Marlena craned her neck to look at Howard.
“I heard about your baby.” Marlena clucked. “Such a shame. That sort of thing runs in families, doesn’t it? I mean, I always thought your daddy was a little . . . well . . . never mind.” She sighed. “He does have pretty eyes. That’s something, I suppose.”
Mary Dell’s neck turned red, and she felt the fingers of her right hand clench involuntarily. She wanted with all her heart to plow her fist into Marlena’s smug, lipsticked mouth and follow it up with a left jab directly at the bridge of her thin, pointy nose, but she restrained herself. Howard was too young to be exposed to that kind of violence. Besides, in the unwritten rules of verbal warfare among women, it is well known that the first one to lose her temper also loses the battle. Mary Dell wasn’t going to give Marlena the satisfaction.
Mary Dell opened her wallet and looked at the clerk. “What do I owe you?”
“Six dollars and eleven cents, ma’am.”
“Shoot. I’ve only got five-fifty. I’m going to have to run by the bank.”
“Maybe you ought to put the MoonPies back,” Marlena suggested in a sickly sweet tone. “Might help you take off some of that baby weight.”
Mary Dell turned to face her foe.
“Maybe,” she said with an icy smile, “but I’m still breast-feeding. It makes you awful hungry. Of course, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? Seeing as you’ve had Jack Benny feeding off you for thirty years.”
Marlena’s eyes blazed and the veins on her neck bulged.
“Well! Maybe if you and that sister of yours could manage to hold on to your men, you’d have enough money to pay for your groceries!”
Mary Dell picked up the beef jerky and handed it back to the clerk, who deducted it from the total.
“True,” she said in the sweetest possible tone. “It will be harder to make ends meet now. But I’ve got an idea how I can make more money than a porcupine has quills. I was thinking that I’d buy Jack Benny for what he’d bring and sell him for what you think he’s worth.” She smiled brightly. “That’d do the trick, don’t you think?”
Mary Dell looked at the clerk, who was working so hard to keep from laughing that his face looked like a blister ready to pop.
“That’s all right. You can keep the change,” she said, then wheeled her groceries and baby right out the door.
“That probably wasn’t the smartest thing I ever did,” Mary Dell said to Howard as she secured the seat belt around his seat and tugged to make sure it was tight enough. “Marlena holds a grudge longer than anybody I know. But I couldn’t help myself. I don’t care what people say about me, but anybody who talks mean to you or down to you had better be wearing an asbestos flak jacket, honey! Because I’m going to come at them a hundred miles an hour with my hair on fire and guns blazing! That is the way it is and the way it’s going to be!”
Howard blinked at his mother with innocent eyes. Mary Dell laughed and kissed him on the nose.
As they drove out of town, she said a prayer, asking God to look down from heaven, find a spot of peacock blue, and steer her to it. Or, barring that, toward something or someone who would help her family, fill their gaps, and teach her how to shoulder the burden.
“Take the wheel, dear Lord. Show me the way.”
She drove north and took highway 84 to Waco, but instead of continuing west when she got there, she felt a sudden urge to take the ramp to 35 North and did so, figuring that having asked for divine direction, it would be rude to resist. She drove north to Fort Worth, then west again through Wichita Falls and Childress, then north across the Oklahoma line, driving as long as she could between Howard’s insistent cries, then pulled into the parking lot of the nearest gas station or burger joint to feed him before setting off again. It was slow going with a baby on board.
When she crossed the Kansas border, well after dark, she was exhausted and Howard was howling. The Bluebird Motel promised clean rooms and free local calls, and so Mary Dell pulled into the driveway and checked in for the night.
CHAPTER 28
After Graydon replaced the spark plugs, the tractor ran fine for about a week and then conked out entirely.
Now Graydon lay on his back underneath the old John Deere, flashlight in hand, trying to locate the exact source of the oil leak that was causing the problem. Of course, the real problem, Graydon knew, was that the tractor was about forty years old. It belonged in a museum, not on a working farm. The Spreewell farm was quite a profitable operation, due in no small part to Graydon’s hard work. In spite of this, L. J. was too frugal to spring for a new tractor, not until this one finally fell to pieces.
