He lifted his head sharply, twisting to see her. "What are you doin' awake?"
"Wondering what's wrong with you. Are you sick?"
"No. I just couldn't sleep."
"There's more to it than that." Her hand found his thigh, tracing it gently. "I could feel something wrong when you came home."
"Nothing much. Business, I guess. Thinking about things." He captured her hand in his right one, letting his thumb rub her fingers. "You still need a wedding ring. I'm going to get you one, Shiloh. I promise."
Then he stood, looking down at her for a moment. "Seems like I'm always making promises. I guess you'd like to see me keep some, wouldn't you?"
"Keep that one we made in that funny little judge's office in Memphis," she suggested sleepily, smiling at him.
He found his pants on the rocking chair and stepped into them. "I think I'll stand on the porch a few minutes. Go back to sleep, baby."
Two days later, Robert Sewell was on the morning news when Billy Bob went to breakfast, waving to a crowd at a fund-raiser in Hattiesburg. A favorite son, said the newscaster, who went on to list his accomplishments.
Billy Bob watched the man without a word, his coffee forgotten in his hand, and when Ellen came to stand beside her son, her fingers reaching up to his elbow in a need for reassurance, he pressed her hand to his side. Grandpa got up and left before the broadcast was over.
Men like Sewell and Pennington got away with things because people like Ellen and him never spoke up.
It was that thought that sent him into Sweetwater late that afternoon; the town was as sleepy and dusty as always.
All day long he had been remembering what he'd tried so hard to forget: Sewell's words to him in the jail cell. "You can go to jail for a while and it's nothing. You're not important enough. Nobody cares. But if Michael goes, it's going to be splashed everywhere. So do the time, take the money. What's it to you?"
Billy Bob had spoken one concise sentence in which he'd told Sewell in the most vulgar terms exactly what he could do with his money.
He had survived everything Sewell had said; he figured he could take what Pennington might mete out, too.
He was tired of being shoved around by the greenback dollar and men who had more of it than he did.
The cool blue interior of the People's Bank was nearly empty this late in the day. Rita was the only cashier still on duty, and she glanced up, smiling, from the bills she was counting as the sound of his boots rang on the tiled floor.
Then the smile wavered.
"I want to withdraw the money that's in this account," he said roughly, shoving the bank book at her.
Her eyes wide and startled, she pushed buttons on the computer beside her.
"Seven hundred dollars?" she murmured, questioningly, eyeing the screen.
"That's it."
It took less than three minutes for the transaction, and Billy Bob spent most of the time looking for the door in the corner that opened on the stairs.
Up there, somewhere, was Pennington.
"Tell Shiloh hello," the girl offered hesitantly as he folded the money into his wallet.
He made no answer, but he headed for the door, not to the outside, but to the upstairs.
'Wait. Mr.—Mr. Walker, you can't just go up there— we're closing—"
The steel door shut on her surprised voice.
It was easy to find him; his name was on the door, in gold letters, no less.
And inside were several women—two were leaving, one was still seated at a big center desk, laughing at something another had said. Her face looked strange, unable to stop the motions of laughter soon enough to express her shock as he strode by her.
"That's Mr. Pennington's office. You can't—I'll call the bank guard . . ."
And then he was right there, in the presence of the kingpin himself.
Pennington was in his shirt sleeves and on the phone, one of those fat cigars smoking in his fingers when he caught sight of the man who'd invaded his space.
They stared at each other a long, long moment.
Billy's shoulders were squared and pugnacious, his whole long body vibrating with anger. Pennington was calmer, more collected, but his hand moved jerkily to put down the phone.
Marie Watson burst into the room. "I'm sorry, sir, but he just pushed in. I've called the guard."
Pennington's hand stubbed out the cigar in the heavy ashtray on the big desk. "That's all right, Marie. Looks like Walker's got something he wants to say, and I've got a few words for him, too."
She stalled for a moment, plainly unwilling to leave the two of them together, before she reluctantly turned and pulled the door shut behind her.
