M
inutes later, when they entered the Clock, Rachel saw at a glance that the restaurant, while busy, was nowhere near filled to capacity. As Jane Morris, a plump, cheerful-looking woman in her early sixties, approached, Rachel smiled at her.
“Why, Rachel, it’s good to see you!” Jane glanced beyond Rachel’s shoulder to where Johnny Harris loomed, tall, dark, and disreputable, and her welcoming smile faltered.
“It’s good to see you, too, Jane. How’s Mel doing?” Jane’s husband had broken his ankle some two months before, and his recovery had been slow and uneven. He still limped badly and used a cane.
“So-so. At our age, healing a fracture’s not so easy.” Jane had recovered from her obvious surprise at the identity of her friend’s escort. Only her determined focus on Rachel revealed her dismay.
With a wide smile, Rachel decided to take the bull by the horns.
“You remember Johnny Harris, don’t you?” Which was a ridiculous question, of course. Everybody in Tylerville knew everybody else from birth on, and Johnny Harris was easily the town’s most notorious native son. “He’s working
for us at the store now, you know. I used to teach him in high school.”
Unspoken between the three of them lay the word
before
. Before Marybeth Edwards had been found with thirteen stab wounds in her body.
“Johnny, of course you know Jane Morris.” Still smiling, Rachel reached out and curled her hand around Johnny’s hard-muscled upper arm, urging him forward until he stood beside her. Not by so much as the blink of an eyelash did any of the trio betray the slightest awareness that this was Johnny’s second visit to the restaurant that evening.
Jane eyed him up and down, from the overlong hair to the scuffed boots, in a single disapproving glance.
“Miz Morris.” If Johnny’s acknowledgment was terse, it was more than matched by the nod Jane bestowed on him.
Once more into the breach, Rachel thought with slightly hysterical humor. “So what’s your special tonight, Jane? I’m hoping for meatloaf.”
“You’re in luck, then.” Jane’s demeanor thawed as she focused once again on Rachel. “Meatloaf and mashed potatoes it is. You want iced tea?”
She was leading them to a table in the back as she spoke. Victory, just as Rachel had expected. When Jane turned to walk away, beckoning them to follow, she had felt an easing in the tight muscles of Johnny’s forearm before she released it. Apparently he had not felt as confident of the outcome of the confrontation as she had.
But she supposed that, by virtue of simply being Johnny Harris, he was used to rejection.
“Glenda,” Jane called to a pink-uniformed waitress as they reached their destination. “Rachel here’ll have iced tea and the meatloaf.” Her eyes slid to Johnny, who, like Rachel, was settling into a seat. “What about you?”
If there was a certain hardness to her tone, at least she had spoken directly to him, which in Rachel’s eyes was a
huge first step. It was not in Jane to snub someone without reason once she had been brought to acknowledge them.
“I’ll have the same.”
“Make that two,” Jane called to Glenda, then smiled at Rachel. “Tell your mama I said hi.”
“I will,” Rachel promised. Drawn by the arrival of more customers, Jane hurried away.
“Here’s your drinks. Food’ll be up in a minute.” Glenda removed two tall, wet glasses from a tray and placed them on the table. Then, apparently seeing Johnny for the first time, her eyes widened.
“Why, Johnny Harris! What’re you doin’ out of jail?”
Rachel winced. Johnny took a sip of his tea, then smiled at the woman.
“You should’ve known they’d be letting me go eventually. You been waitin’?”
Glenda giggled. “Hell, I got four kids now. Cain’t hardly call that waitin’.”
“No, you can’t.”
It was clear to Rachel that these two had once known each other rather well. She knew who Glenda was, now that she thought about it. By birth she was one of the Wrights, who were considered trash just like the Harrises. Rachel hadn’t placed her right off because Glenda had never gotten as far as high school. With her bottle-blond, perm-frizzed hair and the web of wrinkles around her eyes, she looked older than Johnny, but Rachel realized that they must be about the same age.
“I saw your dad yesterday. He didn’t say nothin’ about your comin’ home.”
Johnny shrugged and took another sip of tea.
“Glenda! Can you get these people their drinks?” Jane sounded harassed.
“Sure, Miz Morris! Good to see you, Johnny. You take care.”
