Read Shakespeare's Trollop for Free Online Page B

mock fear. “Bully the old man, why dontcha. Come on, darlin’, make old Joe C feel good again.”
    That did it.
    â€œListen to me,” I said intently, squatting before him. He put his cane between us, I noticed, so he hadn’t completely ruled out the fact that I might retaliate.
    Good.
    â€œYou will not tell me about your body functions. Unless you’re dripping blood, I don’t care. You will not make sexual remarks.”
    â€œOr what? You’re going to hit me, a man in his nineties who walks with a cane?”
    â€œDon’t rule it out. Disgusting is disgusting.”
    He eyed me malevolently. His brown eyes were almost hidden in the folds of skin that drooped all over him. “Calla wouldn’t pay you, you go to hit me,” he said in defiance.
    â€œIt’d be worth losing the pay.”
    He glared at me, resenting like hell his being old and powerless. I didn’t blame him for that. I might feel exactly the same way if I reach his age. But there are some things I just won’t put up with.
    â€œOh, all right,” he conceded. He looked into a corner of the room, not at me, and I rose and went back to making up the bed.
    â€œYou knew that gal that got killed, that Deedra?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œShe was my great-granddaughter. She as loose as they say?”
    â€œYes,” I said, answering the second part of the question before the first had registered. Then I glared at him, shocked and angry.
    â€œWhen I was a boy, it was Fannie Dooley,” Joe C said reminiscently, one gnarled hand rising to pat what was left of his hair. He was elaborately ignoring my anger. I’d seen a picture of Joe C when he was in his twenties: he’d had thick black hair, parted in the middle, and a straight, athletic body. He’d had a mouthful of healthy, if not straight, teeth. He’d started up a hardware store, and his sons had worked there with him until Joe Jr. had died early in World War II. After that, Joe C and his second son, Christopher, had kept Prader Hardware going for many more years. Joe C Prader had been a hard worker and man of consequence in Shakespeare. It must be his comparative helplessness that had made him so perverse and aggravating.
    â€œFannie Dooley?” I prompted. I was not going to gratify him by expressing my shock.
    â€œFannie was the town bad girl,” he explained. “There’s always one, isn’t there? The girl from a good family, the kind that likes to do it, don’t get paid?”
    â€œIs there always one?”
    â€œI think every small town’s got one or two,” Joe C observed. “Course it’s bad when it’s your own flesh and blood.”
    â€œI guess so.” At my high school, a million years ago, it’d been Teresa Black. She’d moved to Little Rock and married four times since then. “Deedra was your great-granddaughter?” I asked, surprised I’d never realized the connection.
    â€œSure was, darlin’. Every time she came around to see me, she was the picture of sweetness. I don’t believe I ever would have guessed.”
    â€œYou’re awful,” I said dispassionately. “Someone’s going to push you off your porch or beat you over the head.”
    â€œThey’s always going to be bad girls,” he said, almost genially. “Else, how’s the good girls going to know they’re good?”
    I couldn’t decide if that was really profound or just stupid. I shrugged and turned my back on the awful man, who told my back that he was going to get gussied up for his girlfriend.
    By the time I’d worked my way through the ground floor of the old house, whose floors were none too level, Joe C and China Belle Lipscott were ensconced on the front porch in fairly comfortable padded wicker chairs, each with a glass of lemonade close to hand. They were having a round of “What Is This World Coming To?” based on