Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

Author:J. Ryan Stradal
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780525429142
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Published: 2015-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

VENISON

It used to be, if Jordy Snelling could change one thing about his life, it would be that rifle season went a week longer and didn’t overlap with bow season. Now here it was, two days from the opener, and he hadn’t even cleaned his goddamn Mauser yet.

His brother Adam had come by early to visit their mom, and he brought his new lady friend Eva with him. For some stupid reason they didn’t wake him up when they got there, and now here he was getting up and they were about to leave. Also, his right hand was swollen up like a turkey drumstick and the knuckles were scraped raw. It had hurt from the moment he woke up, but his nose and face felt fine. Did he get in a fight? Maybe he won.

• • •

“Hey,” Eva said, smiling, when Jordy walked into the living room. Eva was real tall, seemed pretty nice, and supposedly had a job as some kinda fancy chef or something. This was only the second time he’d ever even seen her, but he was already 100 percent sure that she was way, way better than Adam’s snotty ex-wife Octavia, who nobody ever liked anyway. “What happened to your hand?” she asked.

Jordy laughed. “Hell if I know,” he said, crossing the room to check on his mom, who was sleeping, fully reclined in her easy chair. Since she became so bony and pale, he could never look at her body for very long. “How’s she doing?” he whispered to Eva.

“Good,” Eva whispered back. “She was up earlier.”

“We were waiting for you to get up so we could go,” Adam said. His brother looked tired, but he always looked tired, because he worked at a damn bakery for some reason. “Eva’s got her cousins coming into town tomorrow and she’s gotta get her place ready.”

It was 11:00 a.m., and the hospice nurse, Mandy, should’ve come by now anyway. He didn’t like to be alone with his mom for too long, especially when she needed her meds. What if he fucked something up? Her breathing was heavy again. She slept all the time now, and she didn’t get out of her recliner too much.

On their way out, Adam hugged him, and Eva hugged him, kind of firmly for someone he didn’t know too well, and they told Jordy that he’d be fine and to call them if he needed anything. Between them, and the neighbors, and his aunt Melanie up in Inver Grove, someone was usually around, at least.

After they left, he checked on his mom again—still sleeping—and went out to the second-floor apartment’s balcony, the only place where he was allowed to smoke. Outside, they were cutting the forest across the street to make room for new condominiums. Trying to get it done before it started snowing. It meant that all of the deer in those woods were going to be flushed out into streets and backyards just in time for mating season.

What people don’t understand about deer is that they’re vermin.

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