A Gathering of Old Men Read Online Free Page A

all the time. I’m going to die, you’re going to die. Janey, you know what time it is?”
    “Don’t move, Janey,” I said. “I need you out here, Bea,” I said. “Did you hear me? A man is dead. Beau Boutan was shot down in the quarters. And Candy is down there claiming she did it. Do you understand what I’m trying to say to you?”
    “That gal got spunk,” Bea said. “Always said she had spunk. That’s why she won’t get married, all that spunk. Janey, go in there and get those pea pickers.”
    “Don’t you move, Janey,” I said.
    “What did you say?” Bea asked, looking up at me. Her little overpowdered white face was as wrinkled as a prune. Her blue-dyed hair was so thin you could see her gray skull. Only her grayish-blue eyes were still alive and youthful, but now angry. “What did you say?” she asked me again. “You told her ‘don’t’? This is not Seven Oaks, Miss, this is Marshall. At Marshall I say ‘don’t’ and I say ‘do.’ ” She looked at Janey just as hard as she had looked at me. “What are you waiting on?” she asked her.
    “Yes, Ma’am,” Janey said, and went back inside.
    She must have had the drinks already mixed and sitting in the refrigerator, because she was back with two of them within a couple of minutes. The drink was made of gin and pink lemonade, garnished with a slice of orange, a cherry, a piece of lime, a sprig of mint, and a paper straw the color of a peppermint stick. I set my drink on the banister, but Bea couldn’t wait to get started on hers. It was her first drink of the day, and she was already running more than a half hour late. Janey and I stood there watching her.
    “Now, what did you say Candy did?” she asked. “That gal got spunk. Just like Grandpa Nate.”
    “My God,” I said. “My God, Beatrice. Candy just told me she killed somebody. Is that all you got to say, she’s just like her grandpa?”
    “My grandpa,” she said. “Her great-great grandpa. Her grandpa grandpa. About time she shot one of them Cajuns, messing up the land with those tractors. Yes, that gal’s got spunk in her.”
    I could see that I was wasting my time talking to Beatrice, and I turned to Janey. Janey was standing there looking down at her and biting her lips as if she were about to start crying again.
    “Hold up, Janey,” I told her. “I need somebody around here with me. Now you hold up now.”
    “I’m strong,” she said.
    “You better be strong,” I said. “Now, listen. I want nothing but answers. Nothing but answers. No questions. Answers. Who do you know don’t like Fix?”
    “Ma’am?” she said, drawing back and looking at me as though I were out of my mind. You would have thought I had just asked her who did she know who liked the devil.
    “I told you no questions, Janey, just answers,” I said. “We don’t have time for both of us to ask questions. I ask the questions, you answer them. Now, who do you know don’t like Fix?”
    “I don’t like him,” Bea said. “I’ve never liked him. Why we ever let that kind on this land, I don’t know. The land has not been the same since they brought those tractors here.”
    “Beatrice, please shut up,” I said. “Please. Please, Beatrice.” She raised the glass and sucked on the straw again. “Janey, who do you know don’t like Fix?”
    “I don’t know nobody do like Fix,” she said.
    “Do you think they hate him enough to stand up to Mapes?”
    “Ma’am?” she said.
    “Janey, I warned you,” I said. “Yes, or no. Will they stand, or won’t they stand up to Mapes with empty shotguns?”
    “I don’t know what you talking about, Miss Merle,” she said. She wanted to cry. “Please, Ma’am, I don’t know what you talking about.”
    “I’ll tell you what I’m talking about,” I told her. “I’ll tell you once, and I want answers from then on. You got a crazy thirty-year-old white gal down in the quarters claiming she just killed a white man. Now, I know she