She adjusted the sickly flame under the skillet and stirred the contents slowly. “You don’t see a little girl around here, do you? Any sign of one?”
“I work with that child’s parents. They’re excursion-boat musicians, and they’re sick with worry about her.” He looked at the back of her head as if there might be a little window there that his thoughts could climb through. “You’re a mother. Can’t you think about how that lady must feel?”
“I’m seventy-some years old, too old to fall for crap like that.” She shook the skillet over the flame. “You know, sometimes people seem one way on the surface. But inside, they’re different.”
“What?”
“Musicians? Those fine parents might be musicians, all right, the drifter kind that think they’re better than everybody else just because they can read squiggles on a set of lines. You know what I’m talking about. Rummies in the vaudeville orchestra, whorehouse bands, saloon singers.”
“The Wellers aren’t like that.”
She turned her doubtful face on him. “You really know them?”
He blinked. “Well enough to know you been told wrong if you think they’re trash.”
“Still, where will they be in ten years? They’re music players. If they can’t keep up with the tunes, they’ll be as out of work as a broke talking machine.”
“Well.” He leaned back in the chair and looked through the screen into the weed-choked yard. “And where will your boys be in ten years?”
She bristled. “Ralph and Billsy’s already there, mister. And you don’t have to know exactly where, neither. We come over from Arkansas with nothing, and now we’re doin’ all right. That kid’s parents, if I had to guess, can’t give her a thing except how to grow up singin’ dirty songs to dancing drunks.”
“Look, I’m not the law.”
A half-smile formed over the sizzling skillet. “I was worried you might be one of those Chicago boys hired to make some law on the side, if you know what I mean. But you ain’t nothin’ but a coonass that learned all his words.”
Sam glared at her. “Just tell me what you did with the girl.”
“I don’t know what we’re talkin’ about.” She raised the lid on a pot that was chattering on another burner and stirred the rice. “There ain’t no little girl around here.”
The two men came back into the room and sat with him at the table, leaving Satan on the other side of the screen, his eyes like two hot coals caught in the mesh. “You got vittles yet?” Ralph asked.
“Watch this one off the property. He’s just leavin’,” the woman said.
Sam remained seated. “I might stay around to sample some of that rabbit.”
The one named Billsy ran a hand through his iron-colored hair and looked worriedly at the skillet. “What’s he want, anyways?”
The woman sighed. “Hush up.”
“If you won’t talk to me, I’ll go back to the excursion boat and saddle up the Wellers and bring them in for a little chat.”
“If you can sober them up, you mean.”
“They aren’t drunks. Somebody’s filled your head full of lies about those people. The same somebody that paid you to steal their girl.”
“If you send anybody back in here, after we deal with them, we’ll come after you.” The woman turned off the stove, and a kerosene stink began to fill the hot kitchen.
Sam folded his hands on the table. “If someone was hired to steal a child, I’d bet it was by strangers who rode up from nowhere with a good story.”
“Nobody came back in here.”
“It might be faraway strangers, too,” he continued.
“Why don’t you just get on, Frenchie,” Ralph said, arranging his knife and fork next to his plate.
“He talked better than you do,” Billsy said.
Quick as a snake his mother rapped him twice on the skull with her spatula. “You are a ringtailed dumbass if ever there was one.”
Billsy raised his forearms above his head. “I didn’t say nothing.”
Sam could see how scrambled his thoughts were by looking at his eyes. “What did this nice-talking man look like?”
Before his mother could hit him again, Billsy blurted out, “He just had a little mustache and talked about his wife a lot. Rode a horse in a suit.”
Sam made a face. “A horse in a suit?”
Ralph suddenly pulled a big sheath knife and banged it on the table boards. “You about ready to leave, ain’t ya?”
“What do you know about the killing in Troumal?”
“I’ll tell you about a killin’ right here in a minute. Now get out.”
Sam glanced at his eyes and stood up. “Can I get past that dog?”
“You can get past him goin’ out,” Ralph Skadlock told him. “But I wouldn’t try it comin’ back. He’ll eat you like a meat grinder.”
Chapter Ten
IT WAS ONE O’CLOCK when he climbed on Number 6 to ride back to St. Frank, a slow trip through the spiders and snakes.
The shadows were long when he reached the bayou, and he was so hungry and stuck up with briars that he galloped Number 6 into the water before the horse could think about it too much, hollering him across and up the bank toward town.
The man at the livery stood watching as Sam rode up and tied off.
“Here’s your animal. I’ll take my deposit.”
The man looked at Sam’s clothes. “Looks like he got his money’s worth out of you.”
“It’s hard to keep him in a straight line.”
“Well, I guess you did good to even get back.” He grabbed the reins and began to lead the animal.
Sam gave him a hard look. “Say.”
The man stopped and let Number 6 roll on like a shoved wagon.
“Some time ago, maybe two months, did you rent a horse to a little man wearing a suit?”
“No.”
Sam looked down the road toward the river. “How come you can answer so quick?”
“I ain’t rented nothin’ to nobody wearin’ a suit coat in five years or better. Nowadays, if you wear a suit you got a Ford.”
“Somebody was up there wearin’ one.”
The liveryman crossed his big arms and spat. “Could of rode in from Woodgulch to the northwest. They’s more than one point on the compass, you know.”
He started walking in the direction of the boat feeling not only tired but thick-headed. More than one point on the compass. He wasn’t cut out for the wilderness, was damn lucky he hadn’t got lost or killed. And if he could help it, he’d never climb on another horse.
HE GOT to the stage plank five minutes before the boat cast off and was squeezing through the crowd when the captain grabbed him by the arm.
“By God, Lucky, you smell like a sardine. Get cleaned up and out on deck in ten minutes. We’ve got a load of country boys on with the rest and I don’t think some of ’em have ever seen electricity.”
Sam put a hand on his lower back. “I’m about half dead, Captain.”
“Well, the half that ain’t dead better work twice as hard.” He gave Sam a shove toward the stairs, and he went up to wash and change into his uniform. The upper decks and companionways were reeling with excursionists, some well dressed, some in khaki cotton work clothes, a few wearing blue jeans belted with strips of blond leather. Up on the roof he checked the fire buckets, then opened the pilothouse door.
Mr. Brandywine, who seldom used the new steering levers, was standing on a spoke of the ten-foot wheel, waiting for castoff, and he turned halfway around. “Knock before you come in here.”
“I’m looking for the Wellers.”
“Mr. Simoneaux, I am not in charge of the musicians.”
As Sam retreated down the steps, Mr. Brandywine hung half his weight on the whistle cord and set the big three-bell chime to roaring. The deckhands cast off lines and the boat backed out full speed, the decks shaking as the paddlewheel beat down the water.
The café was jammed, and Ted Weller was pinned at the back of the room by a party of eight dandies examining the one-page paper menus with exaggerated care. The sun was going down and young couples were thronging the open area on the hurricane deck, most of them good natured, smoking and sneaking sips from their pocket flasks. He checked in with Charlie Duggs, who was blending with the crowd at the edge of the dance floor, where perhaps a quarter of the paying customers stood in awe of the black orchestra, of the bounce and surprise of the music, the sass of the trumpet. Most of them had never heard anything like it, but knees began to bend, hips to slide, feet to rise like boats lifted on a freshet of notes. Sam moved downstairs and found the main deck jammed, people tossing cigarette butts in sparking pinwheels across the wooden floor and ordering tableloads of ice and soda.