He peeled a can from its plastic ring and popped the top. “Trying to come between Skeet and me isn't a good idea, Francie.”
“I'm not trying to come between you. I just want to make things easier for you.”
“Yeah? Well, forget it.” He drained his beer and stood up. “I'm going to take a shower.”
She didn't want him to be angry with her, so she curved her mouth into an irresistibly sexy smile. “Need any help with those hard-to-reach places?”
“I'm tired,” he said irritably. “Just leave me alone.” He walked into the bathroom and shut the door, but not before he'd seen the hurt in her eyes.
Stripping off his clothes, he turned the shower on full blast. The water sluiced over his sore shoulder. Closing his eyes, he ducked under the shower head, thinking about that lovesick look he'd spotted on her face. He should have figured she would start imagining she was in love with him. Everything was packaging to her. She was exactly the sort of woman who couldn't see any further than his pretty face. Dammit, he should have left things like they were between them, but they'd been sleeping in the same room for nearly a week and her accessibility had been driving him crazy. How much could he expect from himself? Besides, something about her had gotten to him last night when she'd told that stupid warthog story.
Even so, he should have kept his jeans zipped. Now she was going to cling to him like a string of bad luck, expecting hearts and flowers and all that other horseshit, none of which he had the slightest intention of giving to her. There was no way, not when he had Wynette looming up in front of him and Halloween beating at his door, and not when he could think of a dozen women he liked a whole lot better. Still—although he had no intention of telling her about it—she was one of the best-looking women he'd ever met. Even though he realized it was a mistake, he suspected he would be back in bed with her before too much more time had passed.
You're a real bastard, aren't you, Beaudine?
The Bear loomed up from the back recesses of Dallie's brain with a corona of Jesus-light shining around his head. The goddamn Bear.
You're a loser, chum, the Bear whispered in that flat midwestern drawl of his. A two-bit loser. Your father knew it and I know it And Halloween's coming up, just in case you forgot....
Dallie hit the cold water faucet with his fist and drowned out the rest.
But things with Francesca didn't get any easier, and the next day their relationship wasn't improved when, just the other side of the Louisiana-Texas border, Dallie began complaining about hearing a strange noise coming from the car.
“What do you think that is?” he asked Skeet. “I had the engine tuned not three weeks ago. Besides, it seems to be coming from the back. Do you hear that?”
Skeet was engrossed in an article about Ann-Margret in the newest issue of People and he shook his head.
“Maybe it's the exhaust.” Dallie looked over his shoulder at Francesca. “Do you hear anything back there, Francie? Funny grating kind of noise?”
“I don't hear a thing,” Francesca replied quickly.
Just then a loud rasp filled the interior of the Riviera. Skeet's head shot up. “What's that?”
Dallie swore. “I know that sound. Dammit, Francie. You've got that ugly walleyed cat back there with you, don't you?”
“Now, Dallie, don't get upset,” she pleaded. “I didn't mean to bring him along. He just followed me into the car and I couldn't get him out.”
“Of course he followed you!” Dallie yelled into the rearview mirror. “You've been feeding him, haven't you? Even though I told you not to, you've been feeding that damned walleyed cat.”
She tried to make him understand. “It's just— He's got such bony ribs and it's hard for me to eat when I know he's hungry.”
Skeet chuckled from the passenger seat and Dallie rounded on him. “What do you think is so goddamn funny, you mind telling me that?”
“Not a thing,” Skeet replied, grinning. “Not a thing.”
Dallie pulled off onto the shoulder of the interstate and threw open his door. He twisted to the right and leaned over the back of the seat to see the cat huddled on the floor next to the Styrofoam cooler. “Get him out of here right now, Francie.”
“He'll get hit by a car,” she protested, not entirely certain why this cat, who hadn't given her even the smallest sign of affection, had earned her protection. “We can't let him out on the highway. He'll be killed.”
“The world'll be a better place,” Dallie retorted. She glared at him. He leaned over the seat and made a swipe at the cat. The animal arched his back, hissed, and sank his teeth into Francesca's ankle.
