Blind tiger, p.33
Blind Tiger, page 33
His thrusts were brutal. His hands held her with bruising strength. His language was obscene, vicious, abasing. It seemed to go on forever.
Then, heaving and hot, he collapsed on top of her, leaden, compressing her lungs, making spears of the ribs he’d broken. But he lifted his hand from her head, allowing her to turn it aside and try to suck in air through her mouth, but nothing was functioning right. His sweat had combined with the cloying scent of his cologne, making her gag. She choked on blood.
Finally he pushed off of her. Standing beside the bed, he righted himself. She heard the rustle of his clothing, the jingle of his belt buckle, the clink of his watch fob. The floorboards creaked under his weight as he crossed the room toward the door. It whooshed open, the clothes hanging on the back of it swishing.
In a voice that was eerily detached, he said, “If you have the misfortune of surviving, and if you breathe a word of this, I’ll tie that brat of yours in a sack and throw him in the Brazos.”
He walked out of the bedroom. He left the house.
Norma was too benumbed to move.
Forty-Five
Laurel baked all day. Recollections of what had happened between Thatcher and her last night were persistent distractions, and her feelings about them ranged from delirium to despair. Work helped to keep those troubling thoughts from swamping her, but they lurked at the fringes of her mind, teasing and tormenting.
While her last batch of pies was cooling, she delivered Clyde Martin’s order to the café. By dusk when the O’Connors showed up, she had pies boxed and ready for them.
“Where’s the whiskey?” Davy asked.
“We’re fresh out. There’s been some trouble. Our distiller had to shut down and relocate in a hurry. I’m hopeful he’ll do a run tonight, but at this point, I just don’t know. In the meantime, we’re in the pie business exclusively.”
The twins took the news with a surprising lack of despondency. “Don’t worry yourself, lovely Laurel,” Davy said. “In view of our recent shortfall, we’ve been courting another supplier to keep us in moonshine should another shortage occur. Which it has. Once we’re up and running again—”
“Wait. What other supplier? Who?”
“Now, Laurel, you know better than to ask,” Mike said. “We can’t give you his name any more than we’d give him yours. It’s all very discreet.”
“Is he reliable?”
“Yes,” Davy said, “but reliability is expensive.”
“How expensive?”
They told her the terms of the deal they’d negotiated, and they were reasonable. Nevertheless, she was leery. “I don’t like having to buy moonshine in order to sell it.”
“A temporary necessity,” Mike said.
His brother added, “And a smaller profit is better than none.”
“Is his whiskey any good?”
“We thought so,” Mike said.
His glazed eyes indicated that he had had more than a sampling, which reassured Laurel not at all. Dividing a stern look between them, she said, “You’re sure of this?”
Davy answered for both. “We wouldn’t let you down, sweetheart.”
Reluctantly, she counted out the currency they would need to purchase the moonshine. “Just this once.”
Before they set off, she pleaded with them, “Please, please be careful. A young man was killed last night right in front of the sheriff’s office.”
“Ah, we heard about that. Tragic for sure. But it’s rumored that it was a family dispute. Nothing to do with us.”
She could have argued that it wasn’t any ol’ family’s dispute, it was a Johnson family dispute, and that if they discovered that it was her still where their kinsman Tup had been maimed, the clan would be gunning for her.
The less the twins knew of that, the better. She also didn’t want them knowing that she was consorting with a lawman. Further discussion of Elray’s slaying might lead to mention of Thatcher, a subject best avoided.
But no sooner had she thought that than Mike said, “Did you hear about your Good Samaritan Mr. Hutton?”
“What about him?”
“Ah, he was talking to the young man when it happened. A second shot missed Hutton by a hair.”
Davy picked up. “But he took off running to the building where the shots came from. Couldn’t be stopped, they said.”
Laurel’s hands had gone clammy. “Who said?” she asked huskily.
“The sheriff’s deputies trying to hold him back, because he wasn’t even armed. But that didn’t stop him sprinting to the bank building. He was mad to catch the shooter. Those there said he never uttered a word, but that the look in his eyes was positively feral.”
“He didn’t catch him?” she asked.
“No,” Mike said. “Lucky for the murdering Johnson.”
Laurel put up a disinterested front, but she couldn’t wait for the twins to be on their way. After they left, she felt more forlorn than she had since Derby’s suicide and Pearl’s death. She’d had no control over either of those life-changing events.
But rather than surrender to feelings of defeat, she had resolved never to be that defenseless against fate again. With sheer determination, she had persevered, had built a life and livelihood for herself.
Now, she felt control of that also slipping away.
Recent events had played out on their own, without her knowledge or oversight. Irv had been wounded. A man had lost his arm. A boy had lost his life. Ernie and Corrine and the stills were unaccounted for. Where had her tight grip on control been when all that was happening?
And when she was with Thatcher? Last night he’d come to her after what surely had been one of the worst experiences of his life. But his concern had been for her, not for himself. She recalled the sorrow in his eyes when he’d told her about his mentor’s death and Elray Johnson’s murder. She also remembered the determination in his demeanor when he’d pinned on the badge.
