Our Daily Bread by Lauren B. Davis

can’t let anybody make him break that code, or he’s not a man. You get that?”
    â€œYeah, I guess.” Bobby chewed at his thumbnail.
    â€œDon’t fucking do that. You look like a fucktard.”
    â€œSorry.”
    â€œSo, what’s your code going to be, young Bobby?”
    â€œI don’t know, what’s yours?”
    â€œWell, I could tell you, but you have to come up with your own. You can’t adopt another man’s code.” How could he possibly explain his code? How he’d built it slap by slap, bruise by bruise? You don’t let yourself sleep in your own fucking vomit. You don’t shack up with a woman who tosses her used sanitary napkins in the stove. You keep your secrets to yourself and you keep your weaknesses a secret and your hurts a secret and your dreams you bury double deep. He’d had that list by the time he was ten. “You think about it,” Albert said, and he wanted another drink more than anything all of a sudden.
    The door opened and four men came in, wearing the city-issue overalls of road crew workers. They were laughing. Finn greeted them warmly, shook hands with each.
    â€œDrink up. I’m getting another beer,” said Albert. “And then I’ll tell you how to grow some killer weed, if you’re interested, that is. You interested?”
    â€œYeah,” said Bobby, and he smiled that goofy smile and picked at a pimple on his chin. The kid was full of bad habits.
    When he came back, Albert launched into a long sermon on the way to increase the THC content of marijuana plants using a growth changer called colchicine. “You soak the seeds in this solution, right? Maybe some of the seeds die, maybe most of them, but the ones who survive will be fucking superweed. It’s all about the number of females,” he said, “But then ain’t it always?” And he chuckled, and the kid chuckled with him, as though he knew exactly what Albert meant.

    It was long gone dark when Albert drove back into the compound and he passed a car as he did. A car he recognized. The good Dr. Hawthorne.
    â€œFuck,” said Albert to no one in particular.
    When he got to the cabin Toots and Joe were squatting in the shadows by the forsythia bush.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” he said.
    â€œJill,” said Toots.
    â€œWhat about her?”
    â€œShe got knocked up again.”
    â€œThat why Hawthorne was here?”
    â€œYeah. She’s bleeding some, though,” said Joe. “I saw it.”
    â€œWhere is she?”
    â€œAt her place. Jack’s with her.”
    â€œShe have to go to the hospital?”
    Toots shrugged. “I don’t think so. But she sure is crying.”
    Albert unlocked the cabin door and got a bottle of whiskey from his trunk. “Take this over to her, Toots, but don’t let the rest of ’em see you, yeah?”
    â€œOkay,” the little girl reached out for it and Albert noticed there was a burn on her arm.
    â€œWhere’d you get that?”
    She pulled her sleeve down and shrugged, saying nothing.
    â€œYeah, all right. Just make sure Hawthorne didn’t give her any painkillers before she drinks that, all right?” He took her upper arm firmly. “Make sure, Toots.”
    â€œHawthorne didn’t give her no painkillers,” she said. “He never does.”

Chapter Eight
    It was one of those brilliant first days of true spring when the world heaved itself out of the long silver somnolence of winter. The temperature soared, and the air carried the fragrance of honeysuckle, crab apple and cherry blossoms. The clouds in the blue sky fairly sparkled and the promise of green was a joyful aura around the trees. Dorothy had closed up the shop for an hour at lunch, and gone for a long walk by the river. Everyone, it seemed, had the same idea and what she had anticipated would be a solitary meander turned out to be a stop-and-chat with half the