by Jill Barnett
Hank awoke to a loud crash. He groaned and turned over. His head felt like it was about to explode. He opened one eye, then the other. The sunlight made his head throb and about killed him.
Smitty’s shadow came past, and a loud clash of metal against metal echoed through his head and down into his teeth.
“God,” he groaned and clapped his hands over his ears.
She walked past him, pausing at the doorway. “Good morning,” she said brightly.
He scowled up at her from his hammock. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
“I’m a morning person.”
“She’s a morning person,” he repeated as she disappeared through the door. He flung an arm over his eyes and lay there. His mouth felt like something had died in it.
Another crash echoed through his pounding head. It sounded like a train wreck. He staggered to his feet. No, the train wreck was in his head.
He sucked in a breath of pain, then blinked and stumbled toward the water bucket they kept inside. He looked at the cup hanging next to it, ignored it, and picked up the whole bucket. He chugged down half of the water, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His mouth felt half human again.
He went outside, stood in the doorway, and watched her. Smitty was whipping around like a busy little beaver, clanging pots and pans and clattering seemingly anything and everything that was metal against metal.
He’d never flinched so much in his life. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Cooking.” She hammered some more pans together.
“Cooking what? A train?” He ran a hand through his hair and kept it there when she tossed an iron lid against a kettle.
“Fruit.” She held up a bottle and dumped it into a pan.
“Sweet Jesus! That’s my rum!”
She looked up. “Oh, it is?” She held the bottle up again, eyed the last two inches of booze, and dumped the rest of it in the pan. “Thank you for sharing it.” She gave him a sugary smile that made him itch to do something to her. But he couldn’t think of anything terrible enough with his head pounding and his ears ringing. Even his teeth hurt.
She lit a match and dropped it into the pan.
He groaned and swayed. His rum turned orange and blue and went up in the air with loud whoosh!
He was going to kill her, but later, when he felt human again. He was going to do it with his bare hands.
She frowned and stuck a stick into the pan, then whipped it around as if she knew what she was doing. She grabbed one of the sticks he’d sharpened to use for spits and jabbed it into the pan, then pulled out something brown and black and slimy. She walked over and held it in front of his face.
The sweet, sickening smell of burnt rum hit him like a hard pitch to the gut. His stomach turned over. He could feel his blood drain from his head. His hand shot out and gripped one of the door’s support poles.
“You look a little wan. Probably from lack of food.” She waved it near his nose. “Want a bite?”
He lurched past her and stumbled across the sand, almost running over the children. His hand over his mouth, he staggered to the oleander bushes and heaved his guts out.
“What’s the matter with Hank?” Theodore asked.
“You know, Theodore, I’m not really certain.” Smitty’s voice dripped with feigned innocence. “I guess Hank doesn’t have the stomach for bananas flambé.”
Muddy asked himself if kismet truly existed.
It was difficult to believe anything or anyone would have had a hand in stranding Margaret Smith and Hank Wyatt together anywhere, let alone an uninhabited Pacific island. Either fate was cruel or had a wickedly black sense of humor.
Over the next week, Muddy had watched Margaret develop the hunting skills of a ferret. She’d managed to find two more bottles of Hank’s liquor. She’d come running back to the hut in the middle of the night, the bottles hidden in her skirts as she sneaked inside the hut and tiptoed over to a dark corner.
She’d cast a quick glance at Hank snoring in his hammock, then she’d hide them in an iron cooking pot and slide the lid quietly in place. The next afternoon, while Muddy was on the roof finishing the last of the thatch, he caught a glimpse of her laughing with wicked glee as she dumped a fortune’s worth of Napoleon brandy into the fuel base of the tilley lamp. The lamp burned freely for two straight nights.
The third night, Hank caught on.
He stormed into the hut. “Where the hell’s my booze!”
Margaret closed the bamboo door behind him and turned away. “I can’t imagine.”
“Listen to me, Smitty. You’d better come clean.”
“I just took a bath this morning.”
“Cute.” He closed the distance between them and scowled down at her. “Look. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. We both know I buried the bottles and you dug them up. Your sneaky footprints were all over the sand. So don’t play the innocent. Now where’s the brandy?”
“I put it to good use.” She turned up the lamp, smiled calmly, then turned around and crossed her arms. Lined up along the wall like trophies were two squat brandy bottles and one tall rum bottle—all empty.
Hank looked at the bottles, then said, “There’s one bottle left and I’ll be damned if you’re going to get it.” His look turned retributive. He drove his hand through his hair, something he seemed to do a lot around Margaret. “This is war, Smitty.” He stormed out the door.
She stared at the door, her expression thoughtful. She looked down for a second and turned around.
She caught Muddy’s look. “You are a brave woman, Margaret Smith. Braver than most. He won’t rest till he gets even. Revenge was in his eyes.”
She shrugged, but she stared at the doorway for a moment and rubbed her arms as if she were uncomfortable. “Better that he be good and angry than drunk and feeling sorry for himself.” She looked back at Muddy. “I’ll take the brunt of his anger if it will help him.”
