by Nikki Duvall
“I’d like some time to think about it.”
“Call me in the morning,” said Victoria, rising to leave. “I’d like you to start as soon as possible. And Halee,” said Victoria, pausing by the door, “if it’s J.D. getting in the way of you saying yes, I can make him disappear. Just say the word.” She shut the door behind her.
***
“New York is no place to raise a baby.” Rita shoved a piece of buttered bread into her mouth. “There’s a whack job on every corner.”
Halee stared listlessly at her full plate of salad and rearranged the leaves from one side to the other with her fork. “Chicago’s any better? At least on a New York salary I can afford a nanny. This may be my only shot at parenthood.”
“Artificial insemination,” said Rita. “That’s the answer. That way you don’t have to ask anybody for permission, including the father. It’s your kid. You get to do whatever you want.”
“You’re missing the point. I’m supposed to provide a home for a needy child, not create more children.”
“Admit it. You want to be pregnant. That’s what this is all about.”
“I do not!”
“That would get J.D.’s attention,” said Rita with a wicked grin. “Damsel in distress, unwed mother, father M.I.A. He could play the hero. Guys like J.D. live for that kind of thing.”
“We’re not having this conversation,” said Halee.
“You’re going to need support, raising a kid by yourself. Emergency babysitters when you have the flu or the kid gets sick and you have to be at work. Someone to commiserate when the kid talks back and wrecks your car and you wonder what drug you were on when you decided to take in the little darling. You need an enforcer like Uncle Gus. You need me, Aunt Rita, baker of chocolate cookies and diaper changer extraordinaire.”
“I need a fat paycheck.”
“That, too. I guess it’s New York.”
“I don’t know.” Halee dropped her fork. “Whatever works better for the baby.”
“Ok. When is your site visit scheduled?”
“It’s over.”
“And?”
“I should know by Friday.”
“Perfect. If you pass, you stay in Chicago, if you fail, you tell the social worker about your plan to move to New York, and how your salary will triple, and how the Federals will set you up in deluxe accommodations in Manhattan with a live in caregiver, and it’s all set. Either way, you win.”
Halee sat a little taller. “That’s true.”
“Yup.”
“What if he doesn’t believe me about New York?”
“Ask Victoria what’s- her- name to call social services. If she really wants you to take the job, she’ll call.”
“Good idea.”
“So now you have to think about how you’re going to avoid J.D. when you’re both working for the Federals.”
“I don’t suppose I will avoid him.”
“Then how are you going to handle running into him all the time?”
“Not a problem,” said Halee with a tilt of the chin. “Whatever J.D. and I once had is long gone. Old news.”
Rita nodded, playing along. “What about the wife?”
“Same.” Halee didn’t like the way her heart beat in her throat at the mention of J.D.’s wife.
“Same, like you won’t be bothered running into her, or same bimbo you caught him with when he was supposed to be with you?”
Halee’s eyes filled with tears. “I guess he loved her, after all,” she said. “So they should be together. J.D. gets the woman he loves and I get my baby.” She dabbed her eyes with her napkin.
“Sounds fair to me,” said Rita in a sarcastic tone. “You get to pick up the bitch’s dry cleaning in exchange for living in the most expensive city in America and changing dirty diapers.”
“Must you always be so crude?”
“Maybe I’m just good at telling it like it is.”
“I’ll tell you how it is. I finally get a shot at the life I’ve always wanted. And I’m not picking up anyone’s dry cleaning. This is a professional job.”
“You’re both crazy, you know that? Neither you nor J.D. were meant to live in a city like New York. Heck, J.D. can barely stand Chicago. He belongs on the open range. And you? That city will swallow you whole!”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I just want to see you fight for yourself once in a while.”
“That’s what I’m doing. I’m moving so I can make more money and adopt a child.”
“I’m talking about J.D.”
“This has nothing to do…”
“When did you start looking into adoptions?”
“I don’t know. Last summer?”
“Exactly two days after you caught J.D. in bed with someone else.”
“I’d been considering it for a long time.”
“You never said anything to me.”
“I don’t tell you everything.”
“This is some twisted form of revenge, that’s what it is. Have you ever thought about what a baby is going to do to your social life?”
“It will change, of course it will. But I’ll make plenty of friends at the park and his school…”
“But no lovers.”
Halee shrugged.
“That’s convenient. You get to hide behind the kid instead of picking yourself up and making a new life for yourself.”
“I’m not hiding. I just want to settle down. Maybe I don’t like the single life. Maybe I’ve moved past that stage. Maybe I want to be a grownup and take on some responsibility.”
“So get a dog. At least you can return it if it doesn’t work out.”
“I’m doing the right thing, Rita. I’m tired of standing by and watching so many little kids tossed around like they don’t matter. If I can make a difference in one child’s life, I want to do that. The consequences to my personal life really aren’t that important.”
Rita shook her head. “What I would give to look like you, to have your talent. You’re letting one disappointment ruin your future.”
“Stop…”
“Give it one more chance, Halee.” Rita reached over and took her friend’s hand. “Go see J.D.,” she said, her voice softening. “Spend a little time together. If he’s the one, don’t let him get away.”
