Dark River Road by Virginia Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

away, facing him without backing down. Adrenalin pumped blood fast through his veins, pounded in his ears and made him edgy. Indecision flickered on Chris’s face. Chantry waited; then he heard Dempsey come up behind him, his voice slow and easy.
    “Hey boys, you come out to see how it’s goin’, or to help dig?”
    Chris looked startled; then he shrugged. “We just came out to say hello. We’re on our way to town. So, is this where my father’s new creek bed is going to be?”
    Dempsey went through the motions of showing Chris and his friends the proposed creek bed though Chantry was pretty sure he wasn’t fooled either. He didn’t relax until Chris was gone, his new red truck disappearing down the driveway. He heard the tires squeal when it got to the highway. When he looked at the house, Cinda and Mariah were gone back inside. The veranda was empty. Then he looked over at Tansy. She stood staring at the empty drive with something like disappointment in her eyes. You Keep Me Hangin’ On played loudly on the old truck’s radio. He felt like shaking her.
    Someone came and burned a cross in Dempsey’s yard that night. Chantry woke up when he heard truck tires scratching off down Liberty Road. He looked out the window and saw a red truck fly past, then saw the glow of flickering flames light up the night sky. He put on his pants and climbed out his window and looked up the road. Then he saw the burning cross.
    “Hold on, boy,” a thick voice said from the porch shadows when Chantry leaped off the porch to go see about Dempsey, “where you think you’re goin’?”
    Rainey. Chantry stopped and turned to look at him. He sat on the porch steps smoking a cigarette, face lit up by the fire and moonlight. His eyes squinted with a mean look, but his lips stretched into a smile of satisfaction.
    “You knew about this,” Chantry said. “Why?”
    Rainey took a deep drag off his cigarette, then he flipped it out into the yard. “Some folks don’t need to forgit what they are.”
    “If you’re talking about Dempsey, he’s a better man than you’ll ever be,” Chantry said back hard and quick. Anger made his chest tight and his hands curl into fists at his sides.
    He’d forgotten Rainey could move so fast. He was up off that porch step in a flash, and swung his left arm so quick Chantry couldn’t jerk back fast enough. Rainey’s fist clipped his jaw and sent him staggering back against the side of the house. Then Rainey had him by a hand full of hair and banged his head against the wood siding.
    “You lissen to me, boy, I done tolerated enough of your going off down to that house all the time. Now you’re dumb enough to play with that little yella gal right in the Quinton’s front yard? Shee-yit!”
    Chantry just looked at him. Chris Quinton . Who else would have told everybody about what happened? And Chris had a new red truck  . . .
    “What is going on out here?” Mama asked from the front door, and Rainey let go of Chantry’s hair and turned around to look at her.
    “I caught him tryin’ to sneak out of the house,” Rainey said. “Or maybe back in.”
    Mama looked past Rainey and Chantry to the burning cross in Dempsey’s front yard. Her lips tightened. She looked back at Rainey. “If I find out you had anything at all to do with this, Rainey Lassiter,” she said quietly, “I will ensure that you are arrested.”
    Rainey grinned. “You think anybody in this town would arrest me for it, even if I had planted that cross?”
    “Perhaps not, but the Federal authorities might be very interested in finding the culprit.”
    One thing about Mama, she didn’t bluff. If she said she was going to do something, she did it, and Rainey knew that just as well as Chantry did. His grin disappeared, and he didn’t say a word when Mama told Chantry to go down and help Dempsey put out the fire.
    Dempsey had it almost out by the time Chantry got there. It wasn’t a big cross, just two six foot one-by-two