Without a word, she raced in front of the truck and plunged in, and with a lot of wheel spinning and gear-shifting, Billy swung the vehicle out into the road, pointing in the right direction, back toward the farmhouse.
She gave a nervous huff of laughter. "You've got grass in your hair."
His face angry, his eyes a furious blue, he raked the green leaves out of his thick blond scalp. She didn't dare ask where his cap had gone; she thought it was floating on the pond. Maybe the horse had eaten it.
"I'm sorry," she said contritely. "I didn't mean to run over you."
He let the truck slide into motion.
"I really do have a good reason for wanting to learn to drive this," Shiloh told him hurriedly, angling another look over at his thundercloud face. "I want to look for a job."
That got his attention. "A what?"
"A job. I want to work, to make money, to help."
"You can work here all you want. I don't want you off at a bank all day."
"I don't know what to do here. Mostly I follow you, or Ellen, around. If I had a real job, I could earn a paycheck. It doesn't have to be in a bank."
"If that's all that's worrying you, I'll give you a paycheck. I've left money on your dresser both of these past Mondays, haven't I?"
"I know. I appreciate it, Billy. But I don't think I earned it. And sometimes, it feels like I just sit around."
"I can give you a job. Tell me what you want to learn to do around here. I'll teach you. Or my accounts—you can keep the books if you want. Unless"— his voice rose in pure temper—"you're saying you just can't stand me and the farm anymore. So if that's what the hell this is all about, say so."
"Don't yell at me! And none of that is the reason I wanted a job."
They'd reached the house, where Billy killed the engine without even pausing in the argument.
"Then you tell me what's wrong? What's all this talk about traps, and going places? You just got here." He slammed out of the truck, the motion reverberating the entire cab.
She did the same on the other side, her slam nearly as hard, coming around to him. "I was trying to help, Billy. I thought, I'm not much good at farm things. I don't know what to do. So if I go do something I am good at and make extra money I'll be helping my husband."
She was crying now, and she reached out suddenly to give him a rough push with both of her hands against his flat, hard stomach. "But you don't deserve it, you—you— big jerk!"
He watched in silence as she ran up the old sidewalk to the front porch. Blinded by tears, she didn't see the man who stood on the shady steps and so banged into him full Hit.
He caught and steadied her. "Here now, you're gonna get hurt."
She shook herself free, and the last the two men saw of her was her long brown legs as the screen door slammed shut behind her. Then there was silence.
"Huh." The big man strolled down toward Billy, who leaned disconsolately on the truck. "Hello, Billy Bob."
"Mr. Bell." Concentrating on the other man wasn't easy, not when he really wanted to peel himself off the truck, run Shiloh down, and force her body to soften under his, and her mouth to open for his tongue. "Haven't seen you in a while."
"I hear you've been busy, boy." Bell had a swarthy look about him, sort of a modern Pancho Villa appearance, helped along by the big Besistol cowboy hats he wore. Nearer sixty than fifty, he still had an eye for the ladies; he'd divorced three of them, in fact. But his consuming passion was anything horsey, and he had enough money to indulge himself.
"Who, me?"
"That's right. I heard you got married."
"You just met her. She was the one crying," Billy said ruefully.
"Mighty fine-looking woman. I tell you, I didn't believe it when some of the boys said you'd got yourself a wife, but that was some fight. Yep, you two sure look married to me."
Hot, bruised, and mad, Billy Bob had no intentions of listening to Bell's opinions about marital bliss. He was all too aware that this was mostly his fault, that he'd jumped Shiloh over nothing because he was scared stupid Pennington was somehow going to drag her away.
"Did you need to see me about something?"
"Well, first off, there's the same old thing. I still want that horse awful bad. I went down to the bam while I was waiting for you, to take a look at him, but he must have been out in the pasture."
Billy liked Bell, but he resented the way the man made up to Chase, as if the horse still belonged to him. More than once Bell had come to see Billy and he'd found the older man out at the barn, coaxing the stallion, bribing him into trust with apples and caresses.
Maybe he was getting possessive, but Billy Bob was plain sick of having everybody's hands reaching for what was his. "The answer's the same. No," he informed Bell without a flicker of emotion.
"That's what I thought. But I won't give up. Chase deserves better than what you can do for him right now, son, but we won't talk about that."
Bell reached out to remove the cowboy hat with a long arm that ended in a big, rough hand sprayed with black hairs. Around his wrist, a gold watch gleamed. "I've got this dog, Rosie. You remember her. Best stock dog I ever owned, and I've had her ten years. She got hit by a car an hour or two ago; I thought she was dead, but she's still breathing. Opened her eyes after we made a litter and carried her to the barn. I was wondering if you could come and take a look at her, Billy Bob."
"Dr. Sanders seen her yet?"
"Nope. He's gone to LSU for some seminar for three weeks. And I'd just as soon you looked her over. You've got healing hands—I've said it for years. Have you got time?"
Billy Bob cast one regretful glance at the towels still lying on the hot leather truck seat and thought of the afternoon he'd planned. Shiloh was nowhere in sight. Probably still crying.
Then he sighed. "I've got time."
