Lance

by Ronald L Donaghe

  “Rita was hurt, Will, over in Cotton City, tonight. You didn’t hear the phone?”

  I just shook my head, trying to understand what she was saying. “How? Who did it? Who called?”

  Mama told me it was Casey. Then she began to cry, though she didn’t cry out, only the tears just kind of fell. And in an instant I was behind her and hugging her. She felt so bony, it shocked me. She kind of talked into my forearm, holding it with her hands. They were cold and I kept trying to hold her a little tighter. Rick was the one that beat on Rita, Mama said. And even though she didn’t know why, I did. I bet she had told him it was over. So after what seemed like thirty minutes, but it was only about ten, I was dressed and out the door, again. Casey had told Mama that Rita was all right, even though Rick had started in beating on her, and she wouldn’t go to the doctor over in Animas. She just wanted to come home. So I drove over there and met Casey at the Texaco out near the south edge of Cotton City.

  * * *

  I could have lived without Margie Collins coming over to check on Rita. But there she was bright and early the next morning while our house was in an uproar, with everybody just trying to get up and get breakfast. Mama was up and so was I, but Lance wasn’t. I didn’t think he ought to go to school today, and I thought I’d tell him so. May hadn’t been up more than ten minutes when Mama told her what had happened to Rita, and Trinket came in crying about Rita, because she had seen her as soon as she woke up. I was just heading back to the bedroom to check on Lance when Mrs. Collins drove up. I could see who it was out the kitchen window. Geez, I thought, news sure travels fast, but then I remembered that it was Margie whom Rick went to first thing when he put two and two together and came up with me and Lance sleeping together. And she was the first person who had decided to use her calling as she had put it to cure me.

  I noticed, as she walked up onto the front porch, that today her hair was red. Lucille Ball red, and about as fake and dead looking as her black hair had been. As Mama answered the door, I left for the bedroom, feeling my guts tighten up at the thought of Rita lying in her bedroom looking not quite as bad as Casey had, but because she was my sister, I felt even worse.

  Lance was awake, lying in bed with only the sheet covering his naked lower torso, smiling at me when I eased open the door.

  “Mornin’ darlin’,” he said in his best, oily New Orleans accent, and I got onto the bed with him, kissing him deeply, feeling myself go from shook-up to horny in a split second. But I resisted the temptation to go any further, and when we broke apart, I told him what had happened to Rita, and how I had gone over to Cotton City to pick her up.

  He came out of his languid state as soon as he understood what I was telling him. “Is she all right?” he asked, starting to get up.

  “She was a mess when I picked her up last night, but I think more angry than hurt.”

  Lance made it to a sitting position on the edge of the bed, but his eyes looked puffy, and I just wanted to hold him like a little kid until he woke up. I told him I thought he should stay out of school for the day, since he’d had such a long trip and, for a moment, he lay back, blinking his eyes, thinking.

  “I guess I could stay around here and see if Rita needs me to help her. Shit, Will. I just hate that guy. First he rips into Casey and now Rita. I sure hope somebody lays him out. Or maybe he ought’a be thrown in jail.”

  I’d thought about that, and on the way home with Rita, I told her she should press charges, but she had just shaken her head in the dark, no longer crying, at least. “It’s over,” she said. “I just want to forget about it.”

  But I didn’t. I wouldn’t.

  Lance touched me on the arm. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, kind of staring off into space, I guess.

  “You’re the one who ought to stay home,” he said. “You’ve got circles under your eyes. I doubt if you can think too clearly without some sleep.”

  I fell back onto the bed and gathered him up in my arms and kissed him on the mouth. “I doubt I’d get any sleep, ‘cause you’d be here, and I’m not finished saying welcome home yet!”

  He laughed, but got up off the bed and pulled on his Levi’s over his naked butt. “Let’s eat. I’m starved.”

  That’s when I told him Margie was there.

  “You afraid of her?” he teased. “C’mon, Angel. Let’s go give her a little thrill!”

  I was dumbstruck with the thought, but grinned at him, and he winked in return.

