by Sarah Black
“I think until we know who it was and their crazy ass is locked up for life, there’s danger.” I jerked a thumb back toward the hospital. “And SpongeBob, over there, thought he deserved it? The Virgin of Guadalupe was bending him over her knee? Jesus Christ.”
“You heard that? Well, all I can say is he is not a cynical boy, despite living in California for all those years.”
“Maybe I am a bit controlling, but the urge to get him squared away is sometimes irresistible. We need to get home, and not just so we can keep Jesse safe. Buying the Bambi tapped out nearly half my reserves. Then we’ve got a charter plane to pay for, and I can’t even imagine the hospital bill. I’m not sure Jesse has health insurance.” I stared down at the bottle of beer in my hand. “We may have to start drinking PBR.”
“That’s a little extreme. In this family, we drink Shiner Bock, made in Shiner, Texas.”
We both sat back, let a waitress set a plastic basket of fried hush puppies on the table. “You boys can snack on these while we’re fixing your supper.” She gave me a curious look, thinking I might be a movie star, one of the uglier ones, because for sure she had seen my face before. And not just my face, I thought, and hoped she was kept too busy delivering food to think on it.
“I can always get a job,” I said. “At least make sure we get caught up on the bills.”
“Didn’t Jesse sell his painting to those museum people?”
“He said so, but you can be sure Sam took his cut, and then the IRS was right in line behind him. And he’s been staying in New York and DC, doing whatever promotion Sam arranged. I can’t imagine there is a whole lot left. And I would bet he has no idea how much there is, or even where it is.”
“If they gave him anything at all.” I looked up at this. “I got the feeling he contracted with them to do the whole series of eight cowboy angels. Though how in the hell he is going to top this one is beyond me.”
I closed my eyes, took a long swallow of Shiner Bock, and ate a hush puppy. “Hey, those are good!”
He tried one. “Damn! Somebody in the back’s frying hush puppies in lard. This is my kind of place.”
I closed my eyes again, rested my head in my hands. Lard? Did the old man have any idea what his cholesterol reading was?
“Lorenzo, you don’t need to worry about all this.” I looked up at him. “I may have been retired for twenty years, but I love a simple life.” He stared at my blank face. “And I’m still getting royalties from my comics, which are running today in the Stars and Stripes. We’ve got enough, unless Jesse tries to buy the Queen Mary to float out back in the Rio Grande.”
I smiled at him. “First thing the guys did when we got the paper was open up the Stars and Stripes and look for Jarhead. Then they looked for Devil Dog.”
“Son, you need to do what you came to Marathon to do. Get your comic off the ground. We seem to have derailed somewhat, these last few months, but let’s keep our eye on the ball here. Let’s do what you came here to do, and we’ll just both batten down the hatches and work through whatever Hurricane Jesse blows our way. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” I ate another hush puppy and thought it might be the best food in the world, bar none. Then I sat back while our waitress loaded up the table with ribs and steaks and coleslaw and potato salad.
When we were leaving, I asked the waitress if we could take a small order of ribs and potato salad back with us, for my friend in the hospital. She must have put it together then, because when she brought the food out, she gave me a little hug, said to remember that Jesus loved me. “And tell that boy in the hospital too.”
“Thank you. I will.”
“My son’s in the Army. He’s somewhere over there. I don’t know where exactly.”
The Original put his arm around her waist, gave her a squeeze. “It’s the mothers suffer the most.”
“Yes, sir, that’s true.” She handed him a little brown bag, grease staining the bottom. “Here’re a couple of extra hush puppies. I saw how much you liked them.”
He tipped his hat, strolled out of the place with his old back a little straighter. Texas charm. Cowboy angels, they were everywhere.
Epilogue
THE house was full of people. We were having a launch party, because Devil Dogs at War was live in a hundred papers across the country, and Uncle George had most of a pig on the barbecue pit in the back yard.
Jesse had finished the second painting, and he called this one American Angels. It was as different from the first painting as a painting could be, and the museum was worried. “No, you’re going to love it, I promise.” He was on the phone to Sam. “Yes, he’s in it. Nope, fully dressed. Look, Sammy, I can’t paint that one again, you know? I just…. You’ve got to trust me.” He looked at me, shook his empty beer bottle in my direction. “You’ll get it when the paint dries. A week, okay?”
He closed the phone, and I handed him another beer. “Sammy said give you some hugs and kisses from him.”
“Yeah, I bet.” I hadn’t said a word about Sam continuing to represent Jesse’s paintings. After some private soul-searching, I thought maybe Jesse was right, and I just had some extra mad I hadn’t used up. And I was trying not to act controlling. But I still thought Sammy was a fuckhead, and trying to crawl back into Jesse’s bed.
“Can I see it?”
“Yeah. It’s out in the studio.”
We walked out to the porch, and Anna-Maria, Miguel’s little daughter, saw me and came running, her arms raised. “Uncle Mary!” She was four.
She adored me, and I had been Uncle Mary since we’d posed for Jesse’s painting. I spent a lot of time carrying her around Marathon on my shoulders, and I was starting to understand a little better Jesse’s blind spot for Sadie. “Hey, apple blossom! Ready to go see our painting?” I swung her up on my shoulders.
American Angels was long instead of tall, and it showed a wide sweep of Texas countryside, the verdant and beautiful hill country. A group of people were having a picnic under a pecan tree. There was Uncle George, The Original, me, Anna-Maria, and Miguel. Anna-Maria was wearing an adult-sized Army fatigue cap, with the double silver bars of a captain, her chubby little arms holding the hat in place on her head. She was laughing up at her father. It looked like a sweet all-American scene, a Texas scene, but then you saw the grave, up on the hill. He’d painted it so it was just a little less bright than the rest of the painting, so your eye wasn’t drawn to it first. And then your eye slid over it, a plain white cross, a military cross, and in front of it was a photo of a young woman in uniform, smiling, with Anna-Maria’s face, all grown-up.
