Fancy Pants (25 page)
That evening he found himself hanging around in the alley behind Purity
Drugs where she worked for her uncle after school. He leaned his
shoulders against the wall of the store and dug the heel of his boot
into the dirt and thought about how he should be meeting Skeet at the
driving range right now and practicing shots with his three-wood.
Except right now he didn't care about his three-wood. He didn't care
about
golf or hustling the boys at the country club or anything but
trying to redeem himself in the eyes of
Holly Grace Cohagan.
A ventilation grid was set into the outside wall of the store a few
feet above his head. Occasionally he heard a sound coming from the
storeroom on the other side—a box being dropped, Billy T calling out an
order, the distant ringing of the telephone. Gradually the sounds had
died down as closing time approached, until now he could hear Holly
Grace's voice so clearly he knew she must be standing right beneath the
grid.
"You go on, Billy T. I'll lock up."
"I'm in no hurry, honey bun."
In his imagination, Dallie could see Billy T with his white
pharmacist's coat and his florid face looking down his big putty nose
at the high school boys when they came in to buy rubbers. Billy T would
pull a pack of Trojans off the shelf behind him, lay them on the
counter, and then, like a cat playing with a mouse, cover them with his
hand and say, "If you buy those, Til tell your mama," Billy T had tried
that crap with Dallie the first time he'd ever come into the store.
Dallie had looked him straight in the eye and said he was buying them
so he could fuck his mama. That had shut up old Billy T.
Holly Grace's voice drifted out of the vent. "I'm going home, then,
Billy T. I have a lot of studying to do for tomorrow." Her voice
sounded strange, tight and overly polite.
"Not yet, honey," her uncle answered, his voice as slick as oil.
"You've been slipping out on me early all week. The front's all locked
up. You come on over here, now."
"No, Billy T, I don't—" She stopped speaking abruptly, as if something
had settled over her mouth.
Dallie straightened against the wall, his heart pounding in his chest.
He heard the
unmistakable sound of
a moan and he squeezed his eyes shut. Christ. . .
that's why she was holding out on all the senior boys. She was giving
it to her uncle. Her own uncle.
A white-hot rage settled over him. Without any idea what he planned to
do once he was inside, he flung himself at the back door and swung it
open. Empty cartons and packages of paper towels and toilet paper lined
the walls of the back hallway. He blinked his eyes, adjusting them to
the dim light. The storage room was on his left, the door partly ajar,
and he could hear Billy T's voice. "You're so pretty, Holly Grace. Yes
... Oh, yes ..."
Dallie's hands curled into fists at his sides. He walked toward the
doorway and looked inside. He felt sick.
Holly Grace was sprawled on an old ripped couch, her white Woolworth's
tights down around her ankles, one of Billy T's hands pushed up under
her skirt. Billy T knelt by the couch, huffing and puffing like a steam
engine while he tried to pull her tights the rest of the way off and
feel her up at the same time. His back was to the doorway so he
couldn't see Dallie watching them. Holly Grace lay with her head turned
toward the door, eyes squeezed shut, just like she didn't want to lose
a minute of what old Billy T was doing to her.
Dallie couldn't make himself look away and as he watched, the last of
any romantic notions he might have had about her died away. Billy T got
her tights off and started fumbling with the buttons on her blouse. He
finally jerked it open and pushed up her bra. Dallie saw the flash of
one of Holly Grace's breasts. The shape was distorted from the pressure
of the bra band, but he could still see that it was round and full,
just like he'd imagined, with a dusky nipple all puckered tight.
"Oh, Holly Grace," Billy T moaned, still kneeling on the floor in front
of her. He pushed her skirt up to her waist and fumbled with the front
of his trousers. "Tell me how much you want it. Tell me how good
I am."
Dallie thought he was going to be sick, but he couldn't move. He
couldn't turn away from the sight of those long graceful legs sprawled
so awkwardly on the couch. "Tell me," Billy T
was saying. "Tell me how much you need it, honey bun."
