Fishbone's Song by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online Page A

time. Had wrecked his own car the same way only not as bad. Blew his tires too, the revenuers, with a spike strip, but with Fishbone only three tires blew and he slewed off the road and into the brush, and only half rolled once, and didn’t blow. Just started to drip and burned like a fire, and he got out in time, though his leg was broken. Left leg. Why he limped a bit. He was still young then, and the judge took some pity on him, and he did some time, but not in a federal prison. Only four months in the county jail, which was how long it took his leg to heal anyway, and he got out of jail with a healed leg and no money. None. They took it all, what he had left. Didn’t let him keep more than sixteen cents and a matchbook with a bar name in New Orleans. So hemoved on, he said. Thumbed his way back south to New Orleans and took a job sweeping and mopping out flop houses and juke joints and bars and the like. Dark houses, those places, houses called the Rising Sun in songs. Man named Bobby only with no J owned the bar and the flop houses, and gave him a cot in one of the flops, with only just enough money to live on. Barely. If he had had to pay, it would have been fifty cents a night for an eight-hour shift in a cot, hot bunking. While it was all rough, rough trade and tough people, men and women seemed to be mostly made out of scars, he found he didn’t mind it much. Coming from jail where the only food he got was mashed sweet potatoes, one dry hard biscuit, and a cup of black coffee mixed with grounds so strong you almost had to chew it, one time each day, coming from that the red beans and rice he got for a quarter each day, with a cup of soft ginger beer three times a day, was fine.
    He thought a lot about the cars. Fast, wild, crazycars. And he missed them and knew he would own more cars, drive more of them, but never again running ’shine or racing them the same wild way. It’s not that he grew up so much as that he grew out. Thought wider. Thought longer. Didn’t just see the sunset but thought about where it came from; like a fighter who hits not just to the point but aims a foot past it. Tries to carry the hit longer, make more of it. Saw everything that way.
    Called it stock car racing later. Said it all started then—what became national automobile racing. Stock car racing. But there wasn’t anything stock about the races he was in, the roads he drove. The cars were so far from stock they almost didn’t qualify for the brand name. Fords in those days weren’t really Fords. More like a skeleton of a Ford with a monster put inside it. Cars that ate meat, ate men.
    Still later when they stopped running white lightning and just raced, he watched their names in the papers, heard talk about them on radios, heardhow they raced and how many of them died in fiery wrecks and what was called “devastating collisions.”
    But he had moved on.
    Still he never forgot about Judith Eve and how she would sit on the end of the bleachers. Sit there just exactly right. Brown hair falling down, eyes tipped up a bit at the corners, lips like the red of life, body . . . body arched and taking the sun so it seemed the light came from inside her. Sat there just exactly right.
    Perfect.
    And he loved her still in his mind the way she had been then. Didn’t try to look her up or write to her or know more about her or see what had happened to her. Owned her in his thinking, knew her in his thinking, was with her in his thinking, would always be with her in his thinking.
    Like me with the doe standing by the pond with the jewels of water going out and out. I would own, would see her, know her all the rest of my life.
    Fourth Song: The Long Road
    Burning, burning,
    up the long, long road.
    Burning, burning,
    up the long, long road.
    Never knowing day by day,
    whether to swear or whether to pray.
    Moonshine makes a heavy load,
    up the long, wrong road.

5
----
Greenroom
    F ishbone has a