December and Mae, page 3
Luke poured more whiskey. “Seems too…” He searched for a word, then whispered, “…feeble to be much use.”
Liz still had that smile, irritating Luke some, like hair down his shirt. Vexed, he dug out tobacco and papers. “So, what hay bale you find him under?” Tunking tobacco along the flimsy parchment, he licked the length, not much caring about the answer but feeling he had to make conversation. Liz didn’t get out much. Only hen parties, quilting at the long stretcher taking up the front parlor, The Ladies’ Aid, or after Sunday meeting with his daughter, Beth.
“I was busy with the chickens,” she said offhand. “One of the Saurbachs,” she reflected. “I think. They have a passel. Seemed unchristian to turn a lad away who’s wantin’ work ’stead of a handout.”
“Ah, Saurbachs.” Luke had an inkling the church halfway supported the vast Saurbach brood, from what he’d heard. “Well, see now, you have a heart soft as milk custard.”
“Better ’n rock candy.”
She nudged a saucer for his ashes, irritating him more. Wasn’t about to douse the butt in coffee dregs!
Well, dang it. He wasn’t.
“Saurbachs, you said.” He made a face.
She emptied his saucer in the slops bucket, plunking down the clean one. “Just came to the back door, that big old hat in hand.”
Luke patted his stomach, sighing, impatient. A Hawthorne novel and a bottle of Monogram rye awaited him in the parlor. “Right. Don’t have to sell me like some flannel-mouth snake-oil salesman. Reckon you did the right thing, Lizzie.”
Liz rolled a sardonic look. “Not with this ’un.”
Luke didn’t bite. He stretched, yawned and couldn’t think of anything else. Restless, like the first zephyr of Spring blew winter away with Her erotic scents. Too early, by thunder, to go to bed, and The Scarlet Letter suddenly had no appeal.
Wonder what the boys are up to? Not too late to saddle up the skewbald gelding.
Maybe that’s what he was these days.
A damned gelding.
Luke tried brushing away morbid notions. Nevertheless, the morning’s dirge of mournful gossip still nettled him. Biting his mustache, he checked the dark. Ah, what’s the use. Twenty miles to town, twenty back and what then? Luke once more reached for the brown glass bottle of Old Overholt. He could drink here. Yet, grinning to himself, he couldn’t josh fetching barmaids here—one with the charming gap between her teeth, or watch the rowdier girls put on a little jig showing their knickers and tight garters on the saloon’s tiny stage, allowing thoughts to range to the rooms upstairs, or to fade.
What was wrong with him? Luke shot a wry look at the bottle, with a feeling no preacher could put to rights.
He nodded to Elizabeth.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
She splashed him another large tot. “Think on naming the new stallion Hell-Fire,” he half jested. Liz frowned but he couldn’t get a rise out of her.
“Sounds about right.”
After that, Luke put all thought of heading into town aside.
“Gets lonesome here,” she murmured, taking a sip. “Appreciate you bein’ here.”
“Sometimes it do.” They sat and drank, each in their own brown thoughts.
“Day after tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“Aye, that it is.” Stubbing out his second hand-rolled, Luke kenned what was coming.
“Your daughter’s expecting you.”
“Always is.”
“What’s the matter, Lukey?”
He tried not to show irritation over the childhood moniker.
“Nothin’. Did I say?” Luke poured another generous shot. He was getting pie-eyed. Dang! Another early night sprawled half-dozing in his worn leather chair, with a danged book he’d read three times on his lap, plus his onery, one-eared cat gnawing on his knuckles.
“Why not a Saturday?” Irritation gave his voice a burr. He drank quick to feel the burn. “What we do every Sunday. Like they expect it.”
“Did you get crossed with a bear at birth?”
He threw her a sour look. “Beth’ll just have some old widow woman waiting like a chicken hawk ready to swoop down on me.”
“What’s wrong with that? Maybe wouldn’t snap my head off like a broke-back snake if you had a bit of sweetening.”
His grin would have melted cold steel.
“I have you, Lizzie.”
She snorted, studying the stove as if it had just landed from space. He detected moisture in her eyes and her mouth crumpled. “Is that what you think of me? Spinster on the shelf, drying up like a grape too long on the vine?” Cheeks flaming, she slurred words and mixed her images.
