Feast for Thieves (12 page)

Fifty yards in front of me lay my destination. In the quiet of my mind, I called it the devil’s house. It was a ramshackle old pigsty that sat on about twenty acres, and a long dirt driveway
gave the occupants a clear view of anyone approaching. I hated this place, but it was part of me, too. As much as I wanted never to set foot through its doors again, it’d be some time still before it was cleared of my life for good. I walked straight up the driveway, rumbled across the wide porch that surrounded the face of the house, and knocked loud at the front door.

Minutes went by and nobody showed. Hanging from the side wall was the pelt of a badger. The porch light flickered, but that came as no surprise. I could hear rustling inside and could smell the occupants’ smoky presence seeping out the siding. I knocked again, this time louder. The front door cracked and a shotgun barrel appeared in the gloom.

“What you want?”

“Sally Jo Chicory—that you? It’s Rowdy Slater. Open up.”

The crack widened and a swatch of a woman’s housedress appeared. She was a few years older than me, as wide as she was tall, and kept the door safely between her and me. She looked me up and down, shooed a fly away from her face, and scratched her hip. “You got money?” she said, opening the door wider.

“I reckon I’ll talk to your man about that.”

She sniffed, turned, and hollered, “Rance! The hero’s here.”

I waited on the porch while she rummaged around for her man. My eyes stayed fixed on the open door’s darkness. Before long a fella’s frame showed. He shoved the woman out of the way, opened the main door fully, kept the screen door between us, and let out an oily chuckle.

“Back so soon, Rowdy? Well, absence builds motivation in a man—that’s good for what I’m running here.”

“I want to see her.”

“You bring money?”

“Ten dollars.”

He exhaled in disgust, his breath like canned tuna. “That ain’t much.”

“Reckon it’s good for half an hour.”

“Yeah, but it ain’t paying your bill in full. Times are hard, Rowdy. Ringtail brings less than two dollars a pelt these days. Gray fox is only ninety cents. Shoot, I brought in two dozen rabbit last week and the fella only gave me six cents apiece.”

“Well, I got a new proposition for you, Rance. More money—lots more than trapping. You’re gonna like it.” I held my breath, waiting for him to bite.

The fella opened the door and stepped outside. He was barefoot, the heat spilled off him, and his gut flapped over his dungarees. I could see the unmistakable bulge of a Colt .45 strapped to his hip. “You’re always one for deals, Rowdy.” He let loose with a long angry laugh from beneath his whiskers. “Look where the last one got you. What’s your deal this time?”

That was exactly what I wanted him to ask. I knew him accepting this new deal would be unlikely, but I reckoned the more intrigued he got, the more willing he’d be to bite.

“Let me see her first,” I said. “Then I’ll lay out the plan.”

He scratched behind his ear. “Gimme your ten dollars. You can visit half an hour. Sit on the porch, just like last time. Don’t think I can’t see you if you run.”

I nodded and forked over my cash.

He hollered over his shoulder. “Sally Jo! Find the rat!” Rance jiggled the porch lightbulb so it stopped flickering, motioned for me to sit on the steps, then disappeared inside into the darkness. I could see an eyeball through the window watching me from the shadows.

Two minutes later, Sally Jo swung open the screen door and pushed a figure toward me. “Time’s ticking, Rowdy. She needs to go to bed.” Sally Jo let the screen door slam behind her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she and her shotgun kept watch on me too.

I stared in her direction. Toward the small figure, I mean. Her hair was the color of honey. Her skin like a peach. She was quizzical
and wide-eyed and grubby and stunk of cow manure. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“You remember me, sweetheart?” I asked. My voice grew gentle.

The child nodded.

“You remember my name?”

The girl shook her head no.

“I’m your Uncle Rowdy. You remember how I brought you a gift last time?”

The girl nodded, this time more quickly, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

I fished into my pocket, pulled out the yellow ribbon, and held it out to her. The smallest corner of her mouth twitched. “It’s yours,” I said. “Wear it in your hair if you’d like.”

