He stared at Armando. "Sellin' him out?"
"You didn' know?"
He stood silent for a moment. "Haven't been home in a while." He changed the subject. "How's Maria?"
Armando's good-natured eyes became wary. "She doing good." He paused. "Why you want to know?"
He shrugged. "I might come see her sometime if she won't shoot me."
Armando smiled. "She migh' not shoot you, but I don' know if I really wan' you seeing her, man, you know? We grow up together and everything, an' I like you, but…you a little crazy when you drinking, you know?" He paused. "Like that one time, remember? Taking that sign down like that? That guy could have drown when he wen' in the river, you know?" He grinned. "Besides, she married, now, man."
He stared at Armando. "Married? She ain't even eighteen yet, is she?"
Armando shrugged. "Mexican girls grow up fas'."
"Who'd she marry?"
Armando flexed his stocky shoulders. "Big guy. Mean. Jealous." He grinned. "Very jealous, this man."
He tried to grin. "Got it, Armando. I won't try to see Maria."
***
The bass from Armando's car speakers boomed, still audible for a block after he pulled away from the convenience store. Gil stood on the curb looking thoughtfully after him until the sound faded away then he headed for his pickup. The sun gleamed on its shining, midnight blue paint, striking sparks of light from the chrome grill guard and wheels. He slid in and stomped down on the accelerator, pulling onto the highway toward the ranch with a gratifying roar of exhaust pipes.
He took a dip from the tobacco can on the seat beside him and groped for an empty beer can on the floorboard to spit in. An hour later, he had left the dry hills as the road climbed toward the foothills where the ranch his folks had built from nothing spread across a thousand acres.
He should have thought about marrying Maria like she wanted. Armando's younger sister had grown into one of the most beautiful girls he had ever known, but beneath her quick temper she had a tender, sympathetic heart—one of the few girls he had ever known who thought about something besides her hair and shoes. She really knew him, too, and he had always been able to talk to her. Heaving a sigh, he spit in his can. He should have treated her better the last time he'd seen her.
It had been hot that day almost a year ago. Dust had billowed from behind her old car on the graveled road until she slammed on the brakes.
She had glared across the seat at him, her black eyes flashing. "I ain' no trashy wetback girl looking for no green card. I though' you care abou' me, but you don' care about nothing. Get out."
He had looked out at the dry grey hills shimmering in a heat haze in dismay. "Right here?"
"Righ' here." The more agitated she got, the thicker her accent got. "Jhew drink too much and jhew don' got no feelings. Jhew ain' never gon' have no feelings. Only feelings jhew got is in jhore pants."
"C'mon, Maria, settle down. It's five miles to town—"
"Maybe you see if you got feelings in your feet. Get out."
He hadn't been mad when he slowly got out of her car and slammed the door, but the last thing she yelled out the window made him mad and he hadn't gone back to make up with her like he should have.
"This too bad for you, Gilberto." It sounded like Hilberto when she said it. "We coulda made a lotta babies, had a happy life, but maybe you gon' end up jus' like your papa…"
The big sign at the turn onto the gravel road to the ranch interrupted his thoughts. He stopped his truck in the road, staring disbelievingly at the sign reading, Ranch Auction Saturday, with an arrow pointing north. The auction notice almost obscured the faded sign reading, H Bar Ranch—Registered Roping Horses and Angus Bulls.
His stomach twisted. Armando had been right—his father really had managed to lose the place. Swearing, he jerked off his hat and drove his fist down on the steering wheel. He sat staring, and then he gunned the motor, leaving the pavement for the gravel road with a squeal of tires.
At the ranch, the evening breeze blew through the wide doors at either end of the log barn his father, Roy Howard, had built. Gil pulled his pickup into the breezeway and to the end stall. He shut off the motor and stepped out. Visible through the big double doors, his father worked a big buckskin gelding in the breaking pen outside the barn.
