Damn! That came out in my mother’s Georgia charm voice and I didn’t mean for it to.
“Likewise, I’m sure,” Martha Jane said. “Dinner is at the final stages. Pull up a chair, Pearl, and we’ll visit in the kitchen while the men catch up on cows and ranchin’ in the livin’ room. Five minutes, tops, darlin’, and your chicken will be ready.” Martha Jane tiptoed to kiss her son on the cheek.
She doesn’t like me. Not that it matters a tiny rat’s ass, but I’m about to get a crash course third degree from her and the sisters and my knees are still shaky from that blistering kiss.
She sat down at the end of the kitchen table. The roosters all glared at her with their beady little black eyes and promised that if she didn’t answer all the Marshall women’s questions honestly, they’d come alive and commence to pecking her to death.
“I can see why he calls you Red,” Amelia said.
“He’s the only one that can get away with it. I’m Pearl to everyone else.”
Damn! They’ll think I’ve already got my dukes up and drawing the lines for a fight with them.
“I think it’s cute and so are you,” Amelia said. “We are grateful that you were willing to save his sorry hide, even though he would have gotten set free without your word. But you didn’t know that and we are glad you drove over there. Besides, he needed a ride home. It’s the first time he’s been in any kind of real trouble and it probably scalded his pride to have to ask for a woman’s help.”
“Don’t pay any attention to her,” Carleen said. “She’s always been jealous of him.”
“I have not. I’m not jealous of either of you,” Amelia argued.
“So he’s the baby?” Pearl asked.
“Oh, yes, he sure is. You ever hear that song by Blake Shelton called ‘The Baby’? Well, that is our dear little brother. Momma’s last chicken and the prized Texas boy child. He can do no wrong. I actually feel sorry for the woman who gets him,” Amelia answered.
“That’s a bunch of hog shit,” Martha Jane said. “I loved you all just alike. He just came along when we’d given up hope of another child or a son and you two were ten and twelve so you were a lot older. I had more time to spend with him.”
Carleen stuck a spoon down in the mashed potatoes and carried them to the dining room table. “That’s right, Momma. But I have to agree with Amelia on feeling sorry for the woman that gets him.”
“Why?” Pearl asked.
“Neither of us can imagine how tough it will be to live up to his momma’s standards in cookin’, raisin’ kids, or cleanin’ house. She’s perfect and that’s what he’ll be expectin’ from his wife,” Carleen said.
Martha Jane picked up a platter piled high with fried chicken and carried it to the table. “I’m not perfect, and Wil wouldn’t expect that from a wife. But hush, now. You’ll embarrass Pearl.”
“You look like you could go toe-to-toe with him and come out a winner,” Carleen whispered on her way to the table with a casserole of candied sweet potatoes.
“If I couldn’t I wouldn’t be here,” Pearl whispered back as she stood up and reached for a dish of steamed broccoli to tote to the table.
“Jesse?” Martha Jane said.
“There’s the dinner bell,” Jesse said. He took his place at the head of the table. Martha Jane sat on his right with Amelia and then her husband next. Carleen’s husband took the other end of the table with Carleen to his right. Wil pulled out a chair beside his sister and seated Pearl before taking his customary place to his father’s left.
After Martha Jane delivered a very brief grace, Jesse picked up the platter of chicken and passed it to Wil. He took a leg and passed it on to Pearl who forked a leg and sent it on to Carleen who took a piece of white meat and handed it over her shoulder to one of the grandchildren. That kid took a piece and sent it on to the next kid who did the same and gave it back to Carleen’s husband.
The system was strange but efficient. Everyone talked at once and before long Pearl’s plate was loaded with a true old southern Sunday dinner. She dipped into the candied yams first and watched to see if anyone picked their chicken up with their fingers or if they cut it off the bone with a knife.
“We aren’t very formal around here,” Wil said as he picked up a chicken leg and bit into it. “Momma, you have outdone yourself.”
“Don’t thank me. Carleen fried the chicken. I just made the biscuits and the sweet potatoes,” Martha Jane said.
