Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] (16 page)

Read Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] Online

Authors: With Hope

BOOK: Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers]
3.57Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Shut up!” he yelled at the dogs, and they stopped barking as suddenly as if their throats had been cut.
“Howdy, Hardy. I brung ya a visitor.”
“Howdy, Fat. How’s yore maw?”
“Fair to middlin’. How’er yore folks?”
“I ain’t heard no complaint.” Hardy’s eyes had not left Isabel. “Who’s the split?”
“Dorene Perry’s girl from the city. Come to see Pete.”
“Well, ain’t that just dandy? That Pete. He draws women like flies to a syrup bucket. What’s yore name, girl?”
“Isabel. Is Pete here?”
“He’ll be along. Come on in. Have a drink from the well, Fat, before ya start back.”
If the fat man was offended by being dismissed so abruptly, he didn’t show it. He shuffled off toward the well. Isabel set her suitcase on the porch before she went up the steps and followed Hardy Perry into the house.
Isabel heard the clump of heavy steps going across a wooden floor. Then a screen door slammed. She stood just inside the door and sucked in a breath as she looked around at the clutter. A cot was piled high with clothes and bedding and in the middle of it all, a pair of muddy boots. The cot and a chair were the only furniture in the room beside the highly polished Victrola. The top lid was open, showing the picture of the small white dog with its ear tilted in a listening position. The doors below were open. All the record slots were full.
“Come in. Come in.” Hardy Perry’s big body seemed to fill the room.
“When will Pete be back?”
“He’ll be along. Are ya hungry? There’s a hunk a meat on the stove.”
“I ate at Mrs. Perry’s.”
“You been sleepin’ with Pete?”
“No!” The abrupt question took her breath away.
“If ya ain’t lyin’, Pete must be slowin’ down some. Ain’t never knowed him to pass up a piece a ass if it was handy.” He laughed, showing stained teeth and a gaping hole in front where one had been.
“Will he be gone long?”
Hardy ignored the question. He carefully turned the crank that wound the Victrola and set a needle on the spinning disc. Music filled the room.
“Girl of my dreams, I love you.
Honest, I do. You are so sweet—”
“Ya know how to dance, don’t ya?” Hardy asked, then before she could answer, “’Course ya do. Dorene’d see to it. Come on, gal. Come on, now.” He grabbed her hand, pulled her up against him, and began to sway with the music.
Hardy held her so tightly against him that the buttons on his shirt hurt her breasts. His chin on the top of her head held her face pressed against his chest hair as he swayed back and forth to the slow music.
Isabel’s heart pounded so hard that she could hardly breathe. When she finally gathered her wits, she wondered why she couldn’t feel her feet on the floor. Then, with sudden shock, she realized—
This hairy brute of a man was holding her inches off the floor!

 

