The Neon Bible by John Kennedy Toole Read Free Book Online Page B

water and hush puppies. She brought a pan to the table with some brown fried eggs floating around in about two inches of fat. There was such a proud look on her face that I said, "Oh, Aunt Mae, those look good," when I saw them. That made her happy, and we sat and ate the eggs and biscuits like they were real fine.
    I got my books and the lunch Aunt Mae made for me and left for school. There were a lot of things on my mind. Where was Poppa? I thought he'd be back at the house in the morning, but I hadn't said anything to Aunt Mae, and she didn't talk to me about it. Then I remembered that I didn't do the work in my copybook for Mrs. Watkins. I couldn't get in any more trouble with her, so I put my books and lunch down by the side of the path and got my pencil out and sat down. I could feel the seat of my pants getting wet from the dew on the grass, and I thought how funny that was going to look. With the copybook slipping off my knee every time I went to write a letter, the page began to look bad. My A's looked like D's, and sometimes my commas slid all the way down to the next line. I finally finished it and got up and pulled the little wet blades of grass off my pants.
    I still had to get off the hill and cross town to get to school. The sun was up pretty well now. That meant that there wasn't too much time. Something felt heavy in my stomach, and I was sure it was those eggs and biscuits of Aunt Mae's. With the taste of the eggs still in my throat, I began to belch, and belch hard. Belching always made my throat feel hot, so I started to breathe the cool hill air through my mouth. It made me feel a little better, but the burning was still way down, in my chest, and it stayed there.
    I got off the hill onto a street and decided to take the shortest way I could. It was the street right behind Main where they had all the little restaurants and mechanics' shops. Usually I went another way, through the pretty houses, because I liked it better.
    Here they had old boxes in the gutter and old hubcaps and big garbage cans covered with flies that had such a strong smell I had to hold my nose when I passed. It was dark in the mechanics' places, with old cars on wooden blocks or bodies without wheels hanging from chains. The mechanics sat around in the doorways waiting for some business, and every word they spoke had "Christ" in it or "damn" or something like that. I wondered why Poppa had never been a mechanic, and thought that maybe he had been at one time, or maybe his father, because he never told me anything about his family, my grandpeople.
    The mechanics' places were mostly tin garages with old oilcans out in front and in the alleys. When it rained there, the water in the gutters was never clear but had purple and green colors on it that made any kind of design you wanted when you moved the water with your finger. I don't think the mechanics ever shaved, and I wondered how they got all the grease off their skin when they went home at night.
    There was one of those little restaurants between almost every mechanic's shop. They were named the DeLux Kitchen or Joe's or Kwik-Meal or Mother Eva's or other names like that. In front of every one there was a blackboard with the food they were having for the day, and it was always something like beans with rice or pork chops with beans or beans and chicken. I never knew how they could sell food so cheap, because there wasn't any meal that cost more than fifty cents. It must have been that they didn't have to pay much for the buildings they used.
    The barroom was on this street too. All along the front they had fake marble with neon lettering around the door and windows. I never saw what it looked like on the inside because it was always closed when I passed in the morning. I don't suppose anyone was meant to look above the first floor. The marble and neon stopped there, and the rest up to the roof was old weatherboards, brown and gray. There were three windows up there, big long ones that