Pearl could see which DNA strands had wrapped firmly around each of the Marshall children and decided that Wil had gotten the best from both his parents.
She picked up a leg and bit into the thick end. “My momma is from Georgia. Fried chicken is her specialty, and even she would admit she couldn’t compete with this. You done good, Carleen.”
“She had a dang good teacher. I’ve been trying to get her to teach our daughters, Janey and Mesa, to cook,” Amelia’s husband, Thomas, said.
Amelia shot him a look. “You have decent meals so don’t be whining.”
“You have a wonderful cook and my belt size testifies to that. I’m not complainin’ one bit, darlin’. The work you do on the ranch couldn’t be done if you didn’t have help.” He soothed her ruffled tail feathers with a soft voice and a pat on her shoulder. “But the girls need to know how to cook. They might not find a husband who can hire a cook and a housekeeper.”
Matthew blushed but covered it well. Carleen patted his leg under the table. Pearl didn’t miss either gesture.
“So I take it you like to cook?” Pearl asked Carleen.
“Love it. It’s good that I have three big strapping boys to eat up all my fun.” She nodded toward the other table. “The one on the far end is Tony. He’s fifteen.”
Tony looked up and waved a hunk of chicken at her. He looked like a younger Wil. Tall and lanky with a bone frame that would take a few extra pounds to look really good, but if that plate of food was any indication of how he ate every day, it wouldn’t take him long.
“He’s already into the rodeo circuit for junior riders and plays high school football for Chico. And that’s Corey next to him.”
Corey smiled tightly. He’d just shoveled a forkful of potatoes in his mouth. He was a strange mixture of his parents with brown hair and piercing blue eyes.
“He’s thirteen and into baseball and is our brilliant child when it comes to books,” Carleen bragged.
“And the one beside him is Ricky.”
Ricky nodded. He was a good looking kid. When he grew up his parents had better invest in a few two-by-fours to beat the girls off the porch.
“He’s only twelve and he’s our computer geek, like his dad. He doesn’t like the sports. No girls to teach to cook, although Ricky does help me sometimes if it’s something he really, really likes to eat,” Carleen said.
“And the other three over there are mine,” Amelia said from across the table.
The oldest girl at the other table stood up. “I’m Janey and I’m disgusting. I can’t cook and I hate to clean. I go to Texas A&M to study pre-vet. I live on Ramen noodles with peanut butter in them for dessert. And I put catsup in them for pseudo-spaghetti. I’m twenty years old and someday I’m going to marry a rich man who can hire a cook for me.”
Pearl winked at her and she smiled back.
The girl next to her stood up. “Welcome to our dysfunctional family, Pearl. Or is it Red? Anyway, my name is Mesa and I’m disgusting too. I’m eighteen years old and I’m a senior at Chico High School and I’m in love with a boy that works on our ranch and we’re going to get married next summer. Momma is trying to talk me out of it. Daddy is finding out about it right now, and I picked this time to tell him so everyone will know if Jason dies that Daddy had him killed. I’m going to be a June bride so everyone can mark their calendars and start thinking about a present.”
“What the hell?” Thomas’s face turned crimson.
“Shhhh.” Amelia squeezed his thigh. “It’s a passing fancy. Don’t worr
y.”
A boy waved. “And I’m the baby like Uncle Wil and I’m the only one who’s not disgusting. I’m sixteen and I’m Tye and my sisters say I’m spoiled even worse than Uncle Wil, but I don’t believe it because nobody can spoil a boy like Granny. I play football with Tony at Chico, and Daddy, I think Mesa is dead serious so you’d better open up your billfold and dole out the cash for a big wedding.”
Thomas cut his eyes across the wide room at Mesa, but she had her head down, concentrating on buttering another biscuit.
“Well, that was enlightening,” Martha Jane said in a tight voice.
Pearl could have kissed Mesa for taking the heat off her. Now they’d remember the dinner as the one where Mesa announced her engagement to the family and not the one where Wil brought home the owner of a motel.
“We’ll discuss it when we get home,” Amelia muttered under her breath.
“Yes, we will, and it’s not happening,” Thomas mumbled back.
