Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] (11 page)
Read Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] Online
Authors: With Hope
“You don’t talk like a bum.”
“How’s a bum supposed to talk?”
“I don’t know, but not like you do.”
“Where are you going from here, Mr. Gifford?” Henry Ann asked.
“I was hoping to stay around Red Rock for a while.”
“Good. He can help hoe weeds outta that cotton patch.” Isabel spoke as if the decision were hers.
Grant’s eyes met Henry Ann’s. “I can do that, ma’am. For meals and a place to sleep.”
“We’ve got a week’s work left in that field.”
“Not if three of you work.”
“Shut up, Isabel.” Johnny’s patience had finally snapped. “We’d be through by now if you’d done your share.”
“You’ll have to sleep in the barn or the shed.” Henry Ann ignored both her brother and her sister.
“There’s snakes out there,” Isabel said.
“I’ll throw my bedroll in the wagon bed.”
The man had the bluest eyes Henry Ann had ever seen and the saddest. She also realized that her daddy would not allow anyone off the road to stay any longer than to work off a meal or two. There was something different about this man. His clothes were ragged, but reasonably clean and of good quality. She could not fault his manners, and he appeared to be a good worker.
Was he a criminal? Was he hiding from the law?
Henry Ann looked at Johnny, hoping to gauge his reaction. He was looking steadily back at her—waiting.
“Well, for goodness sake!” Isabel broke the silence. “There ain’t nothin’ to ponder about.” She turned her eyes on Grant. “You’re hired. I own a third a this place and—”
“Shut up!”
Henry Ann jumped. It was the first time she’d heard Johnny yell. He was on his feet, grabbed Isabel’s arm, and yanked her out of the seat. Before she could gather her wits to protest, he had propelled her out the door and onto the back porch. She began to screech.
“Stop it! You . . . stupid . . . blanket-ass! Ain’t ya goin’ to stick up for what’s ours? Ya goin’ to just bow and scrape and lick her boots till—” The rest of her words were muffled when Johnny put his hand over her mouth.
Embarrassment caused the blood to rush to Henry Ann’s face.
“My . . . half sister’s a handful,” she said lamely.
“I can see that. The boy’s got a good head. I can see that, too.” That shadow of sadness was back in his eyes.
“I’m the sole owner here.”
“The boy told me that—in the barn, when I asked about staying on a while. He said your father died recently.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. Then, “I can afford to pay you a small wage.”
“I’ll work for meals. I’ve not stayed in any one place more than a week. You may wake up one morning and find me gone.”
“A man who works deserves wages,” she said. “I’ll pay by the week.”
* * *
Pale yellowish clouds were building in the west as Henry Ann watched Johnny and Grant, hoes on their shoulders, each with a jar of well water wrapped in a wet burlap bag tucked under his arm, walk away from the farm buildings. A weird half-light shadowed the farm yard. A dust storm was brewing somewhere along the dry, sandy riverbeds.
At the crack of dawn she had fired up the cookstove and made biscuits and pan gravy. The chores were done and the morning milk on the porch when Johnny and the new hired hand came to breakfast.
“I’ll stay here at the house this morning, Johnny, and work in the garden. I’ve got green beans to pick and new potatoes to dig,” she’d said.
Now, with the water in the copper boiler to sterilize the canning jars heating on the stove, she knocked on the door of her old room to wake Isabel.
“Isabel, get up. Hot biscuits are in the warming oven. I’m going to the garden. Eat and come on out.”
Silence. Isabel usually grumbled and flopped over in bed when she was awakened.
“Isabel.” Henry Ann listened, but didn’t hear the squeaking of the bedsprings. She lifted her hand to rap again, then dropped it to the doorknob as a sudden premonition caused her to open the door.
The room was empty.
Henry Ann crossed the threshold to open the double doors of the wardrobe. She knew it would be bare, and it was. She looked beneath the bed where Isabel had put her suitcase. It wasn’t there. She stood in the silent room where she’d slept all her life until the past week when she had moved her things into the room that had been her father’s. Her eyes took in every detail. Isabel had taken everything she had brought with her and a couple of things she had not. The ivory-backed hand mirror Henry Ann had left was gone, as was a strand of long glass beads she’d left hanging on the post beside the beveled-glass dresser mirror.
