Rich White Trash

by Judi Taylor Cantor

  “There was a particular criminal who fleeced farmers, stealing their hard earned money under the guise of selling crop insurance. I worked two years on that case. It was truly satisfying. Turns out the scoundrel buried a lot of the money across the farmlands of east Texas. A couple of Texas Rangers and I saddled up and tracked down some of the cash. We literally dug up suitcases full of cash! Oh, that was a case for the books.” VF smiled, remembering the adventure and thrill of finding the buried money.

  “You’ve mentioned that the O-Bar farm probably has treasure hidden on it. Can you give us hints of where you think we’ll find it some day?”

  VF adjusted himself in his seat, straightening his back and his shoulders. His eyes brightened.

  “It goes all the way back to Kanuna Nate Hortus. Kanuna means bull frog in Comanche. Nate was captured by the Comanches…”

  “Wait,” Mary interrupted. “Mr. Hortus who owns the farm next to the O-Bar?”

  “Yes, darlin’, Mr. Hortus, now age 90, was captured by the Comanche Indians when he was just six years old. They held on to him for 5 years, then gave him back to his family because they were being forced off their land. They renamed him Kanuna, meaning bull frog, because he would talk to the frogs in the wild.

  “It was Nate who saw three men on horseback come up to Rustler’s Hill in the middle of the night with a large saddlebag and shovels.”

  “You mean Rustler’s Hill on the O-Bar? On your farm?” Mary asked.

  “Yes, dear.”

  “When was this?”

  “This would have been around 1911, before I was born. The week he was captured. He said the Comanches camped close to our farm that week, and he couldn’t sleep, so he was walking in the woods. His memory was vivid. He said he could see the three men at the top of the hill, outlined by the moonlight. They tied up their horses, took shovels from the saddles and dug several holes close to an old oak up on that hill. Then they took off their shirts, poured something from the saddlebag into their shirts, tied them and put them individually into the holes.”

  “So, you think gold is buried up in that hill?” Mary asked.

  “Somewhere up there. I’ve never been able to find it. But there is buried treasure. Hortus is convinced he saw what he saw, and during that time there were several train and bank robberies around Texas. Folks thought it might be Ben Kilpatrick from Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch. Someone saw him in town. This was about a year before the Sanderson Train Robbery when he was killed trying to rob that train.”

  Mary made a mental note to talk with Mr. Hortus.

  “And what advice do you have for your grandchildren and great grandchildren?”

  “Hmmmm…” VF sighed, and breathed heavily, as if the world was listening.

  Then, as if speaking to Mary when she was a child he said:

  “Words matter. Words make worlds. When I was a child, I felt so alone out there in the middle of nowhere on that farm…no library…no bookstores… I’d tell that little child, ‘read, girl, read.’ I’d tell her, ‘be true to yourself and truthful to others. Do not let others bully you.’ I’d say, ‘go to church for Christ sakes. Keep your religion and if you can’t keep your religion, then be kind and love one another.’ I’d say, ‘don’t go to law school. Being a lawyer is being a liar.’ Look, darlin’….” VF brightened on a wave of new energy and talked directly to his only child who was a lawyer. “Being a banker gives you the license to steal; being a lawyer gives you the vocabulary to lie.

  “And then I’d tell all of ‘em how to make Mustang grape wine.”

  VF looked very tired. He slumped in his chair. All was still. Mary and Father Joe glanced at each other. They had the same puzzled reaction to his ‘being a lawyer is being a liar’ advice.

  VF perked up, “Oh! And tell ‘em there is still buried treasure on the O-Bar and someday one of you will find it.”

  “Buried treasure on the O-Bar,” Mary repeated,” Got it,”.

  “Yes. Now I think that’s all the advice I have today.” VF talked slowly and appeared to doze.

  “Think we got enough?” Father Joe whispered to Mary.

  “It could never be enough, but it appears Dad is done.”

  “Stick a f-f-f-fork in it!” Father Joe tried to inject humor.