Halee closed her eyes.
“And if he’s not, keep your options open.” Rita smiled and squeezed Halee’s hand. “There’s someone out there for you, someone to build a life with, I promise you. You’ll learn to love again.”
~EIGHT~
“You take one more step and I’ll blow your head off.”
J.D. lowered his Ray Ban sunglasses and squinted against the Oklahoma sun. He could feel his scalp sizzling like an egg in a frying pan. He needed a hat, but his hat was on the front seat of his rental car and that was parked two hundred feet behind him in the only shade he’d been able to locate this side of Texas. The shotgun in Hank Long’s arthritic hand wobbled in rhythm to his tremors, and Hank had it aimed in the vicinity of J.D.’s jugular. If he turned his back on the old man now, there was no telling how lucky his aim might be, and even though J.D. had been born on the Double HL ranch, he didn’t feel like dying here.
Hank shifted his feet and took aim. “I’ll do it, J.D. I don’t care who your mama is.”
“You wouldn’t do nothing to make my mama cry and you know it.” J.D. moved forward one careful step at a time and studied the situation. If he didn’t hate Hank Long so much, he might pity him. Even though J.D. had only been gone a year, it seemed like Hank had aged ten. Tufts of gray hair poked out from under the old bastard’s sweat stained undershirt and his pants hung below a protruding belly. His bared teeth matched the yellowed fabric of his cotton shirt. The stench of him nearly knocked J.D. off the front steps.
“When’s the last time you had a bath, old man?”
“Why, you little prick!” Hank cocked his shotgun to the sky and fumbled with the saf
ety.
The screen door slammed and Faye Shaw shoved past Hank, taking the front porch steps two by two till she stood eye to shoulder with her son. “Start walking,” she said under her breath with a faint twinkle in her light brown eyes.
“Don’t think I won’t do it!” yelled Hank. “Shaws aren’t welcome here!”
“Just keep your eyes on the end of the driveway,” said Faye. “When he gets worked up, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”
J.D. lagged behind a few steps, angling his tall frame between Hank’s aim and Faye’s body for good measure. “Since when do you work at the big house?” he demanded.
Faye pulled open the passenger door on J.D.’s rental and climbed in. “Since I got too old to run cattle.”
“That’s what Clint’s for.”
“Hurry up and move this thing before he puts a bullet in your tire.”
J.D. hesitated, grabbed his Federals ball cap, then slammed the driver’s side door shut and strode back toward the porch.
Hank cocked the trigger. “You deaf, Boy?”
“I hear you’re selling,” said J.D., mounting the hat over his fresh buzz cut. “I may know of an interested buyer.”
Hank narrowed his beady eyes. “”Won’t sell to strangers. Won’t sell to no friends of yours, neither.”
“That’s too bad,” said J.D., adjusting the bill of his ball cap. “Not too many folks in Kadele have access to the kind of capital you’re asking for.” He gazed down the fence line and did a quick count of cattle. “What you running now, three hundred head?”
“Two fifty,” said Hank, lowering his muzzle. “The drought made me sell some off.”
J.D. spit, keeping his eyes on the horizon. “What ya askin’ for the place?”
“Depends who’s askin’.”
“Seven hundred acres, a couple hundred cattle, I’d say that adds up to about half a million in these parts, water rights included.”
The old man squinted at J.D. through the blaring sun and adjusted his trousers. “That’s low ballin’ it.”
“Times are hard, Hank. You only got one heir and she ain’t interested in ranchin’. I were you, I’d take what I could get and get out from under the taxes.”
“I’d rather die without a penny in my pocket than sell to the likes of you, ya damn Federal!”
“Didn’t say I was buying,” said J.D. with a slight lift of his lip. He turned to go.
“No Shaw’s gonna own this land. I don’t care if you are a fancy major leaguer, J.D., you’ll always be nothing but a punk in my eyes. I don’t care how much money ya got. I worked too hard to build this operation to give it away to the likes of you.”
J.D. stopped in his tracks and turned to face the old man with a hard look. “You didn’t build nothin’, Hank,” he spit. “This place was built on my father’s back. On Faye’s charity.”
“You know a lot about Faye’s charity, don’t you, Johnny Carmenas? If it weren’t for Faye, a half breed like you wouldn’t even have a name.”
J.D. clenched his fists and took another step toward the porch.
Hank fired into the air. “Go back to your faggot white pants and gold chains, before I call the sheriff and have ya hung for them horses you stole from me.”
“You ain’t seen the last of me, old man.” J.D. turned and maintained a steady pace until he reached the car, then slid in beside Faye. He could still hear Hank yelling from the porch.
“How can you work for that sonofabitch?” he asked, peeling the rental out toward the main road.
Faye took a drag on her cigarette and gazed out the window. “We always have worked for him, J.D,” she said in a slow, deliberate drawl. “You’re the last to admit it.”
“Yeh, well, someday the bastard is going to work for me.”
“He didn’t kill your daddy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Really? Then what did?”
Faye shifted and put her cigarette out in the ashtray. “It was an accident,” she said softly, “same as could happen on any ranch.”
“Nobody else would have worked him like Hank did.”
