Fat Lightning by Howard Owen Read Free Book Online

isn’t permanent and that they’ll visit every week, no matter what. They haven’t seen Sam since the move. Monacan’s not so bad, Nancy thinks half the time. It’s not too late, she thinks the other half.
    Sam makes his resignation from DrugLand official, and his father is in the process of having the papers drawn up to give Sam 50 percent of the Monacan Drug Store. Carter is almost 69, and Nancy can’t help but think that this was a done deal before she ever met Sam.
    The Monacan Drug Store is a treat, she has to admit. When she first visited here, when she and Sam were dating, she was taken by how much better Carter’s working conditions were than those of his son. The Monacan Drug Store is in a two-story frame building that was the post office for a century. The second floor, reached by an outdoor stairway and surrounded by a spindle-railed porch, is taken up by Monacan Realty. The first level is Carter’s. His drug store has a lunch counter running 25 feet down the left side as you walk in, so that the customers and Trudy French, behind the counter, can see everything that happens on Monacan’s main street out the front or side windows with just a slight twist of their heads. Trudy makes milk shakes and limeade in addition to burgers, hot dogs and breakfast.
    Carter Chastain is stationed at the back of the store, on a high stool behind smoky glass. He has a clerk to keep the shelves stocked and help the customers. The Monacan Drug Store is open 8–6, Monday through Friday, 8–12 on Saturdays, closed Sundays and national holidays.
    What Monacan doesn’t have, Nancy soon finds out, is a decent grocery store. She’s trying to help Marie with the cooking, and she wants to fix Suzanne’s chicken tarragon for Saturday night dinner the first week they’re living in the big, red-brick house. She soon discovers that the Red Top Market, on courthouse square, doesn’t have tarragon, shallots or white wine, so she leaves Wade with his grandmother and heads for the Giant in Westover, the closest grocery she can get to that doesn’t depress her.
    When she pulls the Duster into the lot, she sees that it is almost full of Friday evening shoppers. She loops around to the third, back row and finds a place near the end. She has the key out of the ignition and is opening the door when she sees a familiar red pickup on the second row, between her and the front door. It’s after 7 and the light is fading, but she knows it’s Lot. She also knows that any route she takes to the front door of the grocery store will take her close enough to him and his truck to make her uncomfortable. He doesn’t seem to be going in. Maybe he’s waiting for someone, but Nancy doesn’t think so.
    Finally, feeling foolish and a little mean-spirited, she turns on the ignition, drives out the exit, circles the building and enters the parking lot on the other side, parking even farther away. The only glance Lot could get of her from here, she knows, is when she rounds the corner to go in the front door.
    Inside, with the sky almost given over to night at last, she sneaks a glance through the plate glass. The truck is still there, and she can see his silhouette. She takes her time shopping, and when she comes out, the truck is gone. She makes a mental note to go to the Ukrop’s, five miles farther away, the next time.

CHAPTER SIX
    I want you to look at them. Hanging around this parking lot, hooking up with each other to do who knows what later on.
    That gal over there, looks like she might not be more’n 14, her head stuck inside that car window a-talking to them two boys, showing her tail to anybody that wants to look at it, probably fixing to go off somewheres with them and do it, maybe with both of ’em.
    And that grown woman standing there, flirting with that bag boy, who looks like he ain’t hardly old enough to be her son. What you reckon she’s got on her