Seventeen Against the Dealer (12 page)

“The what?”

“You know, that's what they used to do with old horses. Send
them to the knacker's to be turned into—oh, glue and dog food and probably cheap leather, too, now I think of it. Haven't you ever heard of the knacker's?”

Dicey didn't bother answering him. Obviously she hadn't.

“This truck must be about a hundred years old.”

The low gray sky hung over them.

“It's probably a verifiable miracle that it's still running.”

“My brother keeps it going.” She shifted into third.

“You have a brother?”

“Two.”

“Is that all of you?”

“No, I've got a sister, too.”

“Are they all like you?” he asked. “Extroverted, talkative? Warm-heartedly convivial?”

Dicey looked across to meet his laughing eyes. “No,” she said, keeping her own face straight.

“Oh. Well then, about cats. Did you know that the early Egyptians believed that cats were sacred?”

Dicey hadn't known that and now that she did, it didn't strike her as any too hot a piece of news.

“Certain cats, that is, not all cats. Like the Hindus with cows.”

What about the Hindus with cows? she thought.

“You don't know about that, either?” He sounded pleased that she didn't. “What kind of an education did you have?”

“A normal one.”

“Any college?”

“I quit, last May. After I finished my second year.” Now he'd ask her why and she would have to decide whether to explain. She pulled the truck into Claude's parking lot and backed it around, until the trailer was in place, hoping he wouldn't ask her why.

“I don't blame you,” he said. “I got out of school as soon as I
could, myself. Listen, Miss Tillerman, I know you don't want to damage your paint job on the finished boats, but is there any reason we can't bring back two of the unfinished ones at one time?”

It was as if he could read her mind, or as if their minds worked the same way. “We can try,” she said.

It didn't work, because the angle of the sides wasn't wide enough to allow an overlap that let the boats stack securely. So they spent a couple of hours moving rowboats around, leaning the finished ones on each other, like a row of circus elephants parading down the length of Claude's shop, bringing back the next group of four to Dicey's. Dicey didn't mind the time it took. She had figured to lose a day over this job. She figured now she was coming out ahead.

She split her lunch with him, giving him one of the two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and half of the wedge of pie. He declined any of the milk Gram had put into a thermos for her. He'd had enough dried milk to last him a lifetime, he said.

They ate sitting on the two boats she'd work on next, facing each other, both pairs of knees in worn jeans, the two pairs of feet in sneakers, only his were the thick-soled kind. He ate the way he did everything else, quickly and neatly.

“Why don't you go home for lunch?” he asked her.

“It takes longer. Besides, my grandmother needs time to herself.”

“You live with your grandmother?”

“Yes.”

He waited, but she had nothing more to say.

“It's funny, you've got instant milk, which is about as skimpy as milk can get and still have the name, but this bread is homemade and the pie—” He put the final bite into his mouth and chewed contentedly.

“Instant milk is cheaper and just as nourishing. Homemade bread is cheaper, too. Gram buys flour in hundred-pound sacks.”

“Is it okay if I make myself a cup of hot chocolate?” he asked.

“Sure.” She listened to him as he filled the kettle with water and set it on top of the wood-burning stove. She heard the clink as he set a mug down, and the tiny ripping sound when he opened a packet of mix. His voice came from behind her.

“If you live with your grandmother, what about your mother?”

Dicey's eyes were on the rough joints where Claude had nailed household to marine plywood, the cheap materials hastily assembled. She was reminding herself—eight done, the next four beginning, when she finished these there would be twelve done, which was almost half of the job—“She's dead,” Dicey said.

“I am sorry.” He sounded like he meant it. Well, Dicey was sorry, too, but there was nothing she could do about it. “So you live—there are four of you, right?—with your grandmother. Did you ever think,” he changed the subject, “of how many lives Louis Pasteur saved?”

Dicey shook her head. She never had.

“If there's a heaven, and if good deeds get you there, he's probably in heaven.”

That was too many ifs for Dicey to have anything to say about.

“You do know who Pasteur is, don't you?”

She turned her head to look at him. He wasn't looking at her. He was standing, watching the kettle, so all she saw was his tall, lean body, and the broad shoulders under the white turtleneck sweater, and the thick, gray-streaked hair growing long down over his weathered neck. “I'm not stupid.” She let him know that.

He turned his head, to grin at her. “I never thought you were stupid, Miss Tillerman. Only uneducated.”

Dicey stood up, crushing the two folds of wax paper that had wrapped the sandwiches, balling up the foil from the pie. She tossed them like baseballs into the wastebasket, and then folded up the paper bag, to take it home with her at the end of the day. She had work to do, a long afternoon's work.

“What do you do next?” he asked her.

“Sanding.”

“I could stay and help out.”

“I keep telling you, I can't afford hired help.”

Steam came out of the kettle's spout. He poured water into the mug, then stirred it with a spoon. “So, I could work a few hours, and then when you get paid you could pay me.”

Dicey shook her head. “I don't plan to owe anybody any money.”

He studied her, his eyes peering over the top of the mug. Dicey made herself go over to pick up a couple of squares of sandpaper. She didn't kid herself; she didn't want to bend to this particular job. She especially didn't want to do the sanding, partly because of the tedium of the task, but also because it was only the first step, and the first step on the first boat. Until she'd begun, she wasn't doing the job. But she had to, and she knew it, so she leaned over the boat and got to work. Getting to work, that was the only way to get the job done.

Cisco drank hot chocolate and watched her work. He didn't say anything. She ignored him. It took all of her concentration to keep on with the sanding, forcing her hand to hold the stiff square of sandpaper, forcing her arm to reach out and gently circle the floor of the boat. And this was only boat number nine. Dicey had never played any sport herself, but she'd heard that there was a point where if you pushed yourself past it, all the exhaustion disappeared. Maybe she was at that point. She hoped so, because at that point she
couldn't even dangle the picture of Mr. Hobart's boat in front of herself, like a carrot dangled in front of a mule, to keep the animal moving.

