Page 77

I find the man who yelled it, a feed salesman from Stonewall, and look at him until he quits.

"Old enough to remember what you still owe Ozzie, Earl."

The laughing moves over to him.

Gil doesn't laugh. He's watching me with his arms folded.

Dutch doesn't laugh either. He lost his money on Wiley, but he sits at Ozzie's table watching my hands like the bet paid off.

He came to find out whether I'd hit somebody. Now he knows I won't, not even a kid who earned it. A man doesn't hold his hands like that unless somebody he cares about asked him to, and Dutch just watched me prove that somebody exists.

I turn my shoulder to the table and key the radio low. "Beckett. Rifle up. Watch the cedar behind you till I call for her." He clicks once.

Dutch waits until the next fight starts and the crowd is yelling again. He gets up, walks along the ropes to my corner post, and stands beside me, close enough that I can smell stale cigar on him.

I speak first, low enough that only he can hear it. "Whatever you paid Wiley, you wasted it. And the next man you pay to break my rules doesn't get past my gate."

His jaw goes tight. He didn't think I'd caught it.

He keeps his eyes on the fighters. "Mr. Whitlock says you and him have done business. Says you know how he likes his paper."

The only paper I ever sold Coleman Whitlock is the preacher's marker, and my initials sit beside that line in the old green marker ledger. Delilah is on the far side of the back wall, too far from this post to hear any of it.

Whitlock isn't asking me anything. He's letting me know he can tell Delilah where her daddy's marker came from whenever he likes. Keeping her from finding out is going to cost me whatever he decides to charge.

She ought to hear it from me first. I know what it'll cost me the minute she does, so I keep my mouth shut.

I close both fists around the top rope and squeeze until the turnbuckle creaks. I want to put him in the dirt.

"Mr. Whitlock wants to talk business," I tell him, "he can drive out here and talk it to my face."

Dutch nods like that's the answer he expected and walks back to Ozzie's table.

He bets on a couple more fights and loses both times.

Between the last of those fights and the main event, he heads for the front doors. He has a fresh cigar lit before he's clear of them.

I follow him across the lot.

I open the lot gate for him. His diesel sits beside Gil's stock truck down the cedar road, at the edge of the light. It's a dark gray crew cab with a steel headache rack.

"If you run across the preacher's girl," he says over his shoulder, "you tell her Dutch was asking after her. Tell her Royce cut her hair with the kitchen shears, and I kept what he cut."

I never knew who hacked off her hair. Now I know who did it, and that the man in front of me kept it.

I walk past him to his truck and put my back against the driver's door. He stops short.

I take the cigar out of his mouth, drop it in the gravel, and grind it out under my boot heel.

"You don't talk about her on my land again," I tell him. "Not to me and not to anybody in my barn. You come through my gate again; you won't drive back out of it."

He looks at the flattened cigar, then at me. He doesn't say anything.

I step away from the door.

He climbs in and backs out onto the cedar road. I go back to the lot gate and stand in it until his taillights disappear around the bend.

Gil's stock truck is still parked in the ditch.