seems to like it good enough.”
“Gary don’t speak up for hisself like I do.”
“No, I don’t suppose he does,” the sheriff said. “But then, you can’t please everybody.”
“Well, it’ll please me to get the fuck out of here.” She pushed back the sleeves of her coat and picked up her fifty-seven cents. She stuffed the coins into the pocket of her jeans, looked up at Tim Weatherstone, and gave him a once-over from the badge on his chest to his spit-polished shoes.
“I don’t reckon you could give me a ride home, could you, Timmy?”
“You got a free ride here, Maggie,” the sheriff said. “You only get the one.”
“I didn’t ask you,” she said.
“But he answers to me.”
Maggie gave Tim Weatherstone the once-over once again and said, “You look good, Timmy, all spiffed out and trim and ironed all sharp. You done good for yourself. Just don’t forget . . .”
She paused and rubbed her wrists again. She glanced a reproach toward Burke and one toward the sheriff, then looked back to Timothy Weatherstone and said, “Don’t forget where you come from.”
* * *
TIMOTHY WEATHERSTONE knew where he came from. He came from a house a mile up the holler road from Maggie Boylan herself, though the house he lived in was now, six months after his mother’s death, nearly bare as the cell of a monk. His older brother and his older sister had come down, one from Cleveland, the other from Columbus, each with a pickup truck and a list. They left him with a bed, a dresser, a kitchen table, four rooms full of echoes, and some pictures on the walls.
* * *
AS SOON as Maggie Boylan was out the door, the sheriff was on his feet. He checked to be sure she was gone down the hall, then he went to the window to be sure she was gone out of the building. Satisfied, he called Deputy Burke into his office.
Tom Burke rose. He was a big man, round at the gut and round at the shoulders, and he rose slowly. Weatherstone, who had the lean body of a runner, watched him with a mixture of pity and contempt. It must take two full yards of leather, he thought, just to make his gun belt.
“Sit down,” the sheriff said. Then he kicked shut the door.
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