Some might mistake his reticence for indifference, or a steeliness against emotion, but he felt things more deeply than anybody she’d ever met.
She’d fought her attraction to him every step of the way, but last night she’d been helpless against it. She’d been overtaken by the look and feel of him, the desperation in his voice when he’d said, “Please don’t answer.”
Unlike anything she’d ever experienced, the groundswell of sexual sensation brought on by his caresses had completely undone her. The control had belonged to him, not to her, and that loss of herself had been terrifying.
But also thrilling. If the climb had been that incredible, what would the cresting have felt like? She couldn’t help but wonder, and regret—
“Laurel?”
Nearly jumping out of her skin, she whipped around to find Irv standing behind her and dressed to go out. “You were a million miles away, girl. What were you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“Huh. Didn’t look like it to me.” He watched her for a moment. “I threatened to shoot him. If you want me to, I will.”
Ignoring that, she patted her pocket to make certain she had her pistol. “Are you ready?”
* * *
Laurel insisted on driving even though they were taking Irv’s truck. He gave in way too easily, leaving Laurel to believe that even though the bullet wound had closed and healed well enough for him to leave his bed, his arm remained infirm.
He brought Ernie’s map with him, although he claimed to know where his partner had likely relocated their stills. “He showed me the place once, bragged on it being nearly perfect like our other spot.”
“Is it on your property?”
“Barely.” When she shot him a doubtful glance, he added defensively, “Barely counts.”
They drove for half an hour. When they saw a flicker of firelight in the distance, Laurel slowed down. “They may start shooting before they realize it’s us.”
“Honk the horn three times. That’s the signal.”
The new location had the natural attributes of the original. Ernie and Corrine had both stills reassembled, and both were cooking. Over cups of coffee they told Laurel and Irv about the harrowing night they had spent moving everything.
Ernie said, “Soon’s we got the trap off that fella’s arm and put him in the hole, I ran for my truck, brought it to the site, and started loading everything up. Even with a gimp arm, she did aw’right,” he said, looking over at Corrine.
“I like to’ve wore myself out,” she said. “But, in a way, it was good we had to take everything apart and put it back together here. I learned a lot. But I don’t want to do it again anytime soon.”
“We wasn’t sure you’d get the map,” Ernie said. “It was her idea to leave it.”
Laurel told them about her seeing the convoy from the shack and racing over the hill to beat it. “Although, at the time, I didn’t know it was lawmen. It could just as well have been rival moonshiners. Imagine my shock to see the place deserted and not knowing what had happened to you.”
She finished telling the rest of it. “I can’t explain what inspired me to get the primer. Irv figured out what the drawing meant.”
Ernie tossed the dregs of his coffee into the dirt and watched as it was absorbed. “Was the thief I trapped a Johnson?”
Laurel nodded. “He and a younger cousin.”
“He die in the hidey-hole?”
“Miraculously, no, but his arm was amputated.”
He nodded solemnly. “Then he pro’bly won’t be stealing no more.”
“Probably. But that was a big price to pay for a few crates of moonshine.”
“Yep, it was, Miss Laurel. But given the chance, he’d’ve killed us without blinkin’.”
Thatcher had reasoned the same. She said, “It’s believed that was his intention.”
“What about the cousin who ran out on him?”
“Shot and killed last night,” Laurel said. “They feel for sure by his own kin.” She related the circumstances, but didn’t refer to Thatcher by name, only as “a deputy” who was seeking information about Wally’s murder.
As though reading her mind, Corrine asked, “You seen any more of Mr. Hutton?”
Irv harrumphed and kept his head down, poking at the logs in the cookfire with a stick. Laurel said, “He came by one evening to check on Irv’s progress.” Quickly changing the subject, she asked Ernie about their renewed production. “Can you step it up?”
“We brought six barrels of mash with us that were close to ready. The rest, we had to pour out. Luckily we had enough supplies to mix up more yesterday and today.”
“We’ve got two crates you can take with you,” Corrine said with pride. “I got ’em ready myself while Ernie was mixing the mash.”
Two crates wouldn’t have excited Laurel a few days ago, but now she was glad to know she had them. She didn’t tell the others about the O’Connors buying from another moonshiner, knowing that they, particularly Irv, who mistrusted the twins, would disapprove. She disapproved.
They discussed more about the operation, then Laurel expressed her misgivings. “Tup and Elray Johnson found our stills. How well hidden are you here, Ernie?”
“Pretty good, I reckon, or I wouldn’t’ve moved us here.” He glanced around at the others. “But about them Johnsons finding us…”
“What?” Irv said.
“Just seems unlikely is all,” Ernie said. Without looking directly at anyone, he added, “Unless they were keeping an eye on the shack.”
“Why would they be doing that?” Laurel asked.
He shrugged his bony shoulders. “If somebody was to’ve tipped ’em off.”
Laurel’s ears began to roar as Thatcher’s words came back to her in a surge. Elray swore he was there when Gert told his great-uncle Hiram who the culprit was. The culprit meaning the female moonshiner.
Gert knew Laurel was dealing in whiskey. She had been there when Laurel and Lefty had sealed their deal. She’d been livid to learn that Laurel had sheltered Corrine. Narrowed down, that would be in one of two dwellings: their house in town, or the shack.