Holly Grace didn't open her eyes, didn't say a word. She just turned
her face into the old plaid pillow on the couch. Dallie felt a prickle
travel along his spine, a creeping of gooseflesh, as if somebody had
just walked over his grave.
"Tell me!" Billy T said, louder this time. And then, abruptly, he drew
back his fist and hit her in the stomach.
She gave a strangled, horrible cry and her body convulsed. Dallie felt
as if Jaycee's fist had just landed in his own stomach, and a bomb went
off in his head. He sprang forward, every nerve in his body ready to
explode. Billy T heard a sound and turned, but before he could move,
Dallie had shoved him to the concrete floor. Billy T looked up at him,
his fat face puckered with disbelief like some comic book villain.
Dallie drew back his foot and kicked him hard in the stomach.
"You p-punk," Billy T gasped, clutching his stomach and trying to get
out the words at the same time. "Sh-shit-eating punk—"
"No!" Holly Grace screamed, as Dallie started after him again. She
jumped up from the couch and raced to Dallie, grabbing his arm as he
stood there. "'No, don't do this!" Her face contorted with fear as she
tried to pull him toward the door. "You don't understand," she cried.
"You're only making it worse!"
Dallie spoke to her real quietly. "You pick up your clothes and go on
out into the hall now, Holly Grace. Me and Billy T are going to have
ourselves a little talk."
"No . . . please—"
"Go on, now."
She didn't move. Even though Dallie couldn't think of anything he
wanted to do more than gaze at her beautiful, stricken face, he made
himseif look at Billy T instead. Although Billy T outweighed him by a
hundred pounds, the pharmacist was all fat and Dallie didn't think he
would have much trouble beating him into a bloody pulp.
Billy T seemed to know it, too, because his little pig eyes were
distorted with fear as he fumbled with the zipper on his pants and
tried to struggle to his feet. "You get him out of here, Holly Grace,"
he panted. "Get him out of here, or I'll make you
pay for this."
Holly Grace gripped Dallie's arm, pulling so hard toward the door that
he had trouble keeping his balance. "Go away, Dallie," she pleaded, her
voice coming out in frightened gasps. "Please . . . please go away. ..."
She was barefoot, her blouse unbuttoned. As he extricated himself from
her grasp, he saw a yellow bruise on the inner curve of her breast, and
his mouth went dry with the old fear of childhood. He reached out and
pushed the blouse away from her breast, breathing a soft curse as he
saw the network of bruises that marred her skin, some of them old and
faded, others fresh. Her eyes were wide and tortured, begging him not
to say anything. But as he gazed into them, the supplication
disappeared and was replaced by defiance. She yanked the front of her
dress closed and glared at him as if he'd just peeked into her diary.
Dallie's voice wasn't more than a whisper. "Did he do that to you?"
Her nostrils flared. "I fell." She licked her lips and some of her
defiance faded as her eyes nervously darted toward her uncle.
"It's—it's all right, Dallie. Me and Billy T . . . It—it's all right."
Suddenly her face seemed to crumple and he could feel the weight of her
misery as if it were his own.
He took a step away from her toward Billy
T, who had risen to his feet, although he was still bent
slightly
forward, holding his pig stomach. "What did you say you'd do to her if
she told?" Dallie asked. "How'd you threaten her?"
"None of your goddamn business," Billy T sneered, trying to edge
sideways to the door.
Dallie blocked the path. "What'd he say he'd do to you, Holly Grace?"
"Nothing." Her voice sounded dead and flat. "He didn't say anything."
"You whisper one word about this and I'll call the sheriff on you,"
Billy T screeched at Dallie. "I'll say you broke into my store.
Everybody in this town knows you're a punk, and it'll be your word
against mine."
"Is that so?" Without warning, Dallie picked up a carton marked fragile
and threw it with all his strength against the wall behind Billy T's
head. The sound of breaking glass reverberated in
the storeroom. Holly Grace sucked in her breath and Billy T began to
curse.
"What did he say he'd do to you, Holly Grace?" Dallie asked again.
"I—I don't know. Nothing."
