They Sold Me to the Crippled War God, So Why Was He Standing in My Father's Barn on Two Good Legs novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Two Good Legs
On the porch Seb says he never signed anything and shows her the three letters he sent, and when she grabs a burning pot he takes it from her hand, then follows her truck home; her father is waiting at the gate loud enough for the neighbors.
He was the handsomest man I had ever seen, and he looked at me like I'd come to read the meter.
I stood at the foot of the porch steps in my church dress, with my father's truck key still in my fist.
"Miss Thibodeaux," he said.
He did not ask who I was.
"You drove out here alone."
"Yes," I said.
"In that dress."
I looked down at the blue skirt.
"It's the one they told me to wear."
His eyes went over me once, quick and level, and returned to my face.
He was tall, six foot one at least, and built like somebody who had carried things for a living.
His dark hair was cropped close and gone gray at the sides.
His jaw was long and clean.
There was a small tattoo of a castle on the inside of his left forearm, and the cane hung from that arm.
"You can walk," I said.
It came out stupid.
"I can," said Sebastien Guidry.
He lifted the cane off his arm and looked at it.
"It was my mother's," he said.
"She had a bad hip."
He hooked it back over the rail.
"I keep it there," Seb said, "so people will think what they want to think."
"My father told two hundred people you were crippled."
"I know what he told them."
He said it flatly, without heat.
"He's been telling them for eighteen months."
I stood very still.
My whole body hummed with the drive and the dress and the clapping.
"Did you agree to marry me?" I said.
"No."
"He said the contract was signed."
"There is no contract with my name on it.
"There is one with yours, I believe.
"He sent it to me in June, with a note saying you were a good girl and a hard worker."
The porch light made a gold circle on the boards between us.
"I sent it back.
"I sent it back in August with a letter, and again in September.
"I have copies."
He went to the screen door and held it open.
"Come inside, Miss Thibodeaux.
"I'm not going to put my hands on you, or anyone.
"But it's late, and you're shaking."
I was.
I had not noticed until he said it.
I climbed the steps, and the boards were warm under my heels.
The inside of the house smelled of old cypress and coffee.
It was bigger than I expected and barer.
A long plain table, a gun cabinet with the glass painted over, a wall of framed maps of the parish.
On the kitchen wall hung a framed letter with a National Guard seal.
I would remember it later, and not know why.
He pulled out a chair for me and went to the stove.
He moved like a man who had learned where everything was and never needed to look.
A dented percolator sat on the burner, and he turned the flame up under it.
"Sit," he said.
"I'd rather stand."
"Then stand."
He took a folder from a drawer and laid it on the table.
Inside were three sheets of plain white paper in the same strong square handwriting.
Dated June, August and September.
Each one said, in nearly the same words, that Sebastien Guidry would not marry any woman he had not met and had not asked, and that he would not be paid in people.
The last one added, in a line by itself, that if Raymond Thibodeaux wanted to discuss the co-op's accounts, he could come to the house and do it in daylight.
"What accounts?" I said.
"Ask your father," he said.
"I'm asking you."
"It isn't mine to say yet."
His face did not change.
"I'm sorry.
"I'm not trying to keep it from you.
"I will tell you.
"But I will not say a thing like that about a man to his daughter on a porch, with no proof in my hand."
I looked at the third letter.
I looked at his handwriting, steady as a ruler.
Then the percolator began to hiss and spit, and I saw it start to boil over, black water running down the dented side.
I reached for it.
I did it without thinking, because I needed to do something with my hands.
I closed my fingers around the metal handle.
It was blazing hot.
I made a noise.
His hand was over mine before I'd finished making it.
He had the pot off the burner in one motion, and then he had my palm in his, turned up to the light, and he steered me to the sink with his other hand at my shoulder.
He ran the cold tap over my hand and held it there.
I stood with his fingers wrapped around my wrist and the water streaming over both our hands.
Nobody had held my hand in a long time.
Gabe never had, I thought, not really.
His palm was dry and calloused and very warm, and he held me exactly hard enough that I could not pull away and not hard enough to hurt.
"Look at me," he said.
I looked.
His eyes were brown, dark and steady, and for one second I saw something move in them that was not courtesy.
"It will blister," he said.
"A little."
"There's a first-aid kit in the pantry.
"Stay there."
Neither of us let go.
The water kept running.
He lifted his gaze from my hand, slowly, and let me go.
"Stay there," he said again, quieter.
He bandaged me at his kitchen table with a roll of gauze and a tube of salve, and did not talk.
His fingers were quick and careful.
When he was done he put the cap back on the tube and set it exactly parallel with the edge of the table.
"I'll follow you home," he said.
"No."
"It's ten o'clock at night, you've been hurt, and it's a dirt road.
"I'll stay a quarter-mile back.
"I won't come in the yard."
I should have refused him.
I was twenty-six years old and I had driven here on my own.
But my hand throbbed, and the dark outside was very black.
"A quarter mile," I said.
"Yes, ma'am."
I drove back in my father's truck with a pair of headlights steady behind me in the mirror.
The lights of the farm came up through the cane.
The porch lights were burning.
Gabe's truck sat in the yard beside my father's second one, and the yard light lit a crowd of neighbors on the gravel, still in their church clothes.
My father stood at the gate with his arms spread wide.
He said, loud enough for every one of them to hear, "She went to her husband's house tonight!
"That's a Thibodeaux for you!"
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