We spent our honeymoon driving the Big Bend pulling a borrowed horse trailer with a built-in sleeper cabin for two. The second night, we were parked down by this creek. Clear, cold water. Moon high. A house-sized boulder above us. A soft rain on the roof. When the rain quit, the clouds cleared and the brightest night I’d ever seen came up out of the edge of the earth. Bright as day. We climbed up on that boulder, wrapped ourselves in a blanket, and watched the world turn beneath the holes in the colander where the light of heaven shone through the darkness.
A year and a half later, the doctor placed Brodie on her chest while she lay there too exhausted to lift her arms. Sweat pouring off her. Some blood, too. She was so excited, so tired. She laid her head back. We listened as she breathed and he swallowed and fought the absence of fluid. Moments later, summoning what remained, she cradled him and lifted him to me. “Your son.”
Words don’t come easy. They didn’t then. They don’t now.
I’d never cried as an adult, but then she passed that child—moments old—into my arms and, from some place I’d never felt, never known, never sensed, a well broke loose, burst forth, and poured out of me. I couldn’t stop them. Didn’t want to.
I know this: At the risk of her life, she opened up, and gave me a gift for which there is no equal. No reciprocity. No barter. In return, she only asked for one thing. An offering. It cost me nothing and it was all she ever wanted.
And yet, for reasons I cannot understand, I did not give it.
Ever.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We’d been on the interstate an hour when I realized that Sam had been quiet since she got in the car. Guess she was waiting on me to talk. I didn’t pick up on this. I seldom do. Sam spoke quietly, “Tell me about Marleena.”
“Several years back, I was working a good bit in the Big Easy. We stayed at her hotel. She had some trouble and I helped her out of it.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“One of the guests said she’d stolen something from his room. A piece of jewelry. Valuable. Along with a bunch of money and a Rolex. He presented himself as a respectable man and had a pretty good story cooked up. Anyway, I’d known her a while and she’s as honest as the day is long so I did some looking around and asked a few questions on my own. Turns out he was lying. And that lie was just the tip of the iceberg. Which is usually the case in my experience.”
“What happened?”
“He’d given the jewelry to his girlfriend. The one he kept in a condo here in town. The one he didn’t tell his wife about.”
“Oooh.”
“Yeah. Anyway, ever since Marleena has been a friend of mine.”
“How much do I owe you?” The question was abrupt and almost stiff.
I laughed. “I’ll bet you have a pretty high credit score.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t like owing people money do you?”
She shook her head. “Not if I can help it.”
“Marleena comped the rooms and food. I asked her not to, but she insisted. Said that after seventeen years running that desk that she’s management now and she can do stuff like that and for me not to give her no lip about it. The women at the boutique charged me cost for the clothes, which Marleena also paid. I gave her three hundred dollars but she said that was too much and gave me a hundred back.”
Sam wedged her hands between her knees and whispered, “Thank you.”
I nodded. “Marleena is good people.”
Sam spoke, staring out through the windshield. “It takes good people to know good people.” She turned toward me, tucking one leg under the other. “Can I ask you something?”
“You know, you can ask without asking me if you can ask.”
“So, can I?”
“Sure.”
“I noticed when you meet people, say hello, and they ask you how you’re doing, you often say you feel like your side’s winning.”
“I do.”
“Where’s that come from? You make that up or get it somewhere else?”
“My dad used to say it. I picked it up from him.”
She turned back toward the dash. “I like it.”
Two hours into the ride, Hope stretched out across the backseat with Turbo under her arm and fell asleep. Four stacks of Ritz-Carlton pancakes, a cup of powdered sugar, and a pint of syrup will do that to anyone. I pulled down my sunglasses and stared at her. “Speaking of good people, and since we’ve got about eight hours, why don’t you tell me about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How’d you get from where you were, to where you are.”