He slammed another carton into the wall. Billy T let out a scream of
fury, but he was too cowardly to take on Dallie's young strength. "You
stop that!" he shrieked. "You stop that right now!" Sweat had broken
out all over his face, and his voice had grown high-pitched with
impotent rage. "Stop that, you hear me!"
Dallie wanted to sink his fists into that soft fat, to punch Billy T
until there was nothing left, but something inside him held back.
Something inside him knew that the best way to help Holly Grace
was to
break the conspiracy of silence Billy T used to hold her prisoner.
He picked up another carton and balanced it lightly in his hands. "I've
got the rest of the night, Billy T, and you've got a whole store out
there for me to wreck." He threw the carton against the wall. It split
open and a dozen bottles shattered, filling the air with the pungent
smell of rubbing alcohol.
Holly Grace had been strung tight for too long, and she broke first.
"Stop, Dallie! No more! I'll tell you, but then you've got to promise
to go away. Promise me!"
"I promise," he lied.
"It's—it's my mama." The expression on her face begged him for
understanding. "He's going to send
my mama away if I say anything!
He'll do it, too. You don't know him."
Dallie had seen Winona Cohagan in town a few times, and she had
reminded him of Blanche DuBois, a character in one of the plays Miss
Chandler had given him to read over the summer. Vague and pretty in a
faded way, Winona fluttered when she talked, dropped packages, forgot
people's names, and in general acted like an incompetent fool. He knew
she was the sister of Billy T's invalid wife, and he had heard she took
care of Mrs. Denton while Billy T was working.
Holly Grace went on, letting loose a flood of words. Like water from a
dam that had finally broken, she could no longer hold back, "Billy T
says Mama's not right in the head, but
that's a lie. She's just a little flighty. But he says if I don't do
what he wants, he'll send her away, put her in a state mental hospital.
Once people get in those places, they don't ever leave. Don't you see?
I can't let him do that to my mama. She needs me."
Dallie hated seeing that helpless look in her eyes, and he slammed
another carton into the wall because he was only seventeen himself and
he wasn't exactly sure how to make that look go away. But he found that
the destruction didn't help, so he yelled at her. "Don't you ever be
such a fool again, you hear me, Holly Grace? He's not going to send
your mama away. He's not going to do a goddamn thing, because if he
does, I'm going to kill him with my bare hands."
She stopped looking so much like a whipped puppy, but he could see that
Billy T had bullied her for too long and that she still didn't believe
him. He made his way through the rubble and grabbed the shoulders of
Billy T's white pharmacist's jacket. Billy T whimpered and threw up his
hands to protect his head. Dallie shook him. "You aren't ever going to
touch her again, are you, Billy T?"
"No!" he blubbered. "No, I won't touch her! Let me go. Make him let me
go, Holly Grace!"
"You know if you ever touch her again, I'll come and get you, don't
you?"
"Yes . . . I—"
"You know I'll kill you if you ever touch her again."
"I know! Please-—"
Dallie did what he'd been wanting to do since he'd first looked into
the storage room. He drew back his fist and slammed it into Billy T's
fat pig face. Then he hit him half a dozen more times until he saw
enough blood to make himself feel better. He stopped before Billy T
passed out, and got real close to his face. "You go ahead and call the
police on me, Billy T. You go ahead and have me arrested, because while
I'm sitting in that jail cell over at the sheriffs office, I'm going to
be telling everybody I know about the dirty little games you've been
playing in here. I'm going to tell every cop I see, every do-good
lawyer. I'm going to tell the people who sweep out my cell and the
juvenile officer who investigates my case. It won't take long for the
word to spread.
People'll pretend not to believe it, but they'll be thinking about it
every time they look at you and wondering if it's true."
Billy T didn't say anything. He just lay there whimpering and trying to
hold his bleeding face together in the palms of his pudgy hands.
"Come on, Holly Grace. You and me have somebody we got to talk to."
Dallie scooped up her shoes and her tights and, taking her gently by
the arm, led her from the storage room.
If he had expected gratitude from her, she quickly let him know exactly
how wrong he was. When she heard what he intended to do, she started to
yell at him. "You promised, you liar! You promised you wouldn't tell
anybody!"