"You claimed that car was stolen. You blocked the sale of my trees. We both know why—because of Shiloh. Well, I've only got one thing to say: You stay out of our lives," Billy Bob said in a rush, through clenched teeth, and his right index finger pointed and accused.
"Did you stay out of mine?" Pennington returned swiftly.
"I love her. She loves me. We didn't do it to hurt you. But what you're doing is deliberate—"
"This love—I got to say that your lovin' her is awful convenient. Why couldn't you love, say, the Blake woman? Or some girl from Seven Knobs? Why my daughter?"
"I didn't plan it, Pennington. My God, I'd rather she was anybody's girl but yours. It'd be a whole lot easier on her and on me both. And you keep hinting that I married her for your money. We haven't asked for anything, and if you'll keep your hands off my business, we'll make it. Or is that what's wrong . . . you're afraid that we will?"
"What's wrong is that you took Shiloh."
"Any man she married would've done the same."
"Don't you think she deserves more than to be married to a Mississippi dirt farmer? One who has a reputation and is a bastard, to boot?"
"I can change the reputation with time. And as for being a bastard, it's got nothing to do with me. Take it up with your buddy, Sewell. He came to Seven Knobs with a God-almighty charity group. They were going to give opportunities to all those poor people who'd never had them. Well, Sewell saw his opportunity and he took it. She believed every one of his lies, so he kept coming back. She didn't know about his family until Grandpa found out what was going on and told her he had a wife and a son he'd forgot to mention. And even then, Sewell tried to keep coming. That's your partner, Pennington, the next governor. If people are blind enough to vote for him, they deserve him."
"You oughta be a preacher, Walker, you sound downright righteous. But don't be too hard on the judge. At least he didn't take thirty-five hundred dollars from Ellen to pay his way out of jail. How long did it take you to talk Shiloh out of it?"
Pennington was still as a cat about to pounce on a mouse, but his face was triumphant and knowing.
Billy Bob felt his own cheeks blanch, then flush. How did the man know?
"That's between me and my wife."
"She wasn't your wife then. Oh, I've checked you out, boy. I called Memphis. I pulled bank statements—yours and hers. And then I remembered T-Tommy reeling from shock when you paid that fine. Two days before the marriage, she got you out. Maybe she had to." Pennington went to the window, his hands on his hips, his stance nonchalant. But his voice was a different story. "Did you get her in trouble and then she had to marry you, Walker?"
After Billy got his breath back, he laughed in utter incredulity. "You don't even know your own daughter, do you? I didn't touch her until after we were married. Shiloh's the most innocent, the nicest lady I've ever known. I just want to live with her and be happy. You won't let us. You're tearing down everything I've worked for, and you're hurting her."
The man at the window stood silent and still for a long, long time, struggling with himself. He tried twice to speak before he finally managed to say, "She talks about me?"
"Shiloh's not coming back to you, not to be your little girl," Billy answered instead, and he hoped he was right. "But she'd be happier if she could se
e you. I'm telling you this for her, and now I've got something to say for me. If you keep on taking away the reasons I've got to stay on the farm and work, it's going to backfire on you, because we'll go so far away from here you'll never see her again."
Pennington turned swiftly, his face gray. "Don't threaten me. You're not tough enough to play the game. And you've got a weakness, Walker. You're ambitious."
Billy Bob could read it in the other man's eyes: Pennington knew something.
"There's nothing wrong with ambition," he told him. "I heard you were, too, forty years ago in old man Ledbetter's mill. But it's got nothing to do with Shiloh."
"I say it does. Who she is attracted you. She's part of that mind-set that's determined to prove you're better than your father. You want to beat the rap the Sewells have laid on you all these years. That's ambition, and it's got you by the throat."
He held Billy's gaze as he returned to the desk, fumbling for another cigar. His face now was keen, intent, and he lit the cigar before he spoke again.
"Like I said, I've been checkin' you out, and you are one surprise package, boy. It turns out they know you real well in Oxford, and in the strangest place—at the University of Mississippi."
