Nobody

Night Talks

The sun was still warm as I sat by the creek, beer chilling in the water, leaning against the log with a piece of wood in one hand and a sharp knife in the other. I was carving, nice and slow, a snake out of the piece of wood I picked up when I'd limped out to the creek.

I was going stir crazy in the house.

Miss Lily-Rylee hadn't said anything about the fat lip and slightly swollen eye, not last night nor this morning, but that didn't mean I didn't see them.

Part of me hurt to see her moving around the kitchen, making me burnt scrambled eggs and slightly soggy toast for breakfast, looking, to use Ant's phrase, like an Irish house-wife. I knew I wasn't the one who had hit her, who had busted her lip or her eye, but it still made me feel slightly ashamed as she moved around my kitchen.

The snake slowly took shape as the morning wound on.

Miss Lily-Rylee said she'd be back in the evening, that she had to help her uncle out at the store. The old man didn't close up until after twenty-hundred, which meant that she wouldn't get out to my house until after twenty-one hundred. She'd have to help run the register, put away the money, sweep up, turn off all the lights, and everything else that went into closing a store after a hard day's work.

Not that I was thinking of any of that. Instead I was thinking about those two injuries.

The right corner of her mouth and the left cheek. Two slaps. Probably a regular slap then a backhand.

I wondered who had done it.

I doubted that skeezy little fuck at the wrecking yard would have done it. He'd have done it years ago, not last night.

The knife flashed in the sunlight as I detailed the scales of the snake on the stick as I kept whittling.

I finished off the beer and stared at the water for a long moment.

Ant would have already been in town, interrogating people, finding out what he wanted to know.

Lord knew I remembered that month of blood and fire that had consumed him back when the Old Man of SOCOM had died and some tweakers had robbed him while he lay dying on the asphalt.

How Stillwater had avoided jail, I still had no idea. I was a Texas cattle baron and I doubted that I had enough sway to keep a man out of jail in Texas if he'd gone berserk like Stillwater had done.

You tell that Irish mob reject... went through my mind.

Henley's voice.

I shook my head and slowly got up. I tucked the knife in the sheath on my belt, put the half-carved snake in a pocket, then grabbed the cane and the last of the six pack.

My leg hurt slightly as I limped back to the house.

A nap left me refreshed, and I made dinner for myself, putting some away for Miss Lily-Rylee when she came home. Fried chicken, chicken gizzards, livers, and hearts, with steamed broccoli with cheese, and canned fruit cocktail that was chilled and served on a bed of over-steamed white rice that had been steamed with canned milk rather than water.

By nine I put her dinner in the microwave.

By ten, I put her dinner in the fridge after carefully covering it.

She called at ten thirty, letting me know that she'd just gotten finished and wouldn't be able to make it and would I please understand.

I told her I understood.

At eleven, I went to bed.

I wasn't sure what woke me up. Something. Something off.

I got up, wiping my eyes, and swung my legs out of the bed. The scars were in stark relief to my pale skin in the moonlight. I grabbed the cane and got up, moving to the bedroom door and opening it.