The Tilted World by Tom Franklin, Beth Ann Fennelly Page B

was his turn to smile now, and she saw the quick flick of dimples through his unshaven cheeks. “Well,” he said. “Let me give you Junior’s gear.” He walked down the steps and crossed to the horse. He flipped open the saddlebag and pulled several cans and packages into his arms and crossed back to the gallery and stacked them beside her door.
    “Okay then. I guess I’ll push off.” He touched two fingers to his hat brim, then inspected them and held them up to show smudges from the wet leather. But Dixie Clay was already turning away. She was patting the baby, walking inside, crooning him low words.
    Not till the next morning, when she drifted onto the rain-loud gallery with the dreaming baby in her arms, would she spot against the rail her forgotten gun. And the cowboy’s cigar, also forgotten, a half-moon singed into the rail where he’d left it smoldering when he rode away.

Chapter 5
    I t wasn’t hard to figure out the place Ham would pick to stay. The first boardinghouse Ingersoll passed was too remote, reeked of cabbage, and cobwebs tethered the single rocking chair to the wall. He rode on to the levee and saw the McLain Hotel, a broad-shouldered terra-cotta thing that would have a good view of the levee from the top floor, but there were no vacancies. He continued to the square and found the Vatterott Rooming House, three stories, valises beside the door, wet towels hanging out of the upstairs windows like tongues. Inside, the matron recognized him from Ham’s description and said his room, the Bluebird Suite, was ready. She hoped he’d appreciate it, she said, because to free it she had to kick out two Flemish engineers. Mr. Johnson, she continued, was booked in the Cardinal Suite next door. Would Mr. Ingersoll like to inspect his room? He would, he would. So he lifted his knapsack—sagging and light without the clanking jars of baby food—and followed Mrs. Vatterott as she climbed the stairs. Her nylon stockings sagged around her ankles like shedding snakeskin, and he reflected that the trend for shorter skirts was not a universal good.
    Mrs. Vatterott opened the door painted with a bluebird, a room clean and simple with a chenille bedspread and a washbasin and a stack of nappy-looking towels. There was nothing Ingersoll wanted more than to topple across the bed like a giant elm, falling into slumber, waking three days later with a beard and craters in his face from the pompoms. And then a bath, a bath that would last another three days, water so hot his toes would turn crimson as soon as they hit. Then those Brillo pad towels buffing him dry, then clean clothes. Then the barber with his warm lather and beaver bristle brush while the voices of men, voices unurgent, unthreatened, and slow, threaded through his ears, his eyes closed behind the warm lemon-scented washcloth, and all this to be followed by a rack of beef ribs as long as a xylophone.
    Mrs. Vatterott was still standing in the hall. “Well? Anything I can bring you?”
    “I’m heading out,” he told her, the vista of pleasure scrolling closed like a schoolhouse map. “But if you could rustle me a cup of coffee, strong coffee, I’d be grateful.”
    “Strong? Strong is the only kind we brew, here at Vatterotts’. I brew chicory coffee. I’m from New Orleans, you know. My granddaddy opened the ball with Lafayette.”
    This was meant to impress him, so he whistled, and she smiled and turned away. What did impress him was the chicory coffee, so scalding strong he thought it almost might burn away thoughts of the baby and that feisty, curly-haired girl he’d handed him to. He’d liked her freckles, and the way her blue eyes speckled with other blues, so they matched the freckles. Dixie Clay. That’s what the shop matron had called her. Dixie Clay. What a name.
    Ingersoll was looking for McMahon’s diner, where Mrs. Vatterott said Ham would be, and thank God because Ingersoll hadn’t eaten since that morning when he’d split a can of