excerpt
…going to be trouble after that visit to Winifred Stone. He bent
down, picked up a beer bottle and dropped it into a trash can. Be
just like that little bastard Poodie James to sneak in here at night
and leave a bottle for spite or maybe as a calling card to remind me
that he knows.
“Gaw—dog gone it, Bell, keep this lot picked up. Stuff lying all
around. Looks like—looks like the devil.” He almost said “looks
like hell,” but caught himself. He almost said “goddamit,” too. He
hated it when Old Bell took him to task for swearing. He couldn’t
fire the old man for being religious.
“All right, boss,” Bell said in his slow way, “yessir, boss.” Torgerson
thought he was straining to make it sound like “Yazzuh, boss.” He
forced the trace of a smile to dissolve and turned a scowl on the lot
man. Bell stood, skinny and black as an exclamation point in coveralls,
water from the hose puddling around his rubber boots.
“Get with it, Bell, for Chr—heaven’s sake.”
Bell watched Torgerson disappear into the building and stared
into space for a moment before he continued his scrubbing. He
heard a voice behind him. It was Janice, the office manager. She
flicked a cigarette stub onto the asphalt and ground it out.
“Jeez, Clarence, why do you let him talk to you like that?”
“Oh, he was just upset. He don’t mean nothing by it. That man
got a load to carry, a heavy load to carry.”
“Yeah. Well, he doesn’t have to dump it on you.”
“It don’t stick, Janice. What do is what he done for me and
Marie, when she lost the baby and almost died. He stuck by me,
paid all the doctor bills. I figure he can blow off a little steam in my
direction after that.”
In the garage, the chatter of an air wrench competed with the
radio blasting Ernest Tubbs’s “Have You Ever Been Lonely?” The
toe of Torgerson’s shoe nudged one of the feet protruding from
under the front of a sedan. Bryer, the chief mechanic, rolled out
face up on his creeper.
Libros Libertad 