Дороти Эллисон - Bastard Out of Carolina

No sense making an enemy of Earle Boatwright’s sister.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, handing half her money back. “The way the law stands there’s nothing I could do for you. If I was to put it through, it would come back just like the one you got now. You just wait a few years. Sooner or later they’l get rid of that damn ordinance. Mostly it’s not enforced anymore anyway.”

“Then why,” she asked him, “do they insist on enforcing it on me?”

“Now, honey,” he sighed, clearly embarrassed. He wiggled in his seat and passed her the rest of her money across the desk. “You don’t need me to tel you the answer to that. You’ve lived in this county al your life, and you know how things are.” He gave a grin that had no humor in it at al . “By now, they look forward to you coming in.

“Smal -minded people,” he told her, but that grin never left his face.

“Bastard!” Mama hissed, and then caught herself. She hated that word.

Family is family, but even love can’t keep people from eating at each other. Mama’s pride, Granny’s resentment that there should even be anything to consider shameful, my aunts’ fear and bitter humor, my uncles’ hard-mouthed contempt for anything that could not be handled with a shotgun or a two-by-four—al combined to grow my mama up fast and painful y. There was only one way to fight off the pity and hatefulness. Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so wel no one could be sure what she real y thought or felt. She got a reputation for an easy smile and a sharp tongue, and using one to balance the other, she seemed friendly but distant. No one knew that she cried in the night for Lyle and her lost happiness, that under that biscuit-crust exterior she was al butter grief and hunger, that more than anything else in the world she wanted someone strong to love her like she loved her girls.

“Now, you got to watch yourself with my sister,” Uncle Earle told Glen Waddel the day he took him over to the diner for lunch. “Say the wrong thing and she’l take the shine off your teeth.”

It was a Thursday, and the diner was serving chicken-fried steak and col ard greens, which was Earle’s excuse for dragging his new workmate halfway across Greenvil e in the middle of a work day. He’d taken a kind of shine to Glen, though moment to moment he could not tel what that short stubborn boy was thinking behind those dark blue eyes. The Waddel s owned the dairy, and the oldest Waddel son was running for district attorney.

Skinny, nervous little Glen Waddel didn’t seem like he would amount to much, driving a truck for the furnace works, and shaking a little every time he tried to look a man in the eye. But at seventeen, maybe it was enough that Glen tried, Earle told himself, and kept repeating stories about his sister to get the boy to relax.

“Anney makes the best gravy in the county, the sweetest biscuits, and puts just enough vinegar in those greens. Know what I mean?”

Glen nodded, though the truth was he’d never had much of a taste for greens, and his wel -educated mama had always told him that gravy was bad for the heart. So he was not ready for the moment when Mama pushed her short blond hair back and set that big hot plate of food down in front of his open hands. Glen took a bite of gristly meat and gravy, and it melted between his teeth. The greens were salt-sweet and fat-rich. His tongue sang to his throat; his neck went loose, and his hair fel across his face. It was like sex, that food, too good to waste on the middle of the day and a roomful of men too tired to taste. He chewed, swal owed, and began to come alive himself. He began to feel for the first time like one of the boys, a grown man accepted by the notorious and dangerous Black Earle Boatwright, staring across the counter at one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen. His face went hot, and he took a big drink of ice tea to cool himself.

“Her?” he stammered to Earle. “That your sister? That pretty little white-headed thing? She an’t no bigger than a girl.”

Earle grinned. The look on Glen’s face was as clear as the sky after spring rain. “Oh, she’s a girl,” he agreed, and put his big hand on Glen’s shoulder. “She’s my own sweet mama’s baby girl. But you know our mama’s a rattlesnake and our daddy was a son of a gun.” He laughed loud, only stopping when he saw how Glen was watching Anney walk away, the bow of her apron riding high on her butt. For a moment he went hot-angry and then pul ed himself back. The boy was a fool, but a boy. Probably no harm in him. Feeling generous and Christian, Earle gave a last hard squeeze to Glen’s shoulder and told him again, “You watch yourself, son. Just watch yourself.”

Glen Waddel nodded, understanding completely the look on Earle’s face. The man was a Boatwright, after al , and he and his two brothers had al gone to jail for causing other men serious damage. Rumor told deadly stories about the Boatwright boys, the kind of tales men whispered over whiskey when women were not around. Earle was good with a hammer or a saw, and magical with a pickax. He drove a truck like he was making love to the gears and carried a seven-inch pigsticker in the side pocket of his reinforced painter’s pants. Earle Boatwright was everything Glen had ever wanted to be—special y since his older brothers laughed at him for his hot temper, bad memory, and general uselessness. Moreover, Earle had a gift for charming people—men or women—and he had charmed the black sheep of the Waddel family right out of his terror of the other men on the crew, charmed him as wel out of his fear of his family’s disapproval. When Earle turned that grin on him, Glen found himself grinning back, enjoying the notion of angering his daddy and outraging his brothers. It was something to work for, that relaxed and disarming grin of Earle’s. It made a person want to see it again, to feel Earle’s handclasp along with it and know a piece of Earle’s admiration. More than anything in the world, Glen Waddel wanted Earle Boatwright to like him. Never mind that pretty little girl, he told himself, and put his manners on hard until Earle settled back down. Glen yes-ma’amed al the waitresses and grabbed Earle’s check right out of Anney’s hand, though it would take him down to quarters and cigarettes after he paid it.

But when Earle went off to the bathroom, Glen let himself watch her again, that bow on her ass and the way her lips kept pul ing back off her teeth when she smiled. Anney looked him once ful in the face, and he saw right through her. She had grinned at her brother with an open face and bright sparkling eyes, an easy smile and a soft mouth, a face without fear or guile. The smile she gave Glen and everyone else at the counter was just as easy but not so open. Between her eyes was a fine line that deepened when her smile tightened. A shadow darkened her clear pupils in the moment before her glance moved away. It made her no less pretty but added an aura of sadness.

“You coming over tonight, Earle?” she asked when he came back, in a voice as buttery and sweet as the biscuits. “The girls miss you ‘bout as much as I do.”

“Might be over,” Earle drawled, “if this kid here does his job right and we get through before dark this time.” He slapped Glen’s shoulder lightly and winked at Anney. “Maybe I’l even bring him with me.”

Yes, Glen thought, oh yes, but he kept quiet and took another drink of tea. The gravy in his stomach steadied him, but it was Anney’s smile that cooled him down. He felt so strong he wanted to spit. He would have her, he told himself. He would marry Black Earle’s baby sister, marry the whole Boatwright legend, shame his daddy and shock his brothers. He would carry a knife in his pocket and kil any man who dared to touch her. Yes, he thought to himself, oh yes.