Lucky's Girl by William Holloway Read Free Book Online Page A

Then he put up a hand to decline the cigarette. “No thanks. Clean living, you know?”
    Errol shrugged. “What, are you crazy or something? These are fancy cigs up here in this neck of the woods.”
    “Had to quit, people in my line of work shouldn’t smoke.”
    “What’s that, Kenny?”
    “Underwater welding.”
    Errol nodded. “Right. Offshore, Gulf of Mexico, oil rigs. Frank told me that. He was real proud of you. I made a point of coming out here and sitting with him about once a month. So did Kaminsky and a couple of folks from the church.”
    Kenny didn’t say anything, feeling the first tears working their way up from inside. He hadn’t planned on this conversation tonight. At first he’d been happy to see Errol, the idea of catching up on old times seemed like fun, until the reality of those times had come back into focus.
    “Tell me something, Errol, why are you here? Why are you still in this town?”
    “Towns need mailmen, Kenny.”
    “This town doesn’t really seem like much of a town anymore. I don’t buy it. Why are you here? Why is anyone here? There’re no jobs. Why do people stay?”
    Errol looked down, shaking his head. “People like your uncle, Kenny, and there are a lot of them. They’re just lost in this world. Somebody has to help them, somebody has to care. You don’t know how many times I’ve watched human beings just wink out of existence, poof, gone. I’d tell myself I was gonna pack my bags and never look back. But what the hell would happen to the people left behind, what would happen if everybody just turned their backs?”
    A strange question crept into Kenny eyes. “Errol, how is the Reverend James, how is his… how is Mrs. James? God, those people were so good to me growing up but everything… well, you know what happened. How are they?”
    Errol shook his head, running his hand through his hair. “He’s dead. Funeral’s tomorrow.”
    Kenny felt the first tear roll from the corner of his eye. He wiped it away, then looked at the wetness on his fingers. “Sometimes, growing up, I’d wonder why this town was even here. There’s no reason for it. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s like a ghost town which never had any reason to be in the first place… but nobody ever left. They just stayed, poor and fucked up.”
    “Wow, Kenny, you outta be on Oprah or something.”
    Kenny laughed. “I’m being serious. When I was a kid, I was never able to figure out why this town was here. It was poor back then and I never could figure out what the hell kept people here.”
    Errol squinted at Kenny in the shadows of the porch. “You left. You left and you never looked back ‘til now. I know why you left, any sane man would, but you look like you’re back, and from the look of your truck, you got kids. What’s going on, man?”
    By the time Kenny told Errol his twenty-year story the six-pack was gone and Kenny was out of tears again. When Kenny was about to pass out, Errol walked him into the cabin. He caught a glimpse of two young kids sleeping on the fold-out couch and said a quiet prayer for them. He put Kenny to bed, saying another quick prayer for widowers lost in the U.P. He closed the door to the cabin, making sure to hear the distinct click to know it really was closed. In the distance he heard the first calls of the Pack, too far away to know which direction they were coming from. But he knew in his gut this song was different. Wild, frenzied, mad with the anticipation of triumph. Errol’s hairs stood up on the back of his neck considering just what kind of triumph that was.

CHAPTER 8

    Across the field two sets of moonlit eyes glared at one another. On the southern side Blackie stood, apparently alone. From the north, two packs from the roughly one-hundred-mile radius of Elton Township stared back, drawn for one reason alone: to kill Blackie.
    Blackie had been born to one of those tribes, her own mother standing across the field from her, ears back, teeth bared,