Henry Ann went back into the kitchen. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sad that Isabel was gone. She had longed for the peace she’d had before her half sister came to stay, but it troubled her that the young girl had probably gone to the Perrys.
After putting another stick of firewood in the stove and checking the firebox to be sure it was safe to leave the house, Henry Ann put on her old straw hat and went to the garden.
* * *
Carrying her suitcase, Isabel walked down the dusty road. She had tiptoed out of the house early while she was reasonably sure Henry Ann was still sleeping.
Johnny can hear a chicken fart and has eyes like a hawk
, she thought with a giggle. But if he heard her leave, he’d not care. He’d told her so last night—told her she was no-good, just like her mama.
Johnny can hear a chicken fart and has eyes like a hawk
, she thought with a giggle. But if he heard her leave, he’d not care. He’d told her so last night—told her she was no-good, just like her mama.
The poor dumb-cluck red-ass! He’d fallen right into step with Miss Prissy-ass and wouldn’t go see a lawyer. Their name was Henry too, wasn’t it? Well! He could go sit on a hot skillet as far as she cared. Pete said he’d help her, said the Perrys would be glad to take her in until she could get what was lawfully hers, even if she wasn’t old Ed’s kid.
She’d had all she cared to take from Miss Prissy-ass Henry and Turn-tail Johnny. She set the suitcase down and sat on it to rest. She was too pretty to ruin her looks working in a cotton patch. Pete had said so. She’d let him feel between her legs the night she slipped out to meet him. He’d stopped when she told him to, but he’d not wanted to and was mad as a hornet. She giggled. It felt really good to have something a good-looking man like Pete wanted. Now she understood a little bit of how important her mama must have felt when a man was panting for her.
An hour after she left the farm, and after stopping several times to rest, Isabel came to the crossroads that Pete had told her about. One was a wagon trail, the other a road. No one lived at the end of the wagon trail, he’d said, but Perrys. There were so many Perrys living there that they could have a town of their own called Perrytown.
Walking down the wagon track, she visualized how it would be when she and Pete were married. They’d win the dance marathon and go to the city to live. Pete was too smart and too good-looking to spend the rest of his life living down on Mud Creek. In her prime, her mama would have latched on to him in a hurry, even if he was kin. Maybe he was too close a kin for her mama, but not for her. Second and third cousins wasn’t too close. Pete had said so.
Brush and blackjack oak grew close alongside the wagon track. As she hurried along she stepped over horse droppings from time to time. A long green snake slithered into the track ahead. She barely repressed a scream. She froze until it crossed and disappeared into the brush on the other side. She waited to see if it would reappear. When it didn’t, she ran a good hundred feet, then stopped to catch her breath.
Finally, she came to a clearing and saw a house ahead. Smoke was coming from the chimney. The unpainted house was set high off the ground on blocks. Beneath the slanting roof that covered the front porch were two doors, both of which were open. A sloppy woodpile was in the front of the house and a tilting outhouse at the side. A flock of red chickens, with a few white ones mixed in, roamed the dirt yard, scratching, looking for a meal.
Suddenly a big black dog shot out from under the house, barked furiously, and raced toward her. Isabel screeched and hugged her suitcase to her for protection. She continued to screech as the dog bounded toward her. Suddenly a shrill whistle from the house caused the dog to skid to a stop.
“Hush up that caterwaulin’!” The harsh voice came from behind her. “Yo’re runnin’ off the game.”
She whirled around to see a grossly fat man with a thick black beard come out of the woods. His overalls were fastened over only one shoulder, and his shirt, evidently the top of his underwear, was dirty and sweat-stained. He cradled a rifle in his arms. The dog, wagging his tail, went to the man who stooped and scratched its head.
“What’er ya doin’ here?” His voice was mean. He was as scary as the shaggy dog. Isabel’s knees began to shake.
“I . . . I . . . came to see Pete.”
“Pete? Law! His women is gettin’ younger all the time. Betch ya ain’t stopped shittin’ yellow yet. Pete got ya knocked up?”
“No! I’m . . . Isabel Henry. Ah . . . Dorene’s girl.”
“Bet it ain’t ’cause he ain’t tried. Hee, hee, hee!” When he laughed his stomach bounced up and down. “Yo’re ’bout as juicy as a overripe peach.”