  So we went into the kitchen, barefoot and shirtless, and sure enough, Mrs. Collins stopped in mid-sentence and looked in our direction. Our eyes met, and despite my nervousness, I smirked at her and threw my arm around Lance’s shoulders, feeling the warmth of his skin against my own. “Good morning, Mrs. Collins. Your new hair color is becoming.”

  She shot me daggers, but messed with her hair, anyway.

  May sure didn’t miss the exchange and when our eyes met, hers opened a little wider and she covered her mouth to hide her grin.

  “But if there’s anything at all I can do, Arlene, just let me know,” Mrs. Collins said, after a moment, turning back to Mama.

  Mama had missed the exchange between us, I guess, because she smiled at Mrs. Collins. “If you could take Trinket to the bus stop, I would appreciate it. As for Rita, I’m keeping her home from school the rest of the week.”

  Trinket had gotten over crying as she looked back and forth between Mama and Mrs. Collins, eating her cereal with an oversized spoon. “Can’t I stay home, too, Mama?” she asked.

  “No, honey. You go on now and get dressed. I’ll fix you a pan of brownies when you get home.”

  Lance and I got our breakfast from the counter and sat at the opposite end of the table from Mrs. Collins. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw her looking at us. The daggers were gone, but not her lust.

  “So who called and told you about Rita?” I asked, before I even realized I was going to. It came out sounding accusative, and that’s the way Mrs. Collins seemed to take it.

  “If you must know, Will, it was Rick. He was just devastated at what happened.”

  Mama frowned at this, but lit a cigarette, rather than saying anything. She was upset though, because she had just put out a cigarette in the ashtray next to her coffee cup a moment before.

  “Did he hurt his goddamned hand when he blackened Rita’s eye?” May asked. She was at the counter and turned with such quick anger, I could tell she was ready for a good old-fashioned argument. “I mean,” she said, coming toward the table and sitting down next to me, but glaring across the table, “Rita’s face must be really hard for such a big guy like Rick to hurt his hand on.”

  “It wasn’t like that at all,” Mrs. Collins shot back. “Really, May! Rick was ashamed of himself. He’s never done anything like that before. He was just hurt that Rita would break up with him. He told me he’d already bought her a ring and was planning to give it to her.”

  “He must be feeling real ashamed then,” I said. I heard a quiver in my voice, both from anger and nervousness. “Just last week he beat on his little brother, Casey. Or did he kind’a fail to mention that?”

  Mama’s jaw dropped to hear May and me attacking Mrs. Collins, and there were questions in her eyes. I decided I needed to tell her, not only about Rick beating up on Casey, but about him telling Mrs. Collins about Lance and me. And I figured it might be time to tell her about what Margie had tried with me. I wouldn’t have considered it, except that Margie seemed to be trying to defend Rick, where there was no defense. I wondered, too, just what it was between the two of them—her and Rick. Then I figured I already knew. Rick was probably one of her more interesting affairs, out of which had come a kind of rogue’s friendship.

  “If you ask me, Will Barnett,” Mrs. Collins said, rising and wagging a finger at me, apparently as ready to do battle as May was, “you’re just a little more than an innocent in all this. None of this would have come out the way it did if it wasn’t for you and—”

  “
Shut up, Margie!” May said, also rising. “We’ve had just about enough of this. Even if Rick didn’t like what he saw in our house, he could have kept his friggin’ trap shut, if you ask me. But no! He decided to take things a little further by telling you. Isn’t that right? And you! You thought it was a good opportunity to pluck a little young fruit!”

  The secret was out now, and Mama looked from May to Margie and then at me. “What is she talking about, Will?”

  Which ‘she’ Mama meant, I didn’t know, but I was sick of the arguing, especially with Rita hurt and in bed. “Mrs. Collins is mistaken, Mama, that’s all. Rita told me herself she was planning to break up with Rick. Maybe she found out things about him she just didn’t care for.”

  I caught Margie’s eye as I said this, and saw that she was a little relieved I’d steered Mama away from what May had just said, though she still looked angry.

