Kicks for a Sinner S3

by Lynn Shurr

  He had that goofy ear-to-ear Howdy grin on his face. Suddenly unsure, she glanced down at her body. “Are you laughing at my freckles?” They did spangle her everywhere not covered by makeup.

  “Nope. My grandma didn’t care for most of the children’s shows on television. She gave me Biblical dot-to-dots to do instead. I’m real good at connecting dot-to-dots.” He moved forward and ran a slightly swollen index finger from one freckle to another across her breasts.

  “My tummy, then? It’s not a flat as it should be because of having Tommy.”

  “I like the way it curves a little.” He ran his hand down its slope and wrapped a curl of that red pubic hair around his pinky. She had a bikini wax but not one of those bizarre jobs he’d seen on some of the groupies only too eager to show him.

  “So why are you smiling like that?”

  “Because you’re beautiful, and you’re mine.”

  Cassie flinched. She closed her eyes and remembered her first time with a man, with Bijou and with no others since that foul man made her his. He’d sung that old song to her their first time together. You’re sixteen, you’re beautiful and you’re mine. She realized now how sordid it had been, a man in his mid-thirties, scarred from bull riding, the moonlight glinting off his gold tooth, mounting her on a sleeping bag in his parents’ old, deserted house. He’d said the flattering words that a skinny, freckled girl with carroty-colored hair wanted to hear. She’d survived cancer same as Nell and doubted she would ever be attractive, ever be able to have children. She certainly proved that last worry wrong. Bijou hadn’t been rough, only insistent that they were meant to be together in this way because that’s what people in love did. She believed him.

  Bijou stroked her breasts and down between her legs. After the first few times, she’d come to enjoy his handling, but it got rougher as time passed. He didn’t want the baby, had tried to get her to abort him, and sometimes, the way he pounded against her, she thought he was trying to make her lose the child. Then, he’d traded her services to pay his gambling debts. Thank God, none of those men wanted a pregnant teenager. One had even given her money for a bus ticket home.

  “Cassie, am I doing something wrong?”

  She opened her eyes. The vision of the gold tooth vanished, replaced by Howdy’s slowly diminishing smile. They stood in a luxury hotel room, not some third-rate motel, the best Bijou ever got for her when they weren’t sleeping in the truck. The young man who had stepped back a pace was as decent as they came. She wanted to bring back his goofy grin. Cassie stepped forward and crushed her lips against his. She fumbled with his shirt buttons and the aggravating buttons of his fly eager to make him smile again.

  “Easy, Cass, easy. You like country-western music?”

  “Huh? Not so much. I heard a lot of it when I was barrel-racing on the rodeo circuit.”

  He stilled her frantic hands. “Do you recall a song about a wanting a man with slow hands. Cassie, I’m that man. I take my time. I’m not all flash and dash like Joe, so get used to it.”

  “I think I can.”

  “Good.” He lifted her onto the bed and gently spread her limbs, opening her to him, and worked her from the lips down and then from the bottom up, connecting all the dots, leaving none of them out.

  The cell phone placed on the elegant night table by her ear blasted When the Saints Come Marchin’ In. Cassie rolled over, checked the number. Mom. She cleared her throat and rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes before answering. “Hi, Mom. I’m fine, couldn’t be better. Don’t ask where or why. I am over twenty-one and entitled to stay out all night if I want. Yes, I had the brick and the condoms in my purse and got to use both. Am I trying to shock you? Yes. I’ll be home in a little while. No, I won’t be back in time for the eleven o’clock Mass. Yes, I’ll go to confession this week. Stop worrying. Later, okay?”

  Howdy, ready to go again, pressed up against her freckled backside and splayed his hands over the soft warmth of her breasts. He nuzzled her red hair aside and kissed her nape. She responded with a contented sigh and a quelling comment.

  “Hey, it’s ten a.m. We need to vacate the room at eleven. Besides, my mother is on my back.”

  “No, I am.” He gave her a small nudge with his erection. “So, there is at least one good thing about having no family, a lack of interruptions.” His cell phone rang, merrily spewing out the song, Oklahoma!

