Warm Wuinter's Garden by Neil Hetzner Read Free Book Online Page B

years
after Nita was born, Bett accidentally had become pregnant with
Lise and had carried her to within two weeks of term without the
help of DES.
    The guilt each carried for the other’s hurt
grew smaller after Nita found that Naprosyn relieved her worst
pains. It grew smaller still the following year when Nita reached
twenty-five, the magic cut-off point, without developing uterine
cancer. For both, it had felt so good to have the guilt gone that
they tiptoed around each other to prevent a recurrence. As Nita,
free from fear, added entry after entry to her collection of men,
as she passed thirty unmarried, as research grew stronger on the
difficulty DES babies had in carrying their own babies to term,
and, then, when she stopped going out with anyone, she and her
mother talked of other things.
    Despite the throbbing of her body, Nita was
glad to be having the pain alone in her car rather than with her
family at Clarke’s Cove. Being sick at home gave her a strange
feeling. It was the same sense of aloof intimacy, of removed
proximity, that she had when she was being crushed in a crowd of
strangers in a subway car.
    Nita considered how as she grew older more of
life felt like a subway ride. As she drove to her office, she
wondered at the price she paid to stay aloof, to stay safe.
Inviolability was expensive. It protected her, but in the shadow of
protection grew isolation. As her past grew longer and its
tentacles rooted her, as they insinuated themselves into all that
was to come, as the weight of her habits grew more immovable, would
she end up cold, safe and alone? No one even to hold her arm. She
was startled to hear a small anguished sound fill the car for just
a moment before being absorbed into the plush upholstery. She
pushed a button to let the late afternoon August heat rush
inside.

Chapter 4
     
     
    Lise Koster squinched her face into a tight
knot of tanned and freckled flesh. Ever since she was a little
girl, the youngest of four, always listening to more grown-up
conversation, she had found squinching helped her to
understand.
    “So what’d you do?” she asked.
    “I snarled back.”
    Brad Denoit hunched his back. His mane of
long black hair fell forward from his shoulders. The hair combined
with the expanse of white teeth he had exposed by pulling back his
lips gave him a feral look.
    Lise tipped her blond curl-topped head
sideways to offer up her jugular vein.
    “What’d he do?”
    “Turned tail. But, not for long. A few
minutes later he was back again. I pretended not to notice. He got
even closer this time. He must have been within a yard of my
ankle.”
    “That gives me the shivers.”
    “He took another half-step. I whipped around
and barked so loud my throat cracked.”
    “Did he leave?”
    “Not really. He went back out on the
sidewalk. Shepherds can be so stupid. But, tenacious. He sat out
there snarling. I’m trying to get my tent repacked, but every time
bend over to make a fold, I can feel him getting ready to go for
me. He kept snarling and inching closer. I gave up. Slammed into
the house, got my forty-five, stuck it in my pants and came
slamming back out.”
    “You didn’t shoot him, did you? My God,
Brad.”
    Lise grabbed Brad’s tie-dyed tee-shirt sleeve
to implore him that the story not end in the dog’s death.
    “I came off the porch staring at him. He
stared right back. A contest of wills. So be it. I pulled out the
gun, kicked off the safety, chambered a shell and pointed it right
at him. That gave him pause. He stopped snarling. He could tell
something was different. I started walking toward him with the
barrel lined up on his nose. When I was about five feet away he
started up again.”
    Brad growled.
    “I took another step. The barrel was this
close to his head.”
    Lise dropped Brad’s sleeve and backed up two
steps to get some distance from the tragedy that she knew was about
to happen. Her voice broke as she asked, “And?”
    “He started quivering. I don’t