Free Clay Hand by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page B

taste,” she explained.
    “Mrs. O’Grady, what was bothering Dick while he was here in Winston? He wasn’t much of a drinker, and yet drinking seems to have been the only pleasure he had here.”
    “Oh, he had other pleasures,” the widow said, drawing her lips tightly over her teeth. “Off gamboling in the hills with that goatherd, and her with a husband. But I’d not blame him for that. I don’t blame the man.” She leaned toward him. “I blame the one sleeping up there in the room above him tonight. She’s come now when he’s gone.”
    “There was no place for her to stay in Winston, even if she’d been asked to come with him.”
    “Tu, tu, tu,” the widow said. “Go ahead. Stick up for her. He did too. You’re all alike. You’ll see. It’ll all come out in the wash.”
    He lifted his glass and studied her over the rim of it, trying to determine whether she was enjoying the gossip. “Put it to me straight, Mrs. O’Grady. Do you mean Dick was having an affair with this woman?”
    “An affair,” she mimicked. “There’s a fancy word, isn’t it? I mean he was carrying on with her and sleeping over there nights, and the father of her, the old devil, encouraging it.”
    “That’s serious stuff you’re saying. I wouldn’t repeat it unless I was damned sure of it.”
    “Do you take me for a fool? Wasn’t I laying in there tossing, listening for him, and him coming home to me in the light of morning, moaning and crooning about her. ‘Oh, the two brown eyes,’ he’d say, as though there was some of us with three. ‘The two brown eyes with the little candles burning in them.’”
    “But you can’t prove it,” he said doggedly.
    The widow rocked back in her chair. “Proof, poof. You’ll see. I’m not the only one knows it.”
    He got up and went to her chair and stilled its rocking. “I thought you were a friend of Dick’s. I thought you were fond of him.”
    She looked up at him, a faded rag doll, its head still cocky. “I was. You can’t say I wasn’t.”
    “Then if I were you, I’d never let that filthy scandal out of my mouth.”
    He set the bottle down hard on the table beside her and went up to his room. He had had quite enough for one day.

Chapter 11
    H E AWAKENED TO SOUNDS in the house and to utter darkness. He lay a few minutes feeling the edges of the narrow bed, gradually recalling where he was, and the circumstances which had brought him there. The sound of wind along the side of the house was a high-pitched whistle that broke off at times, and slid through the rough-hewn window frame and whispered about his head…. “The wind…at night…lies down beside me,” Dick had written.
    Phil threw off his blankets and groped for the light cord. It was five-thirty, and the other boarders were going downstairs to their breakfast. He dressed and made up his own bed. Downstairs, Mrs. O’Grady was making sandwiches, two lunch buckets open before her. A bumpy handkerchief covered her hair, done up in curls, no doubt.
    “There’s no warm water yet,” she said, seeing him.
    “I’ll wash in cold then.”
    “Get the bucket and take it out. Don’t leave the door open.”
    The men nodded and continued eating when he said good morning to them. Their leather jackets and mining caps were laid out on the kindling box by the stove to warm them after having hung in the back kitchen all night. Phil drew his bucket of water and took it out. He stripped to the waist and washed quickly. Once dressed again, he felt alert and more awake than he could remember having been for some time. He went out on the porch and emptied the tub with the wind. Below him, the early lights in a hundred kitchens dotted Winston. There were no stars, and still no shade of dawn. Down the hill and up another, the church bell tolled an early Mass. The miners came out of the house and thumped down the steps, one of them carrying a flashlight. Phil heard the tinkle of the bell on the outside gate presently, and