“Lord, no, Liz! Where’d you get that? You are single by choice—a brave headstrong filly, were and still are. Why, any buck would be—”
“Not by choice. Don’t you be shinin’ me!”
He flinched from her bitterness. Like walnut gall.
“Just happened.” Liz made a long face that told him he should cut the evening short. Didn’t want to think too much on what she forfeited.
“About Sunday after church, Lizzie. We’ll see. Sounds just the ticket. See the baby. Growin’ like a wild carrot, I bet.”
“Don’t butter me, neither. Thought maybe you might wanna stay home rather than go to your daughter’s every week. Thought maybe Beth might want to be alone with her husband!”
“Okay, okay, Lizzie, got your point.”
Not really.
Elizabeth said the opposite two minutes ago. Luke didn’t wonder about Liz’s conflicting emotions.
“Never mind, saves me a lot of cooking.” She sniffed.
Lucian had been married. He kenned enough not to ask. A waste of a good woman, too. Women ran ranches on their stony lonesome, owned businesses. Was it his fault? Like she said, it just happened with the slow leak of years.
An icy hand squeezed Luke’s heart.
Did not that reflect on him too?
The slow leak of years?
A pleasant face came to mind, like an errant breeze.
A widow woman without kith nor kin, save a young’un. Lovely Martha, or even one of the gals down at the Red Dog, like storm-battered roses but still eminently desirable, or perhap the unmarried schoolmarm, Miss Lottie, though, in truth, she warded off suiters with a withering scowl. He s’posed a good thing or he might have asked her out for a buggy ride.
He ended, soothing, “Why, you’re queen of the house, Lizzie. No one could take your place.”
She threw him a look that said withering dismissal.
“I was just,” she muttered, rising unsteadily, and with the barest slur of her voice, “gonna take this little piece of pie out to the…”
Liz hesitated as if she tripped over the raised brick by the hand pump. “Boy out there. Then, off to bed. Long day. I’m all right,” she said, as if she hurled stones at her brother.
“I’ll take it. Go on, get your proper rest, Lizzie.”
She looked with longing to the stairs. “Well. Don’t scare the—lad none.”
She had that strange look again. Pinched, like a drawstring bag keeping something bursting to get out.
Like a laugh?
What did Liz have to find so danged humorous? Liz was getting on strange, Luke groused.
“I’ll be sweet as this pie.” Luke made a googly face.
“Oh, get out there, you no-good. Don’t forget to fetch the plate back. That was Grannie’s!” she said unnecessarily.
Luke studied her a moment. “May head into town later. Don’t wait up.” His voice had more snap than he meant. He dragged his attentions back to his sister like they were a reluctant calf resisting the branding iron. “I am apologetic, Liz.” He hesitated, then added, “Anything I can bring back, if I ride in?”
“Your good manners.” Liz, nose in the air, swept upstairs, carrying her kerosene lamp with the painted irises. “And maybe a bag of horehound, if you stay over and the dry goods is open.”
Liz had her way of ferreting out what he was up to.
Luke checked the mirror above the wash basin. A habit rarely indulged.
Scary?
Maybe.
His leonine shock of silverish hair did look kinda wolfish. He flattened it. Otherwise? Luke showed teeth in a practice grin.
Teeth, whole and white.
Running a large muscular palm, rasping whiskers along a square jaw, decided against it. Furrows plowed his forehead. A stern mouth framed by a steel gray mustache. Skin tan as an old used saddle. Silvery eyes rimmed in black, like looking down a rifle barrel, scowled under ferocious brows.
Not too scary.
Practiced another smile.
Nothing scary there.
Ah, well. What did it matter? Some runaway. Most like, he’d hightail it off by morning carrying anything not nailed down. Like Liz said.
Toting the pie with a face that would sour milk, all Luke could think on was that flask of Monogram Rye and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Or maybe that trip into town. He wasn’t through drinkin’. Luke stopped short at the barn door.
“Crying? Must have lace on his britches,” Luke muttered as he called out. “Hey, boy!” He lifted the lantern and peered in the dark. Coughed. Scuffled his boots.
Legs scrunched, knees tight, head tucked, the boy hastily wiped his eyes, jumping up ready to scarper, then tripped over some bit of tatter trailing from his rags. Two huge eyes glared back at Luke from a tear-stained, grubby face centered by a small red runny nose under the squashed hat.
