Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [7]
“Well, Mister Forrest,” Rodham said, with the hind of a smirk. “If you’ve come to call on Ned, you’ll most likely find him around back in the stable.”
Forrest’s courting nerves evaporated. He took one quick look at Mary Ann to see how well she was amused by her caller’s wit and was pleased to see she had not even smiled.
“Why no,” he said. “I come to put yore head on a stick.” Burke was there too, seated on the joggling board on the other side of her, fondling a mandolin in his lap. The two of them wore short light-colored jackets and shirts with ruffles over the bosom where young blades of their stripe liked to conceal their dirks and derringers. Forrest grinned at them as he came up the steps.
“I thought I got ye tolt yestiddy, the G—” He stopped.
“At a loss for words?” Rodham smiled.
Forrest looked up at the porch ceiling, where a big daddy-longlegs walked. Mrs. Montgomery was nowhere in view, but still.
“Tolt ye the very d—jest the ugly sight of ye makes me want to puke. And ye ain’t got no better sense than to turn up here today.”
Rodham got up, reaching into his breast ruffle. Forrest caught him with one hand below the elbow, the other above, wheeled around and threw him out into the yard. He moved toward Burke, who thought it better to bypass the steps and vault over the porch rail. Rodham had rolled to a stop at the yard fence. He got up cradling his right arm in his left, the whites of his eyes showing, and dust in his brown hair.
“Tolt ye once, tolt ye twicet,” Forrest said. “Now put yore tails between yore legs and run.”
“We’ll see you later,” Burke muttered, with as much menace as he could muster with ten yards and a waist-high fence between them.
“I shore will look forward to it.” Forrest picked up the mandolin from the porch floor and walked out in the yard. Burke was helping Rodham, who still nursed his right arm, clamber on to his horse. When he was done Forrest handed him the instrument.
“If ye ain’t left no other propitty here, I reckon ye won’t have no call to come back.”
Burke took the mandolin without a word and mounted. Forrest turned his back on them. Mary Ann had picked up a book and hidden most of her face behind it. The front door was open now and her uncle, the Reverend Cowan, stood in the frame.
“You make yourself free in a house not your own,” he said.
“Well sir,” said Forrest. “If ye was to see varmints usen round my porch I spect ye’d run’m off or shoot’m.”
“I don’t know if I can satisfy your expectation.”
“Sir,” Forrest said. “I mean Reverend. I ain’t no flower pot I know. My speech is rough and my manners is plain. I don’t own no frock coat nor yet a silk hat. But if I was to need them things I would git’m somehow. I come up hard and I come a long way. But I ain’t halfway yet to whar I’m a-goen.”
“I congratulate your fortitude,” Reverend Cowan said.
Forrest took a breath. “I don’t lie nor cheat nor steal. I do what I intend and I keep to my word. I don’t chaw nor smoke and I don’t use whiskey.” He paused and looked down the length of the porch. Mary Ann had laid down her book and was stroking a cat that had climbed into her lap.
“I tried whiskey oncet to know what hit was,” Forrest said. “I ain’t tetched it since, and I won’t never agin.”
“You don’t mean to tell me you don’t cuss.”
“I cain’t tell ye that,” Forrest said. “I’ll say I’m not proud of it. Hit’s a vice I hope to master.”
“With the Lord’s help.”
“I ain’t never asked no help from nobody.”
Reverend Cowan sighed. “But my niece Mary Ann is a good Christian girl.”
“I know it,” Forrest said. “That’s jest why I want her.”
“Dear Lord,” said the Reverend. “How am I to answer that?”
“Ye might give your consent,” Forrest told him.
“You’re in a powerful hurry,” said the Reverend.
“They say life is short. We ain’t promised tomorrow.”
“It’s short for some,” Cowan said, with raised eyebrows.