Down Don't Bother Me (9780062362209) by Jason Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

her I was the man from the mine. I said, “You’re Temple Beckett?”
    â€œDon’t be an idiot.” She closed the door, leaving me in the downpour. Bad guess, then. I stood there, getting as wet as a fish’s teeth. A long time later, the hard-bitten woman opened the door again.
    â€œAll right, come in.”
    I came in. The hallway was dark wood and blue tile painted with little flowers, and it was what you’d call a good-size space. I’ve been on smaller runways. A life-size painting of a redheaded woman on horseback took up one wall. The other was partially covered by some kind of woven wall hanging, African or maybe Honduran. On either side of the doorway, widemouthed vases coughed driedornamental grass, and the ceiling was fitted with a segmented skylight that ran the length of the space and let in the day’s stormy light.
    â€œI didn’t know any of this was back here,” I said to the woman.
    She handed me a towel and said, “That’s what the gate is for.”
    The sitting room was pretty big, too. You could have parked a bus in it and not missed the space. The ceilings couldn’t have been higher than twenty feet. The furniture was farmhouse, but expensive-looking farmhouse, and tasteful, as were the knickknacks and framed pictures. There were photos of an older woman—Temple Beckett’s mother, maybe—but none of the old man. At least none that I could see. The floors were polished walnut, stained very dark, and the walls were lined with bookshelves so tall you’d need a man from the circus to bring down the high volumes. Like in the hallway, the ceiling was pitted with skylights, these as deep as wells, and the floors were draped with worn Oriental rugs. As I often was, I was again struck by the sheer amount of money in the world and how much trouble the world went through to make sure none of it ended up in my pockets.
    I stood there, dripping on a rug. The wrinkle-eyed woman frowned at me, then told me to wait and went out again. I missed her immediately and consoled myself drying my hair with the towel. There was a picture of Guy Beckett on the coffee table, and I picked it up for a better look. He looked the same. The doughboy was nowhere to be seen. Maybe it was missing, too. I was still thinking about it when the door opened again and a second woman came into the room.
    â€œPut that picture down, please.”
    She was about my age, early forties, though I had to look at her hands to tell it. She was good-looking, too. Good-looking is putting it mildly, maybe. I looked around vaguely for a priest to strangle. She was tall and lean, with the kind of green eyes a lazy novelist would describe as “piercing.” Her copper hair was pulled back from her face with a strip of brown cloth. I imagined that its more honest self was touched here and there with gray, but that was just a guess. The rest of her was dressed like a pioneer fashion model in a deerskin jacket with turquoise beads sewn on the pockets, a powder blue roll-neck sweater, faded jeans, and buskins made of the same stuff as the jacket.
    I put down the picture. She looked at me and it and frowned the kind of desperate, exhausted frown that turns the room upside down and shakes the sympathy from its pockets.
    â€œYou’re Slim?”
    It was Luster’s daughter, all right. You could see him in her, the way she moved and spoke. She held herself like the native she was—rock-shouldered, fighting shyness, full of Midwestern grit—but she held herself like a native who’d spent time and sweat and money to unlearn it all. Mostly money, probably. She didn’t want to shake hands.
    â€œYou found us,” she said. She didn’t sound any too thrilled about it. “I guess I should offer you a drink. You people like to drink, don’t you?”
    â€œMa’am?”
    â€œCoal miners.”
    I’m a big boy who knows when he’s being picked