Red’s Hot Honky-Tonk Bar

by Pamela Morsi

  “What is it?”

  Brad hesitated. “I’m sure not the one to break this kind of news, but…I’m so sorry, Red. Your mother has passed.”

  “Passed what?”

  “She’s…uh…she’s passed away,” he clarified. “She died almost eight months ago. The family has been unable to contact you. They just recently heard that you were here in San Antonio.”

  Red stared at Brad. She heard what he was saying. She even understood it. Her mother, Patsy Grayson, was no longer around for Red to despise and fear and serve as an example of how not to mother. She tried to drag up some feeling of grief, some feeling of loss. But she didn’t have any.

  She looked up at Brad. His expression was stricken. He probably had a wonderful mom, Red thought. He would never comprehend her own ambivalence.

  “Thank you, Brad, for bringing me this news,” she said. “Of course, it is a tremendous loss. But my mother and I were not close. In fact, I haven’t seen her in thirty years.” She glanced over at Cam. “I guess it’s too late to send flowers.”

  Red rose to her feet. “Thank you for bringing me this news,” she repeated.

  “Ah…there’s more,” Brad said. “That was, that was just the cover letter.”

  “Oh.” Red sat back down.

  “Your mother named you as a beneficiary to her estate,” he said. “The lawyer wants to meet with you to go over the details. What he’s indicated here is that the property was distributed to other family members, but that there is a sizable bequest of cash for you.”

  “What?” Red was not sure she was hearing this.

  “She has left you some money,” Brad rephrased as simply as he could. “It’s fifty thousand dollars.”

  Red continued to look at him unbelieving. “My mother left me fifty thousand dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly, the fog in Red’s brain cleared and she was in as much control and as much certainty as she’d ever been in her life.

  “I don’t want it,” she said.

  Brad nodded sympathetically. “You’re in shock,” he said. “You’ve just lost your mother.”

  “I lost my mother a very long time ago. I don’t want any money from her.”

  Brad was at a loss for words. He turned to Cam for help.

  “I don’t think you have to make a decision about this today,” he said.

  “I’ve already made the decision,” she told Cam. “I don’t want anything from her, dead or alive. I don’t want a dime.”

  “It’s not like money has people’s names on it,” Brad offered. “It’s just money. It was in a bank or investments that have to be turned into cash to pay the bequest.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Okay,” Cam said. “If you don’t want it, you don’t want it.” He turned to Brad. “So do we just ignore the letter or what?”

  Brad’s jaw dropped open.

  “Uh…well, uh…we can’t just leave it open. We’ll need to respond so that they can close up the estate. You can refuse it,” he said. “There’s a provision in state law that allows you to refuse an inheritance. I don’t know much about it. People don’t usually do it.”

  “It’s what I want to do,” Red said. “I want to refuse it.”

  “What happens then?” Cam asked.

  “I’m not really sure,” Brad said. “It depends upon how the will was written. It might just go back into the whole of the estate to be redivided or it might pass to another beneficiary. I’ll have to talk to this attorney to find out what the provisions are.”

  “Kenny should just have it,” Red said.

  “Kenny?”

  “My…my stepbrother,” she answered. “All that money was my stepfather’s. I’m sure that his father would have expected it all to go to him.”

  “Well, I’ll call and inquire later this morning,” Brad said. “If you think about it more and want to revise your thinking, I’ll be sure to give us a little breathing room before we completely reject it.”

  “Completely reject it,” Red said. “I don’t want it.”

  Brad rose to leave. Red and Cam did, too. The men shook hands and Brad gave Red an anemic hug.

  “I am so sorry for your loss,” he said. “Call me later,” he told Cam.

  Once he was gone, Red stood in the middle of the living room for a long moment, befuddled as to what she ought to be doing.

  “Here, put on your coat,” Cam said, handing it to her.

  “What?”

  “We’re going for a walk.”

  She didn’t argue. Somehow she didn’t have the will to do so. Passively, she followed him out the front door and down the porch. Red put her hands in her pockets. Cam threaded his arm through hers and they began walking.

  Red hardly glanced around as they went up one street and down another, weaving their way through the neighborhood that had become so familiar to her in such a short time.

  Cam didn’t try to talk to her. She was grateful for that. There wasn’t anything to say. She felt strangely disconnected. It wasn’t as if her mother’s death truly meant any change to Red’s reality. But the wall that she’d held up so formidably between that life and her current one had transformed inexplicably from one she’d thought was made of solid bricks and mortar to a mere illusion on thin paper.

  When they got to Patterson Avenue they turned left onto the wide boulevard that once brought local commuters and city visitors by trolley car all the way from Broadway to the Argyle.

  They continued walking, Cam as if he knew where they were headed, and Red as if she didn’t care. It was a downhill trek, easy to make progress without a lot of effort. As they neared the last big curve in the street, with the giant high-rise condo and the University of the Incarnate Word in view, Cam abruptly turned again. This road—narrow, dark and shaded even in winter—was a steep incline.

  “Where are we going?” Red asked for the first time.

  “Someplace quiet,” he answered and urged her onward.

