Free Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories by Ron Rash Page A

off his stripes and hid them behind a tree. Briefly, Sinkler thought about taking a little longer before he dressed, suggesting to Lucy that the bedsheet might have another use. Just a few more hours, he reminded himself, you’ll be safe for sure and rolling with her in a big soft bed. The chambray shirt wasn’t a bad fit, but the denim pants hung loose on his hips. Every few steps, Sinkler had to hitch them back up. The bedsheet held nothing more and Lucy stuffed it in a rock crevice.
    “You bring that money?” he asked.
    “You claimed us not to need it,” Lucy said, a harshness in her voice he’d not heard before. “You weren’t trifling with me about having money for the train tickets, were you?”
    “No, darling, and plenty enough to buy you that bracelet and a real dress instead of that flour sack you got on. Stick with me and you’ll ride the cushions.”
    They moved down the ridge through a thicket of rhododendron, the ground so aslant that in a couple of places he’d have tumbled if he hadn’t watched how Lucy did it, front foot sideways and leaning backward. At the bottom, the trail forked. Lucy nodded to the left. The land continued downhill, then curved and leveled out. After a while, the path snaked into the undergrowth and Sinkler knew that without Lucy he’d be completely lost. You’re doing as much for her as she for you, he reminded himself, and thought again about what another convict might do, what he’d known all along he couldn’t do. When others had brought a derringer or Arkansas toothpick to card games, Sinkler arrived empty-handed, because either one could take its owner straight to the morgue or to prison. He’d always made a show of slapping his pockets and opening his coat at such gatherings. “I’ll not hurt anything but a fellow’s wallet,” he’d say. Men had been killed twice in his presence, but he’d never had a weapon aimed in his direction.
    Near another ridge, they crossed a creek that was little more than a spring seep. They followed the ridge awhile and then the trail widened and they moved back downhill and up again. Each rise and fall of the land looked like what had come before. The mountain air was thin and if Sinkler hadn’t been hauling water such distances he wouldn’t have had the spunk to keep going. They went on, the trees shading them from the sun, but even so he grew thirsty and kept hoping they’d come to a stream he could drink from. Finally, they came to another spring seep.
    “I’ve got to have some water,” he said.
    Sinkler kneeled beside the creek. The water was so shallow that he had to lean over and steady himself with one hand, cupping the other to get a dozen leaky palmfuls in his mouth. He stood and brushed the damp sand off his hand and his knees. The woods were completely silent, no murmur of wind, not a bird singing.
    “You want any?” he asked, but Lucy shook her head.
    The trees shut out much of the sky, but he could tell that the sun was starting to slip behind the mountains. Fewer dapples of light were on the forest floor, more shadows. Soon the prisoners would be heading back, one man fewer. Come suppertime, the ginks would be spooning beans off a tin plate while Sinkler sat in a dining car eating steak with silverware. By then, the warden would have chewed out Vickery’s skinny ass but good, maybe even fired him. The other guards, the ones he’d duped even more, would be explaining why they’d recommended making Sinkler a trusty in the first place.
    When the trail narrowed again, a branch snagged Lucy’s sleeve and ripped the frayed muslin. She surprised him with her profanity as she examined the torn cloth.
    “I’d not think a sweet little gal like you to know words like that.”
    She glared at him and Sinkler raised his hands, palms out.
    “Just teasing you a bit, darling. You should have brought another dress. I know I told you to pack light, but light didn’t mean bring nothing.”
    “Maybe I ain’t got another