Like a lost waif, she was waiting for him when he finally got home, long after dark, sitting in the cradle of the big swing, one bare foot dragging across the worn spot in the backyard.
New-cut grass made the air sweet and pungent, and the more cloying scent of roses weighted it, making it nearly drinkable.
Shiloh scooted over a little to let him sit down, raising one bare knee to clasp her hand around it. The creaking of the swing's chains as they swayed in it warred with the crickets and the katydids' songs. Each waited for the other to speak.
"You've got a right to work if you want to." Husky, contrite, tired—his voice alone would have been enough apology, but he said it all. "So I'm sorry. It just hurts me to think you have to, and to know that right now, I can't get you things you're used to having. Like rings and cars."
"At least you didn't go off and punch somebody," she returned, her voice teasing and unsteady. "You weren't in one of those famous Billy Walker fights."
"I think you were the one throwing the punches." Relief ran through his voice, and he held his stomach as if in some kind of mortal pain, right where she'd shoved him.
"I came back to play doctor and make you well again after I pushed you, but I heard that man asking you about his dog."
"I'm recuperating real slow. You can still work on me." His teeth gleamed as he grinned at her in the duskiness.
But when she edged toward him, he caught her wrist and stopped the motion. "Give me time, though, baby. I'm dirty. I need a shower. I just got home," he said unsteadily, then he tucked her hands down on his lap, cuddling them.
On the distant porch, a screen door screeched as Grandpa came out in the shadows to admire the night and smoke his pipe. Long, dreamy tendrils of its rich cherry scent drifted out over the wet grass.
"We had to put Rosie to sleep." Billy's voice was low, regretful.
Her hands touched his thighs, rubbing them in quiet sympathy.
"It's funny. I could save Chase when Bell gave up on him, but I couldn't save that old dog of his when he believed in me. Nobody could have; her back was broken, her spine was damaged."
"He didn't blame you, did he?"
"No. He offered me a job, if I wanted to travel again with his rodeo," Billy remembered, resigned laughter in his words. Then he said, more quietly, "Rosie was just too old, and it was a lost cause from the beginning. At least she didn't feel anything much. She was paralyzed from her front legs down. All I could do was give her the shot and hold her head."
He'd held Chase's head, too, the same way he touched the plants in the greenhouse, and the trees in the orchard, and her in the white sheets of their bed.
"I've seen the way you hold things." She moved in closer, a butterfly looking to light, and laid her face against his hands, bending to his lap. "I wouldn't mind if you touched me like that right now, Billy, even if you do need a bath."
The words surprised him, and after a hesitation, he pulled his right hand free from the weight of her body and laid it across her bent shoulders, rubbing his palm over her back in warm, soothing circles, the silence around them broken at last by another slam of the screen as Grandpa reentered the house.
"Did you know how much easier it is to fight with you than with Sam? I never win with him. He never says I'm sorry.' " Slurred with tears, her words were as sweet as rain on his heart. "But / can. I'm sorry, Billy. I said things the wrong way today."
Her hands brushed inward under her, between his legs. His breath slammed out of him; her fingers were too close for him to stay calm.
"Shiloh." The word broke in two, out of desperation.
But her voice was nearly drowsy. "I heard what he said, you know. He's right. You would have made a great vet, because you do have healing hands. Even on the plants. Even on me."
19
The morning was gloomy and overcast as Billy pulled away from the farm. Behind him, the load of trees that rode on the flatbed trailer made a green splotch of color as he rolled out onto the highway that led to the state line.
He had left Shiloh sleeping in the bed; she had barely stirred when he kissed her good-bye at five this morning. With any luck, he could get the load off early at the warehouse and be back home by night.
The venture had been an unexpected success. He'd been raising acres of trees now for years, hoping against hope to find the kind of market for his stock that he had at last located.
This was the first year he'd sold any in mass quantities like this. And for every load he dug and hauled, he had planted replacement trees. It might take years to make money in this business, but there was definitely money to be made by a nurseryman who was consistent and reliable in his growth and delivery of stock.
With care, the money he was going to make from now until Thanksgiving might tide them over until the next crop next spring, and even allow a few extras.
Maybe a down payment on a car. And maybe—he thought back to Shiloh's slender hand on the pillows this morning—a wedding band.
A few sprinkles of rain hit the windshield, and a thin, distant streak of lightning crossed the gray sky.
But this was still a good day.
"I told you once," an ugly, bull-faced man at the chain-link fence outside the big warehouse compound droned, "your name's not on this list. No Walker Farms, no William Robert Walker."
"Look." Billy leaned across the wooden window of the yellow booth in which the guard sat. "These trees are due here today. I've got a paper . . ." He fumbled in his pocket, finally pulling it forth. "Here. This is the contract."
The guard watched as he spread it out, then looked down over his big bulbous nose to read it. When the wind threatened to whip it away, Billy caught it and held it down with both hands.
"All right," the guard said reluctantly. "I'll call the office. Something's not right here."
Billy waited, leaned up against the guard shack, his shirt collar turned up against the light mist. Behind him, he heard the man's mumbled words.
