Read Clementine for Free Online Page B

stand for it,” and it came out furious, lacking the control he wanted to show. So he followed this with, “It only adds to his debt, I think. If he can’t tell the kitchen witch to respect his guests, it ought to cost him. I’ll tack it to what he owes me, one way or another.”
    But neither of his crewmen made any reply, even to point out that Barebones already owed the captain his life.
    For another five minutes they stood on the stoop, rubbing at their aching shoulders and tightening their jackets around their chests. Simeon fiddled with the tobacco pouch in his pocket and had nearly withdrawn it to roll up a smoke when the side door opened again. The chill-swollen wood stuck in the frame and released with a loud pop, startling the men on the stoop and announcing the man behind it.
    Halliway Coxey Barebones was a short man, but a wide one. What remained of his hair was white, and the texture of wet cotton; and what remained of his eyesight was filtered through a pair of square, metal-rimmed spectacles. His hands and feet were large for a man of his understated size, his nose was lumpy and permanently blushed, and his waistcoat was stretched to its very breaking point.
    He opened his arms and threw them up in greeting; but the effect somehow implied that he was being threatened. He said, “Hainey, you old son of a gun! What brings you and your boys to Missouri?”
    Hainey mustered a smile as genuine as Halliway’s warm greeting and said, “A beat-up, crashed-down, worthless piece of tin and gas we never bothered to name.”
    They shook hands and Barebones stepped sideways to let them pass, a gesture which only barely lightened the blockage of the doorway and the kitchen corridor. The three men sidled inside and followed their host beyond the meat-stained countertops and past the surly kitchen woman who gave them a scowl, and Hainey fought the urge to return it.
    Barebones led them into a wood-paneled hallway with a cheap rug that ran its length, and back into the hotel’s depths where an unmarked doorway led to a cellar crammed with barrels, boxes, and the steamy, metallic stink of a still. He chattered the whole time, in a transparent and failing attempt to appear comfortable.
    “It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Good Lord Almighty, our paths haven’t crossed since…well, almost a whole year now, anyway. Not since Reno, and that was, yes. Last Thanksgiving. We’ll be coming up on the holiday again, won’t we? Before very long, I mean. Another few weeks. I swear and be damned, I thought Jake Ganny was going to blow the bunch of us up to high heaven. If ever there was a man with a weaker grasp on science, or fire, or why you don’t shoot live ammunition anyplace near good grain alcohol and a set of steel hydrogen tanks, I never heard of ’im.”
    “It was a hell of a pickle,” Hainey agreed politely, and a little impatiently as he watched the fat man walk in his shuffling, side-to-side hustle.
    “Hell of a pickle indeed. But you and me, we’ve been in worse, ain’t we? Worse by a mile or more, it’s true. It’s true,” he repeated himself and only partially stifled a wheeze. “And it’s a right pleasure to see you here, even if I must confess, I don’t remember everybody’s name but yours, Crog.” He pointed a finger around his side and said, “You’re Simon, isn’t that right? And Lamar?”
    “You got Lamar right,” Hainey answered for the lot of them. “The other’s Simeon. Looks like your operation’s grown a bit since last I was here to see it.”
    Barebones said, “Oh! Oh yes, it’s been longer than a year since you last came through Kansas City. Closer to half a dozen, I guess.”
    “At least.”
    “Yes, things have been going well. Business is booming like business always is, in wartime and sorrow. The grain liquor is moving like lightning, no pun intended, and we can hardly keep the tobacco in the storehouses long enough to age a smidge. Between Virginia and Kentucky going back