  “A show tune. Really. If it weren’t for last night, I’d still think you were gay.”

  “Brian’s idea of a joke. He programmed it for me. And speaking of the devil… Hi, Bri. Yes, I’m with Cassie. No, not at my place so don’t invite yourself upstairs. Yes, uh, yes and yes. How about you? Good. Look we need to check out of this place soon. None of your business. Yeah, see ya.”

  “Brian says hi. He hooked up with the bartender and is mighty mellow this morning.”

  “I could say the same about me. You know I have to go back to LSU tonight. My friends won’t believe what I did on my spring vacation.”

  “Fleeing from Mexican banditos or sleeping with me?”

  “Both are pretty spectacular. I’d say you scored two out of three field goals last night.”

  “Would have done better, but we only had the two condoms. I could kick my own rear for not bringing my own, but I didn’t think…”

  “I thought maybe and came prepared. I’ve been fighting off your cowboy charms for a while, but after that John Wayne act dragging me down into the arroyo and setting me straight in the van on the way home, I think you might be able to handle me.”

  “All I want?” He stroked her breasts and moved his hands southward.

  “In the shower. I can take care of your early morning urges with my nice, soapy hands since we’re out of protection. I don’t know where you suddenly got attitude, but I like it.”

  “John Wayne, The Quiet Man. Grandma didn’t approve of many recent movies, but she’d watch any John Wayne flick over and over. Have you seen it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “In this one scene Wayne, an American, drags his Irish wife off a train and marches her five miles back to their home when she tries to leave him. Very inspirational for a guy like me.”

  “I’ll get the DVD to see how it turns out.”

  “They get married and stay married.”

  She tensed under his hands. “Too soon, Howdy, too soon to mention those words even in a movie context. Let’s enjoy the moment in the shower and then go over to your place. You can show me your great big cactus. If I have to go to confession, I might as well make it a spectacular one.”

  Bumping her hips playfully against him for a second, she slid from the bed and sashayed into the first class bathroom. He followed the sway of her hips all the way to shower stall. Incredible what two people could do with some imagination, a bar of soap, and spray jets when they’d run out of condoms.

  Afterward, Cassie dried her hair with a wonderfully powerful hotel dryer while Howdy put on his wrinkled blue shirt and jeans and settled his gray Stetson into place for their march of shame in the same clothes worn last evening through the ritzy lobby. No one took the tiniest notice. This was, after all, New Orleans, a city of sin long, long before Las Vegas rose like a giant phallus out of the dry desert sands. Howdy squared the bill at the desk and turned in the key cards.

  “Beignets?” he suggested. “We can walk to the Café du Monde from here and still beat the church crowd from St. Louis Cathedral. Beignets are one of my favorite things about this city.”

  “Mine, too. Let’s go.”

  “Say, I’ll drive you back to Baton Rouge tonight. I know you have classes and all, but maybe we could get together next weekend.”

  Her peach-colored lips turned up at his uncertainty. “I’d like that.”

  “After finals, well, I want to take you to see my ranch in Oklahoma before I have to leave for training camp. It sits right near the Texas border and has its own spring that forms a little lake. We could swim and ride and do other th
ings. The house isn’t much, not like Lor—” No, he didn’t want to mention anything having to do with Joe or her exile from the place where Tommy lived and ruin this day.

  Whether she caught what he’d almost said or not, he didn’t know. He only heard her answer. “Sounds great. Let’s plan on it.”

  Cassie’s hair flamed under the sweltering morning sun, mid-April and already eighty degrees. Her golden dress glittered and drew the eyes of men as they moved through the French Quarter. Howdy kept a hold of her elbow, partly to steady her heels on the cracked sidewalks and partly to show possession, complete possession, of the beautiful creature he’d finally gotten into his bed—thanks to an assist from John Wayne. He didn’t hesitate to kiss the powdered sugar from her lips right there at an outside table with all the tourists watching and the cameras clicking. Because he was no Joe Dean Billodeaux, the paparazzi never followed him, but today he’d made the final score and won the game for sure.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Cassie called in advance because Howdy said it was the right thing to do. She asked Nell if they could stop on their way to Oklahoma and say bye to Tommy. They wouldn’t hang around and overstay their welcome. Nell gave surprisingly cordial permission for their visit without consulting Joe. She asked how finals had gone and when summer classes started much like the old days when she’d been Cassie’s counselor at the hospital, all very friendly and interested.

