Hard Twisted (8 page)

Men raised a hand, or a jar, and the barking camp dog scurried from truck to car. On her porch, the droop-eyed sibyl leaned on her broom, nodding at their passing.

They arrived in Peerless with the dusk to dry lightning and the low rumble of distant thunder. They parked before a two-story
house, where a man in a straw hat rose heavily from the porch swing.

Introductions were made. The man, whose name was Steen, wore suspenders and spectator shoes. He mopped his face with an oversize kerchief and led them all on a tour of the empty rental, upstairs and down, noting radiators and closets and demonstrating the workings of the furnace and the electric icebox.

There were three bedrooms in all, and each smelled more strongly of paint. When at last they'd returned to the entry, Steen tousled Lottie's hair and surrendered the housekeys to Palmer, receiving in return some folded bills that Steen counted out twice before smiling and doffing his hat.

Home sweet home, Palmer said as the door closed. He moved to the empty living room, where the floor was dark and polished, the baseboards newly gleaming. There was a ceiling fan with a pull chain, and fireplace tools in an iron caddy, and a neat pine-wood bundle on the freshly swept hearth.

Lottie turned a circle, her mouth agape.

Is this all for us?

Get used to it, sister. Palmer removed his hat and set it on her head. This here is just the beginning.

Lottie woke to the ticking of the radiator.

She rose from her bedroll and crossed to the window, the hardwood cold and creaking underfoot. The view was onto an elm tree, with a grass lawn beyond it freckled with spring flowers, the greens and yellows dazzling in the clear light of morning. A fence divided the lawn from another lawn beyond, which climbed to a white clapboard house on whose porch two men stood in close conversation. The smaller man, she realized, was Palmer.

There were sounds from the kitchen, and when she'd descended the stairs on stocking feet, she found her father at the breakfast counter lifting groceries from a box. The lights were on and the stove was lit, and the familiar odors of woodsmoke and coffee masked the lingering paint smell.

There you are. Thought we was gonna have to send a posse.

She rubbed her eyeball with a fist.

Are you hungry?

Yes, sir.

Palmer's voice echoed in the front room. Hey! Hows about a hand out here?

Lottie found him straddling the threshold with a stool under each arm, the screen door propped with a foot.

Take one, he told her, and when she reached for the stool, he kissed her quickly on the lips.

Don't! She glanced toward the kitchen. He's like to kill us both.

Palmer stood the stools by the kitchen counter and went to rummage the cookware, returning with their iron skillet.

Ever had huevos rancheros?

Way what?

Never mind. He rubbed his hands together. Sit yourself down and watch a Texan at work.

He greased the cold skillet with his fingers, then cracked a half dozen farm eggs into the pan.

My whole time I was away, he said over the rising sizzle, this right here is what I missed the most.

Was you in the army?

Honey, I was the scourge of Fort Leavenworth. He winked at her father behind her. They wanted me so bad, they wouldn't let me go.

He chose a jar from the box and opened it and poured a thick crimson liquid into the scramble. The pan hissed and sputtered, the pungent aromas of onion and fried tomatoes filling the room.

What all did he say? her father asked over the top of Lottie's head.

No problema.

What did who say?

Oscar's his name, Palmer said without turning.

Me and Clint, we got some things that need doin. Might take us all day. Man lives next door says he'll keep a eye on you till we get back.

I don't need no babysitter.

That's good, Palmer said over the sound of his cooking, cuz Oscar ain't no babysitter. He's a artist, for your information, and he'll pay you two bits cash money if you'll help him with a sign needs paintin.

He will?

Humming now, Palmer lifted and shook the pan, spooning the runny eggs onto plates. Tell me if this don't beat your hoecake.

Lottie wrinkled her nose, probing the plate with her fork. What all will you be doin while I'm next door?

Don't you worry about us, darlin. Palmer carried the skillet to the sink. Your daddy and me, we'll be out in the great state of Texas, makin our fortunes.

