got a point you want to make?”
“I’m just getting to know my friendly drug dealer. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I’m a friend to the working man. There’s no reason why people can’t discover common ground across class lines.”
The man showed a small file of hygienic teeth.
Harrison cut his eyes to Delilah, told her to get their stuff in the boat. She bunched the towels and began to load the remaining cooler. Harrison slipped the backpack over his shoulder and turned to go. He was already walking when he heard the footsteps of the man behind him, heard him exclaim, “Now hold on, you goddamn dumb redneck . . .”
Harrison pivoted and grabbed the man’s wrist above the pistol, twisted down sharply so that the gunman lurched over Harrison’s planted foot. They went to the ground hard with Harrison on top, the pistol kicked loose. Delilah was there within a moment, holding the gun on the others who were mute with shock. Harrison pinned the man between his legs and rained down half a dozen quick punches on the man’s unguarded face. The man’s eyes went distant and sleepy with concussion. Harrison stopped when his hands began to register hurt, sat there over the unmoving lump while he leveled his breath.
“Was this worth it? Was this fun for you all?” Harrison shouted to the others. Though they did not answer, he took their silence to mean they thought it was not. He grabbed the pistol from Delilah and tossed the remaining cooler into the boat, started the engine and wheeled out of the channel and around to the island’s point. As they passed he could see that Taylor and the two women remained sitting where they were, looking at the fallen man but afraid to approach him, as if his condition was somehow communicable. Harrison tossed the handgun in the water and throttled up. The bow rose.
“You could have killed him,” Delilah said into his ear so she could be heard above the noise of the engine.
He nodded.
She kissed him at the back of his neck, put her hand over his sun-cooked thigh.
“I wish you would have.”
WHEN THEY returned to the compound some of the men had dragged a big Weber grill around to the side and were grilling ribeyes and tight cylinders of corn in aluminum foil. The smoke moved over the big back lot. Jonathan stood sweating over the flames with a long fork, stabbing the cuts and flipping them over every few seconds.
“That smells good,” Delilah said.
“You go ahead and get you some,” Harrison told her.
“You don’t want to eat?”
“I’m going to go lay down for a while. You’re hungry, though. I’ll be down there in a little bit, don’t worry.”
Harrison kissed her briefly and went up to their room. He could feel her watching his back as he left.
He stripped out of his clothes and washed himself with a cloth and a bowl of water that had been left out on the pine dresser. Pulled on a clean T-shirt and a pair of torn but laundered jeans. He took out the two hundred he needed, folded it into his hip pocket and returned the rest to the envelope he would take to Gavin. Somebody had turned a radio on outside and he heard Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson singing about their many reincarnations and lawless deeds. He went to the window and looked down. Delilah had moved in among the circle of others, one hand on her hip, the other holding a can of Bud. She seemed to fit there as exactly as though she had been cut to form.
He lay down and closed his eyes, let his mind reel free. Before he realized it he was asleep and dreaming of a kinder life.
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