Hard Twisted (3 page)

They's a children's menu on the back, she said.

Palmer ignored her, intent on the streetscape. There were more and newer cars than in Hugo, and fewer horses. On the corner opposite the café, a Negro boy yoked in a wooden sandwich board held a newspaper aloft to the passing cars. The headline read MORE RELIEF FOR FARMERS.

Palmer opened his menu, and Lottie did likewise. There were breakfast plates and lunch plates and blue plate specials.

What all can I have?

Whatever you want, sweetheart.

The waitress returned with a pad, and she dug a pencil from behind her ear as Palmer ordered the chicken-fried steak with biscuits and gravy and pinto beans.

Lottie bit her lip, twisting and untwisting the same lock of hair. She ordered pancakes with bacon, and fried chicken with green beans, and hot apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese.

Expectin company? the woman snorted, jotting the order with eyebrows raised.

Palmer turned to follow her receding back before reaching into his valise and tipping the bottle into his coffee. He stirred it and tinked at the rim and raised the mug as if to Lottie's health.

How much further to Peerless?

He sipped. Thirty or forty miles.

How long will that take?

Maybe a hour, maybe more.

You reckon they's worried about us?

You ask a lot of questions, do you know that?

That's what my daddy says. He says I'm like the queen of Sheba, right there in first Kings.

He set down his cup and leaned forward and thumbed back his hat. Listen, sister. If I wanted a sky pilot for company, I'd of stopped at one of them churches and waved me a dollar bill.

What do you mean?

I mean not everbody was raised up on dried prunes and proverbs.

Don't you never read the good book?

The good book. What's it say in that book of yours about farmers gettin run off their land? What's it say about Jew bankers takin food money from widows and orphans?

Her face was a blank.

You think they's anybody in them churches gives a rat's ass whether you eat or starve? Well, let me tell you somethin I learnt a long time ago, and that's this right here. You want anything in this life, you got to go on out and grab it. You just do what you gotta do, and don't go askin no permission or beggin no forgiveness. And for Pete sake, don't go all the time askin the good Lord for help, cuz if you want my view on the matter, he's done got quit of the helpin business.

She blinked.

You got a problem with that, you let me know right now, and I'll give you a ride straight back to your daddy.

I didn't say nothin.

Okay then.

He leaned back in his seat. He returned his attention to the window, where the newsboy's sign lay jackknifed on the sidewalk, the boy himself gone as though vanished in some heavenly rapture peculiar to his race.

Lottie took up her knife and tilted it, examining her reflection in the blade. Palmer watched her with a sidelong glance as the light bar played on her face.

Try that spoon there. You'll be all topsy-turvy.

She set down the knife and took up the spoon, holding it out like a mirror.

Tell me somethin. How long you been hoboin with your pa?

She shrugged. I don't know. Two years.

What about before that?

Before that I lived with Uncle Mack, up to Wilburton.

Uncle Mack.

She nodded. Tilting her head, examining the upside-down girl.

What all happened to him?

I don't know. Got tired of havin me, I guess.

So where's your mama, anyways?

Dead.

Well, shit, there you go. My mama too. Maybe that's how come I knowed right away that you and me was gonna become special friends.

The waitress appeared beside them with heavy plates two to a hand.

More coffee comin, she said, tearing a sheet from her pad and slapping it down at Palmer's elbow.

Lottie ate the pancakes, and the chicken, and they nudged the pie plate back and forth between them. They ate mostly in silence, watching the cars pass on the street, and when she would glance at him and their eyes would meet, she would giggle and cover her mouth with a hand.

When they'd finished eating, Palmer peeled back the check and studied it and told her to go outside and wait in the truck.

She sat with the window rolled watching the fountain in the town square until Palmer appeared from the alley side of the building, hurrying to the truck and climbing in after his valise. He fumbled with the key and jabbed at the starter, grinding the gears and lurching them into traffic as cars swerved and horns sounded. They turned right at the first corner and left at the next, with Palmer all the while watching behind them in the mirror.

