An Absence of Principal Read Online Free

awards. He was just weeks from being a first-time grandfather, and his online addiction would further put him and his family in financial turmoil. He loved Tawny, but her getting pregnant while in high school was no way for a principal’s daughter to behave. He remembered having that thought repeatedly.
    Doggett’s envy of Nail’s most favored status with the children had always been a sore spot. The fact that Nail was a minister, even if he was just a street minister and didn’t even have a formal church, occasionally annoyed Doggett, even more on those occasions when he found himself more and more prone to being judgmental since his downward tumble had started. For some reason, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why he found himself resenting Nail. He didn’t know if it was jealousy or envy, but he really didn’t give much thought to the reason why he disliked him as much as he did. He only knew he did. It was mostly a recent development. And that was odd, even to Doggett, because even he knew that Nail was a very difficult person to dislike.
    When Nail mentioned he’d seen Doggett in Odessa, it irritated the principal, and he didn’t appreciate being called out, even though it was, in Nail’s point of view, harmless. Nail had no real reason to believe Doggett would be in West Odessa for anything illegal. It was simply Doggett’s guilty conscience that built the feelings that now bordered on anger.
    Doggett, of course, didn’t really want Nail — especially Nail — to know that his little foray to Odessa’s seedier side was to pick up two kilos of cocaine. The principal had always heard and read in his professional journals and other publications that a person could turn a quick profit through the sale of drugs. He figured it would help him get out of debt and back on track before his family found out. And it would be something he could easily back out of when he had reached financial stability again.
    Two hours after the confrontation at the front door with Angela, Doggett told his wife again that he needed to run out, this time to Wal-Mart for a few personal items: shampoo, soap, toothpaste, hand lotion. He was running low on them all, he said, and he’d be right back.
    “Been using a lot of hand lotion since it’s so dry and hot this spring, and I know you’ve been too busy to run out to the store, so I’ll take care of it,” Doggett said, trying to cover himself.
    Angela gave her husband a quick hug but her doubt about his reason for leaving was obvious.
    “I love you, babe. I’ll be back inside forty-five minutes, I swear,” he told her.
    Doggett walked out the front door and before the lock even clicked Angela had walked into the shower and bathroom and noticed half full bottles of his favorite shampoo and hand lotion. He was far from running out of either.

Doggett sped away in his new silver four-door Honda, a car he was finding increasingly difficult to warm up to, especially once he realized that Nail had one just like it. When he had gone car shopping a month earlier, he’d hoped for something in a red two-door, but Angela thought it made him look too much like he was in the middle of a mid-life crisis. Instead, he was forced to drive a car that blended in with all the others on the road, something that annoyed him. There must be a thousand of these on the road tonight, he thought, when he drove it off the lot.
    Ten minutes after Doggett pulled out of his northwest Midland home, he slithered into the cheap hotel and used car lot district along Front Street in west central Midland. It was Midland’s equivalent of West Odessa; a sleazy part of town, and Doggett hated being there.
    He pulled behind the Royal Delite Hotel, a single-story, rodent-infested pimp palace. Doggett had told the man he’d be there in ten minutes. It was no surprise the man he was to meet up with was late.
    “Where is he?” Doggett worried to himself, becoming increasingly agitated the more the seconds ticked by.