He didn't say anything, didn't try to explain, because he could see the
fear in her eyes and he figured if he were in her place, he'd be
scared, too.
as she sat in the living room of Billy T's house listening to Dallie
talk. Holly Grace stood by the stairs, her mouth white and pinched as
if she wanted to die of shame. For the first time Dallie realized that
she hadn't cried once. From the moment he had burst into the storage
room, she had remained dry-eyed and stricken.
Winona didn't spend any time cross-examining either of them, so Dallie
got the idea that someplace deep in her heart she might have suspected
Billy T was a pervert. But the quiet misery in her eyes told him that
she had no idea her daughter had been his victim. He also saw right
away that Winona loved Holly Grace and that she wasn't going to let
anyone hurt her daughter, no matter what it might cost her. When he
finally walked toward the front door to leave the house, he figured
Winona, for all her flightiness, would do what was right.
Holly Grace didn't look at him as he left, and she didn't say thank you.
For the next few days she was absent from school. He, Skeet, and Miss
Sybil paid an after-hours visit to Purity Drugs. They let Miss Sybil do
most of the talking, and by the time she was done, Billy T had gotten
the idea that he couldn't stay in
Wynette any longer.
When Holly Grace finally came back to school, she stared right through
Dallie as if he didn't exist. He didn't want her to know how much he
was hurt by her stuck-up attitude, so he flirted with her best friend
and made sure there were good-looking girls around him whenever he
thought he might run into her. It didn't work as well as he'd hoped,
because every time he ran into her, she had a rich college-prep boy at
her side. Still, sometimes he thought he caught a flicker of something
sad and old in her eyes, so he finally swallowed his pride and went up
to her and asked her if she wanted to go to the homecoming dance with
him. He asked her like he didn't much care whether she went with him or
not, like he was doing her a big fat favor by even thinking about
taking her. He wanted to make sure that when she turned him down, she
would understand he didn't really give a damn and that he'd only asked
her because he didn't have anything better to do.
She said she'd go.
Drugs where she worked for her uncle after school. He leaned his
shoulders against the wall of the store and dug the heel of his boot
into the dirt and thought about how he should be meeting Skeet at the
driving range right now and practicing shots with his three-wood.
Except right now he didn't care about his three-wood. He didn't care
about
golf or hustling the boys at the country club or anything but
trying to redeem himself in the eyes of
Holly Grace Cohagan.
A ventilation grid was set into the outside wall of the store a few
feet above his head. Occasionally he heard a sound coming from the
storeroom on the other side—a box being dropped, Billy T calling out an
order, the distant ringing of the telephone. Gradually the sounds had
died down as closing time approached, until now he could hear Holly
Grace's voice so clearly he knew she must be standing right beneath the
grid.
"You go on, Billy T. I'll lock up."
"I'm in no hurry, honey bun."
In his imagination, Dallie could see Billy T with his white
pharmacist's coat and his florid face looking down his big putty nose
at the high school boys when they came in to buy rubbers. Billy T would
pull a pack of Trojans off the shelf behind him, lay them on the
counter, and then, like a cat playing with a mouse, cover them with his
hand and say, "If you buy those, Til tell your mama," Billy T had tried
that crap with Dallie the first time he'd ever come into the store.
Dallie had looked him straight in the eye and said he was buying them
so he could fuck his mama. That had shut up old Billy T.
Holly Grace's voice drifted out of the vent. "I'm going home, then,
Billy T. I have a lot of studying to do for tomorrow." Her voice
sounded strange, tight and overly polite.
"Not yet, honey," her uncle answered, his voice as slick as oil.
"You've been slipping out on me early all week. The front's all locked
up. You come on over here, now."
"No, Billy T, I don't—" She stopped speaking abruptly, as if something
had settled over her mouth.
Dallie straightened against the wall, his heart pounding in his chest.
He heard the
unmistakable sound of
a moan and he squeezed his eyes shut. Christ. . .
that's why she was holding out on all the senior boys. She was giving
it to her uncle. Her own uncle.