Luke halted, disgusted. The evening was wasting. He frowned at the pie. Glanced at the house and, sighing deep, looked back at the boy.
The boy rassled out a broken pen knife from a ragged pouch of some kind deep in his layers of rags, holding it in front. “Don’t you come any closer. I’ll stick you! I’ll stick you good!”
Luke sucked a tooth and strived not to roll his eyes. The voice seemed strained, like the boy was trying, not too successfully, to deepen it. “S’pose you don’t care for this pie, then?” Had half a mind to toss it.
The boy’s gaze snapped to the plate Luke still held, eyes big with hunger. Instead of contrition, to Luke’s consternation the urchin jabbed the knife higher. “That don’t work, mister!” The boy backed to the far opening…tall double doors leading away from the house to the fields and trees and road beyond. He stuck the knife somewhere back in his rags and began tugging at the iron handles.
Luke, striding after him, proper vexed now, was caught at the sight of the fragile column of neck between the hacked-off hair and what served as a collar. Swiveling, the boy, back to the door, desperately looked about and snatched a broken axe handle, making a stand, yelling, “You leave me be! I ken your kind! I’ll hit you good! I will!” The boy swung the axe handle like a scythe.
My kind? Luke rarely lost his temper, but when tired and set upon, he did. Whiskey waiting, nice little fire laid by… His one or two hours of peace, garnered at end of day like a miser with gold. Dang it! Plus, his unfavorite one-eared cat awaited with its usual tail-lashing so it could lounge over his book.
“Hell’s fire! Get over here and quit the blamed foolishment!”
The boy threw a half-empty bottle of horse liniment snatched from the top of a stall door where it had been abandoned. The bottle broke, splashing the smelly stuff on Luke’s boots while Luke did a quick sidestep to avoid the damage. The boy, trying to go around Luke, tripped over a hay rake and, rucking up straw, scrabbled back on his rump.
“Dagnabit! Not gonna hurt you none!” Luke roared. “Stop it now!”
“Yah. Heard that afore! Ain’t hurtin’ enything a yours neither, an’ I want nothin’ to do with you. Get out of my way, you old cuss. I’ll hightail it so fast…”
Luke was aware he blocked the other entrance, and the rear door the boy tried to open was locked and barred for the night.
“Gol dang it! I brung you a slab of pie! Eat it or wear it!”
He stomped closer. Suddenly the boy ran past with his out-slung arm just touching the plate—the pie flew into a pile of none-too-clean straw.
Luke saw red and grabbed sideways and backward. They both went down, with Luke twisting on one knee and an elbow. Nevertheless, he snagged some cloth and a limb, feeling the thinness of bone, hoping he hadn’t broke anything, even though he wanted to smack the snarling, raging, bundle of bones upside the head.
The lad landed on his side, wistfully eyeing the smashed pie, but began to scarper once more, leaving behind a piece of dirty rag in Luke’s fist. Luke made a flying leap from his prone position and snatched the boy about the waist—and let go like his hair was on fire. Or the lad’s was…
Or he had lost all reason. Judas! Bosoms! Breasts. His hands had grabbed bosoms. Soft, warm and smallish, but still.
“Hell’s bells!” he hollered.
Luke stared at his offending hands.
Felt his face grow mahogany, exploding, “You’re a damned little old gal!”
The lad—he couldn’t think of any other word yet—snarled in reply and snatched up a hayfork, thrusting it out like he—she—meant business.
Eyes the shade of clear water in the dirty face looked mightily offended. “Don’t be gettin’ any ideas, neither, you old devil. Leave me be, or I’ll stick you, good.”
She thrust the tines an inch from Luke’s midriff. Luke sucked in.
“All you varmints are alike.”
Luke jumped back. She pressed forward, still poking sharp tines clotted with barnyard filth perilously close to his stomach.
Luke halted.
A stall door might have had something to do with it. Be damned if he’d show discomfort though, even though his stomach muscles tried to turn to iron bars.
“Liz know you’re a gal?” He said, accusatory instead.
“S’pect so. Don’t I look like one, you old bastard?”
No. Not a whisker. “Bastard, hunh? I’m getting a tad weary of you calling me names.”
She shoved back the crumpled hat that had fallen over her eyes.
