Obligatory mumbo-jumbo: Same disclaimer, different chapter. Thanks as always for reading and reviewing, hope you enjoy it!

vanillafluffy

Chapter Seven

Coin Tricks and Cigarettes

Jinx making her needs known prompted Shadow to find a rest area. The cat disappeared into some nearby woods. She hadn't returned when Shadow got through using the facilities. Corso, after a dose of tonic, was sitting at a picnic table and staring into space, clearly in no hurry to resume their journey.

Looking at the solitary figure, Shadow asked himself again why he was helping the guy, who, more and more, was showing himself as a world-class asshole. Because it was the right thing to do? He didn't buy that, either. After a while, he strolled over and sat down across from Corso.

"I don't know," the other man said, as if answering a question he'd just been asked. "I've never thought of it as fucking people over--but if they're too stupid to appreciate something good, they don't deserve to have it."

"You're not from money, are you?" In Shadow's experience, old money usually took everything for granted. They figured they were rich because they deserved to be rich. He pulled the change from his pocket, selecting coins to manipulate.

"Hell, no! My dad worked in a factory and my mother cleaned houses. I had two brothers--they were two years apart, and I was the youngest by eight years--they hated me. I was unplanned, you can probably figure that out from the numbers, and there were a lot of medical bills involved. Money was always tight, and they said everything would be okay if it wasn't for Dean."

"Your parents said that?" Vanish a quarter.

"My brothers." Corso stared at the treeline. "They couldn't stand me, and believe me, the feeling was mutual. They didn't have as much after I came along, but I made out pretty good." He rummaged in his coat pocket for his cigarettes. It was a balmy May afternoon, but he was still huddled inside the too-big coat like it was his security blanket or something.

"These people my mom worked for had a son around my age. They'd give her clothes and stuff he couldn't use any more, good clothes. It was crazy--there'd be one button missing, or a little ink spot or something, and they'd just toss it. My folks and my brothers wore cheap clothes til it was in rags, but I was dressed like a preppie--except when they'd get pissed at me for something and steal my stuff or tear it up."

"Or beat up on you?" guessed Shadow, turning the Mississippi magnolia into a stand of Vermont maples.

"All the damn time," Corso said bitterly.

Shadow had been a shrimp of a kid, but he'd outgrown it. Corso hadn't. Granted, some of his thinness was due to his illness, but even allowing for that, he had a slender, wiry physique. It wasn't hard to picture him as a runty kid trying to fend off bullies.

"But you were a bookworm?" Maple trees were transformed into an old-fashioned eagle.

"I suppose. My mom left me with a neighbor while she worked, and the lady was a retired teacher. I could read before I started school. She encouraged me more than my family ever did."

Corso sparked a cigarette. "When I got older, I started spending all my spare time at the library. I wasn't a genius--I had to work like hell in school--but I earned myself a scholarship to a college with a good library science program."

He sighed, exhaling a column of smoke. "I left home and never looked back. I worked two and three jobs at a time to make ends meet, but I was going to make a decent life for myself. Then, at the beginning of my second year, I met a girl."

Shadow waited as Corso puffed. "Her name was Jess, and she was an English major. She wanted to be a writer. Bright girl. Middle class--not rich, but no idea what poor was, either. I'd never had a girlfriend before. We followed each other around for a couple years, and then--"

Corso stopped. Shadow braced himself. He could easily imagine Corso deserting a pregnant girlfriend, or something equally tawdry. Marrying for money, maybe, then screwing her over in a divorce settlement.

"We went to a yard sale, and Jess wanted to buy an old trunk she found. The seller wanted fifty bucks, dropped it to forty, and Jess still didn't have enough. Well, I was crazy about her, or maybe just crazy; I gave her my last $20--and I mean, that was my food money for a week. She never understood something like that; with her, if you ran out of money, you just phoned home for more."

He lit another cigarette from the stub of the first. "We made a deal. She'd keep the trunk, and I'd get whatever was inside."

"You didn't know what it was?" All three quarters lay in his open palm, which he slowly closed.

"I would've been happy with anything I could've hocked for my twenty bucks. The lock was so rusted, I had to chisel it off. We were joking about a trunk full of money, or the czar's crown jewels, and then when we got it open, Jess shrugged like it was no big deal and said, too bad, Dean, it's just some junky old books."

"And they weren't?" Three quarters were replaced by two shiny pennies.

"Most of them were, but there were a couple that more than made up for it. I cleared out the trunk and carried those two grocery bags back to my room sweating bullets the whole way. I was afraid the bags would rip, and they'd fall out and get damaged, or it would start raining and they'd be ruined. I knew they weren't junk--they were my ticket out."

A haze of smoke surrounded him. "I sold those books for enough money to finish my degree without waiting tables, and used what was left to get my own business off the ground. And eighteen years later, here I am: I'll be forty-one this year, I have a bank account in the high six-figure range, I've traveled all over the world...and none of that matters because I'm doomed. I won't say I'm not an asshole, Shadow, but I've busted my ass for what I have, and I don't think I deserve this shit."

Shadow finally understood a saying he'd heard somewhere: "No man is a villain in his own mind." He slid the coins back into his pocket without flourishes. "Let's go. This isn't getting us to Mississippi."