“Oh… that story.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m thirty-three. Born in Cordele. My dad was a… peanut farmer.” She smiled. “And if I never see another peanut that’d be okay with me. We had a great big farm, lots of hands, even hired help in the house. They did all the cooking, even cleaned my room.” She shook her head. “I had no idea what we had. My momma trained me to be a lady.” Told you she had class. “Anyway… I graduated high school… number three in a class of over four hundred. Had big dreams. But, Daddy had leveraged himself to the hilt. We lost everything. I remember standing in our front yard watching them carry out my bed. My bed! There ought to be a law against a bank taking the place where you sleep. Take the house but not the bed.” She pushed the hair out of her eyes. “Anyway, Daddy tried hard to get it back, had a massive heart attack and that left me alone with Mom. So, I gave up college to take care of her. I took one job, then another, then her medical bills piled up, so I took another, and I been working ever since.”
“Where is she now?”
“Buried right alongside Daddy.”
“Sorry.”
She nodded and watched the trees pass. “Me, too.”
“And, Hope?”
She turned sideways, tucking her left heel under her right leg and glanced in the backseat. “I was twenty-two, alone, he was a few years older. Owned a night club. Always had lots of cash. He would come in late at night and eat at the diner where I was working. Always left good tips. Asked me out.” She shrugged. “I thought he’d… thought he was… well, he was nothing like I thought. He liked to gamble and he liked strip bars and he liked to drink. He left me standing at the altar wearing jeans and a white linen shirt—which was the only thing I could find that would fit over my stomach. So, we been on our own since she started pooching my belly out. My choice in men hasn’t been too good. I tend to go for the flashy and promising. Most promise the moon, then deliver a scrubbed launch.”
“And Billy?”
“I’d saved up some money. Thought we’d travel west. Maybe California. I don’t know. I just knew I didn’t want to be anywhere I’d been. So, we were sitting in a sandwich shop in San Antonio when this guy walked in wearing a black SWAT uniform. Just took my breath away. He looked strong and safe and secure, and to be honest, I needed strength and safety and security. So, next thing you know he’d offered us a room at his place—which we promptly accepted ’cause I had eleven dollars left in my pocket. He helped get me on at Walmart. Before long he was bringing me flowers and Hope ice cream.” She paused. “I had no idea he would, well, I just didn’t see it coming. I didn’t see any signals. I mean, you’d think that a highly decorated cop who runs a freaking SWAT unit wouldn’t be a sick, perverted son of a—” She caught herself. “Sorry.” She slowed down. Controlled her tone. “That he wouldn’t be the sick miscreant that he is. That if—” She rubbed her hands together and palmed her forehead. “If you can’t trust him, then just who can you trust? I mean what is the world coming to? Anyway, he”—she shrugged—“and I grabbed Hope and we took off. You found us a few days later on the highway praying that the front end of a seventy-mile-an-hour Peterbilt would just end it all.” A pause. “That’s the short version without all the drama.” Another pause and this time, she changed the subject. “What’s your son’s name? Or, do you mind my asking?”
“Bro
die, and no I don’t mind.”
“How old is he?”
“Eleven.”
“What’s he like?”
“Well, he’s a little like me in that he is more quiet than not. He’s a thinker, not a talker. And, he’s more like his momma in that once he gets stuck on something he wants to do or see or… fix, he has a tough time letting it go.” I laughed. “He’s dogged in his determination.”
She looked at my left hand and the absence of a ring. “And his momma?”
“We’re divorced.” The word came out of my mouth and sounded new and strange and like a description of someone else.
“How long?”
“She’s been gone about three years. Give or take.”
She weighed her words. “What happened?”
“Life.”
“Was it you? Were you… unfaithful?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Least not with another woman if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Is that one of those questions I shouldn’t ask?”
“No. Not in my book.”
“Did she find another man?”
I paused, glanced in the backseat and lowered my voice. “Yes.”
She grimaced. “Ouch. What, are you bad in bed or something?”