And Luke beheld a girl who looked like an angry kitten.
Tar-black fringe of hacked hair drooped over one eye and stuck out over each ear. Huge eyes the color of rainwater, or a winter stream, fringed in a thicket of black lashes. He remembered the corral then. Those eyes. Watching between the rails. The small grubby hands he had noted absently, gripping those same rails.
His scrutiny traveled soft pink cheeks under the grime, to a delicate pointed chin—surprised Liz hadn’t scrubbed her within an inch of her life—and pale, fresh-as-cream flesh beneath an open shirt front, if one could call the tatters she wore “clothing.” The straggly red ribbon tied around the hacked-off hair, unseen till now under the hat, almost undid him.
Tears welled, threatening to spill tracks down those cheeks.
Ducking so he could not see, she swiped her hand under her nose.
He’d rather face a jab to his breadbasket than face those tears. “Dad blast it! There now. Startled me’s all. No need to be scared, or stiff jawed. Like I said,” Luke spoke softer, “big old slab of peach pie waiting fer ya, if ya want it, or leave it. All the same to me.”
Her eyes wandered, reluctant, to the flakey smashed pie, like she hadn’t seen pie, or kindness, if ever. Fortunately, Grandmother’s plate was intact. The filthy hayfork drooped, to Luke’s eternal relief.
“For—me? To eat? By myself?” She looked slantwise with suspicion. Liz had cut a whole fourth.
A fish bone stuck in Luke’s craw. “Wasn’t to look at, or grow wings and fly.” Luke sighed. “I’ll fetch another,” he began, when the girl dropped the hayfork and dashed to the pile of straw, snatching up handfuls of pie, mixed with hay, and cramming wads of fruit, juice and crust willy nilly into her mouth till her cheeks bulged like a chipmunk’s.
Luke waited till she picked leftover crumbs from the plate, then the straw, then licked the plate, sensing if he stopped her, he would miss a finger or two.
“Didn’t Liz feed you none?”
“Your woman? Yeah. Some.” Luke could imagine the table scraps Liz set out on the tin plate she used for the odd prairie bums.
She nodded at the empty plate. “Ain’t never had enythin’ so good as this in all my born days.” It was an accusation.
“You are like my daughter Bethy when she was about ten. How old are you, anyway?” Luke blurted.
“Don’t rightly know, do I?” Another accusation. She backhanded juice from her lips with belligerence, licking the back of her hand. “What’s it to you, mister? Maybe sixteen? Why?”
He doubted it. “Look younger’s all.” Act it, too.
She shrugged, indifferent. “Tried to figure it up onct.” She nodded inwardly, more at ease, or the question took her back. “Sixteen’s closest, cause my nearest brother’s fifteen, maybe, and I come before him. I think he was fifteen. He doesn’t rightly ken neither, cause Ma don’t—doesn’t write down nothin’ in a Bible or such.”
She squirmed. “Called me the runt, but I’m strong,” she quickly added, eyeing the hayfork again.
“Mmm.” Doubt flavored his grunt. Luke dug out papers and tobacco, rolling a cigarette one-handed, and squatted against a bale. She looked at the butt hungrily. He didn’t bite. Shouldn’t smoke if you were a woman, least in his circles, but suspicioned some did, including Liz. “How many brothers and sisters?” Really didn’t care.
“Fifteen, one’s on the way…should be popping out any day now,” she said as if mentioning the weather. Even by farming and ranching standards that was a high number.
“Your ma must be busy.”
She mulled. “Not ’zactly. With each kid, she doles out more chores, and Pa don’t do nuthin’. I figure by the next un, she can stay in bed the whole darn day.” She twisted a pained smile.
Judging by her rags—tattered, frayed overalls cut off from an adult’s after they were too tired of work and half-falling into the ragbag, one strap stuck with a rusty safety pin, the other drooping from a knotted string, revealing the top mound of a rounded white bosom poking the colorless rag—the parents didn’t do much for their offspring either way.
He looked off when her shirt slipped off one side, uncovering a satiny shoulder the shade of one of Elizabeth’s cream envelopes and her slender neck, with a ring of grime at the nape. Two different types of footwear, too, Luke noted. Boot on one foot, scruffy Indian moccasin on the other, with not a speck of stocking. Her ankle appeared too thin and white for the cold. “Why’d ya leave home?”
