering when Maddie’s indecision final y forced him to be, and she suspected that, loving as he was in their courtship, he might get around to the physical part—the twisted arm when supper was cold, the occasional slap or downright paddling—in time; when the bloom was off the rose, so as to speak. She saw the similarities… but she loved him. And needed him.
    “I’m not going to be a lobsterman al my life, Maddie,” he told her the week before they married, and she believed him. A year before, when he had asked her out for the first time (she’d had no trouble coping then, either—had said yes almost before al the words could get out of his mouth, and she had blushed to the roots of her hair at the sound of her own naked eagerness), he would have said, “I ain’t going to be a lobsterman al my life.” A smal change…
    but al the difference in the world. He had been going to night school three evenings a week, taking the ferry over and back. He would be dog tired after a day of pul ing pots, but he’d go just the same, pausing only long enough to shower off the powerful smel s of lobster and brine and to gulp two No Doz with hot coffee. After a while, when she saw he real y meant to stick to it, Maddie began putting up hot soup for him to drink on the ferry ride over. Otherwise, he would have had no supper at al .
    She remembered agonizing over the canned soups in the store—there were so many ! Would he want tomato? Some people didn’t like tomato soup. In fact, some people hated tomato soup, even if you made it with milk instead of water. Vegetable soup? Turkey? Cream of chicken? Her helpless eyes roved the shelf display for nearly ten minutes before Charlene Nedeau asked if she could help her with something—only Charlene said it in a sarcastic way, and Maddie guessed she would tel al her friends at high school tomorrow and they would giggle about it—about her —in the Girls’ Room, because Charlene knew what was wrong; the same thing that was always wrong. It was just Maddie Sul ivan, unable to make up her mind over so simple a thing as a can of soup . How she had ever been able to decide to accept Jack Pace’s proposal was a wonder and a marvel to al of them… but of course they didn’t know how, once you found the wheel, you had to have someone to tel you when to stoop and where exactly to lean against it.
    Maddie had left the store with no soup and a throbbing headache.
    When she worked up nerve enough to ask Jack what his favorite soup was, he had said: “Chicken noodle. Kind that comes in the can.”
    Were there any others he special y liked?
    The answer was no, just chicken noodle—the kind that came in the can. That