Delusion Road by Don Aker Read Free Book Online

up empty-handed. People who lived hand-to-mouth on disability and welfare cheques didn’t have a lot of extra cash for hiring help, but Clovis Lafayette had once again been the exception. He’d just had several bags of fertilizer and potting soil delivered to him from a garden centre in Little Rock, and Clovis said he’d pay Griff ten bucks to lug the bags to where he needed them and then spread the stuff around. That ended up being the first of many such jobs Griff did for Clovis that spring and, in the process, Griff learned a lot about flowers. Later, when he fell in with Morozov, he’d come to realize how much of that learning applied to his current line of work. For one thing, offing targets was a lot like thinning out plants that had outlived their usefulness or posed problems for those that remained. Like the guy he’d been hunting for months now.
    A vigorous gust carrying dirt from the street below scoured Griff’s face, and he held up a hand to deflect it. He’d always hated getting dirt in his eyes, even more so after his last moments with Clovis Lafayette. For weeks after Griff buried him in the woods behind the dumpster on Roundtable Road, he couldn’t shake from his memory the sight of Clovis’s open eyes filling up with soil.

CHAPTER 10
    C arrying a tray with a carton of milk, two apples, and a serving of something labelled pasta but resembling afterbirth, Keegan scanned the tables looking for the nearest empty seat to park his butt. Before today, he’d never minded his above-average height but, towering over a lot of the people around him now, he felt like there was a neon sign over his head flashing Loser.
    “Keegan!”
    He turned toward a hand waving at him from the far side of the cafeteria and saw Raven sitting with Bailey Something and two guys, all four looking in his direction. Relief washed over him and he wove his way toward the group. Raven slid sideways to make room for him on the bench attached to a long table that was one of twenty others in the large, noisy space. Setting down his tray, he awkwardly folded his long legs into the narrow opening between the bench and the table.
    “You remember Bailey and Greg from English class,” said Raven when he was settled.
    Keegan nodded. He’d felt sorry for Greg when he got up to introduce Wynn d’Entremont. Standing beside a guy who could model for Abercrombie & Fitch only emphasized Greg’s skinny build and acne-riddled face, which probably explainedwhy he’d hurried through a list of d’Entremont’s many awards and accomplishments.
    “This is Russell,” Raven continued, gesturing toward a short, round guy on the opposite side of the table who occupied far more than his share of the bench seat. He wore a sweatshirt with lettering on it that Keegan assumed was a school motto until he read it:
My cereal bowl comes with a lifeguard.
“Russell,” said Raven, “meet Keegan.”
    “Hey, Keegan,” said Russell. “I see you got the pasta. Brave guy.”
    Checking out their trays, Keegan could see that none of them had chosen that dish. “Bad?” he asked.
    “It’s not so much the taste as the consistency,” said Greg. “It’s like tapioca with an attitude.”
    “I don’t think it ever digests,” added Bailey. “It’ll kinda sit at the bottom of your stomach for the next day or so and then reappear in pretty much the same form it is now.”
    “I have my suspicions,” offered Russell, “that the janitors use it as crack fill whenever some Neanderthal decides to put his fist through a wall.”
    “That happen much?” asked Keegan.
    “Depends on how often they serve the pasta,” Russell replied.
    Keegan laughed and pushed the offending plate away, taking a bite of one of his apples and enjoying the normalcy of the moment before turning to Raven and Bailey. “Hey, great introductions,” he said. “Tough first act to follow.”
    “Thanks,” said Raven. “I’m glad Richardson had us do them. It was a great way to get to