Chapter Eight
Isabel could have wept with relief when, after she had danced an hour with Hardy, a car drove into the yard. Over the frenzied barking of the dogs, someone yelled his name.
“Shitfire! I plumb forgot ’bout Sandy comin’. I gotta be goin’, gal.” Hardy carefully lifted the needle from the record and closed the lid on the Victrola. He went to the door. “Hold yore horses,” he yelled at the sound of a blast on the horn. Then to Isabel, “We’ll do some more dancin’ tonight. ’Bye, sugar.”
Isabel stood in the middle of the room until she could no longer hear the sound of the car. Then she sat down on the edge of the cot, took off her shoes, and wiped the sand from the bottoms of her feet.
The room was as dirty and as cluttered as the ones she had grown up in. Dorene had never been concerned about keeping the apartment tidy. As long as there was a place to sit and a bed to lie on, it didn’t matter if the place was strewn with clothes or the table was piled high with dirty dishes. Isabel paid no mind to the clutter but was disappointed that Pete lived in this run-down place with bare floors.
Pete’s daddy wasn’t exactly what she had expected either. After hearing Fat and his mother talk about him, she had feared that he would throw her on the cot and rape her. He had danced with her and that was all. After he changed the first record, he had loosened his grip on her, and she had been allowed to stand on her feet. Isabel had learned to dance at an early age. Dorene had loved to dance but scorned square dancing as countrified. She had taught her daughter to waltz, even how to do the Charleston.
Isabel heard the squeak of the screen door. Without bothering with her shoes, she hurried to the door leading to the back room.
“Pete?”
“I ain’t Pete.”
A boy about Johnny’s age came into the kitchen. He was a younger, thinner version of Pete. His blond hair was long, and he had a scowl on his face.
“You look like him.”
“I can’t help that.” He lifted a cloth from a pan on the table, cut off a hunk of meat, and began to eat.
“You’re Jude?”
“That’s my name.”
“You’re a lot younger than Pete.”
“Smarter too.”
“But not as good-looking. Pete’s handsome.”
“Your opinion.”
“Fat told me your daddy makes you dance with him.” She giggled.
“He’s got you now. He likes ’em young and with bumps on their chests . . . even little bumps.”
“You’re nasty. I don’t like you a bit.”
“You’re breaking my heart.”
“Do you know when Pete’ll be back?”
“When the notion strikes him. Sometimes he’s gone for two, three days.”
“Where does he go?”
“Ask him. Ain’t you too young to be one a his women?”
“I’m seventeen,” she lied.
“You look about fourteen.”
“I can’t help that either,” she snapped. “Me and Pete are going to win the dance marathon.”
“I heard him tellin’ Pa. Pete’ll do anythin’ to keep from workin’. You stayin’ here?”
“Pete said I’d be welcome. I’m a Perry.”
“Lucky you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Ain’t your name Henry?”
“Dorene Perry was my mother.”
“Who was your pa? Bet you don’t even know. If Dorene was like the rest of the Perry women, she was a slut.”
“Who’er you to talk about my mother like that? At least I know who my mother was,” she sneered.
“So do I.”
“Then where is she?”
“In the graveyard. Why’d you leave the Henrys’?”
“Because that prissy-ass woman won’t admit that part of that farm belongs to me. Pete’s going to help me get my part of it. I’ll sell it, and we’ll go to California.”
“Bullfoot! Ed Henry wasn’t your pa. Ever’body knows that.”
“Him and Dorene was married. I’m legally a Henry.”
“Who says?”
“Pete says.”
Jude snorted with disgust. “Pete’ll say anythin’ to get his hands on a dollar or get in a woman’s drawers.”
“Why don’t you like him?”
“’Cause he’s a shit, that’s why. He’s got the balls of a brass monkey.” He stalked to the door and went out. Isabel followed.
“What do you mean by that? Where’er you goin’? I don’t like to be here by myself.”
“Then go back to Fat. He’d be tickled pink to get Pete and Pa’s leavin’s.”
“You’re hateful and mean and . . . I hate you!”
“Clean up the place,
Issy.
The old man’ll want to dance with you when he gets back.” There was no mistaking the scorn in his voice.
“Maybe he’ll want to dance with you,
Miss
Jude Perry.”
He laughed. “With you here, that’s ’bout as likely as me bitin’ a dog.”
“You’re jealous!” she yelled as he disappeared around the end of the shed.
The afternoon wore on. Thinking to make a good impression on Pete when he came home and to work off her anger at his young brother, Isabel washed the dishes and swept the floor in the front room and the kitchen. The other two rooms, where the men slept, were cluttered with everything from saddles to animal hides to shiny new boots. There was only a path to the bed. The bedclothes consisted of a blanket thrown over a soiled mattress.
