The Cave Painter & The Woodcutter by Don Hannah Page A

was a hottie.”
    Ha. He’d a liked ta hear that.
    â€œHad no use fer’m myself,” Heather says. “He useta take money from Mom’s purse.”
    â€œNow no one ever proved that.” But she’s probably right.
    â€œAnd you don’t remember me comin’ by?” Angie asks.
    I couldn’t for the life a me.
    â€œWe played Barbies in Heather’s room.”
    I still can’t place her back then.
    But’s funny, when ya meet someone and ya know so many a the same things, but ya don’t know each other. Like Mrs. Sales there, taught us both math. I liked her, Angie didn’t. And she liked Mr. Lawson, but not me. We both liked Ms. Ross, in the computer room, she was nice. We’re five years apart, which’s a lot when y’re a kid.
    Her folks was mean, the both a them, and hard drinkers. Angie’s just ten when she and her brother start ta stay with her Aunt Darla, who maybe was kind to them after her sisters moved out, I’m not sayin’ she wasn’t. She raised them up more or less, but she had no use for me or me for her either. She thinks she’s somethin’, that Darla. Weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be out here in this fuckin’ mess. That I know.
    Angie’n me, we’re a lot alike. Got pushed around, the both of us. I’d lucked inta that place above the flower store, lots a space and quiet in the back. Reanne had it first, but she took off, good riddance, so that’s where I am when she was lookin’ fer a new place. We’d just started foolin’ around couple a weeks before she moved in. “S’even got a bedroom for the baby,” she said, like a joke, and then we had one. And she’s no Reanne, all crazy and that.
    â€œAre ya mad?”
    â€œNo. Why’d I be mad?” I was surprised though. She’s younger’n me, not gonna be twenty till the spring. Tenth of April. “Ya gonna keep it?” ’Cause Reanne, see, she had the abortion. “Couldn’t cope.”
    â€œCourse I’m gonna keep it.”
    Well then.
    We got along. Watched TV, Wheel a Fortune, Jeopardy, played crib. I’m workin’ just down the street at the Oak Leaf back then, even come home on my break sometimes. She useta read them books from the second-hand store, Stephen King and that, tell me the stories. Me, I had no time fer readin’, never interested me all that much. But I like it when she stops and tells me all that’s goin’ on. “Listen ta this part,” she says sometimes, and then’ll read it ta me. “Scary,” she says, “listen ta this.”
    She’s a real reader, that Angie. Could a kept up and studied more, I told’r. Could a…
    The moonlight begins to fade.
    We had an agreement. Bought that Excel off Darla’s ex-husband so we could get outta the city, come back here and visit. Never wanted ta see this shithole place again, but I come home for her. Said I’d never leave her, I made a promise when Bobby’s born, and I meant it. And then little Brittie come along. Oh my Jesus, weren’t we just as happy as could be!
    A cool breeze that makes him shiver. He’s digging small holes with his hand and burying the contents of his pockets.
    Bobby’s like what’s good in Mike, I could see that in him as soon as his little sister come along, in all the ways he was a big brother to her. Not jealous, no sir, not for a minute. He stands by the playpen and givin’r toys and plays with’r and that. Like me and Mike, I think. And it’s gonna stay good. We won’t be rich, but we’ll be a family with a better life. I work at the restaurants, they like me there. “Y’re a hard worker, Ted,” they say. “Y’re always so sunny.”
    â€œYou betcha,” I says.
    Some even call me that, Sunny, I mean, like a nickname.
    â€œHow’s she hangin’, Sunny?”
    â€œFine, sir,