| OCR Text |
Show Anting Alone Page 338 robes and possess the hoodoo powers of saints' blood in golden reliquaries at their fingertips, who can shoot a mere Methodist (Baptist? - whatever) like Spikey to hell quicker than Jack Spratt, if he don't toe the line and act straight. But something more than mere mackerel-snapper fear and awe must've been in operation here; because Spikey kept mumbling comfort down into her ears while he tried to get at least her mashed-potato butt up off the chair. The sarge even took a moment to disengage one hand from her armpit, reach into his pocket, pull out a beaten-up, jismy old picture-postcard, and proffer it to the woman as though she were a child in a bad dream needing something, anything to cling to for emotional security. "There, there, little sister," he kept mumbling, even as he puffed and squeezed the very veins out of his muscled neck, and snarled across her huge white expanse like a rabid dog wanting a bite out of Sam's blood-scented face. Sam transported Simone in more ways than one. He fetched her knees a good squeeze now and then, and kept a running commentary on Spikey's taped indiscretions, still squeaking full blast from the Sony, which Sam had hung by its wrist-strap from a big ticklish toe poking from Simone's open-toed sandal. But she was already laughing so hard at the sirens and the scared faces of her more human, as opposed to robotic, sisters, and at the general scurry and the little hands under her armpits, that she couldn't hear Sam's voice. Her breath was sweet as the scum on the lid of an apricot nectar can. Somehow they got her in the air and moving. Sam had to strain with |