Oscar Akard wore white cotton overalls and paint-spattered shoes, one of which he'd wrapped with electrical tape that had come unstuck and trailed behind him like a fuse. Lean and unshaven, he was a tall man with deep-set eyes and an Adam's apple
that moved like a trombone slide whenever he spoke, which to Lottie's reckoning wasn't very often.

Man and girl stood on the shade side of the house, where paint-speckled sawhorses braced a huge rectangle of sheet metal screwed to a thin wooden backing. The face of the sign shone a high-gloss white, and a trio of open paint cans weighted the canvas drop cloth on which they stood.

You ever painted before?

No, sir.

Are you prone to clumsiness?

Not so's I ever noticed.

The man regarded the whiteness before him in the way that the God of Genesis must have studied the void, a hand to his chin, his head tilting this way and that.

He snapped his fingers. We'll start with black. Thinnest brush.

Lottie bent to the turpentine can, inspecting each of the brush heads in turn. She showed him her selection, and he nodded. She handed the brush to him along with the hinged wooden implement he called his maulstick. Then she proffered the paint can, as he had shown her, held in her palm by the bottom.

Here we go. Keep close but don't get underfoot.

He dipped the brush tip, and with one hand holding the maulstick he crossed his wrists and etched a pinstripe border. The line he drew was thin and even and straight as a string pulled taut.

Stay with me now.

He stork-walked the stick and dipped again, extending his line to the bottom of the sign and rounding it off at the corner.

Hmmm, he said to himself.

Lottie followed like a mendicant as the tall man dipped and dabbed, shuffled and dipped, until at last he'd circumnavigated
the sign and closed the loop in a smooth and flawless junction. He raised the brush and backed a step to better attend his handiwork.

I'd say you sure know what you're doin, Lottie said after a pause.

He glanced at the girl. It ain't brain surgery, but I thank you all the same.

I couldn't do such as that in a hundred years.

How do you know?

Sir?

He gestured with the brush. If you've never tried it, how do you know you can't?

I just do, that's all.

The man nodded. It's not your fault, he said, wiping the brush tip on his bib. It's a curse of the female psyche.

Sir?

He bent to the turpentine. I don't claim to have studied the question, but it seems to me that if you show something new to a boy and a girl both, it's the boy that wants to take it apart and put it back together again, and it's the girl that wants to sit and watch him do it. Now why do you suppose that is?

I don't rightly know.

He straightened again and stood beside her. Neither do I.

They studied the sign together, as though in its newly bordered symmetry some answer might be found.

Maybe it weren't broke in the first place?

He eyed her again.

How old did you say you were?

Thirteen.

Thirteen. I believe I've got shoes older than that.

I'd say that's the truth, she replied, and he followed her eyes to the end of his pantleg.

Lucile, is it?

Yes, sir.

That fella left with Clint Palmer, he's your pa?

Yes, sir.

He harrumphed.

They's gone out to the Palmer place on business. I been there once myself to meet his sister and her daughter Johnny Rae, only we missed 'em when they was out ridin and campin somewheres by some river. So we done chores instead and rode them horses out there that wasn't saddle-broke yet.

The man said nothing.

Sir?

The man looked to the sign and back again.

Lucile, let me tell you something. A word to the wise, as it were. I've known Clint Palmer and his kin for longer than I'd care to recall, and I can tell you two things you'd best keep in mind. The first is, Clint's sister Gennie was my wife, and his other sister, Ruby, lives clear out to Little Rock, and ain't neither one of 'em got a daughter named Johnny Rae. The second thing is, that boy Clint is crazier than a shithouse mouse, you'll pardon my French. Not that your daddy's business is any of my business, but if you want some friendly advice from a old paint dabber, I'd say you'd best stick close to your pa, and whatever you do, you'd best watch your backside around that half-pint son of a bitch.

At five o'clock Lottie returned to the still and empty house. She washed her hands at the kitchen tap and dried them on her pants.
She sorted through the tumbled clothes pile, and with arms and chin she carried those that were hers upstairs to the room in which she'd slept. There she found that her bedroll had been tidied, and that a square shape now bulged from under her blanket.

