“What kind of plans?”
“Well, I told you it ain’t none of your business. But have you ever really looked at her? I been around a long time and I ain’t seen many that looks like that. And let me tell you, I been around long enough to know they don’t look like that long. Like a peach hangin there on a tree. It’s July and it’s hot and you’re standin there tryin to decide whether to pick it or not. One day it ain’t hardly right and then there’s a minute when it is and then it’s rotten and the yellerjackets is eatin it. You see? I been waitin for this minute and the time’s right now. There’s a world of money to be made and I can’t have anybody muddyin the water. Even you.”
He paused, offering Winer and opportunity to reply. When he did not Hardin said, “Let’s just leave it at that. Let’s just say I’m concerned about her welfare. Hell, I raised her. I knowed her when she was a kid runnin around the yard naked. She’s like a daughter to me. All I’m asking you to do is give me your word you’ll leave her alone. Hell, she ain’t nothin but a kid. You sweettalk her and turn her head and no tellin what’s liable to happen.”
In that moment Winer realized it was impossible to promise anything. Each succeeding moment seemed shaped by the one preceding it. Everything was volatile, in flux, and there was nothing anywhere he could count on. “Don’t hand me that shit,” he said. “You don’t seem to be considering what she thinks. Are you?”
“Do what?”
“You heard me. Don’t hand me that daughter shit, save it for somebody that believes it.”
“Nobody talks to me that way anymore, Winer. I done growed out of puttin up with it. Now me and you…here, you wait a minute.”
Winer was gone. He’d only turned and walked a step or two but he was gone just the same.
There was a chill to the weather that night and after early dark fell Winer laid cedar kindling and built a fire. He made himself a pot of coffee and sat before the fire drinking it and soaking up the heat. He’d put the last of the roofing on that day and his shoulders ached from hauling the rolls of roofing up with a rope. He was halfasleep when Hardin came.
Hardin had been drinking. He was not drunk but Winer could smell whiskey on his breath and his face had a flushed and reckless look.
“Get in here where’s it’s warm. I need to talk to you.”
Winer got in on the passenger side and closed the door with its expensive muted click and leaned his head on the rich upholstery. There was a warm, leathery smell of money about the car.
“Winer, I don’t want me and you to have a fallin out. I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot back there and I think we ort to work it out.”
“I don’t guess there’s anything left to work out. You want me to do something I can’t do and I guess that’s all there is to it.”
“Well, you kind of got me backed into a corner on this thing and you ortnt fuck with a man backed in a corner.”
“If you’re in a corner then it’s a corner you picked yourself. You act like I’m going to mistreat her. I wouldn’t hurt her for the world.”
“Goddamn it, Winer.” By the yellow domelight Hardin’s face looked almost pained. “You’re goin to have to make up your mind. Just what it is you want? Pussy? Winder curtains? A little white house somers with roses climbin on it? I know what you’re thinkin, boy, but believe me, it ain’t like that. And never was. All in God’s world it is is a split. All it is is a hole and over half the people in the world’s got em. And nary a one of em worth dyin over. You shut your eyes or put a sack over their face and you can’t tell one from the other. You believe that?”
“No,” Winer said.
“And on top of that you don’t even know her. I do. I’ve knowed her from the time she was five year old and you wouldn’t know her if you slept with her the rest of your life. You see her but you don’t know her.”
“I know her well enough. You paid me off tonight and we’re even now. Let’s stay that way. You find somebody else to finish your building and I’ll find another place to work.”
“You dipshit fool. You think I couldn’t have found a dozen carpenters better than you? You think for what I been payin you I couldn’t find somebody to build a fuckin honkytonk? Wake up, Winer, you been livin in dream world.”
Winer turned to study Hardin’s asymmetrical face. “Then why did you hire me?”
For a millisecond the eyes were perplexed. “Damned if I know. I reckon deep down I was just fuckin with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just let it be. It ain’t got nothin to do with this.”
Winer got out. Before he closed the car door he said, “I aim to see her. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
“Hell, you done been stopped. You was stopped the minute I kicked them comestained blankets out of the stumphole. You was stopped and never even knowed it.”
5
Deputy Cooper stood at the edge of the porch waiting while Hardin read the paper. Amber Rose was sitting against a porch stanchion with her dress high on her brown thighs. Cooper kept trying not to look. “Pull your dress down,” Hardin said without looking up from the paper. When he had finished it he handed it back to Cooper. “All right. I see what it says. All this whereas and wherefore bullshit. Now, what does it mean?”
“Well. All it is is a summons. It means you got to go to court. There’s goin to be a hearin. He got it up at Franklin. Blalock did. He tried to get Judge Humphries to issue one and course he wouldn’t, he told Blalocl he’d just have to work this deal about the horses out with you. Blalock he throwed a regular fit they said nearly foamin at the mouth and went to Franklin, and seen a circuit judge up there and he wrote one up. It come down this mornin and I brought it on out.”
“I reckon you didn’t have nubo selection. You doin all right, Cooper, and Bellwether ain’t goin to be sheriff always. We might fool around and run you next election they hold.”
“You know I always tried to work with you, Mr. Hardin.”
“Shore you did. But that Bellwether, now…he’s aimin to wake up one of these times out of a job. Or just not wake up at all.”
Hardin sat down in a canebottom rocker, leaned back, closed his eyes. “What’d happen if I just don’t show up at this hearin or whatever?”
“If one of you don’t go then the othern gets a judgement agin him. Like if you don’t show, the judge’ll automatically find for Blalock. He gets them horses back and you don’t get nothin.”
“Goddamn him.”
“I can’t help it. That’s the way it works.”
“I know you can’t. But he ain’t gettin them fuckin horses. If he does it’ll be when I’m dead and gone. All these sons of bitches startin to shove me around, Cooper, and I don’t aim to have it.”
“I don’t blame you about that, Mr. Hardin.” Cooper was turning his cap over and over in his hands, eyeing the door. The girl hadn’t pulled her dress down but cooper was looking everywhere but at her.
On a cold, bright day in late November Winer and Motormouth set out toward Clifton seeking gainful employment. The prospect of working regularly again and the idea of starting a day with a clear purpose and working toward it cheered Winer and he rode along listening bemusedly to the fantasies Motormouth spun for him.
“We’ll get us a little place down here when we get to makin good,” he said. “Buy us some slick clothes. Boy, they got some honkytonks down here so rough you kindly peep in first then sidle through the door real quick. And women? I’s in one down here one time and this old gal, just as I come to the door she come up and grabbed me by the pecker and just led me off.”