Morton River Valley by Lee Lynch

Author:Lee Lynch [Lynch, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602828575
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2013-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

*

“Long time no see!” said Dusty, who was leaning on the counter talking football with a customer. It was 4:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, a slow time. The ice cream vendor came through the kitchen with a bill. Dusty, joking easily, paid him from the register. Paris looked around for Giulia.

“Don't you ever go home, Dusty?”

“Sure,” Dusty replied, her air of assurance like a promise that life was as it should be, hers, Paris's, everyone's. “I take Sundays and Mondays off. I like to have one day when the rest of the world is playing, and one day when I have Elly all to myself. This Sunday we'll go to the rally.”

“Rally?”

“At the shopping center out on Route 34.”

“For what?” The ever-smiling waitress Rosa brought her coffee. Paris took a stool.

Dusty ticked off causes, tugging at each finger as if for emphasis. “To increase funding for the homeless, restore money for M.O.V.E. and for Rafferty Center. V.O.W. put it together.”

Diner coffee tasted like water after Sophia's. “ I didn't hear a word about it at the Center. This town gets an F on coordination. We could have gotten our students there.”

“Thor Valerie's pretty good about that. He has a way of reaching into the poorest sections of the community.”

“And he's a one-man band.”

“Mister Ego we call him, but he gets the job done.”

“If you say so. What's M.O.V.E.?”

Enthusiasm lighted Dusty's face. “For a while we had a really good transit system, Morton River Valley Express. You could call in your location and they'd pick you up. You had to qualify for a pass: disabled, poor, old, anything like that. The cost was really low, but guess what?” Dusty softly kicked at the counter. Her tone turned disgusted. “The funds got cut completely. We lost business out of that. The older people up on the Hillside would hit the few old stores downtown, visit the bank and the post office, then come in for lunch. It was a big outing for them.”

Paris had noticed that despite the numerous hills surrounding the Valley, there was only one Hillside, an informal district which housed the majority of homes put up by the European immigrants who'd built and worked in the factories.

An affectionate grin stretched across Dusty's face as she went on. “There was even a bunch of employees from the rehab program, people with Down's Syndrome or whatever, who'd come in after work and raise a ruckus. Did we ever freak when they discovered us! But we learned that we were being ignorant and made some good friends. Now they have to go straight home in the rehab vans.”

Dusty, so calm and steady, should have been dull as dishwater, but instead her wide-open enthusiasms were exciting. Paris could see why Elly would have grabbed her and never let go. She was like a good-looking favorite old jean jacket, a pillar who wouldn't fall, no matter what the odds. And Paris could see that she'd wage a fierce battle if anyone tried to keep her down.

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.