The package was wrapped in newsprint and tied with a new pink satin ribbon. She crossed to the door and closed it, then sat with the gift in her lap, smoothing the hair behind her ears. She loosened the bow and examined the ribbon and folded it and laid it carefully beside her.

Inside the paper was the dented shortbread tin, and inside the tin was another sheet of newsprint, balled and nearly weightless. She hefted it and felt within the paper something small and hard between her fingers that she somehow knew, even before she'd unwrapped it and studied it and held it to the light, was a gold human tooth.

THE COURT
: Your witness, counsel.

BY MR. HARTWELL
: Miss Garrett, isn't it true that you left Texas with Mr. Palmer of your own accord?

A
: Sir?

Q
: He didn't force you to go with him, did he? He didn't, say, drag you into the car by your hair or put a gun to your head?

A
: He told me we was—

BY MR. HARTWELL
: Move to strike, Your Honor.

THE COURT
: Miss Garrett, just answer counsel's questions yes or no.

A
: I'm sorry. What was the question?

Q
: You understood the questions all right when Mr. Pharr was asking them.

BY MR. PHARR
: Objection.

THE COURT
: That's enough, L.D. Just ask your question.

BY MR. HARTWELL
: When you left Peerless with Clint Palmer in May of last year, you did so voluntarily and with no physical coercion on his part. Isn't that true?

Lottie had dozed where she lay, and now she scrambled to her feet at the sound of the closing door. The downstairs voices were
loud and querulous, and she knew before she saw them that both men had been drinking.

Lottie? her father's voice rang in the stairwell.

Coming!

She pulled the chain stub in the little bathroom and examined herself by the glare of the swinging bulb, touching her hair and straightening the long, pink ribbon that trailed at the back of her neck.

She found them in the kitchen, her father at the sink with the water running and Palmer at the counter, grinning and leaning on an elbow. Her father had his knife in one hand and the darkly velvet ears of a jackrabbit in the other.

Palmer's eyes crinkled at the sight of the ribbon. He bared his teeth like a beaver.

Hope you're partial to hare, he said.

Her father turned. There you are. Did you get lunch?

Yessir. Mr. Akard made us deviled eggs.

Did he pay you that quarter he promised?

She reached into her pocket and produced the coin for inspection. Her father grunted and returned his attention to the sink.

Texaco Motor Oil, she told them, easing onto a barstool. Drain, Fill and Listen. That's the sign we done.

Why, that's downright poetical, ain't it, Dil? And sound advice to boot.

I got to color in the Texaco star. Mr. Akard said I got potential.

You hear that, Dil? This girl's got po-tential.

Her father either ignored this or missed it over the hiss and scrape of the skinning.

What all did you do today? she asked them both.

Her father snorted. Palmer cocked his hat as he straightened.

Groundwork is what we done. He tapped his forehead with a finger. Plan-makin before risk-takin. Measure twice and cut once, my daddy always says. Ain't that right, Dil?

Her father half-turned at the sink. Your old man never cut nothin in his life, less it was the cheese. And what I'm wonderin now is how come we give up a moneymakin deal to throw in with that windy old coon.

Palmer shook his head. Piss and vinegar. That's ol' H.P.

Hot air and horse flop is more like it.

Believe me, cousin. When the chips are down, he'll do to ride the river with.

River my ass.

Law me alive. Ain't you all of a sudden the doubtin Thomas.

Her father turned again, pointing the bloody knifeblade. I'll thank you not to blaspheme in front of my daughter.

The mirth drained from the smaller man's face. And I'll thank you to watch where you're pointin that pig-sticker, friend.

After the plates were dried and stowed, Palmer crossed to the sink and lifted the curtain.

Moon's up, he announced. We's already late.

Where we goin?

Not we, darlin. Just me and your pa.

She looked to her father and back again. How come I'm always the one gets left?