Lay Your Body Down by Amy Suiter Clarke

Author:Amy Suiter Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

Thirty-Eight

GROWING UP, RONNY JAMES WAS always on the edge of getting kicked out of wherever he was. Youth camps, game nights, lock-ins—no matter what activity we did, he found a way to goof off. He pulled pranks and messed around in the back row during sermons, cheated at games and snapped girls’ bra straps. It didn’t matter whether it was good or bad: any kind of attention was what he craved.

And because boys will be boys, he had no trouble making friends—one of whom was Keith Rivers. I think Keith was originally supposed to be like a mentor, since Ronny was a few grades younger. But once the youth leaders matched the two of them up at a boys’ retreat, they were inseparable.

Ronny’s construction shop isn’t hard to find. It’s linked to his social media account. A scroll through his timeline made it clear that I haven’t missed out on anything by not speaking to him in years. Now that he’s an adult, all that teenage rebellion has been refocused on mistrust of the government and a general derision for participating in a compassionate society. I turn off the road onto a gravel drive that leads past a used car lot and a tack shop. A white truck with a James Construction logo stuck to the side is parked out in front of a squat beige building. After pulling in next to it, I get out, boots kicking up dust.

“Help you with something?”

I look up to find Ronny standing in the open doorway of his shop. His worn Levi’s and khaki button-down are covered in sawdust. A rolled red bandanna keeps the sweat out of his eyes, which he’s shielding with a rough hand as he looks at me.

“Delilah?”

Stopping at the bottom of the short set of stairs into his shop, I squint up at him. My oversize coat and baggy pants do nothing to make me feel protected under his gaze. “Hey, Ronny. You got a few minutes to talk?”

“Sure.” He looks around for a moment. “It’s kinda dusty inside, but it’s too cold out here. C’mon in.”

It takes my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the dim light inside his shop. He’s right: every shelf, table, box, and slab of wood is coated in layers of sawdust. Giant tools form imposing shapes all around the shop: some I recognize, others are completely foreign. Most of the light is coming from a bright yellow lamp with a white bulb behind a metal grate, to prevent it from being bumped and shattered, I suppose.

Ronny leads me on a path familiar only to him, through stacks of two-by-fours and toolboxes and trash cans filled with unusable scraps of wood. There’s a tiny kitchenette at the back, right next to a closet just big enough to hold a toilet. Opening the mini fridge, he bends over and reaches for two bottles of water, holding one out to me. I accept with a nod, and he takes a stack of woodworking magazines off the one chair next to the kitchen, gesturing for me to sit.

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.