  Fortunately, it was not far. They walked into an entrance that revealed mostly empty parking spaces, a couple of buildings with a courtyard and fountain. Beyond that was a wide expanse of open land on a gently manicured slope.

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s the grounds of the Episcopal Diocese.”

  “Are you an Episcopalian?”

  “Uh, more or less,” he answered. “It doesn’t matter. They don’t mind people quietly walking here.”

  He clasped her hand and they strolled along a gray stone walkway that curved through the grounds punctuated by benches offering a seat with a view. Without hesitation, he turned onto a less formal path of gravel and dried leaves. Reddish-brown, it edged away from the parklike beauty to twist and turn among the trees. Then Cam abandoned that path, as well, for what was nothing more than a foot track through the brush.

  “Are you sure we can go there?” she asked.

  “I’m sure,” he answered.

  The way was far too narrow to walk two abreast, so Red followed him, trying not to trip over roots or encounter any snakes.

  The place was quiet, amazingly quiet for the middle of a neighborhood. But as they moved along the trail, she became aware of the sound of trickling water ahead. As they got closer, Red could glimpse though the trees and underbrush a swift-moving little stream tumbling over ancient stones.

  Cam edged down the side of a hollowed-out hill and stopped to turn back and offer his hand. Red accepted the help as she made her way closer to the water. He motioned to Red to take a seat on a huge gray limestone boulder that was a perfect vantage point to the site. Just a few feet away and slightly above them, water was bubbling out of the bluff they’d just descended.

  Cam eased himself close beside her, wrapping an arm around her waist to hug her more tightly against him. Red didn’t usually go for that kind of thing, but today she found it surprisingly comforting. The sun had momentarily escaped from behind the clouds and lit up the area of stones and water and
tree trunks.

  They sat together silently for a while as the tension in Red began to ease. She hadn’t known it was there until it started to go away.

  She wondered about this place. Had it been Cam’s secret hideout as a boy? The place he’d come to be alone when life at home had been too hard to bear? She knew, without asking, that it must have been and she was honored that he was sharing it with her.

  “It’s nice here,” she told him. “With nobody around.”

  He smiled and nodded. “But we’re lucky to be here alone,” he assured her. “This is a very busy place, you know.”

  “Busy?” She thought of the less-traveled track they’d just been on. “I don’t think so.”

  “Absolutely,” he answered. “Or at least it has been over time. They say humans have been coming down here, occupying this area, the Olmos Basin, for eleven thousand years.”

  “Eleven thousand? That’s a joke, right. You don’t mean eleven thousand.”

  “No joke.” He gestured with his other arm. “All of this is a protected archeological site. They’ve found projectiles and pottery and even ancient graves dating back as far as 9000 B.C.”

  “I didn’t think there was anything in Texas back that far,” Red said.

  “Surprising, huh,” he said. “This area has been occupied since the end of the last Ice Age,” Cam said. “It’s almost too hard to get your mind around. Before the Pyramids were built, people were sitting right here where we’re sitting, watching this small flow of water splash across those rocks.”

  Red was thoughtful.

  “So there was an Indian town here?”

  “It was more like a camp, I think,” Cam said. “It was a perfect area for hunter-gatherers because it has available water and abundant game. And in a valley like this, there is some protection from the elements.”

  “That’s interesting,” she said.

  “It is. When the Spanish came and agriculture took over as the mode of life, this was no longer really the place to be. Tilling the soil requires flatter ground. So the indigenous people built farms elsewhere. But as late as the 1920s, there were still bands of Native Americans that camped here in the basin during the summer.”

  “I can understand why,” Red said. “It seems so…I don’t know, peaceful, I guess.”

  Cam nodded. “It is peaceful.”

  “And it’s so far away from all the noise and traffic and busyness of the city.”

  “Seems that way, huh,” he agreed. “But that just proves that things are often not at all what they seem. This little stream is the very heart, the lifeblood of this whole city.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked him.

  “This stream is actually one of the springs that form the headwaters of the San Antonio River,” Cam told her. “Most people think of the Blue Hole as the official start of the river. We’re five hundred yards north of there, so for me, this is the true beginning.”

  Red studied the source of the water. It seemed to be seeping straight out of the large limestone boulders that made up the ten-foot bluff.

  “So everything that’s downstream,” Cam continued, “the river itself and the seventh-largest city in the country, which has thrived on its banks for three hundred years, came into being from that gush of water pushing out around those rocks.”

  “Wow.”

  “Not a very auspicious beginning for something that ultimately enables so much.”

  “No,” Red agreed. “You’d never believe that all that could begin from something so small.”

  They sat together in silence as the water continued to push out from around the boulders, swirling, puddling, falling and racing forward.

  “Do you think I’m crazy for not accepting the money?” she asked him. It was changing the subject, but maybe it wasn’t.

  Cam turned slightly to face her and then put his forehead up against hers, as if doing a sci-fi mind meld.

  “If you’re crazy, I want to be crazy, too,” he answered.

  “That money, that could do us a lot of good,” she pointed out.

  “Us are going to be fine,” he teased. “Especially if we’re going to be us.”

