“All right,” Mackey said, and the way he didn’t object also said a lot.
So they all went inside the house like good friends, Rick clumping after them, clearly out of sorts and maybe, at least Carlo thought so, puzzled.
The wife met them in the hallway, a narrow wooden hall with torn and sooty rugs, and they all went into the sitting room, where the rugs were new and not cheap but only slightly cleaner. The wife had a bottle of spirits on the table, and she set out five glasses and started pouring.
“Not for my brother,” Carlo said, “thank you.” A glass of that and Randy would be flat on the rug. Randy knew it, and didn’t more than sulk.
“There’s tea,” the wife said, and waved a hand at Rick, who hulked on the fringes. “Tea.”
Wouldn’t trust him not to spit in it, Carlo thought: he kept an eye on the process through the open door to the kitchen adjacent, and in the midst of a short course of small talk, watched Rick Mackey carry the ready teapot and a cup to the sitting room and the wife pour it. Rick went and slouched in the doorway, a picture of grace, with his hands in his pockets below a sagging belt.
“I have to tell you,” Van Mackey said for openers as he and his wife sat down with them, “it’s fine work you’re doing. Just gave you a couple of days to prove it and, I tell you boys, I’m real happy with what I’m seeing. Fine work, real fine eye.”
For damn sure the Mackeys knew what had come out of that meeting. And steam was all but coming out Rick Mackey’s ears, but he was keeping quiet under threat of his father’s hand, Carlo would lay odds on it.
Mackey poured the drinks, and the wife offered spiced crackers. “Hey,” Randy said, surprised at the change in things. “First-rate stuff.”
And after that, for half an hour at least, Van Mackey and his wife sat and chattered idly and in detail about shop business, neighbors, the mayor, the marshal, the whole situation down on the Ridge, and orders they expected and who they dealt with.
As if they were going into partnership—which, Carlo began to think queasily, just might be the game the Mackey household had in mind, a third possibility that Danny hadn’t named.
The Mackeys downed two rounds of drinks and poured his glass full the instant it emptied, and considering he hadn’t eaten, Carlo downed crackers at an equally rapid rate. If he and Randy had remotely dreamed of a warm and cordial reception in the village, right down to the crocheted doilies and the tea, the polite asking after their sister and the sympathy the wife—Mary was her first name and the last name turned out to be Hardesty—offered for the demise of their village, they couldn’t have concocted anything as extravagant.
Right down to the offer of an inside bedroom, as soon as they could refit the pantry and install beds.
“We’re pretty comfortable out there,” he said, and Randy, with his mouth full of cracker and another in his hand, looked at him in indignation. He went on regardless: “Might rig a couple of cots out there, though. The floor’s warm, but—”
“I don’t know why we should,” Rick said, which clearly said he didn’t know exactly what was going on, or was stupid enough to ignore it.
“Shut up.” Van Mackey said to his son, and to them, in a different tone of voice, “You can’t go sleeping on the floor, good God, boy. I tell you, I was just real suspicious Peterson had fallen for some story, until I saw the work you do. And you’re just real fine. Real fine, praise the Lord and His mercy you boys made it in.”
“Yeah, I could see your position. I could really see that.” Carlo controlled his temper and his bellyful of alcohol and crackers real well, in his own opinion. He didn’t walk out, or even come close.
“I mean,” Mackey said, “a village goes under, you just don’t know.”
“Yeah,” Carlo said. “You couldn’t.”
Mackey might have spread the news around to the neighbors about Tarmin’s going. He wished he hadn’t had to tell the man anything; and it might be why they’d been left out of the information Danny had gotten, that the marshal knew he’d talked to someone and had decided they couldn’t be trusted.
Mackey for an ally wasn’t an attractive prospect.
Meanwhile Randy was darting glances at him—mindful of his strict order to shut up and not to talk back to the Mackeys ever, and not to talk to the Mackeys most especially if he was talking to them. Randy was doing all right so far, and held his silence on a mouthful of crackers while the wife said,
“We’d still be pleased if you boys would move inside while we fix up the place.”
And he said,
“Oh, no. We’re just real comfortable out there, a lot of room, all of that.”
“You boys have got to have some more blankets,” sweet wife Mary insisted, while Rick burned and Randy stuffed his mouth and his pockets with crackers. “Would you like the rest of the crackers, son?”
“Sure,” Randy said.
And on that, it seeming they’d gone about far enough, Carlo set his glass down and pocketed a fistful of crackers himself.
“Join us for Sunday dinner,” Van Mackey said.
“No, no,” Carlo said. “We don’t want to disturb you. You have your lives. We’re not here to intrude on your house. We’re grateful enough for a place to stay.” Then he decided to push it, about the time they stood up, taking their leave. “Could use a little extra cash for meals at the tavern, though. Growing kid there. —If we’re worth it. Sure be nice to have the seconds.”
“Hell,” Rick said from the doorway.
But Van Mackey said, “You just put meals on our tab over at the tavern. We’ll work it out.”
“That’s real kind. That’s real kind, sir.” He meant to make it fair-sized tabs and hide away things like crackers and other stuff that did all right on the trail—supplies were mobility, and mobility for him and Randy might be real necessary on short notice. Feed up real well on Sundays, when they had a real good table—
And maybe take the actual cash he got and put it with Danny Fisher, who wouldn’t rob him.
Rick would turn his bunk inside out looking for it. He’d lay odds on it. And if Rick was a real fool—might try outright strong-arm robbery. Rick was bigger than any guy he’d seen in Evergreen, including the loggers. Rick was used to having his way—he’d seen Rick elbow his way in the tavern. And he saw the look Rick had now.
“You sure you won’t come to dinner,” wife Mary said.
“No,” Carlo said, thinking he’d as soon snuggle up to a nest of lorrie-lies. “We’re fine. Our papa always said, Don’t get personal on a business deal.”
If he was right it was only going to make them twice as determined, and sure enough, they took no offense at all. He could have tossed his glass onto the floor and they’d have smiled. Except Rick.
“Well, we understand,” the wife said. “We appreciate your attitude. But you boys won’t mind if I bring out some roast tomorrow.”
“That’d be real kind,” Carlo said, and with Van and Mary in close attendance all the way down the sooty, worn rug of the hall, got Randy out the door before he exploded.
“What’s that for?” Randy asked when they were in the forge and far enough from the shut door of the house.
“Hush,” he said, and got himself and Randy across the forge to collect their coats and go out to supper.
“Why in hell’d you turn them down?” Randy said, getting his coat on. “You crazy?”
“Tell you later,” he said. “Let’s go to supper, all right?” He buttoned his own coat and took his brother out into the snow, by the outside door, not by the passages.
There he could be relatively sure nobody was eavesdropping. And then he told Randy—while they were walking toward the tavern, in the trampled snow of a lot of traffic headed the same direction—as much as he was sure Randy was apt to hear, meaning the whole thing.