Saturday, April 20, 2024

the last book I ever read (Black Wings Has My Angel (New York Review Books Classics)) by Elliot Chaze, excerpt thirteen)

from Black Wings Has My Angel (New York Review Books Classics) by Elliot Chaze:

“Kenneth,” I said, “I cannot tell a lie. I shot them because I wanted to see their blood squirt.”

“Now, Kenneth,” he said, frowning, “don’t talk like that.”

We kept Kennething each other for ten minutes, maybe more, and my face was killing me and my right arm hung down as if there were no bone in it. I was polka-dotted with pain from the cigar burns and the places on my buttocks hurt especially. I Kennethed him and he Kennethed me and we got nowhere, because he wanted what the others wanted, for me to get down on my knees and sob out the whole thing, the color of the getaway car and who I’d been with. The woman and girl in the white frame house on North and Fourth had got a glimpse of the car as it skidded away from the corner, but in the excitement they hadn’t paid much attention to it. Or so Kenneth Hawkins, prosecuting attorney for Mulvaney County, Mississippi, told me. Virginia was probably back in New Orleans, bathing with Loralee and Eddie. Maybe they were floating chocolate-marshmallows in the tub. I grinned, but cut it short when it seemed my right cheekbone might fall off in my lap. I didn’t want that to happen, because I didn’t want to see my right cheekbone any sooner than I had to.



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