Hard Mountain Clay by C.W. Blackwell

Author:C.W. Blackwell [Blackwell, C.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shotgun Honey Books
Published: 2023-01-27T05:00:00+00:00

11

I don’t know what Maisy intended, or what she thought would happen when Lou found what she’d done. Maybe she wanted him to know that someone had figured him out, that he wouldn’t get away with it. Maybe she thought he’d leave town.

But Lou didn’t leave, and he didn’t cool down.

I knew the exact moment he discovered the flyer. It came with a bomb-blast of cusswords and a rampage so loud and violent I thought he would be heard all the way down the mountain. We watched from the window as he punched the air, kicked the bushes. He looked like the target of an angry swarm of wasps. Then he’d stop, look over the paper front to back, and get right back to kicking and screaming.

I thought he’d kill us for sure.

“Why’d you do that, Maisy?” I said. “I've never seen him so mad.”

She looked startled, like she couldn’t decide whether to deny it.

“You saw?”

“I watched you last night from the window.”

The front door slammed, and Lou stomped into the living room. He must have flipped over the coffee table again. Big explosive clatter.

“I couldn’t let him get away with it,” she said. “It was mean what he did to us.”

“You hear him, Maze? I don’t think he’ll ever calm down.”

I heard Mama’s bedroom door open, footsteps creaking down the hall. She asked Lou what this was all about with a summoned bit of confidence. He broke something else, I couldn’t tell what. But amid all the ranting, a word came up again and again that put us at ease.

Cowboy.

Cowboy.

Cowboy.

He thought Cowboy had done it.

A few minutes later, Mama came into the room and told us to get dressed.

“You’re coming to work with me,” she said. “You can eat breakfast at the diner and hang out at the laundromat if you get bored.”

We got dressed in a hurry. We didn’t mind at all. Home was the last place we wanted to be, and we could smell the French toast already. Maisy grabbed her harmonica, and I brought my sketchbook and pencils and we climbed into Mama’s little Honda long before she came out with her work blouse and tennis shoes. We drove in silence down the mountain and into town. When we reached the Oak Street Diner, Mama fixed her makeup in the rearview and we followed her through the back door where the kitchen buzzed with the sounds of chopping knives, the whirl of industrial blenders. Campesino music blared from some hidden portable radio, and the smell of pie and bacon hung heavy in the air.

We sat in a corner booth and waited for Mama to clock in, deliberating over the menu even though we knew what we both wanted. I got the same breakfast every time: a stack of banana pancakes and hot chocolate. Maisy got French toast with whipped cream and a glass of milk. Mama didn’t bring the food out for a long time. We heard her arguing in the kitchen with someone but we couldn’t see who.

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