In late afternoon they quit the highway for the county road. They passed through miles of wooded fields and blackland farms before swinging onto a gravel track by a cemetery, where a small dog shot through the iron gates and heeled them for almost a mile.

The track then narrowed and darkened as shade trees crowded their passage. They rounded another curve and Palmer braked the truck and tilted his hat, leaning out the window to hawk and spit through their settling dust cloud.

There she is.

Lottie sat up to look. Through a gap in the tree line she made out a long field sloping away to a swaybacked barn. Beyond the barn was a peeling clapboard house flanked by shade trees, one living and one dead, and beyond the trees was a pasture, this with an empty stockpond in which two rawboned horses posed with their heads low and their tails swaying and switching.

Another tree line marked the far boundary of the pasture. She saw no cattle or goats and no pony horses, and she could imagine no swimming hole on the land or in the jagged cut that ran beyond it.

Okay then. Here we go.

He climbed down to free the rusted loopwire that held the
sagging gate upright. The horses lifted their heads as he returned to the truck and slammed the door and drove it forward and alighted again to close the gate behind them.

They parked in the shade of the barn. Swallows flew at the sound of their slamming car doors. Somewhere in the distance, chickens gabbled and clucked. Palmer turned to the house, cupping his mouth with his hands.

Hello! Anybody home?

All was silence.

The barn before them listed precariously. One stall housed a rusted jalopy blinded by missing headlamps; the other, an ancient two-furrow horseplow. Littering the ground and lining the open-stud walls were sacks and barrels, tin cans and fruit jars, and rusting tools of every description. Against the back wall, spotlighted by a gap in the high tin roof, stood a tumbledown tower of hay.

I got to pee bad.

Privy's around back. I'll go on inside.

The outhouse was rank, and so she squatted in the bare dirt behind it. The sun was high and the air warm and still, and the stillness of it hummed in her ears. She listened for the distant sound of voices raised in greeting, but she heard nothing.

The porch sagged where the paint had worn, and her bootheels rang hollow on the steps. She opened the screen door and paused, and there spied Palmer's back framed in an open doorway where he knelt before a woodstove. He pivoted at the sound of the doorspring.

Come on in. Looks like we missed 'em.

The house was cool despite the sun. A small front parlor was sparsely furnished with a cracked leather sofa and a matching
wing chair, its brass rivets missing. Lace hung limply over milky windows. Beyond this room was the kitchen, and beyond the kitchen a narrow hallway that ran darkly toward the back.

Where all'd they go?

They's a note, he said without turning.

It lay on the kitchen table beside the valise; grease pencil scrawl on a flattened paper sack.

Clint—Could not wait no longer. Rode out with girls to river. Will camp for the nite. Make yorself to home. H.P.

She stared at the scribbled words until the words vibrated and blurred and she felt a hot streak on her cheek. At this the vague shape of him rose from the stove and crossed to where she stood, and she felt his strong hands on her shoulders.

Come on, Bonnie Parker. Don't go bawlin now. It ain't the end of the world. We can ride with 'em some other time, and that's a promise. Meanwhile, we got the place all to ourselves, and we can have us a swell time. Come on now.

She nodded, leaning away to look at him.

I'm sorry, she said, sniffling. I know it's the Lord's will.

The slap was swift and sharp, the force of it spinning her sideways into the table.

What did I tell you about that nonsense?

She raised a hand to her face. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. She turned and ran for the door.

He caught her in the front parlor and pulled her backward, kicking and squirming, and he wrestled her onto the sofa.

Hold on now. I said stop, dammit, and settle down.

His hands gripped her wrists, straitjacketing her in his lap.

I hate you!

You listen to me for one second. Just listen.

She struggled again, and then was still.

I done fed you, and I drove you all the way down here so's you could have a little fun for yourself, and all I ast in return was one little thing. All I ast was for you to quit your mealymouthed holy-rollin for one goddamn day. Now is that so much? Huh? Is it?

