Jilo by J.D. Horn Read Free Book Online Page A

Charleston would be an electric-lit land of milk and honey.
    Six months after the move, May received the telegraph saying Jesse got himself killed when scaffolding collapsed, sending a rain of bricks down on him. Your son I stole from you is dead. Stop. Send money to bury him among strangers. Stop. Of course, those weren’t the cable’s actual words, but that was how May’s heart remembered them. May hadn’t been able to stop Jesse from leaving, let alone from getting himself killed, but she had managed to get him brought home. Jesse now rested between his own father and May’s mother. The spot she had always believed would be her own resting place.
    “May, I want you to meet Walter Williams,” Betty said, placing one hand on her hip. Betty seemed proud, like she was showing off a prize pig at the state fair.
    May examined the dark, round-faced fellow. A good three inches shorter than Betty, and a good three inches wider, too. Walter Williams, my eye. Porkpie, a cardboard suitcase in each hand, sidled up beside Betty. The Depression seemed to have spared Porkpie, seeing as he had both a new car and a spare tire around his waist. He didn’t fit May’s image of what a gangster should look like, but she couldn’t imagine how else a man could come by the cash for a chariot like this these days. He set the cases down and doffed his hat.
    “Ma’am,” he said, looking at her with a wide smile. His gaze turned instantly back to Betty, and May realized the poor fool was in love.
    “What’re those for?” May asked, taking a couple of steps forward to the edge of her porch. “This ain’t no hotel, and you sure ain’t moving in here with that man.”
    Betty laughed, a careless sound pealing from a careless woman. “Opal,” Betty called her daughter, never taking her wary eyes off May. The spindly girl let go of Jilo, who scooted off to explore, and took hold of the cases. She set them down in front of the porch steps and looked to her grandmother, not seeming to know what to do next.
    “Those are for the girls,” Betty said. “Walter and I, we going on to Atlanta. The girls wanted to stop off here a bit and visit with their nana, ain’t that right, Opal?”
    May’s eyes fixed on the young girl’s face. Opal’s worried gaze drifted down, and her lips began to work, but no sound came out. May’s heart nearly broke at the sight. “You bring those cases up here then, girl,” she said to her oldest grandbaby. Opal’s eyes shot up to meet May’s, and a hopeful smile spread across her face. Poor little thing believed I might turn her away , May thought, an even deeper resentment toward Betty growing in her heart. What kind of stories has that creature been telling the babies about me?
    “Yes’m,” the girl said, her face now radiant. She grabbed the first case with both hands and hauled it up to May’s side, then skittered back down and managed the second, which seemed a tad heavier. May would have helped the girl, but she didn’t trust herself to be even a single inch closer to Opal’s mother.
    “What you going to Atlanta for?” May asked, pulling Opal close and laying a protective hand on her head.
    “Walter has business there,” Betty responded. May scanned the new auto, its scintillating chrome causing spots to rise before her eyes.
    “She a beauty, ain’t she? She’s a Chrysler Airstream.” He smiled, oblivious to May’s disdain. “Only thing prettier is my lady here.” He reached up to place his arm around Betty’s shoulder.
    “It’s too hot, baby.” Betty flashed the man a smile, but stepped quickly forward, sliding out from under his embrace.
    “That explains why . . . Walter ”—May very nearly used her interior moniker for the man—“is going. Why are you going?”
    Betty reached back and, seeming to forget her earlier avoidance of his touch, took Porkpie’s arm. She beamed and flashed May the most sincere smile May had ever seen on her ex-daughter-in-law’s face. “Walter