He walked past the two men to the bathroom. It had a door, but it was a communal facility inside, four of everything with no interior partitioning. Four toilets, four sinks, four shower heads in a single elongated stall. It was reasonably clean, and it smelled of warm water and cheap soap, like the two guys had recently showered, maybe ready for Friday evening off. There was a high window with a clogged insect screen and no glass. By standing tall he could see past the corner of the horse barn all the way up to the house. He could see half of the porch and a sliver of the front door.
He came back into the dormitory room. One of the guys had hauled himself upright and was sitting with his head turned, watching the bathroom door. His back was as pale as his front, and it had more healed fractures showing through the skin. The ribs, the right scapula. Either this guy spent a lot of time getting run over by trucks, or else he was a retired rodeo rider who had passed his career a little ways from the top of his trade.
"Storm coming," the guy said.
"What I heard," Reacher said.
"Inevitable, with a temperature like this."
Reacher said nothing.
"You hired on?" the guy asked.
"I guess," Reacher said.
"So you'll be working for us."
Reacher said nothing.
"I'm Billy," the guy said.
The other guy moved up on his elbows.
"Josh," he said.
Reacher nodded to them both.
"I'm Reacher," he said. "Pleased to meet you."
"You'll do the scut work for us," the guy called Billy said. "Shoveling shit and toting bales."
"Whatever"
"Because you sure don't look like much of a horse rider to me."
"I don't?"
Billy shook his head. "Too tall. Too heavy. Center of gravity way up there. No, my guess is you're not much of a horse rider at all."
'The Mexican woman bring you in?" Josh asked.
"Mrs. Greer," Reacher said.
"Mrs. Greer is Rusty," Billy said. "She didn't bring you in."
"Mrs. Carmen Greer," Reacher said.
Billy said nothing. The guy called Josh just smiled.
"We're heading out after supper," Billy said. "Bar, couple hours south of here. You could join us. Call it a get-to-know-you type of thing."
Reacher shook his head. "Maybe some other time, when I've earned something. I like to pay my own way, situation like that."
Billy thought about it and nodded.
"That's a righteous attitude," he said. "Maybe you'll fit right in."
The guy called Josh just smiled.
Reacher walked back to his bed and stretched himself out, keeping still, fighting the heat. He stared up at the red-painted rafters for a minute, and then he closed his eyes.
The maid brought supper forty minutes later. She was a middle-aged white woman who could have been a relative of Billy's. She greeted him with familiarity. Maybe a cousin. Certainly she looked a little like him. Sounded like him. The same genes in there somewhere. She greeted Josh with ease and Reacher himself with coolness. Supper was a pail of pork and beans, which she served into metal bowls with a ladle taken from her apron pocket. She handed out forks and spoons, and empty metal cups.
"Water in the bathroom faucet," she said, for Reacher's benefit.
Then she went back down the stairs and Reacher turned his attention to the food. It was the first he had seen all day. He sat on his bed with the bowl on his knees and ate with the spoon. The beans were dark and soupy and mixed with a generous spoonful of molasses. The pork was tender and the fat was crisp. It must have been fried separately and mixed with the beans afterward.
"Hey, Reacher," Billy called over. "So what do you think?"
"Good enough for me," he said.
"Bullshit," Josh said. "More than a hundred degrees all day, and she brings us hot food? I showered already and now I'm sweating like a pig again."
"It's free," Billy said.
"Bullshit, it's free," Josh said back. "It's a part of our wages."
Reacher ignored them. Bitching about the food was a staple of dormitory life. And this food wasn't bad. Better than some he'd eaten. Better than what came out of most barracks cookhouses. He dumped his empty bowl on the cabinet next to his toothbrush and lay back down and felt his stomach go to work on the sugars and the fats. Across the room Billy and Josh finished up and wiped their mouths with their forearms and took clean shirts out of their footlockers. Shrugged them on and buttoned them on the run and