The Girl With the Golden Shoes by Colin Channer

Author:Colin Channer [Channer, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book, General Fiction
ISBN: 9781933354262
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2007-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

VIII.

The road was dark and silent, and she focused on the slapping of her feet against the asphalt as she walked. In the distance, she could hear the engine fading and the short compression coming just before the elongation of the gears, a pattern like a snore. She hummed to rinse the loss before it stained.

There was grass along the verge, and as her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, she could see a narrow path.

Shit…I ain’t know what in them grass, she thought, standing in the road. Them grass could have all kind o’ macka to jam me in my foot. And it have some worse than snakebite, I hear. Those, when they jam you, make you foot swell so much you feel like you walking with a ball and chain. The road hard, and my foot feel soft, but I ain’t able for no swell foot tonight—especially how my driver gone.

Her conversation with Joseph had left her feeling sentimental, and now, for the first time in her life, she felt uneasy in the dark. Like a novice sailor in a boat caught up in big waves, she couldn’t find a way to put herself along an even keel. And her skin began to prickle as she grudgingly admitted that she, Estrella Thompson, a castaway, was something precious that someone could lose. Her life was not her own. It belonged to all who showed her love. Like the woman in the red bandanna and Vashti, the handsome man with the rash along his face. Like Joseph. Even Asif!

It would matter if they woke up in the morning and heard that something awful had occurred…that she’d been robbed or killed or raped. If something awful happened it would count. She began to feel now that she should have talked to Joseph more to find out what it would have cost to take her into town. If it had come to it…if he’d said he’d do it but her body was the price, she would have paid it, she was thinking, would have found a way to make it work. Maybe she would have asked him to repeat that she was pretty while he touched her leg as if it were a length of rich, imported cloth. Maybe she would have touched herself and thought of someone else while he was sliding in on top of her…just so she wouldn’t have to be alone…just so that she wouldn’t be the one in charge of making sure that nothing awful happened, of making sure that sadness didn’t flood these people’s lives.

One mile. Two miles. Three miles. Four. She walked without seeing a soul. Sometimes she saw dim flickers and heard voices, and knew she was passing by a hut set back into the bush. Sometimes a shadow in a larger clump beside the verge would break away and she’d recognize the blotchy outline of a moving thing. When she thought it was human she’d say goodnight. If she thought it was a ghost she’d cross herself and pray.

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