Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

Sophronia settled into Alafair’s lap and laid her head on her mother’s breast.
    “What’s that smell, Mama?” she mumbled.
    “It’s liniment to make Daddy feel better.”
    “It stinks, Daddy,” Sophronia informed him.
    “Why, I thought it smells like violets,” Shaw teased, and Sophronia mustered a drowsy smile to acknowledge his witticism.
    “Is it morning?” she mumbled.
    Alafair enfolded the girl in her arms and pushed the curly auburn hair, fine as cobwebs, back from her forehead. “It’s not time for you to get up for quite a spell, honey,” Alafair told her. “Did we wake you up?”
    “I’m cold,” Sophronia complained. “I was dreaming about that man that got buried in the snow.”
    Alafair and Shaw looked at one another for a minute before Shaw said, “I’ll see if I can’t get Dan Lang out here later today. You can talk to him if you want, but I intend to be there when you do.”
    Alafair nodded, relieved. “He won’t feel a thing.”
    ***
    Alafair pushed the door to the tool shed open with her foot and carried the old tin coffee pot and the bucket of cornbread and sliced fatback into the dim interior. The large shed, which was appended to the back of the barn, was lined at the back with stacks of good lumber and extra bricks, cabinets and shelves filled with nails, spikes, bales of wire, bolts and nuts. Tools of every description were hung neatly from pegs or leaning in their places along one wall. On top of and under workbenches which stretched along another wall lay items in need of repair, from pots with holes, to harness that needed mending, broken furniture, and a doll with one leg. In the center of the room, Shaw and Dan Lang sat on stools at a rough wooden table. Strewn across the tabletop were bolts, a long axle, and several platter-sized discs from a harrow.
    The room was fairly warm, since Shaw had a small coal fire going in a makeshift oil drum brazier. A lantern on the table supplemented the pale winter light that filtered in between the boards of the uninsulated walls. Shaw looked up at Alafair when she entered, and his expression sharpened. She gave him a reassuring smile. Dan Lang twisted in his seat, then stood to greet her as she bumped the door shut with her hip.
    Alafair knew Dan Lang to see him, but she couldn’t remember ever having spoken to him. He looked very much like his father, Russell, the owner of the Boynton Mill and Elevator Company, tallish, with sharp eyes and a high color. Alafair noted with interest that a puckered white scar ran for a couple of inches across his cheekbone and temple before it disappeared into his hair.
    “Oh, sit down, now, son,” she told him. “I just brought you fellows some food to keep your strength up and some coffee to warm your innards.”
    Dan relieved her of the pails. “This is mighty welcome, Miz Tucker.”
    Alafair removed the two tin cups she had stuffed in her apron pockets and placed them on the table. “How’s it going out here? Do you think you can fix the harrow, or is Mr. Tucker going to have to bust loose for a new one?”
    Dan sat back down and accepted a piece of warm cornbread that Shaw had just unloaded from the bucket. “Oh, I don’t think there’s too much wrong with this one, ma’am,” Dan assured her, as he pulled the cornbread apart and placed a piece of fatback between the layers. “I expect I’ll have to take this axle back to the shop, but I can have it forged by tomorrow. These here discs don’t need anything more than sharpening. I can do that right now.”
    Alafair crossed her arms over her chest. “How’s business these days?”
    Dan swallowed and nodded. “Not bad,” he admitted. “There’s not much a farmer can do during weather like this besides fix up his machinery and tools.”
    “How’s your dad and mother?”
    “They’re doing well, ma’am, thanks for asking.” He smiled at her, perfectly willing to eat cornbread and exchange pleasantries. It was the usual way of doing business with company-starved farm people.
    “I visited with your dad at his office when I was in town a couple of days ago,” Alafair said. “Talked to him about this ugly business with Harley Day.”
    A shadow passed over the young man’s face. He hadn’t expected this, Alafair thought. She felt a pang of guilt at ambushing him. He didn’t appear to want to bolt, however. “Yes, ma’am, he told me about that,” he responded.
    Alafair glanced at Shaw. She couldn’t tell if he was