Read Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 04 for Free Online Page A

conveniently situated coffee can. "No, she don't care for it. The gnats get in her eyes and she gets all nervous and jumpity." He beamed at his pride and joy, who was snoozing peaceably on the sofa.
    Ruby Bee tried not to wince at the sight of his stained stubbles of teeth and crumb-encrusted whiskers, or to allow herself to dwell on the miasma of the room created by equal contributions from the owner and his pet. "They can't use your house if there's a sow in it. Don't you want the money?"
    "What fer?" He cackled. "I got everything Marjorie and me needs. We got us a color tellyvision, a VCR with a clicker, and a new icebox stocked with frozen entrées. Marjorie is particular about the brands. She gets all het up if the food don't match the picture on the box."
    "Where are you getting all that money?"
    Raz spat into the can, then hooked his thumbs on the straps of his overalls and swelled up like a bloated carcass in a pond. "I got my ways, Rubella Belinda Hanks, and they's none of your business."
    "They're probably Arly's business," she retorted in her most snippety voice. "I heard someone's running a still up on the ridge again, not too far from Robin Buchanon's old place. Wouldn't be anyone in this room, would it?" When he flinched, she moved in (verbally-not physically) for the kill. "Now, if I'm busy cooking for these movie people, I won't have time to pass along my suspicions to Arly. But they won't come if you don't agree to let them use your house and barn, and they might not understand why there's a sow in the living room."
    "I reckon I can run the hose and make Marjorie a nice wallow," he said sullenly. His cheek bulged, but he caught her glare and sucked it back in. "But only for a day or two, and they pay me in cash. I ain't gonna mess with some darn-fool piece of paper. Cain't buy corn with paper."
    Ruby Bee lifted her chin and sailed into the fresh air outside the shack, feeling pleased with herself despite the worrisome possibility that she was aiding and abetting Raz Buchanon in the act of something that smelled a sight worse than his front room.
     
    -- ==+== --
     
    "Okay, here's the way it goes," Hal said. He was sprawled on the leather couch in his office, a cigarette between his lips and his unclad body glistening from a session in the sauna. Although he took sessions under a tanning lamp three times a week, his skin resolutely remained alabaster except for the sprinkling of freckles and moles. "The mother finds out Loretta's been sneaking out at night to let Billy Joe feel her up. She tells the father and he goes into a rage because they'll lose the farm if Cooter refuses to marry her."
    Carlotta nodded as she found her notebook and a pencil, and sat down behind Hal's desk to listen to him spill his ideas as quickly as he spilled his seed. She would diligently record them, then throw them away and make whatever revisions she felt were needed to the script. Hal never remembered his suggestions, particularly when he had done several lines of coke.
    "Zachery learns about the trysts," she said, trying not to look at him. When he was naked, it was difficult not to think of the menu at a luau. "Then what?"
    "He'll drag her outside to spank her. Do these primitives have woodsheds? For that matter, do they have -- what do you call 'em? -- opposable thumbs?"
    "I'll check on the availability of woodsheds." Carlotta scribbled a note in the margin.
    "So he drags her wherever and orders her to drop her pants. He's going to spank her, but once he starts slapping those lily-white mounds and ogling the red marks, he -- "
    "Gwenneth won't go for this."
    "You'd be surprised," Hal said with a short laugh. "She knows she'd better do what I tell her to do, so just get it down and quit interrupting. I've got to have total silence when I'm in a creative mode. I've got to flow. Okay, close up on him as he throws her to the ground and starts scrambling out of his pants. She leaps to her feet and runs -- "
    "With her pants around