A few minutes later Muddy went back inside his bottle to the peace and quiet and familiarity of his home. He settled down with a new novel: The Story of the Wild West: Campfire Chats by Buffalo Bill. He opened it and read a page, then put the book down on his chest and locked his hands behind his head. Over the last few days, Western folklore had lost its appeal.
He stared up at the mouth of his bottle. The stopper was out and he could make out the glow of the tilley lamp. Muddy lay there, grinning. Perhaps the fates knew what they were doing after all.
The next morning Hank was sitting on a rock near the hut. He had spent the whole night plotting revenge. He just couldn’t think of the exact way to get even with Smitty. Whatever he did had to be the perfect thing.
So he figured he’d keep thinking, just lull her into a sense of security. Then bam! He’d give it to her. Whatever it was.
He rubbed his stubbled chin, then went back to cleaning the pistol—a navy Colt .38, six-shot. But there were only five bullets and no more ammunition in the trunk.
He cleaned the barrel, made a big deal of it, too, because he’d caught Smitty eyeing him and the pistol as if she expected him to use it on her. He wouldn’t, but a little intimidation couldn’t hurt. Might even win the war.
He set the pistol aside and began to work on sharpening the knife with a lava stone. A man was only as good as the quality and care of his tools. Or weapons.
He heard a loud bleat and looked up just as Rebuttal came trotting by with his last bottle of whiskey in its mouth, the frayed ends of a chewed rope trailing limply behind her.
Hank did a double take. “Goddammit! How’d you get that?”
He dropped the knife and dove for the goat, but it trotted off down the beach.
Hank got up and took off after it in a cloud of sand. Rebuttal began to run. He didn’t know a goat could run that fast. It could turn on a dime and dodge him better than a batter could dodge a wild pitch. The damn thing ran right into the thick jungle with his last bottle.
He went after it.
Not that he really wanted the whiskey, although having to put up with Smitty could drive a preacher to drink. Now it was the principle. Damn females—human and animal—kept swiping his booze.
Fifteen minutes later, Hank came stumbling out of the jungle, sweat pouring from his hair and down his face and neck. His shirt was soaked, his pants had fern fronds and flower petals clinging to them along with a few gnats and bugs. He took deep breaths, and his chest burned like hell, but it didn’t matter.
He had the whiskey bottle in hand. He broke into the clearing and held up the bottle as if he’d just caught a fly ball and expected cheers.
Smitty stood alone near the doorway of the hut. She looked at him from narrowed eyes.
“The last bottle, sweetheart.” He crowed. “And I got it. You lost the final battle.” He bent over, one hand resting on his knee while he caught his breath. He was still laughing when he straightened.
“Drop the bottle, Hank.”
“Like hell! Give me that gun, Smitty! You might hurt someone.”
She shook her head.
“Well, then, you’re just going to have to shoot me, sweetheart, ’cause I’m not letting go of this bottle.”
“Fine.” She raised the pistol.
He laughed. “Oooo-whee! I’m scared.” He took a step.
She held the gun with two hands.
“Hey, sweetheart. You almost look as if you know what you’re doing.” Then he laughed again.
She aimed, and he watched her finger slide to the trigger.
“Wait a damn minute, Smitty. I—”
She shot the bottle.
Shattered glass and whiskey flew like winter sleet. He froze. He looked at his right hand.
Whiskey dripped from it. All he was holding was the glass neck of the bottle. “No shit . . .” He clamped his gaping mouth closed and looked up again.
She smiled, blew the smoke from the pistol like a gunfighter, and calmly went back inside the hut.
Chapter 21
Margaret tied the last ribbon in Lydia’s braids. “There. All done.”
Lydia turned around. The part in her hair was off by a good inch. One loose and lumpy braid was in front of her ear and the other started two inches higher, was too tight, and stuck out from behind her ear at a ninety-degree angle.Margaret chewed her lip for a second. “I think they’re a bit lopsided.” She reached for the hairbrush. “Let me try again.”
Lydia sighed and sat back down on a barrel. She sat there utterly silent while Margaret brushed her dark blond hair and divided it into sections.
She would try counting each link in the braids so they’d be even. She cast a quick glance at Annabelle, who was asleep on a nearby mat.
Lydia was absently staring at her hands. After a minute she asked, “How did you learn to swim?”
“My dad taught me.”
“Oh.”
“Why?”
“I just wondered.”
Margaret continued to section Lydia’s hair. She sensed there was more coming.
“Do fathers usually do things with their daughters?”
“Some do.”
“What else did your father do with you?”
“He taught me to roller skate and to jump rope.”
“He did?”
Margaret laughed. “He had my uncles turn the jump rope and he showed me how to jump double time. Right out in the middle of the park, where everyone could see him. He’s very tall. Now that I think about it, it must have looked pretty odd, a tall, distinguished lawyer in that park jumping rope.” She smiled at the memory and wondered what her dad was doing right then. If he knew yet about the ship.
“He’s a lawyer, too?”
Margaret nodded. “And he’s a state supreme court judge.”
