Dorothy Garlock (37 page)

“Well . . . I’m certainly not a threat to anyone.” She laughed nervously. “I really must go—”

“Before you go— I want to tell you that I’m sorry if I hurt you the other night.”

“You didn’t.” She shook her head in denial.

“Yes, I did. I could tell. Some of the things I said didn’t come out the way I wanted them to.” He flattened her hand on his chest. His skin was warm beneath her palm. She could feel the steady beat of his heart and her fingertips pressed in an unconscious effort to keep that life-sustaining part of him safe.

“That happens . . . sometimes.”

“I’ve never cared whether anyone liked me or not . . . until I met you.” He expelled a heavy breath, but his eyes never wavered from hers. “Then it purely scared hell out of me when I discovered you had invaded every dream I had and how much I longed to hear you say what you said—about
maybe
loving me.”

Willa was deeply affected by his words. They hung in the air between them. He lay there watching her with anxious eyes. She didn’t know that she was crying until she felt the tears running down her cheeks.

“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. If you didn’t mean it, I’ll understand.” He spoke as if his throat were raw.

Fighting to regain her composure, she wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hand.

His eyes took on a questioning look as she groped for words.

“I won’t deny that I feel something for you. But I realize that nothing can come of it. We wouldn’t be compatible at all, and in time we would despise each other. Love can’t last where there is no respect.” She couldn’t bear to look into his face. She lowered her chin and looked down at the hand that lay in her lap.

“Having someone to . . . to look out for you isn’t enough?”

“Not for me. I’m sorry.”

“I wish it could be . . . different.”

“So do I.”

“I can’t change what I am. I can’t go back and undo what’s been done. I have to live with it or . . . blow my brains out.”

“Did you kill Mr. Eastwood? Is that what you have to live with?”

“Yes.”

“And Mrs. Eastwood is justified in hating you.”

“Yes.”

Willa looked into his eyes. His chilling answers to her questions pierced her heart like a shard of ice. Her spine sagged. Her brain was full of turmoil. It was as if her heart had been pounded into a pulp and her mangled emotions heaped on top. She pulled her hand from beneath his and stood.

“I must go.”

“I’m sorry I’m not the man you want me to be.” Shadows of pain clouded his eyes.

“I could say the same. It wouldn’t matter to some women that you drink yourself senseless and that you killed a man who had been your benefactor and friend, but it matters to me.” Lines of bitterness etched her face.

“Will you come back?”

“No,” she said on her way to the door.

Smith watched her leave and closed his eyes wearily. What the hell could he have said but the truth.

An agony of despair washed over him. The pain in his leg was not to be compared to the pain in his heart. He felt once again like the lost, frightened boy who had stood alone on the bank of the river so many years ago.

23

I
nez opened the bedroom door to see if Maud was still asleep.

She wasn’t.

“I heard ya unlock the door,” Maud demanded as Inez came into the room. “Why’d ya lock me in here for? Where’s Willa?”

“The girl needs a minute to herself once in a while. She locked the door and gave me the key. She was ’fraid you’d jump up and run off.”

“Yore lyin’. She knows I can’t get outta this bed.”

“Guess she thought ya’d get on a broomstick and fly out the winder. Ya bein’ such a ornery witch and all.”

“Where’s she at? I’m payin’ her wages to tend me.”

“Horse-hockey! Smith’s payin’ her wages.”

“You’d not talk to me like that if I was on my feet.”

“If ya was on yore feet, a team a mules couldn’t a dragged me in here. I brung ya some fresh water.”

“I don’t want no damn water. Smith brought ya here to pester me, and I want ya outta my house.”

“I’m not carin’ what you want. I’m here, and there ain’t nothin’ ya can do.”

“Get out!” Maud shouted. “Ya ain’t nothin’ but low-down white trash.”

“Hold on just a gol-durned minute. Who’er you callin’ low-down white trash, Maud Putney? Before ya married Oliver Eastwood ya was just as poor and down-and-out as anybody I ever knowed. So hush yore mouth. Hear?”

