Дэвид Балдаччи - One Good Deed

“Working on it.”

“Look, you can stay with me, Archer.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?” She smiled. “It would give us certain advantages of privacy.”

“How’d you think that would look, especially to Mr. Shaw with the way things are?”

Her smile faded. “Right, I see your point.” She looked down the street. “Was that my father?”

“I think you know it was.”

“Did you speak with him?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“And he’s increased the offer to two hundred dollars if you come back home.”

“What else did he say?” she blurted out.

He drew a step back. “What? Nothing.”

She lurched forward and grabbed his jacket. “Are you lying to me?”

“No.”

She let go of him and her hostile look faded. “Well, good. How about I feed you then? I can see your belly pushing inward from here.”

However, he was still reacting to her dizzying emotional swing and didn’t answer.

Apparently his unsettled features showed his dilemma, because she smiled disarmingly and said, “My father drives me a little crazy, Archer.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Maybe more than a little.”

“So, let’s go eat.”

“I don’t have the cash, and I’m not letting you buy me a meal again.”

“Then how about I cook for you?”

He looked askance at her.

She said, “You doubt I can?”

“No. I just... Well, what would you be thinking of making?”

“I like my food fried, Archer. So chicken and okra and green tomatoes, for certain. And I have a bottle of wine. You ever have that spirit?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“My mother introduced me to it. Wine from Argentina was her favorite. I don’t have that. But I have a bottle of red wine from France.”

“France! How the hell did you manage that?”

“I didn’t. Hank did. He gave it to me.”

“You okay with us drinking it?”

“We can toast him, if you want. But I mean to drink it sooner rather than later. He said some people wait years, even decades, to uncork a bottle.”

“Never heard of such a thing. Couldn’t be any good after all that time.”

“They say it is, but I’m not that patient. Why don’t you meet me in an hour’s time at my house? Then dinner will be ready.”

He thought of his arrangement with Ernestine and said, “I’ll come up to your back door. And I can’t stay all that long. I have to go to work in the morning.”

“Right. Killing hogs.”

“Well, in my case, just butchering ’em.”

“That’s a hairsplitter if ever I’ve heard one, Archer.”

It was sixty-one minutes later that Archer found himself knocking on the woman’s back door. She answered it wearing an apron over her dress.

“Well, if the smell is any factor, this meal will be pretty fine,” he said.

He watched her working the skillets on the three-burner stove, which had an electric icebox next to it. When the food was done, shortly after he arrived, they sat down in a small dining room stuffed with too much furniture. She’d lit candles that threw the room into shadowy relief.

The chicken was crispy on the exterior — nearly burned, in fact — and moist on the inside.

“Best chicken I ever had,” proclaimed Archer with all honesty.

“Eat what you want, I have plenty.”

The okra and tomatoes had been coated in crumbles and fried in lard. After two helpings of everything, Archer finally had to push himself back from the table. “Okay, no more room left and that’s a fact.”

They had both tried the wine and didn’t cotton to it, but when they tried it again later, it tasted different.

“How’d that happen?” Archer wanted to know.

“Hank told me something about it breathing .”

“Okay.”

“He went over there a couple years ago. Took Marjorie with him. They toured some of the wine country in France and Italy.”

He looked at her, puzzled. “Didn’t think there’d be any left after the war.”

“He did say there was damage, for sure. But they managed to bring back a few bottles.”

They finished the wine, and Archer rose and put on his hat.

“Sure you don’t want to stay?”

“I’ve made other arrangements.”

“Really? Well, excuse me.”

“Don’t be like that. I already explained why I can’t stay here. Shaw would hang me for sure. Thanks for the dinner. It was really nice of you, Jackie.”

“Don’t start being kind to me when I’m mad at you.”

“You ever gonna tell me what happened to your mother?”

Her eyes blazed. “Why? Did my father mention her? Tell me the truth, Archer. I made you dinner after all.”

“Okay, Jackie, okay.” He leaned against the sideboard and chose his words carefully. “He said she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on, well, something like that. Anyway, he also said that, well, that she could be hot-headed. And sometimes...”

“Yes?”

“Sometimes he was afraid of her.”

“What else?”

“And that sometimes you and she didn’t get along all that well. That mother-daughter relations are complicated.”

“They are complicated. But I loved my mother.”

“I’m sure you did.” He decided to change the subject because he didn’t like the direction it was taking, and he wanted to gauge the woman’s reaction to something. “Did you know that Pittleman was running out of money?”

Jackie slowly stood. “Who told you that?”

“Shaw. He found a bucketful of past-due bills that Pittleman had tossed into the trash.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Saw it for myself.”

“But Hank was rich. Everybody knew that.”

Archer shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you.”

“You’ve given me a lot to think about.” She fell silent for a few moments, apparently doing that very thing while he watched her closely. “So, are you going back to the slaughterhouse tomorrow?”

“It’s my job, till I find something better. And that would be just about anything.”

She walked him to the back door. “See you around, Archer.” Despite his stench, she gave him a peck on the cheek.

He circled back around and came out on the main road. It took him about thirty minutes to walk over to Ernestine’s bungalow. The lights were on, and when he knocked at her back door, she answered it right away. She had changed into a pair of high-waisted royal-blue trousers with buttons on one side and wide cuffs at the bottom, a long-sleeved white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, a light blue cardigan over that, and a pair of dark blue slip-on loafers. The woman’s blond hair was still down around her shoulders, though she had clipped part of it back.

“Are you hungry?”

“No, I had my fill, thanks.” He took a whiff of himself. “You, um, you mind if I wash up a bit? The... the business today was a little, uh, smelly.”

“Of course. I can run a bath for you.”

“A bath? You have one of them?”

“Yes. I’ll get it going for you. And I have a robe you can wear.”

“Thank you, Miss Crabtree.”

She said shyly, “Look, we’re not in the office now, just call me Ernestine.”

“And I’m Archer, no ‘mister’ necessary.”

She ran the bath and told him when it was ready.

He sank into the hot water to which she’d added something that made the water bubble and feel soothing against his skin.

She knocked on the door. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s wonderful, Ernestine. I mean really swell. Best I’ve ever had.”

She laughed on the other side of the wood. “It’s only a bath, Archer.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t had a bath since around 1941.”