Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,124

half, and so after pulling it out of the paper shopping bag he opened it. He set it in the middle of the table. He did this with a bit of a flourish, the unfolding and the placement. Then he reached into the bag again and pulled out the little round pieces, one by one. Each time he thrust his arm down into the bottom of the bag to retrieve a piece, the paper bag rattled.

At each rattle, Harm twitched and blinked. He hated the sound.

Alvie saw that, of course. It made him go slower, making the noise last even longer. Milking it. He liked the power he now had over Harm Strayer. He would reach into the bag, ostensibly to dig around for another round piece, but it was really for his own deep satisfaction: seeing Harm react with that twitch, that blink. Fear and confusion in his cloudy eyes. It was a small, exquisite torture that Alvie could inflict on his old pal. And it left no marks. No one would ever know. It was just Alvie and Harm in here, two old friends.

Harm had gotten all the breaks. Well, no—Vic had gotten lots more breaks than Harm, more breaks than anybody, but Vic was so far out of Alvie’s league that Alvie did not think of Vic in relation to his own life. Vic was not a standard against which Alvie could measure himself. The differential was too great.

But Harm—well, Harm, was still on Alvie’s level. So he could compare. They were two boys. Two boys from Norbitt, West Virginia. And Harm, everybody liked. Everybody looked up to. Why? For years, Alvie had tormented himself with the question. It was like biting down on a sore tooth, over and over again, just to feel the pain: Why did people like Harm so much? He was a fucking factory worker. Blue collar, all the way. Never did anything else, never dreamed of doing anything else.

Whereas he had actually read some books. Studied. Not in a formal way, because the church did not care about any of that when hiring a pastor. They did not ask about degrees—only about whether you were married and had a family. They wanted you stable. But he still read books. Books about motivating yourself to work harder, to size up your enemy and defeat him. How to succeed, in other words. How to be a winner.

And then there was Harm Strayer. His old pal Harm. A man who had skated by on his looks and his line of bullshit and on—what else? What else made people gravitate to Harm Strayer in a way they had never gravitated to him? Maybe pity. Harm had buried two wives, and people felt sorry for him. Raising his little girl on his own and all.

Well, Alvie had known sorrow, too, and nobody ever seemed to be extending any kindness his way. Nobody ever said, “Sorry your boy’s such a good-for-nothing loser, Alvie. Too bad.” Because that was another thing: Harm’s girl, Darlene, was smart and focused. She was going places. You could just tell. She worked hard, and she had not taken the kind of shortcuts that Lenny specialized in: stealing things, cheating people when he thought he could get away with it. Losing job after job because he was lazy and stupid. He would get hired, then call in sick for the first week. When he finally showed up again, they’d tell him to leave. And while you’re at it, don’t come back. Ever.

It was as if Harm was rubbing his nose in it, in what a bum Lenny was, just by having a daughter like Darlene. Go ahead, Harm probably said to himself over the years, secretly snickering. Go ahead and compare. Put them side by side: Lenny and Darlene. I dare you.

There was no comparison. None at all.

The kids had been friends for a while, in junior high and high school, his Lenny and Harm’s girl, Darlene. It was not a boy-girl thing—Alvie always had his suspicions about Darlene, her with that short hair and those dungarees, because every woman he knew cared deeply about her appearance and Darlene did not seem to give a rat’s ass about that—but it was a steady, solid friendship. Darlene helped his Lenny. For a time, when they were spending a lot of time together, Lenny’s grades ticked up a bit. His attitude improved. He even straightened up when he walked, losing that pathetic, please don’t hit me