Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories by Ron Rash Page B

Sinkler thought him fool enough to believe it. Vickery answered that if Sinkler thought he’d lightened his load he was mistaken. It’d be easy enough to find another bucket, maybe one that could hold an extra gallon. Sinkler shrugged and lifted himself into the cage truck, found a place on the metal bench among the sweating convicts. He’d won over the other guards with cigarettes and small loans, that and his mush talk, but not Vickery, who’d argued that making Sinkler a trusty would only give him a head start when he tried to escape.
    The bull guard was right about that. Sinkler had more than fifty dollars in poker winnings now, plenty enough cash to get him across the Mississippi and finally shed himself of the whole damn region. He’d grown up in Montgomery, but when the law got too interested in his comings and goings he’d gone north to Knoxville and then west to Memphis before recrossing Tennessee on his way to Raleigh. Sinkler’s talents had led him to establishments where his sleight of hand needed no deck of cards. With a decent suit, clean fingernails, and buffed shoes, he’d walk into a business and be greeted as a solid citizen. Tell a story about being in town because of an ailing mother and you were the cat’s pajamas. They’d take the Help Wanted sign out of the window and pretty much replace it with Help Yourself. Sinkler remembered the afternoon in Memphis when he had stood by the river after grifting a clothing store of forty dollars in two months. Keep heading west or turn back east—that was the choice. He’d flipped a silver dollar to decide, a rare moment when he’d trusted his life purely to luck.
    This time he’d cross the river, start in Kansas City or St. Louis. He’d work the stores and cafés and newsstands and anywhere else with a till or a cash register. Except for a bank. Crooked as bankers were, Sinkler should have realized how quickly they’d recognize him as one of their own. No, he’d not make that mistake again.
    That night, when the stockade lights were snuffed, he lay in his bunk and thought about Lucy Sorrels. A year and a half had passed since he’d been with a woman. After that long, almost any female would make the sap rise. There was nothing about her face to hold a man’s attention, but curves tightened the right parts of her dress. Nice legs too. Each trip to the well that day, he had tried to make small talk. She had given him the icy mitts, but he had weeks yet to warm her up. It was only on the last haul that the husband had come in from his field. He’d barely responded to Sinkler’s “how do you dos” and “much obligeds.” He looked to be around forty and Sinkler suspected that part of his terseness was due to a younger man being around his wife. After a few moments, the farmer had nodded at the pail in Sinkler’s left hand. “You’ll be leaving that, right?” When Sinkler said yes, the husband told Lucy to switch it with the leaky well bucket, then walked into the barn.
    Two days passed before Lucy asked if he’d ever thought of trying to escape.
    “Of course,” Sinkler answered. “Have you?”
    She looked at him in a way that he could not read.
    “How come you ain’t done it, then? They let you roam near anywhere you want, and you ain’t got shackles.”
    “Maybe I enjoy the free room and board,” Sinkler answered. He turned a thumb toward his stripes. “Nice duds too. They even let you change them out every Sunday.”
    “I don’t think I could stand it,” Lucy said. “Being locked up so long and knowing I still had nigh on three years.”
    He checked her lips for the slightest upward curve of a smile, but it wasn’t there.
    “Yeah,” Sinkler said, taking a step closer. “You don’t seem the sort to stand being locked up. I’d think a young gal pretty as you would want to see more of the world.”
    “How come you ain’t done it?” she asked again, and brushed some loose wisps of hair behind her ear.
    “Maybe the same