A World of Thieves

He laughed. “She’d rather, would she?” He looked at Belle. “Is this rascal telling me true, missy? I scared you?”

She kept her gaze on her plate and nodded. I was pulled between pity and the urge to slap her on the head for being so damned sheepish.

“And so?” Buck said. “You don’t want me to come creeping into your tent no more?”

She looked all set to start crying again. It really irked me. “It’s what she said, Buck.”

“Not to me, she didn’t—and she can speak for herself.”

She laid her fork alongside her plate and for the first time looked at him directly. “I don’t want you to do that again.”

He stared at her without any expression at all.

“Please,” she said.

Which got a smile from him. “Well hell, honey. All you had to do was say so. I never in my life forced myself on a woman and I ain’t starting now. This how you want it, this is how you got it. Good enough?”

She nodded.

“Still friends?”

She looked like she’d never heard such a question. Then made a small smile and nodded again.

“Well, all right then,” he said.

The waitress arrived with his food and the coffeepot and refilled our mugs. Buck cut into his pork chop and said it was done just right. Belle started nibbling the sausage links off her plate with her fingers. The matter of last night had been so swiftly settled it felt like I’d missed something, but she seemed well satisfied with the way it went.

Buck said he’d already checked on the car—radiator all patched up and ready to go. Then Russell and Charlie showed up and ordered big well-done steaks with scrambled eggs and hashbrown potatoes and biscuits and gravy and tall glasses of milk.

Charlie was happy to see how much the swelling had gone down in Belle’s cheekbone. She lightly traced the bruises with a forefinger and said, “Look here where the purple part’s already turning blue. This spot here’ll be green by tomorrow, and here’s some yellow starting to show. Declare, girl, right now you got about the most colorful face in Texas.”

Russell leaned over for a closer look at the swellings. “You’re lucky the bastard wasn’t wearing some kind of mean ring,” he said. “You won’t have no scar at all.”

A half hour later we’d retrieved our bags from the cabins and loaded them in the car. The girls got in the back seat with Russell. Our old road map was practically in tatters so I went in the office to buy a new one. Buck had settled the bill for the car repair and the rooms and was standing outside the office, counting what was left of our stake money. He was still there when I came out.

“Here’s the lucky stud gets her all to himself,” he said, punching me lightly on the arm.

He was smiling but there was something in his tone. I smiled back and shrugged. “I guess,” I said.

“I want you to know,” he said, “if she said I forced her it’s a lie.”

“She didn’t say that. Only that she asked you to go.”

“I don’t recall that she did.”

“We were all pretty soused,” I said. “Except for her.”

He spat and looked off at the distant mountains. “I wasn’t so soused I ain’t sure she didn’t say no.” He turned to me again. “I ain’t no rape fiend, kid. I can’t abide a rape fiend.”

“Hell, Buck, I know that.”

“Like as not she couldn’t deal with Mr. Stub,” he said, using the name he’d given his mutilated pecker. “It’s some who can’t.”

I made a wry smile and shrugged. “Maybe. She’s pretty much the fraidy-cat type as it is.”

“I thought I had her figured,” he said, “but now I ain’t so certain.”

“Cries at the drop of a damn hat,” I said.

He smiled. “Yeah she does.” He looked over at the car, where she and Charlie were laughing at something Russell was saying. “But Lordy, don’t that body beat all?”

“You said a mouthful.”

“Couple of nice mouthfuls is what she got. Well, hell, enjoy it while it lasts, kid.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Just one thing. You sappy for her?”

“Sappy?” I said. I peered at the car and lowered my voice. “Hell no, man, it’s not like that.” And told myself I meant it.

He studied my face. “Good,” he said.

“I mean it.”

“All right.” He smiled. “Let’s go.”

On our way to the car he said in a low voice, “You know, even if I had tried to force her—and I sure as shit didn’t, but even if I had—it couldn’t’ve been but attempted rape nohow. Can’t be nothing but attempted with a damn one-inch pecker, right?”

We were laughing when we got to the car, and Charlie asked what was so funny.

“This damn Sonny,” Buck said. “Listen here to the dumbass joke he just told me.”

As I drove out of the parking lot and started down the highway with the sun directly behind us, he told the one about the woman who goes to the doctor and tells him she just all of a sudden went deaf in one ear. The doctor takes a look and says, “Well, I see your problem—you’ve got a suppository in there.” And the woman says, “Oh for Pete’s sake…now I know what happened to my hearing aid.”

Indigo night of drizzling rain. Water dripping from eaves and clattering on banana fronds, running off gutters and spattering on cobblestones. Sporadic and trembling heat lightning. Hoarse bellows of ships’ horns out on the river.

He works the pick gently. Feels the lock yield to his expert application. Eases the door ajar and listens intently. Opens it further and slips inside and closes it softly behind. Stands immobile and studies the geography of the place by the intermittent flares of lightning at the windows. There the kitchen. There the bath. There the bedroom door. Light and dark, light and dark. Mapping in his head the furniture’s array. And then a quavering illumination finds him gone from the front door, transported as by the darkness itself to the bedroom threshold.

The bed stands empty and neatly made. He cannot know if she will return this selfsame evening, whether she will be alone or in company. The lightning quits. He positions himself in a chair in the bedroom and listens in the darkness for sound at the front door. And remains thus for hours. The rain ceases. The windows turn pink with the rising of the morn. When the place is sufficiently daylit he begins to search. And comes to find an envelope in the bedside drawer. The word Sonny inscribed upon it. Two items within. A sheet of paper with the single word Dolan’s and the initial B. And a note.

Cherie—Sorry to leave this way, but got word of B & R! Have to catch a train in 15 min. Took $50. I owe you more than $. Be back soon. You’re an angel—an incomparably lovely vixen—the classiest dame in the Quarter—the most erotic of dreams made flesh—the cat’s veriest whiskers. In other words, you ain’t bad, kiddo. Think of me, S.

She will never know of her inestimable good fortune in choosing to go to St. Louis at this time to appraise an oil collection for possible exhibit in the Fontaine. So deft was his search she will also never suspect that