Free Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde Page B

back. Just real simple like that. Whatever you think of, you can just say. That’s good, right?”
    “Well, I guess so, but…honey, I just don’t get why you would do that.”
    “I think he’s lonely, Mom. And I know you are. And you always said you don’t judge people by how they look.”
    “No. That’s right. You don’t.” She learned so much from these little talks with her son. He always swore he’d learned it from her and was only mirroring it back, but somehow the wisdom of her own advice surprised her as it came out of his mouth, and left her wondering if she was wise enough to heed it. It happened this way every time. “And it’s not that at all, honey, it’s not about looks in any way, it’s just that, well, you know as well as anybody that your daddy’ll be back one of these days.”
    He didn’t answer at first, just looked up at her with an expression that crystallized like ice around her diaphragm and made it hard for her to breathe. If pressed to put words to it, she’d be tempted to call it a look of pity, but surely he hadn’t meant it to be as harsh as all that. “Mom.” She so didn’t want to hear the next thing he’d say, but felt too tongue-tied to stave it off. “Mom. It’s been more’n a year.”
    “So?”
    “Mom. He’s not coming back.”
    And she’d been so careful to never let those words pollute her home, not even in the chasm of her own tired brain, not even in the silence of four o’clock in the sleepless morning. But now here they were, having to be fought with desperate means.
    So Arlene did something she’d never done, not in twelve years; she raised the back of her hand to her own son and cracked him across the mouth. She tried to stop the hand before it quite hit home, but it was too mindless by then, too bent on relief, or maybe the signal didn’t go through in time.
    He looked at her without recrimination, without adding one tiny stick of kindling to the shame that already threatened to burn her at the stake.
    She’d never hit Trevor, promised herself she never would.
    And then, to make matters worse, so unequipped was she to deal with her own shame that she spun on her heels and left him alone.
     
    T HE SMOKE MADE HER EYES BURN, like it did every working night of her life, like it had since the truck had come home alone and unusable, unsalable, but still fully financed.
    Conway Twitty blasted on the jukebox, which she didn’t like one bit, and which, relieved only by loud voices and the clinking of beer bottles, seemed to add to her already foul mood.
    The sound of bottles, the smell of beer—it was one tiny step from all she could take, every night. Now and then she’d get a whiff of it, taste that first cold slug in her mouth, so real, so clear, without ever meaning to imagine it, without any warning whatsoever. Twenty days it had been, and every night seemed harder than the night before.
    Half the time she’d call Bonnie at 3 A.M. , wake her out of a sound sleep, and Bonnie would say, “Girl, quit that damn job,” but that was easy for Bonnie to say, because where was Arlene supposed to find another one?
    Frustrating as all hell it was, the whole deal, and she hated herself like crazy for taking it out on her boy.
    Hitting might have been in her blood now, like a dog who’s killed his first chicken and so acquired the taste. Because every time that loud redneck with the beard and tattoos leaned out of his booth and patted her butt, the back of her hand wanted to forget itself one more time, only this time it would be wonderful.And he did it every time she passed his booth. Her eyes kept darting to the clock, hoping for a moment free to call Trevor before he fell asleep, but that moment wouldn’t seem to come.
    And if one more time she had to scream to be heard over the din, if one more time she had to ask for an order to be screamed again, only to hear it no better than the time before, well, she just didn’t know what she would do. She wanted