“What else did he teach you?”
“He took me skating at the roller rink once and fractured his arm. He taught me to ride a horse, and when I was thirteen, he taught me to shoot a pistol.”
Lydia was quiet. “My papa was a botanist. Mama said his work was important so we had to understand that he couldn’t be with us much.”
“I don’t think that’s unusual, Lydia. My dad and I, well, we only had each other after my mother died.”
After a few minutes Lydia asked, “Can you still remember what your mother looked like?”
Margaret paused. “She was tall, like I am. And she had dark hair and eyes and the most beautiful smile.” She looked at the braid and realized she’d lost count. It was falling out. She brushed it out and started again. “What did your mother look like?”
“She had red hair like Theo and Annabelle and blue eyes.”
“Like yours.”
Lydia leaned her head back and looked at Margaret. “I think so. I don’t remember.” She was quiet, then she asked, “When people die, do they become angels?”
“I don’t know.”
They were both pensive.
“Do you believe in heaven?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think people in heaven can see us?”
“I’d like to think that my mother can see me and that your mother and father can see you. We’re the part of them that’s still here. Perhaps they’re keeping an eye on us.”
“Like guardian angels?”
“Um-hmm.” Margaret stopped, then said, “I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone, but I’d like to keep it between us. Our secret, okay?”
Lydia turned around and nodded.
“I remember once when I was about your age I was playing with some other children at a birthday party, and we were chasing after a barrel hoop. It went down the hillside, and the kids wanted me to run after it. I was always running, racing the boys and winning, so I ran after that hoop. It rolled and rolled down through some trees and over a few grassy hills. I ran faster and faster, because it was rolling toward the cliffs at the edge of the bay.
“The hoop finally stopped rolling right at a high cliff. I slowed down to a walk when I saw that I wasn’t going to lose it after all. When I was a few feet away, I took a step toward it, and someone grabbed my arm and pulled me back. It happened so suddenly that I was scared. I looked up, but there was no one there. I turned around. I was all alone. Not a soul anywhere.
“A second later, I turned back, and the place where I was going to step just literally crumbled away. The ground, the dirt and rocks and the hoop, everything tumbled down the cliff side onto the rocks below.”
Margaret paused again. “If I had stepped where I was going to, I would have been killed.”
Lydia looked up at her. “You think it was your mama?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think it was,” Lydia said with more surety than Margaret had ever felt about that incident. To this day she could still feel that touch on her arm as vividly as if someone had just touched her again. And since it didn’t make logical sense, she never spoke of it. Until now. But she’d felt it as surely as she’d seen Muddy fly.
She looked down at Lydia and sighed. Both braids stuck out like cattle horns. “I think I’m still not doing this right.”
Lydia reached up and felt the braids and frowned. “Want me to take them out?”
Lydia shook her head and one braid drooped. But it didn’t matter. Because Lydia reached out and slid her arms around Margaret’s waist, hugged her, and said, “Thank you.”
Hell, she’d been thinking again. Hank recognized that walk. He stood in the waist-high water after his morning swim and watched her march down the beach toward him. Smitty stopped at the waterline and crossed her arms in that annoying way she had when she was about to start a stupid argument or demand equality or tell him he was wrong.
“We need to talk about the children.”
“What about them?” He slicked the hair out of his face and wiped away the water that was running into his eyes.
She wasn’t looking him in the eye. She was staring at his chest. He looked down, wiped it a few times, but didn’t see a
nything.
“I think we need a chest—” She shook her head a second, muttered something he didn’t hear, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Let me start over.” She looked up at him.
He waved her on. “Go ahead.”
“We need a schedule, an agenda so to speak. To both spend time with the children individually and together. I think we need a plan.”
He crossed his arms. “Theodore and I already have plans.”
“But Lydia needs to be involved, too. She needs to be included as much as Theodore, maybe more so.”
“She’s a girl.”
She arched a brow at him “And . . .”
“You’re a woman. She should be with you.”
“She lost her father, too.”
“I’m no father substitute, Smitty. I told the kid that and I’m telling you that. No way.”
“You can’t make her feel excluded because of her sex.”
He gave her a wicked grin. “Sex includes, it doesn’t exclude. Want me to show you, sweetheart?”
“I’m trying to have a rational conversation, and you are being purposely obtuse and lewd.”
“Well, Smitty, let me tell you something for a change. I’m no chump. You’re asking me for help after you stole, burned, and shot my booze. You’re the one who wants the world to be fair and equal.” He laughed. “That’s like you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. No backscratch. No deal.”
“I’m thinking of Lydia, not myself.”
“And that’s your problem, Smitty. You think too much.”
“You’re better off—we all are—without you being drunk.”
“If I were drunk, I might be less obtuse and lewd.”
She muttered something just as a wave broke near her bare feet, then gave him one of those direct looks, her chin high and challenging.
He crossed his arms. “I didn’t hear you.”
She sighed as if her patience was running out. After a moment she said, “Please come out of the water so I don’t have to stand here and shout.”
