It was odd that the wolf was alone. Wolves usually ran in packs, or at least in pairs. Maybe this one was flawed in some way, banished from the group, prowling alone the vast shadowland of the lunar night. The wolf had about it an otherworldly presence, and Harley understood why Native Americans assigned to them powers of the supernatural. He could imagine a spirit from the other side presenting itself to him in the form of this wolf. Uncle Jay, or Mavis; this wolf, bold and fearless and mysterious. Audacious was the word the encyclopedia used, though that reminded Harley more of Sidney than Uncle Jay or Mavis. With a jolt, he felt certain that Sidney was dead. He paused, paralyzed by the mysteries of existence. He took a deep breath, told himself he was strung out, his imagination running amok.
Then, slowly, released of fear, he knelt and made a long, low howling sound: “Ay-oooooooooooo.”
The wolf pricked up its ears. It loped off some distance, then stopped, watching him.
“Ay-oooooooooo,” Harley howled. The sound rose and fell across the long, night-shadowed country.
The wolf bolted.
Harley leaped to his feet. “Ay-oooooooooo.”
The wolf stopped. It looked at Harley. It turned again and raced into the night, a specter flickering through the scrub, disappearing into the far boundaries of his vision. The wolf, little more than a glimmer of gray streaking through the brush, circled and returned. It stopped, poised again in the clearing. Watching him. Head high.
“Ay-ooooooooo,” Harley howled.
The wolf dashed off to one side and stopped.
Harley ran to the opposite side and stopped as well.
The wolf darted back across the clearing in the direction it had come.
Harley ran parallel with the wolf, his own night shadow chasing through the scrub.
Chapter 27
Breakaway
HE DROVE INTO the yard just before daybreak. The pickup was gone. He entered the darkened house and turned on the light. Dirty dishes were still on the table from the night before, fish bones on the plates, vegetable scraps jelled in their own sauce. But Sherylynne’s and Leah’s clothes were still in the closet and there was no note, so it was with a sigh of relief that he concluded they weren’t that gone.
He put coffee on and ran hot water in the sink, scraped out the dishes and put them in to soak. After wiping down the table and countertop, he made himself a fried-egg sandwich on toast with a slice of sweet onion and took it with the coffeepot out to the backyard.
Daylight broke on a cloudless sky. He sat in one of the aluminum lawn chairs, drank the coffee and ate the sandwich. The Odessa skyline—a thin gray ribbon—was visible beyond a distant scattering of trailer houses and oilfield equipment. A few pump-jacks nodded in the middle distance.
He was on a second cup of coffee when he saw the pickup coming down the graveled road, trailing a cloud of caliche dust. The truck slowed, the dust catching up and drifting past as the truck turned in. Then he couldn’t see because of the house. He heard the engine go dead and the truck door opened and banged shut. Sherylynne came straight through the house and out the back with Leah on her arm. She let the screen door slam, then stopped, looking at him, an air of indecision weighed with hostility. He took a sip of coffee.
“Where did you go last night?” she demanded. Leah bounced on her arm and made happy noises at him.
“Out.”
Sherylynne shifted Leah to her other arm and cleared her throat. “Out where?”
He nodded toward the empty distance. “Out there.”
She glanced across the plains, then back, flushed beneath her freckles.
“On the lease,” he added. After the wolf disappeared, he had climbed into the backseat of the old Chevy and slept a bit.
“Harley, I’m worried about you, acting out like you did last night.”
“I couldn’t take it any more. Every time I turn around, there he is, bad-mouthing me, telling me I’m a worthless ne’er-do-well, while he’s mister big-shot moneybags.”
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have him over so much.”
He set his empty cup on the iron table alongside his chair, then went over and took Leah. She rocked in his arms, slobbered her little mouth on his face, making her own brand of cheerful conversation. “Da-da,” she said suddenly. “Da-da.”
Harley stopped in surprised. “Did you hear that?” He knew, of course, that she would be learning to talk, but “Da-da…” Tears came to his eyes.
Sherylynne had paused too, startled. “Well, I’ll be…”
“Da-da,” Harley repeated. “The kid’s a genius!”
He circled his finger over her belly button. “Here comes a widdle-biddy-buzzy-bee. Bzzzzz.” She giggled and grabbed at his hand.
Sherylynne studied him for what seemed like a full minute. “Harley,” she said finally, “we have a little money, not as much as you’d hoped, but enough to get you enrolled in school. I think you should go on to New York.”
He paused in surprise.
“You could make a go of it up there by yourself,” she said.
“You mean, leave you and Leah here?”
“Just till you get settled. Then you can send for us.”
“Sherylynne, you know I won’t do that.”
“I talked it up to Wendell last night. He said me’n Leah could stay here till you get settled. He even said you could have your job back if it didn’t work out.”
“He said that?”
She managed a thin smile. “He doesn’t think you’ll last two weeks.”
“I wouldn’t go back to work for him if he had the only job in ten thousand miles.”
“Harley Jay, he’s just trying to be nice.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t need him being nice. I’ve told you that.”
“I’m hoping you’ll get back to being your old self after a little while in New York.”
