Empty Pockets by Dale Herd Read Free Book Online

wheel. They went off the highway into the station lot. He stopped at the side of the building.
    â€œComing?” He shut off the engine.
    â€œRight,” Mark answered.
    The old man opened his door and got out. As he walked around the front of the truck he looked in at them. He was a lot bigger than Bill had thought he was. From a distance he didn’t look so old. Bill watched him go over to the men’s room at the back of the building.
    â€œWell?” Mark said.
    â€œFuck you,” Bill said. He opened his door.
    â€œWhat the hell’s wrong?”
    â€œYou figure it out,” Bill said.
    â€œOkay, man, that’s all right with me.”
    â€œOkay.” Bill lifted his pack and stepped down.
    â€œI kind of feel sorry for the old coot, you know.”
    â€œWell, you know what to do.” Bill put on his pack.
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œGo on in there.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œIn the head, man, in the head.”
    â€œLook, Bill . . .”
    â€œLook, nothing, Mark. All you have to do is split for the head. That’ll cinch it for you. He’ll take you to the moon.”
    â€œYou’re really an asshole, Bill, you know that?”
    â€œMe!” Bill said. “Ha!”
    â€œI said I was sorry, man. I am. It was a mistake.”
    Bill looked at him.
    â€œYou know, man,” said Mark, “you don’t know shit. You don’t know the first goddamned thing about people.”
    â€œI’m learning pretty fast,” Bill said, “I know that.”
    â€œYou’ve got a lot more to learn, man.”
    â€œWe’ll see,” Bill said. “We’ll fucking see.”
    â€œOkay, take off.”
    â€œI am, man.”
    â€œAll right,” Mark said.
    Bill walked back along the side of the pickup and then out toward the road. There weren’t any cars coming. The highway was empty. He hoped one would come soon. He didn’t want to be standing when Billy and Mark went by. What a rotten trip this had been. It really had.
    â€œBut not me,” Bill said fiercely. “Not me.”

The Big Apple
    T heir first time in Manhattan they stayed with Felicia’s college roommate, Dolores, and her roommate, a good-looking boy named Gary.
    The second night there, Gary, who had been gone all evening, came back to the flat with a man named Morton. Morton was about thirty-five years old and wore a gray suit. Dolores was away visiting an aunt and uncle somewhere up on Long Island and Gary and Morton slept together in Dolores’s bed. David lay awake listening to them.
    â€œIt makes me sick,” he said.
    â€œSsh,” Felicia said. “Live and let live, babe.”
    â€œNot me,” David said, “I’m getting the fuck out of here. I hate this goddamn place.”
    Felicia reached out and held on.
    â€œCome back here, you silly,” she said.
    She kissed his arm and pulled him back down. “Listen,” she said, “you know that I know Gary from school, don’t you? Do you know that?”
    â€œNo,” David said.
    â€œWell, I do,” Felicia said. “And I worry about him. I used to worry about him a lot. He’s had some pretty horrible things happen to him. His mother slept with him until he was sixteen. Did I tell you I slept with him once? I think I’m the only girl he’s ever slept with.”
    â€œNo,” David said, “you didn’t tell me. Did it make any difference? He seems pretty happy the way he is.”
    â€œNot like us,” she said. “Now here, come here, let’s be happy too.”

Lucy in the Sky
    S tanding up, head tipped forward, listening (Gray, a twenty-three-year-old college graduate surfing until he is drafted, not to the Vietnamese war, yet he would like to see a war. Blond, moderately long hair, tan, Levi’s, sky-blue deck shoes, striped red and white shirt), mind jammed with the sensory impressions of this house: its