“My name’s Jeremiah. Jeremiah Croxton,” the man told Doc, gesturing to a free seat at the table. “Why don’t you come sit with us, Mr….?”
“Tanner,” Doc replied automatically.
“Mr. Tanner,” Croxton continued, looking around the shack for other seats. “We would be most honored, if you would come eat with us, both you an’ your friends.” As he spoke, several of his party stood, shuffling their seats along to make more room at their tables.
Doc smiled again. “That is very gracious of you, Mr. Croxton, but we would not wish to intrude.”
“‘Intrude’ nonsense,” the old farmer dismissed with a hearty laugh. “I thinks we may just have us something to interest you, Mr. Tanner. I couldn’t speak for your friends there, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be glad you loaned me your ear for the two minutes or so it will take.”
Intrigued, Doc looked across the table at its inhabitants as Croxton introduced himself to Mildred. The group seemed normal enough, mostly older folks, tired-looking with that hard, leathery skin that suggested long hours toiling in the sun. There were two youngsters among them, besides the wounded baby. One was a girl, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, sylphlike with just a little puppy fat on her pretty face, long, ash-blond hair cascading down her back. Across from her, his eyes on the door, sat a young man of perhaps twenty, hair the same color as the girl’s and with a light dusting of beard on his chin. He seemed hungry to Doc, predatory eyes scanning the room and the door, a bow and quiver of arrows resting at his feet. The next in age was the baby’s mother, who appeared to be perhaps forty years old—it was hard to tell as she was clearly in shock from the attack. A dark-skinned woman with graying hair was gently cleaning the wound at the woman’s neck using a rag dipped in a bowl of water. The water held the pinkish tint of diluted blood.
“Well,” Doc decided, “perhaps just for a moment.”
Beside him, Mildred touched Doc’s sleeve to get his attention. “Doc, I think our dinner is almost ready,” she said, giving him a significant look. Mildred’s time in the Deathlands had taught her that strangers, however kindly they appeared, were almost never to be trusted.
His back to the farmer and his people, Doc gave a sharp nod and mouthed, “It’s fine,” before he spoke aloud. “Perhaps you would alert me when our waitress arrives with our meals, Mildred,” he said.
Mildred rolled her eyes, hoping that Doc knew what he was getting involved in, then walked across the hard wooden floor to speak to Ryan and wait for the serving girl.
As Mildred strode away, a chair next to Croxton was vacated at the table and Doc was invited to join the group. The empty chair was also beside the blonde girl, and Doc offered her a polite bow, little more than a courteous nod, before he sat. She giggled just a little, covering her mouth with her hand as a blush rose across her cheeks. The girl smelled sweet and musky, delicately scented with woman’s perfume. Her youth and long blond hair reminded Doc of another girl, one he had been close to not so very long ago. A treasure of a girl called Lori Quint, who, like everything else in the Deathlands, had been tainted and spoiled and ultimately killed by the unforgiving world around her. Doc pushed Lori’s bittersweet memory aside, as he realized that the bearded farmer, Croxton, was talking.
“The reason I asked that you join us, Mr. Tanner,” Croxton was saying, “is that I do believe we have a little proposition that may be of interest to you.”
Doc inclined his head, inviting the man to continue.
“You see Daisy there,” Croxton said, indicating the fresh-faced, blond-haired teenager. “Pretty as a picture, am I right?”
Nodding, Doc began to feel slightly uncomfortable, concerned that he had come across yet another exercise in an old man whoring his children. “I would say so, certainly,” he replied, amiably enough.
“Would you like to guess how old she is?” Croxton asked, his blue eyes shining, his tongue running across his teeth as a playful smile appeared on his lips. It was the smile of a gambler, someone used to fooling people, and to judging them from their body language.
Shaking his head, Doc pushed his chair back and began to stand. “I am sorry,” he said, “I am really not interested in what I believe you are offering, kind though that offer most certainly is…”
The girl—Daisy—spoke, her voice rich like treacle. “I’m seventy-an’-six, Mr. Tanner,” she said.
Caught halfway between standing and sitting, Doc almost fell over. He reached out and grasped the side of the table before him as his chair crashed to the floor.
“Seventy—” Doc began, the words choked in his suddenly dry throat.
Daisy shrugged her bony, girl’s shoulders and blew Doc a kiss. “I look good on it though, don’t I, sir?”
Chapter Three
“Do you remember what it was like to be young, Mr. Tanner?” Daisy asked, as Doc regained his composure and sank into the chair beside her.
Her voice was low, intimate, with a sweet, rich quality like molasses. Her eyes, a shade of blue so light they appeared almost white, peered at him, the tiniest creases appearing at their edges where she smiled. Her mouth was smiling, too. Her wide, flawless teeth were a dazzling shade of white even in the indifferent, gloomy light. Looking at that friendly, inquisitive smile, Doc felt himself drawn to the girl. There was an intimacy here, created by her soft voice, by the half-light of the room, by the wall of noise all around them as other people continued with their meals and conversations, oblivious to the two of them sitting there discussing the nature of youth.
Realizing that the pretty young girl was waiting for him to answer, Doc nodded slowly. “Oh, I remember,” he intoned. “Long summer days, running simply because you could, running until you fell down with giddiness.”
Doc’s head was still nodding, a smile on his lips, as he looked back at Daisy. He would guess that she was perhaps sixteen or seventeen. Her skin was smooth, crinkles forming and disappearing as she flashed that wonderful, dazzling smile at him, the flesh on her cheeks a ruddy pink in the flickering light from the cook’s fire. He looked at her more closely, trying to see the old woman that she had once been. Her face was round, as though she was predisposed to smile for any occasion, a little chubby around the rounded cheeks, dimples appearing as she smiled. She was pretty, but not beautiful. It was the prettiness of youth, Doc realized, of innocence, the way that only a child could be pretty.
Daisy’s hair was long, falling past her shoulders and ending halfway down her back, a cascading wave of silvery-blond. It was fine hair, wispy and prone to tangle, and she would shift the tangled bangs out of her eyes as she spoke, an unconscious movement, long practiced and harboring no sign of irritation.
As Doc watched the girl, Daisy continued to smile at him. “That’s not it,” she said in that slow drawl that didn’t seem to quite form the hard edges of the words, instead mushing them into a flowing sound, like a song. “That’s—what you are talking about—that’s what you think youth was, because you don’t really remember it. You think it was this thing that was all about being a kid, but that’s nothing like what being young is. That thing that you described, that’s what I thought it was before I was—” She stopped, her eyes wandering as though searching for the rest of the sentence.
“Changed?” Doc suggested after a moment’s pause.
“Youngered,” the girl responded. “Like the way I used to get older, so I guess I got youngered by the pool. That make sense to you, Mr. Tanner? You seem like a man o’ learning, is all.”
Slowly, Doc nodded once again, intrigued despite himself. “Youngered it is,” he replied with a smile.
Daisy glanced up for a moment, and Doc followed her glance. She was looking across the table to where Jeremiah Croxton, the aging farmer, sat. He had spread out an old, dog-eared map across the table and was