The Last Exit to Normal Read Online Free Page B

and went on my way, on a mission to get more smokes. Miss Mae was like an old record, all scratchy and rough but still functional. She’d skin you, strap you, eat your liver, take you by the ears and beat some sense into your head. I’d been hit with a wooden spoon more times in the last week than I liked to think about, and even though the thought of getting slapped in the face burned hot, there was something about her that I sort of liked. She was like a rebel herself.
    Rough Butte, population four hundred and sixty-three not counting several dozen chickens roaming the streets, had a stagnant creek running through it, a bunch of small stores, and huge oak and maple trees growing everywhere. A town-square park with a wishing well and a bridge over the creek sat in the middle of everything.
    If I were one to admire quaint small-town life, with its clean streets, old-fashioned sidewalk lampposts and all the trimmings, Rough Butte might have been cool, but I’m not one to appreciate anything without a grind rail on it. I couldn’t find a decent one in the whole rotten place. But I did find the sheriff. Actually, he found me.
    There are no cars in Rough Butte. Everybody drives trucks. Most of them had rifles in the cab windows, and I figured impromptu animal-killing went on quite a bit around here. That included the sheriff. He drove a fullsize K-5 Blazer, and he drove up alongside me as I skated home from the drugstore, two packs of smokes stuffed in my pockets and waterfalls of sweat streaking down my body.
    He wore a real cowboy hat and had a mustache, like every other cop in the history of the world. Tall and big-shouldered, and probably about fifty years old by the lines on his face, he wore a tan uniform. He gave me the eye as I skated, then tipped his hat to me, idling his truck under the trees. “Howdy,” he said.
    I thought I’d been transported to a John Wayne movie. I stopped skating and made sure my hands were out of my pockets. I knew the procedure because I’d been hassled a million times back home, and if Spokane cops have one thing they’re good at, it’s acting like they’re mini-gods instead of armed meter maids. I didn’t figure it was any different here. “Hey.”
    He smiled a definite not-cop smile. “You the new people staying with Bonnie Mae?”
    “Yes.”
    “From over Spokane way?”
    “Yeah.” I looked at him, wondering what was wrong. He was treating me like a human being, and I thought that went against cop training.
    He laughed. “Likely bored out of your head, huh?”
    I nodded, loosening up a bit. “And hot.”
    “Your name’s Ben, right? Dad is Paul?”
    I nodded.
    He adjusted his cowboy hat. “My name is John Wilkins. I’ve known your . . .” He looked out the windshield, trying to find a word for “your faggot dad’s faggot husband.”
    I looked at my feet, embarrassed for the first time in a long time about it. “Stepdad.”
    He nodded. “Yeah, your stepdad. I’ve known him ever since he was a kid. ’Course he left and all, but I knew him.”
    I looked at him, not buying it and angry at my shame. Edward hadn’t “left.” He’d been shipped off. “I take it they don’t like fags around here.”
    He blinked, then nodded. “You don’t mince words, do you?”
    “I know what most people think.”
    “Not what all people think.”
    I laughed. “And now you’re going to tell me when the Rough Butte Gay Day Parade is? I’d bet that’s popular.”
    He laughed back, an open, easy one. “Not saying that, Ben. Just saying it might not be as bad as you think.”
    “Tell that to Mr. Hinks.”
    “Norman Hinks is an opinionated man, sure enough. But he’s decent.” He put the Blazer in drive. “You say hello to Eddie for me, huh? And keep your chin up with Miss Mae.” He shook his head and smiled. “One woman in the whole state of Montana I wouldn’t want to cross, that one. Tough as nails.”
    All in all, everything was good. He hadn’t beaten me to a pulp