The Western Limit of the World by David Masiel

Author:David Masiel
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781588365941
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-04-09T16:00:00+00:00

Evening was settling with no cooling of smoky air as he turned down Howe Street, past the street vendors closing up shop, a stooped man gathering cassava, and a fat girl of twenty wearing a flowered dress selling the last pieces of grilled fish and chicken from an open barbecue. Within two hundred yards there stood five dozen men who would as soon kill Snow as let him pass, but let him pass they did, for despite his age he knew where he was going and carried himself as such. He ticked through his mental list: get the contracts into Churchill’s hands, hope the unscrupulous bastard didn’t fuck him over completely, and set sail.

He longed for something simple. He wished to God he could go back to the Cascades, felt tightness in his chest when he remembered the clean air of the mountains, the cool-aired mist of home in Washington. And the girl from Index. He quickened his pace, as if getting to Churchill to nail everything down would somehow stave her off; Favor had a way of dredging up the shit. Snow hated when people called her retarded. For his taste in younger women, he pled guilty. There was something about youthful womanhood, how it never censored or angled but flung itself headlong into life and love and bed with a complete lack of guile, got its heart broken, swirled, and ached for its loss. Women were complicated, girls were simple. Like he was simple.

He had never been with anybody who gave herself so completely to him as Carly. Carly. He had tried a long time not to think of her name and how he’d say it while they were together, urging her, inside her, staring at that twisted ecstatic face. He tried to blot out how utterly she craved him, and the ways she came to him, stealing away to scratch at his door after midnight. He hadn’t used her. He cared for her, showed her affection. He never thought of himself as a user. He wanted to protect her. But then the endgame hovered and goaded him. They sent her to some home. Some “managed care facility” or whatever they called it. Twelve years ago now. She’d be twenty-nine and still a girl in her mind. For him there was only the banishing. If he believed in confession he would have to admit this was the gravest pain of all. He could still remember how they descended on his house, Elks Club elders, men he’d played cards with, chased women with, hunted with, sitting him down and leaning into him, stern and clear: We all got our vices, but you have crossed a line. There are two kinds of people in this world and you are the wrong kind, Snow. You are the wrong kind.

Snow walked in short quick steps. In a strange way he wished for a sterner reprisal, wished the girl’s uncle had hit him in the jaw, wished he could have pulled himself up off the ground to explain instead of being driven off like a wild animal.

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