“Look, why don’t you give me that knife? Nobody wants to hurt you, and I’m sure you don’t want to hurt me.” He could hope anyway. “Matthew’ll lend you what you need to wear, but he’s not going to be too happy about losing the knife.” He took a step and held out his hand.
She hissed, sort of like an angry cat, and jumped away. “You—back.”
He walked his fingers across his palm. “I followed your tracks out here, understand? I wanted to make sure you were all right.” And satisfy his own curiosity. Which currently was very far from satisfaction.
Her eyes shifted, and he could almost see the whir of her thoughts as she sifted through translations. “Follow me?” She didn’t sound too impressed by his chivalry. “Kill you I will—you follow me! Plohoi chelovek.” She spat to the side and came back up glaring.
He dropped his arms to his sides. “Listen, sister, I ain’t here to cause you any trouble. You want me to go, then after we explain to Matthew what’s going on, I’ll go. But it looks to me like you need a translator if you’re going to go wandering around these parts.”
She stared.
Not only had his plane nearly been hit by a human being out of nowhere, she was a human being whose nowhere sure as gravy wasn’t from around here. The gibberish she was yabbering wasn’t anything he’d run across in his travels around the country. That ruled out Spanish, French, and probably Chinese.
If he went back to camp with this story, Earl would tie him up in the front cockpit and fly him straight out of here. There had to be a sensible explanation to it. Sensible-ish, anyway.
He opened his mouth. How did you ask someone who didn’t speak English if she’d done something that wasn’t possible?
The fluttering dress caught his eye. He pointed at it. “That. Where’d you get that?”
She shook her head, vehemently.
“Is it yours? Did you find it someplace, same as you did the overalls?” He wiggled his own shirt collar.
She sidestepped, past the wash line, into J.W.’s yard.
“Just tell me if you’re from around here. Maybe I could help you get back to your family.”
She almost seemed to get that one. Her eyes narrowed, as if thinking hard. She gave her head half a shake.
Finally, he just bit the bullet. “Where—do—you—_come_—from? Savvy?”
She straightened, and her hold on the knife eased. With her free hand, she pointed one finger straight up.
Oh, that answer was sure going to make Earl think he was sane. “You’re saying you, what, live in the sky?”
She dipped her chin, once, and then her whole body froze. She whipped her head around, eyes scanning overhead, as if she heard something.
Like enough, it was a diversion. Get him to look too and then find a good hunk of muscle to sink the knife into.
But two could play that game. He lunged at her, caught her knife hand by the wrist, and forced it clear of his own body.
She screamed and struck out at his head with her free hand. She didn’t have much meat on her bones, but she was tall and surprisingly strong. He caught that wrist too, and she started kicking at his shins.
“Ow! Just quit, will you? Drop the knife, and you can go. I’ll even pay Matthew for the clothes. You don’t have to stay to talk to him.”
She shouted words at him, and they didn’t sound too much like endearments. Up close, she smelled like engine grease, lye soap, and lake moss. Her eyes locked on his, and in back of all that fury, he saw fear. She was just a lost girl in a strange place, trying to keep her head above water.
Either that, or she was a foreign spy trained to kill people by kicking them to death.
The ball of her bare foot landed another thwack on his shin, just above his boot.
And then he heard what she’d heard: the buzz of plane engines, lots of them, maybe about five miles out. Had her people come back to pick her up? He risked a glance away from her, toward the sky.
That was when the shooting started.
The first shot smacked into Matthew’s water barrel, and the report of a .22 rifle echoed. “Goldurn it, Matthew Berringer! Didn’t I tell you to stay out of my tomatoes?”
Hitch ducked and yanked the girl down with him, barely keeping the knife away from his ribs. All around them, the red gleam of tomatoes peeked from behind brown-edged leaves. He pushed her backwards, tumbling them both behind a steel water tank.
Still hanging onto her knife-holding hand, he cocked his head back against the tank. “J.W., this is Hitch Hitchcock! It ain’t Matthew, so for the love of Pete, stop your shooting!”
Another shot plinked into the tank and sprinkled water over their heads.
The girl tried to pull her hand away.
Hitch caught it fast in both of his. “Stop it, I tell you!”
“Eh?” J.W. said.
Matthew’s back door slammed, and he came tromping out, shotgun under one arm, pulling up his overalls strap as he came. “Why do you have to go shooting everything up this time of the morning? I told you I locked my chickens in!”
“Maybe not chickens, but there’s sure something in my tomato patch! If them tomatoes are ruined, you’re accountable.”
Overhead, the plane engines thrummed louder.
Hitch leaned sideways, trying to stick his head out enough for Matthew to see him around the wash on the line—but not so far that J.W. could shoot it off. “Matthew—”
The girl released the knife and yanked her wrist free. She jumped to her feet and bolted.
Instinctively, he dove after her. “Wait, you idiot. You want to get shot?” He caught her rolled-up pants cuff and brought her down.
She scrambled back to her feet, and he barely managed to snag her waist. With another one of those non-endearments, she turned on him, both kicking and clawing this time.
He caught first one hand, then the other. “Just wait a minute!”
To either side of him, running footsteps tromped through the tomato patch. Next thing he knew, two gun barrels were pointed at him. Not at them. Just at him.
“Now hold up, sonny,” Matthew said.
J.W. prodded Hitch with the .22. “Let her go. Don’t know what Matthew’s got to say about this, but I won’t have no manhandling of ladies on my property.”
Hitch’s chuckle sounded forced even to him. “Let’s all calm down here, shall we? You remember me? I used to work for you when I was a kid.”
Matthew leaned his head back and surveyed Hitch through the round specs perched low on his nose. He was closing in on seventy, but his face was still smooth and hardly jowly at all.
“Well, bless my suspenders, so you did.” He, at least, lowered his shotgun. “Hitch Hitchcock. Never thought we’d be seeing you again. How long has it been?”
Hitch huffed a sigh. “About nine years, I reckon.”
Matthew glanced at the girl. “And who are you?”
She wasn’t fighting anymore. She stared, first at the guns, then at the sky. The planes were almost overhead now.
“Don’t know who she is,” Hitch said. “But she’s crazy. And she doesn’t speak English.”
J.W. gave him another poke in the ribs. “Let her go anyway.”
The years hadn’t been quite so kind to J.W. The top of his head was almost completely bald and peeling with an old sunburn. He still had his mustache, but it was stone gray now and in need of a trim.
“You heard me right enough,” J.W. said. “I won’t have no manhandling around here.” The way he had of jutting his grizzled chin made him look like a badger on the prod.