  “See, it’s just good manners, and those will take you a long way, Grandma said.” Howdy turned his red truck into the Lorena Ranch drive and the gates opened before them like the entrance to Heaven.

  The sometimes angelic Billodeaux children formed a circle under one of the ancient live oaks that had seen the Attakapas Indians and the Union Army come and go into history. Dean, using a pointed stick, drew something in the oak duff. They pulled alongside the group and got out.

  “Figuring out new plays?” Howdy asked.

  Tommy immediately detached himself from the ring and ran to hug his second mother around the waist. Howdy let them have their reunion in peace and distracted the other kids by looking at the scratches in the ground. “So what’s this?”

  “We’re figuring out the balance of power,” Dean said. “I heard about that on TV. See here are the boys, Tommy and me. Here are the girls, Jude and Annie. Dad is on his way to Laredo right now to pick up Xochi and Macho. Xochi goes here with my sisters. Tommy says Macho should be counted with the boys, but I say dogs don’t count in the balance of power.”

  “I think they could,” Howdy remarked. “A good dog won’t ever let you down. I had one once.”

  “Okay.” Reluctantly, Dean drew another stroke for the dog in the boy’s column. “See, Mama and Daddy found out we really are going to get three babies in the fall. One is for sure a boy. They could see his wiener. The other is a girl.” Dean marked the appropriate columns.

  “The third one won’t turn around and show itself, so it’s a mystery child.” He made a question mark to one side. “That one could upset the balance of power. I mean the guys are already behind if we don’t count the dog since Dad is bringing another sister home. What if number three is a girl. Then us boys will be way outnumbered.”

  Howdy nodded solemnly. “I see your dilemma. But, did you ever consider that your dad grew up with four older sisters and turned out fine?”

  “Yep, but he said it was H–E–Double L and a good thing he was a Dieudonne, a gift from God to MawMaw, so he had all the saints looking after him or he never woulda survived.”

  “I think your dad might be joking. I’d give anything to have brothers and sisters, even annoying ones.”

  With her hand stroking Tommy’s red hair, Cassie stood behind Howdy. When he made such statements, she always felt this little twinge in her heart. Throughout her leukemia treatments as a child, she’d never been alone, not one second. Open her eyes from a hospital bed and there sat her careworn mother, her hard-working father, an older brother reading a comic book, or an older sister painting her nails. The brother would offer to share his reading material even though he knew she loved celebrity magazines best, and her sister would go from embellishing her own hands to doing Cassie’s toenails, all to cheer her up. If Howdy became ill or injured, he had no one to take care of him, except maybe the Sinners if they felt he could recover and play again.

  “Tommy, Mr. Howdy and I are going to visit his ranch in Oklahoma for a few weeks. Then, I’ll be back in Baton Rouge at LSU again. I’ll take lots of pictures and bring you a nice present from there.” Three other sets of dark Billodeaux eyes stared at her hopefully. “I’ll bring all of you presents. We stopped to say bye and won’t stay long. I guess I should say hello to your mama now if your daddy isn’t home.”

  “I’m right here,” Nell said, coming through the grove.

  Cassie noted she’d already developed a waddle. “Hi, Nell, why don’t you look…”

  “Huge. Go ahead and say it. Into my fourth month and it might as well be my sixth.”

  Howdy leaned down and kissed her cheek. “You look beautiful, Miss Nell, glowing.”

  “Just Nell, please.” She looked pointedly at Cassie. “I wouldn’t let this one get away if he thinks pregnant women are beautiful. Howard, you are a keeper.”

  Tommy tugged at Nell’s maternity top, pulling the stretchy yellow knit tight across her belly. “Mama, can I go to Oklahoma with them? I’m outta school. I like to travel. I want to see Mr. Howdy’s ranch.”

