She smiled. “I’ll do that for you. I’ve seen you on the lake, Barney. And around the village. I’ve wondered how come you keep company with that walking corpse fellow.”
She went out, and Barney pulled the blind and began climbing into her old man’s clothes. They had a clean, nice smell of strong soap. So she had seen him around the village. How in blazes could he have seen her and not have it register?
She served him com pone, hominy, thick slabs of fried ham, and collard greens. Halfway through the meal, thunder began to roll over the mountains and rain began to beat a lulling rhythm on the shingle roof. Barney ate until he was filled with a pleasant glow. He helped Josie stack the dishes in the kitchen sink. Rain was hammering against the windows now, and when she went back into the living room she stood with her back to the fire, and it made her very beautiful.
They were shut away here in a world all their own, and Barney took her in his arms and kissed her. Her lips were warm and sweet and her body flowed against his for a moment. She stepped back and Barney found himself gasping to breathe.
She slapped his face hard, though her features held no anger.
“You think I’m fresh, huh?” Barney said, holding his cheek. “You didn’t like that?”
“Maybe I did, but I’m just a helpless mountain girl and you shouldn’t try to take advantage of me.”
Barney wasn’t sure she was so helpless; he grinned, “Okay, so I was fresh — but I won’t apologize. You don’t apologize for something you enjoy very much.”
She was smiling again. She studied the rain pouring down the dark window. “You’ll get drenched. And you’d never find your way to the village or back to the boat dock in pitch darkness, 1 suppose you’ll have to stay here, at least till the rain stops. But you sit over there — and I’ll sit here.”
Barney took the chair she indicated, and she curled in the chair across the fireplace from him. Like a kitten. She asked a question or two and Barney found himself talking about himself. It was a new experience. He’d never been very talkative before, especially with dames. But he told her about little adventures he’d had as a kid, what life in the big town was like, and he found her a good listener.
The fire burned low, but the rain didn’t stop. Barney quit talking finally. She was sleepy-eyed. She yawned, said, “Looks like I’ll have to offer you the settee for the night.”
She rose, lifted down the rifle that hung on wooden pegs over the fireplace.
Barney gave the gun an askance look. He didn’t like guns. He said, “What’s that for?”
“Pa’s logging on Big Hickory.” Josie smiled. “This little fellow will have to stand in his place. Good night, Barney.”
She entered the bedroom, reappeared long enough to toss him a quilt with a crazy pattern and a pillow; then the door closed behind her and Barney heard it lock.
He rolled in the quilt, lay looking at the dying embers of the fire. He felt strangely young and happy. He went to sleep with a smile on his face.
Later he snapped awake, a feeling of alarm jolting through him. He didn’t know how long he had slept, or who was in the room with him. Maybe Pa had finished logging on Big Hickory. Mountaineer fathers and shotguns became an unpleasant correlation in Barney’s mind.
He stumbled off the sofa, watching the shadow over near the window, and bumped into the second man. Startled at the new presence, Barney threw a right, felt it connect, acting on the assumption that anyone who entered in this manner could be up to no good. There was a grunt; then a chunk of steel slapped the side of Barney’s head. He sat down on the floor so hard the house timbers groaned with the strain.
A switch clicked. A light flared up. Josie said, “Leave him alone, cousin!”
Barney took his hand away from the side of his bursting head. Sitting with his legs splayed, he saw Josie in the bedroom doorway, her face tight, the rifle in her hands. Shuffling away from the open window was Bobo Hensley. And just to Barney’s right, standing over him, was a big hillbilly with a black beard, black eyes, and an equally dark look on his face.
Bobo had never been pretty and a hundred-odd fights had made such a mass of cartilage of his face that he was something out of a nightmare. He was bald and had the lumpiest ears in the fight racket. He looked at Josie and said in a voice filled with gravel, “Be careful with that thing!”
“You be careful. Mr. Loy is a guest in this house. You ought to show a little mountain courtesy. The idea, breaking in this way.”
“Shucks,” Bobo said, “we didn’t mean evil. I just got to talk to Barney, is all.”
Bobo’s plaintive words and doleful expression caused Josie to lower the rifle. She came forward to help Barney back on the settee. She touched his hurt with gentle fingers.
Bobo came forward, offered his hand humbly. “Barney, it’s good to see you. This is Skip Merrill. Skip, you apologize to the man for hitting him.”
The big mountaineer slid his pistol in his overalls pocket, hooked his thumbs in his galluses, worried a cud of chewing tobacco in his stubbled paws, and looked Barney over. He didn’t seem to think Barney was so tough. “Reckon I can, at that. Apologies, Barney. Didn’t calculate to bop you. Just intended to make you quiet-like.”
Barney decided to let it pass. He didn’t like the faint sneer of contempt in Skip Merrill’s eyes. Merrill was fully as large as Barney and seemed to be thinking what a pleasure it would be to take this citified prize fighter apart just to show the boys up and down the cricks that he could do it.
I don’t think I’m gonna like Bobo’s pal, Barney thought.
Josie crooned over him and said she would get turpentine to take the soreness out of his lump.
Bobo watched Josie pat the pungent medicine on Barney’s head. Bobo blinked his eyes now and then. He shifted his gaze to Barney’s face. “I saw you on Sanloosa when you hit the log. Saw you meet Cousin Josie. We kind of ambled up this way, and been waiting in Pa Calhoun’s barn until we decided you wasn’t coming out tonight.”
Bobo licked his lips. His eyes were worried. Barney found himself feeling sorry for Bobo, remembering little favors Bobo had done him, the way Bobo, in Barney’s comer, always seemed to suffer every punch that landed on Barney’s face or body.
“Look,” Bobo said, “Charlie Collins being down here has kind of got me pinned down.”
“You took his twenty grand?”
Bobo nodded. “I’m gonna level with you, Barney. I had to have that money. I need it like a bass fish needs his scales. I need to use it in a hurry, for something extra special. So I got to get Charlie out of my hair.”
Here it comes, Barney thought, the pitch.
“Tell you what,” Bobo said in his halting tone, “I don’t want to see anybody getting hurt, even that skunk Charlie. What I’ve got to do won’t take all the money. I’ll make a deal, split with Charlie.”
It seemed to Barney to be rather cockeyed reasoning. He said, “You will make a deal with Charlie — for Charlie’s money?”
Bobo said seriously, “I figure Charlie owes me that money. You don’t know Charlie like I do. He sold me short all down the line. He sold me for the quickest buck. I might be fighting even yet if Charlie had handled me different.”
Barney studied Bobo’s ugly, sad face. Barney was willing to concede a certain point. Charlie would have a tough time collecting the dough from Bobo through legal channels. Possession here seemed to be ten points of ownership.
It was anybody’s dough, under the present setup. Hell, Barney thought, I’ve got as much right to it as anybody. I’m the guy who took the beating for the dough.