I saw the joke as a good sign, even though it was at my expense. I chuckled. “Evidently.” I looked at her. “You ask tough questions.”
“Sorry. I do that so others won’t ask the same of me. One of my… friends, a psychiatrist, told me—just before he kicked us out, changed the locks, and threw our clothes out the second-story window—that it’s a defense mechanism. I do it to defer attention from my own baggage.”
“He sounds like a real winner.”
“He was right, I had and have baggage but that doesn’t explain the naked coed in the closet.”
“Sounds like you’ve earned the right to ask a few questions.”
She stared out the windshield. “Maybe a few.”
We small talked for the next several hours. We crossed into Texas, skirted around Dallas and Fort Worth, hopped on Highway 180 and drove through Mineral Wells, Palo Pinto, and Caddo, crossing into the city limits of Rock Basin late in the afternoon. My little place, the Bar S, lay on the other side of town, a few miles outside the limits. When Dad bought it, it was farther outside of town but like people, the town’s waistline had bulged. I turned off the paved road and began winding my way around the potholes in the clay-packed road. My house lay a half mile ahead down a single lane dirt road lined with cottonwoods that rose like sentinels over the barbed wire fence. Dumps was mending the split rail with help from Brodie. Sam saw him and squinted. I said, “That’s Dumps.”
“Dumps?”
“Yeah. He’s sort of like an uncle.”
“Sort of?”
“He’s not blood, but he is family.”
She smiled. “And that one?”
Brodie climbed atop his pony—Mr. Bojangles. He galloped the fence line toward us. “That’d be Brodie.”
Hope leaned forward between the two seats, Turbo nibbling on her shoulder. I drove slowly toward the house, careful not to kick up too much dust. Brodie met us halfway, turned, spurred Mr. B and then cantered alongside. When I stopped, he stuck his spurs hard into Mr. B’s flank, who raised up on two hind legs, stood momentarily, and then rocketed back to the house. Sam’s eyes grew big as Oreos. Hope’s jaw fell. Turbo dropped a turd.
I watched the dust swirl behind him. “That’s Mr. B. I bought him when he was two and gave him to Brodie on his second birthday. A two-year-old for a two-year-old. They’ve grown up together. In a sense, Brodie doesn’t know life without Mr. B. He’s one helluva…” I glanced in the rearview. “I mean, heckuva horse. Gentle as Jesus.” I smiled. “Where Brodie goes, so goes Mr. B.”
I parked the truck and turned to Sam. “You better give me a minute. You’re not the woman he was hoping I’d bring home.” She nodded. Brodie sat at a distance staring inside the truck. I walked toward the fence, grabbed Mr. B’s reins and rubbed his muzzle. I stared up at Brodie. He sat, stoic. Just like he thought he was supposed to. The way all his silver screen heroes did. All “our” heroes did. He was the picture of everything John Ford ever tried to do with John Wayne. I patted his leg. “How you doing?”
He nodded, not taking his eyes off the car but his Adam’s apple rose, paused, and fell.
“I need you to help me with something.”
He looked at me.
“Remember those people I told you about?” He nodded. “Well, they’re in the truck. Running from a bad man. They need a safe place for a while. The girl is named Hope. She’s ten. And she’s had a rough go. I need you—I was wondering if you’d help me make a safe place for them. They don’t have any place else to go. Can you do that?”
“What about Mom?”
His world was a chasm. Ripped in two. He lived in the middle. The dry riverbed between. Trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between two cliffs that he couldn’t climb or move or stretch a cable between.
My voice rose a bit. Maybe my tone changed. “Son, they’re not replacing your mom. I just couldn’t leave them in the middle of the highway with the rain pouring down and no gas. And when the bad man thumped them on the head and shoved them in the back of his van with socks in their mouths, I couldn’t let him do that.” I turned and stared at the truck. “They needed a break. I didn’t know where else they were gonna get it.”
