All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 46

46

“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,” Grace said, her voice deep and drawling.

She started slow, almost talking. She shot a man in Reno. And then she picked it up, and before long she was singing so loud and raucous that Patch almost smiled.

She moved from Folsom to Sue, walking the line before declaring they had five minutes to live.

“He wore black because he identified with the downtrodden. And there ain’t no one more trodden down than you, Patch.”

“Right.”

“But don’t worry, I keep a close watch on that heart of yours.”

Patch moved silently, feeling his way. He counted nineteen paces by fifteen. He could not reach the ceiling, and for a while thought that might be the way. And for a while he’d tried keeping some kind of count between visits; how long until the bucket was changed, the water, the food was

brought.

“Paint it for me,” she said.

“What?”

“Your life. Or a piece of it. Paint it with every color you know, so I can see it, so we can see it.”

He told her of the old house on Rosewood Avenue, of the day he started school and how the other kids had shied from him till his mother bought him the tricorne and the waistcoat, and made the eye patch with the skull

and crossbones.

“She sounds like a good mom.”

“She is,” he said, and believed that fully.

“We never hear any other sounds,” he said.

“I told you, there’s no world out there. The door opens to outer space. A billion stars so close you can reach out and touch them. I need water otherwise I won’t be able to do that encore.”

“Where does the man go?” Patch said, handing her his bottle.

“Hunting.”

“Hunting for what?”

She pressed her lips softly to his ear. “Bad people like you and me.”

He thought of his mother then, and again felt the betrayal of tears.

“We don’t cry anymore,” she said, and wiped his eye. “He doesn’t get our tears. No one does.”

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