Liz still had that smile, irritating Luke some, like hair down his shirt. Vexed, he dug out tobacco and papers. “So, what hay bale you find him under?” Tunking tobacco along the flimsy parchment, he licked the length, not much caring about the answer but feeling he had to make conversation. Liz didn’t get out much. Only hen parties, quilting at the long stretcher taking up the front parlor, The Ladies’ Aid, or after Sunday meeting with his daughter, Beth.
“I was busy with the chickens,” she said offhand. “One of the Saurbachs,” she reflected. “I think. They have a passel. Seemed unchristian to turn a lad away who’s wantin’ work ’stead of a handout.”
“Ah, Saurbachs.” Luke had an inkling the church halfway supported the vast Saurbach brood, from what he’d heard. “Well, see now, you have a heart soft as milk custard.”
“Better ’n rock candy.”
She nudged a saucer for his ashes, irritating him more. Wasn’t about to douse the butt in coffee dregs!
Well, dang it. He wasn’t.
“Saurbachs, you said.” He made a face.
She emptied his saucer in the slops bucket, plunking down the clean one. “Just came to the back door, that big old hat in hand.”
Luke patted his stomach, sighing, impatient. A Hawthorne novel and a bottle of Monogram rye awaited him in the parlor. “Right. Don’t have to sell me like some flannel-mouth snake-oil salesman. Reckon you did the right thing, Lizzie.”
Liz rolled a sardonic look. “Not with this ’un.”
Luke didn’t bite. He stretched, yawned and couldn’t think of anything else. Restless, like the first zephyr of Spring blew winter away with Her erotic scents. Too early, by thunder, to go to bed, and The Scarlet Letter suddenly had no appeal.
Wonder what the boys are up to? Not too late to saddle up the skewbald gelding.
Maybe that’s what he was these days.
A damned gelding.
Luke tried brushing away morbid notions. Nevertheless, the morning’s dirge of mournful gossip still nettled him. Biting his mustache, he checked the dark. Ah, what’s the use. Twenty miles to town, twenty back and what then? Luke once more reached for the brown glass bottle of Old Overholt. He could drink here. Yet, grinning to himself, he couldn’t josh fetching barmaids here—one with the charming gap between her teeth, or watch the rowdier girls put on a little jig showing their knickers and tight garters on the saloon’s tiny stage, allowing thoughts to range to the rooms upstairs, or to fade.
What was wrong with him? Luke shot a wry look at the bottle, with a feeling no preacher could put to rights.
He nodded to Elizabeth.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
She splashed him another large tot. “Think on naming the new stallion Hell-Fire,” he half jested. Liz frowned but he couldn’t get a rise out of her.
“Sounds about right.”
After that, Luke put all thought of heading into town aside.
“Gets lonesome here,” she murmured, taking a sip. “Appreciate you bein’ here.”
“Sometimes it do.” They sat and drank, each in their own brown thoughts.
“Day after tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“Aye, that it is.” Stubbing out his second hand-rolled, Luke kenned what was coming.
“Your daughter’s expecting you.”
“Always is.”
“What’s the matter, Lukey?”
He tried not to show irritation over the childhood moniker.
“Nothin’. Did I say?” Luke poured another generous shot. He was getting pie-eyed. Dang! Another early night sprawled half-dozing in his worn leather chair, with a danged book he’d read three times on his lap, plus his onery, one-eared cat gnawing on his knuckles.
“Why not a Saturday?” Irritation gave his voice a burr. He drank quick to feel the burn. “What we do every Sunday. Like they expect it.”
“Did you get crossed with a bear at birth?”
He threw her a sour look. “Beth’ll just have some old widow woman waiting like a chicken hawk ready to swoop down on me.”
“What’s wrong with that? Maybe wouldn’t snap my head off like a broke-back snake if you had a bit of sweetening.”
His grin would have melted cold steel.
“I have you, Lizzie.”
She snorted, studying the stove as if it had just landed from space. He detected moisture in her eyes and her mouth crumpled. “Is that what you think of me? Spinster on the shelf, drying up like a grape too long on the vine?” Cheeks flaming, she slurred words and mixed her images.