He looked at me. “What’d you do? With the man?”
“I didn’t let him do what he wanted.”
“Is he coming after them?”
I scratched my chin. “I’m not sure. I need to find out how motivated he is. I would if I were him.”
“I thought you were retired.”
“I am, so I got to ask permission. Captain’s coming by tonight.”
“And after that?”
“After that, we’ll talk about your mom.”
He hopped off Mr. B and stared up at me. “Promise?”
I nodded.
He started toward the truck, then stopped, looking up at me. “You can tell me the truth, you know.”
I swallowed. He was the best of both of us. I tipped his hat back so I could see his eyes. “Son, the truth hurts me to tell it.” I shook my head. “And I don’t want it to hurt you, too.”
He tugged on the brim of his hat, hiding his eyes. Looked like The Man from Snowy River. “Dad, not knowing hurts worse.”
Brodie led Mr. B to the truck. Wrangler jeans. Boots. T-shirt tucked in. Buck knife on his belt. Hat sweaty around the band. He was me, he was my father, he was my grandfather, wrapped in an eleven-year-old package. His shoulders were getting broader and he was getting taller. His momma would cry if she saw him. If she said it once, she said it a hundred times. “That right there is the best to ever come out of Texas.” She was right then. And she’d be right now.
He stood back from the truck about three feet and then opened the back door. He held his hat in his hand. “Hi, I’m Brodie.”
Hope recoiled and clutched Turbo.
He turned Mr. B and held the stirrup. “Wanna ride? Mr. B’s real gentle. Ain’t gonna hurt you none.”
Sam patted Hope on the leg. “Go ahead, baby. I’ll be right here.”
Brodie shook the reins. “I’ll hold the reins. We can just walk if you like.” He eyed the animal on Hope’s shoulder. “You can bring him if you want. Mr. B won’t care none.”
I held out my hand and, to my surprise, Hope took it. She scooted across the seat and I steered her foot into the stirrup. She hopped up, swung her leg over, and Brodie turned them toward the cottonwoods. I spoke over his shoulder. “Go easy, son. Nothing fast. Nothing sudden.” He nodded and started the walking tour of the Bar S—a picture of Texas a hundred years ago.
Dumps walked around to Sam’s window and pointed at me. “Since he ain’t got no dang manners—” He rubbed his dirty hand on his dirtier jeans. “I’m Pat Dalton, ex-con and boot make
r extraordinaire, but most folks just call me ‘Dumps.’ ”
Sam talked with Dumps while I watched my son lead a scared young girl through the trees on his horse. Maybe it’s me, but boys in Texas become men sooner than most. I was watching it happen right before my eyes.
He’d started early.
PART TWO
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.
—Isaiah 53:3
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Five years ago.
He sat in my lap. Hands on the wheel. Almost seven. Oblivious. Bouncing to the rhythm of the song coming out his mouth. The light turned. “Light’s green. Look left-right-left.” His head swung on a swivel. Large, exaggerated movements.
Satisfied, he nodded. “All clear.”
I pressed the accelerator. “Here we go.” He bounced faster. The house faded, growing smaller in the rearview. White picket framed in cottonwood barbed wire, and weeping willow. A black squirrel scurried across the road. She stood on the porch. Faded jeans. Bare feet. Arms crossed. Hair blowing across her face. Swaying slightly.
Objects in mirror are not closer than they appear.
We rattled across the railroad tracks. “Push that down.” He did. The left signal started blinking and clicking. “Give me some left turn.” He inched the car leftward, afraid to turn it and afraid to let go of it. On our current path, we’d take out the light pole. I laughed. “You’re not milking a cow. Turn the wheel. Give me some left in that rudder.” In one large motion, he overcorrected and we rolled out into the left lane. “Good. Now straighten out.” We snaked our way to town, bouncing between the lines. He was oblivious to the conversation sitting on the tip of my tongue.