Read Revenant Rising for Free Online Page B

long drive to California will be the greatest of the inconveniences. But all things considered, it’s not like he has a choice—not if he’s ever going to even the score.
    Hoop takes the beer with him and strolls back to the shuffleboard where he plays one more game with Adrian, everyone’s honorary uncle and the best player in the U.P. Local lore has it that if you ever beat Ade, it’s only because he’s let you beat him; on your birthday for example, or at Christmas, or if it appeared you were having an especially bad day. Hoop now loses to Ade in three straight games, so it’s fair to say he’s not signaling that this might be a special occasion or a bad day.
    He loiters by the pool tables to speculate about what kind of special treatment Ade and the others might have shown if he had let on how many of his days were bad after Audrey’s death. Had they known the true circumstances of her death and how those circumstances weighed on him, chances are they would have let him win all the games and bought drinks to boot. And if any of them knew his present circumstances, they’d probably contribute to his grubstake and furnish him with home-baked cakes and pies for the trip. On that basis he can see himself having a free ride for life once the whole world finds out what really happened in November of 1984.
    When leave-taking can’t be put off any longer, he handles it the way he did with Ade, casual-like and careful not to say much beyond an all-purpose “See ya later” as he works his way along the bar and between the tables. The responses are similar, with some good-natured muttering about the weather and no one appearing to suspect he won’t be back tomorrow or any day after that.
    Outside, the sidewalk is cobbled with clods of refrozen slush, gutters are piled waist high with old snow, and the sky looks like more will fall before the day is over. Unlike that memorable winter of ’84–85, when there seldom was enough snow to pee your name in, this winter of ’86–87 has been a record-breaker so far, with no signs of letting up even though official spring arrived last week.
    His Jimmy is parked at the opposite end of Main Street by the IGA store. The truck’s front end is a little beat up and the rocker panels are dappled with rust, but both doors are the same color and it runs fairly good. The tires are bought new for the trip west; he walks all around the car, kicks each one in turn without knowing why.
    He goes into the market for road food—bologna and a box of saltines—and because tomorrow is a special occasion, he includes a Hostess pie. Inside the store, he stays away from the doors to the back room where newly arrived goods are warehoused; they won’t expect him there at his part-time stock boy job till the start of next week, and by then he’ll be long gone.
    On the outskirts of town, he gives a little nod as he passes the abattoir where he filled in during deer seasons and any other time they needed an extra hand. The pay was good, it bought him the new tires and the rebuilt engine in the twelve-year-old Jimmy, and it gave him a set of skills that can be used anywhere his mission takes him.
    LEAVING BIMMERMAN pop. 425 PLEASE COME AGAIN
    The sign looms up without tempting him to stop and change the numbering like he changed the population figure on the Paradise town sign when he found out Audrey was gone. His departure needn’t be recorded; his leaving has nowhere the same meaning as hers.
    He’s on the lookout for the Baldwin Road and then the spur off it that dead-ends near the old railroad line. He hasn’t made one of his routine visits since the first of the year and now, even with the snow compacted and some blown off, regular landmarks still appear misshapen and foreign, and a few are still completely covered. He almost sails right by the spur because it hasn’t been plowed and never will be; the road hasn’t seen mail delivery in over ten years, so the county’s not going to waste