A white-hot rage settled over him. Without any idea what he planned to
do once he was inside, he flung himself at the back door and swung it
open. Empty cartons and packages of paper towels and toilet paper lined
the walls of the back hallway. He blinked his eyes, adjusting them to
the dim light. The storage room was on his left, the door partly ajar,
and he could hear Billy T's voice. "You're so pretty, Holly Grace. Yes
... Oh, yes ..."
Dallie's hands curled into fists at his sides. He walked toward the
doorway and looked inside. He felt sick.
Holly Grace was sprawled on an old ripped couch, her white Woolworth's
tights down around her ankles, one of Billy T's hands pushed up under
her skirt. Billy T knelt by the couch, huffing and puffing like a steam
engine while he tried to pull her tights the rest of the way off and
feel her up at the same time. His back was to the doorway so he
couldn't see Dallie watching them. Holly Grace lay with her head turned
toward the door, eyes squeezed shut, just like she didn't want to lose
a minute of what old Billy T was doing to her.
Dallie couldn't make himself look away and as he watched, the last of
any romantic notions he might have had about her died away. Billy T got
her tights off and started fumbling with the buttons on her blouse. He
finally jerked it open and pushed up her bra. Dallie saw the flash of
one of Holly Grace's breasts. The shape was distorted from the pressure
of the bra band, but he could still see that it was round and full,
just like he'd imagined, with a dusky nipple all puckered tight.
"Oh, Holly Grace," Billy T moaned, still kneeling on the floor in front
of her. He pushed her skirt up to her waist and fumbled with the front
of his trousers. "Tell me how much you want it. Tell me how good
I am."
Dallie thought he was going to be sick, but he couldn't move. He
couldn't turn away from the sight of those long graceful legs sprawled
so awkwardly on the couch. "Tell me," Billy T
was saying. "Tell me how much you need it, honey bun."
Holly Grace didn't open her eyes, didn't say a word. She just turned
her face into the old plaid pillow on the couch. Dallie felt a prickle
travel along his spine, a creeping of gooseflesh, as if somebody had
just walked over his grave.
"Tell me!" Billy T said, louder this time. And then, abruptly, he drew
back his fist and hit her in the stomach.
She gave a strangled, horrible cry and her body convulsed. Dallie felt
as if Jaycee's fist had just landed in his own stomach, and a bomb went
off in his head. He sprang forward, every nerve in his body ready to
explode. Billy T heard a sound and turned, but before he could move,
Dallie had shoved him to the concrete floor. Billy T looked up at him,
his fat face puckered with disbelief like some comic book villain.
Dallie drew back his foot and kicked him hard in the stomach.
"You p-punk," Billy T gasped, clutching his stomach and trying to get
out the words at the same time. "Sh-shit-eating punk—"
"No!" Holly Grace screamed, as Dallie started after him again. She
jumped up from the couch and raced to Dallie, grabbing his arm as he
stood there. "'No, don't do this!" Her face contorted with fear as she
tried to pull him toward the door. "You don't understand," she cried.
"You're only making it worse!"
Dallie spoke to her real quietly. "You pick up your clothes and go on
out into the hall now, Holly Grace. Me and Billy T are going to have
ourselves a little talk."
"No . . . please—"
"Go on, now."
She didn't move. Even though Dallie couldn't think of anything he
wanted to do more than gaze at her beautiful, stricken face, he made
himseif look at Billy T instead. Although Billy T outweighed him by a
hundred pounds, the pharmacist was all fat and Dallie didn't think he
would have much trouble beating him into a bloody pulp.
Billy T seemed to know it, too, because his little pig eyes were
distorted with fear as he fumbled with the zipper on his pants and
tried to struggle to his feet. "You get him out of here, Holly Grace,"
he panted. "Get him out of here, or I'll make you
pay for this."
Holly Grace gripped Dallie's arm, pulling so hard toward the door that
he had trouble keeping his balance. "Go away, Dallie," she pleaded, her
voice coming out in frightened gasps. "Please . . . please go away. ..."
