Hard Twisted (9 page)

Don't worry your pretty head. We'll be back quicker'n you can say Jack Robinson.

Back from where? Why can't I come?

You keep it up and you'll find out why, her father said as he shrugged into his mackinaw.

She followed them to the door, where her father worked and reworked the latch.

Now listen to me. Don't open this door for nobody till we get back, understand?

That's right, Palmer said. There's been reports of some desperate characters newly arrived in the neighborhood.

Yes, sir, she told her father.

All right then. Her father held the door for Palmer, who winked as he crossed over the threshold. When the door had closed behind them, she heard a key in the lock.

Lottie woke at dawn. She rose and stretched and padded to the bathroom, the warmth of her footprints evanescing on the cold wooden floorboards. She peed and washed her face and straightened her ribbon in the mirror. On her way back to her bedroll, she paused again at the window.

The Akard house was still as yet, its windows clad in the golden glow of sunrise. Songbirds clustered in the elm tree, jostling and flitting, and a rooster cawed somewhere close at hand. She smiled at the sound.

She dressed quickly and hurried down the stairs, expecting voices and the sounds and smells of breakfast, but found herself alone in the empty kitchen.

She listened for movement elsewhere in the house.

She filled the coffeepot and fed crumpled newsprint and pine tinder into the stovebox. She tried to light the match as Palmer
did, but the match tip chipped beneath her nail and she yelped as it flared, sucking at her thumb.

She remounted the stairs, and she crept to her father's bedroom, rapping lightly at the door.

Daddy?

The cut-glass knob was cold to her touch. The door creaked as it opened, revealing her father's bedding rolled and bundled in a corner. Beside the bedroll was his Bible, and beside the Bible were his folded clothes and his few scattered toiletries.

She listened. The radiator ticked.

Returning downstairs, she paused outside Palmer's door, which she opened without knocking. Inside she found his empty bed-roll splayed upon the floor.

Only then, as she passed the hallway bathroom for the second time, did she notice the leather valise where it rested on the toilet seat. She stopped, holding her breath and listening.

Inside the satchel were Palmer's shaving things, his brush and razor and a soap bar in a lidded tin. There was a screwdriver and a pliers, a small scissors and a nail file, a toothbrush and a hair comb, two decks of playing cards, a tin of Dr. Wernet's dental powder, a box of Colt Firearms Company .45 ammunition, and an oval tin of Dixie Peach pomade. She removed these items each in turn and examined them and placed them in a neat row along the sink.

There was no pistol.

Beneath the things that she'd removed, flat and contoured to the satchel bottom, were papers. State of Texas Department of Highways Motor Vehicle Registration. Certificate of Live Birth, frayed and yellowed. United States Army Notice of Induction to
Military Service. Enlistment Record and Report of Separation (Dishonorable Discharge). Her lips moved with the words as she paged through each of the documents.

She was careful to replace the papers as she'd found them, followed by the tools and the toiletries, then the shaving kit. Lastly she reached for the ammunition, spying as she did her face in the medicine cabinet.

What the hell?

She shrieked at Palmer's reflection, the box exploding where it landed, man and girl jigging in tandem at the clattering of cartridges.

I'm sorry! I'm sorry!

She fell to her knees, sweeping and gathering the hard brass cylinders in handfuls from around his boots, until his boots stepped back and pivoted and strode on down the hallway.

She sat for a long time on the cold, hard tile, until the sound of frying eggs lifted her slowly, cautiously, to her feet. She edged down the hallway to the kitchen, where cups and plates and forks were neatly paired on the laminate counter.

Coffee's gettin cold, he said quietly as she eased onto a stool. How do you like your scramble?

I don't care.

He lifted the skillet and shook it and spooned the steaming eggs onto the plates.

Your pa and me bunked at the old man's place. Palmer replaced the skillet and refilled his coffee, joining her on the other side of the counter. In case you was wonderin.

He ate without appetite, his fork moving the eggs like pewter soldiers on a paper battlefield. He was red-eyed and unshaven, and he appeared not to have slept. His fork stopped.

What?