He realized that, like Whitehead, she too thought he’d soon fizzle in New York. Nevertheless, he felt a little glow of excitement at the thought of it. He looked at Sherylynne again, his whole being warming with love and appreciation. And guilt, too. Life couldn’t be easy for her out here in the middle of nowhere, chasing around after a baby all day. He would make a go of it—for her if nothing else.
She made a small, forlorn smile. “Well, you look awfully cheerful all of a sudden.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a stick in the mud. ”
“You weren’t so glum when Mavis was alive.”
“When I went to see her in the hospital, she said she was sorry she helped keep me here. She said, ‘Don’t you listen to anybody. Just go.’”
Sherylynne tilted a look at him, a surprised, mildly stricken expression. “She said that?”
“Her exact words.”
“Well, that’s kinda odd. I thought she was my friend, too.”
“No, no. She wasn’t blaming you. She said it was her fault I hadn’t already gone.”
“What in the world made her say that?”
“She didn’t want us to leave. After Buddy blew himself up, she was lonely. She tried to make us into her own kids. We both know that. You said it yourself.”
“You, she did. Mavis would’ve treated you like a son if you’d’ve let her. She really wanted you to have that car.”
“That’s not the point.”
“She really did say for you to go ahead to New York?”
“Her very words.”
Sherylynne took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Well, you’re never going to be satisfied if you don’t.”
He said nothing.
Leah was beginning to be cross. He switched arms and cradled her and rocked gently back and forth. He already missed her and Sherylynne, and he hadn’t even left. But this was it. He was really going.
Sherylynne picked up the empty coffeepot and his cup and took everything inside. After a moment she came and stood behind the screen door. “So, where were you last night, really?”
“I to
ld you. Out on the lease.”
“All night? All by yourself? What in the world were you doing?”
Harley grinned. “Chasing around with Sidney, howling at the moon.”
Sherylynne gazed a long moment through the screen, a faint bemused smile. “See there? You are. Crazier by the day.” She said it like it was a joke she didn’t quite get.
“Well,” he said, getting up with Leah, “since Whitehead’s being so nice to me, I guess I should get on over there and grovel.”
He went inside, made himself two baloney and cheese sandwiches, seeded a jalapeño pepper, took a bag of chips from the cabinet, and poured the rest of the coffee into his thermos.
HE TURNED THE pickup off Kickapoo Road and crossed the cattle guard toward Whitehead’s house. A cloud of caliche dust rolled up from the shoulder behind. He brought the truck to a stop halfway around the circular drive, killed the engine and sat for a minute, looking at the big red pump-jack by the swimming pool. Down back, Álvaro looked up from where he was breaking up several bales of hay to mulch the garden.
Paladin came loping around the house, head down, tail curled under, the hair on his back bristling. Harley sat watching the dog until Whitehead came out on the porch. Then he got out. Now that he was here, he was at a loss where to begin.
“You know I’m leaving,” he said. “I just came to tell you that I’m not somebody to leave a man in a bind. I’ll keep those wells up two more weeks if you want. Or until you find somebody else, whichever’s first.”
Whitehead squinted, head craned forward on his shoulders. “Harley Jay, you’ve been acting crazier’n a hoot every since Mavis died.”
“Who told you that? Sherylynne?”
“I don’t thank anybody could miss it.”
“Look, I didn’t come out here to discuss my mental condition. You want me to work, or don’t you?”
Whitehead’s shoulders drew up. “You really gonna do this thing? Going off up yonder to New Yark and all?”
“I’m all but gone, even as we speak.”
“Son, you ought’a thank about it some before you get all kinked up here and go do something you’re gonna regret. We had us some good times, you’n Sherylynne, and me’n Mavis. And that little ’un. Now you’re gonna take her off too?”
Harley regarded Whitehead briefly. “You’ve had your losses the last few years. I understand that. Buddy and Mavis. And I know you’re pretty keen on little Leah. I figure that’s what you’re really out of joint about, that I’m taking her away. But I can’t help that.”
“I thank it’s a damn fool idee all around.”
“And you know I don’t give two hoots in a well whether you think it’s a fool idee or not.”
Whitehead looked into the distance, eyes red-rimmed. “It ain’t something I like to talk about, but I’ve got to tell you, son. I miss Mavis more’n I ever thought I could. Sometimes I feel like my head ain’t on real straight.”
Harley tried not to show his surprise. He had never seen Whitehead even come close to baring his feelings.
Whitehead lowered his gaze. “Over three years you been with me, pumpin’ these wells. I know I wasn’t always as good with you as I might’uv been. Fact, I was kinda jealous.”
This wasn’t something Harley was prepared for.
“See, Mavis was plumb stuck on Buddy. When he got killed, I knew she was gonna leave. Then she latched onto you, same as him. She put up with me, and I should of been grateful for small favors, but there you was, gettin’ all the attention I never did.” He laughed ruefully—a stranger Harley had never expected to meet, this grizzled man standing before him who never asked for or gave quarter. Whitehead forced a grin of sorts. “That’s a fine howdy-do for a feller to tell on hisself, now, ain’t it.”
“I’m sorry,” Harley said.
