The Stone Necklace by Carla Damron

Author:Carla Damron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2016-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

When Joe Booker rounded the corner on Main Street, a familiar presence fell in stride with him. The sour smell was familiar, too. Rag Doll, dressed in a stained brown top she must have snagged from the trash behind the Goodwill store, wore a sheen of sweat on her chapped face despite the cold. Her red high-top sneakers had a hole in the right toe.

“Where ya going, Joe?” she asked. “You going to the park?”

He picked up his pace hoping to make it hard for her to keep up.

“Not as cold today,” she said. “Bout froze my titties off last night. You stay at the shelter?”

Again, he kept his silence, and tried not to notice when she cupped her saggy breasts to make her point.

“If it gets that cold tonight I’m gonna try to get in,” she continued. “Some fat cow run me off from there last time.”

He cast a sideways glance at her, wondering what she’d done to get run off. Could have been anything: fighting, stealing stuff, cussing out staff. Why Rag Doll worked so hard to tangle with people he didn’t understand, but it seemed something she took pride in.

As he turned the next corner, she stayed at his side. “Hey, you gotta ten you can give me?” she asked.

“No.” He put power in the word to shut her up. Rag Doll was always begging. Always. Downtown folks going into their jobs. Mothers coming out of a grocery store. She was good at it, too. Why she was asking Joe for money when she had more than he did was always a puzzle.

“Or a few bucks. I need it.” She rubbed at her nose with the back of a dirty hand. “I’ll pay you back in a week. I promise.”

He paused, arching his brows at her. Her gaze did a dance from his face to the sidewalk to the road ahead, more jittery than normal.

“You owe somebody?” he asked, hoping she hadn’t got herself in trouble with a dealer.

“Even a dollar,” she persisted. “You got a dollar don’t ya?”

He got moving again, Rag Doll a pace behind. Sometimes she was harder to shake than a head cold. Joe tucked his hands in the pockets of his pea coat, glad to have the warm wool between him and the cold breeze stirring up.

After they’d gone a few blocks, she paused, pointing to a brick walkway that led to a tall building. The crisp lawn on either side of the path was too green for this time of year.

“You ever look at that fountain?” Rag Doll jutted her chin towards a strange-looking thing halfway down the walkway: a cement circle around a pool. In the center, a giant hammer made out of some kind of brown metal had water pouring from its head. How the thing didn’t get rusted made no sense.

“Sometimes people throw coins in there.” She scampered over and sunk her hands into the cold, frothy water. She grimaced as she pulled out a dime and two nickels.

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