Yellow Mesquite

by John J. Asher

  Harley’s dad brought out Uncle Jay’s old double-barreled shotgun. It was an ancient 12-gauge with worn scrollwork on the breech. Twin hammers stood straight up on either side. Harley and Uncle Jay had spent a lot of time quail hunting with that gun.

  “Aunt Julie asked me to give it to you,” his dad said. “He would want you to have it.”

  Harley took the gun, too choked up to say anything.

  At ten they dressed, Sherylynne in a plain black smock and Harley in a dark suit he had bought for the occasion.

  The church was a narrow one-and-a-half-story building with Sunday-school rooms in the basement, small windows at ground level, built years before from native rock. The patches of variegated ocher stone reminded him of reptile skin, and brought to mind the horned lizard Darlene had cut open when they were kids.

  The church seemed to crouch back from the highway, its second-floor double doors thrown open like waiting jaws. Wide stone steps reached down, broad concrete banisters like forearms—like the Great Sphinx of Giza. Harley thought he might paint it like that: a crouching reptilian avenger that would eventually receive them all.

  Cars crowded the church, parked all the way back to Raymond Dunn’s pasture fence. Harley was just as happy to let his family out near the entrance and park the Mercedes some distance back.

  Groups of men stood talking in the graveled churchyard. Most of the women were already inside. Harley followed his dad across the yard to a group of Mexicans standing off to themselves, the men holding their hats in work-weathered hands. Harley and his dad shook hands with each of the men, nodded respectfully to the women and thanked them individually for coming. The women bowed their heads and crossed themselves. The men nodded in turn. Lo siento, they murmured, looking at their feet.

  Harley and Sherylynne followed his mom and dad inside and were ushered to the front where four pews were roped off for family. His grandmother, granddad, aunts, uncles and cousins were present, as was Aunt Julie’s sister from Williamson County. The open casket sat before the pulpit on a bier of flowers. Harley studied Uncle Jay’s waxy nose and his dead slit eyes against the satin lining. Harley felt a little flush of guilt, wishing he could draw him.

  The minister sat behind the pulpit, solemn. The six pallbearers sat opposite the choir, two of them Uncle Jay’s longtime friends, old one-eyed Enoch Engleson and Dent McCaulley, both looking uncomfortable in new suits. He saw that Engleson had gone all out with a new black patch for his broken-egg-yolk eye.

  The pianist dinged a note on the piano. The choir rose and began to sing: “Rock of ages, cleft for me / Let me hide myself in thee…”

  Aunt Julie wept in her handkerchief. Other aunts, uncles and cousins sniffed and cleared their throats.

  The choir sat down and the preacher came forward. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the joyful knowledge that God has called one of His own home to eternal life in Heaven with Jesus Christ our Lord.” He went on to tell how Uncle Jay’s parents had walked from Pine Ridge, Tennessee to Burnet County, Texas in 1875, how their firstborn had died on the way, then how Grady Jay Buchanan was born in 1887 and in the tradition of his pioneering ancestors, rode horseback from Burnet County, Texas, west to Hardwater, when he was eighteen.

  The preacher continued: “When he was twenty-nine years of age, he married Julie Denison from Williamson County and they lived together in the union of holy matrimony these forty-eight years…”

  Harley looked at Uncle Jay. What he saw, this waxy imitation, had very little to do with the Uncle Jay he knew. What the preacher was saying had very little, either. A preacher could come in and give facts, but he couldn’t tell how it was. He could give the dates and name the names, but he couldn’t say what Uncle Jay really wanted out of his life, or if he ever got it. And the preacher wouldn’t tell about Uncle Jay’s wildness, not at his funeral anyway, or ponder out loud why Aunt Julie stayed with him all those years, or guess at how much money he’d spent gambling and drinking. Harley wondered what Uncle Jay’s last thoughts had been, dying the way he had, or how Aunt Julie felt about that?

  The preacher did mention Uncle Jay’s generosity, how at one time or another he had done something for just about every man, woman and child in the community, and Harley knew it wasn’t always a big thing, like his habit of slipping nickels to the little Mexican kids. The story had gotten around how he once threatened to wreck the business office at the hospital in Hardwater because they wouldn’t admit a Mexican woman in labor. Uncle Jay signed her in and paid the bill himself. There were very few funerals at the Baptist Church in Separation, Texas, with Mexicans mourning on the front steps. Catholics, no doubt.

