Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

is coming, and if I want to save anybody then I got to be gone before it gets here.

EIGHTEEN

The rain starts, a thousand tiny cat scratches on the roof. Lance sighs, leans back in his chair. Chester finishes tidying up and lies down on the bed, reading by candlelight. I ask if I can pick out a book to flip through and he says sure. I find a slim leather-bound thing, with no name and a drawing of a plant on it. The book is in a language I can’t read, but it’s full of pictures of strange flowers. Some are red and on fire. Some look like little blue eyeballs.

The nice thing about a book in a different language is that you can make it say whatever you want. The words are just pictures for your own words and all of a sudden the book is your book, it’s your story that you’re reading. That’s how it is with all books, really, when you get down to it. This book is about a princess and her garden. All these plants are hers. Some of the plants are good, and some are less good. Some might even be evil. All of them are her friends though.

Tommy snores soft on the table. I walk over and kiss his cheek, muss his hair a little. He opens his eyes for a second and smiles at me. Chester’s kept him woozy with herbs and tea, but not in a mean way like Bobba. I know his ankle hurts him so. I’m just glad he can sleep.

I’m sorry, Tommy. I whisper it right in his ear. If I never get to tell you again. I’m sorry about your momma. I’m sorry about your leg. You’re the only real friend I ever had.

I crawl up on the table next to him and hold his hand and burrow myself into him like I seen a cub and bear do once. It’s a safe feeling, warm and cozy. The roof, the fire, the books, Chester and Lance, Tommy. It’s almost a family right here. It’s almost what I’ve always wanted.

Too bad I can’t let it last.

I wait and wait. The steady rain, Tommy’s snoring. Chester sleeps with the book on his chest. Lance even seems like he’s dozing a little in his chair, gun in his lap. His eyes are shut, and I can see his chest rise up with breath. He’s as asleep as he’ll get.

It’s time. I ease myself off the table, just barely touch my bare feet to the floor.

“You wouldn’t be thinking of running out on us now, would you?” says Lance.

He’s still in the same sleep slump, just now he’s got a big eye cocked open and glaring right at me. It’s his house, I don’t feel like lying to him.

“How’d you know?”

“Figured,” he says. “Heck, it’s what I would do if I was you.”

“So you gonna let me go?”

“Not on your life,” he says, grinning.

I know it shouldn’t, but it makes me smile too. It feels good to be wanted around, for someone to try and protect me.

“You know the Preacher will find me here,” I say. “You know he’ll hurt you and Chester. I don’t want that on me. You been so good to me, haven’t made me do anything, haven’t asked anything of me. Didn’t even poison me. Don’t think I can thank you enough for all that.”

“Well shoot, you don’t have to get all sentimental about it,” he says. “Anything happens to us, it ain’t on you. This day’s been coming for a long time. That Preacher was gonna show up here sooner or later, with a posse and a hanging rope. You know it as good as I do. Neither you nor God’s got a thing to do with it. You just got him here a little faster is all.”

“You gonna give us to him?”

“Naw,” says Lance. “I don’t know why he’s hunting you, and I don’t care to know. You’re an innocent to me. Anything that happened to you ain’t your fault at all. Now hush. I don’t care what you got to say about it. It’s tough for the likes of you two out there, kids on the run. Tough being out there in the world.”

“Thanks, Lance.” It’s not enough, but it’s all I got. “I mean it.”

“This is my house. I built it,” he says. “I ain’t hurting no one, and I’m not going anywhere, no matter what that Preacher says.” Lance pats his rifle. “Let him come. I can’t wait.”

The rain falls steady outside. The trees bend and bow and sway. Lightning cuts up the clouds and somehow above us I can still see the moon, just barely, like it’s fighting to look down on us through the storm, like it’s worried about us and wants to see.

The moon wins and she burns her light right through the storm clouds in a white beam that looks solid enough to climb on. The trees shake themselves like wet dogs and a fury of cardinals, hundreds maybe, fly through the rain and land in the trees until they are full of little fire tongues. The beam of moonlight dances and twirls until it’s not moonlight anymore, it’s a girl, it’s me. All the birds peer down at me with crooked heads, they watch, but I don’t notice, I dance and dance until I’m older, until I’m not a girl anymore, I’m my momma. Momma’s in the long white dress she died in, but it isn’t ripped, it isn’t burned black and gone yet. She looks her eyes at me in the window.

“Momma,” I say.

She has a book in her hand, the same book that I took from Bobba’s tree, the one that mewls and caws like a baby. She clutches the book and walks toward me. But it’s jerky and limping and as she walks farther from the moonlight she stumbles. The book is wailing, Momma thrusts it out to me, and I