  She grabbed her purse from the table, turning to Mama. “I didn’t mean to stir up any trouble, Arlene. Tell Trinket I’m waiting on her in the car.”

  * * *

  With Trinket and Mrs. Collins suddenly gone, Mama and May and Lance and I just sat quietly for a moment at the kitchen table, each of us digesting what had just happened. Mama was still wearing the blue, terrycloth robe from the night before, and I could tell she hadn’t got any more sleep than I had. May wasn’t dressed yet, either, and was wearing a robe, as well, but underneath she had on a T shirt. Lance and I were just wearing our Levi’s and were both barefoot. It was kind of cold in the kitchen, because Mama hadn’t turned on the furnace and usually didn’t in mid-fall unless it was freezing.

  The heat from the stove had all but dissipated, and we all cupped our hands around our coffee mugs.

  Mama mashed out her cigarette, took a sip of coffee, and looked across the table at me and then at May. “Now, why don’t you two tell me what’s been going on, here.” Her face was set, and I figured she already had a few ideas about things. She hadn’t missed Lance’s busted lip from a few weeks before, but when she’d asked him what happened, he just said it was an accident.

  May and I exchanged glances, and I saw from the look in her eyes that she knew Mama wasn’t going to put up with us sugar-coating anything. Both of us usually did try to soften things on Mama, because…well, she was Mama, and we didn’t like to see her fret.

  “Part of it has to do with me and Lance,” I told Mama. “Rick figured out we were sleeping together.” I eyed Mama, but she didn’t seemed fazed by what I just said.

  “Go on, Will,” she said. “I’ve heard people talking, too. I don’t like what you and Lance are doing, if you want to know.”

  “But—”

  Mama just held up a hand. “Let me finish. I wouldn’t like it ten years from now, I guess, so it couldn’t be any worse, now.” Then she looked at Lance, who lowered his eyes. “Lance, honey. I love you like a son, so please don’t think I’m condemning you. Nor you, either, son,” she said, turning back to me. “It’s just something I was raised not to like. It’s hard to change. Only I know that something’s been going on because of that, something that got Lance hurt and now Rita. So let’s get it on the table and deal with it.”

  Mama hadn’t strung so many words together in a long time, at least since before Daddy died, and I was stunned. I figured she stayed home most of the time because she didn’t want to face things in Hachita, much less in Animas and Cotton City, and just preferred staying where things were familiar, even if she was a little lonely.

  I told her about Rick telling Mrs. Collins about me and Lance, and the day she tried to get in my pants. Mama’s eyes flared, then she nodded, smiling kind of oddly. “I’m sorry she put you through that, Will. But don’t be too upset. She’s a lonely woman. She’s been a lot of boys’ first experience with a woman. I’m glad you turned her down, though.”

  I was stunned, again, but kind of glad that what Mrs. Collins had tried with me wasn’t going to make Mama hate her. May was struck dumb, though, and started laughing.

  “Mama! Really! You don’t sound the least bit surprised!”

  Mama smiled. “Let’s just forgive her that, May. And if you can’t forgive her, just pity her.”

  Lance just looked at all of us with his jaw dropped and kind of smiled.

  Then I told Mama why I’d agreed to pay Mr. Trujillo so much money for the harvest, after he’d tried to force me into paying twice that much, though I left out the part about the shotguns. I told her he thought he could get away with it because of the talk about me. Mama just nodded.

  Then I told her about Rick’s younger brother, Casey, and how Rick had beat him up for standing up to him about me and Lance.

  “So that’s why Margie said you had a little hand in all this, isn’t it?” Mama asked. I opened my mouth to explain, but she just raised her hand again. “Well, she’s wrong. Those Zumwalts have always been trouble for as long as I can remember. And I didn’t like it that Rita was dating Rick, if you want to know. But just like I couldn’t stop you, Will, from being who you are, I couldn’t stop her, and I just didn’t try. I grieved thinking she was getting serious enough to marry him. I’ve seen Leona Zumwalt wear sunglasses enough to know that her husband beats on her.”