  It wasn’t a long service. There was a prayer and the choir stood again: “What a friend we have in Jesus / All our troubles he will bear…”

  The pastor nodded to the pallbearers. Enoch Engleson rose, ill-fitted and gangly as Ichabod Crane in his new suit, his one good eye red as a stoplight. Engleson stepped down in front of the casket and stood stiffly at attention; then he turned and saluted Uncle Jay sharply, boot heels clapping together so hard he almost knocked his feet from under himself. The choir played on: “Do thy friends oft forsake thee / Is there trouble everywhere…” Harley realized Engleson was drunk as a coot.

  Engleson wobbled over and unhooked the little black ropes on the mourner’s pews. The Buchanan family filed out and passed before Uncle Jay’s casket with hushed throat-clearing and sniffing. When the last family member sat down, the congregation began to file by. The piano and the choir went on and on—“is there trouble everywhere…”—as friends and neighbors passed by in single file for a last look.

  Then he saw Darlene Delaney. Darlene Hinchley.

  She stood in line, moving along the wall, eyes downcast. She looked tragically grieved, big almond eyes heavy lidded and glistening wet, mouth drawn down at the corners. She turned and came toward the bier, cutting her eyes toward Uncle Jay as she passed, lifting one hand alongside her thigh to brush her fingertips against his casket.

  Harley watched in his peripheral vision until she passed from sight around the pews on the far right. He was flooded with guilt—Uncle Jay’s funeral, Sherylynne ready to give birth any moment, and here he was, obsessing over Darlene, another man’s wife.

  Then it was over.

  The pallbearers picked up the casket and walked it down the aisle with the piano playing and the choir singing and Aunt Julie sniffing. Enoch Engleson’s knees buckled, but Uncle George Thompson grabbed the casket and between them all they got Uncle Jay out the door and down the steps.

  Harley and Sherylynne were washed out with the crowd down into the churchyard. People milled about, talking in hushed tones. His mom and dad went over to help with Aunt Julie. People Harley had known all his life came up to him and Sherylynne, shaking hands—Travis and Bernadine, Frog and Bender, on and on—offering sympathies and congratulations on the pregnancy. The twins were surrounded by their girlfriends, the whole bunch boohooing.

  An old man limped up to Harley—stooped, mouth twisted, one eyelid drawn down toward the bony knob of his cheekbone. He respectfully removed his hat. A few strands of gray hair lay flat over a speckled skull.

  “Hidee, young feller,” he said from the side of his mouth. “You don’t know me, do ye?” He glared at Harley through little bright eyes, a twist of a smile pulling at the good side of his face. “Well, sir, I’m J. T. Blanket, a friend a yer kinfolk there in the box.”

  Harley nodded and shook the old man’s hand, brittle as a stick.

  “Hee-heee,” the old man wheezed. “Me and yer kinfolk there, we had us some times in our day. You bet’che we did. Now, I remember once in Hardwater, let’s see, must’a been back about nineteen-ten, we got after old Sheriff Biggerton in Jay’s Model T, chased him down the street, run one wheel plumb up on the boardwalk. Heeee, them sure was some good times, them days was.”

  “Yessir. I’ve heard him mention your name.”

  The old man bent toward Harle
y. “He tell you he stole that Julie Denison from me? Slick as a whistle. Heeee. By god, I got my shotgun down to go calling on ’im. Yeah, I did. Went calling on ’im.”

  “I don’t think he mentioned that,” Harley said. In his peripheral vision he saw Darlene and Billy Wayne talking with his mom and dad and Aunt Julie.