  Mary walked over and hugged VF, took the letter he still had in his hand, and helped him to his favorite reclining chair so he could rest.

  When Mary arrived home that evening, there was a letter in her mailbox. It was from her dad. It had been sent to all the daughters from his law office.

  Mary sat and read:

  Dear Vicki, Bits, Iris and Mary:

  I hope you never have regrets in life. I hope you each live long, productive, full lives and that you and your children prosper.

  I have regrets, though. I should have told you more often how much I love each of you. I know that you think Mary is my favorite and you are probably right. I always wanted a lawyer in the family. I also always wanted each of you to marry a Catholic. But we don’t always get what we want, as Bits has sung to me many times. I always thought Bits that you got whatever you wanted because you have such a no nonsense way about you and you ASK for what you want. And Vicki, you’ve always been the Boss. Will you stay that way and keep the family together? Iris, I am proud of you and I forgive you for your divorce, and I know that your first husband was an asshole and that you got married way too early. And I even know how that happened, even if you didn’t want to tell me.

  I love you. I will always love you, in this life and the next.

  Forever,

  Dad

  Mary cried uncontrollably, picked up the phone and dialed Iris’s number in New York.

  “Mare?” Iris thought maybe Mary was in labor—it was nearly midnight. She never called this late, and she was eight months pregnant.

  “Did you get the letter?” Mary asked.

  “The letter? That sounds ominous…. Have you been crying?” Iris heard sobs.

  “Dad wrote us all—all the girls--the most beautiful letter. He’s going to die soon, isn’t he?”

  “Wow! Actually wrote all of us a letter? Was it anything like that book he wrote, ‘When My Girls Come Home’ and he tells about all the dirtbags we married?” Iris could be sarcastic at times, and it was clear to Mary that even Iris was mad that their father was dying. Mary thought she understood her sister’s sarcasm. She knew Iris had seen a lot of ugliness in the family dynamics. She had witnessed her mother’s abuse of her brothers and her father, and she had harbored a deep secret about their sister, Jillian, whom Mary never knew.

  “Seriously, Iris. He wrote this beautiful letter about how much he loves us. Why are you always so sarcastic?”

  “Loves YOU. OK, we all know you’re his favorite. Sorry. That horse has been beaten to death..Ooops… Wasn’t talking about your horse, Malka, and what Mom did….”

  Mary blew her nose and nearly laughed. “Thanks for the gallows humor, Iris. Let’s not bring up Mom poisoning Malka.”

  “I haven’t gotten that letter yet. Now I’ll be surprised to read it,” Iris deadpanned. “Tell me more.”

  “Joe and I did the video today and when I got home there was this lovely letter.”

  “Well, Mare, Dad always did like to write us rather than hug us. So, maybe this is his last embrace.”

  “Good one, Iris…his last embrace. What do you think—you think he’ll hang on for a few more months?”

  Iris got up from her bed, wrapped her naked self in a blanket and took the phone to the living room with its floor-to-ceiling windows. It was a large room by NY standards in a beaux-arts building overlooking Riverside Park. The darkness outside enhanced the beauty of the New Jersey lights across the Hudson with the George Washington Bridge twinkling in the distance, and the streetlights below. She stood cloaked in the dark looking at those lights, w
aking up, trying to think of something to comfort her little sister.

  “Mare, do you remember—naw…you were too young. Well, let me tell you this story about Dad when we were kids and he had just bought the ranch.”

  “I was a newborn, you were eleven, so of course I wouldn’t remember,” Mary interjected.

  “And let me make this clear—I’m talking about Silvercreek Ranch, not the O-Bar farm, which Dad bought from Grandpa Krejci. Am I making it clear?”

  “As a bell,” Mary said.

  “Right. Time is so strange. Anyway, Dad bought all the cattle, the pigs, the goats, and horses for each of us except you, of course, and he wanted us to be so thrilled that we’d get to drive from Austin to the ranch in the hillcountry every evening and every weekend and haul rock around the back forty and drive the stupid tractor, and learn how to shoot the damned guns to kill the damned rattlesnakes and how to burn the ticks off and how delighted he was to open those cans of Vienna sausages to eat with crackers for lunch on the banks of the creek…”

  “Your point?” Mary was getting impatient.