She let out a yelp of pain and screeched at Dallie. “Now see what you've done!” Pulling her foot into her lap, she inspected her injured ankle and then shrieked down at the cat, “You bloody ingrate! I hope he throws you in front of a bloody Greyhound bus.”
Dallie's scowl changed to a grin. After a moment's thought, he shut the door of the Riviera and glanced over at Skeet. “I guess maybe we should let Francie keep her cat after all. It'd be a shame to break up a matched set.”
For people who liked small towns, Wynette, Texas, was a good place to live. San Antonio, with its big-city lights, lay only a little more than two hours southeast, as long as the person behind the wheel didn't pay too much attention to the chicken-shit double-nickel speed limit the bureaucrats in Washington had pushed down the throats of the citizens of Texas. The streets of Wynette were shaded with sumac trees, and the park had a marble fountain with four drinking spouts. The people were sturdy. They were ranchers and farmers, about as honest as Texans got, and they made sure the town council was controlled by enough conservative Democrats and Baptists to keep away most of the ethnics looking for government handouts. All in all, once people settled in Wynette, they tended to stay.
Before Miss Sybil Chandler had taken it in hand, the house on Cherry Street had been just another Victorian nightmare. Over the course of her first year there, she had painted the dull gray gingerbread trim Easter egg shades of pink and lavender and hung ferns across the front porch in plant hangers she had macraméd herself. Still not satisfied, she had pursed her thin schoolteacher's lips and stenciled a chain of leaping jackrabbits in palest tangerine around the front window frames. When she was finished, she had signed her work in small neat letters next to the mail slot in the door. This effect had pleased her so much she had added a condensed curriculum vitae in the door panel beneath the mail slot:
The Work of Miss Sybil Chandler
Retired High School Teacher
Chairperson, Friends of Wynette Public Library
Passionate Lover of W. B. Yeats,
E. Hemingway, and Others
Rebel
And then, thinking it all sounded rather too much like an epitaph, she had covered what she'd written with another jackrabbit and contented herself with only the first line.
Still, that last word she'd painted on the door had lingered in her mind, and even now it filled her with pleasure. “Rebel,” from the Latin rebellis. What a lovely sound it had and how wonderful if such a word actually were to be inscribed on her tombstone. Just her name, the dates of her birth and her demise (the latter far into the future, she hoped), and that one word, “Rebel.”
As she thought of the great literary rebels of the past, she knew it was hardly likely such an awe-inspiring word would ever be applied to her. After all, she had begun her rebellion only twelve years before, when, at the age of fifty-four, she'd quit the teaching job she'd held for thirty-two years in a prestigious Boston girls' school, packed her possessions, and moved to Texas. How her friends had clucked and tutted, believing she'd lost her senses, not to mention a sizable portion of her pension. But Miss Sybil hadn't listened to any of them, since she had been quite simply dying from the stifling predictability of her life.
On the airplane from Boston to San Antonio, she'd changed her clothes in the rest room, stripping the severe wool suit from her thin, juiceless body
and shaking out the neat knot that confined her salt-and-pepper hair. Re-outfitted in her first pair of blue jeans and a paisley dashiki, she had returned to her seat and spent the rest of the flight admiring her calf-high red leather boots and reading Betty Friedan.
Miss Sybil had chosen Wynette by closing her eyes and stabbing at a map of Texas with her index finger. The school board had hired her sight unseen from her résumé, overjoyed that so highly acclaimed a teacher wanted a position in their small high school. Still, when she'd shown up for her initial appointment dressed in a floral-print muumuu, three-inch-long silver earrings, and her red leather boots, the superintendent had considered firing her just as quickly as he'd hired her. Instead, she eased his mind by spearing him with her small no-nonsense eyes and telling him she would not permit any slackers in her classroom. A week later she began teaching, and three weeks after that she lacerated the library board for having removed The Catcher in the Rye from their fiction collection.
