Tomato Red (21 page)

A thing I heard a convict say once came to mind and floored me. “A head is just a pumpkin with ears when it smashes.”

The ground caught me. I lay back and looked up, and I felt she thought of me then and would remember my name for good, forever. People congregated and gasped. People muttered about me. Some kids edged close to peek down at Tim’s mushy head and they paled quick.

The sirens coming to get me let loose with those constant howls, howling my way like official hounds from the next world over.

I worry that the beach is really no place for a girl alone who can’t swim a lick.

Hang the blame where blame belongs.

Now you’ve heard it.

Daniel Woodrell lives in the Missouri Ozarks near the Arkansas line. His five most recent novels were selected as
New York Times
Notable Books of the Year, and
Tomato Red
won the PEN West Award for the Novel. Two novels have been adapted as major motion pictures:
Woe to Live On
(released in 1999 by Ang Lee as
Ride with the Devil
, starring Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich) and
Winter’s Bone
(2010; won the grand jury prize for U.S. dramas and the Waldo Salt screenwriting award at Sundance). His short story “Uncle” (in Busted Flush Press’s
A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir
) was nominated for the Edgar Award. He is at work on his next novel.

Originally published in 1998 by Henry Holt.

 

This edition, Busted Flush Press, 2010

This edition copyright © Daniel Woodrell, 2010
Foreword copyright © Megan Abbott, 2010

 

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

 

eISBN : 978-1-935-41568-8

First Busted Flush Press paperback printing, July 2010

P.O. Box 540594

Houston, TX 77254-0594
www.bustedflushpress.com