The rich get richer. Maybe that’s how. By being so darned cheap.
Graydon heard the popping sound of rubber tires on gravel and wondered who it could be. Being so far from town, they didn’t get many visitors. He scooted out from underneath the tractor and walked around the back of the shed, wiping motor oil from his hands with an old bandana.
A car door slammed. He caught a glimpse of a face as he rounded the corner, and for a moment, just until the woman climbing out of the sedan stood up to reveal her full height, his heart pounded.
“Mary Dell?”
She turned toward him with a startled expression, which quickly gave way to a wide grin. “Hey, Graydon. You know, for a second I thought you were Donny. You two sure look alike.”
Graydon didn’t mention that he’d been thinking the same thing about her, how much she looked like Lydia Dale; taller and with more curves, but just as pretty. Nor did he mention how the sight of her had caused his heart to race.
“Have you seen him?” Mary Dell asked. “Donny?”
Graydon shook his head, surprised by the question. “Well, no. I sure haven’t. You don’t know where he is?”
The screen door to the farm house slammed, and L. J. walked out onto the stoop. His wife, Grace, followed close behind.
“My sister-in-law,” Graydon said by way of explanation and tipped his head in the direction of Mary Dell, who was bent over in the backseat of the car, getting Howard out of his car seat.
“Is the tractor fixed?”
“Working on it. I’m still trying to figure out where that oil is coming from.”
L. J. frowned.
Mary Dell, with Howard in her arms, smiled sweetly and said, “Oh, we won’t stay long, Mr. Spreewell. Just long enough to say hello and maybe give me a chance to change the baby; do you mind? We were in the neighborhood, so I thought it’d be nice to stop by and introduce Howard to his uncle Graydon.”
L. J. wasn’t convinced. Nobody stopped by his farm because they were “just in the neighborhood.” She had to have come out here for a reason. He didn’t like people taking his hired man away from his work, but the woman had come all the way from Texas, so he couldn’t very well say no.
L. J. looked at Howard, and his frown deepened. “Something wrong with him?”
Mary Dell’s bowed lips went flat and the smile left her eyes. “Not a thing,” she said.
Grace poked her husband in the back and stepped out from behind him.
“He’s a sweet little thing, isn’t he? Think I see a little of his uncle in him. Graydon, why don’t you take your sister-in-law out to your room, so she can change the baby and the two of you can visit. I’ll bring some refreshments out directly.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Mary Dell said, ignoring the look on Graydon’s face. “That’s real nice of you.”
Graydon walked into the shed that served as his living quarters a step ahead of Mary Dell, nudged an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s underneath the bed where she couldn’t see it, and quickly pulled the blanket up over the rumpled sheets.
“It’s kind of a mess in here,” he mumbled apologetically. “I don’t get much company.”
“Do you mind if I lay him down here to change him?” she said, nodding toward the bed. “He’s wet.”
Graydon sat down on the only chair, a wooden ladder-ba
ck with wobbly legs and a frayed cane bottom, to watch. He smiled when Howard, freed from the confines of his diaper, kicked his chubby little legs.
“Cute little fella. He’s sure got a lot of hair, doesn’t he? Donny did too, when he was born.”
Mary Dell slid a clean diaper under Howard’s bottom and looked up.
“You haven’t seen Donny, have you? He hasn’t been here?”
Graydon assured her that he hadn’t, reminding her they weren’t exactly on speaking terms.
Mary Dell sighed and nodded, as if to say she’d expected as much, then sat down on the bed with Howard in her arms and told him the whole story from the beginning, about how much Donny had wanted a baby, how excited he’d been during the pregnancy, what a blow it had been to him when Howard was born with Down syndrome, how Mary Dell had been so wrapped up in taking care of the baby that she hadn’t realized the depth of his distress, and, ultimately, how Donny had disappeared without a trace, leaving no word of his whereabouts until the letter had arrived, how much she needed some help with the ranch and why, though she knew her chances of success were slim at best, Mary Dell had decided to go looking for him.
