Compound Fracture: Chapters 31-35

Not what it’s contractually obligated to become, according to all the romance novels I read as a kid, according to how things work.

His face is too rotten to make out the expression, the railroad spike distending his jaw into a permanent grimace.

The yellow light of the single streetlamp should turn him golden, but it only reminds me of jaundice.

Mrs. Miller counts out the cash, Mr. Miller interrogates the hunters about Chronic Wasting Disease symptoms, and the boys break down the game.

The radio murmured and the ceiling fan was set to low.

He’s skinny around the middle, which makes me think the bags under his eyes ain’t exhaustion but malnutrition.

I look to Cooper as if he’s going to be able to explain, as if he accounted for this, or maybe it’s a ploy, but I’m getting nothing from his face.

Wrenching your jaw open and shoving something between your teeth, one wrong move away from obliterating you.

A traitorous pang of guilt hits me in the stomach.

And sure, there’s a telltale pit in my stomach, the only thing I can rely on to let me know I’m upset.

Workers are exploited, rent is astronomical, the cost of healthcare is life-destroying not because they are the path a river carves through a canyon, but because some capitalist fuckers decided they wanted it this way.

Why do CEOs and governments get to make decisions that hurt people — cost-cutting safety measures in the mines, dumping chemicals in a water supply — but we’re the ones deemed a threat?

Paul tries to scream again and it comes out more like a gurgle.

No different than the squirrels Lady mauls sometimes.

Every half mile or so, on the main path through Twist Creek County, there’s a gravel outcropping on the side of the road, fenced in with guardrails and boasting a faded plaque with a paragraph or two of sanitized historical context.

I became obsessed with preserving them in middle school anyway and put together a plan to make Mom and Dad drive me to every single one, but the first I went to was so underwhelming that the plan collapsed immediately.

We’re close to the outskirts of Pearson on the way to McLachlan, but the signal is still spotty.

The moon is three-quarters there, behind a wispy cloud.

Saint never wanted to dismember Joseph Davenport, but hell if it ain’t what he needed to do.

But I can’t get out more than a few groggy syllables, so I take the phone from my ear and send a photo of my view.

It reminds me a lot of Mamaw and Papaw’s place: exposed brick, wood walls burnished orange, sturdy old appliances that ain’t been replaced since the eighties.

I catch sight of a grey kitten hopping down from the cabinets and scampering into a dark hallway, collar jingling.

It’s all her same perfect monotone.

I’m weird and socially inept and a picky eater and had to be taught how to smile and made to stop chewing my hair and can’t spend more than a few minutes around people before I want to crawl out of my skin and can’t take a shower without losing my shit over it and I don’t understand people at all.

The water is cool, I don’t spend the whole time with my eyes closed to block out the light, I don’t have to brace myself against the freezing air when I get out.