Jaw tight, he worked his wad of chewing tobacco, narrowing his gaze on his father and the horse. The whites of the gelding's eyes stared and the muscles beneath his glossy hide bunched with effort as he struggled to keep his balance against the deep sand of the pen and the conflicting cues of the man on his back. His father moved easily with the horse, as much an extension of the big animal beneath him as always, but his hands pulled heavily at the horse's foaming mouth as he jerked him in meaningless circles.
He spit contemptuously on the ground. If he tried to intervene with his father this drunk, it'd just be worse for the horse.
Turning away, he yanked open the half door of the stall, entering the dim space smelling of dust, horse sweat, leather, and saddle oil. Nails full of bridles, halters, ropes and saddle straps covered the length of one wall and he passed along it separating his gear from his father's, flinging each piece into a pile on the floor as he went. When he had it all gathered, he carried it to his pickup and heaved it all into the back. He headed back for his saddles and the metal box with his horseshoeing tools then he stood looking around the familiar space for the last time before he turned away.
He drove around to the ranch house where his mother, Irene, sat on the top porch step, her unruly black curls loose on her shoulders. Her white blouse looked too big for her, and her sandaled feet peeked from under one of what his father always called her 'hippy' skirts. The skirt swirled around her in a riot of design, and the whole thing created the impression of a forlorn little girl dressed in her mother's clothes.
He parked then removed his hat and flung it onto the seat beside him, ran his hand over his hair, and stepped out to spit his wad of chew onto the ground.
He stopped at the foot of the steps. His mother raised her dark blue eyes with their heavy fringe of lashes without any of her usual attempt at cheerfulness. The hopeless look in her gaze hurt him.
"I'm sorry, Mama."
She reached for his hand, pulling him down beside her on the step.
He slid his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to rest her head on his shoulder. "What're you gonna do now?"
She sniffed and wiped at tears dripping silently onto their hands. "I'm still working at the travel agency in town, so I guess we'll move into the apartment."
His mother, desperate for money his father couldn't drink, had taken the job at the travel agency in town a few years before. Too far distant for her to drive every night, she and Dee had lived in a small apartment during the week until Dee moved away to work at a veterinarian clinic in northern Idaho.
He stared out across the lawn. Once the color of an emerald and mowed smooth, it now sported a straggly growth of drooping dandelions and parched bluegrass in spite of the rush of irrigation water in the ditch at the edge of the yard. The flowerbeds next to the porch, once a profusion of color, grew only weeds now.
His mother cleared her throat. "Gil, the sheriff was out here a while ago." She paused. "He said you were in a wreck with Darlene Carpenter and she was killed."
He sat motionless. "That why he came out?"
She sighed. "No. He came to tell your dad not to give any trouble at the auction Saturday, but he's…concerned about you." She paused. "Is it true about Darlene?"
He shrugged and turned loose of her hand to lean his elbows on his knees. "Yeah."
"He said her blood alcohol level was way over the limit and that you'd had too much, too. He seemed to think you could have prevented the whole thing."
He didn't look at her.
"Could you have prevented it, Gil?"
"Probably."
Roy's Australian shepherd, Spud, bounded around the corner of the house. The dog s
potted him and launched himself. While he held the dog's enthusiastic onslaught at arm's distance, he scratched Spud's grey ears and rolled him around at his feet, but he didn't smile.
"Did you…care about her at all?" his mother asked.
He picked up a stick from the flowerbed and flung it across the yard, his gaze on the dog racing after it. "No."
She burst into tears. He turned to her.
Tears swelled over her lashes and ran down her cheeks. "Gil, please. I'm begging you to stop all this. Do you not understand where you're going to end up?"
Spud bounded back with the stick and dropped it. Tight jawed, he leaned forward to pick up the stick, throwing it again. The dog brought it back twice more while his mother sat with her face in her hands.
He broke the silence. "My life's a bunch of crap, Mama."