Maud lifted her head and shoulders up off the bed and shouted. “Don’t ya talk to me that way.”

“I’ll talk to ya the same as ya talk to me. Ya was always mouthy. Ya’ve got worse in yore old age. Now ya can scream and holler all ya want, but I ain’t takin’ no shit off ya. I’ve knowed ya since ya was ass high to a duck. Course when ya married rich, ya didn’t know us down and outters no more. Ya forgot how it was to live in a dugout and eat tater peelin’s like the rest of us done one time or other.”

“I ain’t forgettin’ ya was the brat of a whore,” Maud said nastily. “Ever’body knowed what your ma was. None of the Sawyers ever amounted to a hill a beans.”

“Yeah, my ma was a whore. She worked to feed us kids. Yore old man stole coal from the railroad and peddled it for whiskey money. His kids would’a starved if that old whore hadn’t brought in grub now and then.”

“That’s a lie!”

“It ain’t and ya know it. I ain’t holdin’ it against ya, Maud. Ya warn’t so bad till ya married Carl Holt. Guess him beatin’ the tar outta ya ever’day turned ya mean. Can’t say I blamed ya fer that. I’d a cold-cocked that bastard with a stick a stove wood. Ya fell outta a bucket a shit when Carl died and into a bed a roses when Oliver Eastwood married ya. I ain’t never figured how ya managed that.”

“Ya was jealous. All of ya was.”

“How’d ya know that? Yore nose was so high in the air
it’s a pure wonder ya didn’t drown when it rained. Well, I’m here to tell ya, ya ain’t no better’n me. Not even as good. I got friends that’d come a runnin’ if I needed ’em. What’a ya got, Maud?”

“I got the finest place in the country, damn you.”

“Ya got this big old house that’s goin’ downhill faster than a goose shitting apple seeds, and that’s all. Nobody gives a goddamn about ya. Not even yore own kid. She’s livin’ high on the hog in Denver, ain’t she? Why ain’t ya been to see her, Maud? No invite?”

“Shut yore m-mouth!” Maud choked back a sob.

“Take a good look at what ya got, Maud. Ya’d be in a hell of a mess if Billy and Smith pulled foot and left ya sittin’ out here on the prairie by yoreself.”

Inez set the glass pitcher down on the bureau with a thump, turned with her hands on her hips and glared at the woman lying on the bed. Tears streamed from Maud’s tightly closed eyes and ran down her wrinkled cheeks. The hands that lay at her side were knotted into fists.

“I ain’t wantin’ to say them mean words, but ya had ’em comin’. Ya turned yore back on yore friends a long time ago and treated us like dirt. We wasn’t good enough no more. The air’s clear now, Maud. Stop yore bawlin’,” Inez said gruffly. “Ya ain’t no better or worse than anybody else.”

Inez looked down at Maud and remembered the slim young girl with the laughing dark eyes who had wanted so much. She had changed drastically after she married Carl Holt and moved out on his homestead. She had come to town a few times, but after she had one of her swooning spells in the general store, she had never been back.

Folks were shocked to hear that she had married Oliver Eastwood, a friendly, generous man who mixed easily with the town folk. He had built this house, but as far as Inez
knew, only a few people from Buffalo had seen the inside of it.

“Are ya goin’ to lay there feelin’ sorry for yoreself, or do ya want this water?”

Maud looked up. “I ain’t no good, Inez. Guess I never was. I tried so hard to be somebody.”

“I’m thinkin’ ya tried too hard, Maud. Ya tried so hard all the softness in ya just flattened out. I ain’t sayin’ Carl wouldn’t’a turned me mean, or havin’ all this wouldn’t’a turned me snooty. Guess what I’m tryin’ to say is—what’s done’s done. Pull in yore horns and be decent.”

“Oh, God. I’ve been so lonesome.” Maud covered her face with her hands.