He leaned and tried to turn her, but she wouldn't turn.

Come on, Lucile. Where's that other cheek I keep hearin about?

She tried to stand, and he hugged her tighter.

Let go!

Come on, darlin. This ain't no way to be.

She looked away, turning her face to the door and the porch beyond. Don't you never hit me again.

Don't you never give me no cause again. How's that for a square deal?

On the porch the angled sunlight quartered the floorplanks. Houseflies jumbled noisily beyond the screen.

All right.

All right then.

He released his grip, and she slid quietly from his lap.

I got to start us a fire. And then I got to feed and water them nags. Then we can play some dominoes or take us a little walk, all right?

She nodded.

Will you help me with them horses?

Can't they be rid?

Well. These ones ain't exactly saddle broke is the thing. Unless you're some kinda buckaroo cowgirl and me not knowin it.

Not hardly.

Well then, maybe we'd best just feed 'em and leave 'em be. He
rose from the sofa. Course if anyone asks, we can always say we grabbed apple and marked 'em up the side. How does that sound?

All right.

All right then. Are we still friends? She shrugged. I guess.

He lit the woodstove with the paper sack and fanned it with his hat and stood back to consider the result.

All right then. Let's get after it.

The air outside was cooler now, the shadows longer. She trailed behind him as he threw feed to the chickens and pumped water into buckets and carried sack oats and water to the mirrored horses nickering in the pasture. In the side yard she set firewood for him to quarter, and when he'd split the last of it, he squatted and held his arms out like a surgeon while she stacked it and ran ahead and held the door for him to stagger through.

They lingered on the front porch watching the horses, the road, the fallow field. They walked the wire fenceline for a distance as Palmer narrated. He showed her the spot where a wolf took his 4-H heifer, and the spot where he broke his leg roping, and the spot where his best bluetick dog ate a copperhead snake and dropped stone dead at his feet.

At the top of a low rise he stood akimbo, surveying the landscape of his childhood; the joys and sorrows etched upon the weathered barnwood and the hardened turnrows and the dying play of sunlight on the roof shakes.

When I was a kid, he told her, I couldn't wait to get quit of this place. I run away, and I come back, and then I run away again. Finally, when I was sixteen, I run away for good. At least I thought I did.

How come?

He shrugged. I don't know. The old man went and got remarried. I guess I felt like I'd lost my place somehow, and that if I got away and looked somewheres else, I might find it again. Almost like you can't really be home until you know what else is out there, and then you figure out for yourself that whatever it is, it ain't really home. Does that make any sense?

What happened?

Huh?

Your place. Did you ever find it again?

He squatted and plucked a grass stem and held it in his mouth.

I don't know. I don't know if you ever know a thing such as that. Maybe I did, but I just didn't realize it. Or maybe I ain't got there yet. He removed the stem and studied it. Maybe I'll get there tomorrow, or the day after that. Or maybe I won't never get there a'tall.

Or maybe you're there right now.

He looked up at her face, guileless and pink in the low light of sunset.

By God, you may be right.

He stood and placed the hat on her head.

Maybe I am at that.

Palmer backed the sofa onto the porch, and when he went inside again, he returned with four warm bottles of orange Nehi and the last of the bourbon whiskey. He popped the caps on his belt buckle and lined the bottles along the railing, topping them off each in turn with a measure of whiskey.

They sat with their boots on the railing and sipped their drinks and watched the land turn from green to blue, the rising
tide of darkness swallowing first the driveway and then the fenceline and then, as the night air cooled, the very steps below their feet.

Now crickets chirped and bullbats swooped and the plow horses shifted and snuffled somewhere in the darkness.

You see that one there? Lottie closed one eye and pointed her empty bottleneck.

Where?

Them three in a row like that?

Okay.

That's Orion. She pointed again. That there's supposed to be his sword.

Don't look like no sword to me. More like his dick maybe.