Through a Glass, Darkly by Charlotte Miller

Author:Charlotte Miller [Miller, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Through a Glass Darkly, Charlotte Miller, NewSouth Books, romance, The South, southern culture, Alabama, Great Depression, Depression-era South
ISBN: 9781603062657
Publisher: NewSouth Inc.
Published: 2001-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The pool hall on a side street a block off Main was smoky and dimly lit that morning, the light filtering through the grimy windows spotty and almost gray in color. Buddy Eason leaned against a pool table, a bottle in his hand from which he drank openly, the pretense of Prohibition forgotten in the open area of the pool hall, and not just in the dark rooms beyond where the law seldom reached. Buddy was hustling money and stirring up trouble, both of which he often did, and openly enjoyed, in the pool room.

Carl watched from a stool in one corner of the room just beyond the tables, watched as Buddy put down the bottle and took his shot—within minutes he would win the game from the other player, and, as Carl stared at the other man, he knew the money the man would be losing was money he could little afford. The man had lost his job in the fire that had taken much of downtown the night before, but still he had been unable to refuse Buddy’s challenge. He was afraid of Buddy, as were many other men who frequented the pool hall. That was a feeling that Carl could well understand.

The night before haunted him now, after having robbed him of sleep, invading his dreams in the early morning hours when sleep finally came—the break-in, spilling the gasoline out, realizing the old man was dead, the fire—Carl had lived it again and again in his dreams, and he shuddered as he remembered the sound of the fire, the smell of the gasoline, the look on Buddy’s face of determination and something very near to pleasure. How did we do it? Carl wondered, staring at Buddy. They had run from the store the night before, leaving the dead man behind, leaving the fire set to consume the store and the body itself, the fire that had finally taken half of downtown. In the cold light of day it seemed a nightmare now, a hell of dream and fear, too horrible to have ever been real—but it had been real. The burned-out shells of the stores downtown said it was real; the smell of smoke that still clung to the town; the raw, blackened timbers and collapsed walls and supports, and the charred corpse found in the blackened pit of the grocery said it was real; as did the man who now sat in the jail accused of something that Buddy, Carl, and Richard had done. Carl hated himself, but he had not been able to tell Buddy no, no more than he had ever been able to tell Buddy no about anything even once in their lives. He was horrified of Buddy, and horrified of what they had done, and horrified that he had not somehow been able to stop it, and horrified that he could not now tell the truth.

And horrified of what Buddy planned to do now before Janson Sanders could come to trial for something he had not done.

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