Billy Bob Walker Got Married (23 page)

"I hate you.
Hate
you. I don't know how much more plainly I can say that. You tried to rape me."

Shiloh's face was as white as Michael's cotton polo top. They stood squared off, facing each other across her father's office, and if words were knives, the silver carpet would have been splotched red. She had been brutal during the last fifteen minutes.

They had retreated here at her insistence when the speeches ended; the judge's fear that she was about to explode outside in front of the crowd made him give in with poor grace to her demands that every one of them hear what she had to say.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I've never touched you," Michael blustered. "Not that way. Maybe you misunderstood."

"Now, Shiloh, don't make any more of a scene," Sam said warningly, from where he stood in front of the closed door, a sentinel at guard. "Think of Lydia. No mother wants to hear things about her son."

"Me—make a scene? I just got dragged up on a podium in front of half of Mississippi and kissed by a man I don't like. Who made
that
scene?" she demanded.

"There's been a misunderstanding. I didn't have time to talk to Michael," the judge expostulated.

"You said it was taken care of. All worked out," Michael accused, his face blood-red with shock and embarrassment and anger.

"She won't have you, boy."

Sam's words cut across the confusion in the room.

Lydia fairly trembled with rage as she stepped up to take her son's arm.

"She's not worth this, Michael," she said vehemently. "You need a woman who will love you, and behave like a civilized, decent person. Someone who won't make up vicious lies, someone from an impeccable background. Not from—"

"That's enough, Lydia." Judge Sewell cut her short; he knew who had the money in this room, and impeccable backgrounds didn't matter much stacked up to dollars and cents.

"I'm not ashamed of where I came from," Sam said mildly. "But that's got nothing to do with this. The fact is that Shiloh's stubborn as a mule. She won't marry him."

"Michael, are you all right?" Lydia's anxious words fell on deaf ears. Her son's face had two red splotches on each cheek; the vein in his temple throbbed painfully; his eves burned into Shiloh's. "Nobody will ever believe any of these lies even if she tries to tell them."

Shaking his mother's hand off, he stepped across the carpet toward Shiloh, and he said clearly, "If I could do that night over, I'd be rougher. And you wouldn't get up until I was through with you. You'd remember it for the rest of your life."

The room reverberated with his words; the listeners stood frozen in a slow-dawning horror.

"Here, you've got no call to talk to her like that!" Sam sounded apoplectic, horrified, outraged, as he walked toward Michael.

But Michael stopped him cold, shoving him away. "And you, old man, and all your money that my father dances to like a trained bear, you can go to hell. I'll meet you there."

He nearly tore the door off its hinges, then vanished down the hall.

Sewell came out of his trance to rush to the door. "Michael, don't do something stupid," he called after his son.

Lydia Sewell was sobbing quietly, but there was pure fury in her voice. "You've turned the best night of my life into a tragedy, Shiloh. This is your fault. Look what you've done to Michael."

"Michael's thirty years old. He did it to himself," Sam said heavily.

At first black rage consumed him. Under its power, Billy Bob made it to his truck and down the road. Grandpa could catch a ride home with Clancy Green.

His head was full of hot, passionate profanities, waiting to tumble off the tip of his tongue. But something held them back, probably the tremendous iron grip he used to clamp down on his emotions. If he ever really let go of them, he was going to hurt, hurt so much he might not survive.

So he burned up the highway in a deadly silence.

Michael Sewell had just reached out and reeled Shiloh back in. He'd laid hands on her as casually as if he were the one married to her. Right there in front of the whole world, he had claimed Shiloh.

But that wasn't what hurt the most.

She had let him.

That made everything she'd told Billy a lie. A damned lie. What had really happened? She'd used him to get Michael to fall in line? To get something from Sam? She had kissed him and danced with him and lain with him on that couch—and it was all a lie. A game. Another one.

