Flights by Jim Shepard Read Free Book Online Page B

wooden noise as she watched. She had done nothing, allowing him to creep across the desk top until he came to the edge, and then had opened the drawer underneath and toppled him in, shutting it with a bang.
    Biddy, who’d been in her room collecting more paper, had said, “Kristi, don’t leave him in the drawer.”
    â€œHe always gets out,” she said.
    â€œYou can’t punish a turtle,” he said. “Take the rock out of there and he won’t get out.”
    She’d replaced the turtle, but days later, seeing only Kid, he’d opened the drawer to find the dried Foofer, half buried under pens and small plastic rulers in his search for moisture or an exit.
    Kid had disappeared a few days later.
    Kristi, her father said, was erratic. Her mother worried about her. She had more trouble at Our Lady of Peace than her brother did, although he seemed to be rapidly closing the gap. Sister Theresa had long since decided and informed the Siebert family by letter and consultation that neither her conduct nor her effort was all it could be. In fact, she did not, ever, behave like a little lady. Biddy had at least been a very good student at her age.
    She despised the nuns and disliked school generally. At times he would be called down from his classroom to help discipline his sister, although how he was expected to help he was never able to fathom. He would at those times look into her defiant eyes with embarrassment, irritation, and pride. She seemed beyond him then, the intensity of her anger and unhappiness revealing itself in fleeting words or gestures that seemed unnoticed or ignored by the others around her. He was never much help. To the Sisters she was as unpredictably ferocious as a cornered raccoon or a small, angry cat. At one point while he looked on she had wrenched herself free from Sister Mary of Mercy, tearing the sleeve of her habit, and had been slapped for her trouble. A kind of horrified and fascinated silence had ensued while they all stared at the black sleeve hanging loose and ragged away from Sister’s arm, even the slap forgotten in the strange blasphemous image before them. Nuns were rarely touched and Kristi’s assault on the taboo had made her famous throughout the school; to an extent it was as if they’d seen God bleed.
    Lady, too, seemed edgy, unprepared, around her, and Kristi was the only human being Lady had ever bitten. Biddy had been present for that bit of history as well: she’d been nipped across the tips of her fingers one hot day after sitting on the dog as she lay in the shade. Lady had growled and Kristi had slapped her nose and she had spun around and snapped. She’d slapped back fiercely, the force of her hand spraying saliva from the dog’s mouth, before erupting into tears. Lady had lain in the shade throughout all the following chaos, unrepentant. His father had yelled at Lady so loudly that her ears had flattened, but she had remained bristling and stubborn, as though she could not be blamed for an altercation with Kristi. When Biddy had seen the size of the needle at the doctor’s, he’d thought it was some kind of awful joke, but his sister had remained grim and silent until the needle had gone in; then she had screamed.
    â€œHow’d Louis get retarded?” she asked. She was flipping cards, bored with diamonds and spades.
    They sat at the redwood table in the backyard, swishing their bare feet back and forth through the grass, slapping mosquitoes, scratching bites. Biddy was looking back over the Brewers-Yankees scorecard.
    â€œHe was born that way,” he said.
    â€œSo he’s never going to get better?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDo you like having him around?”
    He looked up. “Why? You don’t like him?”
    â€œIt’s funny,” she said, squinting. “I feel bad for him, but it’s kind of creepy.”
    â€œLouis is nice.”
    She didn’t reply. “I remember