Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock

Author:Alan Heathcock [Heathcock, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 1555975771
Google: Oq54ZeNCBBEC
Amazon: B004OA64R0
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2011-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

The lounge’s sign was lightless. The girls and Calvin kept watch from the truck. Walt wore his new usher’s jacket, strolling the burnt and dripping shadows. Everything reeked of smoke, everything wet and black. In the middle of the rubble were a table and chairs, bright orange like poppies in a cave. Walt sat at the table expecting to feel a change, a secret breeze. But it was just a chair, damp in its seat, and he couldn’t figure why some things burned while others were spared.

In one corner, Hep and Lonnie were inspecting a heap that was once a jukebox. Hep raised a record, trying to read its label by the moonlight. Smoke grimed the night, the moon low and muzzy.

Walt clambered over bricks, joists, the remnants of an old mahogany bar. An icebox had fallen sideways. He tugged open its door to an acrid spill of alcohol. Picking through the refuse, he found an intact bottle of vodka, a bomb-shaped jug of berry liqueur.

Then Lonnie was calling from down by the lanes, where he and Hep struggled lifting a shelf fallen facedown. Walt hurried over, set aside the booze, and grabbed and pulled until the shelf stood upright. Hidden beneath were the wet shining spheres of bowling balls.

Hep lifted a ball. “What we gonna do with ’em?”

Lonnie held a ball swirled blue and white and melted flat on one side. He squinted, peering into its finger holes. “You hear about that girl from Selma?”

“The one that boy Elmer keeps talking up?” Hep asked. “The one what’s gonna be in the movies?”

“She singing up in the city?”

“At that pageant?”

“That’s tonight, ain’t it?”

“We ain’t goin’ to no goddamn pageant.”

“Hell no,” said Lonnie, sliding his fingers into the ball. “We goin’ to Selma.”

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