  “Well, sir, I never made it. I run inta old Enoch Engleson there, and he had a jug of whiskey, offered me a drank and, shoot, first thang y’know, I can’t find my ass with both hands… Ah, ’scuse me, young lady. Ordinarily, I don’t take kindly to rough talk in front of wimmen, but I ain’t as swift of mind as I use’ter be. Uh, now where was I? Uh, yeah, well, sir, me’n old Engleson, we got to dranking this licker like damn fools’ll do, and when he found out what I was up to—gonna pay a call on your kinfolk there with my shotgun and all, well sir, he got all uppity and we had us a big knock-down-drag-out. I busted that eye of his out with a stove poker.” Darlene and Billy Wayne stopped to talk with Mr. and Mrs. Delaney. “Hee-heeee. Well, that part was a accident, sorta. By god, you know what that son of a bitch Engleson done? Ah, ’scuse me, young lady—shot a hole clean through my dinner bucket. Heeee. You wanna see something? Here, lookit this here.” The old man put his hat on and pulled his shirttail out from where it was wadded up under his suspenders. His body was pale and hairless, his flesh a translucent yellow. A thick twist of a scar curled around one side of his navel like melted candle wax. “Right through the dinner bucket with a forty-five. Hee-heee.”

  Sherylynne looked away.

  “Mr. Blanket, Sherylynne’s not feeling too well.”

  “I tell you, that took the starch right outta me, that forty-five did.” Mr. J. T. Blanket stuffed his shirttail in and glanced around. “Where is that damn Engleson, anyway? I need a good drank’a whiskey, one fer yer kinfolk there in the box.”

  “He’s one of the pallbearers,” Harley said. “I think he’s gone to the cemetery already.”

  “Goddamn his sorry hide. Oh, ’scuse me, young lady.” The old man tipped his hat to Sherylynne and went limping away, muttering to himself.

  Sherylynne looked pale.

  “You all right?” Harley asked.

  She turned away, silent.

  “He’s an old man,” Harley said.

  Darlene and Billy Wayne had disappeared. His mom and dad stood with the twins, the four of them looking toward him and Sherylynne, ready to go to the cemetery.

  Harley put his arm around Sherylynne’s thick waist, and they walked over to where his family were waiting.

  They had started back to the car when he spotted Darlene again, standing with Billy Wayne and Mrs. Delaney, talking to Travis and Rosie. He was momentarily jolted, seeing the sun glint on the ankle chain above Darlene’s pump.

  They all got in the Mercedes and Harley eased it across the graveled yard, past Darlene and the others toward the highway. Billy Wayne glanced up. He looked downright startled, seeing Harley behind the wheel. Harley lifted the first two fingers of his right hand off the steering wheel, nodded once, hello, and drove on.

  THE BUCHANAN FAMILY stood under the canvas awning inside the cemetery walls.

  “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” monotoned the minister.

  In a field two miles distant, a long plume of dust rose behind Garland Bailey’s tractor and hung on the still air before slowly settling back to earth. Who might that be Garland was plowing up?

  A sudden breeze flapped the canvas.

  They let Uncle Jay down.

  Chapter 22

  Leah

  THE ENTIRE BUCHANAN clan showed up for lunch after the funeral—aunts, uncles and cousins, including several close friends who were considered family. They filled up the little house and stood out in the yard, holding paper plates of fried chicken, ham, potato salad, coleslaw, fried okra, sweet pickles and Jell-O salad. For the most part, they spoke in hushed tones; then someone would tell a story about Uncle Jay and they would laugh guiltily and shake their heads with a kind of dubious pride. Harley wondered if wives and husbands by marriage worried secretly about the family gene pool.

  Sherylynne had been quiet since the funeral. After lunch, when just about everyone had left, she went in and lay across the bed. Harley got their things together.

  “I hope this hasn’t been too much for her,” his mother said.

  Harley woke her when it was time to leave. Sherylynne barely said good-bye, then rode in sullen silence.

  In an attempt to lighten the mood, he reached across and patted her tummy. “This little turnip got that Buchanan blood pounding in his veins. Got a lot to live up to, this one does.” Sherylynne turned from him, looking darkly out the window toward a devil duster swirling manic in the mid-distance.

  “So? What’s up? You mad about something?”

  She turned, looking at him. “Why?”

  “You’ve been awful quiet.”

  She looked out the window again.

  Between Colorado City and Big Spring, she said, “I think it’s time.”

  “Time?”

  “The baby.”