Janey waved and got Pearl’s attention. “Tell us about you now.”
Pearl wanted to stand up and say that she was disgusting. She’d challenged Marshall’s only son to a Jack Daniel’s whiskey contest, wound up drunker than Cooter’s owl, and then had a wonderful night of wild sex with him, found out he was a helluva lot of fun on a run of dates, had an ultra romantic side in a candlelit hayloft, and could make her body hum no matter where they made love.
She controlled the impulse and said from a seated position, “I’m Pearl Richland. Wil calls me Red and I don’t like it but after he stayed up with me all night and woke me up every hour to make sure I wasn’t in a coma, I told him he could call me that and I won’t go back on my word. But if anyone else thinks they’re big enough to call me anything but Pearl, they’d better bring their lunch because the fight is going to last all day. I own the Longhorn Inn because my Aunt Pearlita died almost two months ago and left it to me. I was an executive banker in Durant until I decided to run the motel.”
“Is that all?” Carleen asked.
“What else do you want to know?”
“Ever been married?”
Pearl shook her head slowly and shoveled sweet potatoes into her mouth. Maybe that would be the only embarrassing question. She could hope, even if it was a 10 percent chance. After all, it was only a two-minute marriage and that barely qualified as a white lie.
“Engaged?” Amelia asked.
Pearl held up one finger.
“That mean one engagement or wait until I swallow?”
She did swallow and then took a sip of tea. She might as well spit it out even though it wouldn’t help Mesa one bit. “It means that I did something very stupid after my senior year on the rebound. I eloped but I’d barely said I do when Momma caught up with us. She took me home and annulled it the next day. The day after that we went to Savannah and I spent the summer with my Aunt Kate.”
Wil stiffened beside her.
Get off your high horse, big boy. You can’t tell me you never did anything stupid and if you do, remember that I know Rye well enough to ask him, Pearl thought as she sipped sweet tea.
“Did a summer with Aunt Kate convince you your mother was right or make you want to run away with the boy again?” Thomas asked.
“Oh, honey, Aunt Kate did both. Let’s just say she is very influential and by the end of the summer, I knew my husband for two minutes was not the boy I thought he was and that he had his eyes on my daddy’s bank account. But she didn’t convince me Momma was right. Not that summer. It took a couple more before I’d admit it and I still haven’t in Momma’s presence.”
“Can I have your Aunt Kate’s address or at least her contacts?” Thomas asked.
Mesa looked up and caught Thomas looking right at her. She narrowed her eyes and said, “Won’t do a bit of good, Daddy. I’m not eloping. I want the big wedding and the big cake and all the hoopla, and I want a small house out on the back forty. We’ll build on next year when our first baby is born. Don’t look so pale. I’m not pregnant but we’re having kids right away. Jason is twenty-one and we want to be young parents.”
Wil chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Amelia said.
“You’d better send her to Carleen so she’ll know how to cook. I don’t expect Jason is making enough to hire a cook and housekeeper, is he?”
“She’s not getting married this summer. She’s going to college with Janey next year. Subject closed,” Thomas said from between clenched teeth.
Mesa gave her father a tolerant smile. Pearl recognized it because she’d used the same expression at least a gazillion times when she was eighteen and so much wiser than either of her parents.
He glared back at her. “I mean it.”
“I’ve got a question for Pearl. How do you feel about Uncle Wil?”
“Mesa Joanne! That’s plumb rude,” Amelia said.
“And asking her about a personal nickname and her marital status isn’t?”
Pearl winked at her. “Your Uncle Wil is one helluva cowboy.”
Mesa winked back. “A real one like Conway Twitty sings about?”
Pearl knew exactly what she was talking about. Conway Twitty had a song out years and years ago that said not to call him a cowboy ’til you’d seen him ride. Mesa was asking if she’d been to bed with Wil and knew if he was a real cowboy.
“Maybe,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders.
“What was that all about?” Wil asked.
“That, darlin’, is personal between me and your sweet little niece.”
Mesa giggled. “Is it a secret?”
“My lips are sealed.”
“What are you two goin’ on about?” Wil asked again.
