Free Days of Little Texas by R. A. Nelson Page B

races all over with goose bumps.
    This is all that’s left of her
.
    This must be what men see on the battlefield. What policemen see on the highways. Doctors see it in hospitals. It’s right here in front of me.
    It’s all that’s left of her
.
    “Why?”
I say.
    Now she is reaching for me. But it looks so hard for her.
    She lifts her arm higher and higher till it’s level with the ground, then holds it there, her little hand in a fist. Her mouth opens. It opens wider and wider, showing nothing butblack on the inside. She works her jaw slowly, slowly, no words coming out.
    Turns her fist over, opens it, lets a little piece of paper fall.
    She looks like …
oh no, please …
she is trying to smile. That’s exactly what she’s doing, the corners of her mouth lifting up slow and gradual, as if they were being tugged by a wire.
    So… beautiful
.
    Even like this.
    “Lightning!” Certain Certain calls. I snap my head toward the sound. When I turn back, she’s gone.

Something hurts. I’ve put a fist to my mouth, and I’m biting down on my knuckles. Harder and harder till I can near taste the blood. I can see the speaker box posts, the dead white movie screen, the hackberry woods. All solid and real.
    She couldn’t be gone that quick. The woods are too far away.
    Somebody lays a hand on my shoulder; I feel my legs nearly go.
    “Hey, boy,” Certain Certain says. “You all right?”
    I turn and look at him like I’ve never met him before in my life.
    “What?” I say finally.
    “You don’t look so good. She take that big a plug out of your hind end?”
    Did he see her?
    “Miss Wanda Joy, she’s just like that.” Certain Certain starts to tug me toward the motor home. “Come on. Let’s get some supper. That’s right, she wants to head into town. Reckon Miss Wanda Joy feels a little guilty for chewing on you so hard.”
    I look at the woods again, working to haul my words up from so far away, I don’t even recognize my own voice. “Did you—did you see her?”
    “See which?”
    “Her
. That girl, Lucy. She was standing right here.”
    “All I saw was you. My Lord. Tell me you didn’t really see somebody.
Tell me
.”
    I pull away and take a step toward the drop cord.
    “She left something! Help me look! It’s got to be right here somewhere….”
    I get down on my knees in the gravel beside the drop cord, raking all over with my fingers.
    “Here! Here it is. I found it!”
    I rush to the light with the little piece of paper. It’s a piece of an article torn out of a newspaper.

    I grab at Certain Certain’s shirtsleeve. “What does it
mean?
What do you think it means? Is she trying to tell me something?”
    “I’ll tell you what it means. Means you found some trash on the ground. Elsewise, Miss Wanda Joy’s liable to sign you up for a rubber room over in Tuscaloosa. Nothing but Ritz crackers and green baloney from now on.”
    “But the article!”
    “Hold your water. We’ll talk about it.”
    I shove the scrap of paper in my pocket. “Please believe me. If you don’t, nobody will.”
    “I believe
you
believe. You ain’t never been one to lie. Probably some little old town girl fooling with you, same as them during the service.”
    I stand there, look at the woods one more time. It’s too dark, too thick to see anything. Could he be right?
    “But I know it was her. I
know
it.”
    Whoever I was before seeing her, I’m a different person now.
    Lucy’s dead
.
    That sweet, beautiful girl is
dead
.
    I will wake up tomorrow, and it will still be true, and there will still be nothing I can do about it.
    What is she? Where is she now?
    A
ghost
. What does a ghost want with me?
    For some crazy reason I recall the way they handled witches up in Massachusetts. They piled big stones on their chests, one stone at a time, till finally the witch was slowly crushed to death. I’m feeling the very first stone.

I have a handheld computer Sugar Tom gave me for Christmas that holds the entire King