Fishbone's Song by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online

stuck back in the brush off the main road, muddy ruts for driveways with a shed for working on the cars. And out in frontof the sheds, a spare motor either hanging on an A-frame made out of logs or a tree limb, and somebody always, always working on a motor if he wasn’t on a run. Or hadn’t been caught and sent to federal prison.
    Come a day now and then, or two or three days, when there wasn’t any white lightning to move, to transport, Fishbone said you’d think they’d take some down time. Take some self time and relax. But no.
    No.
    Instead they all headed south down into Florida, where there was a flat place to run, down to Daytona Beach, and they’d race the cars with empty ’shine tanks, race against each other—those that weren’t in jail or prison—race without seat belts or helmets, race the crazy-wicked fast cars for money on a barrel head, all the money, all the money they made running the ’shine north, screaming fast on the beach and drinking beer andsometimes moonshine and fighting and sometimes dying there in wrecks.
    And so to Judith Eve.
    Fishbone’s second Forever Woman.
    Never called her Judy. Never called her Eve.
    Always called her Judith Eve. Lady, he said, like no other lady ever lived. She’d come down to the races with Bobby J. Never knew his full name. Just Bobby J. Won most of the races with a cut-down-and-built-back-up ’53 Ford. Had some kind of wild engine in it that would outrun anything but light, and he’d show up with Judith Eve in the car with him, set her aside on the crude bleachers they had put together out of planks for local audiences that always showed up to bet on the cars.
    She’d sit . . . perfect.
    It was not just that she was pretty, or beautiful. Thick brown hair that fell to her waist in back. Shined like it had glow heat in it. Huge brown eyes, tipped up at the corners just that touch, alwayson the edge of smiling, and when she laughed, it sounded like silver bells back in a deep forest. Hear it and you had to laugh with her even if you didn’t know what she was laughing about.
    Body, Fishbone said, that would make a grown man like buttermilk, and when I asked him what that meant, he said I would know later. Maybe a lot later because I still haven’t figured it out. She wore white T-shirts and shorts, he said, and after racing in the day they would have kegs of beer in stock tanks full of ice and drink beer and argue about the racing and sometimes fight. There would be music from car radios set on country stations, three or four cars set on the same one so it could be loud, and they would drink and fight and dance on the beach.
    But not Judith Eve.
    She’d sit and sip a beer and talk and smile and laugh and just be . . . perfect. Not tangled up in all the mess of racing and fighting. Just come downwith Bobby J and go back with him and say hey to other men. Never with them, just to them. Say hey.
    Said hey to Fishbone.
    That was it. All of it. Fishbone was young then, which was hard to believe. That he’d ever been young. And shy. Bobby J was above him, had the best car, was the most, the very most of it all. Black hair in an Elvis cut and combed back in a ducktail, Levis with the belt loops cut out, T-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled up in the sleeve, black leather engineer boots with a strap and buckle. Looked like they all wanted to look, drove like they all wanted to drive, fought like they all wanted to fight.
    Until.
    Until he got caught by revenuers who laid a welded spike strip across the highway and blew all four of his tires when he had a full tank of lightning, clocking somewhere just above a hundred miles an hour, boring a hole through the night. Spun him sideways, and around twice, and then it rolled him,and he lit up like a shooting star when the gas and lightning blew and there wasn’t anything left of Bobby J.
    Not a thing.
    But Fishbone had gone on by that