“Maybe you get that smart mouth from your mama too,” Calvin said.
Just then the saw made a terrible screech as its teeth bit deep into the hard heart of the log. The blade stopped, but the tractor engine kept growling. Speck grabbed a piece of scrap board and reached in to push it against the log.
John Talley came running from around the far end of the saw, waving his arms. “Cut it off!” he screamed.
Calvin ran to the tractor and pushed in the throttle.
The sawyer grabbed Speck by both shoulders. “Don’t ever reach in to that machinery,” he said. “You know better. That old mill’s touchy. Any trouble, that’s it. You shut it down. You hear?”
Speck tossed the scrap aside, and the sawyer and Calvin rocked the log until they inched it away from the blade. Across the yard, Marcy called from the doorway of the main shack.
“Dinner’s ready,” John Talley said.
The men and Speck sat outside at the rough table and waited for the girl to carry the plates to them. She was flushed when she finally sat down. Calvin attacked his food while John Talley said grace. The girl wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. A strand of brown hair stuck out from under her hat and was matted across her pale brow.
“This is real good,” the sawyer told Marcy, his mouth full of cornbread. “You ain’t eating?”
“Not hungry,” Marcy said. “I just need to sit awhile.”
“And I need some pepper,” Calvin said.
She stood and began to make her way back to the shack, but halfway across the yard she slumped to her knees. Speck stood, but he didn’t move when he saw how Calvin looked at him.
John Talley waited for the hired man too, but Calvin continued to eat. “You think you might better see to your daughter?” the sawyer said.
“She’s all right,” Calvin answered, and he leaned over his plate and spooned in another mound of beans.
“She’s hurt,” Speck said. “You did this.”
Calvin’s fist, still holding the spoon, pounded the table as sudden and sharp as a thunderclap. “What do you know about it? If I say she’s fine, she’s fine. You can just stay the hell out of it.”
“I won’t,” the boy said. “This ain’t right. You’re a goddamn criminal.”
The sawyer straightened his spine. “That’s enough,” he said. “You, boy, hold your tongue.” He turned on Calvin. “And you had best remember why it is you’re here. I need help with this timber, but you can just keep on going down the line if you mean trouble.” And he went to help the girl back to the table.
Speck could see the storm pass from Calvin, at least for the time being. His smile showed his stained teeth and pieces of his dinner.
“She’s overcome by the heat,” the sawyer said. Then he looked at Calvin. “What happened to that eye?”
“She fell out of the bed,” Calvin said. “She ain’t used to sleeping in a bed. She was turning in her sleep and fell out. Them things happen.” And then he continued to eat beans like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“You’re a goddamn liar,” Speck muttered.
“I told you, that’s enough,” John Talley said. “We’ve got work to do. But she’s got to get that eye seen to. Speck, I want you to take Marcy to the doctor.”
“She don’t need no doctor,” Calvin said.
“I don’t understand you, mister,” the sawyer said. “Your girl is hurt. If you don’t care no more for her than that, then maybe you should be on your way. Maybe we’d all be better off. Right now, though, she’s going to the doctor.”
“Go on, then,” Calvin said, and waved them off.
Marcy said she didn’t want to go to town. She was feeling better. But the sawyer made her get in the truck with the boy.
As they pulled onto the main road toward Perrine, Marcy told the boy again not to take her the doctor. “I’m fine,” she said. “Really.”
“If you don’t go,” the boy said, “I’m taking you to the sheriff. I may go myself anyway.”
“You can’t do that, Speck. You don’t understand.”
“What I don’t understand is why you put up with him.”
“I tried to tell you, I’m his daughter,” she said. “I don’t have anyplace else to go. And he ain’t a bad man, really. He’s just rough.”
“Only an evil man could do such a thing. Especially if he’s your father. Where did you come from? Don’t you have people who could help?”
“The kind of trouble I was in, they wouldn’t want no part of. I can’t tell you, Speck, what it was. Can you just not ask me to tell?”
“But you’re not in trouble now. You don’t owe him. You could tell him to leave. You could stay here.”
“With you? How would your daddy like that? You think he’d welcome me just moving in with you?”
“You heard what he said. He wouldn’t turn you out.”
“And I’m supposed to just tell my own daddy that he’s going and I’m staying? He’s not the type that’d just leave. And say you and I did go away — it ain’t that easy. He wouldn’t rest till he found me. And nothing and no one would stand in his way.”
“Maybe I could, I don’t know... do something.”
“Speck.”
“He hurts you.”
“He’ll hurt you worse.”
“We could run him off, my dad and me.”
“Your daddy’d have done that long ago if he cared about such things.”
“There must be something.”
Marcy touched the boy’s face. “Don’t say no more,” she said. They were nearing the town. Marcy leaned over and almost in a whisper said to the boy, “If you could find us something to drink, maybe we could find us a peaceful spot and just talk like friends.”
It didn’t take much liquor for the boy to get drunk. Marcy didn’t try to stop him when he kissed her, and she helped him when he fumbled with his pants. It took him only a couple of seconds, and even then he didn’t know at first when it was finished.
“That was real nice,” Marcy told him.
It was getting late, and they still had to go to the grocer’s to pick up supplies. The boy was too far gone, so Marcy drove to the store and parked the truck on the street a few buildings away. They both got out, and Marcy went on into the store with the sawyer’s list while Speck lingered outside. On the window of the grocer’s someone had pasted a single piece of white paper. The black type said:
Missing Girl — Mary Whitt, 14
If you have seen or know of a young girl with brown hair and green eyes unfamiliar in these parts, please contact Mr. C.W. Whitt R.R. #1, Big Fork, Ark.
Or your Sheriff
Reward Offered
Identical handbills had been pasted on the windows of nearly every shop and office she passed on the street. Speck rested his head against the glass of the front door. Suddenly, he doubled over and vomited into the street. He stood up and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
Speck went to wait in the truck, but before he opened the door a man in a white shirt and bib overalls came walking over from across the street. He held a stack of papers and handed one to a passerby.
“I hate to trouble you, son,” the man said to Speck. He had the leathery neck and hands of a farmer. “My name’s Whitt,” he continued, handing Speck a flyer. “I wonder if you’ve seen a strange girl around. Her name’s Mary. We heard she may have come this way.”
“What?” Speck said.
“I’m her father,” the man said. “I’m afraid she’s mixed up with some bad sorts. I’ve been looking for her. I want her safe, I guess you might say.”