The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield Read Free Book Online Page A

Ballenger’s attention to your existence was like prodding a cottonmouth moccasin with your bare foot. A cottonmouth is deadly poisonous, and it will come after you. It will strike from behind.
    Ballenger cut his glance in her direction. His black eyes widened, and he grinned. Swan wanted to shrink up inside herself and disappear, but it was too late.
    “Where’d you come from, little pretty?” he asked.
    Toy looked at her. Hard. “I thought I told you to git.”
    She got. Turned and hustled into the store. There was another car pulling up, but she didn’t look to see who it was. She wouldn’t know them anyway. She leaned against the ice cream box and peeked through the bug-specked window. The new customer was a middle-aged woman in a flowery cotton dress. Some farmer’s wife. She was chattering to Toy as she started toward the store, and Toy was answering her. His voice was a deep, low rumble. Swan wasn’t paying any attention to them, though.
    She was watching the red pickup truck as it peeled out onto the road. The two little boys were sitting like soldiers again. Straight as arrows. Two little boys. But Swan was focused on just one. The one who’d gotten struck by the cottonmouth. That kid. The way he was sitting there, with his head cocked to one side—looking like he didn’t care, like it was nothing. That kid’s face was burning a hole in Swan’s mind.
    She watched until the truck made the bend in the road and was blotted out by a bank of sweet gums and pin oaks. Until the whine of the tires and the chug of the motor faded down to a whisper that hung in the air for the longest time, unwilling to die.

Chapter 5
    Sometimes, when Geraldine Ballenger wasn’t trying to think, but was letting her thoughts just drift, some quick, shining idea or insight would start to churn faster than the rest and would rocket to the surface, glimmering. She could never quite catch hold of these. They were like shooting stars. Fast gone.
    She was letting her thoughts drift now, enjoying the pleasant flow. There was a small, bright stab of light that had surfaced, a little earlier, back at the store, and it was still bobbing along in her consciousness. She gazed at it, mentally, fascinated by it. She knew better than to attempt to examine it for brilliance or for flaws. If she tried too hard to capture it, it would dissolve, or sink, or shoot out of reach. And, anyway she was content, for now, just to look at it.
    Her husband was smiling to himself while he drove. This she saw out of the corner of her eye, and her stomach did an uneasy flip-flop. When most folks smiled, it meant something good. With Ras, it could mean anything. Still, she wouldn’t let him and his smile take her mind off the lovely, shimmering Idea. She wanted to keep it in view as long as possible.
    “How long you had your eye on that ugly bastid?” Ras asked. He prided himself on his craftiness, as well as on his ability to throw her thinking off. He sure knew how to throw her thinking off.
    She just looked at him, without saying anything. When Ras was getting wound up, it was bad to talk, because he could find something incriminating in any words that came out of your mouth—and it was bad not to talk, because silence indicated guilt. It meant you couldn’t think of anything to say that would hide whatever dirty secret he was in the process of discovering.
    “I seen you droolin’ back there,” he accused. “Don’t you think I didn’.”
    Geraldine was irritated. The Idea was starting to dim a little. If only Ras would shut up so she could concentrate. She said, “Oh, you think you see so much.” She had already forgotten about it not being good to talk.
    He laughed. An obscene, snorting sound. “You’d best believe I do.”
    Geraldine shifted the baby from her lap to her shoulder and patted its back, rhythmically. She was so disgusted. The stab of light was gone. There was nothing to do now but go ahead and fuss with Ras. If you didn’t give