“Lord, no, Liz! Where’d you get that? You are single by choice—a brave headstrong filly, were and still are. Why, any buck would be—”
“Not by choice. Don’t you be shinin’ me!”
He flinched from her bitterness. Like walnut gall.
“Just happened.” Liz made a long face that told him he should cut the evening short. Didn’t want to think too much on what she forfeited.
“About Sunday after church, Lizzie. We’ll see. Sounds just the ticket. See the baby. Growin’ like a wild carrot, I bet.”
“Don’t butter me, neither. Thought maybe you might wanna stay home rather than go to your daughter’s every week. Thought maybe Beth might want to be alone with her husband!”
“Okay, okay, Lizzie, got your point.”
Not really.
Elizabeth said the opposite two minutes ago. Luke didn’t wonder about Liz’s conflicting emotions.
“Never mind, saves me a lot of cooking.” She sniffed.
Lucian had been married. He kenned enough not to ask. A waste of a good woman, too. Women ran ranches on their stony lonesome, owned businesses. Was it his fault? Like she said, it just happened with the slow leak of years.
An icy hand squeezed Luke’s heart.
Did not that reflect on him too?
The slow leak of years?
A pleasant face came to mind, like an errant breeze.
A widow woman without kith nor kin, save a young’un. Lovely Martha, or even one of the gals down at the Red Dog, like storm-battered roses but still eminently desirable, or perhap the unmarried schoolmarm, Miss Lottie, though, in truth, she warded off suiters with a withering scowl. He s’posed a good thing or he might have asked her out for a buggy ride.
He ended, soothing, “Why, you’re queen of the house, Lizzie. No one could take your place.”
She threw him a look that said withering dismissal.
“I was just,” she muttered, rising unsteadily, and with the barest slur of her voice, “gonna take this little piece of pie out to the…”
Liz hesitated as if she tripped over the raised brick by the hand pump. “Boy out there. Then, off to bed. Long day. I’m all right,” she said, as if she hurled stones at her brother.
“I’ll take it. Go on, get your proper rest, Lizzie.”
She looked with longing to the stairs. “Well. Don’t scare the—lad none.”
She had that strange look again. Pinched, like a drawstring bag keeping something bursting to get out.
Like a laugh?
What did Liz have to find so danged humorous? Liz was getting on strange, Luke groused.
“I’ll be sweet as this pie.” Luke made a googly face.
“Oh, get out there, you no-good. Don’t forget to fetch the plate back. That was Grannie’s!” she said unnecessarily.
Luke studied her a moment. “May head into town later. Don’t wait up.” His voice had more snap than he meant. He dragged his attentions back to his sister like they were a reluctant calf resisting the branding iron. “I am apologetic, Liz.” He hesitated, then added, “Anything I can bring back, if I ride in?”
“Your good manners.” Liz, nose in the air, swept upstairs, carrying her kerosene lamp with the painted irises. “And maybe a bag of horehound, if you stay over and the dry goods is open.”
Liz had her way of ferreting out what he was up to.
Luke checked the mirror above the wash basin. A habit rarely indulged.
Scary?
Maybe.
His leonine shock of silverish hair did look kinda wolfish. He flattened it. Otherwise? Luke showed teeth in a practice grin.
Teeth, whole and white.
Running a large muscular palm, rasping whiskers along a square jaw, decided against it. Furrows plowed his forehead. A stern mouth framed by a steel gray mustache. Skin tan as an old used saddle. Silvery eyes rimmed in black, like looking down a rifle barrel, scowled under ferocious brows.
Not too scary.
Practiced another smile.
Nothing scary there.
Ah, well. What did it matter? Some runaway. Most like, he’d hightail it off by morning carrying anything not nailed down. Like Liz said.
Toting the pie with a face that would sour milk, all Luke could think on was that flask of Monogram Rye and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Or maybe that trip into town. He wasn’t through drinkin’. Luke stopped short at the barn door.
“Crying? Must have lace on his britches,” Luke muttered as he called out. “Hey, boy!” He lifted the lantern and peered in the dark. Coughed. Scuffled his boots.
Legs scrunched, knees tight, head tucked, the boy hastily wiped his eyes, jumping up ready to scarper, then tripped over some bit of tatter trailing from his rags. Two huge eyes glared back at Luke from a tear-stained, grubby face centered by a small red runny nose under the squashed hat.