She was barefoot, her blouse unbuttoned. As he extricated himself from
her grasp, he saw a yellow bruise on the inner curve of her breast, and
his mouth went dry with the old fear of childhood. He reached out and
pushed the blouse away from her breast, breathing a soft curse as he
saw the network of bruises that marred her skin, some of them old and
faded, others fresh. Her eyes were wide and tortured, begging him not
to say anything. But as he gazed into them, the supplication
disappeared and was replaced by defiance. She yanked the front of her
dress closed and glared at him as if he'd just peeked into her diary.
Dallie's voice wasn't more than a whisper. "Did he do that to you?"
Her nostrils flared. "I fell." She licked her lips and some of her
defiance faded as her eyes nervously darted toward her uncle.
"It's—it's all right, Dallie. Me and Billy T . . . It—it's all right."
Suddenly her face seemed to crumple and he could feel the weight of her
misery as if it were his own.
He took a step away from her toward Billy
T, who had risen to his feet, although he was still bent
slightly
forward, holding his pig stomach. "What did you say you'd do to her if
she told?" Dallie asked. "How'd you threaten her?"
"None of your goddamn business," Billy T sneered, trying to edge
sideways to the door.
Dallie blocked the path. "What'd he say he'd do to you, Holly Grace?"
"Nothing." Her voice sounded dead and flat. "He didn't say anything."
"You whisper one word about this and I'll call the sheriff on you,"
Billy T screeched at Dallie. "I'll say you broke into my store.
Everybody in this town knows you're a punk, and it'll be your word
against mine."
"Is that so?" Without warning, Dallie picked up a carton marked fragile
and threw it with all his strength against the wall behind Billy T's
head. The sound of breaking glass reverberated in
the storeroom. Holly Grace sucked in her breath and Billy T began to
curse.
"What did he say he'd do to you, Holly Grace?" Dallie asked again.
"I—I don't know. Nothing."
He slammed another carton into the wall. Billy T let out a scream of
fury, but he was too cowardly to take on Dallie's young strength. "You
stop that!" he shrieked. "You stop that right now!" Sweat had broken
out all over his face, and his voice had grown high-pitched with
impotent rage. "Stop that, you hear me!"
Dallie wanted to sink his fists into that soft fat, to punch Billy T
until there was nothing left, but something inside him held back.
Something inside him knew that the best way to help Holly Grace
was to
break the conspiracy of silence Billy T used to hold her prisoner.
He picked up another carton and balanced it lightly in his hands. "I've
got the rest of the night, Billy T, and you've got a whole store out
there for me to wreck." He threw the carton against the wall. It split
open and a dozen bottles shattered, filling the air with the pungent
smell of rubbing alcohol.
Holly Grace had been strung tight for too long, and she broke first.
"Stop, Dallie! No more! I'll tell you, but then you've got to promise
to go away. Promise me!"
"I promise," he lied.
"It's—it's my mama." The expression on her face begged him for
understanding. "He's going to send
my mama away if I say anything!
He'll do it, too. You don't know him."
Dallie had seen Winona Cohagan in town a few times, and she had
reminded him of Blanche DuBois, a character in one of the plays Miss
Chandler had given him to read over the summer. Vague and pretty in a
faded way, Winona fluttered when she talked, dropped packages, forgot
people's names, and in general acted like an incompetent fool. He knew
she was the sister of Billy T's invalid wife, and he had heard she took
care of Mrs. Denton while Billy T was working.
Holly Grace went on, letting loose a flood of words. Like water from a
dam that had finally broken, she could no longer hold back, "Billy T
says Mama's not right in the head, but
that's a lie. She's just a little flighty. But he says if I don't do
what he wants, he'll send her away, put her in a state mental hospital.
Once people get in those places, they don't ever leave. Don't you see?
I can't let him do that to my mama. She needs me."
Dallie hated seeing that helpless look in her eyes, and he slammed
another carton into the wall because he was only seventeen himself and
he wasn't exactly sure how to make that look go away. But he found that
the destruction didn't help, so he yelled at her. "Don't you ever be
such a fool again, you hear me, Holly Grace? He's not going to send
your mama away. He's not going to do a goddamn thing, because if he
does, I'm going to kill him with my bare hands."