“It’s been yore own makin’, but it ain’t too late to change.” Inez pulled up a chair and sat down. “It’s real pretty up here with all the nice fixin’s.” She looked around the room. “I swear to goodness. Ya’ve even got yore own heatin’ stove for winter.”

“Fanny ain’t comin’ back, Inez.” Maud’s voice held resignation.

“How’d ya know that? She’ll be back sometime—”

“No. She’s shamed of me. Never wanted me to come visit at that fancy school.”

“Well now, that makes no sense a’tall. I’d bet my last dollar that this house is right up there with the grandest in the state.”

Maud was silent for a long while before she spoke. She seemed to be carefully studying the ceiling above her bed.

“Where do you live, Inez?”

“With my sister. Ya remember Yolinda.”

“Was she the one with the big gap between her teeth?”

“Yeah. She’s got a bigger one now. Hardly got no teeth a’tall.”

“I heard somewhere you’d married.”

“Yeah. Pud Snodgrass. But I branded the seat of his britches with my foot years back. I ain’t makin’ a livin’ for no bastard too lazy to turn a hand.”

“Pud was a good ball-player.”

“That and gettin’ under a loose skirt was all he was good at. I tell ya, Maud, I wasn’t sorry to see the back of him. Last I heard he’d pulled foot for Californy.”

“Time’s gone by fast.”

“Ya know what I got to thinkin’ ’bout the other day? Remember when we was kids and that skinny, sissyfied school teacher took us on a trip to the woods to teach us ’bout flowers and birds and stuff like that? We caught us some red ants in a whiskey bottle and Jobe Tasser, who was the meanest kid that ever lived, slipped the neck of the bottle down the back of the teacher’s britches.”

Maud began to laugh. “I’d forgot ’bout that.”

“In no time a’tall that feller was dancin’ Yankee Doodle. When he took off for the creek like a cat with his tail on fire, us kids piled in the wagon and beat it for town.”

“I remember when Ralph Volk put a dead frog in his coffee—”

“—And a dead rat in his coat pocket.” Inez doubled over laughing. “Remember when Carl drove a nail up through the seat of his chair? When he sat on it, he came up fightin’ mad. Carl laughed so hard he fell off the bench. I think he got a whippin’ for that.”

“Was probably the last whippin’ he got,” Maud said solemnly.

“One mornin’ old sissy britches went to get the books out of the drawer and found a big old rattler curled up in there. He took off like a scalded cat. Lord-a-mercy! He fairly flew outta that schoolhouse and never come back.”

“We never did learn how to read and write good, did we?” Maud said regretfully.

“It’s grand to have somebody to talk to about old times, ain’t it, Maud?”

“It’s been a long time since I seen anybody that knowed me back then.” After a pause she asked, “Why’d Willa lock the door?”

“She don’t want that young gal, that Jo Bell, comin’ in here botherin’ ya. That’s the God’s truth.”

“She was here lookin’ at me one day when I woke up. Why’er they lettin’ her stay here?”

“She don’t have no place else to go, leastways that’s what Willa said. That gal fairly needs her butt blistered the way she carries on.” A broad smile spread across Inez’s face. “She’s plumb put out with Smith ’cause he don’t pay her no mind.”

“Smith! Ha! Don’t mention that rotten piece a trash to me after what he done.”

“Ya just ain’t got no forgiveness in ya a’tall, have ya?” Inez said with disgust. “I’ll say this once, Maud. Nobody feels more sorry ’bout what happened to Mr. Eastwood than Smith.”

“Then why is he tryin’ to kill me?”

“Kill ya?” Inez screeched. “Bullshit! Yore crazy as a bedbug if yore thinkin’ that. He’s worked his ass into the ground to keep this place goin’ for ya.”

“He thinks it’ll be his when I’m gone, but he ain’t gettin’ nothin’. Fanny’ll come back when there ain’t nothin’ here for her to be shamed of.”

“Land sakes. What’d ya do without him here to run things? Why he stays and puts up with ya for is beyond me, Maud.”