Luke halted, disgusted. The evening was wasting. He frowned at the pie. Glanced at the house and, sighing deep, looked back at the boy.
The boy rassled out a broken pen knife from a ragged pouch of some kind deep in his layers of rags, holding it in front. “Don’t you come any closer. I’ll stick you! I’ll stick you good!”
Luke sucked a tooth and strived not to roll his eyes. The voice seemed strained, like the boy was trying, not too successfully, to deepen it. “S’pose you don’t care for this pie, then?” Had half a mind to toss it.
The boy’s gaze snapped to the plate Luke still held, eyes big with hunger. Instead of contrition, to Luke’s consternation the urchin jabbed the knife higher. “That don’t work, mister!” The boy backed to the far opening…tall double doors leading away from the house to the fields and trees and road beyond. He stuck the knife somewhere back in his rags and began tugging at the iron handles.
Luke, striding after him, proper vexed now, was caught at the sight of the fragile column of neck between the hacked-off hair and what served as a collar. Swiveling, the boy, back to the door, desperately looked about and snatched a broken axe handle, making a stand, yelling, “You leave me be! I ken your kind! I’ll hit you good! I will!” The boy swung the axe handle like a scythe.
My kind? Luke rarely lost his temper, but when tired and set upon, he did. Whiskey waiting, nice little fire laid by… His one or two hours of peace, garnered at end of day like a miser with gold. Dang it! Plus, his unfavorite one-eared cat awaited with its usual tail-lashing so it could lounge over his book.
“Hell’s fire! Get over here and quit the blamed foolishment!”
The boy threw a half-empty bottle of horse liniment snatched from the top of a stall door where it had been abandoned. The bottle broke, splashing the smelly stuff on Luke’s boots while Luke did a quick sidestep to avoid the damage. The boy, trying to go around Luke, tripped over a hay rake and, rucking up straw, scrabbled back on his rump.
“Dagnabit! Not gonna hurt you none!” Luke roared. “Stop it now!”
“Yah. Heard that afore! Ain’t hurtin’ enything a yours neither, an’ I want nothin’ to do with you. Get out of my way, you old cuss. I’ll hightail it so fast…”
Luke was aware he blocked the other entrance, and the rear door the boy tried to open was locked and barred for the night.
“Gol dang it! I brung you a slab of pie! Eat it or wear it!”
He stomped closer. Suddenly the boy ran past with his out-slung arm just touching the plate—the pie flew into a pile of none-too-clean straw.
Luke saw red and grabbed sideways and backward. They both went down, with Luke twisting on one knee and an elbow. Nevertheless, he snagged some cloth and a limb, feeling the thinness of bone, hoping he hadn’t broke anything, even though he wanted to smack the snarling, raging, bundle of bones upside the head.
The lad landed on his side, wistfully eyeing the smashed pie, but began to scarper once more, leaving behind a piece of dirty rag in Luke’s fist. Luke made a flying leap from his prone position and snatched the boy about the waist—and let go like his hair was on fire. Or the lad’s was…
Or he had lost all reason. Judas! Bosoms! Breasts. His hands had grabbed bosoms. Soft, warm and smallish, but still.
“Hell’s bells!” he hollered.
Luke stared at his offending hands.
Felt his face grow mahogany, exploding, “You’re a damned little old gal!”
The lad—he couldn’t think of any other word yet—snarled in reply and snatched up a hayfork, thrusting it out like he—she—meant business.
Eyes the shade of clear water in the dirty face looked mightily offended. “Don’t be gettin’ any ideas, neither, you old devil. Leave me be, or I’ll stick you, good.”
She thrust the tines an inch from Luke’s midriff. Luke sucked in.
“All you varmints are alike.”
Luke jumped back. She pressed forward, still poking sharp tines clotted with barnyard filth perilously close to his stomach.
Luke halted.
A stall door might have had something to do with it. Be damned if he’d show discomfort though, even though his stomach muscles tried to turn to iron bars.
“Liz know you’re a gal?” He said, accusatory instead.
“S’pect so. Don’t I look like one, you old bastard?”
No. Not a whisker. “Bastard, hunh? I’m getting a tad weary of you calling me names.”
She shoved back the crumpled hat that had fallen over her eyes.
And Luke beheld a girl who looked like an angry kitten.
