Offerings Three Stories by Mary Anna Evans Page B

relieved to see the gun swing away from Owen toward this man I didn’t know. This makes no sense, since I didn’t know Owen, either, but Iris did (quite well, it appeared) and that made him almost kin.
    “I’m done with the two of you,” Gibson said, waving the revolver back and forth between Owen and the other man, who I suddenly recognized. It was Mr. Robbins, who worked at the sawmill in town. “You’re cheating me, the both of you.”
    “How can you say that?” Mr. Robbins asked. His eyes bugged out of his long sallow face every time the gun swung his way. “I go over the numbers with you every night. We count the bottles together before we deliver them. We count the money together when we get home. Then we pay Owen and we split the rest. How could we cheat you?”
    Gibson’s eyes flicked away toward the woods for a second, and I recognized two things in those eyes that scared me. First, they were unfocused, the way my grandfather’s got when he’d had too much rum. And second, they showed a peculiar mix of confusion and humiliation that I’d seen before.
    My friend Jeremy, Daddy’s fieldhand, had come home one day with that self-same look on his face. It was the day he got tricked into paying a dime for a little old candy bar because he didn’t know his numbers. After that, I made it my business to walk to the store with him and look over the clerk’s shoulder while he totted up Jeremy’s receipt. Eight-year-old girls can get away with most anything when they smile, and everybody in town knew I’d been able to add a double-column of numbers since I was six.
    I’d been real proud of my tidy solution to Jeremy’s problem, but on that night I felt as cold and rudderless as if I’d been dumped into the muddy river below me. I wrapped my arms around my knees and tried not to shiver. If my shaking set the spider lilies and palmettos to moving, then Gibson would know I was there. I didn’t intend for him to be pointing that gun at me, too.
    He was going to shoot them—Owen and Mr. Robbins, and maybe Iris, too. That shamed, angry light in his eyes said that he saw no other choice. He needed the other men to help him run his business because he couldn’t count the money, but he couldn’t trust them not to cheat him…because he couldn’t count the money.
    Owen had finally eased his airborne foot down onto the landing, but his stance was odd and stiff, just like you’d expect of a man being held at gunpoint. Still, there was something funny about his right arm. He was holding it about a foot in front of him, with the palm pointed in toward his belly. Since I was situated where I could see that belly in profile, I was well-positioned to see something that Gibson couldn’t—a bulge beneath that glen plaid vest. If Gibson was distracted, just for a moment, Owen might be able to save my sister, and himself, too.
    I needed something to throw. A shoe would be perfect, but I wasn’t wearing anything but my nightgown and underdrawers. I would have thrown them and sat there stark naked, except I couldn’t imagine that they would make much noise.
    Being as how Florida is nothing but a spit of sand, there were no handy rocks, but our swamps are full of cypress balls. I hefted one of them, a hard green knob about the size of a baseball, and heaved it into the river. It landed near Mr. Robbins’ end of the boat, which turned out to be an altogether bad thing for him. Gibson hollered out a word I’d never heard before and pulled the trigger without a moment’s thought, hitting Mr. Robbins square in the middle of his chest.
    Poor Mr. Robbins toppled overboard and sank like a rock. Even though my sister was in the worst trouble imaginable and I wasn’t in a much more secure position myself, there was a long heartbeat when all I could think about was Ginny Robbins, who was two grades ahead of me in school. She didn’t deserve the news she was going to get come morning.
    Now, let me tell you about the word Gibson