Country Hardball by Steve Weddle Read Free Book Online Page B

yard, dragging his pellet gun in one hand, holding a bird cradled in his other arm.
    Outside the house, she looked at the bird, pulled it loose from the boy. Then she held the boy’s shoulders tight in her hands.
    “What did you do?”im with angel

GOOD MONEY
    In the photograph I’m holding my grandfather’s baseball glove.
    Short. Stubby. An early glove, back before Spittin’ Bill Doak of the St. Louis Cardinals made them put in the webbing. A glove. Not a mitt. Old when my grandfather had it.
    Doak retired to Florida and opened a candy shop. He died in November of 1954. The next year my grandfather was on his way home from work when he was shot in the back six times and died in a ditch alongside Highway 29, two miles south of Bradley, Arkansas. They never found his truck.
    I was pulling pictures from boxes when my grandmother walked into the room.
    “Find anything worth keeping?” she asked.
    I said I’d found a few things, nodded toward a toppled stack of pictures and books. A journal. A pocket watch. A box of cufflinks and tiepins. A silver dollar.
    She picked up the silver dollar, turned it around in her hand. “This here is a Peace Dollar.”
    I had no idea.
    “The artist modeled Lady Liberty after his own wife. Take a gander. 1934.” She handed the coin back to me. “Your grandfather got that from a man over in El Dorado for something. Can’t remember now. Called it his lucky coin.”
    “You want it?” I asked.
    “No, no. You need the luck more than I do.” She winked. “See the woman? Lady Liberty? Everyone got all hot and bothered because the woman has her mouth open.”
    I looked at the coin. “What’s wrong with that?”
    “Nothing,” she said, “now.” Then she laughed a little high-pitched cough. “You going through your mama’s stuff today? Your daddy’s?”
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “Got a job interview at three.”
    She hummed a little in agreement. “Want something to eat before you go? Leftover chicken. Rustle you up some pie, I imagine.”
    • • •
    I was standing at the sink, looking out the window and washing out my glass.
    My grandmother squeaked back in her chair. “What’s this job? This the one your cousin Cleovis set you up with?”
    “No, that one didn’t work out. This one is with a guy down on Dorcheat.”
    “On Dorcheat Bayou?” She whistled through her dentures. “Roy, hadn’t been nothing doing down there since a hundred years ago.” She laughed.
    “Yeah. I know. He wants to start up some canoe business. Said he does some fishing down there now. A little trapping. Local meat and fish for these restaurants around.”
    She shook her head. “I can’t see it,” she said. “But I never did have a head for business. That was your Pawpaw’s thing, you know.” She reached across the green-and-white he pressed a button and the chair ">“mavchecked, vinyl tablecloth, pulled along the photograph of me with the baseball glove. “Yes, sir. He knew how to take care of us. Yes, sir, he did.”
    She stood up from the table and I looked back out the window as she re-snapped the middle of her housecoat.
    I pulled a butterscotch candy from a bowl on the television, kissed her goodbye, and headed to the cabin on Dorcheat.
    In thirty minutes, I was listening to a man I’d never met explain how I could make good money by killing his wife next Wednesday night during choir practice.
    • • •
    That Wednesday night, the man pulled out of his driveway and flashed his lights as he passed my car. When I reached the house, I took the hidden key from under the flowerpot and let myself into the mudroom.
    I pulled the pistol from my jacket pocket. She was folding clothes in the guest room. A stack of white towels was on the bed. Soft. Warm. Clean.
    She screamed when I put the gun to the side of her head and clamped my left hand across her mouth.
    I showed her the gun and nodded. Then I put my finger to my lips. Shhh. She nodded back and I took my other hand