  She smiled at him, but her thoughts were still serious. “If I took the money, I could fix up the place without worrying about paying for it. I’d have something in the bank if and when we are forced out of our building. Or I could even use it as a down payment for a new building that I would own myself.”

  “All true,” Cam agreed.

  “It’s like Brad said, money is just money. It’s not like my mother will ever know that I refused to take it. That I threw it back in her face.”

  “No, she won’t know,” Cam agreed. “But you will. And if you think this is what you need to do, then I trust you.”

  Red looked up at him. His was a young face, but it was strong, it was lived in.

  “You’re not even going to ask me to explain?”

  He shook his head. “I know you would tell me if you could,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Red sighed heavily. It felt so good to lean against him. Such a relief after so many years of being forced to stand on her own. There was a long, sweet moment between them as the truth emerged in her consciousness. They were in this together. She no longer needed the walls that she’d built between them.

  “My mother just walked away from us and never looked back,” she told him. “I don’t claim to know what all went on between her and my dad. I don’t think anybody can ever really see inside their parents’ marriage. But it was obvious to me, even as a kid, that my mom really disliked her life.”

  Red pulled the hair away from her face and tossed it behind her shoulders.

  “My dad was a farmer and farmers always struggle,” she said. “I guess they really struggle when they’re married to women who like lots of things. And my mom did like lots of things. So Dad took a second job. But that was still not enough. Mom decided she needed to work, too. I don’t remember thinking much about it at the time. She wasn’t home anymore when I got off the school bus. But I just took care of my chores and the world went on.”

  Red’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Looking back, I’d say the day she went to work at Grayson Automotive, she was already on her way out the door.”

  She glanced over at Cam. He was listening, clear-eyed and intent.

  “Harv Grayson was actually a pretty good guy,” Red told him. “He’d been married twenty-five years to his childhood sweetheart. They’d established themselves at the very top rung of what passed for a social ladder in Piney Woods. He had a successful business and she was big in church and charity groups. They’d raised a son who was smart and had as much potential as his father.”

  She gave a humorless smile. “They might have fit right in, here in Alamo Heights,” she said. “But within one year, my mom blew all of that to kingdom come. Harv dumped his wife, forgot about his kid. He was totally ensnared by my mother and wanted to give her anything she wanted. And being the woman she was, well, she wanted it all.”

  Cam nodded, understanding.

  “None of this touched me, none of it was really important,” Red continued. “I had my daddy and we were a happy family. Truth is, I think we were happier than before she left. No more fighting, no more drama. Daddy and I did what we needed to do and didn’t worry about wanting a lot more.”

  Red wiped her hands on the thighs of her jeans.

  “If things had just gone on. If nothing had happened, my life would not have changed. I would have finished high school and Daddy would have walked me down the aisle to marry some local guy and I’d never have left Piney Woods.” She heaved a sigh. “But when my father died, well, everybody just assumed that my mother would take me in.”

  “Of course,” Cam agreed.

  “I think she would have been willing to foist me off on some distant aunt somewhere, if she could find one,” Red said. “But Harv really felt sorry for me. He could never see my mother as she
was. He thought that she would want me with her. And she didn’t want to look like she didn’t.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “Right,” Red said. “My mother didn’t think much of me. For her, I was too much like my dad, I guess. And her greatest fear was that I would ruin her butt-in-a-jam-jar life.”

  “Narcissism, that’s what shrinks call that,” Cam said. “I think it’s more or less incompatible with motherhood.”

  Red shrugged. “Maybe that was her excuse.”

  “So what happened?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said. “We all know that when you screw someone, payback is hell.”

  Cam agreed.

  “All the time Mom was living high and mighty on Harv’s money and cavorting around town in her Cadillac, the friends of Harv’s first wife were anxious to bring her down. And there I was, her daughter, naive and countrified, such an easy target.”

  “Ummh,” Cam sympathized shaking his head.

  “I was ostracized at school, laughed at, talked about,” Red said. “It was kid stuff, though I do think they were probably encouraged by their parents. Still, I could have managed that.”

  “But something worse turned up,” Cam said.

  Red nodded. She heaved a heavy sigh. This story was not one that she’d ever told aloud. She had to momentarily collect her thoughts as she focused on the racing water in the stream in front of her.

  “Harv’s son, Kenny, came home from college that summer, as he always did, to work at his father’s dealership. He was an athlete, good-looking, charming and he seemed so grown up. No grown-up man had ever paid any attention to me. But Kenny did.”

  Red recalled perfectly how calf-eyed she’d been.

  “He talked to me,” she explained. “He listened to all my teenage-girl craziness. He took me for romantic drives around the lake. He gave me my first kiss. And I fell in love with him. It was easy. I needed somebody to love me.”

  Red was picking nervously at her fingernails. She hadn’t even realized it until Cam took her hand in his own.

  “Kenny didn’t love me,” she said, unwilling to meet Cam’s eye. “I don’t think he even hated me. I was nothing to him. I was a means to an end. He wanted to get back at my mother. To shame her, humiliate her the way his mother had been humiliated. He failed at that. The humiliation was all mine.”