A World of Thieves

maybe you don’t care to. That answer your question?”

I nodded and said, “Utterly.”

She only half succeeded in suppressing a snicker. “I don’t guess this chat’s going to do a whole lot to change your attitude about not talking much.”

It was the first time I’d heard her try to be even a little bit funny, and coming when it did it struck me as so funny I busted out laughing—and she did too, laughing hard, from deep in the belly, like she hadn’t done it in a hell of a while.

I moved over on the boulder and patted it for her to have a seat beside me. She accepted an Old Gold from the pack I offered. She smelled freshly clean, and when I struck a match to light the cigarettes, I saw that her hair hung damp and straight. She took a small puff and coughed. She was no practiced smoker.

“You never even smoked a cigarette before?”

“In secret a couple of times with this girl back home e didn’t have all that much chance to get good at it.”

“What about that boyfriend you had? You didn’t smoke with him?”

“He didn’t smoke, he chewed. I wasn’t about to try that.”

“I guess love has its limits, huh?”

“Maybe,” she said. “It anyway wasn’t love, I don’t believe, not really. I think I was only…I don’t know.”

In the ensuing silence I sensed she was embarrassed at having told too much, so I said in a tough-guy rasp, “Well, stick with me, kid, and you can practice at smoking all you want. I’ll show you all the fastest ways to hell.”

“Look who’s calling anybody kid,” she said. “How old are you—eighteen, nineteen?”

“Right the second time,” I said.

The high cries of the coyotes rose again and seemed keener in the greater darkness. She said she used to hear them all the time at her grandparents’ farm in Comanche County when she was a child.

“They sound different ways if you listen really careful,” she said. “Sometimes it’s like they’re having a high old time, and sometimes like they’re trying to tell you something you’ll never in the world understand.” There came a long solitary howl and then another right behind it from another coyote and of different timbre. “And sometimes it’s like that—like the loneliest talk there is.”

We sat and smoked in the dark, our cigarette tips glowing red among the pale green sparks of the fireflies, our smoky exhalations mingling in the light of the rising moon. We stayed like that for a long time without speaking. Russell and Charlie had remained in their room and I figured he was making up for what he’d missed the night before. The thought of them going at it made me keenly conscious of Belle’s nearness. I thought I could feel her body heat on my bare arm. I lit another cigarette and she asked if she could have one too.

I struck a match and she touched my hand as she leaned forward to accept the light. She looked up at me from under her lashes, her good eye wide and bright and a little scared. Then blew out the flame and took away her hand.

And then here came headlights down the road, brightening as they approached—and sweeping over us when the car turned into the parking lot. The Model A halted in front of the cabins and the engine shut off and the door opened and then banged shut. Buck called out, “You all come on down here and see what I got us.”

When we got to the room, he had already set out drinks for us in a pair of tumblers. He’d sweet-talked the oil crew into selling him three bottles. He’d tapped into one of them on the drive back and it showed in the high shine of his eyes. The bottle was already down by a third. He tossed off his drink and smacked his lips, smiled at us and served himself another. I took a sip of mine and had to admit it seemed like pretty good hooch.

Belle hadn’t picked up her glass. Buck gestured at it and said, “It’s aged plenty enough, honey. Down the hatch.”

“I don’t guess I want any,” she said, rising from her chair. “I’m really awful tired. Think I’ll go on to bed.” She said goodnight to Buck and waggled her fingers at me and left.

He got up and went to the window and pushed the curtain aside to watch her go to her cabin.

“She’s probably still hungover from the mickey,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “If it was a mickey.”

“What do you mean if it was?”

He turned and arched his brow at me. “Just because she says she was Shanghaied into it don’t make it so. Most of them who do those movies do it because it pays good and because they like it.”

“What are you saying? She was doped, man. You smelled it on her breath, you said—like on that girl in New Orleans.”

“Yeah—and what I didn’t say was I’d smelled it even before that. In a Chink dope den in New York. Me and another doughboy went in to see what it was like and got looped just breathing the air in there. You can mix that stuff all kinds of ways. Makes a swell mickey in a drink, but they mostly smoke it in pipes with a little hose. They do it for the dreams, but a right dose’ll let you stay awake and keep you smiling at nothing all night. The stag movie guys like to have the girls take a puff to loosen them up, put a dreamy look on their face for the camera, but some like it too much—sucking the devil’s dick, they call it. Get too dopey to do anything but lay there like the dead.”

I watched him pour another, then light a cigarette and blow three perfect smoke rings. “You think her story’s bullshit?” I said.

“Who knows?” he said. “Maybe not. Or maybe everything she’s said is bullshit—all that stuff about her momma and daddy, everything. Maybe she was willing enough to fuck in front of a camera for the right price or a little encouragement from the pipe, or both. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for her to admit it, though. Only thing we know for sure is she got somebody damn mad at her.”

“Russell believes her,” I said.

“Hell he does. He’s like me—he just doesn’t give a shit if she’s lying. What difference does it make if she’s a good girl on the stray or some bullshitting little tramp? Who cares? Those tits are as nice either way, and those tits are why she’s here, right? You’ve had plenty of schoolgirl tail, Sonny, but this one’s a different breed, so don’t be a sap and think that she’s—”

There came a hard rapping on the door and then it swung open and Russell and Charlie came charging in with wide smiles, their faces flushed with their recent sporting.

“There it is!” Russell said, making a beeline for the booze. “Can we count on this man to come through or can we count on him to come through?” He poured drinks for him and Charlie.

Charlie was sorry to hear Belle had called it a night but said she didn’t blame her, all she’d been through the last couple of days. Russell toasted our arrival in this strange new world. He said he loved the dryness of the heat, so different from New Orleans, where you could drown in the humidity. Charlie said she felt smaller out here. “It’s that big old sky and hardly any trees,” she said. “I can’t get used to hardly any trees.”

We finished the bottle and started on another. Russell told a joke he’d heard from a filling station guy. Fella goes to the doctor for a checkup and the doctor tells him it’s bad news, he doesn’t have long to live. Fella says, “Oh my God, that’s terrible! How long do I have?” Doctor says, “Ten.” Fella says, “Ten what? Months? Weeks?” Doctor says, “Nine…eight…seven…”

Buck told one he’d heard from the oil rig guys. The queen of England was riding in her carriage with her guest the king of Belgium when one of the carriage horses lets go with a tremendous fart. The queen turns all red and says to the king, “Oh dear, I must apologize for that.” The king says, “Quite all right, your highness—actually, I had thought it was the horse.”

The bottle was down to its last couple of inches and Russell took it with him when he and Charlie said goodnight—a little hair of the dog for the morning, he said. Buck and I stood at the door and watched them go. Belle’s cabin window was dark.

We went back inside and Buck uncorked the last bottle and filled a tumbler to the brim. “That ought to hold you,” he said. Then gave me a wink. “Don’t bother to wait up.” He took the rest of the bottle and went out and shut the door behind him.

I sat on the bed and took off my shoes and stared at the floor for a time. I couldn’t clarify what I was feeling. I picked up the tumbler and took a swallow. And then another. Then got up and went to the curtain and pushed it aside. Her window curtain was dimly yellow. I stared at it till my eyes burned. Then the window went dark.

Of course she wouldn’t admit it if she’d done it willingly. So what? He was right. Who gave a rat’s ass if she