The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,69

words, I do, was he going to rest easy.

And because he was so engrossed in his own bit of news, he missed seeing the clothes lying in the street. But he did see a small crowd gathering around the livery. He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. He was a little bit early and his curiosity won out. He stepped off the sidewalk and into the street just as a trio of young boys came barreling past him.

“Hooligans,” he muttered, settling his hat a bit firmer on his head.

The frown was still on his face as he began pushing his way through the crowd. It did his blood pressure no good when he got to the front and saw Eulis sitting in the watering trough.

“Oh my word!” he muttered.

With a proper gentleman preacher coming from back east, he’d done everything within his power to increase the social amenities in Lizard Flats. He’d even hired a man to whitewash the bank, only now it stuck out like a sore thumb in a town where every other building was a plain, weathered gray, but Alfonso didn’t care. It was a sign of prosperity. For a banker, a necessity, indeed.

But now this? How would this town fare in the preacher’s eyes if the town drunk was allowed to take public baths.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he shouted.

Eulis looked up. His head was throbbing and his vision had doubled. To make matters worse, the little roosters suddenly dancing in front of him looked a lot like Worthy, the banker.

“Have you all gone insane?” Alfonso continued, staring about in great confusion. “Why is this man being allowed to bathe in public? It’s a disgrace, I tell you! In fact, he’s a disgrace!”

“I ain’t bathin’,” Eulis muttered. Then he felt something crawling at the back of his neck and thrust his fingers through the wet, sticky mass of his hair, digging and picking until he felt the small ant. He mashed it before it could bite, ending its futile bid for freedom.

Alfonso was livid. Everyone watching seemed to think this was funny. They were snickering and pointing at the man like a side show freak. It was all he could do not to scream. He thought of Sophie. Now that she was his intended, he felt obligated to protect her in every way that he knew. He gritted his teeth and leaned closer until he and Eulis were almost eye to eye.

Water clung to Eulis’s hair and beard, mixing with the remnants of molasses to give him a rather interesting appearance. If it wasn’t for the stink of his body and the condition of what was left of his clothes, he might have looked sugar-coated.

“If not a bath, then pray tell what do you call this?”

“I been anted,” Eulis muttered. “I’m just pickin’ ’em off.”

Alfonso frowned. Anted? He’d never heard of such a thing. Then he looked down at the water. Hundreds of dead ants were floating upon the surface. He gawked.

“Good lord! How did such a thing happen?”

Eulis frowned. For a banker, old Worthy was pretty dim.

“Wal, you take a jug of somethin’ sweet and—”

“Oh for pity’s sake,” Alfonso snapped. “Get yourself out of there!” He straightened and glared at the crowd. “And you people are no better for gawking at a fool. Someone get him out of Pete’s trough and off of the street. What would the preacher think if he was to come into town right now?”

They began to mutter among themselves. They hadn’t thought of it quite like that.

“Right, Mr. Worthy,” someone said.

Alfonso stomped away, satisfied that he’d dealt with a sticky issue in a satisfactory manner.

The guilty crowd dispersed, leaving Eulis to get himself out of the trough. His steps were dragging as he recovered the rest of his clothes from where they lay. Holding them between his thumb and forefinger, he dragged them through the dust to the trough, then doused them up and down a few times to remove all the critters before putting them back on, dripping wet.

With his head throbbing and his mouth gone dry, he went about the business of draining the ant-ridden water, then refilling the trough with clean water just as he’d promised to do. Every step that he took squished. Every move he made dripped. And there was still a bit of molasses in his hair and his beard that he hadn’t gotten out, but the ants were all gone, and he was some cooler than he’d been in quite