The rooms stank of dirty feet.
Isabel washed in the washpan, changed her dress, and used the curling iron she had taken from Henry Ann’s house after heating it in the chimney of a kerosene lamp. She checked the results with Henry Ann’s ivory-backed mirror, then rouged her cheeks and applied lipstick. Slipping a ribbon under her freshly curled hair, she tied it in a bow on top of her head. With a drop of Blue Waltz perfume behind each ear, she went out onto the porch to wait for Pete.
He didn’t come. Not that night. Hardy and Jude seemed to think nothing of it. After supper, Hardy wound up the Victrola and pulled Isabel out of the chair to dance with him. Jude disappeared.
They waltzed to the crooning music of Rudy Vallee. Hardy smelled of sweat and woodsmoke. Isabel tried to hold herself as far away from him as she could. He seemed to be in a dreamworld.
Later, Isabel lay on the cot fully clothed and listened fearfully for sounds coming from the other room. Hardy had looked at her with interest during supper, and when they danced, he had bent his head time and again for a whiff of the fragrance she had dabbed behind her ears. Fat Perry had said that he was the meanest man on Mud Creek and that he took whatever he wanted.
He hadn’t tried to talk to her as they danced, not even to ask her what type of dancing she liked, or how long she had known Pete. He just danced, then turned off the Victrola, and went outside. She had heard him relieving himself at the end of the porch. When he came back in he blew out the lamp and went to the other room, leaving her in the darkness.
Was she safe from him because he thought she was Pete’s girl?
Isabel was just beginning to relax when she heard a screen door squeaking. Someone had come into the kitchen. She jumped up.
“Pete?” she asked in a loud whisper.
“It ain’t Pete.” The voice that came out of the darkness was Jude’s. “I need a blanket. You got my bed. I’ll sleep on the porch unless you want to.”
“I don’t want to,” she said irritably, when he came out of the back room.
“Get enough dancin’?” he whispered nastily, as he passed her on his way to the porch.
She followed him out the door. The moon, shining through a thin cloud, gave a sickly light. She saw the shape of him throwing the blanket down on the plank floor.
“Why don’t you like me?” she whispered.
“’Cause there ain’t nothin’ ’bout you to like.”
“What’s wrong with me—to your way a thinkin’?”
“You ain’t nothin’ but a snot-nosed, know-it-all kid chasing after a man twice your age. You’ll get knocked up in a year and spend the rest of your life on Mud Creek havin’ younguns that’ll grow up living on Mud Creek having younguns.”
“What’a you know about anything? You’ve never been anywhere or done anything."
“Think what you want.”
“What’ve I done to you?”
“Nothin’, and you ain’t goin’ to. Go to bed.”
“What’s that howling?”
“A coyote. Go to bed.”
“I’m going to tell Pete how . . . how nasty you’ve been.”
“Tell him.”
“He’ll beat you up.”
“Go to bed.”
She went back into the house and felt her way across the floor to the cot.
Damn him!
Who did he think he was to turn up his nose at her? When she got her money from the farm, she’d show him. He’d change his tune about her.
* * *
Jay recovered quickly and appeared to be perfectly at home at the Henrys’. Aunt Dozie doted on him. She was supremely happy to have a
youngun
to care for again. The child responded to the attention with smiles and childish chatter. To the surprise of both Dozie and Henry Ann, Johnny took a delight in playing with Jay and every day carried him on his shoulder out to the corral to see his pony.
The little boy never once mentioned his mother or going home. But when his daddy came, he was wildly happy to see him. He would run to meet him and be swept up in his arms and plant wet kisses on his cheek. It was a joy to see. Tom was not at all shy about kissing and cuddling his son, and telling him how much he missed him.
The first few nights Jay had slept fitfully in Henry Ann’s bed and had awakened several times a night. Henry Ann had held him to her and crooned to him until he went back to sleep. She had become so attached to the little boy that she began to dread the day that Tom would take him home.

Other books

The Ghost and Mrs. Hobbs by Cynthia DeFelice
Dreamfisher by Nancy Springer
The Citadel by Robert Doherty
Queen's Own Fool by Jane Yolen
Zorilla At Large! by William Stafford
Black Fridays by Michael Sears
Resurrection by Nancy Holder
Inanimate by Deryck Jason