"How much?" I repeat.
Mr. Hodge scowls and hands me the sketchpad, muttering for Cain to notate a ten-dollar purchase on his clipboard under my name. I clench my teeth at the price, and then say, "Wait, one more thing." I point to the pearl hairpin. "How 'bout that?"
This time it's the woman-Angie, Poppet said her name was-who hands it to me with a curt, "Three dollars." She hardly looks in my direction because she's focused on Cain. Reaching into her pocket, she withdraws a peppermint covered in lint and shoves it into Cain's hand.
He mumbles a thank-you, but she waves away the pleasantry.
"Gotta load the excess onto Betty," she tells him. Her voice sounds like a tractor rumbling down the road. Yeah, a tractor. No need to search my brain for a better word in this situation.
I turn and hand the pin to Poppet, and she throws herself around me. I lock every last muscle in my body, but manage not to push her away.
"I'm going outside," I tell Poppet, but she's already racing toward the bathroom to try out the pin I bought her.
On credit.
Because I'm an idiot.
Chapter Nineteen
Angie and Black Betty
It's nine o'clock in the morning, but already it's balmy outside. The sun beats down on the cracked soil and gold sedan. Beside it are two other vehicles, a cop car that must belong to Eric, and a black tractor.
Angie, the woman from the market, is loading boxes onto the back of the tractor. Angie, the woman whose voice I compared to that of a tractor, owns a tractor.
I start to sit on the patio bench, but decide I'm being rude by not offering to help. "Is there something I can do?" I call out.
Angie straightens. She must be a touch over five feet. Not so much taller than me. She wipes a hand across her cheek and leaves a smudge of dirt in its wake. "You talking to me, Minnow?"
I startle at her use of a nickname Poppet gave me only last night. "How do you know-?"
"That they call you Minnow?" She lifts another box onto the tractor. "Those girls are loud."
That's all the explanation she gives. Angie appears callous, but she's answering my questions and that means a lot, comparatively. So I keep talking. "You live around here?"
"You need to speak up. You're too damn quiet."
I smile, because no one has ever accused me of being quiet. Especially not Dizzy. Of course, it was easier to be loud when Dizzy stood behind me. "I asked if you live around here."
She stops working and puts those soft hands on her hips. "Yeah, I do. My place is down that way, in the park by the flagpole. Prettiest yellow trailer you ever saw." I laugh when she says the last part, but she purses her lips. "What are you laughing about? You got a place that's better?"
My smile shatters. "No, I … I'm sorry. I thought you were being funny."
We stay this way for a few minutes, her loading boxes, me watching her work. Wanting to ask questions but afraid to say the wrong thing. I thumb the piercing in my eyebrow until Cain walks outside and lights a cigarette. When Angie sees him, she pants harder than she was before and yells for Cain to get his no-good rear end out there and help.
Cain smiles. Not a full-blown grin, but close enough. He tilts his head in my direction without really looking at me. "Her bark's bigger than her bite," he says, that smile still clinging to his lips. Then he stubs out his cigarette, puts it back in the pack, and jogs down the steps. There are only a few boxes left when I work up the nerve to join them.
Angie sees me coming. "What do you think you're doing? Too skinny to do a damn thing properly."
Cain chuckles under his breath. "Let her help, Angie. She's new."
"You think I don't know she's new? She's got it stamped on her forehead."
I pull in a deep breath and face Angie. "It's not like you were doing much with these boxes before Cain came along. Huffing and puffing like a bull with emphysema."
Cain throws his head back and laughs long and hard. The sun shines down on his face, and the sound comes from deep in his core. In that moment, it's like he's stepped out of his own body and back into one from his childhood, before the thing that made him the way he is now came along. And I do know he has a thing. Anyone with a thing recognizes someone else with it, too. I like Cain this way-talking, playful.
Cain recovers and looks at Angie to gauge her reaction. She doesn't look pleased, but I see past her frown and spot the amusement in her eyes.
"Here, then." She shoves a box into my arms. "Put this on Black Betty's hood. It'll stay well enough." She pats the tractor and mumbles, "A bull with emphysema."