She looked up. "Honey—"
"I can't ride rodeo with a blown out knee, and they won't take me in the Marines, now, either. I'd kinda thought that me and Maria might settle down one of these days, but she married somebody else." He rubbed a hand over his hair. "Everything I wanted to do with my life ain't gonna work out now, and everybody seems to think I'll end up like Dad." He jerked to his feet and threw Spud's stick with unnecessary force. "Maybe they're right. I think there's somethin' wrong with me." He turned and thumped his chest over his heart. "In here."
She frowned, instantly worried. "Did you get hurt in the wreck?"
He shook his head impatiently. "No, but I should have." He turned to look over the Saw Tooth Range, its jagged peaks still snowcapped. "I shouldn't have got out of that car alive. It looked like a smashed pop can, but it was like—" he shrugged—"I don't know. Like somebody lifted me out and laid me on the ground. Ever since then it's been like…nothin's the same to me."
The screen door behind them kicked open. He turned and his jaw tightened. His father stood in the doorway holding a Pepsi can—no doubt half-filled with whiskey—then slouched onto the porch and dropped into a chair against the wall. Tipping back, he lifted his boots to the porch railing and pushed back the brim of his dusty Stetson, exposing sweaty black hair plastered in stark contrast to his white forehead. Aiming at a weed in the flowerbed, his father spit a stream of tobacco juice onto it then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his denim shirt.
"Come home to watch the old man go down in flames Saturday, boy?" his father asked, his dark lashed eyes bloodshot and puffy. "That oughta make you and your mother happy."
His mother's shoulders sagged, making her smaller and more forlorn than ever. He stiffened, his stance with his hands on his hips belligerent. Spud brought back the stick, but he ignored him.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
His father took a swallow from the can and grimaced. "It means if you'd stayed home and helped out after Antonio left, I could've held this place together, but you had to go off chasin' skirts and—"
"I learned everything I know about that from you." The resentment bordering on hatred in his father's eyes exactly mirrored his own emotions.
His father swore. "At least I ain't never killed one of 'em."
"I didn't kill her. She was tryin' to kill me."
His father gave him a humorless grin. "Too bad she didn't get it done."
"Roy!" His mother's head jerked up.
"Shut your mouth, Irene. You've worked all his life to turn him against me. Dee, too. If it hadn't been for you—"
With a bellowed curse, he lunged up the steps toward his father, a red haze shadowing his vision. The chair legs crashed to the floor as his father scrambled upright. He caught his father halfway up and grabbed his shirt at the throat, slamming him against the wall. The black Stetson fell to the floor.
"Don't you start on Mama," he said through gritted teeth, eye to eye with his father. The veins on his neck swelled, throbbing. "This is all your doin'. If you wanna know who turned me against you, go look in the mirror."
His father swore. "You get yourself tied to a woman like your mother and you'll see the same thing I see in the mirror—"
"If it hadn't been for Mama through the years—" he roared, slamming his father against the wall again with a satisfying crack of skull against wood siding—"you wouldn't be any different from any old drunk layin' behind a beer joint in an alley beggin' money off hookers."
The Pepsi can hit the board floor, splattering his boots with whiskey.
His father worked his hands between their chests, shoving back, his eyes ugly and unrepentant. "If it hadn't been for her, I'd—"
Pulling back his fist, he drove it into his father's lean middle. Roy doubled over, gasping, and then he lunged, driving his shoulder into Gil's stomach. He staggered. His father drove forward again. He avoided the rush with a step to the side. His father's momentum propelled him into the porch railing with his head. The dry wood snapped with a sound like a pistol shot. His mother screamed and rushed down the steps, sobbing as his father toppled onto the flowerbed beneath.
A moment later, he reluctantly followed. He rolled his unconscious father over to reveal a bleeding gash on his head then he grabbed Roy beneath the arms and hauled him onto the overgrown lawn.
With his chest heaving for air, he straightened and met his mother's horrified gaze. "I wish I'd killed him," he panted. "It would've solved a lot of problems."
All the color left her face, leaving the scattering of freckles across her small nose standing out in sharp relief. Her face contorted with anger and pain.
