“That. Because Zlo—he has celebration for what he has done.” The lines around her mouth tightened. “He has thoughts that he has won.”
“Zlo? That’s the guy who lit you on fire?”
She tucked her chin in a nod.
“And what was it he did that was worth celebrating?”
“He changed everything.” She blew out a deep breath. “Um, your word for it, I have no knowledge for. But he is—” She made a pushing motion with both hands, then glanced at him to see if he understood.
“He pushed you? Lucky thing you had your ’chute already on.”
“And I—” She added a pulling gesture.
“Ah.” That explained why they’d been hanging onto one another before their canopies opened last night. “And you’re sure he survived the fall too? He’s the one you saw in town?”
She nodded.
None of this made a lick of sense. They were having a party up in the sky someplace, so she put on an old-fashioned dress to escape notice—and then ran away with a parachute, only to be tackled and sent hurtling through the night? If Earl had thought last night’s story was crazy, this one plumb ran away with the farmer’s daughter.
“Well, that’s not so good,” he said carefully. “Why’d he push you?”
Her face stilled, and she pulled back, retreating into her secrets once more.
For a few minutes, they ate without talking. Taos edged closer and propped his chin on Hitch’s leg. His eyes followed the food from Hitch’s hand to his mouth. Hitch fed him a few crumbs off his fingertips.
Jael broke the silence with a soft laugh. “I have not seen this—what you call this animal?”
“You’ve never seen a dog?”
“No.”
Where did someone spend her whole life without ever seeing a dog?
“I had small, very small animal.” She cupped her hands. “Much hair, long tail. His name was Meesh.”
“A mouse?” he guessed.
She shrugged again. She looked at the fire, then back at him. “I am also having sorrow for what I did to man with mouth hair. If I gave trouble to you, I am having sorrow.”
“Yeah, well.” He fed Taos the last potato skin. “If you gotta give trouble to somebody, might as well give it to me. I should know what to do with it if anybody does. What happened with Livingstone this afternoon was more my fault than yours.”
“And this custody he said? He will not do this to you?”
He stood up and dusted off his pants. “Oh, I doubt it. Unless he gets his dander up again.”
“But you have brother who will help?” She stared up at him. “The man with orange phosphate and cheese sandwich—he said you have good brother who is deputy? This is custody man, yes?”
“Oh, Griff. First I’d heard of that. To be honest, I don’t much like it.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Despite what folks think, I know for a fact the law around here isn’t exactly… Well, the sheriff ain’t a custodian, let’s just say that.”
“Would they do custody to Zlo?”
He looked down at her. “Griff would.” Unless Campbell had gotten to him, changed him.
Hitch looked west, to where his family’s farm lay a few miles off. Like enough, Griff was still living there, though he could be married with little ones, for all Hitch knew.
He needed to talk to Griff now, before any more time passed. Seeing him wouldn’t get any easier, and it might get a whole lot harder.
So much water had flowed under that bridge. When he’d left, Griff had been a skinny twenty-year-old kid, still working the fields beside their daddy. He’d always looked up to Hitch, always backed him—and, in that quiet, intense way of his, always seemed aggravatingly intent on reforming him.
He’d be a man now—and he’d have become that man without Hitch’s influence. It was a strange thought. His kid brother had been making all his own decisions for almost a decade now. And somewhere along the way, one of those decisions had been to send Hitch a letter saying he never wanted to see him again.
And then Griff had apparently made the marvelously intelligent choice to go to work for the one man in this town Hitch would have warned him to stay away from.
Hitch rubbed his shoulder; it got stiff sometimes on account of the crash that had kept him out of the war. “Reckon maybe I’ll walk on over there tonight.” He was stalling, and he knew it. He glanced at Jael.
She had picked the spark plug back up, but she was watching him. “Tonk you.”
He looked away, suddenly embarrassed. “You don’t have to keep saying that. I really haven’t done anything.”
“You have been giving me help. You have been giving me”—she held up what was left of her cornbread—“what this is. In morning, I must go. I must go where Zlo cannot look for me.”
“Yeah, well.”
That probably was her best choice. Like Earl said, she was mightily out in the open here in camp. And the kind of chaos she seemed to trail in her wake wasn’t exactly the sort he was equipped to handle, especially with Rick on the prod like he’d been here lately.
Trouble was she’d still be a sitting duck wherever she went. No job, no place to stay, no friends. And it wasn’t just the language she had trouble with. There was also the little matter of basic, everyday social conventions.
“Look,” he said. “You don’t have to go just yet.” He slapped his leg to Taos. “If they can find this guy and put him in jail, then after that, it should be safe enough for you to go find your folks again.”
A flicker of something kind of like hope passed across her face and almost—but not quite—dispelled the doubt.
He took a breath. “I’ll ask Griff about it.” He started walking before he could let himself change his mind.
*
Hitch wandered up the familiar dirt road, listening to the tree-lined creek that bordered it on the one side. He came around the bend into view of the single-story farmhouse he’d grown up in. Hardly anything had changed. Same white curtains, gone yellow after his mother’s death. Same willow rocking chairs on either side of the door. Same sag in the bottommost porch step.
Lights shone from the kitchen window, so somebody was home. When he reached the black Chevrolet Baby Grand roadster parked in front of the porch, dogs started barking. He stopped at the base of the steps and waited, Taos alert at his side. His heart was thumping harder than it had any right to. He hooked his hands into his suspenders, then put them in his pants pockets instead.
Inside the kitchen, a shadow moved against the curtains, and a voice quieted the dogs. A man’s silhouette darkened the screen door, his face hidden in the shadows.
Hitch’s mouth went dry.
The screen door creaked open, and there was Griff.
“So,” his brother said. The dim light shone against the side of his face. “I’d heard you were back.”
“Hullo, Griff.”
Griff came forward and let the door bang behind him. The skinny kid was indeed gone. His shoulders had broadened, his voice had gotten a little deeper, and, beneath his rolled-up sleeves, his forearms were hard with muscle. Hitch had always favored their father, with his dark curly hair; Griff had gotten their mother’s tawny coloring and that sideways slip of the mouth that could telegraph either happiness or anger.
Right now, it looked like anger.
Quite a few words started running through Hitch’s head. Words like: I’m sorry. I missed you. I should have come back. But none of them quite wanted to surface.
Better to start with business, feel out the water, then see what happened.
He cleared his throat. “Got a problem I thought you could help me with—”