Chapter Thirty
THE THREE OF THEM had arrived at the big house two nights before. Ralph was standing in the yard next to his brother, staring up at the roof.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Billsy said.
“You carry them shingles up to the window for her?”
“No. I guess she found ’em in the yard.” Billsy tilted his head like a dog. “She damn sure knows how to patch. Look how she’s lappin’ ’em.”
Vessy was on the roof in a worn pair of corduroys, copper nails stitching her mouth as she swung the hammer lightly to keep from splitting shingles.
Ralph nodded. “Makes me dizzy just watchin’ her.”
The men stood in the yard a long time. Now and then Vessy would call to the dormer window, and the child would put three or four shingles on the ledge.
“This one a whore?”
“Nope, just some kind of housemaid or cook.”
“How long you gonna let her hang around?”
Ralph spat. “Till we get rid of the kid.”
“I ain’t never seen a woman on a roof before. Not wearin’ pants, anyways.”
“You ready to hit the road?”
“I guess. You still want me to go all the way to New Orleans?”
“And use a coin phone to call Acy at night. I decided he better bring the money to us in Woodgulch.”
“What if he says he won’t pay?”
“Oh, he’ll pay, all right. I’ll keep that little girl and make a card-sharp out of her.”
“She’s bright as a cap pistol, all right.”
Ralph looked over at the tangle of trash woods behind the house. “We got to keep an eye out from now on.”
Billsy looked up in awe at the woman on the roof. “Breakfast was terrible good. I never knowed you could do that with cornbread.”
HE TOLD the boy to smear himself with citronella oil. They ate cheese and a potato roasted on the coals and said nothing for a long time until August looked at him over the flames, his eyes catching fire.
“Charlie Duggs told me about you.”
“That right? I hope it was an interesting story.”
“He said your whole family was murdered and you never even tried to find out who did it.”
“I think that must be the most interesting thing Charlie ever heard in his life. He never quits telling people about it.”
The boy’s face glowed with sullen disgust. “Well, why don’t you look them up?”
“Maybe I don’t want them to complete the job.”
“I’m not joking. Don’t you take anything to heart?”
“I take plenty to heart, you little shit. I was six months old when it happened. I never even knew anybody I lost.”
“That’s pretty heartless.”
Sam looked away from the fire, from the disturbing eyes. “My uncle told me it was in other hands.”
August tossed a stick onto the fire. “Other hands? You know, the Bible teaches justice along with everything else. Sam Simoneaux, you’re just a coward with all sorts of excuses, and your uncle’s next to worthless for not setting things right for your father. All he taught you is excuses.”
Sam stared at his feet, then turned his head sideways. “Maybe.”
“Tell me. You remember your father’s hands on you?”
He settled back against a fallen loblolly and looked up at the fire-coppered limbs. “I told you, I was a baby.”
“When I was old enough to make a chord on a piano, my father started teaching me. He’d sit behind me and tap my shoulders with his fingers, sort of playing the notes on me while I played them on the piano. I knew if I was lazy and delaying a note, or if I was rushing a run out of time. His fingers guided me in the rhythm, see. When I started the sax, he did the same thing, tapping out an improvised beat, hearing where I was going with the melody and telling me where I should go, where not. It was like he was passing himself into me through those fingers.” He looked up, and his eyes were yellow mirrors. “You can’t know what it’s like never to have that again.”
“Your old man made a good musician out of you. He wouldn’t want you to waste it.”
“I’m not wasting a damn thing.”
“You’re about to. When one of those Skadlocks knocks you down with a rifle bullet tomorrow, where will all that music learning be then? Dead as your smart-ass little carcass.”
“Skadlock’s just a hillbilly rummy. I can sneak up on him like I waylaid you.”
“Good lord, August. I’m a department-store floorwalker. These people
August gazed to his left into the dark and smiled. “I don’t think they’re as sharp as you think.”
“Listen. If you believe you know more about hurting people than they do, go back to town and talk to some of the locals.”
“I’ll do what I need to.”
“Boy, this doesn’t have a thing to do with your father. You just want to think of yourself as important. A show-off is all you are.”
The boy stood up and grabbed the old shotgun by the barrels. “Take that back.”
“That’s what revenge is, kid. You’d like to think you’re going to help your mamma or provide justice for the world, but you really just want to kill somebody to make yourself feel big.”
“That Ralph Skadlock might kill someone else.”
“I got news for you. I don’t know for a fact that he’s ever killed anybody. He didn’t kill your father, either. Ted got an infection in a Cincinnati hospital and died of blood poisoning.”
August’s face convulsed. “He wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for Skadlock,” he yelled, his eyes welling with tears.
“If Skadlock wanted him dead he’d of killed him out here and thrown him in the river with a sack of bricks tied to his neck. You’re not thinking straight.”
“It’s not right,” he cried. “If people don’t get what they deserve for killing somebody, it’s just not right.”
“I agree with you. But trying to shoot ’em up with a six-dollar shotgun ain’t the way to do it.”
“It feels right to me.”
“Feeling’s got nothing to do with it. But what’s true does have something to do with it. The truth is, your daddy never taught you to go out and gun anybody down. He taught you to make music for the rest of your life.”
August sat in the dirt next to the fire and let his hand slide down the shotgun. “Just shut up.”
“After you sprinkle Skadlock with that Parker, what’ll you do about his brother?”
“He has a brother?”
“And a mother, who I’m pretty sure is never more than three feet from a pocket pistol. They run a still back in there, and I’ve never seen moonshiners who didn’t have more guns than a hardware store.”
He looked over when he heard a sniff and saw the tears shining down August’s face. “Lucky, for a second I thought I believed you, but just as soon as I did I could feel my father’s hands on my shoulder. I’ve got to make it right.”
Sam nodded once. The matter was past arguing that night. When someone is struck, the first mindless