She'd gone right up on that stage and let Sewell kiss her.
Kiss
her. They had looked good together, matched in their cool whites, his blond head forcing hers back so that her brown mane of hair fell thickly, freely.

"My fiancée," Sewell had said.

Well, buddy, thought Billy viciously, there's one little problem. She's married. And I had my hands on her yesterday, and two weeks ago, and four years ago. But if I could get my hands on her now, it'd be different. I might kill her.

Pain began to trickle into his rage, lessening it. Then he slowed down so that instead of taking the road so fast it was a dark blur, he saw where he'd come: home. The farm.

It was all right. He needed a hole to crawl into, to lick his wounds. So he pulled off, turning not toward the house but toward the dark barn, where Chase was.

He found the bridle but didn't even look for the saddle. The big horse was sleepy and confused as Billy Bob slipped the bridle on his nose, but he made no fuss when Billy led him outside the barn doors and vaulted onto his bare back.

The night air was hot and humid; mosquitoes were out in force. But the horse snorted with the realization of his unexpected freedom, and eased into a trot, ignoring the heat.

Billy let him go, riding out into the dark night past the orchards. Far in the distance, way beyond a stretching field, somebody's porch light glowed dimly.

He ran his hand over his face, trying hard to fight away all sensations. Pain, betrayal, loss.

She'd set him up for it all. And it wasn't like it was the first time she'd done it. Once before she'd made him feel things, gotten to him, then walked away. He just hadn't expected her to go so far. She'd kissed him. Just yesterday, she'd teased him with that Coke can, in front of everybody.

She'd asked for time; she'd made him believe there might be more to this marriage than a desire to get even with her father and his brother. More than a thirty-five-hundred dollar jail fine.

It was all a lie.

The Sewells deserved her.

And Billy Walker had learned all over again that he was the biggest, dumbest fool in this county. Maybe in this state.

He didn't go home until nearly midnight, and he wouldn't have gone then except there was nothing else to do and Chase was beginning to tire. He rubbed the horse down carefully, just to occupy time, and stopped to stroke one of the dogs that had run up to him from nowhere.

He kept wondering where
she
was, seeing her on that platform in that white circle of light. But it wasn't that memory that hurt him the most.

No, what stung like hellfire was the one fact Billy finally forced himself to face: she had looked as if she belonged with Michael. Both cool, well-dressed, poised. The up-and-coming country club set.

He kept seeing her walk up those steps, remembering the swing of her hair as she twisted to look back. He'd seen her face clearly in the light—it had been shocked, pleading. For what?

Or had he misunderstood?

He wondered all of that as he climbed wearily up the steps to the white farmhouse that loomed like a ghost under the moonlight, the dog at his heels.

"Will."

He jumped. The voice startled him, coming from the shadows at the swing. Only one person called him that.

"Mama! What are you doin' up this late?"

"There's a girl that keeps calling here. She says her name is Shiloh. And your grandpa claims that's the name of that banker's daughter in town." Ellen was so agitated she could barely get the words out. "She says ever)' time she calls that it's important."

The swing rocked wildly as Ellen stood, her pale cotton robe blowing a little in the late-night breeze. "She's upset. Boy, you've not gone and got yourself in bad trouble, have you?"

Not unless you count the way I hurt right now, he thought.

"No, Mama. But I know what she wants. It's nothing." She'd called. Why? No matter. It was way too late, and it had nothing to do with the clock.

Ellen gazed up at him, eyes disbelieving. "It is to her. She's gonna call one last time at midnight. She asked me if it'd be okay. I told her I didn't know where you were but she—she sounded desperate."

"It'll work out," he returned wearily, dropping into the swing she'd vacated. "I can't tell you any more right now, Mama. Just go on to bed. I'll wait for the call." "This girl—is she who Grandpa claims?" "She's Pennington's daughter, if that's what you mean."

"He said ... she was with . . . with Michael Sewell tonight." Ellen's words were low with distress. "That's right. She was." "Oh, Will, what have you got yourself into?"

