Elders by Ryan McIlvain

Author:Ryan McIlvain [McIlvain, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-95570-8
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2013-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

An hour later the scene still spun in McLeod’s mind in a sort of horror-movie loop: Leandro’s voice catching on the f of Are you fff-fucking my wife, McLeod literally flinching at the word, he and Passos both, the burn of cachaça in their nostrils, and again. It felt surreal at moments, or if not quite that, if not quite past reality, then past explanation, exempt from it. But no. McLeod arrived with his companion at the edge of Josefina’s street and knew that a very real reckoning must come.

“Just …” McLeod said. “Just give me a minute.”

In the near distance the river ran brownish pink and red. The sound of it promised calm. McLeod walked to it, his senior companion following after. They sat in silence on the corrugated guardrail that separated the road from the shallow bank beneath them, the occasional prods and nubs of drainage pipes sticking out of the dirt like uncovered limbs. The low sun making the color on the river. For the moment it looked blood-red.

McLeod spoke first. “Now what?”

“We baptize Josefina.”

“You mean—”

“We baptize Josefina without Leandro. We don’t even tell her that we’d changed our minds. She doesn’t need to know that. We pick up where we left off Tuesday night.”

A long silence soaked into the air around them. They heard no fireworks anymore, no car horns—only the runs and riffles below, a continuous sound but somehow dislocated, fragmented, like the glow on the water. McLeod asked about the time.

“We were supposed to be there half an hour ago,” Passos said.

“Okay,” McLeod said. “One more minute.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.