  At this, I felt my stomach flip. “You mean they’re all like that?”

  Mama nodded. “Them and a few other families I could name, Will. Farming is a tough life and brings out people’s frustrations, and some of the people that moved into this region brought their wife-beating ways with them.”

  During all this, May hadn’t said much, and she still didn’t, but I saw she was taking in as much as I was, maybe even realizing like me that Mama kept a lot of information to herself. But this morning, Mama was laying it out and asking us to do the same. And I realized that Mama thought of us more as adults that she could talk to than she did children she needed to protect. At least it felt like that to me.

  May and I filled Mama in on other details about the way people had been talking, and I told her I thought things would just die down, now that Rick wouldn’t be coming around.

  “Maybe,” she said. She got up and poured herself another cup of coffee and came back to the table and lit another cigarette. “But things is gonna change, Will. We’ve got this harvest over with. I think it’s time we retired from farming and sold out. Your daddy’s dead and gone, and he’s the only one that ever wanted to keep this god-forsaken place. It killed him, and I see that you’re about as worn out as you can be.”

  I was stunned and speechless, and so was May. Lance just looked at each of us, kind of bowing his head, but when tears glistened on his lower lashes, I asked him what was wrong. He shook his head. “I…” he looked up at Mama, then me, his face stricken. “I love this place, Will! I don’t want it to be over!”

  Mama looked surprised. She smiled at him. “It’s all right, Lance, honey. First of all, we’re not going to be moving out tomorrow. We’ll be here at least until you graduate. We’re just going to take a year off from farming and give us all a chance to rest.”

  Lance still didn’t look too pleased, though he smiled back weakly at Mama. “It’s the only real home I ever had, though!”

  “But you’ll always have a home with this family,” Mama said, “no matter where that is.” Her own eyes got a little wet. “It’s just that, since Roy died, Goddard Hill has been making noises about buying us out. He wants the well and wants to return this place to pasture.”

  I thought it was a good idea, and I sure liked the idea of having the farm off my shoulders. “I hope he gives us a good price, Mama,” I said, looking at her and then at Lance.

  “Well, we’re not going to give it away,” she said.

  * * *

  It was almost seven-thirty when we all left the table. May rushed to shower, and Lance and I went out to the pickup to bring in his stuff from the night before. I’d decided to play hooky with him. He was quiet as we brought in his suitcase and the other stuff he’d brought back from his trip.

/>   He was still quiet when we got into the bedroom.

  “I didn’t know you liked it here so much,” I said.

  He’d set his suitcase on the floor and was standing by the bed where he had laid the other packages, looking down at them. He spoke without looking at me. “I figured you and me would be leaving here, Will, one day. But…”

  “What?”

  He shrugged, then turned to look at me. He was smiling sadly. “It’s the only place I’ve ever felt loved. It’s hard to separate that from this room, and this house, and the barn and the fields.”

  I went over to him and hugged him from behind, and he put his hands on my forearms and held me tight. I felt him sob, then take a breath. “But your mother meant it, didn’t she, about me always having a home with this family?”

  I turned him around and looked into his beautiful violet eyes and the fear in them. We hugged, chest to chest, our skin warm. “She meant it, Lance. You bet. Now, didn’t you say something about a surprise for me last night?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, drawling on the last syllable. “Step back against the door and close your eyes.”

  I did as he said, leaning against the closed bedroom door with my eyes clamped shut. I heard the rustle of paper as he pulled things out of the packages. I couldn’t imagine what it was.

  “Okay. Open!”

  I opened my eyes and blinked and found myself staring into a landscape of tall, dominating mountains, richly rendered in blues and hues of purple, against a clear turquoise sky, and in the foreground was a nude figure, facing away from the viewer, with both arms raised as if in greeting to the mountains. The light from our northwest windows didn’t cause a glare, and I could study the fine details. It was a chalk pastel picture, I realized, having seen Lance work with the box of oil-based chalks he’d bought through the art class.

  “Well?” he asked, looking at me over the painting.

  “It’s beautiful! But how did you get it so finished looking? You were only gone four days.”