The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy by David Handler Read Free Book Online

depending on the light and how clean it was. Lulu’s favorite. There was the Jag, the sinewy red ’58 XK 150 drophead, every inch of it original, right down to the sixty-spoke wire wheels. My favorite. And there was our latest addition, which we’d bought for carting Tracy around: a powder-blue 1950 Ford Woody wagon that had belonged to our dear, departed neighbor, Margaret, an aviatrix who’d been a test pilot during World War I. Solid as a tank, heavy and quiet. And the Woody wasn’t bad either. Had 42,000 miles on it, no rust, its original wood and five brand-new wide whites. The clock even worked.
    Lulu was curled up next to it, eyeballing the barn warily. She won’t go in there if she can avoid it. It has bats and, from time to time, raccoons. Sadie was stretched out next to her in the sun chewing on a foot. She likes the barn just fine. But she likes being warm even more.
    The chapel door opened and young Clethra came padding out, her eyes puffy and her hair uncombed. She was barefoot, and wasn’t wearing any pants. Just a T-shirt and her black leather jacket, which just did cover her butt. Her legs were somewhat chubby, and blotchy from the cold. She painted her toenails black.
    “Clethra, dear child!” Thor called out to her. “Come over here and say hello to my friend, Dwayne Gobble.”
    She came scuffling over, most grudgingly. Until she realized Dwayne was her own age. Then her manner changed completely. We’re talking major thaw. “Whassup, cuz?” she asked him, all friendly and interested. Smiling even. All of a sudden, I felt very old. “You, like, work here?”
    “Sometimes,” he replied, gawking at her dumbly. Poor guy was utterly entranced. If this had been a cartoon he would have been hearing tweety birds. “For a while, anyway.”
    “Dwayne’s an artisan,” Thor informed her. “He works where he wants, when he wants. A man with his gifts is always a free man.”
    “Cool,” exclaimed Clethra, tossing her wild mane of black hair at him, her dark eyes flashing and playful. “Hey, can I bum one of those?”
    He was fumbling for another Camel. “Uh, sure. You bet.” He shook another one out of the pack and lit it for her. “I like your ring,” he said, meaning the one in her nose.
    “Check, I got this new one last week …” She pulled up her T-shirt so he could see it. It was in her belly button. “Jamaican dude in the East Village did it for me.”
    “Cool!” exclaimed Dwayne, very impressed. “Did it hurt?”
    “Duh, yeah,” she said most casually, dragging on her cigarette. “Like, I mean, if you want total excellence you have to do the time, know what I’m saying?”
    “You got that right,” agreed Dwayne, slipping her five and getting five back.
    Thor stood there beaming at the two of them like a proud parent. Me, I was starting to feel like David Niven in Prudence and the Pill.
    “Whoa, your truck is a piss,” she observed, scuffling over to it.
    Dwayne drove a jacked-up Dodge Power Ram, gunmetal gray, and bedecked with the usual he-guy bells and whistles—the mondo Trail Buster tires, the roll bar, the fog lamps. As well as some individual flourishes of his own. Homemade front and rear bumpers of pressure-treated lumber. And a rear window plastered with clever bumper stickers like “Red, Hot and Rolling” and “Lick My Meat” and “Perot for President.”
    “Awesome stereo,” she raved, getting up on her tippy toes so she could see in the window.
    “She’s got eight-inch woofers,” he informed her, his eyes firmly fastened on her own eight-inch woofers. “You into death metal?”
    “I used to be into Metallica, but then they got so commercial, y’know?”
    He nodded vigorously. “They’re totally bogus. I’m into Deicide now. They’re the truth, man.”
    Dwayne had played me a sample one day when we were working on the barn. To me, the truth sounded like a garbage disposal eating up a live rodent, and I told him so. He thought maybe it was a