inclined his head, inviting the man to continue.
“You see Daisy there,” Croxton said, indicating the fresh-faced, blond-haired teenager. “Pretty as a picture, am I right?”
Nodding, Doc began to feel slightly uncomfortable, concerned that he had come across yet another exercise in an old man whoring his children. “I would say so, certainly,” he replied, amiably enough.
“Would you like to guess how old she is?” Croxton asked, his blue eyes shining, his tongue running across his teeth as a playful smile appeared on his lips. It was the smile of a gambler, someone used to fooling people, and to judging them from their body language.
Shaking his head, Doc pushed his chair back and began to stand. “I am sorry,” he said, “I am really not interested in what I believe you are offering, kind though that offer most certainly is…”
The girl—Daisy—spoke, her voice rich like treacle. “I’m seventy-an’-six, Mr. Tanner,” she said.
Caught halfway between standing and sitting, Doc almost fell over. He reached out and grasped the side of the table before him as his chair crashed to the floor.
“Seventy—” Doc began, the words choked in his suddenly dry throat.
Daisy shrugged her bony, girl’s shoulders and blew Doc a kiss. “I look good on it though, don’t I, sir?”
Chapter Three
“Do you remember what it was like to be young, Mr. Tanner?” Daisy asked, as Doc regained his composure and sank into the chair beside her.
Her voice was low, intimate, with a sweet, rich quality like molasses. Her eyes, a shade of blue so light they appeared almost white, peered at him, the tiniest creases appearing at their edges where she smiled. Her mouth was smiling, too. Her wide, flawless teeth were a dazzling shade of white even in the indifferent, gloomy light. Looking at that friendly, inquisitive smile, Doc felt himself drawn to the girl. There was an intimacy here, created by her soft voice, by the half-light of the room, by the wall of noise all around them as other people continued with their meals and conversations, oblivious to the two of them sitting there discussing the nature of youth.
Realizing that the pretty young girl was waiting for him to answer, Doc nodded slowly. “Oh, I remember,” he intoned. “Long summer days, running simply because you could, running until you fell down with giddiness.”
Doc’s head was still nodding, a smile on his lips, as he looked back at Daisy. He would guess that she was perhaps sixteen or seventeen. Her skin was smooth, crinkles forming and disappearing as she flashed that wonderful, dazzling smile at him, the flesh on her cheeks a ruddy pink in the flickering light from the cook’s fire. He looked at her more closely, trying to see the old woman that she had once been. Her face was round, as though she was predisposed to smile for any occasion, a little chubby around the rounded cheeks, dimples appearing as she smiled. She was pretty, but not beautiful. It was the prettiness of youth, Doc realized, of innocence, the way that only a child could be pretty.
Daisy’s hair was long, falling past her shoulders and ending halfway down her back, a cascading wave of silvery-blond. It was fine hair, wispy and prone to tangle, and she would shift the tangled bangs out of her eyes as she spoke, an unconscious movement, long practiced and harboring no sign of irritation.
As Doc watched the girl, Daisy continued to smile at him. “That’s not it,” she said in that slow drawl that didn’t seem to quite form the hard edges of the words, instead mushing them into a flowing sound, like a song. “That’s—what you are talking about—that’s what you think youth was, because you don’t really remember it. You think it was this thing that was all about being a kid, but that’s nothing like what being young is. That thing that you described, that’s what I thought it was before I was—” She stopped, her eyes wandering as though searching for the rest of the sentence.
“Changed?” Doc suggested after a moment’s pause.
“Youngered,” the girl responded. “Like the way I used to get older, so I guess I got youngered by the pool. That make sense to you, Mr. Tanner? You seem like a man o’ learning, is all.”
Slowly, Doc nodded once again, intrigued despite himself. “Youngered it is,” he replied with a smile.
Daisy glanced up for a moment, and Doc followed her glance. She was looking across the table to where Jeremiah Croxton, the aging farmer, sat. He had spread out an old, dog-eared map across the table and was deep in conversation with the person sitting to his right, another outdoors type. When he saw Daisy and Doc looking at him he smiled in acknowledgment before getting back to his cartographical calculations.
When Doc turned back to her, the blonde girl was holding her hand up before his face, palm toward him, fingers upthrust. “Look at my hand, Mr. Tanner,” she said. “Go ’head, it won’t bite none.”
Doc peered at the girl’s pink hand, wondering at the strange request.
“You can touch it, if you want,” she told him encouragingly.
Doc looked at her quizzically. “What am I looking at?” he asked.
“The scars,” Daisy told him, her lips upturned in a smile. “There’s no scars there, not now. I worked the fields for almost sixty years with my father and then with my better half, the lazy good-for-nothing. But the scars have healed, they disappeared. You wouldn’t know that they was ever there.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Doc agreed, wondering what else he could say, suddenly aware of his own hands, old and wrinkled.
“That’s being young, Mr. Tanner,” Daisy said with certainty. “No scars, no shooting pains deep in your bones fucking with you when the first frost comes. Not running about in the summer, that’s just some—I dunno—song words, troubadour crap. This is being young, Mr. Tanner—” she flexed her fingers before him “—this right here.”
Doc found his eyes following Daisy’s slim hand as she reached for the glass that sat before her on the wooden table. Behind her, and all around, the other members of the wag train were laughing, drinking and eating, watching the tawdry floor show, enjoying themselves.
Daisy took a drink from her glass and Doc was amused to see that it was a swig, a gulp, not the delicate ladylike operation that one might associate with an adult. “You taste this?” Daisy asked, holding the glass out to Doc.
Doc shook his head, waving away the proffered glass. “That’s very kind,” he stated, “but I should really be getting back to my friends.”
“You should taste it,” Daisy encouraged. “Just a little nip. Won’t hurt you none. It hasn’t chilled me,” she said.
Doc took the glass from her and sniffed at its contents. It smelled of sweetness, some blended fruit concoction. Warily, he held the rim of the glass against his lips and tipped it until a tiny dribble of liquid washed past his teeth and into his mouth. “It’s nice,” he assured Daisy, passing the glass back into her waiting hand. “What is it?”
Daisy’s baby blue eyes were watching him intensely, and the fire of challenge colored her words. “You tell me,” she drawled.
“It tastes like…” Doc began thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. Perhaps cantaloupe? Cantaloupe
