The .22 was empty, but when I worked the action on the shotgun it was loaded. I jacked the three shells out on to the floor, picked them up, and threw them under the bed.
I sat down on the bed and leaned back against the wall. Outside I could hear a woodpecker hammering on a tree. The air was dead and very hot and I could feel sweat breaking out on my face. And then I heard him coming. He was climbing out of the ravine behind the house. I sat there as he appeared in the rear door, carrying a bucket of water in each hand.
He was wearing overalls, but no shirt, and the black hair on his arms and chest glistened with sweat. The smooth moon face split open with a grin that didn’t get as far as his eyes.
“Come in,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”
“Sure,” I said. I pulled a foot back and put it behind the edge of the small table beside the bed and shoved. It shot across the room and crashed into the kitchen table. An ashtray rolled, spilling butts, and the kerosene lamp hit the floor and shattered. Oil spilled down between the planks. “Sit down,” I said.
He looked at the mess. “Tough, huh?” He set the buckets of water on a bench by the door.
“Yes,” I said. “Tough.”
His eye drifted towards the shotgun.
“It’s not loaded,” I said.
“Well, what’ll they think of next?” He looked at me.
“What are we going to talk about? Not that I’m nosey, you understand—“
“Gloria Harper. You’ve been on her back a little over a year now—“
“And you came all the way out here to tell me to get off? Is that it?”
“I’m going to do better than that,” I said. “I’m going to help you off.”
I got up off the bed and started for him. He waited, not even putting his hands up. I walked in on him, watching the hands, and when they did move at last, the left feinting at my face, I turned sharply on my left-foot and took the knee against my thigh. Maybe he was expecting somebody from the Golden Gloves, I thought, swinging very low and hard into his belly and moving in with it at the end. He bent over, sucking for air and sick, and I put the glove in his face and twisted it. He groped for me with a left, and I hooked a right to his face which spilled him on to the edge of the kitchen table. The legs caved in on one end and he slid down it, getting mixed up with the plates and a bottle of syrup. He tried to get up, the wind roaring in his throat, and I dropped him again. It was five times before he stayed down. I was winded and my hands hurt, and sweat ran down my face like rain. I got him by the bib of the overalls and hauled him up against the slant of the table-top with my knee in his belly and bounced his head against it three times more for a sales talk and then let him slide down and roll around in the dishes. He was a mess to look at. I went over to the water buckets, fighting to get my breath, and poured water over the gloves to get the blood off, then took one of his shirts off the wall and dried them, and threw it on the floor. I poured the rest of the bucket of water in his face.
When I thought he could hear me, I squatted down beside him. “Now get this,” I said. “You can’t make trouble for her. But even if you could, there’s nothing you can do to me. I’ll still be here. And hell won’t be big enough to hold you. So if you want to go around the rest of your life singing to yourself and slobbering down the front of your shirt, go ahead and try it.”
I went out and got in the car and drove back to town. Maybe I’d sold him, and maybe I hadn’t. The only thing I knew for sure was that next time I’d never get a chance to unload the shotgun.
16
That next week was wonderful. We didn’t see anything of Sutton, and we were together nearly all the time. We had lunch together every day, and I spent a lot of time in the loan office under the pretext of familiarizing myself