“Nobody else would have given your daddy a chance. He was straight out of jail when he asked Hank for a job. Hank took a chance on him.”
“And made him pay every day of his life.”
Faye shook her head. “You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you. They used to hang horse thieves in Oklahoma, you know.”
“I had a right to them horses,” said J.D.
“Well, he hates the sheriff, or he would have called him in.”
“More likely he wasn’t ready to lose favor with Faye Shaw.”
Faye smiled a slow, satisfied smile. “Oh, you think so?”
“Hank always had a thing for you. One more reason I hate the bastard.”
“He’s always been a gentleman,” Faye said matter-of-factly. “Ain’t no reason to hate anybody.”
“Look at you defending him.”
“Well, I don’t have a lot of choice. Can’t imagine waking up to anything but the sound of cattle. Working for Hank lets me stay on this land.” She turned toward J.D. and thoroughly looked him over. “Enough about Hank. Why didn’t you tell me you was comin’?’
“Didn’t know till yesterday.”
“Ain’t the season still on?”
“I got a week off.”
“So you thought you’d spend it in Oklahoma?”
“I can think of worse places.”
“Well, I missed ya, I’ll say that. I was hoping you’d say you was home for good.”
“Don’t look like Hank wants me home.”
“You buy him a couple horses, he’ll probably forget the whole thing.” Faye watched J.D. angle the car into the long driveway at the other end of the Double HL ranch with his left hand. He kept the right one unusually close. “You sure you got nothing else to tell me?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“You been fightin’ again?”
J.D. stroked his sore chin. “No, Ma’am.”
“I guess you ran into a wall, then.”
J.D. chuckled as he drove through tall stretches of sunflowers poking their heads up on either side of the dusty road. He pulled to a stop in front of a rusting sky blue trailer with a couple of cattle dogs sprawled in the yard. “I see Mack and Chase ain’t changed a bit.”
“I don’t fault them,” said Faye. “They did their time. Now they just want to lie in the sun.”
“Sure hotter than I remembered,” said J.D., glancing toward the sky. He leaned down to give each dog an ear rub. Chase lifted his head briefly and yawned. Mack grunted and rolled toward the shade.
“If ya came to see your family once in a while, it wouldn’t be so foreign to ya.”
J.D. wrapped his left arm around Faye’s thin waist and planted a kiss on her sunburned cheek. “You got me there.” He followed her up a pair of squeaky steps and into the small trailer. Faye circled the room, turning on a series of fans in succession. It took a few minutes before his eyes adjusted to the low light of the kitchen. He removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow with his good shoulder. “Well, ain’t this embarrassing?”
Faye came up behind him and gazed with pride at the walls adorned with jerseys, trophies and a dozen award plaques. “Took a lot of sweat to earn what you’ve earned, Johnny. I like to flaunt it. Not every woman can say she raised a Federal.”
“Don’t sound like much of a compliment in Kadele, Oklahoma. You might want to change that statement up a bit.”
“Ok,” said Faye with a chuckle, “a major leaguer. This is my wall, too, you know. I suffered through enough thirteen inning no hitters over the years.”
“That you did.”
“The rest is in your bedroom. You planning on staying over? I’ll have to clean things out. I’ve been bad about accumulating junk.”
“I can take the sofa,” said J.D.
“When are you moving to New York?”
“Feds don’t need me
till the end of the month.”
“Or you won’t be ready till then?”
J.D. shook his head. “Can’t pull nothin’ over on you, can I?”
“How bad is it?”
He rubbed his shoulder absent-mindedly. “Bad.”
“Quittin’ bad?”
“Now you know I don’t quit,” J.D. scoffed. “Doc’s got enough medicine to get me through the season.”
“They don’t care nothin’ about you, Johnny,” said Faye quietly. “You’re just a meal ticket to them. You ruin that shoulder, you’ll never rope cattle again.”
J.D. turned away.
“I know you ain’t mine, Johnny, but I’ve loved you like my own since the day your mama brought you into this world. I hate to see those rich men use you this way.”
“Ain’t as bad as you make it out.”
“Hear they paid you three million dollars.”
J.D. snorted. “I ain’t no Jeter.”
“It would have been nice to hear it from you, John.”
J.D. nodded and moved toward the kitchen, pulling an ice cold drink from the refrigerator. He picked up a brochure from the counter. “Retirement Village,” he read out loud. “You thinkin’ about movin’?”
“Maybe in a couple years,” said Faye.
“Thought you said you wanted to wake up to the sound of cattle.”
Faye shrugged. “Can’t have everything you want.”
“Sure you can. You just gotta want it bad enough.”
“Well then, I guess I don’t want it bad enough.”
“I do. I want it bad enough for both of us.”
Faye took another drag on her cigarette. “You don’t want this life.”
“Maybe I do.”
“You forget how hard it is to run cattle, Johnny.”
“I’m the one who sweated his way to the major leagues, remember? I ain’t afraid of hard work.”
“You got New York City dangling at your feet and you’d choose Kadele, Oklahoma?”
“I got some things to set straight.”
“You’re wasting your time feuding with Hank. He’s ready to die.”
“Not soon enough, if you ask me.”
