Broke Heart Blues by Joyce Carol Oates

Author:Joyce Carol Oates [Oates, Joyce Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Men - New York (State), New York (State), Psychological Fiction, City and Town Life - New York (State), General, Psychological, Sagas, Suspense, Young Men, Fiction, City and Town Life
ISBN: 9781860497704
Google: IFMCcovnASkC
Amazon: 1860497705
Publisher: Virago
Published: 1999-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Insomnia’s when you want to sleep and can’t. When you’ve got plenty to do, and are happy doing it, that isn’t insomnia.” Nola said, “But it comes to the same thing. You don’t sleep.” On the fourth, final day, when at last the shingling was done, John agreed to have supper with Nola and the kids. He drove home, however, and shave and change his clothes. He wore a white shirt, trousers, even a necktie. (A hand-painted, expensive tie that had been a from a well-to-do woman customer when MR. FIX-IT had lived in Watertown.

“When you wear this, John, will you think of me?” MR. FIX-IT long forgotten her name. ) He brought Ellen and Drew a surprise, a horse from a flea market in Shawmouth he’d bought when his was still alive. For years he’d had no use for it, one item among many in MR. Flx-IT’s barn. Now inspired, he repaired the horse, repainted it, a warm golden hue. It was a friendly-looking horse, a miniature, three feet from the ground on a flat wooden platform, when it rocked, it creaked. The children were ecstatic. “He’s a palomino pony,” them. “His name is Pal.” Nola’s eyes shimmered with tears, she’d had to turn aside. She said, “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.” She burst tears, her shoulders shaking. John stared at her in dismay. “I’m not used to people being nice to me. I mean—so nice.” John said, “Bullshit, Nola.” Nola laughed, laying a hand on his arm, yes it was bullshit but she couldn’t crying.

In MR. Flx-IT’s sky-blue pickup he drove home from the Oswego County Courthouse, eleven miles to the nickel-colored trailer in the ruin of an apple orchard on Barndollar Road, Iroquois Point. What our come to!

How God tests us. Dripping blood from a cut above his eye. For a while, driving, he’d pressed a wad of tissue against the cut, soaking up blood, then gave up in disgust. Sure, those deputies had looked at him, John Heart, with contempt. A man who hadn’t defended himself. A man who’d let hit in the face. Who wouldn’t press charges against his assailant.

Probably the deputies knew he was an ex-con, too. Every one to know.

If anyone had asked him point-blank, he wouldn’t have denied it.

Tomahawk Island Youth Camp wasn’t a maximumsecurity prison for adult offenders like Attica, Sing Sing.

Nothing to be ashamed of. Not now.

Nothing MR. FIX-IT couldn’t fix.

But since Jordan Leavey had initiated his custody suit—his blackmail as Nola called it—more of John Heart’s private life, his long-ago teenaged life as John Reddy Heart, was emerging. Not just the conviction for theft, to which he’d confessed, and the other accessory crimes, but the for second-degree murder. He’d seen the look in Nola’s face when Leavey’s attorney alluded to Nola’s “current live-in companion,” man who’d been tried for murder in Buffalo as a sixteen-year-old and had had a “controversial” acquittal. And those twelve months at Tomahawk without a day off for good behavior.

He’d seen the look on the judge’s face, too.

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