Light to the Hills: A Novel (65)
“Seems you got a knack for showing up in odd places,” he said, his breath a sour mix of tobacco and whiskey. “I’m gonna be straight with you, little miss. I don’t know what you might or might not of heard just now, but the other day when you met my rooster, I follered you and your pretty little sister home.” Sass raised her eyes then. She’d checked behind them that day. He hadn’t really followed them, had he? She was grateful Hiccup had stayed with Mama at the store today. “Maybe you didn’t see me, but that’s ’cause I can walk quiet as a Cherokee in them woods.”
The man stuck his spoilt hand in his pocket, still holding on to Sass’s arm with the other. He regarded her, decided to take another tack.
“You look like a good Christian girl,” he said. “I’m sure you don’t want to go spreading gossip and tales ’round town ’bout the likes of me. Things that don’t concern nobody else. You prob’ly got family in the mines, too. Be a shame if something were to happen to ’em down in the dark there, where no one would see it coming.” He regarded her, his eyes traveling the length of her body slowly. “I know who you are. You go telling tales, girl, and I’ll take your big brother right down the mountain with me. Sheriff’d be real interested in the location of that still he’s been running. Bet he’d like to slam the cell door on him real tight. No telling when you might see his face again.”
Sass moved her head side to side, and his lip curled into a sneer. “’Sides, it ain’t like anybody’d pay you no mind. You’re just a hillbilly from the boonies, and not even half-growed.” He pulled his claw hand from his pocket and hesitated a half second before running a finger across Sass’s chest. He gave one of her nipples a hard twist, and her eyes brimmed hot with tears. That cackle of a laugh again. “Not even a handful, even for half a hand! More like chigger bites.” He leaned his left elbow against the building, pinning her on one side, while with his right hand he reached around behind her and grabbed between her legs. She felt the scrape of his dirty fingernails through the thin cotton of her dress. Sass did her best to twist away, pushing upward with her toes to escape, throwing her elbows out against his arms. She didn’t think to holler. She was using all her strength to push him away, to free his hold on her. He watched her squirm, no flicker of pity or shame in his features. He was strong and she was weak; he did it because he could.
He let her go then and backed away, satisfied he’d made his point. He looked back once and pointed at her again before he rounded the corner of the Feed & Seed. He raised a finger to his lips and disappeared down the alley between buildings. Sass stood there still, her back and palms pressed flat against the wood of the building, bracing against it and remembering to breathe as her heart thrummed in her chest. She squatted down and hugged her knees tight, trying to keep from being sick. She had to tell, didn’t she? But that’s the one thing she couldn’t do. What about her daddy, in the mines every night? Or Hiccup, the next time they picked blackberries or hunted sang?
Images of Finn’s smashed leg flitted across her memory like pictures in a book, his pale face as he lay there in the bed for weeks. What he’d suffered. How Mama had worried so, more than Sass had witnessed before—and she’d seen her share of worry—more even than when Hiccup had caught the ague and had a fever for days. Sass knew it could’ve been so much worse, and the tears started. Not tears of sadness or fear, but tears of pure anger that burned as they fell into the dust at her feet. Pain shot through Sass’s jaw, and she realized she’d been clenching her teeth so hard she might’ve cracked a tooth. What good were tears in the dust? Salt water never grew no seeds.
A scrap of paper rustled against her ankle, and she plucked it off the ground. It had become habit now to read everything that crossed her vision, so she unfolded the page. It fell open in soft creases—some kind of list, a name on each line. As she studied it, she remembered the man taking his hand in and out of his pocket. He must have dropped it while he was busy tormenting her. Sass had pockets, too.
She wiped her eyes with a sleeve of her dress and folded the page back. Casting a quick glance down the back side of the building, she tugged open the back door and darted inside, brushed down the center aisle past the burlap sacks and lengths of twine, and headed out the front. Her eyes swept up and down the road. No sign of the rooster man. Sass backtracked to the general store, folks passing by in a blur. There, Mama and Cricket stood out front by their wagon, placing packages in the bed. Hiccup sat on the bench seat, swinging her bare feet.
“There you are, Sass. I didn’t know where you’d got off to. You three stay put and I’ll go round up your sister,” said Mama.
Sass climbed up into the back of the wagon and hugged her knees to her chest, ignoring Hiccup’s questions and Cricket’s chatter about the new lures he’d examined. She couldn’t wait to point the wagon back up the mountain. She needed to talk to Finn something fierce.
Chapter 20
The path from town to home always passed quicker because Plain Jane counted on corn and a rubdown at the end when she went that direction. Fern hummed as she sat on the front seat beside her mother, and Cricket and Hiccup swung their legs over the back edge of the wagon, watching as the road beneath their feet changed from packed-down dirt to rutted grass to the thicker leaves and underbrush of the old logging trail that led north.