True Fires Read Free Page A

trouble?”
    “Well, if you don’t mind,”—the Sheriff removes his hat and slaps it gently against his thigh—“I’d like a word with their mother. Please, ma’am.”
    “Mother? Didn’t they tell you—haven’t got one—that’s why I said poor things—earlier, I mean. Father works for Lila Hightower—you know, out at the Judge’s place? Well, of course, you do!”
    “No mother, y’say?” Sheriff DeLuth cocks his head as if he hadn’t heard right. “What happened to her?”
    “Died ’fore they came here—cancer, I think—the poor little girl, ’Becca, told me, ‘My mam’s insides et her up.’ Doesn’t that sound like cancer to you?”
    “Yes. Yes, it does. And the father works for Lila, y’say?” The Sheriff retains the look of someone who either doesn’t hear well or is having a hard time believing what she’d said.
    “Oh, yes! She’s the one vouched for ’em. House rules—I mean, I must have references—so many oddballs, really!”
    “Well,” Sheriff DeLuth fingers the rim of the big white Stetson, “I’ll be heading out to Lila’s then. Sorry to have bothered you, Miz Betty.”
    “But, Sheriff,” Betty flutters a trembly hand in his direction. “Is there trouble?—I mean, this is a respectable—I can’t afford—”
    “Might catch a little rain, don’t y’think?” The Sheriff eyes the bank of clouds scuttling overhead. “Then again, might not.” He shrugs and strides to the curb.
    Betty’s hand floats back down to her side, the heel of it testing her sore hip joint.
Rain, for sure,
she decides.
And what
else?
she wonders as ’Becca’s small wave blurs in the back window of the Sheriff’s receding car.

5
    Sheriff DeLuth turns left on Beech, right on Oak, then hard-pedals out Old Dixie toward the Judge’s place, south of town. In his rearview mirror, his eyes rake over the two tight-lipped children in the backseat and he shakes his head at Ed Cantrell, Betty Whitworth, and, now, Lila Hightower, hearing the words of the prophet—
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, who?—The Lord give
them eyes, but they do not see.
    Look at the kink in that boy’s hair, and the girl—that nose has
the black curse of Canaan on it, clear as day. What’s Cantrell thinking, lettin’ them in school? And Lila vouchin’ for ’em to stay at the
old hen’s boardinghouse?
    Lila.
    As DeLuth turns the wheel sharply at the bend in the blacktop created by the abrupt arrival of Lake Esther—the one locals christened SonofaBitch Curve after it claimed Clay Whitworth—his thoughts veer toward Lila Hightower.
    Lila was nobody’s fool. The Judge had seen to that. Even in grade school, when he and Louis Hightower first became friends, Lila had the jump on every kid in class. The Judge taught her to read early—tried to do the same with Louis, too, but it didn’t take—and suffered no more foolishness in his home than in his courtroom. “Don’t go relyin’ on your prettiness, Miss,” DeLuth had heard the Judge warn Lila many a time. “In the cases that count, smart beats pretty every time.” And hadn’t she outsmarted the Judge himself—damn near broke his heart, too—by joining the Women’s Army Corps after Louis went and got himself killed in Africa, for Chrissakes? And hadn’t she piled insult onto injury by staying away until just before the ol’ man died and was all set to disown her?
    DeLuth purses leathery lips as he wheels onto the private side road—paved at county expense—beside the green-and-white sign for Hightower Groves. Once, during the anxious weeks before the Judge passed, DeLuth had flirted with the possibility that all this might be his. The Judge as much as said so. “K.A., you been more of a son to me than Louis ever was.” The ol’ man was spitting up blood in wads as thick and brown as chewing tobac by then. “S’long as Lila can’t see fit to find her way home, I’ve told Paine to fix things so you’re next in line.” But, of course, Lila had come home,