Diverting her eyes, Mim tried to turn Hildie’s head into her shoulder, but the child turned to the auctioneer with a dazzling smile.
“Well, Hildie,” Perly asked. “How’d you like to be rich? Fancy clothes and toys. Trips downtown to see Santa at Christmas? Almost like being a princess. Bet you might even get a dog like Dixie.”
Hildie beamed.
“Did you know I’m a magician?” he asked with a smile. “I’ll see what I can do.” He was well into the room by now, and he turned back toward the door to address John. “Such a pretty place,” he said. “How many acres did you say you have? That pasture—about thirty-five right there—and what else? How much in pine?”
“You’re hankerin’ to know my business,” John said, “go look it up in the county seat.”
Perly smiled, his straight teeth bright in his dark face. “Two hundred thirty-four, more or less, if my memory serves me right.”
He leaned back against the table and looked around the kitchen. “Nice range,” he said. “Real antique. It sure does keep the room warm too. People are buying those nowadays to decorate their game rooms.” Perly stood still for a moment, assessing the room with a half smile that was almost nostalgia.
Finally his eyes caught on Hildie’s curious gaze and he reached out and ran a palm over her bright hair. “I thought I’d feel so much at home here,” he said, just a touch of wistfulness softening his voice. “Here and in Harlowe.” He turned a long look on Ma and one on Mim, then turned and stepped toward the door.
With the knob in his hand he whirled suddenly to John. “I never asked you for your pretty tractor,” he said sharply. “Just keep that in mind. I’m not sure it’s even a present I appreciate.”
And then, as they watched, Perly swept out the door and down the path.
But Gore with his hand on the butt of his gun and the Moores clustered in the doorway remained where they were as motionless as animals in a spotlight.
Perly climbed into the truck and slammed the door. Still Gore stood where he was, sweat rolling in big drops down the sides of his head.
Perly tooted the horn.
“Jesus,” Gore said, and stepped backward off the stoop.
John snickered. “Back off,” he said. “Go ahead. Just like we was royalty.”
Gore turned and trotted down the path.
“Hey,” John called. “You’re forgettin’ what you come for.”
Gore turned back to the family and side-stepped to the barn, then remembered he didn’t have the keys.
“Not too put together for such a big shot,” John said.
“John, for Lord sake,” Mim hissed behind him.
Gore pulled the gun out of its holster and moved slowly up the path toward John, training the pistol on him. At the doorstep he stooped to pick up the keys, feeling for them blindly in the grass, his small blue eyes straining upward on Moore.
Keys in hand, he backed off toward the barn.
“What happened to all your talk, Bobby Gore?” John asked, following him slowly toward the barn at a distance of ten feet. “Gettin’ tongue-tied in your old age? Lost your taste for gossip?”
“You just stay where you are,” Gore said, and John stopped. He stood as if casually, his hands deep in the pockets of his overalls.
Gore stood indecisively, near the tow bar, not wanting to put his gun away to bend to his task.
Perly backed the truck around to the tractor and poked his head out the window to look back at Gore. “Put that gun away, Bob,” he said. “These are law-abiding people. You’re liable to shoot someone playing around with that gun.”
Gingerly, Gore set his gun on the fender of the tractor and set to work. Perly rolled his window shut and leaned on the steering wheel to wait.
“Dunsmore got bullet-proof glass?” John asked. “He don’t seem to put much stock by you.”
Gore swept the gun off the fender. Holding it with both hands as though it were almost too heavy for him, he trained it at John. Mim screamed.
“Shut up!” Gore shouted at her, then raised his arms and pulled the trigger.
The bullet went through an upstairs window leaving a neat hole in the center of a starburst of cracks.
John stood perfectly still, his arms folded, watching as Gore leaped into the truck and the two men drove away. Perly did not drive quickly, digging out, as Gore might have wished, but deliberately, careful for the cumbersome tractor swaying precariously behind them up the dirt road away from the Moores.
“Now you fixed it so we got to go,” Mim shouted at John when he came back into the house. She flew at him and stopped. “You’ve got no right to get yourself killed,” she screamed. “No right.”
“He’s got no right to lay hands on you and Ma and Hildie.”
“Then take us away,” Mim cried.
“We won’t run,” John shouted.
“We will,” Mim screamed. “We will. We will.”
John looked down on her and began to laugh.
“Stop that,” Mim cried. She reached for him to make him stop, but he twisted away, laughing harder than ever, doubled over with the force of it.
Mim swung her fist out on the end of her arm and landed it against his shoulder, hard.
“Ow, ow,” John said, choking with laughter. “Cut it out.”
Mim stepped back and her eyes filled with tears. She stood crying, not covering her face, staring at John with disbelief.
“Don’t carry on now,” he said, rubbing his arm. “I’m goin’ out to buy us some Thanksgivin’ dinner.”
John threw the truck into gear and set it roaring up the road with a sense of purpose that made him slap the steering wheel in an exuberant rhythm. But instead of fading as he moved away from home, the image of the three pale faces grew more vivid, until he could almost feel the heaviness of their breath waiting on his own.
He did his errands in a hurry. At Linden’s he filled the truck with gas and bought a chicken, a bunch of bananas, and a gallon of milk. Fanny handed him change and bagged his items, dispensing information all the while in her usual bored monotone.
John did not answer, but he heard, and his own breath went short at the thought of his family sitting alone so far away.
As soon as he was out of sight of the Parade, he floored the old truck so that it skidded on the gravel at every turn. He pulled up almost to the door, jumped out of the cab and burst into the room. In the doorway he stopped short. Ma was peeling potatoes at the table, and Mim was sitting on the bench by the stove rocking Hildie in her arms, singing the alphabet song with her. He could see she would say no more about going for now. The lamp cast a cheerful glow in the gray afternoon, deepening the colors of the room.
“Everything’s okay!” he exclaimed, with an unfamiliar shock of pleasure.
“If you can call it that,” Ma said.
John unloaded his purchases onto the table. “For once we’ll eat decent,” he said. “After all, Thanksgivin’s still a holiday. You should a had a whiff of the smells from the kitchen down to Linden’s.” But Mim was counting what was left in the jar when he returned the change. “A hundred and thirty-two,” she said. “Fifteen dollars down in one week. A hundred and thirty-two’s not much to go on.”
“What the hell,” John said. “It’s somethin’.” He was high now. Home had never seemed so precious and so comfortable. “Damn fool Jim Carroll. First he let that child go, and now he’s gone and let his land go too. Him and the kids that’s left, they up and went. They moved Emmie up to that nursin’ home by the Circle, and took off. Even she don’t know where to.”
“That’s what she says,” Mim said. “She knows him and the kids are best off gone.”
“The Carroll place must have a hundred acres clear,” John said. “Dunsmore will make some hay on that.”
“How can you joke?” Mim said wearily.