  “Hang in there. Are you in labor yet? How’s the family?”

  Mary patted her belly as if Iris could see. “All’s well. Continue.”

  “Well, did you ever know that Bits was attacked by a water moccasin?

  “What????? NO!!! I’ve never heard this.” Mary was cringing. She sat down on the couch in her media room.

  Iris knew she had Mary’s attention.

  “Yes. Vicki, Bits and I went skinny dippin’ in the creek—sort of—with our underwear—it was overflowing its banks because of a huge storm the night before. Remember that huge boulder straight down from Inspiration Point?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Vicki and I were lying on the boulder and she was tickling the fuzz under my arm, kidding me about becoming a woman, and we didn’t see the water moccasins. Bits was swimming and all of a sudden she screamed and we jumped up and pulled her out onto the boulder. Then, sure enough we saw the snake swim away—ewww I get chills remembering it slithering in the mucky water—and we realized she was bitten.

  “Vicki got on Rebel, Bits’ horse, and rode up to the house to get help. Bits became apoplectic—yelling, jumping up and down until she started crying. I kept telling Bits, ‘hang in there, hang in there.’ Meanwhile her leg started swelling. I wasn’t sure if I should take her pocketknife and cut and suck, like we were taught about rattlesnakes, or what.

  “Then I remembered something Dad said to Mom when I was really, really sick in the hospital when I was a toddler. He said ‘let go, let God.’ So, I said that to Bits. I said, ‘let go, let God.’ She calmed down. I was able to soothe the bite by putting a flat, hot rock I found beside the boulder we were sitting on, on her leg. I think the heat helped pull out the venom. Then Dad arrived in the truck and they took her to the hospital. They got her to the emergency room just in time, the doctor said. After a day or so on anti-venom drugs, she was fine.

  “So I say to you, let go, let God…or just breathe.”

  Mary held the phone tighter. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “It’s a nightmare. I agree. I think we all thought Mom would die before Dad. She never exercised. Her diet was for shit. She was always so mean.”

  Iris was finally opening up. Mary needed to hear this.

  “I heard Dad could be pretty brutal sometimes, too,” Mary said, more as a question than a statement.

  “Well, you are the youngest so you didn’t see what happened. I think by the time you showed up in their lives, they began to mellow.

  “It was awful when Hap and Richard were growing up. I think Dad felt he needed to discipline the boys the same way he was disciplined as a kid. He didn’t know better. He would take out the belt for bad grades, for acting out. In fact, our neighbors on Alta Vista wanted to adopt Hap. They thought he was being abused.” Iris felt the time had come to set the record straight.

  “Well, didn’t Mom abuse Hap more than anyone?”

  “Oh, what an understatement. She did all kinds of horrible things to him. And to Jillian before her accident. Things I just can’t talk about.”

  “Why can’t you talk about them?”

  “Because they make me sick to even think about them. And then the memories keep roiling in my mind. I’d like to forget those horrible days when I hid from the anger—the abuse. I literally hid. From the time I was about three or four, I can remember hiding in the dirty clothes basket just to be invisible while the beatings and torture were going on. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Dad is so afraid we won’t stay together as a family,” Mary began to sob.

  “Did he say that?”

  “Yes, after we shot the video he looked at me, straight into my eyes and said, ‘how can we keep the family together?’”

  Iris thought about the scene and how hard her father always tried to keep the family together, how hard he tried to keep his marriage together. He said the family that prayed together stayed together, so prayer was a ritual. Attending Mass was an ultimatum.

  “Well, we probably won’t Mare. Why would we? By the way, who is helping with his care right now?”

  “Vicki told me she and Richard are going to care for him as it gets worse.”

  Iris was alarmed. “Richard???? Are you kidding me? He’ll steal them blind.”

