Read The Long Home for Free Online Page B

earnest, intensifying, attaining the desired rhythm. The front door opened and closed and they saw that the girl Amber Rose had gone out.
    The women sat in a hot, aghast silence. Color crept into their faces, they did not look at each other but all stared at the dying man who seemed charged with the performance of something that might break the furious agony of silence, propel them on to whatever their next action might be. When he made no move the woman in the middle rose, peered at the wasted face. “I believe Brother Hovington’s gone to sleep.” The other two arose with a thick rustling of silk, turned to the door. “Poor soul. I expect he needs his rest.” The door pulled to when they crossed the porch and passed into the sun, parasols fluttering open, their foreshortened shadows darting attendance like dark fowl underfoot.
    The horses turned to watch them come, moving a little already in anticipation, the wagon creaking, the traces rattling musically. The girl watched them clambering into the wagon, their faced flushed and flat with revulsion. “Come around here,” one of them yelled peremptorily to the horses, snapping the lines. The wagon turned itself laboriously in the yard, dust billowing up from beneath the horses’ feet, rising in a palpable cloud that had them at their fans again, turning the wagon then onto the road in a sigh of prolonged noise.
    Amber Rose smoothed the dark wing of hair from her eyes. It seemed to her the world was full of things she had no control over, and she watched them go with no look at all on her face.
    Weiss parked the car in front of the Utotem Market and cut the switch off. “Say he works in here?” he asked Winer.
    “He did the last time I was in there. He was picking chickens and cutting em up.”
    “A man of experience then,” Weiss said dryly. “Just what we need. I don’t know whether I remember Hodges from the last time we caught. Was he the tall, redhaired one with the shifty eyes?”
    “He’s all right.”
    “Then get him. But if you can’t, call me so we can get someone else.”
    “All right.”
    Winer got out of the car and crossed the sidewalk to the front of the grocery. It was hot on the street but inside the Utotem a fan whirred somewhere above him and he could feel cold air blowing from somewhere. It was almost closing time and there were few customers in the store. He walked past the checkout counter and down the aisle to where the drinkbox was. He had the lid back and was peering inside making his selection when a voice hailed him.
    “Hey Winer.”
    He turned but couldn’t see anybody he knew. It had sounded like Motormouth but he was not about, only two women shopping, making their selections from shelves and putting them into shopping carts.
    “Hey Chicken Man,” the voice said. A chicken was ascending slowly past the chrome rim of the meatcase. Winer stood clutching a dripping Coke and staring at it. The chicken rose until its feet rested on the chrome rail. A human thumb and forefinger gripped each yellow foot. The chicken pranced across the length of the metal lip with delicate little mincing steps. It pranced back. It was halfplucked and its head lolled drunkenly on a broken neck. Its eyes seemed to be leering at Winer through their blue eyes.
    The two shoppers paused before the meatcase the better to consider this wonder. Perhaps warming to its audience the chicken began to dance, slowly at first, kicking out first one drumstick, then the other, a fey, loosejointed sort of shuffle to no audible music. Above the trays of hamburger meat and liver and the packages of its own dissected brothers it began a macabre country buck dance, its loose head whipping back and forth, its feet fairly flying on the chrome lip. A demented cackling sound issued from behind the meatcase. The two women stared at each other in awe or disgust when the chicken began a slow, lascivious bump and grind. They shook their heads and wheeled their buggies