“You, too, Glenda.”
“It’s obvious
she’s
glad to see you,” Rachel observed blandly after a moment’s awkward silence.
Johnny’s mouth twitched into an involuntary half-smile as his eyes met Rachel’s. “Yeah. There’ll be a few.”
Glenda was back with heaping plates of food, which she set down on the table with a snap. “Need ketchup?”
“Yeah.”
“No.” They spoke at the same time. Rachel looked at Johnny, then nodded in the direction of the waitress. She needn’t have bothered. Glenda was already setting the catsup bottle on the table before hurrying off to take care of her other customers.
“Hey, it kills the taste,” Johnny said in response to the look on Rachel’s face as he reached for the bottle, uncapped it, and dumped what looked like half its contents onto his meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Mildly revolted, Rachel nodded, then glanced away as he started to shovel the food down. His table manners were not the best she had ever seen.
Then conscience overcame her. He had not, after all, spent the last ten years in a school for manners. And before that, considering his background, she doubted that he had had much opportunity to learn the niceties of wielding knife and fork and napkin.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” He managed the question between mouthfuls.
“I’m really not all that hungry.” She had taken no more than three bites of her meal. Feeling slightly self-conscious, she glanced around to see if the other diners had noticed Johnny’s assault on his food.
There was a moment of charged silence, unbroken even by the clink of his fork against his plate or the sound of his food being chewed.
The silence drew Rachel’s attention. She glanced at him. He was staring at her narrow-eyed, his well-loaded fork suspended in his hand. There was a tiny smear of catsup at the corner of his mouth. Her eyes focused on
that, and something in her expression must have conveyed her distaste to him because his mouth twisted violently. He put his fork down with a clatter as the tines struck the china plate, snatched up the napkin that had never been unfolded from its neat triangle, and swiped it across his face with a savagery more eloquent than an outburst of swear words would have been.
“Am I embarrassing you, teacher?”
Taken aback, Rachel stuttered, “N-no.”
“You’re lying.”
“More tea?” Glenda was beside them with a big yellow plastic pitcher beaded with moisture.
“No, we’re done. Just give us the check, please.” Johnny managed a crooked smile for Glenda, but the glint in his eyes as they swept over his dinner companion told Rachel that he was furious.
“Pay up at the front.” Glenda fished through the half-dozen or so checks that stuck partway out of her skirt pocket, extracted one, and placed it on the table in front of Johnny. Then she smiled at him. “Come see me when you get a chance,” she said softly. “Me and the kids live out at Appleby Estates—you remember it, don’t you? That trailer park down by the river? My husband and me—we’re split up. Guess we’ll be gettin’ a divorce. When one of us can afford to pay for it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Johnny said.
“Yeah.”
“Glenda! These people need tea!”
“Gotta go,” Glenda said resignedly, and hurried away with her pitcher to answer Jane’s call.
“Give me that,” Rachel said under her breath as Johnny picked up the check and studied it. Hostility emanated from him in waves.
“Oh, right. Add insult to injury, why don’t you?” His voice was almost pleasant, but his eyes as they met hers were far from that.
“Don’t be silly. You don’t have any money, and—”
“You do?” he finished for her, too politely.
Rachel sighed. “Look, Johnny, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. It’s just—I’m not a big ketchup lover, and the sight of that lovely food being smothered in the stuff kind of got to me. It was rude of me to let you see how I felt, and I apologize for that. But that’s no reason for you to be ridiculous.” The expression on his face shut her up. Clearly her words were not appeasing his anger. Perhaps he would feel humiliated if she paid the check instead of him. After all, he was a man, and men were silly about some things. Opening her purse, she fished in the side pocket and came up with a twenty-dollar bill, which she passed across the table to him in as unobtrusive a manner as possible. “All right, all right. You win. Here, you pay.”
The way he looked at the twenty, someone might have assumed that it was a snake getting ready to bite him.
“I pay, all right. With
my
money.” He stood up, taking the check with him. Thrusting a hand into his pocket, he pulled forth a couple of crumpled dollar bills, which he put down on the table with a slap before heading toward the cash register. Rebuked into silence, Rachel was left with nothing to do but retrieve her twenty and follow.