She stopped looking so much like a whipped puppy, but he could see that
Billy T had bullied her for too long and that she still didn't believe
him. He made his way through the rubble and grabbed the shoulders of
Billy T's white pharmacist's jacket. Billy T whimpered and threw up his
hands to protect his head. Dallie shook him. "You aren't ever going to
touch her again, are you, Billy T?"
"No!" he blubbered. "No, I won't touch her! Let me go. Make him let me
go, Holly Grace!"
"You know if you ever touch her again, I'll come and get you, don't
you?"
"Yes . . . I—"
"You know I'll kill you if you ever touch her again."
"I know! Please-—"
Dallie did what he'd been wanting to do since he'd first looked into
the storage room. He drew back his fist and slammed it into Billy T's
fat pig face. Then he hit him half a dozen more times until he saw
enough blood to make himself feel better. He stopped before Billy T
passed out, and got real close to his face. "You go ahead and call the
police on me, Billy T. You go ahead and have me arrested, because while
I'm sitting in that jail cell over at the sheriffs office, I'm going to
be telling everybody I know about the dirty little games you've been
playing in here. I'm going to tell every cop I see, every do-good
lawyer. I'm going to tell the people who sweep out my cell and the
juvenile officer who investigates my case. It won't take long for the
word to spread.
People'll pretend not to believe it, but they'll be thinking about it
every time they look at you and wondering if it's true."
Billy T didn't say anything. He just lay there whimpering and trying to
hold his bleeding face together in the palms of his pudgy hands.
"Come on, Holly Grace. You and me have somebody we got to talk to."
Dallie scooped up her shoes and her tights and, taking her gently by
the arm, led her from the storage room.
If he had expected gratitude from her, she quickly let him know exactly
how wrong he was. When she heard what he intended to do, she started to
yell at him. "You promised, you liar! You promised you wouldn't tell
anybody!"
He didn't say anything, didn't try to explain, because he could see the
fear in her eyes and he figured if he were in her place, he'd be
scared, too.
* * *
Winona Cohagan twisted her hands in the ruffle of her frilly pink apronas she sat in the living room of Billy T's house listening to Dallie
talk. Holly Grace stood by the stairs, her mouth white and pinched as
if she wanted to die of shame. For the first time Dallie realized that
she hadn't cried once. From the moment he had burst into the storage
room, she had remained dry-eyed and stricken.
Winona didn't spend any time cross-examining either of them, so Dallie
got the idea that someplace deep in her heart she might have suspected
Billy T was a pervert. But the quiet misery in her eyes told him that
she had no idea her daughter had been his victim. He also saw right
away that Winona loved Holly Grace and that she wasn't going to let
anyone hurt her daughter, no matter what it might cost her. When he
finally walked toward the front door to leave the house, he figured
Winona, for all her flightiness, would do what was right.
Holly Grace didn't look at him as he left, and she didn't say thank you.
For the next few days she was absent from school. He, Skeet, and Miss
Sybil paid an after-hours visit to Purity Drugs. They let Miss Sybil do
most of the talking, and by the time she was done, Billy T had gotten
the idea that he couldn't stay in
Wynette any longer.
When Holly Grace finally came back to school, she stared right through
Dallie as if he didn't exist. He didn't want her to know how much he
was hurt by her stuck-up attitude, so he flirted with her best friend
and made sure there were good-looking girls around him whenever he
thought he might run into her. It didn't work as well as he'd hoped,
because every time he ran into her, she had a rich college-prep boy at
her side. Still, sometimes he thought he caught a flicker of something
sad and old in her eyes, so he finally swallowed his pride and went up
to her and asked her if she wanted to go to the homecoming dance with
him. He asked her like he didn't much care whether she went with him or
not, like he was doing her a big fat favor by even thinking about
taking her. He wanted to make sure that when she turned him down, she
would understand he didn't really give a damn and that he'd only asked
her because he didn't have anything better to do.
She said she'd go.
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