  “No, Vicki said Mom is paying Richard to help, thinking he’ll stay off the heroin while he’s around Dad.”

  “Well, good luck with that. Is Vicki moving back from Colorado? What about her daughters?”

  “Yes, she’s going to move in with Mom and Dad. Her partner will stay in Colorado with her daughters. You should talk with her.”

  “She wrote me. I need to call her. That’s going to be hard for her to do—to care for Dad while Mom rants and raves and then while Richard shoots up.”

  “Hmmmm…I really don’t think he’ll be shooting up at the ranch.”

  “Mare, I love you. You are so naïve. Of course he’ll be shooting up—both heroin and his guns. Last time I saw Richard before I was summarily kicked off the ranch, he asked for $3,000. He said he needed it for ‘the horse.’ He was reading a gun magazine at the time….but Vicki will need a partner to help move Dad around as he gets weaker. If they can’t have hospice, then Vicki and Richard will have to do.”

  Iris could hear Mary quietly snoring.

  “Mare?” Iris loudly asked.

  “Oh, sorry…I’m so…tired.”

  “When are you due?”

  “Around Christmas.”

  “Please get some sleep and take care of that child within. I love you. G’night.”

  * * *

  Iris made arrangements with Vicki to see VF and try to say goodbye before he died. Vicki gave her explicit instructions for the timing of when their mother Virginia would be gone from the house and when Iris could safely be there with VF.

  “Wednesdays from 10 am-2 pm. That is when Mom leaves religiously to meet with her Wild Women friends….. He can barely talk anymore,” Vicki said, trying to prepare Iris for what she would see. “We have him in the hospital bed, he can’t walk, he’s not eating much. And…” she stopped to add emphasis. “We have a hospice nurse every day.”

  “Really? A hospice nurse? How did that miracle happen?”

  “Well, Mom finally was convinced because of Dad’s frailty that he needed a nurse for palliative care. We just kept the word ‘hospice’ out of the title.”

  Iris was pleasantly surprised, visualizing her dad being appropriately cared for.

  “Do you think he’ll recognize me?”

  “He will,” Vicki was sure of that. As if to emphasize that his mind was still clear, but that time was of the essence, she said, “It’s critical that you come now. A couple of days ago he whispered that he saw all th
ese people behind me as I was massaging his face. He told me their names.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper, “Iris, they are people who have all died.”

  “I’ll be there Wednesday at noon.”

  Iris bought a direct flight from JFK to Austin Bergstrom Airport. She had recorded her last letter to play for him because she knew she probably could not read it aloud. When strong emotions welled up inside her, she could not hold back the tears. She had always been this way. As a child, she imagined being a movie star would be so easy for her. The director would just shout “cry,” she would think of any mildly sad story, and the tears would flow. On the day she would say goodbye to her father she wanted to be strong for him, and she wanted him to hear her message. If she was saying it, she would surely choke and not finish.

  Wednesday morning December 7 the flight arrived on time. 10:59 am. She had no luggage. It was a same day round trip flight. She would be back in NY by midnight, only losing a day of work. She raced directly to the Gold Members board at the Hertz rental station, noted her stall number, inspected her rental car, and pushed the ignition button.

  As she drove from the airport she marveled that what was once the Air Force Officer’s Club was now a Hilton Hotel. Bergstrom AFB. VF’s old stomping grounds. The family went to brunch there on Sundays on a monthly basis. Colonel Landry loved showing off his family as he and his buddies re-told old war stories. The kids enjoyed the array of food, the respect they and their father were shown, and the special formality of the club. Remembering those times helped her shake off the anticipation of confronting Virginia. She turned on the radio and listened to her favorite PBS station, KUT. Austin music accompanied the forty-five-minute trip.

  Vicki was ready for her when she arrived at the ranch. No other cars were there. “You’re safe for another hour,” Vicki said. Iris hugged and kissed her sister.

  “Thank you.”

  They walked to the back bedroom, Iris handed Vicki the cassette tape to play. It had been taped at a studio and under dubbed with “Moon River” as background music.