She was smiling a little, and not a forced smile. She was beginning to trust this man and to like him.
“One thing I thought of,” he said. “Did you know many people around King City?”
“No.”
“I heard about the knitting needle,” he said casually. “Well, it could happen that somebody you knew might come in here. That your real hair color?”
“Yes.”
“Dye it black for a while. Lots of people look like somebody else.”
“How about this?” She touched her scar with a slender finger.
“Well, that’s just a—what is that word? What is that goddam word? I had it this morning.”
“Coincidence?”
“That’s it—coincidence.” He seemed to be finished. He got out tobacco and papers and rolled a clumsy, lumpy cigarette. He broke out a sulphur match and struck it on the block and held it away until its acrid blue flame turned yellow. His cigarette burned crookedly up the side.
Kate said, “Isn’t there a threat? I mean, what you’ll do if I—”
“No, there isn’t. I guess I could think up something pretty ornery, though, if it came to that. No, I don’t want you—what you are, what you do, or what you say—to hurt Mr. Trask or his boys. You figure you died and now you’re somebody else and we’ll get along fine.”
He stood up and went to the door, then turned. “I’ve got a boy—he’ll be twenty this year; big, nice-looking fellow with a broken nose. Everybody likes him. I don’t want him in here. I’ll tell Faye too. Let him go to Jenny’s. If he comes in, you tell him to go to Jenny’s.” He closed the door behind him.
Kate smiled down at her fingers.
4
Faye twisted around in her chair to reach a piece of brown panocha studded with walnuts. When she spoke it was around a mouth full of candy. Kate wondered uneasily whether she could read minds, for Faye said, “I still don’t like it as well. I said it then and I say it again. I liked your hair blond better. I don’t know what got into you to change it. You’ve got a fair complexion.”
Kate caught a single thread of hair with fingernails of thumb and forefinger and gently drew it out. She was very clever. She told the best lie of all—the truth. “I didn’t want to tell you,” she said. “I was afraid I might be recognized and that would hurt someone.”
Faye got up out of her chair and went to Kate and kissed her. “What a good child it is,” she said. “What a thoughtful dear.”
Kate said, “Let’s have some tea. I’ll bring it in.” She went out of the room, and in the hall on the way to the kitchen she rubbed the kiss from her cheek with her fingertips.
Back in her chair, Faye picked out a piece of panocha with a whole walnut showing through. She put it in her mouth and bit into a piece of walnut shell. The sharp, pointed fragment hit a hollow tooth and whanged into the nerve. Blue lights of pain flashed through her. Her forehead became wet. When Kate came back with teapot and cups on a tray Faye was clawing at her mouth with a crooked finger and whimpering in agony.
“What is it?” Kate cried.
“Tooth—nutshell.”
“Here, let me see. Open and point.” Kate looked into the open mouth, then went to the nut bowl on the fringed table for a nut pick. In a fraction of a second she had dug out the shell and held it in the palm of her hand. “There it is.”
The nerve stopped shrieking and the pain dropped to an ache. “Only that big? It felt like a house. Look, dear,” said Faye, “open that second drawer where my medicine is. Bring the paregoric and a piece of cotton. Will you help me pack this tooth?”
Kate brought the bottle and pushed a little ball of saturated cotton into the tooth with the point of the nut pick. “You ought to have it out.”
“I know. I will.”
“I have three teeth missing on this side.”
“Well, you’d never know it. That made me feel all shaky. Bring me the Pinkham, will you?” She poured herself a slug of the vegetable compound and sighed with relief. “That’s a wonderful medicine,” she said. “The woman who invented it was a saint.”
Chapter 20
1
It was a pleasant afternoon. Frémont’s Peak was lighted pinkly by the setting sun, and Faye could see it from her window. From over on Castroville Street came the sweet sound of jingling horse bells from an eight-horse grain team down from the ridge. The cook was fighting pots in the kitchen. There was a rubbing sound on the wall and then a gentle tap on the door.
“Come in, Cotton Eye,” Faye called.
The door opened and the crooked little cotton-eyed piano player stood in the entrance, waiting for a sound to tell him where she was.
“What is it you want?” Faye asked.
He turned to her. “I don’t feel good, Miss Faye. I want to crawl into my bed and not do no playing tonight.”
“You were sick two nights last week, Cotton Eye. Don’t you like your job?”
“I don’t feel good.”
“Well, all right. But I wish you’d take better care of yourself.”
Kate said softly, “Let the gong alone for a couple of weeks, Cotton Eye.”
“Oh, Miss Kate. I didn’t know you was here. I ain’t been smoking.”
“You’ve been smoking,” Kate said.
“Yes, Miss Kate, I sure will let it alone. I don’t feel good.” He closed the door, and they could hear his hand rubbing along the wall to guide him.
Faye said, “He told me he’d stopped.”
“He hasn’t stopped.”
“The poor thing,” said Faye, “he doesn’t have much to live for.”
Kate stood in front of her. “You’re so sweet,” she said. “You believe in everybody. Someday if you don’t watch, or I don’t watch for you, someone will steal the roof.”
“Who’d want to steal from me?” asked Faye.
Kate put her hand on Faye’s plump shoulders. “Not everyone is as nice as you are.”
Faye’s eyes glistened with tears. She picked up a handkerchief from the chair beside her and wiped her eyes and patted delicately at her nostrils. “You’re like my own daughter, Kate,” she said.
“I’m beginning to believe I am. I never knew my mother. She died when I was small.”
Faye drew a deep breath and plunged into the subject.
“Kate, I don’t like you working here.”
“Why not?”
Faye shook her head, trying to find words. “I’m not ashamed. I run a nice house. If I didn’t somebody else might run a bad house. I don’t do anybody any harm. I’m not ashamed.”
“Why should you be?” asked Kate.
“But I don’t like you working. I just don’t like it. You’re sort of my daughter. I don’t like my daughter working.”
“Don’t be a silly, darling,” said Kate. “I have to—here or somewhere else. I told you. I have to have the money.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Of course I do. Where else could I get it?”
“You could be my daughter. You could manage the house. You could take care of things for me and not go upstairs. I’m not always well, you know.”
“I know you’re not, poor darling. But I have to have money.”
“There’s plenty for both of us, Kate. I could give you as much as you make and more, and you’d be worth it.”
Kate shook her head sadly. “I do love you,” she said. “And I wish I could do what you want. But you need your little reserve, and I—well, suppose something should happen to you? No, I must go on working. Do you know, dear, I have five regulars tonight?”
A jar of shock struck Faye. “I don’t want you to work.”
“I have to, Mother.”
The word did it. Faye burst into tears, and Kate sat on the arm of her chair and stroked her cheek and wiped her streaming eyes. The outburst sniffled to a close.
The dusk was settling deeply on the valley. Kate’s face was a glow of lightness under her dark hair. “Now you’re all right. I’ll go and look in on the kitchen and then dress.”
“Kate, can’t you tell your regulars you’re sick?”
“Of course not, Mother.”
“Kate, it’s Wednesday. Probably won’t be anybody in after one o’clock.”
“The Woodmen of the World are having a do.”
“Oh, yes. But on Wednesday—the Woodmen won’t be here after two.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Kate, when you close, you tap on my door. I’ll have a little surprise for you.”
“What kind of a surprise?”
“Oh, a secret surprise! Will you ask the cook to come in as you go by the kitchen?”
“Sounds like a cake surprise.”
“Now don’t ask questions, darling. It’s a surprise.”