Free Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 by High Adventure (v1.1) Page B

out.”
                 “The village threw her out.”
                 “Okay,”
Kirby said. “I buy that.”
                 “She
took us kids along,” Luz said, “mostly because she was pissed off. I was nine,
Rosita was one.”
                 “Rosita?”
                 “My
sister. You met her before.”
                 “Okay.”
                 “So
we went to Houston, and Cary’d forgot— Did I tell you? His name was Cary
Smith.”
                 “Really?”
                 “He
was John Smith,” Luz said, “my Mama’d
never found him. But she got him. We went up through Mexico, we tracked into
the States, got to Houston, and old Cary’d forgot to mention Mrs. Smith.”
                 “Whoops,”
said Kirby. “So then what?”
                 “Mama
signed on as the maid. Lois didn’t give a shit.”
                 “That
was Mrs. Smith?”
                 “She
was okay,” Luz said. “Had three kids of her own, older than us. We all grew up
together, big fucked^up family. Tommy come to visit a couple of times—”
                 “Wait
a minute. Tommy Watson?”
                 “Yeah,
he’s my cousin.”
                 “He
came up from South Abilene to visit?”
                 “Naw,”
Luz said, “South Abilene didn’t want to know about us. Tommy was in Madison, Wisconsin.”
                “Wait a minute,” Kirby said. Surging
to his feet, he reeled away into the darkness. He propped himself against a
tree for a while, listening to the splash, then found another jar of home-brew
and came back and fell on the ground again beside Luz. “Madison, Wisconsin,” he
said.
                 “You
from there? Cold, man.”
                 “Tommy was there.”
                 “Sure,”
Luz said. “His old man was with the college, the scientists took him up. He
knew all that carving stuff, you know, the old arts and crafts baloney from the
old days, he taught it and, uh . . . What do you call it when you say this
thing’s okay, this thing’s a piece of shit?”
                 “Validate?”
                 “That’s
cars.”
                 “Authenticate,”
Kirby decided. “Say if it’s real or fake.”
                 “That’s
it. Tommy’s old man did that. Tommy could do it, too, but he’s like me. We’ve seen the world, man, you can have it.”
                “How’d you both wind up back here?”
                 “Tommy’s
old man died, is how with him,” Luz said. “Tommy brought the body back, he was
nineteen, he felt relaxed here, he never did like that snow shit, he was home
again.”
                 “Same
with you?”
                 “Naw.
I’m sixteen, Rosita’s eight, Mama gets mad at Cary, we go off to L.A., get into
some very weird scenes. Mama’s
dealing, we’re into all this heaviness, Chinamen, Colombians, I took it three
years, I said, I got to get out of
this. I got in the car, head south, turns out Rosita’s hiding in the trunk, she
can’t stand that shit either. So we go down to San Diego, sell the car, come on
down south.”
                 “Where’s
your Mama now?”
                 “Alderson,
West Virginia.”
                 “That’s
a funny place to be.”
                 “Not
that funny. It’s the Federal pen for women.”
                 “Oh,”
said Kirby. He thought a few seconds, and then he said, “Luz?”
                 “Present.
”
                 “If
these people here are so moral ...”
                 Some
time went by. Luz said, “Yeah?”
                 Kirby
woke up: “What?”
                “So what’s the question?” Luz