The Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK ™ by Talmage Powell

Author:Talmage Powell [Powell, Talmage]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: mystery, detective, noir, hardboiled, crime
ISBN: 9781479406111
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

“We never had children,” he said. “We—ah—never did very much of the necessary prerequisite to having children. Jassie didn’t want them around. Too much trouble, she said. I wanted a gang of kids. So the wife and I could sort of grow up all over again with them. Fellow with kids has got a good excuse to do lots of stuff like pitch a baseball in the back yard or tinker with a bike or take in a circus and eat hot dogs. Jassie didn’t like any of that. She had to have a man who’d come in, cook supper, wash the dishes, and sit in the living room with her. Sometimes she started snoring on the couch—she had a wet, blubbery little snore. Still, she liked to have her husband sitting there with her. It was his place, she said.”

“Fellow like you,” I suggested, “should have become a Boy Scout troop advisor or had a Sunday School class of boys.”

He looked at me as if I weren’t very bright. “I tried both of those things. It made Jassie ill.”

“Ill?”

“Yes. She’d have to call the doctor. She wouldn’t get better until I had loaded the house with chocolate creams and was staying with her again.” He sighed. “It got worse as time went on. She’d time me from the house to the store and back again. If I missed my bus, I’d have to explain every minute I was late.”

“Sounds pretty dull,” I conceded.

“You’ve no idea,” he said. “For a time, I tried to make friends. You know, have somebody drop into the house and play bridge or have a little dinner. The experiences were horrible. A couple would drop in and Jassie wouldn’t stir. I’d have to cook the dinner and explain her illness. Newly made friends usually dropped in only once, the house was usually…well, dirty, unmade, you know. Sometimes the dirty dishes and garbage container made it smell. Anyway, Jassie would never return a visit. As time went on, she got worse, of course.” He looked at me calmly and I got a mental picture of Jassie, spreading over the couch as the years spread over her. Jassie so helpless, demanding every moment of his time, hemming in every second of his life.

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.