"Okay. Mr. Jensen—he's the big dog in charge here— he's coming down himself." The guard handed Billy back the paper contract and watched as he folded it. "This must be some setup. Jensen, no less."
Billy didn't bother to tell him that he'd never met the man; a purchaser had liked his trees and arranged the deal.
Jensen was a big, untidy man with a huge round barrel of a stomach. His sandy brown hair was cut in a stiff-looking flattop, and his tortoiseshell glasses were pressed firm against his face, nearly imbedded in the bridge of his nose.
He was blunt and rude. "Mr. Walker? I represent the company. I wasn't aware that you hadn't been contacted, but we have made a decision to halt purchase of stock from Walker Farms."
"What?" Billy stared at him incredulously. "But I made a deal with a man named Lewis—"
"Lewis Abrahams. I know. I believe the arrangement was for you to deliver a load of trees—specified types—to this warehouse once a month from June to November. Is that right?"
"That's right. And today's the twentieth, the day set for delivery."
"But the fact is, the contract says that we here at the actual site have to be satisfied with your stock, or the sale is to be cancelled. Having looked over your first load last month, we are not satisfied. So you will need to take this shipment back where you got it."
Jensen turned away, but not before Billy came out of his stupefaction enough to grab his arm.
"What do you mean, not satisfied? This is some of the best stock around. I worked to make it that way. Look at it—-just look at it. Then you tell me what it is that's unsatisfying to you," he demanded.
Jensen pulled away from Billy's grasp, just as the guard took a step closer, reaching threateningly for his billy club.
"I don't know, Walker. Maybe it's too short. Too tall. Too green. We'll find something if you insist."
Billy let his hands fall to his sides. "You just plain don't want it."
"That's right."
"And what about my contract with Lewis Abrahams?"
"You'll find it costs money to challenge the default of a contract. Have you got that kind of money? Anyway, like I said, we will find something wrong."
Jensen turned away a second time. "Matthews, shut the gates after me. Mr. Walker is not entering."
He finally found a McDonald's on the edge of town with enough room to park the trailer and truck.
At the pay phone outside, as the rain came down harder, he tried to hold the paper that had Abrahams's office number on it and dial at the same time.
"Lewis Abrahams," he told the receptionist. "Tell him—Jensen is calling."
He didn't even sweat over the lie. Abrahams had seemed decent, but he wasn't taking any chances on not getting to talk to him.
His chest felt heavy; his brain was on fire. He had to make this sale. He'd been depending on it.
"Yes?" This was his man; Billy remembered the slight midwestern drawl the purchaser had. He was from Kansas, he'd said.
"Mr. Abrahams, I want to know why the stock from Walker Farms got turned down at the warehouse this morning."
There was a slight pause. "Who is this?"
"Billy Walker."
"I see. I thought it was—"
"I told her to tell you it was Jensen. I know something's going on. There was nothing wrong with those trees. I want to know what's the matter?"
Another slight pause. "Look, Mr. Walker, I'm new here. I saw your farm and your stock. What I saw was excellent. Well-tended and sturdy."
"So buy it, for God's sake."
"I'll swear I never told you this if you ever bring it up, but I understand somebody put the ax to the purchase. He had ties to major stockholders. Somebody from your home state."
Billy swallowed once, twice. In front of him, somebody had scrawled on the telephone wall, "For a good time, call Ann." The words danced before his eyes.
"Who?" he choked, already knowing the answer.
"I never got the name, but some joker said it was your father-in-law."
He sold the stock anyway, sometimes for half what it was worth. It took him three days to do it, three days of canvassing Arkansas and Louisiana and even up into West Tenn
essee, selling wherever he could. To roadside markets, to landscapers, once to a man selling horrible paintings on black velvet at a flea market who decided to try his hand at reselling Billy's trees, instead.
It became a point of honor with him not to go back to Briskin County until every tree was gone.
He called home twice, just to tell Shiloh where he was. "In Arkansas," he said, having "some trouble with the truck." He'd be home soon. "I love you," she said. “I love you, too, baby.”
Damn your father.
Every night he sprawled in the seat of the truck in some roadside parking area, windows and doors open to cool the heated cab. Mosquitoes were everywhere, but he barely heard them.
Why, why did Pennington have to mess it up? He had everything. He had cars and rings and banks and more money than Billy Walker would ever dream of.
But he'd lost one daughter. And no matter what he did, he wouldn't get her back.
Billy looked over the dwindling bed of trees every night, and he made a vow: Pennington would not beat him. He would fight Pennington and Sewell both. His life would go on.
And somewhere he'd get the money he needed for his family to live and for his plans to go on, too. Shiloh hadn't married a loser.
Billy Bob came home with something on his mind. Shiloh knew it the instant she touched him, so glad to see him that she could have eaten him alive.
But he couldn't seem to focus on her, and she withdrew a little, hurt.
That night he made love to her convulsively, as if he had to prove she was there, then he slipped away into himself again.
And when she came awake sometime before dawn, when the sky was at its darkest, he was sitting on the side of the bed, his head dropped into his hands.
"Billy?" she whispered.
Billy Bob Walker Got Married Page 31
