Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (top ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“Yeah, I reckon leaving a strip club wearing a sweatshirt that says ‘COCKS’ across my boobs ain’t exactly a nun’s outfit, is it?” She gave me a shy little smile, and my heart broke for the dreams this little girl had that would never come true.

“Can we sit down and talk for a minute, sweetie? These old knees ain’t what they once were.” I walked off the road a little ways to a smooth spot of grass, keeping Willis in sight. He was sitting in the car with his blue lights flashing, doing his best to stay visible and maybe get traffic to slow down a little bit. All we needed was a log truck to run off the road at just the wrong spot and make a couple more ghosts. Then me and Chastity would have more time to talk than we wanted.

She sat down next to me and I looked over at her. She was a pretty child, bumping up against downright beautiful if I was being honest. Good skin, long, dark hair falling over her shoulders in waves, and a body that I would have killed for at her age. Hell, I’d maim for it now. But the sadness that hung over her was like a fog, permeating everything and casting a chill around us both.

“You’re mad about your wreck,” I said without any preamble.

“If Jody had stayed home like he was supposed to and been at his kid’s birthday party, it never would have happened.” She sat down next to me and pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and dropping her chin to her knees.

“Maybe, maybe not,” I replied, earning myself a sharp look.

“What are you talking about?” she snarled at me, and the air got markedly colder. “If it wasn’t for Jody, I wouldn’t have been driving so fast. I would have paid better attention. I would still be alive.”

“Honey, I ain’t in the business of might have beens, but let’s be honest. You were eighteen years old driving around in a convertible sports car. You ain’t gonna honestly sit there and tell me you obeyed every traffic law. Hell, I drive an ‘86 GMC pickup and I run like hell on these wide, straight roads.”

“Yeah, I drove fast. So what? I was crying so hard I couldn’t see straight. I was so ashamed of Jody seeing me like that, so scared he was going to tell my mama and she’d find out I didn’t have a job at Bowater like I told her, scared…”

“Scared that she’d be ashamed of you,” I finished.

“Yeah.”

“Sweetie, I know how that feels. It hurts. It hurts a lot, and for a long time. But it beats the hell out of being dead. And it ain’t no cause for hurting other people.”

“How would you know what it’s like? When did you ever dance in a strip joint?”

“If I was ever as pretty as you, I probably would have. But I ain’t, and I wasn’t. I did have to grow up being the girl who talked to dead people. ‘Crazy Gracie,’ they used to call me. And not on account of anything I chose to do, but because I have the talent to do what we’re doing now—bridge the gap between the living and the dead. But because of that I been called heathen, and evil, and devil worshipper, and crazy my whole life. I had to see the look in my mama’s eyes every day as she worried if I was ever going to get married and live right, as she liked to say.”

“Did you?” the girl asked, and some of the fire was gone from her tone.

“Get married? No. But I ain’t dead, so there’s still time. Live right? I’ve done the best I could. That’s all any of us can do, sweetie—the best we can.”

“Why ain’t those men doing the best they can, huh? Why ain’t they taking care of their families instead of—”

“Instead of paying some girl more money than she could make at about any other job in thirty miles? Instead of helping put somebody through junior college in exchange for a little company on a lonely night? Maybe they ought to have been at home. Maybe they had a fight. Maybe they’d been underfoot all day and their wife told them to get the hell out of the house so she could get something done. Maybe it ain’t none of our business what goes on in anybody else’s home.” Okay, that last bit might have been a little much, because her head jerked back like I’d slapped her.

In for a penny...I thought, and dove on. “Honey, it ain’t no more on you to decide if what they’re doing is right than it is on them to decide if how you made your living is right. You don’t have to approve of it. You don’t have to like it. Sweetie, my boyfriend over yonder likes to smoke a cigar every now and then, and I think they’re nasty as hell. But it ain’t for me to tell him not to smoke them. I can tell him I don’t like them, and not to try to love up on me after he smokes one of them nasty things until he takes a shower and brushes his teeth, but that’s it.”

“But, I’ve just been so damn mad,” she said, turning to look at me. This time she didn’t look mad. For the first time since I saw her, the line of her jaw wasn’t locked with tension, and her eyes had widened and glowing tears threatened to spill over. “I was so close. I had enough money saved up for a year’s tuition, and after that I could apply for the Life Scholarship and that would pay for tuition and books the whole rest of the time I was at school, as long as I went to a state school. I was going to go to USC-Spartanburg