Save Johanna! by Francine Pascal Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t. He walked into the house.
    “Where’s the van?” he asked.
    “Skip and Little Willie took it to pick up supplies,” she answered.
    With the shutters closed it was dark inside the house. Slivers of sunlight slipped between the warped slats, sending half a dozen long white stripes across the floor and over the body of a man sleeping on two big, raggedy couch cushions. The only other light was from a couple of candles burning in saucers on the floor. Besides the sleeping man there were two women. One was curled up asleep on a small rug against the far wall. She lay in a fetal position with her ripely pregnant stomach resting on her lap. The other woman was Swat; she was at an old-fashioned, white-speckled stove, stirring a small pot of chili.
    The screech of the screen door and the sound of Avrum’s boots made louder by his angry step woke the two sleeping people and caused the large-boned woman at the stove to stop stirring and turn toward him.
    “Those fuckin’ niggers,” he exploded, “I can’t wait till they wipe ’em all out!” Avrum threw himself down on a big, worn armchair that leaked white stuffing through its bursting seams. “Does this place have to look like midnight all the time? Open the fuckin’ shutters, will you!” This was directed to Frank Helmet, the man on the cushions, who was by now sitting up and wide awake.
    “Hey, man, we were only trying to keep it a little cool in here.” His tone was vaguely annoyed, reflecting the abruptness of his awakening.
    “Open it,” Avrum snapped back.
    “Come off it, Avrum, it gets like a fuckin’ oven with the sun baking in.”
    Without a word Avrum got up, walked over to Frank, jerked the slim young man up by his shoulders, and rapped him once, hard, across the chin with the side of his hand, karate-style. Frank’s head snapped back against the blow, his body tightened and his arms shot up to shove his aggressor away, but at the first contact with Avrum’s body, his hands froze and, an instant later, fell to his sides. The room was still.
    “I told you, Frank, you got to let it go. All of it.”
    Frank was struggling to swallow his fury. Avrum went on talking, his face only inches from Frank’s. As his voice lost its sharpness, it took on a deeper and more soothing quality. “Ease the tightness,” he said, “unlock it and let everything flow free. Let me into your head, Frank, let me in there so I can drive out all that ego and fill the space with love. Hey, man,” Avrum said, grabbing Frank into him with a sudden hard hug, “come on, don’t fight it, let me in.” Avrum held him close in a strong grip of love until he could feel Frank’s body loosen and begin to respond. And that response seemed to trigger something in the others, and strong vibrations started to build in the room and focus on Avrum. He absorbed their love, catching its zenith and holding it for one long, powerful moment, and then abruptly cut the mood, dropped the embrace, and stepped away from Frank. He pointed to the shutters and waited. Without a word, Frank went to the windows and pushed them open. Yellow sunlight flooded the room, changing the mysterious into an ordinary, ugly seediness. Stained, striped mattresses strewn with faded Indian spreads covered much of the floor. A cheap, wooden picnic table with attached benches stood alongside an old, deep, four-legged sink that was just this side of the stove where Swat was cooking the chili.
    The triumphant Avrum sat down again in the armchair, and then he remembered his earlier anger and spoke, stoking his fury as he recounted an incident he’d had a half hour earlier with the state highway police. It seemed they had pulled him over for not wearing his helmet.
    “I play it cool,” he told them. “I figure they’re gonna hit me with a ticket no matter what, so I dummy up. Now I’m sitting there, just waiting for them to write it up, but they’re taking their sweet time; then finally the white guy starts