Honky Tonk Christmas by Carolyn Brown Read Free Book Online

them.”
    “I’m sorry. So the kids have been shoved from baby-sitter to grandma’s most of their lives?”
    He nodded. “They need stability. You heard what Waylon said about drinking beer. She was too young for kids and too pretty for the men to leave alone.”
    A hot summer wind picked up strands of Sharlene’s red hair and stuck them to her sweaty forehead. She brushed them back and blinked away the tears.
    “Hot night, ain’t it?” he remarked.
    “It’s not as bad as the Shamal wind,” she whispered.
    “The what?” Holt asked.
    “The Shamal winds. They’re not as strong as the Sharqi wind but they are just as wicked. We’d go hours and hours with restricted visibility. It was like a blizzard only with sand instead of snow. It gets into everything. Your hair, your ears, your boots, even between your teeth. The Shamals aren’t as strong as the Sharqi but the temperature is higher. More than a hundred degrees and thirty mile winds make you feel like you’re up against a sand blaster. I’m sorry. That’s just an information dump that wouldn’t make a bit of sense to you. The hot wind reminded me of the first time I encountered the winds of Iraq.”
    “Well, thanks for the info dump. Go on and tell your cat the beer joint news. And Sharlene, it’s all right if you want to come around and talk to him in the middle of the night. Most of the time, I’ll be sound asleep.” He raised his arms over his head and stretched. His chest and abdomen were muscular and ripped like he’d been spending hours at a gym.
    “Thanks, Holt. I’m sorry about your sister,” she said.
    “Me too,” he said softly.
    He disappeared around the front of the truck and she heard the door close softly. The yellow glow of the light coming out the kitchen window went out. She patted the cross a couple of times and went back home to the Honky Tonk.
    She parked the small car in the garage and pushed the button to lower the doors. The steady hum of truckers’ engines out in the trailer spaces provided background music for the crickets and tree frogs. She opened the back door of her apartment, peeled off her clothes, and left them on the bathroom floor. A quick shower and shampoo and a favorite old nightshirt with a picture of Betty Boop on the front and she was ready for bed.
    She laced her hands behind her head and stared at the dark ceiling. It became a screen for mental pictures from Iraq. The bombed out buildings. The little children in a war-torn country. The fear that was always right behind her. The joy when someone finally got to go home. The sorrow at leaving comrades behind maybe to never make it back to the States.

Chapter 3
    Everything was eerily quiet under the heavy layer of camouflage. Sharlene missed Jonah. Even when they didn’t talk he was there beside her, but now he was gone. She’d flown with him back to the hospital praying all the time that he wasn’t really dead; had stood beside his body while Joyce and Kayla tried to resuscitate him; had saluted the coffin when they loaded it on the plane; and had refused to answer questions from her four best friends about why she was so sad.
    Sweat ran down the bridge of her nose and dripped off the end. It reminded her of the icicles hanging on the house in Corn, Oklahoma, in the winter. When they started melting they dripped just like the sweat dripping off her nose.
    The sun came up different in Iraq. She couldn’t explain the odd way it looked as it jumped up from the end of the earth and into the sky. She’d been hunkered down on the top of the building across the street from the store for the last hour. She’d had a late supper the night before at the hospital with her friends before she got the call . After she finished the job, she’d go back to the hospital and do her job without nearly enough sleep. But that was Sharlene’s life. At least once a week she got a call that meant she had extra duty. If she didn’t keep up with her regular routine at the