The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [43]
Cold air fell in from the open door, and I think I shivered.
Tabitha made a quick move with her hands.
“You watch your mouth, child,” Miss Dinah said. “Who taught you to talk like that?”
Tabitha grinned, pointed to Unc, nodded hard.
“What’d she say?” I asked Miss Dinah, but it was Unc to answer.
“I’ll wager her turn of phrase was a short and simple ‘Damn straight,” ’ Unc said. He was grinning now, too.
I looked back at Tabitha. She had a hand over her mouth, shoulders moving up and down, the same laugh she’d given me when I’d fallen in the ditch last night. Only now it was at her momma, scowling down at her from there at the kitchen counter. “I appreciate you don’t corrupt my only child any more than she already is,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Unc said, and nodded. “Missy Dorcas’s next assignment is, if you can make sure you ain’t going to get yourself identified, to try and poke around, get hold somehow of who the bad boy sent these might be.”
She motioned, shrugged. Miss Dinah said, “She say she try but can’t promise nothing.”
“All I can ask for,” Unc said, and Tabitha turned, headed back down that hallway crammed with bookshelves.
But at the last second, just before she disappeared, she looked back over her shoulder. She gave me the smallest wave, just her fingertips.
I smiled, nodded.
“Lose whatever idea you got in your head right now, you hear?” Miss Dinah said. She missed even less than Tabitha. “You hear?”
“What do you mean, Miss Dinah?” I said. “I was just saying goodbye.”
“Lose it,” she said, and crossed her arms.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
Unc looked from me to where Miss Dinah stood to me, puzzled. But it wasn’t enough to make him stop what he was working on in his head. He said, “I believe these boys we’re dealing with will play by their own rules. They told Huger last night we have forty-eight hours before they’re going to do whatever it is they’re going to do. I believe you have nothing to worry about.” He paused. “For another thirty-six hours or so, I guess.”
“You guess,” she said. “What happens then?”
Unc took in a breath, said, “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”
He turned, went out onto the porch, and started down the cinder blocks, while I stood there in a shanty flooded with books, just watching him. Then he was off into the woods behind the house, on the trail back to the shed.
“You be careful, child,” Miss Dinah said from behind me, right there at my back. “That man dangerous if he want to be. But you the one he really counting on. You the only one can feel what he feel about what you both stand to lose in all this.” She patted me on the back. “You the one he counting on, but he be the last one to let you know.”
Then for some reason I looked up, above the door, and saw up there about the only other bit of wall not covered over with bookshelves.
Here was their picture of Jesus, but it was a picture like none I’d ever seen before. It wasn’t one of those prefab things, Him here with his robe open and heart bleeding, all wild and sharp colors made to make you wince. This one was just a penciled Jesus, pretty poorly drawn, looking down on us. No smile, no sorrow. Just a man in a robe looking down, watching, like all he had to do was wait and see what each of us chose to do with our lives. Like it was up to us what was going to happen, one way or the other.
It seemed about the truest painting of the man I’d ever seen.
“Benjamin drew that for us,” Miss Dinah said. “Bless his heart.”
“It’s beautiful, ma’am,” was all I could think to say, and I looked at it a moment longer before I stepped outside, started after Unc, already disappeared back inside the woods.
We made it to the Luv, buried there in the high weeds off the road, and once I was actually onto the blacktop, out here in the world again and in my own truck, it seemed that world was watching one more time, could