On the way, they drove past Charley and Edna's, and there was a big expensive Packard in the side yard. Curtis stared as they passed it. "Whose car is that?" he asked.
"Darned if I know. Never saw it before." The tenant pursed his lips worriedly. It looked like a banker's car, and more often than not, bankers meant trouble these days. Though he didn't think Charley had any mortgage to worry about: The Macurdy land had been in the family for generations.
It seemed to Curtis it would be one of Varia's Sisterhood: maybe Idri. He wasn't afraid of Idri by herself, but she wouldn't be alone, and he wasn't altogether sure he could handle the men she'd have with her. Besides, this wasn't Yuulith; they might carry guns. And if they killed him, they'd kill his parents as witnesses.
He wasn't very good company for the Hammonds at supper. Half his attention stayed on whoever might have driven up in the Packard. He'd come close on the food: It was canned pig hocks and boiled potatoes, with pork gravy, canned green beans, and peach pie for dessert. Seemed like Miz Hammond kept her family pretty well fed. The coffee was weak of course, but coffee had to be bought.
When he'd finished, he paid his respects and left, walking east toward home. But before he'd gone more than a few chains, he left the road along the old line fence, screened by the growth of serviceberry and young sassafras in the fence row, until the barn cut him off from view of the house. Then he hiked through the potato field to the barn, skirting the manure pile. Trapjaw, Charley's old redbone hound, peered from the barn door, then sauntered out, tail waving, to greet Curtis. From inside, Curtis could hear the sound of milk on pail bottom as his dad began on another cow.
He looked in. Charley was hunkered on the one-legged milking stool, head against a fawn-colored flank, squeezing and pulling, the sound changing from metallic singing to the rushing "shoosh-shoosh-shoosh" as milk jetted into milk, broken just a beat as Charley squirted a stream into an expectant cat's face. With quick tidy movements the animal wiped it off, licking the paw between wipes, then waited primly, hopefully, for her next serving.
"Howdy," Curtis said.
Charley answered without pausing, merely glancing back over his shoulder. "You're back, eh? Your ma put your supper on the back of the stove. You've got company." Ordinarily Curtis saw auras simply as an inconspicuous, layered cloud of colors. Now, however, he focused on Charley's. It reflected distrust, a sense of betrayal. When Curtis failed to respond, Charley added, "It's Varia. The wife you said drowned."
The words struck Curtis like a fist in the gut, but he recovered quickly. "How sure are you it's her? She's got a twin." He'd almost said clone, then caught himself. "Named Liiset."
The barrier softened as Charley considered, and Curtis spoke again. "Did she say anything, or ask anything, that didn't sound e Varia? Maybe something Varia would have known but this one didn't?"
Charley grunted. "Now that you mention it… A twin, you say."
"And Varia wouldn't have brought men with her."
"You saw them then?" Charley asked.
He hadn't needed to. He'd turned Sarkia down on the other side, but obviously she wasn't taking no for an answer. With his reputation, she'd have sent men, very likely tigers, as the clone's enforcers. And if it came to a fight, and he succeeded in killing them, how would he explain to a judge, or even to his parents?
"No," he answered, "I just came from supper with Bob and Hattie. So he wouldn't feel he had to pay me any two dollars. But I saw the Packard in the front yard when we drove by. And there's stuff I didn't tell you. About Varia's family. Stuff just about impossible to explain; stuff you wouldn't believe. Too foreign. I-kind of rounded off the truth."
The strong farmer hands continued squeezing and pulling. As the milk had deepened, the sound had changed to "choofchoof-choof." Charley said nothing, but he was thinking, putting together snippets of observation accrued over more than twenty-five years. The cat, ignored now, stalked off to wait with others by their milk dish.
"Did the men have an accent?" Curtis asked.
"Neither one of them said anything in English. Varia, or whoever she is, did the talking. I thin you're right though; she's not Varia. Not by what she said, but what she didn't say. She didn't ask about Julie, or Max, or Frank… none of them. And didn't tell us anything about you, except they had a good job for you. She excused the fellas with her, said they'd just come from the old country and hadn't learned English yet. Said she's taking them around with her to learn about America. When they talked, I kind of thought they might be Eye-tahan."
"Big hard-looking men?" Curtis asked. "Hair somewhere between carrot and bay?"
"I guess you know them."
"Probably not them specifically. But they're not Eye-talian." He spoke a line of Yuultal then, ending with, "It sounded like that, right? Their part of the world is full of old rivalries, with people trained to kill. Finally I had enough of it. More than enough."
Charley nodded, not knowing what to say, his hands still pumping milk into the four-gallon pail.
Curtis continued. "And Varia's not dead. Her family traced us from Evansville to Illinois, and stole her back. She never imagined I could find her, so she ran away from them, and ended up married to someone else, a man who saved her when her kinfolks caught her again. So I joined another group, separate from either of those, and married a woman whose name translates out to Melody. It was Melody fell through the ice, a good good woman, that I came to love maybe as much as I had Varia."
Charley's aura had shrunk from doubt and concern, shrunken halfway to his skin. He'd even slowed his milking, looking over at his youngest son.
"But Varia wouldn't have come here with two men," Curtis went on. "If she'd come after me, it would have been alone and it would have been enough."
Soon the jets of milk thinned. After another half minute, Charley rose from the stool, picking it up with one hand and the pail with the other. Together the two men walked to one of the ten-gallon cans, and Charley emptied the pail into it. "What are you going to do now?" he asked.
"Leave. Go somewhere they won't have a notion of. Or you either; that's the way it's got to be." He paused, his eyes intent on his father's. "Did it ever seem to you that Varia was-a little bit witchy?"
Charley nodded. "In a manner of speaking. A time or two. Ask your ma."
"Liiset's got her own witchy powers, so I need to be gone before you go back in. I'll saddle Blaze and ride to Max and lie's. Leave Blaze with them, tell them I'm in trouble, and borrow some money; maybe twenty dollars. That you promised to pay it back for me. My money belt's in my top dresser drawer, with about sixty dollars. It's yours; I dasn't go in for it."
Charley blinked; sixty dollars was a lot of money.
"Max can drive me into Salem," Curtis went on, "and I'll take the train to Louisville. After you've finished milking, phone up Bob and ask if he knows where I'm at. He'll tell you I started home after supper. Liiset will figure something's fishy, but there'll be nothing she can do except hope I show up later."
Leaving his father staring after him, Curtis went to the horse shed on one end of the barn, saddled Blaze and rode away, keeping the barn between himself and the house. When he came to the lane along the fence line, he rode north through the beginning of dusk to the Maple Hill Road. He wasn't totally sure this was necessary. Perhaps he could just go in and talk to the clone, tell her he wasn't interested. But the two men with her? They'd kidnapped Varia that day in Macon County; they might kidnap him. And if the men were tigers, burn the house to cover the kidnapping. The bones in it would be his parents' and Ferris's.