Valentine held it for her while she filled it from a set of big plastic jugs on her cart, and replaced it on its aluminum tray.
He wandered to the clothing swap first, and found the cavernous barn filled with odds and ends from darned socks to snappy but stained felt hats. A giant iron-bottomed laundry pot bubbled over charcoal and filled the whole barn with a faint smell of lye. More women and children sat on folding chairs or fruit boxes, talking and sewing.
"Offering, trading, or needing?" a bored teenage boy asked. He carried a plastic hamper.
"Looking", Valentine said.
He hadn't seen a bar coming into Nancy's, so he made for the other end of her property. Sure enough, some entrepreneur had taken an old buffet franchise resting just on the other side of the hill from the garbage pit and turned it into a sawdust-and-fat-lamp saloon. A tarnished trumpet hung from the sign outside. A few biodiesel pickups, several bicycles, and some wagon teams were arranged outside, with shade given to the animal transport and proximity to the door taken by the bikes. The pickup trucks were parked facing the road to give passersby a good look. One driver had even popped his hood to show off chrome exhaust pipes and a supercharger.
Valentine entered through the door cover, a carpet-remnant strip that acted as a windbreak.
Under the light of the front windows a guitar and banjo were keeping each other company, with bootheel syncopation as percussion.
Valentine smelled fryer oil and kidney-filtered beer. As soon as his eyes adjusted he picked out Duvalier in what would have been a crowd if everyone weren't spread out as though trying to keep out of one another's business. He walked past tables with cards and dominoes and guns being examined for trade or sale. A pair of women worked behind the bar, serving drinks and making sandwiches.
Lounging in a wooden, high-walled booth, Duvalier was in her usual earth-toned Free Territory clothing. Her knife-cut red hair dirty and disarranged, she'd put a good deal of effort into making herself look less attractive than she was, wrapped up in the duster that hid
her body from the neck down. Valentine didn't recognize the young woman with her, noted only that she was blond with a longish face and nose. Duvalier pointed for the benefit of her companion, and Valentine took in the blonde's wide-set, steady eyes.
Then she blushed and dropped her gaze.
"Blackie, this is Jules. Be nice, she's like a sister to me".
Public code for another Cat. Valentine wondered what her real name was.
"Max Argent", Valentine said.
Duvalier waved over one of the bartenders and ordered three ciders.
"Bad news, looks like", Duvalier said. "Your shipment's delayed. Em is still getting it together".
Valentine wondered at that. Lambert could take a plane for a rendezvous with a potential operative, but they couldn't get a footlocker of gear to the edge of what amounted to the Free Territory?
United Free Republic, he reminded himself.
Jules spoke. "I hope you weren't planning to meet a train". Valentine wondered at her voice; there was a bit of Eastern giddyup to it. She must not have operated in the KZ much or she would know to smother the accent; it attracted too much attention.
"No. I dropped word at Hobarth's that I'm looking to pass west".
"Not as driver, I hope", Duvalier said. Most of Valentine's efforts behind a wheel were illfated.
"Scout work, security, maintenance, whatever they need. There'll be westbound convoys for a month or two".
"I'll leave tonight to let Em know you've arrived", Duvalier said. "You can have my bed".
Valentine waited for a remark about staying in it; Duvalier treated his cocksmanship as something of a joke - which it was, considering the results.
"Traveling at night?" Valentine asked.
"It's almost as quiet as the Ozarks around here nowadays. Nearest organized Kurians are a hundred miles away west and north".
"Diddo-dish", Jules said, using Iowa slang for something easily accomplished.
In the last three years the Great Plains had been transformed into a bloody quilt of territories in revolt and those still under the Kurians. Grogs and mercenaries from as far away as inland China were holding on to North America's breadbasket.
The ciders came and Duvalier paid in cigarettes, one of the lower denominations in a ranking that went thus: gold, batteries, whiskey, ammunition, tobacco. Lesser necessities like darning thread, pens, gloves, and toothbrushes also served as unofficial currency in booze boxes from Kurian Zone to Freehold and back again, if someone was running short and could be talked into a swap.
Between songs, they made small talk about the weather and the food. When the guitar and banjo made enough noise to cover conversation, Valentine learned that Jules hailed from a privileged family in Iowa - her father owned an estate that sounded similar to the one he'd visited in search of F A. James. She'd spent her teenage years "out East" at school and returned to the usual privileged child's choice of military, church, or management career. She ran away just in time to get caught up in Consul Solon's bid to put the Trans-Mississipi under the Kurians.