In the dark kitchen, he picked up the telephone on the first ring with one hard jerk.

"Yeah?"

"Billy?"

His heart stopped. She'd never called him before, and it was meaningless now.

"What d'you want, Shiloh?" he asked brusquely.

He heard her long-drawn breath. She was nervous. That was good.

"I need to talk to you."

"About what? Well, don't worry, honey, whatever it is, you can have it all. I don't want to see you ever again."

"Billy, don't be like this. We need to talk. I need to explain about tonight."

"You mean when I stood there and saw with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, that you're Michael's fiancée? No, I don't reckon I want to talk about that. You can feed your lines to him tonight. Cry on his shoulder about how afraid you are, about how good he makes you feel."

"Billy, please. I'm not engaged to him. I didn't know he was going to do that. I didn't want him to."

"You mean," he drawled in patent disbelief, "that he just dragged you up there and you didn't have a clue?"

"That's right," she cut in, her voice blurry, as though she'd been crying—or was about to. "Today the judge and Sam wanted me to agree to the engagement again. He said it would be better for his candidacy if things were settled between me and Michael. And you know what Sam wants. So, I settled things. I said no. But Michael barely got here before the speech started. He thought— Michael did—that I'd agreed to take him back. I couldn't say or do anything in front of that crowd. I just had to—to stand it."

"I don't believe you."

"Why would I call you now, trying to explain, if it wasn't the truth, Billy? The judge swore he'd tell the truth about the engagement tomorrow. It'll be on every street corner. And why would I . . . call you to the house and tell you the way I feel, and let you bully me all over town, if I'm not telling the truth?"

"We got married, and that wasn't the truth."

There was a tiny pause while she registered what he said. "Billy, I could be somewhere, the square maybe, at your grandfather's booth, if you'll only come—"

"You stood in light brighter than daylight and let him kiss you, but I'm supposed to meet you in the dark. Just like always. Well, I never liked it before, and I sure as hell don't like it now. Forget it, Shiloh. This time I'm not comin'."

When she spoke again, she was as angry as he was. "You know what? You're as big a jerk as Michael. I couldn't get it through his head that I didn't want him, and now I can't get it through yours that I dc>—" She broke off the sentence.

He had to know the end of it. "You do
what?"

"Nothing," she said hotly. "But it's my turn to make demands, Billy, like you made here the other night. If you don't meet me at the square in thirty minutes, if you won't believe me when I'm telling the truth, don't you ever come flirting around me with your fast hands again."
₁₂

She was actually
stupid enough to cry.

In fact, Shiloh couldn't seem to stop crying, and all the tears were for Billy. Her world was coming apart: Laura had quit talking, Sam was furious, T-Tommy was disapproving, the Sewells—well, they didn't matter.

She'd faced down Sam and Michael both.

She ought to be happy.

Instead, she was tearing herself up over Billy Bob. And he was as hard and uncaring as a rock.

The night was full of a steamy, swampy heat that curled under doors and hit her in the face when she stepped outside. Most of the town was asleep; Sam was still off somewhere with Sewell, probably holed up until dawn, making plans to rule the kingdom of Mississippi even as Shiloh pulled out in the quiet street in the car.

She didn't care if her father caught her in or out; she had to talk to Billy.

She had to make him trust her. She had to trust him.

In the pocket of the white shorts that she wore was her ring on his chain. Something little, but... "if I ever mean anything to you, then you can give it back."

It would be her pledge, her peace offering, to make him listen. Her bond of trust.

If only he'd come.

The center of Sweetwater lay quietly under the silver stars in the wee hours of this Saturday morning.

Shiloh parked behind the old depot, then walked one block up and two blocks over, clinging to the shadows, her heart pounding.

An unexpected, blessed breeze rustled leaves as it swept over the dark town. Except for that, there was silence.