Everything by Kevin Canty Read Free Book Online Page A

floating bright spots.
    Jesus, Mary and Joseph, RL said.
    I warned you, said Betsy, and sipped hers ladylike.
    Well, yeah, but you could of
told
me, he said. So what’s going on?
    He sat down again across from her and watched her face as she decided what to tell him and how. The fall’s cold rain fell into the bushes outside, hissed into the grass and ran down the sidewalks. It was a night to be inside and now that Betsy was here, RL was glad of the company. This was not a night to be alone. The burning in his throat became heat in his belly and slowly spread outward into his arms and thighs and head.
    I don’t know, Betsy said. I don’t really want to talk about it.
    * * *
    You look good.
    No, I feel fine. I get up every morning at quarter to five and I go out and I milk my goats and then I get the kids off to school and then I go for a run. I take care of myself. I feel great. I eat right off the bottom of the food chain.
    RL tinked his shot glass against the jar of whiskey and said, I’m glad to hear this is good for you.
    You know what I mean.
    I do, he said. It’s not fair.
    That’s not it, she said. I got over that idea last time. Nothing’s fair.
    She stopped talking and looked so forlorn and blue that RL wanted to take care of her, to make her soup or tuck her in a comforter. He felt her weight, then, the way a body gets so suddenly heavy when it goes limp. Her weight was handed to him.
    Are you hungry? RL asked.
    You know what it is? Betsy said. I’m sorry, I should just be quiet. This is so much more than you need from me. It’s so nice of you to put me up. To put up with me.
    Tell me, RL said. What’s going on?
    * * *
    She took a moment, took a sip of whiskey, shuddered at the taste and burn, pulled herself together again. The skin of her face was windblown and rough, a life in the open. Her face was pretty still, but her hands were like his hands, battered and wrinkled and spotted. Our hands give us away, he thought, always.
    Everything I know, she said. Everything I believe about the universe tells me that intention is everything, you know? Eyes on the prize. You look at where you want to go and don’t worry about where you might end up if you screw up completely. And, you know, my goats, my kids, my place, I’ve been living
one hundred percent
like I was going to be around. I’ve been clear about this, Robert. I’ve been like one hundred percent single mind. I know what I want and I want it completely and I’m absolutely clear about it.
    Stuff happens, RL said. That last time, you didn’t bring it on yourself. It wasn’t your fault.
    No, it wasn’t my fault, Betsy said. But there was a lot of negative energy in my life at that point.
    RL just looked at her with a fearful creepy feeling in his heart. Betsy was beautiful still and she had a good soul, but she believed in all these things that were not true and would say these things about herself that were absolutely wrong. She walked in her own thick cloud of negative energy that she generated herself, but she could not see this. She could not see herself. She was blind.
    That’s the problem, Betsy said. I just thought that if my intention was right, if I was clear, right down the middle … Now I don’t know what to think. Where to put it.
    * * *
    You might get good news tomorrow. What’s on the schedule, anyway?
    CAT scan, PET scan, puppy dog scan—I forget. Some kind of imaging.
    Might be nothing.
    Might be, Betsy said. They caught something up in Bigfork. I don’t even know what to think, Robert. I don’t know what to do.
    She looked him squarely in the face as if she might find an answer there. RL found himself almost blushing. He could not solve this. He could not talk her down from here. Yet he wanted to save her.
    I’m sorry, she said, and gave a bitter little laugh. The worst houseguest.
    You know what’s weird. You walked right by my pickup truck on the way into the house and you haven’t given me a single word of shit about