“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “At least when he beat me I knew he cared.”
“Pardon?”
She put the brush down and came and sat on the side of the bed next to me. “Sometimes that’s how people show you they care about you.”
“Hitting you?”
She nodded. “I don’t say it’s the best way. I wouldn’t ever hit anybody myself. And Candy—he hardly ever hit me. I guess that’s why I loved him so much.”
She seemed better this morning, seemed already to have accepted the finality of Candy’s death. Maybe in this fast crowd she ran with, fast death was commonplace. I asked her.
“You ever see anybody die before?” I said.
“Sure. Two times.”
“Guys working with Candy, you mean?”
She nodded. “They got shot on jobs.”
“I see.”
“And Candy killed some people. I never went on any jobs with him, so I never saw it. And I don’t like to think of it. But it’s true.”
“What kind of people?”
“Did he kill? A bank guard and a sheriff’s deputy. It bothered Candy.”
“It did?”
“Yes—he was afraid of the electric chair.”
I said nothing.
“He doesn’t have to be afraid anymore,” she said, and then tears gushed forth, and she was burying her face in my chest.
I held her for a while; by the time she came up for air, the sun was pouring through the windows like fresh buttermilk.
I wiped her tears with the bedspread. She smiled at me bravely. I got lost in her eyes, brown, brown eyes.
She said, “You didn’t take advantage of me last night.”
I swallowed.
“Most men would’ve.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You could’ve. I was helpless.”
“You look like you’ve got some spunk left. You let out a pretty good scream when you saw me, for example.”
She shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. You could’ve taken me. A man can have a woman if he wants her.”
“You mean he can rape her.”
She nodded.
“Where I come from,” I said, “that’s not an acceptable way of getting to know a girl.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Back East.”
“Is that why you’re such a gentleman?”
I smiled. “That’s another first for me—being called a gentleman.”
“I think that’s what I’ll call you. Gentleman Jim. A real gentleman in a lousy world.”
“Let’s just leave it at ‘Jimmy.’”
“No—I like ‘Gentleman Jim’ better.” She beamed at me; she was trying a little too hard to be cheerful, but I was glad she was making the effort.
“Whatever you say,” I said.
She grabbed me by the hand and yanked me off the bed.
“Come on, Gentleman Jim…this old farm girl’s going to show you around a farm. You got some learning to do.”
I told her I had to go the bathroom, but she said that would be no problem.
I could stop at the outhouse on our way.
34
When we cut across the backyard, a dozen chickens were dancing around, scrounging for food. One with yellow legs and another with bluish-green legs were dancing in place, pecking at something that looked like an old beat-up leather glove.
Louise caught my curious expression and said, “That’s a rat skin. That’s about all the cat leaves behind, when she’s done with it.”
“Hens aren’t real particular about their breakfast, are they?”
Deadpan, she said, “Those aren’t hens. Not yet. They don’t start laying eggs till they’re seven months.”
She led me by the hand beyond the barn and silo, down a dew-wet path, at the end of which half a dozen cows, black, brown, stood gazing at us with bored expressions. Then we cut over by a shocked field, each shock looking like a small rustic wigwam.
“Velvet barley,” Louise explained. She pulled a stalk out of one of the shocks, crushed the head against her palm, lifted her palm to her lips and blew away the chaff. She held out her palm for me to see the seeds there. “You like beer?”
“Sure.”
“That’s the malting barley.” She dropped the seeds to the earth and moved on. “Mr. Gillis has fifteen acres of barley. They plant this stuff quick, soon as the ground’s fit.”
“How many acres does Gillis have here?”
“Eighty.”
“Is that big?”
“Not really. Not small, though.”
Birds were singing. I wasn’t used to seeing this much sky; in Chicago, in the Loop, you have to raise your head to see any sky. And the last bird I heard sing in the city was Anna Sage’s parakeet.
I asked, “Can he make a living at it?”
“He could if the prices were right. The livestock’ll get that barley. He can’t afford to sell it for what it’s going.”
“You ought to be able to make a living with land like this. Crops like these.”
She shrugged, walking ahead of me now. Not holding my hand—leading the way.
“Mr. Gillis does all right with his sideline,” she said.
“You mean taking in house guests.”
She nodded.
“You ever stay here before?” I asked her.
She nodded again. “A few times.”
We were at the edge of the barley field, now. Some stones were scattered about, some of them nearly boulders, big cold seeds not worth planting. She pointed.
“That grass is Mr. Gillis’ hay. He’s got about six acres in grass. For the cows and horses.”
We walked along, skirting a patch given to more stones and nettles. “Always a patch or two a farmer can’t tame,” she explained. “There’s the corn.”
