Vernon God Little by Dbc Pierre Read Free Book Online Page B

reach down for a bottle, but Lally brakes to avoid a stray teddy under the Lechugas’ willow; I overbalance, the dope cigarettes fall from my hand.
    Lally switches off the engine, looks at the joints, picks one off the floor, sniffs it, and grins. Then he looks at me. ‘Tch - you could’ve just said you didn’t want to share.’
    ‘Uh, they ain’t mine actually.’
    ‘Not for long, anyway,’ he says, frowning into his mirror.
    I spin around to see the Smith County truck nose onto Beulah Drive, a block behind us. Velcro fucken ant-farms seize my gut.
    ‘Here, give them to me,’ says Lally. He lifts himself up, and stashes the joints through a tear in the seat.
    ‘Thanks - I’ll be right back.’ I fly across our lawn, into the house, and up the hall to my room, where I pick the cap off the ginseng. I take Taylor’s LSD pearls and poke them into the bottle. They blend right into the piss, and the cap replaces like new. I drop the bottle into the Nike box, next to my padlock key, and hide it back in my closet. As I stroll onto the porch, all nonchalant, cooled by a sweat of relief, I see Vaine Gurie, Mom, and a Smith County officer arrive in the truck. Air-conditioning blows their hair like seaweed underwater, except Mom’s, which blows more like one of those tetchy anemone things. Lally sits quiet in the shade of the Lechugas’ willow. I guess he turned out okay, ole Lally, in the end. ‘A good egg,’ as the once-talkative Mr Goddam Nuckles would say.
    Fate suddenly plays its regular card. Leona’s Eldorado sashays past the pumpjack, full of musty, dry wombs and deep, bitter wants. Mom withers. The fucken timing of these ladies is astounding, I have to say, like they have scandal radar or something. They foam out of the car like suds from a sitcom washing machine, except for Brad, who stays in back. He’s eating a booger, you can tell. Betty Pritchard gets out and starts to strut around the lawn like a fucken chicken.
    ‘I think I need the bathroom - I just can’t be sure with this infection.’
    Leona and George take the high ground by our willow. ‘Hi, Doris,’ they wave. I almost make it back into the house, but Vaine Gurie unfolds faster than you’d expect from the cab of the truck. ‘Vernon Little, come down here please.’
    ‘Another setback, Doris?’ asks Leona, hopefully.
    ‘Well it’s nothing, girls,’ says Mom. ‘There’s some fudge inside.’
    ‘We don’t have long,’ says Leona, ‘they’re coming to lay the sunken patio at three.’
    ‘Well, I thought it was the people with my Special Edition,’ says Mom, scuttling over the dirt. ‘I saw the car, and thought the new fridge was here …’
    ‘Ma?’ I call. She doesn’t hear.
    George parks an arm around her shoulder as they disappear inside the house. ‘Honey, of course they’ll come after him if he insists on looking like that - that haircut’s the pits.’
    The screen clacks shut, Mom’s voice trails away into the dark. ‘Well I couldn’t sway him, you know how boys are …’
    ‘Vernon,’ says Gurie. ‘Let’s go for a little ride.’
    I search her face for signs of uncovered truth, imminent apology. None appear. ‘Ma’am, I wasn’t even there …’
    ‘Is that right. Makes it difficult to explain the fingerprints we found then, doesn’t it.’
    Picture a Smith County Sheriff’s truck with me inside, sitting quiet on a road between three wooden houses. Bugs chitter in the willows, oblivious. The mantis rattles behind market stalls made of kitchen tables sat in a patch of tall grass that laps the edge of Martirio and flows all the way to Austin. Then Brad Pritchard appears at my window; nose to the sky, finger pointed at his shoes.
    ‘Air Maxes,’ he states. ‘New.’
    He stands with his eyes shut, waiting for me to blow a fucken kiss, or break down weeping or something. Asshole.
    I lift my leg to the window. ‘Jordan New Jacks.’
    He squints momentarily before pointing at my Nikes. ‘Old,’ he explains