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Show Go Love/113 "I'd go in a heartbeat," Renee said "Right now." O.W. swallowed coffee, and looked out the plate glass to the lot where empty trucks idled. "Mama needs to be careful," he said. Before we left, he led us out to the refrigerated trailer's padlocked double doors. He keyed the lock, stepped into the dark and out rushed a wave of frosty air. "Here," he said, lit up under a red trailer light A whole gutted turkey hung dripping in either hand, big birds, twenty-pounders. "Happy Thanksgiving." "My god," Renee said. "Can he do this?" "Where are we going?" Lara asks, plain as day. Renee's taking the back way in, the cut-through between Jackrabbit Stadium and Honeysuckle Drive, past the state policeman's house on the curve and the grown-over gully where I smoked my first joint. I'm wondering, what was O.W. saying? People don't just die of their own accord. What was the story getting told about Mama? Heart attack in the hottub? Lonoke folk sniff every crook and cranny We make a left on Willy Ray, and way off I see our destination-the crooked mailbox shadowed by pines, the retarded neighbor boy Mama loved-now in his forties-mowing our grass, an offspring from his pet rabbit still chained to a Silver Flyer. |