“Storm coming,” the guy said.
“What I heard,” Reacher said.
“Inevitable, with a temperature like this.”
Reacher said nothing.
“You hired on?” the guy asked.
“I guess,” Reacher said.
“So you’ll be working for us.”
Reacher said nothing.
“I’m Billy,” the guy said.
The other guy moved up on his elbows.
“Josh,” he said.
Reacher nodded to them both.
“I’m Reacher,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“You’ll do the scut work for us,” the guy called Billy said. “Shoveling shit and toting bales.”
“Whatever”
“Because you sure don’t look like much of a horse rider to me.”
“I don’t?”
Billy shook his head. “Too tall. Too heavy. Center of gravity way up there. No, my guess is you’re not much of a horse rider at all.”
‘The Mexican woman bring you in?” Josh asked.
“Mrs. Greer,” Reacher said.
“Mrs. Greer is Rusty,” Billy said. “She didn’t bring you in.”
“Mrs. Carmen Greer,” Reacher said.
Billy said nothing. The guy called Josh just smiled.
“We’re heading out after supper,” Billy said. “Bar, couple hours south of here. You could join us. Call it a get-to-know-you type of thing.”
Reacher shook his head. “Maybe some other time, when I’ve earned something. I like to pay my own way, situation like that.”
Billy thought about it and nodded.
“That’s a righteous attitude,” he said. “Maybe you’ll fit right in.”
The guy called Josh just smiled.
Reacher walked back to his bed and stretched himself out, keeping still, fighting the heat. He stared up at the red-painted rafters for a minute, and then he closed his eyes.
The maid brought supper forty minutes later. She was a middle-aged white woman who could have been a relative of Billy’s. She greeted him with familiarity. Maybe a cousin. Certainly she looked a little like him. Sounded like him. The same genes in there somewhere. She greeted Josh with ease and Reacher himself with coolness. Supper was a pail of pork and beans, which she served into metal bowls with a ladle taken from her apron pocket. She handed out forks and spoons, and empty metal cups.
“Water in the bathroom faucet,” she said, for Reacher’s benefit.
Then she went back down the stairs and Reacher turned his attention to the food. It was the first he had seen all day. He sat on his bed with the bowl on his knees and ate with the spoon. The beans were dark and soupy and mixed with a generous spoonful of molasses. The pork was tender and the fat was crisp. It must have been fried separately and mixed with the beans afterward.
“Hey, Reacher,” Billy called over. “So what do you think?”
“Good enough for me,” he said.
“Bullshit,” Josh said. “More than a hundred degrees all day, and she brings us hot food? I showered already and now I’m sweating like a pig again.”
“It’s free,” Billy said.
“Bullshit, it’s free,” Josh said back. “It’s a part of our wages.”
Reacher ignored them. Bitching about the food was a staple of dormitory life. And this food wasn’t bad. Better than some he’d eaten. Better than what came out of most barracks cookhouses. He dumped his empty bowl on the cabinet next to his toothbrush and lay back down and felt his stomach go to work on the sugars and the fats. Across the room Billy and Josh finished up and wiped their mouths with their forearms and took clean shirts out of their footlockers. Shrugged them on and buttoned them on the run and combed through their hair with their fingertips.
“See you later,” Billy called.
They clattered down the stairs and a moment later Reacher heard the sound of a gasoline engine starting up directly below. The pick-up, he guessed. He heard it back out through the doors and drive away. He stepped into the bathroom and saw it come around the corner and wind around the horse barn and bounce across the yard past the house.
He walked back through the dormitory and piled the three used bowls on top of each other, with the silverware in the topmost. Threaded the three cup handles onto his forefinger and walked down the stairs and outside. The sun was nearly below the horizon but the heat hadn’t backed off at all. The air was impossibly hot. Almost suffocating. And it was getting humid. A warm damp breeze was coming in from somewhere. He walked up past the corrals, past the barn, through the yard. He skirted around the porch and looked for the kitchen door. Found it and knocked. The maid opened up.