Read Ozark Trilogy 3: And Then There'll Be Fireworks for Free Online Page A

But there on that nailbarrel sits the Sister and the Mother and the Greatgrandmother of Evil, the Holy One help us all, and we all of us know that , too! If she so chooses we’ll have storms and leaks; and if she don’t so choose we’ll have an easy journey of it. That’s no tale for tadlings, now—that’s same as saying the sun’s more use to solar collectors than snow is.”
    There were two Michael Callaway Brightwaters standing near, one of them a 20 th and the other a 37 th , something of a nuisance in such close quarters. They hadn’t much use for one another, or for Gabriel John, but they shook their heads like one man now and allowed as how he was absolutely right and the captain could leave off his tales any time.
    “We’re not fools,” said the one they called Black Michael—not that his hair was any blacker than Michael Callaway the 37 th ’s, that was called simply Michael Callaway in the ordinary fashion, but you couldn’t be having them both speak up every time one was wanted. And Michael Callaway nodded, saying:
    “We came for the money, same as you, Captain. And what trouble we’ve got on our plates is trouble we bought ourselves. Complaining about it, that’s not seemly; I agree to that. Howsomever, Captain, you’ll do us the favor of telling us no lies, thank you very much.”
    The captain stared at the three of them, considering, and at the eloquent back of Haven McDaniels Brightwater the 4 th , pretending to be fooling with a sail—him that had started all this—and he shrugged his shoulders.
    “All right,” he conceded. “I’ll not dispute youall on it. I don’t care for her myself ... they say she was a child once, but I’m hard put to it to believe it. But I’ll not listen to prattle over the matter, either, mind you. As Michael Callaway rightly says, this is our own doing, of our own free will, and talk’ll change nothing. Furthermore and to go on with, such talk heard at the wrong end of the boat might well provoke the lady. You’ll do me the favor of not chancing that. That’s my last word!”
    Truth was, he thought as he turned away from them with a set jaw intended to impress them with his firmness of purpose, the sight of her made his blood run colder than the seawater. No woman should stand six feet tall like she did; no woman should fit to a fishingboat like she’d been born on one, when she’d spent her whole life in Castle and in mountain cabin; no woman should have the dark fierce beauty that somehow flamed around her, putting him in mind of the black roses that grew near the edge of Marktwain’s desert in deep summer.
    Anybody’d described her to him, and him not knowing, he’d of thought she’d stir his loins. Especially out on this b’damned ocean with no other woman for many a mile and many a long lonely night. Yet when he looked at Troublesome of Brightwater, for all the sweet curve of her breasts and hips and the perfection of her face, he would of sworn he could feel his manhood shriveling in his trousers. He’d as soon of bedded a tall stake of Tinaseeh ironwood.
    That didn’t mean he’d tolerate a dauncy and fractious crew, whatever the feelings she raised in him or in them. He’d keep the men too busy to have time left over for mumblings and carry-ons. He wanted to get this fool trip over with—he needed the money the Grannys had come up with, and how they’d done it he couldn’t imagine, but it was none the less a fool trip for all that—and he wanted to find himself back in his own bed, cozy with his own wife, that was a soft round woman more his style. With a voice like the call of an Ozark housedove just as the sun was coming up, and no more like that female in the stern than if they’d been different species altogether.
    “You turn to,” he barked over his shoulder at the men, “and I’ll do my share, and we’ll get this out of the way and be home to brag on it before we have time to think.”
    Nobody said “ if we get home”;