The girl took the ribbon and stared at it, fingering the shiny cloth. A bug zapped against the porch light. The child was four-and-a-half years old, born September 1, 1941. I remembered the date, I remembered it well.

“That ribbon’s real pretty, Susannah, just like your name. You remember what I called you when you were first born—I told you last time I was here—Sunny Susannah. They ever call you Sunny around here?”

She shook her head.

I paused and eyed her closely. “Well, it’s no matter. That’s what I’ll call you every time I visit. I brought you another present. You like licorice?”

The girl shrugged.

I fished into my pocket again, brought out the licorice whips, and handed one to her.

She took it and stared, her hands unmoving.

“It tastes good. Here—I’ll show you.” I took one of the whips, bit the end off, chewed, and smiled.

Cautiously she bit the end of hers and chewed. Her eyes brightened.

I hoped she’d sit down next to me. I hoped I could tell her how much I loved her and hug her close, but I didn’t want to press my luck. Sometimes when you’re just getting to know a person, it’s better to eye her from a distance. You watch her out of the corner of your eye, and she watches you. Each time you meet you sit a hair closer. The poor child knew me mainly by my letters; I was pretty sure they’d been read to her, but getting used to a person in real life is different for a child. Last thing I’d ever want to do is scare the little gal.

“Everything’s going to be fine, Sunny,” I said. “I’m going to make sure of that. I’ll come again and visit you real soon, and I’ll bring you another present then. If things aren’t fine I want you to tell me. Okay?”

“The girl can’t talk yet, fool!”

Sunny and I both jumped at Rance’s voice. He was standing in the doorway, his hand resting on his .45.

“Time’s up, Rowdy. You ain’t paying me so you can put fool ideas in her head.” He glared at the girl and added sternly, “Get in the house, rat.” She scampered inside.

I stood to my full height and glared at the man. “Be warned how you talk to her.” I wasn’t smiling in the least.

He glared back at me. “The girl ain’t yours, Rowdy.” He laughed. “I’ll do what I want. Now, what’s your new plan? I’m all ears.”

It had been nowhere near the half hour I paid for, but I wanted to keep on the man’s good side, so I unclenched my fists and tried to keep my tone casual. “Got me a job not far from here. Pays room and board and a monthly stipend. I can cut firewood and bring in extra. New plan’s for her to come with me right away. I’ll pay off what I owe on installments—plus thirty percent interest. That’s the new part of the deal. You make more money if you let her go today.”

“And who’ll guarantee that?!” Rance laughed in my face. “Law’s on my side, Rowdy. The day you pay your debt in full is the day I release her. Nothing sooner!”

I stared hard at the man. He stared hard back at me. Neither of us blinked. Neither of us moved. Finally I said, “What if I make it forty percent?”

“Make it fifty.” He chuckled. “Make it sixty. Make it a hundred. It don’t make no difference—you ain’t taking her until your debt’s paid in full. We got lots of girls in this house, lots of ways to make money more than trapping. True enough, that don’t happen ’til the buds ripen on the vine a bit. But last time you came around I warned you that time’s coming quick for the rat. You’ve still got time before I put her to work, but it ain’t much, so you best be quick in your full financial delivery—you hear?”

My eyes blazed. “If you put her to work I’ll—”

“You’ll do what?” He unsnapped the holster of his .45. “Look Rowdy, we’re no stranger around here to shooting fellas who disagree with us, and it’s your own fault the child boards with the Chicorys. Let me refresh your memory of how you got yourself into this mess. It’s such a prime story.”

“Won’t be necessary.”

“Well, it brings a smile to my face to recount it again, it rightly does. Let’s see—you were dating Sally’s Jo’s sister, I remember—Nancy Clugman. A comely girl, folks considered, but a genuine skunk of a gal, everyone agreed. You knocked Nancy up. She had your baby then fled town leaving you holding the bag. What she say to you again?”

I stayed silent. Rance was doing this to taunt me. I knew the man’s ways. His telling of the story dripped with venom in a way my own remembering wouldn’t.