Anna-Maria’s mother was not actually dead. She was in the kitchen, making salad, and Miguel was not very happy with Jesse about this painting. She was a reserve nurse, and had been back from her last deployment for three months, but Miguel was convinced painting her already in her grave was the worst sort of omen. Jesse had made quite a few trips out to his favorite Bathtub Mary, trying to make it right.
But it was a brilliant painting, full of beauty and life, haunted by an American angel. Anna-Maria pointed to herself in the painting, wearing her mom’s cap, and then she found me. “Uncle Mary! There you are!”
“Yep, there I am. You want to come over to my side and draw something?”
I set her up with some paper and a marker, watched while she tried to draw a picture of the Devil Dog on my arm. “You’re gonna be a cartoonist when you grow up, right?”
She hopped from one foot to the next in excitement. “No! No! I’m going to be a nurse, like my mommy. I will take care of you if you go to the war. I will take care of everyone who goes to the war.”
I picked her up and sat her down on my lap, let her draw a pony on my hand with her marker. There would be a war somewhere for her. I closed my eyes, said a little prayer. Please, let there not be a war for her.
“She’s pretty good for four,” Jesse said, studying the pony. Anna-Maria had been fetched by her mom for her nap. We could hear her wailin
g all the way across the yard. “Better than I was. Maybe I should start teaching her to paint.”
“I like the new painting.”
“It’s not as good as Death of a Grievous Angel.”
“It’s not as shocking. It’s not in-your-face, like the first one was. But it’s beautiful, Jesse. It’s going to be more popular. People are going to feel this one, take it to their hearts.”
“You think Miguel is going to forgive me? He really seems mad this time.” I looked at him. “He’s been mad at me before, lots of times.”
“I believe that. I think he’ll get over it. Eventually. Probably.”
JESSE drank three beers and got weepy, loving us all, so I put him to bed to sleep it off, walked around Marathon with Miguel and Uncle George. Looking for strangers. Looking for trouble heading our way. Miguel broke the silence. “Have you heard anything from the FBI?”
I shook my head. Uncle George gave a quiet grunt. “I don’t believe they’re still looking, tell you the truth.”
“Maybe we just need to stay down here, keep quiet. Keep our heads down. We can keep him safe in Marathon.”
I looked at both of them. “This is America. He should be able to go into town if he wants.”
Uncle George put his hand on my shoulder, the same gesture The Original made when he didn’t know what to say. “You just keep watching his back.”
I went back home, lonely all of a sudden for Jesse. They walked on in silence, watching night fall across Marathon. The Original was on the porch, and he raised his bottle of Shiner Bock in a salute as I went into the house. Jesse was in bed, but he scooted over when I climbed in. I pulled him into my arms, and he curled up against my neck.
“Tell me you love me again.”
“I love you again. Maybe more today than I did yesterday.”
“Really?” He smiled up at me, sleepy-eyed. His hair was growing out since we’d been home, and it was falling across his forehead, down into his eyes. I wrapped a piece around my finger. Like honey, or sunlight. Soft as corn silk. “I love you too. Mary?”
“Yes?”
“Okay, now, don’t get mad, but do you remember that riata?”
“I remember you took a picture of me with the thing wrapped around my waist. Dangling down around my balls.”
“I was thinking about the next painting.”
I sighed. “Of course you were. Don’t you think America has seen enough of my balls? No, forget it. I don’t want to know. Just do it. Do whatever you want to do.”
“Mary?”
“What?”
“Have you ever worn chaps?”
“Jesse, I swear….”
He was up on his knees now, putting his beautiful hands on either side of my face. “Okay, just listen. I’m going to call it Rodeo Angels. Or maybe Ride of the Rodeo Angels. I don’t know yet. Just think about it. We could get Gary to make the chaps, do the designs. You know, roses, and little cowboys on bucking broncos, designs like that. Like the shirts Roy Rogers used to wear.”
Chaps? With little bucking broncos? Oh, God. I closed my eyes. “I am not getting on a bull for you, my friend. Don’t even ask.”
He was quiet above me, and his fingers started moving over my face, tracing the lines of my mouth. “Okay. I won’t ask, zo-zo.” He thought a moment, his fingers in my hair. I opened my eyes, looked up at him. “You could be one of the clowns. Wearing the chaps and holding off the bull with the riata. Bare butt, and I could put a little tattoo on your ass. That would be cool.”
I stared at the ceiling, and he snuggled down against me until I could feel his warm breath against my neck. There was nothing I could say. Inside this house, we were warm and loved. A couple of old men sat on the porch, enjoying the silence, keeping watch so we could sleep. I could smell a pot of coffee on the stove.
About the Author
SARAH BLACK is a fiction writer living in Boise, Idaho, and a retired Naval officer.
Visit Sarah’s blog at http://sarahblack5.livejournal.com and her website at http://www.sarahblackwrites.com.You can contact her at [email protected].
Also from Sarah Black
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Copyright
Marathon Cowboys ©Copyright Sarah Black, 2011
Published by
Dreamspinner Press
382 NE 191st Street #88329
Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art by Anne Cain
This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the Publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
Released in the United States of America
November 2011
eBook Edition
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-135-3
Table of Contents
Title page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
About the Author
Also from Sarah Black
Copyright
