Jewel by Bret Lott

Author:Bret Lott
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The next evening we were doing the last straightening up of the house, me scouring the sink, Annie grabbing at whatever cobwebs she could find with the broom, Wilman and Leston outside, the hood of the car up, the two of them peering into the engine like it might speak.

Billie Jean’d been gone all afternoon, picked up at lunchtime by one of her girlfriends at the bank, Ruby Sit well, who drove a pickup not much different from the one we’d just gotten rid of the day before. They were giving her a farewell party, Billie Jean’d told me as she ran down the front porch steps, her eyes, I’d seen, blinking and blinking at tears coming up. She climbed in the cab, the two of them giggling and crying already. Then Billie Jean’d leaned out the window, blew me a kiss, and the two of them had headed off down the road.

Near sunset I finished scouring the kitchen sink, and turned to see I I’s l Billie Jean just inside the kitchen from the front room. She stood with her arm looped in the arm of a man we’d only met twice before, one Gower Cross, a plump man whose face seemed too red, maybe even flushed, whenever he talked. He smiled what I figured was entirely too much, but he was a salesman for a tractor-trailer operation out of Jackson, was starting up an office here. All that smiling, I figured, just went right along with the job. He’d been over to dinner a month ago, the first time a month before that, but that was it, and he and Billie Jean’d gone out a few times otherwise. Nothing serious, as far as I could see, she’d had boyfriends on and off, boys I could only recall by how they’d acted around Brenda Kay, some wouldn’t come in the house, some smiled too much and patted her head like she was a strange breed of dog, others stood with their hands behind their backs, their eyes never falling on Brenda Kay.

Gower Cross’d been of the smiling variety, just smiling and smiling those times he was over, hesitating with his fork between his plate and mouth a moment or so when Brenda Kay’d smack her lips too loud, or when she’d let fall from her mouth a piece of gristle she wanted rid of, all of it her general manners at the table, no matter how hard I tried to teach her different.

“Gower, ” I said, and nodded. “Here for dinner? Because all we’re having is sandwiches. Tomorrow’s ” “Momma, ” Billie Jean said, and she pulled him even closer. She had on the orchid dress we’d bought the day before, her eyes and lips and cheeks made up. Then I saw Gower’s hair was greased and combed, and he had on a painted tie, his white shirt crisp and starched and clean, nowhere near the rumpled and tired it would’ve been had he worn it all day. His face was more red than I’d seen it either of the nights he’d been here.

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.