“‘You’re the daddy, Rowdy, so you deal with the problem.’” Rance laughed, swatted a mosquito, then continued. “Like a sap, you did the honorable thing, although Lord wonders how you
kept going like you did. Working all those extra shifts at the mill, paying for a wet nurse, keeping the child at your boardinghouse. Must have come as a relief when Pearl Harbor hit and you knew every unmarried man in America would soon get drafted. Remember how you came crying to me then? Do you?”

I hated this man with every yard of being.

“Gal at the boardinghouse said she couldn’t look after the baby no more, what with the war starting and real money to be made. So in desperation you brought the child to us, her only kin, and offered twenty dollars a month for us to take care of the child while you were away. You enlisted in the army, started writing all those letters to her—oh, we read some of them, I remember. But twenty dollars doesn’t stretch far when raising a child these days, and when I heard you became a paratrooper, well, I had no choice but to double the fee. You paid it heartily all the time you were overseas, but then—” He let loose with a long, lusty cackle. “You got yourself thrown in jail!” He laughed again.

“I’ll be going now,” I said. “Be back in two weeks for another visit.”

He grabbed my arm roughly. “But this is where it gets good, Rowdy. Real good. See, right about the time you go to jail, Nancy Clugman wanders back to town. She doesn’t know of your noble arrangement with me and doesn’t care. All she wants is whiskey money. For two bottles of Wild Turkey, she signs over the custody papers. The child’s all ours now—all shiny and legal. You’re still fool enough to have mercy on the brat and keep paying for her keep, so your six months in the clink equals two hundred and forty dollars owed. Seven months later with no job, your bill comes to five hundred and twenty. Oh, I realize it’s tough for a man with a black mark on him to find work, but now we was talking real money, weren’t we? And then—” He let loose with his longest laugh yet. “Once you finally figured out what we do with our girls around here, you had the frantic notion to come to me one night and bet
the high card. ‘Double or nothing’ you said! Oh you begged me to play. You pulled jack of hearts and thought you’d won. Until I pulled king of spades. Then you owed me a grand total of one thousand and forty dollars.” He cackled again and scrunched his face in mockery. “Oh, how will the poor hero ever pay his debt now?”

I was down the porch steps and striding up the long driveway.

“You’re a desperate man,” Rance called after me. “A desperate man who wants his daughter back! And I like that about you, Rowdy Slater. It’s good for business. Save her from a life of working for me, that’s fine. We don’t want her anyway! Just pay me my money, and I’ll sign those papers straight across!”

The farther away I walked, the more the devil’s laughter lessened. I hated leaving his house empty-handed, but the man had me over a barrel. I was a desperate man indeed. Sure enough that’s why I did what I did. If a choice came to Rance Chicory laying a salacious hand on my child, or me taking a chance in crime with Crazy Ake, well even the fool plan of Crazy Ake’s looked to have merit. It did.

I found my way back to the DUKW, dusted off the foliage, started up the engine, and started driving back to Cut Eye. I knew the math already. If I saved my ten dollars salary and cut and sold five loads of firewood each month, then it would take three years for me to get Sunny back. Three years was better than nothing. I didn’t like the job in front of me, but it was all I had. That is, if Rance didn’t think up some devilish new reason for me to need the money quicker. The DUKW roared down the highway into the night. I kept the pedal flat against the floorboards as I let loose a roar of war.

If Rance touched her before then, I had no problem killing the man.

No problem
, I thought. No problem indeed.

TWELVE

I
t was long past midnight when I got back to Cut Eye. The town was quiet and I topped the tanks of the DUKW at Gummer’s station, then drove through town and over to the parsonage.

There were two packages on the doorstep and a lone note tacked to the front door. The first package was from Augusta Wayman. It was filled with more clothes and shoes.
Missed you tonight at dinner—come by real soon for some more peach shortcake
, was carefully written on a note card and set on top. The second package was from Mert Cahoon. In it were sheets for the parsonage bed, an alarm clock, a clothes iron, and a homemade quilt.
Make sure your shirt’s always well ironed
, was scrawled on top.