It made her angry, too—she could take about two more minutes of having someone stand around while she worked, stand around watching somebody else work, as if he was . . . an old-time plantation owner, strolling through fields where cotton was being picked. Dicey was surprised, now that she thought of it, that overseers and owners hadn't been beaten to death by the slaves. There had been enough slaves. They had outnumbered the white men. If she were a slave, and someone watched her slave away, she'd have murder in her heart.

He went into the bathroom and rinsed out the mug. At least, she thought, working mechanically, he was tidy. At least, she thought, he'd be leaving now and she wouldn't have someone standing around; she could at least be alone while she worked. At least, she recognized, she was now working mechanically, without having to make herself do it.

He wasn't leaving, however. He was getting a piece of sandpaper and getting to work on the second boat. In a minute, she thought crossly, he'd start talking.

And he did. “Why are you in such a big hurry with these?” he asked. He had a light voice, and you could let it float right on past you if you wanted to ignore it. She didn't want to, but it was the kind of voice that let you decide. Gram's voice was like a grappling hook; it went right into your head and caught your mind. Maybeth's voice, like their momma's as Dicey remembered it, went its own direction, like an arrow from a bow. You had to reach out for Maybeth's voice, with your mind, to try to ride along on what it was saying. Jeff's voice, she thought, smiling to herself, spread out from the middle of your mind, of her mind at least. She ought to call Jeff. He'd left enough messages. She
made a mental note to call him before supper, before he left to spend his evening at the library.

“You going to tell me?” Cisco's voice asked. “Or is it some deep, dark secret?”

“Tell you what?”

“I'd asked you a question, but you were way off somewhere else. What were you daydreaming about? Some boyfriend?”

“Voices,” she snapped. What she was thinking was none of his business, and she didn't know why he didn't go away, anyway.

He laughed—amused at Dicey didn't care what. “You're in a real charming mood today, Miss Tillerman.”

Dicey just gave him a look.

“If looks could kill” was his only response. “What is it with you, anyway—you on the rag or something?”

Dicey straightened up. It was almost a relief to have something clear to be angry at. “If you mean am I menstruating, the answer is it's none of your business. I assume,” she went on, almost enjoying herself, “that you meant to be pretty vulgar. Rude, too.”

He had straightened up to face her, and he wiped his face clear of laughter, although he couldn't control his eyes. “Sorry, Miss Tillerman,” he said quickly. “I'm sorry, and I apologize. Accepted?”

She didn't want to accept. She wanted to be angry. She didn't move a muscle.

“It would be childish to sulk,” his light voice pointed out to her.

She wasn't sure she cared about that.

“I'll not repeat the error—not in any form. I know when I'm outgunned.”

Dicey bent back to work.

“So,” he asked, “what were you thinking about voices? We
can't hear our own, because they echo inside our heads, did you ever think about that? That's why deaf people have so much trouble learning how to speak. And that's why it was such a remarkable thing that Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, and therefore effectively dumb, could be taught to speak. Do you know about Helen Keller?”

Dicey shook her head, so he told her the long story. Having done that, he asked her again why she was in such a hurry with these rowboats. She told him about the order Mr. Hobart had placed with her, about the boat she was going to build. Because he was curious about it, she explained how the money for the business worked out, between Mr. Hobart's advance and what she'd earn from Claude and the maintenance-storage income. She even told him about the dentist's overdue account.

“Want me to call and demand payment?” he offered.

“I've already written, twice. He's never even answered.”

“Yeah, but—now, don't get your dander up about this, because it's only a fact of life—sometimes if it's a man, they'll take it more seriously. Listen, are you willing to give up the money? I'm serious, because if it were me, my boat here, I'd figure to just pay you when I picked it up in the spring. I'd let you wait and keep the money in my own pocket. I wouldn't pay you until I absolutely had to. Not because I couldn't afford it but because it would make me feel more powerful, in control, getting away with something. If I could get away with it, I would. So if I knew you were going to just dump my boat somewhere—into the water?—then I'd be more likely to pay my bill, because I'd feel as if I had something to lose.”

“I've already put hours of maintenance into it,” Dicey protested.

“It's a gamble,” he advised her, not looking up from the sanding he was doing. “You gamble the risk of losing what
you're owed against the pleasure of not being taken advantage of.”

Dicey thought about it. “Yeah,” she said, “I'm willing. It makes me mad.”

“Do you have a contract I could look at, to figure out penalty prices?”

“Contract? No, we just agreed.” Dicey considered that. “What do I need a contract for?”

When he didn't answer, she felt pretty stupid. “Nobody has contracts,” she said.

He didn't say anything. Cisco's saying nothing said a lot.

All she wanted to do was build boats, and it seemed like every time she turned around something got in her way. She didn't know what she was doing that was so wrong. She felt like she was always, over and over again, cutting a path through to where she wanted to go, and as soon as she cleared out what she thought was the final part of the path, she'd see something else, sprung up to get in her way.

D
icey got back to work, and so did Cisco. Before long, he was talking again, about space, and the stars, whether there was time in black holes and whether space was endless, about the chance of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. “If you consider man intelligent life,” he said.

Dicey grinned. It was only the first coat, so they worked fast, and carelessly, covering the insides of the two rowboats. “My little brother is talking about maybe being an astronaut,” she said.

“Then he's got more courage than I do.”

Their brushes made soft stroking sounds, laying paint onto the wood.

“Either that or he's a real dreamer,” Cisco said.

“Maybe both,” Dicey said.

“Maybe, but it's an unlikely combination, you have to admit it. What about the other one?”