Bratchett was acting out of pity—that much was clear. But Sal was ravenous.
“I thank you. Grazie.” He devoured the trout in four bites, embarrassed at how poorly he’d disguised his hunger. At least there’d be pay coming. And maybe ways to pay Bratchett back.
Sal scooped water out of the stream with cupped hands. The water, icy cold, tasted sweet, as if the buttercups of summer had leaked into it.
“Deeper still holes for each one,” Schenck said as he rode past. His accent became more pronounced when he was on horseback, as if pronouncing his English and controlling a horse taxed the same part of his brain. “And remember: not in a line.”
Jumping into the hole he was digging, Sal launched a pickax over his head to break up the stone. The soil of Sicily, too, had been full of rock—volcanic rock. The vintners who owned the tiered land rising in the hills above his mother’s citrus groves claimed the porosity of the volcanic soil made for well-irrigated grapes, even in dry years, and incomparable wines.
But these were men who paid other men to till their acres. To Sal, the soil was only ever an enemy to be battled.
Bratchett spoke up suddenly: “Yesterday, Wolfe was stomping around town wanting to throw Ling Yong in jail, but not enough evidence. Which one of us you reckon they’ll be hauling in next?”
Sal shoveled peat moss and cured cow manure into the hole. “My being Sicilian, this is not the help to me.”
“Lord, you can say that again.” But Bratchett’s eyes were still kind.
“I was on the train,” Sal added. “And at the station. This has put me on a list to be watched.”
Bratchett straightened briefly from his shoveling. “Yep. You and me both.”
“You? But you have lived here many years, yes?”
Bratchett rolled up his left sleeve with his right hand, then, with his maimed arm hanging loose, he pulled up the right sleeve using his teeth. He gestured with his head to his arms. “Don’t take away from my color. Not to them that’s got a problem with it.”
Sal studied him. “We are alike, then.”
Bratchett’s mouth tipped up at one end. “Are we?”
“Men of suspicion.”
Bratchett chuckled. “Men who are suspect. Yep. That’d be us.” He flicked his hat back on his head. “And maybe also what you said: men of suspicion. I got my own theories on who’s hiding what.”
Sal lifted his voice toward Bratchett in the next hole. “This Tate, he does not like the newcomers? The owner of Biltmore?”
Dearg Tate himself loomed at the edge of his hole. “Heard my damn name.”
Bratchett kept his tone cheerful as his shovel kept time. “Back to work, Tate.”
Sal had kept his temper stoppered all morning. And now the stopper was edging loose. Looking up from the rock he’d just shattered, he tossed his shovel over his shoulder. “In Sicily, when a man—”
“Do I look,” Tate demanded, “like I give a damn about Sicily?”
Bratchett was shaking his head.
For Bratchett’s sake, Sal made himself go back to digging. “About this, you do not. And this is your loss.”
Sal heard the crunch of rocky soil as Tate landed beside him in the hole. Spinning around, Sal saw Bratchett leaping to yank Tate backward by his collar.
“Slow down a spell, Tate. Think. Schenck’ll fire you both, and you’ll be back to weeding your turnips full-time.”
Tate spat to one side. “Infestation.”
Bratchett kept one hand on Tate’s chest to hold him there. “Now that’s a bigger word than I’d have wagered you knew. Four syllables, even.”
As two other men hauled Tate back, Sal tipped an invisible cap. “A great country, this America is.” And he meant it. But then he heard himself add, “Where the infestation becomes the American. Pretty soon, we are all of us the Americans together, yes? The mark of a great country.”
Shaking off the men who’d gripped his elbows, Tate rounded on Sal. “Listen here, dago. You think nobody saw how you was talking to Kerry MacGregor at the train station? First thing I heard when I come back to town: how you was talking to her like you had some kind of right.”
Sal shrugged good-naturedly. “She has the liking for the Sicilians, yes?”
Tate was in full flight, arms extended, reaching Sal’s neck. Bratchett lowered his shoulders and caught Tate at his midsection, laying him flat.
At Tate’s cry of fury and the thud as he landed, Schenck reined his horse in an about-face. “Vat is this?”
Bratchett reached his hand down toward Tate. “Edge of the hole’s a bit slippery from yesterday’s rain. No reason to worry, Mr. Schenck.”
Red-faced, Tate was livid as he staggered up. He did not look at Sal. But it was clear who his words, low and menacing, were meant for. “There’s some that’s suspected of murder. There’s some got a hell of a reason to worry.”
As Sal returned to his shovel, he could hear his mother’s voice echo in his head, as clearly as when she’d stood the last time, sickled sideways in pain. The air had smelled of the market: the oregano, mint, and rosemary, the almonds and pistachios and pine nuts, the lemons and sun-dried tomatoes. She’d spoken as she’d sunk to the ground.
I beg you, my son, protect our little Nico. You are strong. Your heart is big and good. You must promise me this.
Sal shut his eyes at the memory.
Here was the chance for him and Nico to make another fresh start in this country together.
But even here, he was surrounded again by suspicion. On a list now for the murder at the train station in addition to Hennessy’s in New Orleans.
And even here, Sal could be tracked down for that killing of the police chief four years ago.
The mist on his face, Sal lifted his eyes to the ring of shrouded blue mountains. Maybe this would be a refuge. A haven. The place where he could finally make good on his promise to keep Nico safe.
Or it could be the place Sal would finally be caught.
The death of the promise. The end of the line.
Chapter 14
As Kerry trudged up Patton Avenue to Asheville’s center with Tully and Jursey, the riot of fall color that circled the town seemed to be mocking her, a spectacular party she could not join. Like the Cinderella of the twins’ spine-splintered storybook, Kerry was not invited.
But Cinderella hadn’t been worried about two younger siblings. She’d only needed to charm herself a prince.
The owner of the general store in Best—now Biltmore Junction—had shaken his head. After the Panic a couple years back, times been hard. Hire you if I could.
Shopkeepers all over Asheville told her similar things:
Since the recession in ’93 . . .
Try down the street . . . Did you check . . . ?
Tully looked up with rounded eyes, her hair springing out of one braid. Carrying a large, lumpy burlap sack slung over one shoulder, she occasionally patted its side. But she didn’t volunteer what it held. Tully was thirteen and responsible to a fault. She probably deserved to have a small secret or two.
Kerry smoothed her sister’s hair. “You’re hungry, Tuls. And you don’t want to tell me.”
Jursey, though, flopped against Kerry’s side like he could no longer hold himself up. “I could eat a wild boar. Only just me.”