"It wouldn't have solved anything, Gil," she screamed. "Why can't you understand that?" She gestured at his father with an angry movement. "Do you want to end up like this?" She fell to her knees, and her tears dripped onto the dark whisker stubble on his cheek. She gently patted his face. "Roy, can you hear me?"
He stared at his mother. She was mad at him?
Spud crept up on his belly to his father and licked his hand with a worried whine. Even the dog…
In that instant he made a decision he hadn't even known he had been considering.
He was going to Colorado. He wanted to see his grandfather.
Chapter Two
A June dawn rimmed a volcanic upthrust of black boulders and cedar trees with gold, filling the sky above it with the deep blue of the high altitudes. Mellow sunlight suddenly spilled over the top of the hill, illuminating the weathered grey of the barn and corral where an aging gelding, Shorty, lipped up the last of a measure of oats in a rusty metal tub. Gil's grandfather, Gene Howard, leaned on the top corral pole, his dark gaze on the snow covered peaks far across the valley, cast into sharp relief by the sunrise.
Gil leaned next to the old man, eyeing the horse disgustedly. This late in the year, Shorty's coat should have reflected deep, glossy chestnut. Instead, patches of his winter coat remained, absorbing the early morning sunlight. His hide looked tired and dusty, like the moth-eaten hair on a fledgling taxidermist's forgotten experiment. Seemingly unmoved by his poor opinion, Shorty snuffled around in the tub for the last grains.
He turned to his grandfather. "That's the laziest horse I've ever flung a leg over, Gramps."
Even he recognized the striking resemblance between him and his grandfather even though the old man's full head of hair had turned steel-grey and his lined and weather-beaten face reflected over seventy years of living.
"Son, at my age, the lazier the better," his grandfather's booming voice rumbled over the quiet of the morning. Hard of hearing, he compensated by raising his voice even in normal conversation.
"You can't be that old."
The old man laughed, deepening the maze of lines around his eyes. He reached a rough hand to scratch behind barrel-chested, fat-rumped Shorty's ears. "Don't be so hard on ol' Shorty. He's a good feller."
He shook his head, but he grinned. "He's a lazy bucket of lard, Gramps."
The nose of his grandfather's black and white shepherd, Chief, nudged against his jeans. He looked down at the dog and spit a stream of tobacco juice. "I'm not bendin' down there to scra
tch your ears, Pooch," he said, but he reached for Chief's greying head, scratching his ears.
Chief gave a groan of pure delight and collapsed onto his well-padded side.
He rubbed the dog's belly. "In fact, every animal on this place is a lazy bucket of lard."
"Son, we're all gettin' old. We ain't so full of juice as we used to be."
"If I'm gonna help you get your cattle gathered and ready to move to the mountain before I leave, Shorty's gonna have to get some juice somewhere."
The old man eyed him for a moment. "What's your hurry about leavin'?"
"I need to get a job one of these days." He straightened, leaning on the pole again.
His grandfather cleared his throat. "You haven't told me why you came here, yet, Son."
He studied the patchwork of green ranch fields across the valley, now flooded with light. "You remember that time I almost got sent to juvie when I was fourteen or so? When Mama called you and had you talk to me?"
The old man nodded.
"I've always remembered that."
His grandfather's gaze probed his. "You in some kind of trouble?"
He grinned crookedly. "The sheriff suggested a change of scenery, but…that's not it." Removing his hat, he rubbed his hand through his hair, curling over his ears and shirt collar. He didn't want to talk about the thing with Darlene. "I don't know why I came."
"You got trouble with your dad?"
He shrugged. "Nothin' new there."
His grandfather stood looking down at his big-knuckled hands. "Why don't you just stay and work for me? With you here we could buy some more cows and break out that forty acres down by the creek for a hay field. We could make it a partnership, or I could just pay you."
He grinned wryly. "With what?"
"Well, it might be with just a place to live and somethin' to eat for a while, but we'll sell calves this fall and next year—"
He chuckled. "All you old farts on the ranch live for next year. The year it's all gonna come together."
The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) Page 2