Tar-black fringe of hacked hair drooped over one eye and stuck out over each ear. Huge eyes the color of rainwater, or a winter stream, fringed in a thicket of black lashes. He remembered the corral then. Those eyes. Watching between the rails. The small grubby hands he had noted absently, gripping those same rails.
His scrutiny traveled soft pink cheeks under the grime, to a delicate pointed chin—surprised Liz hadn’t scrubbed her within an inch of her life—and pale, fresh-as-cream flesh beneath an open shirt front, if one could call the tatters she wore “clothing.” The straggly red ribbon tied around the hacked-off hair, unseen till now under the hat, almost undid him.
Tears welled, threatening to spill tracks down those cheeks.
Ducking so he could not see, she swiped her hand under her nose.
He’d rather face a jab to his breadbasket than face those tears. “Dad blast it! There now. Startled me’s all. No need to be scared, or stiff jawed. Like I said,” Luke spoke softer, “big old slab of peach pie waiting fer ya, if ya want it, or leave it. All the same to me.”
Her eyes wandered, reluctant, to the flakey smashed pie, like she hadn’t seen pie, or kindness, if ever. Fortunately, Grandmother’s plate was intact. The filthy hayfork drooped, to Luke’s eternal relief.
“For—me? To eat? By myself?” She looked slantwise with suspicion. Liz had cut a whole fourth.
A fish bone stuck in Luke’s craw. “Wasn’t to look at, or grow wings and fly.” Luke sighed. “I’ll fetch another,” he began, when the girl dropped the hayfork and dashed to the pile of straw, snatching up handfuls of pie, mixed with hay, and cramming wads of fruit, juice and crust willy nilly into her mouth till her cheeks bulged like a chipmunk’s.
Luke waited till she picked leftover crumbs from the plate, then the straw, then licked the plate, sensing if he stopped her, he would miss a finger or two.
“Didn’t Liz feed you none?”
“Your woman? Yeah. Some.” Luke could imagine the table scraps Liz set out on the tin plate she used for the odd prairie bums.
She nodded at the empty plate. “Ain’t never had enythin’ so good as this in all my born days.” It was an accusation.
“You are like my daughter Bethy when she was about ten. How old are you, anyway?” Luke blurted.
“Don’t rightly know, do I?” Another accusation. She backhanded juice from her lips with belligerence, licking the back of her hand. “What’s it to you, mister? Maybe sixteen? Why?”
He doubted it. “Look younger’s all.” Act it, too.
She shrugged, indifferent. “Tried to figure it up onct.” She nodded inwardly, more at ease, or the question took her back. “Sixteen’s closest, cause my nearest brother’s fifteen, maybe, and I come before him. I think he was fifteen. He doesn’t rightly ken neither, cause Ma don’t—doesn’t write down nothin’ in a Bible or such.”
She squirmed. “Called me the runt, but I’m strong,” she quickly added, eyeing the hayfork again.
“Mmm.” Doubt flavored his grunt. Luke dug out papers and tobacco, rolling a cigarette one-handed, and squatted against a bale. She looked at the butt hungrily. He didn’t bite. Shouldn’t smoke if you were a woman, least in his circles, but suspicioned some did, including Liz. “How many brothers and sisters?” Really didn’t care.
“Fifteen, one’s on the way…should be popping out any day now,” she said as if mentioning the weather. Even by farming and ranching standards that was a high number.
“Your ma must be busy.”
She mulled. “Not ’zactly. With each kid, she doles out more chores, and Pa don’t do nuthin’. I figure by the next un, she can stay in bed the whole darn day.” She twisted a pained smile.
Judging by her rags—tattered, frayed overalls cut off from an adult’s after they were too tired of work and half-falling into the ragbag, one strap stuck with a rusty safety pin, the other drooping from a knotted string, revealing the top mound of a rounded white bosom poking the colorless rag—the parents didn’t do much for their offspring either way.
He looked off when her shirt slipped off one side, uncovering a satiny shoulder the shade of one of Elizabeth’s cream envelopes and her slender neck, with a ring of grime at the nape. Two different types of footwear, too, Luke noted. Boot on one foot, scruffy Indian moccasin on the other, with not a speck of stocking. Her ankle appeared too thin and white for the cold. “Why’d ya leave home?”
