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“No!” Holly Grace screamed, as Dallie started after him again. She jumped up from the couch and raced to Dallie, grabbing his arm as he stood there. “No, don't do this!” Her face contorted with fear as she tried to pull him toward the door. “You don't understand,” she cried. “You're only making it worse!”
Dallie spoke to her real quietly. “You pick up your clothes and go on out into the hall now, Holly Grace. Me and Billy T are going to have ourselves a little talk.”
“No... please—”
“Go on, now.”
She didn't move. Even though Dallie couldn't think of anything he wanted to do more than gaze at her beautiful, stricken face, he made himself look at Billy T instead. Although Billy T outweighed him by a hundred pounds, the pharmacist was all fat and Dallie didn't think he would have much trouble beating him into a bloody pulp.
Billy T seemed to know it, too, because his little pig eyes were distorted with fear as he fumbled with the zipper on his pants and tried to struggle to his feet. “You get him out of here, Holly Grace,” he panted. “Get him out of here, or I'll make you pay for this.”
Holly Grace gripped Dallie's arm, pulling so hard toward the door that he had trouble keeping his balance. “Go away, Dallie,” she pleaded, her voice coming out in frightened gasps. “Please... please go away....”
She was barefoot, her blouse unbuttoned. As he extricated himself from her grasp, he saw a yellow bruise on the inner curve of her breast, and his mouth went dry with the old fear of childhood. He reached out and pushed the blouse away from her breast, breathing a soft curse as he saw the network of bruises that marred her skin, some of them old and faded, others fresh. Her eyes were wide and tortured, begging him not to say anything. But as he gazed into them, the supplication disappeared and was replaced by defiance. She yanked the front of her dress closed and glared at him as if he'd just peeked into her diary.
Dallie's voice wasn't more than a whisper. “Did he do that to you?”
Her nostrils flared. “I fell.” She licked her lips and some of her defiance faded as her eyes nervously darted toward her uncle. “It's—it's all right, Dallie. Me and Billy T... It—it's all right.”
Suddenly her face seemed to crumple and he could feel the weight of her misery as if it were his own. He took a step away from her toward Billy T, who had risen to his feet, although he was still bent slightly forward, holding his pig stomach. “What did you say you'd do to her if she told?” Dallie asked. “How'd you threaten her?”
“None of your goddamn business,” Billy T sneered, trying to edge sideways to the door.
Dallie blocked the path. “What'd he say he'd do to you, Holly Grace?”
“Nothing.” Her voice sounded dead and flat. “He didn't say anything.”
“You whisper one word about this and I'll call the sheriff on you,” Billy T screeched at Dallie. “I'll say you broke into my store. Everybody in this town knows you're a punk, and it'll be your word against mine.”
“Is that so?” Without warning, Dallie picked up a carton marked FRAGILE and threw it with all his strength against the wall behind Billy T's head. The sound of breaking glass reverberated in the storeroom. Holly Grace sucked in her breath and Billy T began to curse.
“What did he say he'd do to you, Holly Grace?” Dallie asked again.
“I—I don't know. Nothing.”
He slammed another carton into the wall. Billy T let out a scream of fury, but he was too cowardly to take on Dallie's young strength. “You stop that!” he shrieked. “You stop that right now!” Sweat had broken out all over his face, and his voice had grown high-pitched with impotent rage. “Stop that, you hear me!”
Dallie wanted to sink his fists into that soft fat, to punch Billy T until there was nothing left, but something inside him held back. Something inside him knew that the best way to help Holly Grace was to break the conspiracy of silence Billy T used to hold her prisoner.
He picked up another carton and balanced it lightly in his hands. “I've got the rest of the night, Billy T, and you've got a whole store out there for me to wreck.” He threw the carton against the wall. It split open and a dozen bottles shattered, filling the air with the pungent smell of rubbing alcohol.
Holly Grace had been strung tight for too long, and she broke first. “Stop, Dallie! No more! I'll tell you, but then you've got to promise to go away. Promise me!”
“I promise,” he lied.
“It's—it's my mama.” The expression on her face begged him for understanding. “He's going to send my mama away if I say anything! He'll do it, too. You don't know him.”
Dallie had seen Winona Cohagan in town a few times, and she had reminded him of Blanche DuBois, a character in one of the plays Miss Chandler had given him to read over the summer. Vague and pretty in a faded way, Winona fluttered when she talked, dropped packages, forgot people's names, and in general acted like an incompetent fool. He knew she was the sister of Billy T's invalid wife, and he had heard she took care of Mrs. Denton while Billy T was working.
Holly Grace went on, letting loose a flood of words. Like water from a dam that had finally broken, she could no longer hold back
. “Billy T says Mama's not right in the head, but that's a lie. She's just a little flighty. But he says if I don't do what he wants, he'll send her away, put her in a state mental hospital. Once people get in those places, they don't ever leave. Don't you see? I can't let him do that to my mama. She needs me.”
Dallie hated seeing that helpless look in her eyes, and he slammed another carton into the wall because he was only seventeen himself and he wasn't exactly sure how to make that look go away. But he found that the destruction didn't help, so he yelled at her. “Don't you ever be such a fool again, you hear me, Holly Grace? He's not going to send your mama away. He's not going to do a goddamn thing, because if he does, I'm going to kill him with my bare hands.”
She stopped looking so much like a whipped puppy, but he could see that Billy T had bullied her for too long and that she still didn't believe him. He made his way through the rubble and grabbed the shoulders of Billy T's white pharmacist's jacket. Billy T whimpered and threw up his hands to protect his head. Dallie shook him. “You aren't ever going to touch her again, are you, Billy T?”
“No!” he blubbered. “No, I won't touch her! Let me go. Make him let me go, Holly Grace!”