  “You mean… Oh, shit! Maybe we’d better pull in at Big Spring and find the hospital.”

  “No, let’s get on inta Midland.”

  “Think you can make it?”

  “I can make it.”

  Harley pressed down on the accelerator. He had been cruising along at seventy, the speed limit, but now he kicked it up to eighty-five and ninety.

  “You doing okay?” he asked.

  She looked at her watch. “I can make it.”

  He slowed a little through Big Spring. “How we doing?”

  “Don’t call Carla Lynn until it’s over.” Carla Lynn was her mother’s closest neighbor with a phone.

  “Right.”

  “I guess you can call Wendell and Mavis. They’ll want to know.”

  In Midland Harley peeled off the exit with the tires squealing and drove directly to the emergency room entrance. He jumped out and ran up to the sliding glass door, where he was met by an orderly.

  “I need me a wheelchair out here!” Harley shouted.

  “Emergency?”

  “My wife, she’s about to have a baby!”

  Sherylynne got out of the car. Harley ran and caught her by the elbow and walked her inside.

  The orderly followed them through the glass doors. “Go put your car in the public parking,” he ordered.

  “Soon as I get her settled here.”

  The orderly went off mumbling about rich people thinking they could do whatever they damn well pleased.

  “Name?” the woman behind the admittance desk asked.

  “Harley Jay Buchanan.”

  “You the patient?”

  “No, no. My wife here, she’s about to have a baby.”

  “Oh. Obstetrics.”

  “Yes, ma’am. She’s about to have a baby.”

  The registrar turned to Sherylynne. “Contractions?”

  “About every five minutes.”

  “Name?”

  “Sherylynne Buchanan.”

  “Age?”

  “Eighteen. Almost nineteen.”

  “Ever been a patient here before?”

  “Look,” Harley said, “if you’ll just get her on in, I’ll answer all this stuff later.”

  “No,” Sherylynne answered. “This is my first time.”

  “Insurance?”

  “No,” Harley said. “I’ve got money, though.”

  The registrar looked over her glasses. “We require a five-hundred-dollar deposit and the balance on dismissal.”

  “I’ll give you a check right now. How about getting her in a room?”

  The woman looked at Sherylynne. “Date of birth?”

  “November the third, nineteen—”

  “Wait a minute,” the woman interrupted, thumbing through a sheaf of papers. “You’re Sherylynne Buchanan?”

  Sherylynne paused.

  “Oh.” The woman smiled brightly. “You can go right in. Y
our bill is all taken care of.”

  Harley stared. “What do you mean, ‘all taken care of’?”

  “Mr. Wendell Whitehead arranged it over a month ago.”

  “Whitehead— The hell he did!”

  In the same moment, Sherylynne bent, clutching her stomach. A gush of fluid ran down her leg onto the floor.

  “Good lord,” the registrar exclaimed.

  Harley shakily caught his arms around Sherylynne. “Dammit! I told you! Get her a doctor here!”

  The woman turned and punched an intercom button: “James, bring a wheelchair to emergency. James, a wheelchair to emergency.”

  Harley held Sherylynne as she leaned on the counter. Two nurses appeared as the orderly came through the door, taking his time with the wheelchair.

  “Call Dr. Lowe,” Harley shouted to the registrar.

  “Her water broke,” one of the nurses said to the orderly. “Take her up to prep.” The registrar got on the intercom again: “Dr. Vincent. Please report to the examining room in OB. Dr. Vincent.”

  “Her doctor is Dr. Lowe,” Harley said again.

  “Yes, we’ll try to reach him. Don’t go away; you still have to complete paperwork here.”

  “You better move that car,” the orderly said, and wheeled Sherylynne away toward the double doors.

  Harley glared after the orderly. A man appeared with a mop and a bucket as Harley went out to move the car.

  Half an hour later, he was the only one in the maternity waiting room. He went to the nurses’ station. “Has Dr. Lowe shown up?”

  “He’s here. Relax.”

  Harley went back and sat down. The clock seemed to have stopped.

  Presently a nurse stepped through the double doors. “Mr. Buchanan, Dr. Lowe would like to see you. Come with me, please.”

  Apprehensive, Harley followed her back through the double doors.