Halfway through her story, Mrs. Spreewell dropped off a tray with lemon bars and a pitcher of iced tea, assuring Graydon that he could take his time and that she’d square things with L. J.
Mary Dell finished her story at the same time as she finished her tea.
“I planned on going to Midland first and then driving up to Lubbock, but something told me I ought to try here first. Guess I was wrong.” She shrugged, tipped her glass up to get the last drops of liquid, then took a bite of a lemon bar.
“Oof!” she said, and made a face. “That’ll put some pucker in your lips. Guess Mrs. Spreewell was running low on sugar. Didn’t have any in the tea either. I was so thirsty I didn’t care but, really, why would anybody drink unsweet tea if they didn’t have to?”
Graydon smiled and pulled on his nose. “Grace isn’t much of a cook. She’s nice enough, though. A whole lot nicer than her husband.”
Mary Dell nodded and scanned the sparse barrack of a room with her eyes. “Uh-huh. And you’ve worked for them all these years?”
“Never planned it out that way. I just figured to be here for a season or two, but . . .” He shifted his shoulders. “I guess it’s as good as anyplace. No worse, anyway.”
“Suppose not,” Mary Dell said. “Well, I guess I should get out of your way and let you get back to work. If you do see Donny, you’ll call me right away, won’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Well, first I’ll clean his clock, then I’ll call you.” He gave her a regretful look. “I’m real sorry about this, Mary Dell. For what it’s worth, I think Donny’s crazy to have run out on you. You and this sweet boy.”
He reached out and took hold of Howard’s hand. The baby curled his tiny fingers around his uncle’s thumb. Graydon grinned.
“Do you want to hold him?”
“Can I?” Graydon responded with a touching mixture of surprise and wonder, like a boy who has just been offered the keys to his daddy’s new car.
Mary Dell handed the baby to him, showing him how to support the baby’s head in the crook of his elbow.
“Hey, Howard. How are you there, son? I’m your uncle Graydon. What do you think about that?”
Graydon’s voice was low and gentle. When he looked up at Mary Dell, there were tears in his eyes.
“He’s perfect, Mary Dell. Just perfect. I know things are hard for you now, but on the whole, I think you’re a real lucky woman.”
“I think so too,” she said.
CHAPTER 29
Mary Dell turned the key in the ignition, laid her arm over the back of the seat, looked out the rearview mirror, and shifted the car into reverse.
“Well, Howard, I guess we’ll try Lubbock next. Graydon gave me a list of Donny’s old friends and hangouts. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
She backed the car up to turn it around and was getting ready to pull out when somebody started banging on the trunk.
“Mary Dell! Wait a minute!”
Mary Dell let out a little yelp and clasped her hand to her chest.
“Graydon! You about scared me out of my skin!”
Graydon opened the back passenger-side door and tossed an army-green duffel bag into the backseat, next to Howard.
“Sorry. I was afraid you’d drive off. Hang on a minute, will you? There’s something I’ve got to do. I’ll be right back.”
Without waiting for her response, Graydon ran toward the back door of the Spreewells’ house, letting the screen bang closed behind him. True to his word, he was back about a minute later. He jumped into the front seat and slammed the car door.
“All right. Let’s go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“To Too Much.”
Mary Dell stared at him. “You want to go to Too Much? With us? Why?”
“Because you need some help and I need a job,” he replied. “I just quit mine.”
It was near noon when they left the farm, so they stopped at a diner in Liberal to eat and discuss the possibility of Graydon’s employment at the F-Bar-T in greater detail. The waitress showed them to a booth in the back that was big enough to hold Howard’s car seat and then took their order: a bowl of chili with a side of cornbread for Graydon and a chef’s salad with extra Thousand Island dressing for Mary Dell.
“Four hundred dollars a month!” Mary Dell exclaimed after hearing his proposal. “I can’t pay you four hundred dollars a month.”