I wasn't snoopin, she told him.

He returned to his food, reaching a hand and placing it on her knee.

It reeked of gasoline.

H. P. Palmer was a superannuated facsimile of his son, cord-thin and clear-eyed, his aquiline face fissured and deeply tanned. But as the scion's hair was dark and full, so the forebear's stood scarce and whitish, capturing the sunlight and wreathing his leathery pate in a gossamer halo.

Lottie watched both men from the parlor window. They stood at a distance in the field half-furrowed, their conversation animated, their heads turning toward the house and then, in unison, toward the sound of an approaching motorcar.

The older Buick trundled past the listing barn and out into the field, slicing like an errant plowshare through the newly ordered furrows.

The driver, when he alighted, although backlit by a sun stained umber in the settling car dust, was clearly not her father. Now the three men stood together.

A barn cat, gaunt and mottled, buttered itself on her pantleg.

What about you, pussy? Lottie lifted the purring animal. Have you seen my pa anywheres about?

Out beyond the window, the conference had ended. The old man placed a hand on the shoulder of the new arrival, then glanced toward the house as he leaned and spat. He returned to the team still hitched and slumbering in its traces. Palmer removed something from his pocket and handed it to the other man, then he started toward the house.

At the sound of the doorspring, the cat jumped free. Palmer hawed and kicked, but the cat dodged and threaded the opening behind him.

Who all's that? Lottie asked him.

He joined her at the window. Oh, that's just Buddy. Him and me is gonna help the old man for a spell. Then after supper all of us is gonna take a little drive.

Drive to where?

Heck, if I told you that, then it wouldn't be no surprise.

What about my pa?

The Buick was moving again, cutting a loop back toward the barn.

I wouldn't worry none about your pa. You and me'll see him soon enough.

I been to Wilburton, the old man said. He pushed his plate aside and with the bread knife carved a slice from the twisted plug he'd drawn from a shirtfront pocket. He worked the chaw with a focused effort, then he reached for a can on the sideboard.

Helped run cattle from Panola to Fort Smith, back in '85 or thereabouts. He leaned and spat, lifting his watery eyes across the table to where the girl sat watching. Before these here bread-snappers was born.

Here it comes, Buddy said.

Course, there was grass in them days. Not like today. The old man set the can on the table and leaned back on his chairlegs, hoisting his galluses with his thumbs. Yes, sir. Stirrup-high grass clear out to the Arkansas, and that's a fact. And not so many damn fences.

Palmer and Buddy shared a look across the table as the old man repositioned his chaw.

They was Indians too, he continued, his eyes drifting to the kitchen window and beyond the darkness there to the open prairies of his youth. And not the fall-down drunks and idlers you see hereabouts today. I'm talkin prideful Indians on horseback, workin cattle and makin a livin with their hands. He shook his head sadly. No, sir, not like these 'uns nowadays.

By gosh, that explains it, Buddy said.

The old man's eyes narrowed. Explains what?

How it come you got yourself scalped like that.

Palmer lurched forward, squirting coffee through his nose. Buddy roared as Palmer sputtered and coughed, and both men banged the table with their palms, rattling plates and jumping silver.

The old man rose, imperious.

You see, miss? This here is the thanks I get for raisin these two niggers like they was my own.

They rode in the Buick three abreast, with Palmer driving and Buddy shotgun and Lottie angled on the seat between them, her feet paired primly on the one side of the gearshift. Buddy Virgil resembled his stepbrother only in profile, the contours of which Lottie considered in stolen glances by the light of passing cars. Younger certainly, and taller. But clearly not as handsome.

Buddy, for his part, was oblivious to her appraisal, his head nodding with the bounce of the roadway and his gaze shifting at intervals to the porch lights passing like revenants on the old country road.

Up ahead, floating eyes shone small in the roadway, and Palmer swerved the car to meet them, laughing at the thump-thump under the Buick's wheels.

I ever tell you about the time I house-sat for old man Lawrence? Buddy leaned forward to address Palmer. Had him a tomcat, big as a damn raccoon. I was to let him in the house at night and feed him and then let him out again in the mornin. Well, it was about the third day I come home and found the cat all squashed in the road out front of the house. Only it was just his back half got squashed; up front he was still alive and squalin and pawin at the road.

