The Butterfly - James M. Cain [15]
"Do we take him in, Jess?"
"Let's go."
He had cut his motor, but now he started it again, and she stood aside. "All right, Wash, but you're taking a lot of trouble for nothing."
"You think it's for nothing?"
"He's not yet your child."
"He will be tomorrow."
"I'm not talking about what he will be. I'm talking about what he is, and what he was when he was taken. If they ask me, I'll tell them I've got nothing to say, and if the mother won't sign the writ, that ends it, unless of course the child has a father."
"Kady, why are you standing up for Moke?"
"Jess, are you crazy? Who's standing up for Moke? I'm standing up for myself, and for my little boy that nobody else is thinking about that I can see. Do you think I want this in the papers, and then have it come out that Danny is what they call a love child, and God knows what else they would think up to put in?"
"It's not any piece for the papers."
"A kidnapping?"
She stepped up to the window and talked straight at Wash. "Haven't you done enough to me without this, and for no reason except to give a simple-looking imitation of a West Virginia bad man?"
"I'm turning him over to the law."
"You can't even do that, right."
"So you know a better way?"
"You're turning him over to Carbon County when the crime was committed in Blount? Gee, but you're smart, aren't you? Gee, but you're going to look wonderful when you get to Carbon City with him and they say, sorry, son, you're in the right church but the wrong pew. Gee —
"Suppose you shut up."
For a minute, steel had been facing steel, but now they weren't anything but a pair of kids jawing at each other, and next thing they were laughing and he got out and she said he was so dumb it was pitiful but there was no steam in it and the fight was over. So I got out and told Moke to get out of there and get quick. So he got out and started up the creek. So Wash, he ran after him and gave him a kick that knocked him over on his face. So he got up and began to cuss out Wash, mean, whispering cusswords, all covered with spit. That was when Kady walked over and slapped his face, and told him he'd got off pretty lucky. He stood there panting, and once or twice he stared to say something, and didn't. But when Jane got his banjo, where it had been pitched in the car, he went.
But there was one thing that could make us all feel good, no matter what had been said, and that was Danny. When Jane brought him out for a little whiff of air before tucking him in for the night, we were laughing and talking to him and me and Wash were taking turns holding him. And then without anybody knowing he was going to do it, he turned to Wash and stead of the goo-goo stuff he'd been saying, he said "Wash," and laughed. It was the first word he ever said, and it made us all so happy we didn't look at each other at all, and Kady picked him up and held him close, and pretty soon he said it again, like he was pretty proud of himself. And then we heard a car, and down the road I see the white tow car from the filling station on the state road that the fellow uses now and then to haul passengers up the creek for fifty cents. And it stopped and somebody got out and it went away and we all stood there trying to see who was coming up the path, a little satchel in her hand. And then I could feel my heart sink, because that funny walk, go three steps fast and then shuffle one, couldn't be but one person. That was Belle.
"Jess, what is she doing here?"
"It's got me buffaloed."
When supper was over, Kady and Wash went for a ride, and when Belle went to bed, Jane and I took a walk down