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"What would men like?" She glanced down. "Besides those." . Green Sun Chapter 17 Thirsty Work by Donna Lamb

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"Eight packets high, five long, ten wide, one hundred bills per packet--I make it four million dollars if they are all hundreds." said Arthur. The other two men nodded.

"And if they are real money, not counterfeit," added Bruce.

They all watched the suitcase full of Ben Franklin portraits as if it might suddenly do something extraordinary like the chorus line scene from Blazing Saddles, perhaps. Mangas puffed placidly on his pipe. Arthur made ticking noises by clicking his ring finger nail against his thumbnail. Bruce tried to work out how a--dolly!--a girl like Hollie Dollie Hayes could come into possession of so much money, real or not.

"What are you smoking in that thing?" he suddenly asked Mangas.

The old Indian took his pipe out of his mouth and looked into the bowl as if suddenly curious himself. "Indian tobacco," he said. "Cured with vanilla bean, cinnamon, cherry, beet root, agave, wildflower honey and corn beer."

Arthur laughed. "He left out the owl spit this time."

"Indian tobacco?" asked Bruce.

"Grows wild all over the country, about six times more potent than the stuff they make cigarettes from." He shrugged. "I don't smoke much of it and I mix it with commercial tobacco usually."

"Sorry," said Bruce. "All that money made me think back to my first thought about that airplane."

Mangas nodded. "Drugs."

* * *

Inside the cabin, Hollie finally gave up on finding a mirror. Instead, she examined the parts of her body she could easily see. Her small hands with their delicate, painted nails. Her smooth, slender arms. Her long, shapely legs. Her abundant, bright blond hair which she could almost pull around her like a cape. It reached down long enough that she had to be careful not to sit on it. Her breasts.... Abruptly, she decided to see what the guys were doing outside.

She crept up on the cabin door and tried to listen through the chinks around the hand-planed door frame but the men were too far away, at the other end of the truck, for her to hear them clearly. The door latch operated as a simple pull up-and-in device, she had it open quickly and leaned against the opening to look out. She saw Mangas take a step back away from the truck and wink in her direction.

She giggled. Mangas was funny and didn't scare her like the idea of meeting Bruce again. But she still couldn't hear what they were saying very well. She eased the door closed again and wagged her head in a gesture she must have seen somewhere. "Well, Hollie, if that's your name," she asked herself, "what now?"

The men outside scared her but she wanted to meet them. She frowned. Why? That thought scared her, too. Bruce she'd already met and.... Okay, don't think about that, either. "I used to be a man," she said out loud. She remembered that, remembered the demons changing her...but were her memories real? She sighed. She didn't remember much about being a man or much in the way of details of her former life at all. Like her name, Hollie almost sounded right but not really.

She knew she'd been alone in the airplane which implied that she had been flying it, a totally impossible thought at the moment when she had trouble opening doors. "Hope Mangas is right," she whispered. He'd said she would remember more later. She trusted him, though she could not say why.

She looked around the room again, hoping for inspiration. "I want to go out there, but I need...." She didn't know what she needed. A reason? An excuse? "What do I know about being a girl, why would a girl go out there?" Duh. To meet the men. She blushed.

"I should take them something, like food," she decided. "That's what a girl would do. They might be thirsty or..." She stopped talking and looked at the icebox. "What would men like?" She glanced down. "Besides those."

* * *

"Somebody will report the plane crash," said Arthur. "It made a heck of a tall smoke." He nodded in the general direction of the still visible column of greasy gray smoke. "And it ain't that far from Christmas. Someone's probably already on their way out there."

Bruce nodded. "Yeah, they'll find the plane and the body and, well, who knows what else? Can't quite figure out why she was out there naked.... You don't ride around in an open cockpit plane with no clothes on."

"There are any number of logical explanations," said Mangas. "One of them may even be true."

"Thanks a lot, Chief Confucius," said Arthur. Bruce chuckled and Mangas made his gurgling noise.

"This money complicates things," said Bruce. "Whether it's real or not, we should turn it in."

"Why?" asked Arthur. "Maybe it belongs to Lady Mysterious?"

"How could it?"

"Same way she lost her clothes?"

Bruce shook his head. "It's got to be illegal to find that much cash and not report it."

"Sure, 'cause the government wants that money and they sure ain't the ones that lost it."

Bruce frowned. "What if whoever it does belong to comes looking for it?"

"Now that's one reason to turn it in..." Arthur began.

They all heard the cabin door open this time and moved so they could see. Hollie came out the door carrying a plate and three tall cans of beer. She smiled at them nervously, standing there in er short dress and high heels, blond hair floating around her. "Bet you guys are thirsty, huh?" she said.

"Wow," said Arthur.