One by one, heads turned as he passed, and in only a couple of seconds it seemed as if every eye in the place were on him. Rachel, trailing some little way behind, was in a perfect position to observe the reactions of her fellow citizens to Johnny Harris.
“Isn’t that—?”
“Oh, my land, it is!”
“What’s he doing here?”
“I heard he got parole because the Grants offered him a job in their hardware store.”
“Elisabeth never did any such thing!”
“Not Elisabeth, Rachel. Look, there she is with him. Can you believe it? Oh, hi, Rachel!”
This last was said in a much louder tone as Rachel turned her eyes on the speaker. Rachel responded to the
greeting with a tight smile and a small wave. She’d known nearly everyone in the restaurant her entire life, but that wouldn’t keep them from stripping her flesh from her bones with their tongues, she knew.
“Hope everything was all right?” Jane, having bustled up to the cash register, sounded slightly friendlier as she took Johnny’s money. He handed her a twenty. Where had he come by any cash? Rachel had heard the state paid convicts for working while they were in prison, but the wage was something like ten cents an hour. He’d been in there for ten years, so at forty hours a week that came to …
She was still trying to arrive at the approximate sum when Jane handed him his change and he stalked on out the door.
With a quick smile at Jane, Rachel followed.
He was already in the parking lot heading for her car by the time she caught up with him, his long legs eating up the short distance. That he was still furious was obvious enough to the most casual observer, Rachel thought, casting him a reproving glance over the roof as she unlocked the car and got in. He slid in beside her, jaw tight, eyes hard. Rachel’s lips pursed.
“You’re acting like a child in a tantrum,” she told him as she edged the transmission into reverse.
“Oh, yeah?” His eyes took on an unpleasant glitter. “Well, you’re acting like a damned rich-bitch snob. Sorry if my manners don’t suit you, Miss High and Mighty.”
“Your attitude suits me even less than your manners,” Rachel snapped, goaded. “And don’t you swear at me! You might try showing a little gratitude.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For me to be grateful. Should I kiss your feet or your ass, teacher?”
“You,” Rachel said fiercely, “can go straight to hell!”
With that, she stepped on the gas. The car shot backward.
“If you’re not careful, we’ll both end up there. Keep
your mind on what you’re doing, for God’s sake,” he said through his teeth as she screeched on the brakes, the rear bumper a scant few inches from a solid brick wall. “My life may not seem like it’s worth much to you, but I sure as hell don’t want to end it in a car wreck.”
Rachel had to fight an urge to hit the gas hard just to teach him a lesson. Her jaw now set as obstinately as his, she concentrated on her driving and got them to the store without any mishaps more serious than a run-over curb.
When they pulled into the deserted parking lot behind Grant’s Hardware just minutes later, neither of them had said so much as another word. Rachel suspected she owed Johnny’s forbearance to his healthy fear of her driving. She took a deep breath. If he was being childish with his lowered brows and scowling mouth, well then, honesty forced her to admit that so was she.
“Now, then,” she said as she put the transmission in park and turned to look at him, “suppose we talk this out.”
“Suppose we don’t.” He reached for the handle, opened the door, and got out without another word. Freshly affronted, Rachel winced at the volume of the slam. As she watched him walk around the front of the car and noted his leanness, conscience overwhelmed her again. Whether she was mad at him or not, the man had to eat. Fumbling with the button, she rolled down her window.
“Johnny?”
He turned his head to look at her, his eyebrows lifting. Rachel beckoned. His expression was forbidding as he approached her side of the car, but Rachel, already fishing in her purse for her checkbook, didn’t notice.
“What?” Glancing up, she saw that he was now beside the car. Her fingers touched the cool vinyl of her checkbook. Triumphantly she pulled it out.
“I’m going to pay you your first week’s wages in advance.” She flipped the checkbook open as she spoke,
extracted the pen that she kept neatly tucked into the fold, and began to write.
He leaned over, one forearm resting on the inch or so of window that had not disappeared into the door, his head coming partway through the opening, his other hand reaching for her.
Startled, Rachel shrank back as his arm brushed her breasts, but immediately she realized that his object was not to molest her. His long fingers clamped around her wrist, preventing her from finishing writing his name on the line marked “payee.”