Maggie, always attuned to Will’s manner, read his expression and followed his gaze to where the tall, broad-shouldered man was grinning and starting across the street. “Who’s that?” she asked.
“Roy Gibbs. Used to be an overseer at Weatherspoon’s plantation. Real mean fella, real rough. Used to beat the tar out of us kids picking cotton.”
“Is he the one who used to give you black eyes?”
Will nodded, watching the man approach, a familiar grin on his face.
It was the grin Gibbs showed people before he hurt them.
CHAPTER 16
Will had hated every second of picking cotton alongside the Weatherspoons’ slaves. He worked the fields from dawn to dark, lugging fifty or sixty pounds behind him with the sun beating down. It was backbreaking work. The spiny cotton burrs made his hands a bloody mess. And yes, some nights, he also carted home a black eye from Roy Gibbs.
It was miserable, but that time of year it had been the only work that paid anything, so he had suffered through it year after year, every picking until he was seventeen and got into the big blowup that changed everything and brought an abrupt close to his cotton-picking career.
When Will was a boy, Gibbs had seemed impossibly huge and strong, a giant of a man straight out of a fairy tale.
Will set the flour barrel in the wagon and turned to face Gibbs, who came straight at him.
The man no longer looked impossibly huge. He was a couple of inches taller than Will but wiry, like a half-starved wolf. He had long arms and big hands, their knobby knuckles crisscrossed with scars from fighting. His black hair was streaked in gray now. Salt-and-pepper stubble bristled on hisbig, lantern jaw. His dark eyes glimmered, staring at Will, and he wore the same old, cruel and cocky smile on his face.
“Will Bentley,” Gibbs said.
He stopped a few feet away, that stupid smile locked on his face.
Neither man offered to shake hands.
“What do you want, Gibbs?”
Gibbs ran his tongue in a slow circle around the inside of his cheek, saying nothing and staring at Will, obviously trying to intimidate him.
“I’m not a little kid anymore, Gibbs. You got something to say, say it.”
But Gibbs continued to take his time, enjoying the moment, the man clearly feeling he was in control.
And Will remembered that about Gibbs now, remembered how everything had been a show with him. It wasn’t enough to oversee slaves and kids who hired on to work alongside them. Wasn’t even enough to beat them. Everything had to be a show. And Gibbs was its only star.
The memory rankled Will. He himself was a professional fighting man, not someone who looked for trouble, and he felt contempt for bullies like Gibbs.
“You going somewhere, Bentley?” Gibbs asked.
“That’s none of your business,” Will said. He wanted to load his wagon and leave, but he knew better than to pick up anything until Gibbs was gone.
He’d probably clock Will as soon as he picked up a bushel of potatoes.
“None of my business, huh?” Gibbs said. Then he turned his smile on Maggie and looked her up and down, his eyes glowing lecherously. “What do you think about that, darling?”
Will stepped in front of Maggie. “Don’t talk to her, Gibbs. Don’t even look at her.”
Gibbs snorted. “Well, you sure have changed since you were a kid. You didn’t make a peep out there in them cotton fields. You never got mouthy back then, even when I had to go upside your head.”
Will balled his hands into fists. “Get out of here, Gibbs.”
“Now, ain’t that funny? Because I was gonna tell you the same thing. Get out of here, Bentley. Go back to wherever you’ve been and don’t come back. Sully Weatherspoon doesn’t want to see your face ever again.”
Will smiled wolfishly. Now, he understood. Sully had sent Gibbs. Now it all made sense. Gibbs was still working for the Weatherspoons. “Sully doesn’t want me around, huh? Must be afraid.”
“You’re lucky I wasn’t there that day,” Gibbs said.