“It’s between us and what goes on at a Sunday dinner is confidential, right, Mesa?”
“Hell, yeah!”
“Gretchen Wilson, ‘Redneck Woman,’” Pearl said.
Mesa gave her a thumbs-up sign. “That’s me. I may leave my Christmas lights up all year just like she says in that song.”
Pearl turned back to the adults. Thomas was grumbling to Amelia. Matthew was grinning. Carleen was telling him not to get too smug because he had three boys on the way to the altar in the very distant future. Martha Jane was staring at Pearl.
“So why did you say you quit your job at the bank?”
“I got tired of sitting on the side of the desk that gave out loans to young folks trying to start up businesses. I’d been thinking about doing something that would make me my own boss for a while and then my aunt died and left me the motel. Seemed like an omen.”
“I see,” Martha said. The tone didn’t match the chill in her voice and she could almost hear Lucy’s voice over her left shoulder telling her to get the hell out of Bowie and scoot right on back to the Longhorn as fast as she could.
“Hey, Wil, how’s that new bull? Is he going to be worth what you paid for him?” Matthew changed the subject abruptly.
“I didn’t get him. The man called from California the morning I was leaving and told me the bull, along with several other cattle, had been rustled.”
“That’s too bad. I was lookin’ forward to seeing him,” Matthew said.
The conversation went to bulls, buying cattle, and running ranches and Pearl sighed in relief. The warmth in her chair actually dropped from six degrees above hell’s hottest recorded temperature down to barely warm as the spotlight faded from her and onto a tractor out in the barn.
Don’t think it’s over just because you are out of the hot seat, Aunt Pearlita’s voice came through loud and clear in her head. You’ve still got dessert and visiting to do before you can go back to the motel.
Wil chose that moment to push his plate back a few inches and throw his arm around the back of her chair. He leaned over and whispered, “Want to take a ride around the property and have dessert later?”
She nodded.
“If y’all will excuse us, I’m going to give Pearl a tour of the ranch. We’ll have dessert when we get back.
”
“But I thought we’d set two more tables and have a canasta play-off,” Martha Jane said.
“You’ve got enough here for that without us. Besides, Pearl is a sorry loser and she’ll throw the cards if she doesn’t get a good hand.”
“Thank you for a lovely dinner. Truth is I really am lousy at card games other than poker, but he’s not telling the truth about me throwing them. I usually just hide the bad cards and cheat,” she said.
Martha gasped.
Mesa laughed out loud. “Want some company?”
“No, we do not!” Wil said.
The last thing that filtered through the noise as Wil was shutting the door behind them was Mesa saying, “Don’t worry about her red hair, Granny. It’s not serious.”
Chapter 18
The sun was out when they stepped outside. The sky was that strange shade of blue that only comes in the winter, not robin’s egg blue but not the crystal clear blue of a Texas summer sky. A few marshmallow clouds moved across the sky as if they had nowhere to go and a lifetime to get there. A couple of buzzards looked down from the utility poles bringing electricity and phone lines into the house.
Pearl pulled her shawl tightly around her shoulders and settled down into the passenger seat of the truck, wishing she’d brought along a heavier coat. Mesa’s comment worried through her mind like a hound dog with a fresh ham bone. She didn’t know whether to bury it and dig it up later to gnaw on or to ask Wil what Mesa meant. His answer might open a can of worms, so she kept her mouth shut while he drove around the house and down a road toward the back side of the ranch.
Describing the bumpy path they were on as a road was using the word loosely. It had tire tracks with grass growing up between them and ruts big enough to shake all that greasy fried chicken right down to her thighs. She’d have to run all the way to the last red light in Henrietta that evening to take off as many calories as she’d inhaled.
“My folks’ spread is twice as big as mine. I’ve only got a section of land, six hundred and twenty acres. They’ve got two sections. A mile to the back, two miles of road frontage. Mine runs a mile each way but someday when the neighbors get ready to retire I’m hoping to have enough saved back to buy their place and it will double. By then I’ll have to have more than one full-time hired hand, though. So how did you like my family?” Wil asked abruptly.
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