Isabel took that to mean he thought her pretty. She preened and let the suitcase slide down her thighs to rest on the ground at her feet. With one hand she flipped her hair behind her ears. She wished she’d had time to use the curling iron. The man’s eyes, made small by his fat face, were roaming hotly over her, making her leery of him.
“This is where he lives, ain’t it?”
“Pete? Hell, no. He lives down yonder on the river bottom with his daddy and Jude. ’Course, way that boy roams ain’t no tellin’ where he’s at. Ya say yo’re Dorene’s gal?”
“Yes. Mama’s dead.”
“That Dorene was one hot little twat. Time she got her bleedin’, she had ever man on Mud Creek pantin’ fer her—kin and all. Then she up and wed up with Ed Henry. Ever’body knew she’d not stay with him. Just wanted them pretty dresses he bought her. Last I heard she was in the city livin’ high on the hog.”
Isabel opened her mouth to ask if he thought going from man to man, living in rooms at a run-down flea-bitten rooming house was living “high on the hog,” but thought better of it. Let them think her mama was something special. And she was. She’d shaken off the stink of Mud Creek and the dirt farm.
“Well, come on to the house. Ma’s standin’ there on the porch a wonderin’ ’bout ya. Ain’t no use me tryin’ to get a mess a squirrels now. Yore screechin’ plumb scared the hell outta ’em, and they’re long gone.”
The fat man led the way to the house, where a woman stood in the doorway. Her thin gray hair was fastened in a tight knot atop her head, and the wrinkled skin on her face was like dried leather. She wore a shapeless cotton dress and had a snuff stick in the corner of her mouth.
“Who ya got there, Fat?”
“Ma, this here’s Dorene’s kid.”
“What’s she here fer?”
“She ain’t comin’ here. She’s goin’ to Hardy’s.”
“What fer?”
“See Pete, I reckon.”
“Harrumph! What’s he been up to now? If he causes a ruckus and the law comes in, Hardy’ll whop his ’hind.”
“This one’s kin, Ma.”
“Kin, or not, wouldn’t make no never mind to Pete.”
So far the woman hadn’t even looked at Isabel; now she did. Her eyes were an amazingly bright blue in her brown wrinkled face.
“Hello,” Isabel said hesitantly.
“Ya watch yoreself down at Hardy’s, or you’ll find yoreself with a woods colt, if ya ain’t a’ready. Yore mama’d lay down and spread her legs at the drop of a hat. It’s in yore blood.”
“Ah . . . who’s Hardy?”
“Hardy Perry is Pete’s pa,” the man called Fat answered. “Hardy’s ’bout the meanest son of a bitch on Mud Creek if ya cross him. But I reckon if Pete told ya to come, ya’ll be welcome. Hardy thinks the sun rises and sets in that boy.”
“Harrumph! That ain’t all that ‘rises and sets’ in that boy. He’s as horny as a two-peckered billy goat.”
“Smart though, Pete is.”
“Pete brung Dorene’s boy here.” The old lady spit snuff juice out into the yard, then wiped her toothless mouth on the end of her apron. “Didn’t cotton to him much. Ain’t got no use fer Indians. It’s what he was. Plain as the nose on yer face. Screwin’ a Indian brung Dorene down a peg or two to my way a thinkin’.”
“My daddy wasn’t no Indian,” Isabel retorted hastily.
“I can tell that. I ain’t blind.”
“Come on in.” Fat grabbed a post and pulled himself up onto the porch. “What’d ya say yore name was?”
“Isabel. What’s yours?”
Surely he had a name other than . . . Fat.
Surely he had a name other than . . . Fat.
“Fat’s what I is. Fat’s what I’m called,” he said belligerently.
“Ain’t no call to get yore tail in a crack, Fat,” his mother scolded.
“I ain’t got my tail in no crack,” he retorted. “Come on in, Issy. We’ll eat a bait, and I’ll take ya on down to Hardy’s.” He leaned his gun against the side of the house and put both hands through the sides of his overalls to scratch his belly. “I can’t wait to see his face when he sees ya. Why, he’s goin’ to be plumb tickled havin’ a young, tender piece like ya are a-switchin’ her tail ’round his place.”
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