That's pitiful.

Pitiful is what it was. So I look around and find me a big ol' rock, see? Figure if I can catch him clean at the neck, I'll put 'im out of his misery. And that's what I done, bam! Only the dumbass cat starts a'twitchin and a'scrabblin all over the road, and with me chasin after him with the damn rock. Well, sir, after five or six good thumps, that cat is finally still. Only now I'm all heavin and spattered, and I got this bloody rock raised up over my head with both hands to give it one more go. And just then, I look up and see a bunch of pickaninnies comin my way, maybe five of 'em afoot, and not a one more'n four feet tall.

Shit.

So these little niggers, they all freeze and bunch together like spooked calves, and I'm standin there with that bloody rock. And then the biggest of 'em, he can't be but ten years old, he sidles up to me with eyes like chicken eggs and he says, What's the matter with you, mista? Don't you like cats or somethin?

Shit, Palmer said, his shoulders shaking.

And the damnedest thing was, that old tomcat showed up about a hour later without a mark on him. Turns out I'd been whompin on someone else's cat.

I'm about to piss my pants.

It was the goddamnedest thing. Hey, comin up quick.

The lane where they turned was narrow and rutted, and in the bouncing arc of the Buick's headlamps Lottie saw a house set small and dark against the greater darkness beyond.

Give me a runnin start, Buddy said, shouldering his door as they stopped. Then come in with both guns blazin.

Gravel crunched, and his legs flared brightly as he circled the idling car.

What is this place?

Friend of Buddy's, Palmer said as he shook a cigarette from the pack and tapped it on the dashboard.

Lights appeared in the house windows.

What are we doin here?

In the pop of the match she saw Palmer's reflection materialize and dissolve again in the windscreen.

Makin some arrangements. He shook the match and pitched it through the window. About a rooster.

He looked to the house as he smoked, his fingers drumming the open windowframe.

What rooster?

Just give it a rest.

They watched the house in silence, until the door opened to a furtive gesture. Palmer killed the engine.

Okay, let's go.

The moon had not yet risen, and she followed his bobbing ash glow up the darkened lawn.

The door was ajar when they reached it, and Palmer's rapping entrance halted the conversation between Buddy and a woman in a bathrobe. She too was smoking, with her wrist cocked in a theatrical pose. She was pale and fleshy, and her head was wrapped
in a kind of Gypsy scarf from which coppery ringlets spilled. She studied Lottie through the curling smoke, then turned her face to Palmer.

What all did I do to deserve this?

Nice to see you too, Lonnie. What's it been?

The woman ignored the question. She crooked a finger at Buddy and led him down the hallway.

The room where they waited smelled of perfume and cigarettes. Magazines were piled in stacks on the floor,
Movie Mirror
and
Photoplay
, and a sofa slumped behind a low table on which an ashtray had been set. A new Philco radio gleamed like a cathedral in miniature, and these and the floorlamp by which she viewed them were the room's only furnishings.

From down the hallway came voices, low and angry, then silence.

Don't seem like we was expected, Lottie whispered, to which Palmer turned and crossed to the window and there stood gazing past his own reflection, silent and ruminative, as though looking through the light to view some inner, darker self.

Lonnie Kincaide set aside her magazine.

What now?

The girl, curled on the bed beside her, only shrugged.

C'mon, kid. Don't go all weepy on me. They said they'd be back in a jiffy.

Lottie was startled by the hand that reached to stroke her hair. She rolled to face the older woman.

Is Buddy your beau?

The woman arched her eyebrows. My beau? She reached to the nightstand and tapped out a cigarette. Sometimes, I guess. Not
regular-like. Ain't nothin regular about these Texas boys. But I guess you could say he's my beau. Yeah, sure, why not?

Does he got a sister, him or Clint?

Clint's got two sisters, Ruby and Gennie. Why?

Does either one of 'em got a daughter?

The woman frowned. I don't know about no daughter. Why?