So Pennington had found him out. It didn't matter, but if he laughed, Billy was going to punch him. It was that simple.
"It's not against the law to take classes at the university."
"No, but you've sure laid low about it."
Billy wasn't about to tell Pennington why, that he'd been half-sure when he started that he was going to fail. It had been a pipe dream for him—Billy Bob Walker— even to attempt it. And it had been hard to come by the money, too. He'd already spent four years clawing his way through only sixty-plus semester hours. But that was nearly enough for what he wanted.
Pennington blew smoke, then continued, "But it's all about to end, isn't it? All this time, and you're about through that school. What is it? Preveterinary medicine? Pretty soon, you're gonna have to face the facts. You're not goin' to be admitted to the vet program down at Starkville. Only thirty students a year get in, and they've got to be next to God and pure as the driven snow. You're nearly twenty-eight, you're married, you've been in jail. Just one word about jail in the wrong ear, and you can forget studying to be a vet."
"So that's something else you've decided to interfere with?" Billy could hear blood beating in his ears, he was so angry.
"The point is, I can stop you, just as fast as I cut off that contract with the Arkansas warehouse."
"And if I walk out on Shiloh?" He didn't know why his voice was steady; even his legs were shaking.
"You might get those ambitions satisfied someday. But only if you take my suggestion. End the marriage.
Talking to the man had been pointless; but at least now they understood each other.
"I don't know how long I can fight you, Pennington. But as long as Shiloh sticks with me, I will. I'll keep on living with her, talking to her, sleeping with her. Even if you do ever get her back, she won't be the same. She'll have been with me. And if I don't get admitted to vet school, I'll live. I'll do something else. Just remember what I said—I'll take her away."
As Billy Bob got to the door, he turned to glance back at Pennington, who suddenly looked smaller. "In case I didn't make that plain enough, my answer to your suggestion is no."
It nagged at him all that night and the next day, that conversation. More than Pennington's threats, his knowledge of the money ate away at Billy.
He knew Shiloh would never have made that offer and he would never have taken it if there hadn't been more going on with them. But it stuck in his craw that the money had been part of the marriage and that Pennington knew at least part of the story.
He had to come up with the money.
And he had to tell Shiloh about the work at the university. He'd meant to all along, but it never seemed to fit with any conversation, and she had missed all the other clues.
Maybe she didn't think he was capable of it. Maybe he was the wrong type, in which case, she might be right. He'd thought the same thing when he had to take Music Appreciation that one semester. It had felt like time served in hell. He'd been miserable analyzing symphonies, wondering if these people had ever heard of George Strait. What did a common man who'd spent most of his life in a pecan grove have to do with a university, anyway?
And he wasn't crazy about the rest of Sweetwater finding out. All of a sudden they would catch on—like Sam had—that he had dreams, and if he failed, it'd be open season on him.
Being just plain Billy Walker was easier, except that at the first sign of trouble, like that wreck, they hunted him down.
But Shiloh should have caught on by now. It aggravated him that she hadn't, and the money between them stung his pride, and Sam's conviction that there was another, better man for her made things worse.
All of those worries kept him preoccupied, and the thought that he had to make more money kept him anxious. He could go with Bell and his rodeo for a few weeks, but he couldn't take Shiloh with him on the road.
That meant leaving her here, alone, open prey for her father.
How could one man cause so much trouble? And what right did Pennington have to take away his livelihood? He'd even threatened Billy's already slim chances at vet school.
It made him want to punch the walls, and it made him restrained in his dealings with Shiloh.
She loved the old reprobate. Why, Billy didn't know.
A visitor arrived the next day. She was for Shiloh.
The gray Ford pulled up in the drive, and Laura Kershaw climbed out. Surveying the yard and the house, the woman looked decidedly uncertain.
Shiloh at the window saw her, and her heart jumped. Laura had come. She ran to the front door, then made herself calm down before she walked outside.
