Volt: Stories Read Online Free

paused, eyeing them all. “Yet you still got that rage inside you, don’t you? Don’t you? Well, that’s why you’re here. Who’ll start us at a hundred even?”
    Winslow watched faces barking bids. The man who won stepped around the chicken wire, wore horn-rimmed glasses, tugged long hair behind his pierced ears. In this young man’s lenses Winslow saw his own reflection: a lockjawed, feral-haired savage. He prepared his body. The punch was thrown. Winslow took a breath. He always took a breath.

10
    In Barney’s bathroom, Ham smeared charcoal beneath Winslow’s eyes, told him to growl through his wires, stamp a foot onstage. Winslow followed Ham into the bar, through men in stocking caps, beers in gloved fists, not even the blizzard outside thinning the crowd.
    The same storm had earlier in the day bayed over Winslow’s trailer, the sky whirling like a snow globe shaken. He’d sat in the trailer’s window, imagining the shuddering room was a train engine, a crossing and a truck on the tracks ahead. He saw his own face in the truck window, anticipating the crushing of metal and glass and bone.
    Winslow carried that same doom as he stepped onto the stage, his mind plagued by questions. Would it matter if it weren’t my fault? Could I let it go if I knew what’s to blame? How do I aim these ugly thoughts to be rid of them?
    He stood before the chicken wire, before faces breathing steam in the cold barroom. Ham drew a riding crop from inside his jacket and lashed Winslow across his naked back. Winslow arched his spine, glared hard at Ham as the audience howled.
    “Don’t turn them crazy eyes on me,” Ham scolded out the side of his mouth. “Ain’t me what’s going to pay.”
    Winslow lay in the examination room. Through grimed windows, he watched the flurried sky, a string of colored lights swinging from the clinic’s eaves. A knock came on the door. Six weeks he’d worn the wires and now they were gone.
    Winslow flexed his jaw, formed the words, “Come in.”
    Ham entered, hat in hand, and stood beside a little Christmas tree in the corner of the room. “Strange to talk?”
    Winslow nodded. “Jaw’s rusty.”
    “You feeling strong?”
    “I feel all right.”
    “Good. I’m glad.” Ham stared into the tree, hung his cap on a branch. “Got the Christmas birds sold,” he said, and stepped to the window. He tapped the sill, smiled down at Winslow. “You look good, Red. Look strong.”
    Winslow knew what was on Ham’s mind. “I want a steak,” he said. “Get me a steak. But go ahead and tell folks I’ll be on tonight.”
    “All right.” Ham patted Winslow’s leg. “Rico and me,” he said, and stared at the door. “We thought it best you don’t talk during the show. It’s just folks don’t see you as a real man.”
    Wind whistled off the eaves. “I won’t say nothing,” Winslow said, the colored lights madly twirling. “Just get me a steak. I’ll eat it with my hands if you want. Eat it right there on stage.”
    Her blouse read Delsea’s Cafe, and below that Lilian. Ham asked Winslow if he was ready. Winslow just stared at the woman, dismayed by the resemblance; the same build as Sadie, face with the same tapered chin, same sad brown eyes, and she wore a silver chain and cross just like Sadie.
    Her fist popped weakly off Winslow. Those in the bar laughed and hooted. Lilian looked at her fist. Slowly her body shook, as she started to sob.
    Even her tears fell like Sadie’s.
    “I’ll get your money back,” Winslow blurted. “Buy yourself something nice. Some jewelry or a sweater or something. Something nice. Something—” He pulled her to him, her cheek pressed tightly to his pounding heart.
    Lilian shrieked. She struggled to get loose and Winslow held her tighter. A wicked smack stung Winslow across his bare shoulders. Ham yanked Lilian free, waving the riding crop at Winslow as a tamer might ward off a lion.

11
    Winslow paced the dark trailer. He realized, with the