Shine - Lauren Myracle [67]
“Under?” he said.
Oh, whatever, I thought, moving my hand and slipping it under the fabric. His skin was soft, which shouldn’t have surprised me, but did. He was so skinny I could feel his ribs.
“So did you tell me everything you wanted to, or do you have any other secret knowledge you think I should know?” I asked, half-joking.
“Well, there’s Ridings and that whole mess,” he murmured into the seat.
My hand stilled. At Wally’s trailer, Ridings was the “customer” I’d heard leaving a message.
He twitched his shoulder to make me start scratching again. I complied and said blandly, “What about Ridings? What whole mess?”
Several seconds passed.
“Robert?” I said, slowing the pace of my circles.
“’Cause of that cow,” he said.
What cow? I thought. But I held my tongue.
“But Beef’s daddy fixed it so Tommy wouldn’t get in trouble, even though Tommy’s a douche.”
“Tommy? What did Tommy do?”
“When he was out shooting with the others,” he said, like surely I knew this story already. “You know how they get wasted and go and shoot at road signs?”
Boys and their guns. I snorted.
“Well . . . Tommy shot Ridings’s cow.”
I froze mid-scratch. “What?!”
“The one with a bell around her neck. That one.”
Well, of course, that one, ’cause Ridings only has the one. And Tommy shot it?
“Did it die?”
“Maybe,” Robert hedged. “But you can’t tell no one. And Tommy did pay to have it butchered. Butchering a cow costs a lot of money.”
Ah, crud. Ridings loved that dumb cow like a pet. Not just that, he needed her. A man can get by on milk and cheese and a decent vegetable garden, even a dead-broke junkie like Ridings. Why on earth would Tommy shoot Ridings’s cow?
“I mean it, Cat. You can’t tell,” Robert said. He turned his head to look at me. “No one knows ’cept me and you, okay? Well, and Tommy and Beef and Roy, since Roy told Tommy how to fix it.”
“How to fix it?” I said. You couldn’t “fix” a dead cow. How did you fix a dead cow?
“Anyway, it was an accident, and anyway, it might have been lightning. So stop looking at me funny!”
If I was looking at him funny, it wasn’t on purpose. I was just trying to figure things out. Could a dead cow have anything to do with Patrick? Was there any possible way the two things were connected?
“Did Patrick know?”
Robert chose not to reply, which I interpreted as a “yes.” In a town like Black Creek, dead cows were hard to bury, even just the bones and scrap meat of them. The fact that I didn’t know showed how out of the loop I was.
We were quiet. Robert laid his head back down and straightened his stick-thin legs in his ridiculous shorts, and I resumed the back scratch. On the edge of consciousness, he mumbled, “You’re nice, Cat.”
Then he fell asleep. His eyelashes were dark and long, a detail I noticed only because he was finally still.
I saw Robert safely home, and since I was there anyway, I went inside to see if Bailee-Ann was around. If she was, I planned on questioning her some more about the night Patrick was attacked.
I agreed with Robert that Bailee-Ann wouldn’t have played a role in anything violent, but maybe she saw something when she snuck out with Tommy. Or heard something. She obviously lied to me for some reason.
Bailee-Ann wasn’t there. No one was. Robert’s face fell, and I could see he didn’t want to be left alone. When I was his age, I had Patrick, and Mama Sweetie, too. When I was his age, I didn’t know what loneliness was.
So I stayed for a bit. We played slapjack. I let him win. He talked nonstop—mostly more hero worship regarding Beef—and I listened with half an ear.
After a while, he said, “I’m bored. You’re too easy to beat. I think I’ll go to Huskers and see Beef. Wanna come?”
“No, thanks.” I wasn’t in the mood for Huskers. Who knew who all might be there?
“Will it make you feel bad if I go anyway?”
“No,” I said, smiling ruefully.
He shoved his chair back from the rickety kitchen table, and I did the same.
“Tell Beef hi for me,” I said. “But, Robert . . . be careful what you say to people about all of this. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
Robert gave me the finger,