The housekeeper was climbing the steps. She hesitated uncertainly when she saw Shiloh.
"Hello, Laura." Shiloh's voice quivered in spite of her best efforts.
"Hello, Shiloh." Laura looked at the girl in the tennis shoes and black shorts and black V-necked top, her hair caught up in a ponytail so silky that dark strands of it had slipped away to brush her neck and her cheeks. "Marriage must agree with you. You look about sixteen—and happy." "I am."
"Well, I'm not. I miss you, Shiloh."
Shiloh didn't say the obvious. Instead, she reached out for the other woman and hugged her as tightly as she'd ever hugged anybody in her whole life.
"... and the town hasn't talked of much else since," Laura concluded as they sat in the big swing.
"But we've stayed away from Sweetwater, just so the talk would die down," Shiloh protested.
"That makes it better. This way they just get gossip. We've heard you were . . . kissing in public in a parking lot in Martinsville."
"Who saw that?" Shiloh demanded in exasperation.
"The whole world, if I got the story right," Laura said disapprovingly. "And that you went to church with his mother. I got that from T-Tommy. And I heard that Walker hasn't been out carousing at the Palace for a long time."
"He's been busy."
"And you've been keeping him that way?" "Well, it's sort of a mutual thing," Shiloh said mischievously.
Laura made a snorting noise in her throat. "I just hope there's more to him than what he can do in bed. Because that doesn't matter as much as other things do in the long run."
"Whatever he is, he's what I want."
"You're happy here?"
"They've made me welcome, Laura."
"I guess that's good. Because we're not doing too well at home, Shiloh. Sam's in a pretty bad way. He sits and broods and broods, then sometimes he curses you. But most of the time, it's the Walker boy." "Billy, Laura."
"Sam's in pure misery, and he doesn't know how to climb out."
"Yes, he does. He just has to accept Billy as my husband."
"He might," Laura said sardonically, "the day they do a brain transplant on him and
make him a new man."
Shiloh's hands traced the edge of the swing. "He disowned me. Right there, in front of everybody."
"That's all over town, too."
"Laura . . ." Shiloh had tried to keep from thinking about that day, and she'd tried to hide her emotions from Billy, but one fact kept repeating itself over and over. "Sam said that Caroline came back one last time. Is that true?"
Laura's face held a trace of shock. "I didn't know he'd ever breathed a word of it to you." "But is it true?"
"It was when you were fifteen. She came to the house while you were away at school. White as a ghost and thin—Lord, she was so thin. She was already dying of cancer—I just didn't know it."
"Did she ask about me?"
"It doesn't matter what she asked for, Shiloh. Just because she wasn't a good mother doesn't mean you're not a good daughter. You were. You are now, if Sam would just admit it. I've never told you, but I guess I love you as much as—as a real mother could." Laura looked away out at the orchard beyond the rose-laden fence. "I always pretended you were mine."
Shiloh nodded, then swallowed. "She never wanted me."
"She was sick. In a different way, she was sick from the beginning. She couldn't leave men alone. I heard diat her own father beat her, that he didn't want her. They say that has strange effects on some women. But the funniest thing was, she loved Sam. She needed him. Always coming back to him, lying and deceiving, desperate for him to say it was all right. I think he was old enough for her to see her father in him. But that wasn't what Sam wanted. He wanted a wife. And finally, he got sick, too, sick at heart. He couldn't keep letting her come back."
"She barely noticed me. I remember that."
"Caroline was a child. What child has room—or time—for another?"
"Not even when she was dying?"
Laura didn't answer; her eyes avoided Shiloh's.
"Tell me, Laura, why she came back," she asked insistently.
"She told Sam she'd found which school you were in. If he didn't give her more money—he was already paying her so much ever)' month—she would approach you. She put the fear of God in Sam. Don't you think we knew how much a girl wants a mother, Shiloh? Even when you tried to hide it, it was there, in your face. That look didn't leave until you were a teenager, but I think I see it there today."
Billy Bob Walker Got Married Page 32