  Nell regarded the young couple. Her nostrils flared a little, and Cassie wondered if she could smell sex on them the way Nell had once told her Nadine could from a mile away. They’d been at it before beginning their trip.

  “Not this time, Tommy. Xochi is coming home this afternoon, and you don’t want to miss her welcome party, do you? You and your dad and Mr. Polk will be the only ones she knows. Maybe next time.”

  Cassie caught that she hoped there would be a next time. Nell’s mood had softened with her pregnancy or maybe with the success of getting her together with Howdy. She suddenly realized that since arrival she hadn’t once searched for a sight of Joe coming from the barn or doing some kind of ranch work with his shirt off and his chest bare. In the past knowing Joe was gone, she would have hinted for an invitation to stay until he returned. Now, she found she’d rather be on her way to Howdy’s ranch for two weeks alone with a man she’d disregarded until recently.

  Maybe because she hadn’t pressed, Nell made an offer. “Would you like to stay to greet Xochi? The two of you could remain overnight, whatever kind of sleeping arrangements you want, and go to Oklahoma tomorrow.”

  Howdy blushed and stared at the toes of his boots. “Thank you kindly, Nell. Maybe we can stay for the party, but I’d like to get as far as Houston tonight.”

  Cassie’s delighted laugh drew the eyes of all the children. “You’ve embarrassed him, Nell.”

  “Well, I’m not your mother or even MawMaw Nadine telling you what you can’t do. Grownups do grownup things, and I think you two might have reached a new maturity since going to Mexico. Come on and help us finish getting ready for the party. Corazon made a Tres Leches cake and her special extra-cheesy enchiladas, plenty of chips, fresh salsa and dips, too. We got a great deal at the Party Place on leftover Cinco de Mayo decorations, streamers, big crepe paper flowers, a piñata, to make her feel at home. We could use a man to hang the streamers since Corazon and I are forbidden to get up on a ladder.”

  “Knox won’t do it for you?” Howdy asked, a little reluctant to stay.

  “He’s hiding out to escape being pressed into service, though he says he’s walking the perimeter and grooming the ponies before the onslaught of our summer guests in a few days.”

  “So Camp Love Letter is still going strong?” Cassie said referring to the cluster of cabins Joe had built to accommodate the families of seriously ill children and give them a vacation on his ranch.

  “Bigger and better than ever. We have a handicap ramp going down into the pool no
w. Every cabin is booked all summer.”

  “Camp Love Letter?” Howdy asked.

  “Joe’s charity. It’s a play on his name. In his carousing days he always told the ladies Billodeaux meant love letter in French. I suppose it is a corruption of the term. As long as he’s not using that line on other women anymore, I’m happy.” Like a Madonna giving them her blessing, Nell gazed benignly upon them with her hands clasped over her belly. “Stay for the party.”

  “Thank you, we will,” Cassie said simply.

  They swarmed to the house where Corazon trundled around the kitchen putting the finishing touches on the feast. “Here, you cut up some vegetables for the dips. The senora says always we must have something green. I say we already got guacamole.” She handed Cassie a paring knife and pointed to a bunch of celery and a pile of green peppers lying on the cutting board.

  Nell hustled Howdy into Joe’s vast den that had become more and more of a family room since the birth of the children. She pointed to the ladder in the center of the room and a festive piñata in the form of a burro ready to hang from the ceiling fan.

  “Tie it to the fan post, but let it drop fairly low so the children can reach it,” she directed.

  Once he had completed that task, Howdy moved the ladder to the corners of the room and fastened the streamers of red, green, and white to drape merrily across the cathedral ceiling. The girls scurried below him placing bouquets of gaudy red and yellow crepe paper flowers into any container they could find including several of Joe’s trophies. The boys seemed to feel they were above decorating and started in on the bean dip and tortilla chips until Nell sent them outside again with an “If you can’t help, go watch for your dad and Xochi.”

  Mission accomplished, Howdy folded the ladder. “I’ll take this out to the barn and make sure the boys don’t get into any trouble in the meantime.” He hefted it with ease, but very nearly knocked the vegetable-filled tray from Cassie’s hands as she entered the room.