J. D. Salinger reappeared on the library shelves, the senior English class raised their SAT verbal scores one hundred points over the previous year's class, and Miss Sybil Chandler lost her virginity to B. J. Randall, who owned the town's GE appliance store and thought she was the most wonderful woman in the world.
All went well for Miss Sybil until B.J. died and she was forced to retire from teaching at the age of sixty-five. She found herself wandering listlessly around her small apartment with too much time on her hands, too little money, and no one to care about. Late one night she wandered beyond the bounds of her small apartment into the center of town. That was where Dallie Beaudine had found her sitting on the curb at Main and Elwood in the middle of a thunderstorm clad only in her nightgown.
Now she glanced at the clock as she hung up the telephone from her weekly long-distance conversation with Holly Grace and then took a brass watering can into the living room of Dallie's Victorian Easter egg house to tend the plants. Only a few more hours and her boys would be home. Stepping over one of Dallie's two mongrel dogs, she set down her watering can and took her needlepoint to a sunny window seat where she allowed her mind to slip back through the years to the winter of 1965.
She had just finished quizzing her remedial sophomore English class on Julius Caesar when the door of the room opened and a lanky young man she had never seen before sauntered in. She immediately decided that he was much too handsome for his own good, with a swaggering walk and an insolent expression. He slapped a registration card down on her desk and, without waiting for an invitation, made his way to the back of the room and slouched down into an empty seat, letting his long legs sprawl out across the aisle. The boys regarded him cautiously; the girls giggled and craned their necks to get a better look. He grinned at several of them, openly assessing their breasts. Then he leaned back in his chair and went to sleep.
Miss Sybil bided her time until the bell rang and then called him to her desk. He stood before her, one thumb tucked in the front pocket of his jeans, his expression determinedly bored. She examined the card for his name, checked his age—nearly sixteen—and informed him of her classroom rules: “I do not tolerate tardiness, gum chewing, or slackers. You will write a short essay for me introducing yourself and have it on my desk tomorrow morning.”
He studied her for a moment and then withdrew his thumb from the pocket of his jeans. “Go fuck yourself, lady.”
This statement quite naturally caught her attention, but before she could respond, he had swaggered from the room. As she stared at the empty doorway, a great flood of excitement rose inside her. She had seen a blaze of intelligence shining in those sullen blue eyes. Astonishing! She immediately realized that more than insolence was eating away at this young man. He was another rebel, just like herself!
At precisely seven-thirty that evening, she rapped on the door of a run-down duplex and introduced herself to the man who had been listed on the registration card as the boy's guardian, a sinister-looking character who couldn't have been thirty himself. She explained her difficulty and the man shook his head dejectedly. “Dallie's starting to go bad,” he told her. “The first few months we were together, be was all right, but the kid needs a house and a family. That's why I told him we were gonna settle here in Wynette for a while. I thought getting him into school regular might calm him down, but he got hisself suspended the first day for hitting the gym teacher.”
Miss Sybil sniffed. “A most obnoxious man. Dallas made an excellent choice.” She heard a soft shuffling noise behind her and hastily amended, “Not that I approve of violence, of course, although I should imagine it's sometimes quite satisfying.” Then she turned and told the lanky, too-handsome boy slouched in the doorway that she had come to supervise his homework assignment.
“And what if I tell you I'm not doing it?” he sneered.
“I should imagine your guardian would object.” She regarded Skeet. “Tell me, Mr. Cooper, what is your position regarding physical violence?”
“Don't bother me none,” Skeet replied.
“Do you think you might be capable of physically restraining Dallas if he doesn't do as I ask?”
“Hard to say. I've got him on weight, but he's got me on height. And if he's hurt too much, he won't be able to hustle the boys at the country club this weekend. All in all, I'd say no.”
She didn't give up hope. “All right, then, Dallas, I'm asking you to do your assignment voluntarily. For the sake of your immortal soul.”
He shook his head and stuck a toothpick in his mouth.
