Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online

incarcerated, did you simply stop fighting it?
The twin brothers who ran the farm had assigned him feed duty, which involved mixing grains from two different silos in an automatic overhead chute and then carrying the wheelbarrow load to the small troughs in front of the cows. Jack had done it early this morning before the milking; now, at just past 4:30, he was scheduled to do it again. He maneuvered the wheelbarrow to the far end of the huge barn. It was shrouded in cobwebs and poorly lit, and this morning Jack had had the scare of a lifetime when a bat dove out of the rafters and skittered onion-skin wings along his shoulder.
The automatic mixing mechanism was powered by a toggle switch on one of the heavy upright wooden beams. Jack flipped it, then waited for the grain to fill the top of the chute. The noise made by the machine vibrating to life was deafening, sound pounding around like a hailstorm.
The first punch, square in the kidney, drove him to his knees. Jack scrambled for purchase on the cement floor, twisting to see who had attacked him from behind.
“Get up,” Mountain said. “I ain’t done.”
It cost three dollars to go to the jail’s nurse. Mostly, this was because she was one of the few females on site and inmates would rather malinger and watch her breasts shifting beneath her white uniform than sit in a six-foot-by-six-foot cell, or thresh grain. Inmates who paid the fee were granted twenty minutes on one of the two padded tables and a free sample of Tylenol.
Jack was brought there by a security guard, who assured him that this visit was on the house. One of the twins who ran the farm had found Jack buried up to his neck in a heap of feed, blood spreading over his blue denim shirt in the shape of a valentine heart. Jack hadn’t been asked any questions, nor had he volunteered information.
The nurse gathered her materials on a metal tray. “Want to tell me what happened?”
Jack could barely speak past the blinding pain that came every time he moved his head. “Nosebleed,” he choked out.
“First nosebleed I’ve ever seen that involved broken nasal cartilage. How about that contusion on your spine, and your ribs? Or should I guess . . . you were kicked by a cow?”
“Sounds good,” Jack said.
Shaking her head, she packed his nostrils with cotton and sent him back to the pod. There, in the common room, men sat playing board games. Jack made his way to an unoccupied table and began to play solitaire.
Suddenly, two tables away, Aldo lunged across a Scrabble board and grabbed another inmate by the lapels. “You callin’ me a liar?”
The man looked him in the eye. “Yeah, LeGrande. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Jack averted his gaze and turned over the queen of spades. Put it there, on the column with the five of diamonds . . .
“I’m telling you, it’s a word,” Aldo insisted.
Hearing the commotion, the correctional officer on duty appeared. “What’s the matter, Aldo? Someone not want to share his toys with you?”
Aldo jammed his finger at the game board. “Isn’t this a word?”
The guard leaned closer. “O-C-H-E-R. I’ve never heard it.”
“It’s a word,” Jack said quietly.
Aldo turned with a smug grin. “You tell ’em, Teach. I read it in one of your books.”
“Ocher,” Jack said. “It’s a color. Kind of orange.”
“Twenty-seven points,” Aldo added.
His opponent narrowed his eyes at Jack. “Why the hell should I listen to you?”
“Because he studies all kinds of stuff,” Aldo said. “He knows the answers to all kinds of questions.”
Jack wished Aldo would just shut up. “Not the ones that matter,” he muttered.
Jack scraped the shovel along the concrete, holding his breath against the pungent stink of manure as he tossed another load into the wheelbarrow. The cows twisted their muscular necks to blink at him with great brown eyes, their udders already swollen with milk again and distending their legs like a bellows.
One of the cows lowed at him,