If it had been discovered that Corrine was living in the shack, if she’d been seen going on foot over the hills, if she’d been followed to the still, Gert would have had the perfect setup for revenge against both Corrine and Laurel.
Good God. Everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours was a consequence of Laurel’s going to the roadhouse that day. Thatcher had said he was afraid they would wind up on opposite sides of a fight. He wasn’t afraid of it at all. He already knew that she was moonshining, and last night he’d warned her that, thanks to the vengeful Gert, the Johnsons did, too.
“Corrine, things have become dangerous. You have to come back to town with Irv and me,” she said. “You’re too far from the shack to be going back and forth on foot.”
“Ernie and me done talked about it,” the girl said. “I’ll stay here and help him do runs till we catch up.”
“Ernie?” Irv asked. “What do you think of that plan?”
He shifted self-consciously. “When she ain’t blabbing, she’s handy.”
Laurel came to her feet. “It doesn’t matter what Ernie thinks. It matters what I think.”
The three of them looked up at her like she’d lost her mind, and very possibly she had. She walked away from them, pressing her fingers against her temples where her pulse was beating fast and hard. There had to be a way out of this, not to save her own skin, but to protect these three and the twins.
The logical solution to all their problems would be to shut down completely. But then what?
She couldn’t stop Ernie and Irv from carrying on as they had before her interference. Corrine, having shown an enthusiasm for making corn liquor, would likely join them.
The twins were young, daring, and resourceful. They obviously had other contacts in the illegal liquor trade. With their winning personalities, they would prosper.
She would bake and sell pies.
The dreariest part of that prospect would be that Gert would continue to thrive, turning victims of mistreatment and misfortune into prostitutes for her gain.
Laurel slowly came back around to three pairs of eyes looking at her expectantly. Corrine would actually be safer out here than she would be in town where she was much more likely to be seen by someone who would return her to Gert. But this was hardly a Garden of Eden.
“Corrine, are you sure you want to stay here?”
“Oh, I don’t mind at’all. I’m enjoyin’ bein’ out in the open.”
Irv and Laurel looked to Ernie for his opinion. “She’s proved herself to be right smart,” he said. “Nimble and quick, too.”
“All right,” Laurel said, but not without reluctance. “For the present, she stays. Please get the crates loaded into the truck.”
Although Irv couldn’t be of much help, he accompanied Ernie.
Laurel stayed behind with Corrine. “I’ll be back the day after tomorrow.” She glanced over at the tent. “By then, if you’ve changed your mind about your situation here, you can come back to town with me. You’ll have a home with Irv and me.”
“I know what you’re askin’ without coming right out with it. Ernie treats me regular, not like a whore.”
“You were never a whore, Corrine. You were a victim of circumstance.”
“Well, anyway, Ernie has his cranky moments, usually over my jabberin’, but he’s nice. Even without me asking, he dug a latrine for my private use.”
Laurel tried to contain her smile. “That was thoughtful of him.”
The men came back for the other crate. As soon as they were out of earshot again, Laurel said, “Corrine, the morning after Irv got shot, and you and I were having breakfast, you talked to me about Gert and how upset she’d been with Wally Johnson for the beating he gave you.”
“Upset? I’ll say. She carried on something fierce.”
Laurel remembered what Corrine had told her that day, but she wanted to hear it from her again. “What made Gert so angry?”
“’Cause I looked like roadkill, and she wouldn’t be making any money off me, and money is all she cares about.
“She was so mad at Wally, her face turned purple. She hollered cuss words, threatened him with a meat cleaver, and ordered him to get his ugly self out of her place.”
Laurel patted the girl’s shoulder. “Ernie needs help, and you seem content to be here. But I’m worried about your safety.”
“You got no call to be.”
“Yes, I do, Corrine. Believe me.”
“Ernie’s protective.”
“I’m sure. But he may not always be around. You need to protect yourself.”
“I will, Miss Laurel. I promise.”
“Well, I want to make sure of that.”
Forty-Six
The landlady called Thatcher away from the supper buffet to the telephone in the hall. “Keep it short,” she said as she handed him the earpiece. “There’s others who use it, too, you know.”
Thinking it might be Trey Hobson at long last, he leaned into the mouthpiece mounted on the wall. “This is Thatcher.”
Bill Amos said, “Can you get over to Doc Perkins’s office?”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
“Who’s sick?”
“Just come. Don’t say anything to anybody.”
The sheriff disconnected. Thatcher hung up, stared at the telephone in puzzlement for several seconds, then, responding to Bill’s urgency, ducked back into the dining room to take his hat from the rack.
The crabby Mrs. May said, “Are you eatin’ or not?”
“Not.” He was aware of Chester Landry’s interest in his abrupt departure, but he didn’t acknowledge the man as he rushed out. He feared the emergency pertained to Daisy Amos.
Having to walk several blocks, he was winded by the time he reached the professional building on Main Street where he’d been told the elderly doctor had a clinic that took up half the third floor. It was past quitting time for anyone else who had office space there, but the main entrance was unlocked. Thatcher went in and climbed the stairs two at a time.