Graydon took another bite of chili and shrugged. “All right, two hundred. You sure drive a hard bargain.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant,” he said. “But I’m not doing this for the money. Donny left you in a lurch, and I want to help you out. Howard’s the only nephew I’ve got.”
“You’re sweet, Graydon. You really are. But none of this is your fault. I can’t let you leave a perfectly good job and turn your whole life upside down just on my account.”
Graydon leaned across the table and looked her in the eye. “First off, that job was a long way from good, and we both know it. Second, maybe it’s time my life was turned upside down.
“Do you know that you’re the first person, aside from the Spreewells, who’d been in my room since I’ve started working there? When you came through the door, I suddenly saw my life the way it must look to you—bitter bachelor cowboy, living in one dirty room, no friends, no future, nothing to look forward to. Just counting off the days, wasting my life, waiting for it all to be over.”
Mary Dell gave him a pitying look and started to say something, but Graydon lifted his hand to stop her.
“Don’t, Mary Dell. It’s nobody’s fault but mine. When things got too hard, I ran off and hid in a hole. Just like Donny’s doing now. Just like our daddy did when we were kids. When I was little, I always swore I wouldn’t turn out like him, but . . .”
He picked up the cream pitcher, poured a little into his coffee cup, and stirred it thoughtfully.
“Funny that I never saw it until now. Maybe that’s what Bebee men do,” he mused.
“The Fatal Flaw,” Mary Dell said quietly.
“What?”
“Nothing. Listen, Graydon, I can’t deny we could use your help, but . . . are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’ve got no love for Too Much, you know that. Once your lambs are born, your cattle go to market, and we can find somebody reliable to take over, then I’ll head on down the road. But I’d like to help you get through this rough patch, help you get off to a fresh start now that you’re on your own. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be a fresh start for me too.”
Mary Dell thought about this. She couldn’t deny that their meeting seemed to be timed by Providence and that his proposal was an answer to her prayers. And he would doubtless be better off working at the F-Bar-T than he was living in that nasty shed and working for that cranky Mr. Spreewell.
But she didn’t think it was fair that Graydon should be trying to make up for Donny’s mistake. Especially at a price of four hundred a month. That might be reasonable pay, or close to it, for a regular old hired man, but what Graydon was proposing was to really manage the ranch. Mary Dell had no doubt that he was up to the job.
“I’ve got to pay you more than you’re asking for,” Mary Dell said as she cut a chunk of tomato into bite-sized pieces. “I won’t let you do it for four hundred.”
“How about this?” Graydon countered. “You pay me the four hundred. If you have a good year, if the lambing goes good and the beef sells at a decent price, you give me three percent of the profits.”
“Eight,” Mary Dell countered.
“Five,” Graydon said.
“Done.”
“Done.”
Graydon nodded and resumed eating.
“Just one thing,” Mary Dell said. “Where are we going to put you? I’d let you stay with us, but we just have the two bedrooms. You could sleep up at the big house, it’s closer to the barns anyway, but since Lydia Dale moved in with the children, they’re pretty short on beds too.”
“I don’t want to stay in the house.”
The way he said it made Mary Dell think what he really meant was he didn’t want to stay anywhere Lydia Dale was. She understood his feelings, but they were bound to run into each other. And, anyway, that was all ancient history now. It was time he got over it. Time Lydia Dale got over it too.
Too bad there weren’t any extra bedrooms at the big house. Now that Lydia Dale was finally free from Jack Benny and with Graydon still single . . . well, she could think of worse ideas than throwing the two of them together. Damn, but he was handsome! But those Bebee brothers always had been.
“You got a tack room?”
Mary Dell jerked a bit, startled by the sound of his voice. “Beg pardon?”
“Do you have a tack room in the barn? If you’ve got a cot and some blankets, maybe a chair and table, I can bed down there.”
“In the barn?” Mary Dell frowned. “That wouldn’t be very comfortable. There’s no bathroom out there. No kitchen either.”
Between Heaven and Texas Page 15