She was quite disappointed, but she hid her feelings by rummaging in the tie-dyed tote bag she'd brought with her and pulling out a paperback book. “Very well, then. I observed your visual exchanges with the young ladies in the class today and came to the conclusion that anyone as obviously interested in sexual activity as you should read about it from one of the world's great writers. I'll expect an intelligent report from you in two days.” With that, she thrust a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover into his hand and left the house.
For nearly a month she relentlessly dogged the small apartment, thrusting banned books at her rebellious student and badgering Skeet to put tighter reins on the boy. “You don't understand,” Skeet finally complained in frustration. “Regardless of the fact that no one wants him back, he's a runaway and I'm not even his legal guardian. I'm an ex-con he picked up in a gas station rest room, and he's been pretty much taking care of me, instead of the other way around.”
“Nevertheless,” she said, “you're an adult and he is still a minor.”
Gradually Dallie's intelligence won out over his sullenness, although later he would insist she had just worn him down with all her dirty books. She talked him back into school, moved him into her college-bound class, and tutored him whenever he wasn't playing golf. Thanks to her efforts, he graduated with honors at age eighteen and was accepted at four different colleges.
After he left for Texas A&M, she missed him dreadfully, although he and Skeet continued to make Wynette their home base and he came to see her during vacations when he wasn't playing golf. Gradually, however, his responsibilities took him farther away for longer stretches of time. Once they didn't see each other for nearly a year. In her dazed state, she had barely recognized him the night he found her sitting in the thunderstorm on the curb at Main and Elwood wearing her nightgown.
Francesca had somehow imagined Dallie living in a modern apartment built next to a golf course instead of an old Victorian house with a central turret and pastel-painted gingerbread trim. She gazed at the windows of the house in disbelief as the Riviera turned the corner and slipped into a narrow gravel driveway. “Are those rabbits?”
“Two hundred fifty-six of them,” Skeet said. “Fifty-seven if you count the one on the front door. Look, Dallie, that rainbow on the garage is new.”
“She's going to break her fool neck one of these days climbing those ladders,” Dallie grumbled. Then he turned to Francesca. “You mind your manners, now. I mean it, Francie. None of you
r fancy stuff.”
He was talking to her as if she were a child instead of his lover, but before she could retaliate, the back door flew open and an incredible-looking old lady appeared. With her long gray ponytail flying behind her and a pair of reading glasses bobbing on the gold neck chain that hung over her daffodil yellow sweat suit, she rushed toward them, crying out, “Dallas! Oh, my, my! Skeet! My goodness!”
Dallie climbed out of the car and enveloped her small, thin body in a bear hug. Then Skeet grabbed her away to the accompaniment of another chorus of my-my's.
Francesca emerged from the back seat and looked on curiously. Dallie had said his mother was dead, so who was this? A grandmother? As far as she knew, he had no relatives except the woman named Holly Grace. Was this Holly Grace? Somehow Francesca doubted it. She'd gotten the impression Holly Grace was Dallie's sister. Besides, she couldn't envision this eccentric-looking old lady showing up at a motel with a Chevy dealer from Tulsa. The cat slipped from the back seat, looked around disdainfully with his one good eye, and disappeared under the back steps.
“And who is this, Dallas?” the woman inquired, turning to Francesca'. “Please introduce me to your friend.”
“This is Francie... Francesca,” Dallie amended. “Old F. Scott would have loved her, Miss Sybil, so if she gives you any trouble, let me know.” Francesca darted him an angry glare, but he ignored her and continued his introduction. “Miss Sybil Chandler... Francesca Day.”
Small brown eyes gazed at her, and Francesca suddenly felt as if her soul was being examined. “How do you do?” she replied, barely able to keep herself from squirming. “It's a pleasure to meet you.”
Miss Sybil beamed at the sound of her accent, then extended her hand for a hearty shake. “Francesca, you're British! What a delightful surprise. Pay no attention to Dallas. He can charm the dead, of course, but he's a complete scoundrel. Do you read Fitzgerald?”
Francesca had seen the movie of The Great Gatsby, but she suspected that wouldn't count. “I'm afraid not,” she said. “I don't read much.”