“You and them two—Sherylynne and that little ’un—you’re the only family I got. I guess I’ve been bad as Mavis was, conniving to keep y’all around.”
Harley was torn between guilt for having berated Whitehead so harshly—whose bluster, it appeared, was mostly coverup for feelings he was unable to express. At the same time, Harley felt uncomfortable that Whitehead had confided in him so intimately. It was an unwelcome burden, this being forced into sympathy, a kind of emotional blackmail. Harley wondered if Mavis had tolerated Whitehead because she’d seen through his coarse facade to his emotionally damaged core.
Whitehead studied hard at the ground near his feet. “How about letting them two stay in that little house till you get settled in up yonder?”
Harley hadn’t yet come to terms with how to manage Sherylynne and Leah. Remaining in the house would simplify the situation, and Sherylynne had already said Whitehead had agreed to it. But he would also be indebted to Whitehead. And while Whitehead was showing this new side, Harley wasn’t ready to trust either himself or Whitehead completely.
“Um,” he mumbled. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
Whitehead glanced up again, but avoided eye contact, looking a little aside. “Son, it’s a damn good idee. It’s the only sensible thang. If you don’t want to feel obligated, how about I have her come out and cook a meal now and then? I could use the company.”
“What about Lupe?”
“She’s been bitchin’ about going to see her family down in San Anton’ for god knows how long. Fact, she’s way overdue for some time off. Two birds with one stone, as they say.”
“I don’t know… I’ll see what Sherylynne says.”
“That lease out there, you wanna work, I can use you till I find somebody else.”
“I hear Len Barkley’s boy is looking for work.”
“He any good?”
“Beats me.”
Whitehead was silent, looking into the distance again. Harley was newly moved, seeing his old eagle eyes rimmed wet.
“Son,” he said with a long sigh, “you gotta do what you gotta do.” He turned and held out his hand. “I guess I always knowed you was gonna go. I just wasn’t ready for it.”
Mind reeling, Harley shook his hand. “Thank you,” he heard himself saying.
Barely knowing what he was doing, Harley got back in the truck and drove off—as if he’d discovered the earth wasn’t round after all.
THE LEASE WAS situated within twenty-two thousand acres of wide-open wasteland in a long stretch of West Texas known as the Permian Basin just off Route 349. The highway ran straight as a chalked line for fifty-one miles, Midland to Rankin, nothing between but barbed-wire fencing, pump-jacks, a scattering of scrub mesquite and a few scruffy patches of sage, thistle, and a smattering of shin oak. Tumbleweeds broke free from their roots in the fall and skittered back and forth over the long country before the winter winds. It was said that nothing else would grow because of salt water pumped into the ground for the oil wells.
By noon he had the donkey engines gassed and greased, the tanks thieved and the sediments run on all the wells to the southwest. He drove to the section known as Rattling Square, parked the pickup and killed the engine. He took the .22 revolver from the glove box and stuck it in his belt, then took his lunch bucket from the seat. He selected David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature from the box of books in the floorboard, then got out and walked past the powdered remains of an early frontier dwelling, discernible now by nothing more than a ten-by-twelve-foot rectangle of adobe rubble. Just beyond stood the weathered remains of a wooden windmill frame, and alongside that an empty, galvanized water tank sagging on an angle-iron platform. At some long-ago time the fan had blown off the windmill and lay fifty yards away, crumpled, half-buried in sand.
It was to the shade underneath the galvanized tank that he took his lunch. It was the same shade that rattlers sometimes took refuge from the sun, and the reason he carried the revolver.
A ragged line of scrub mesquite followed a gully, meandering across the plain. After the rare rain, a little water ran in the cut. He sat in the shade under the tank and ate the two sandwiches with t
he jalapeño pepper and the corn chips. Afterward, he poured coffee into the thermos cap and sipped, looking out over the country. Ugly country. But he realized he might actually miss it. It had its own beauty if you knew how to look.
Ten feet away, a horned lizard scrabbled along the edge of the shade, then stopped. It looked at him with its beady eyes. He suffered a stab of guilt, recalling how Darlene had slit open the horned lizard when they were kids.
A rooster tail of dust rose, coming toward him in the distance. Soon Wesley Earl’s pickup pulled up alongside the ruins, Wesley Earl killed the engine. Dust settled behind as he got out.
Harley stood up, hands in his back pockets, thumbs hooked over as Wesley Earl sauntered toward him. Wesley Earl grinned, leaned to one side and spat a stream of tobacco juice.
“Hoss,” he said, “I hope you got the air conditioner on.”
“Just took some ice cream out of the freezer, too.”
“While you’re at it, how ’bout hauling out a couple a them six-packs.”
“Well, I tell you, I would but it wears me out drinking in the middle of the day. A couple a cold beers and I’m as liable to lay down and go to sleep alongside one of these rattlers as not.”
“Hell, it wouldn’t be the first rattler I snuggled up to.”
“I bet.”
“Some of ’em was two-legged and good-lookin’.” Wesley Earl grinned, leaned to one side and spat again.
“And don’t be spittin’ on the furniture,” Harley said.
Wesley Earl angled his head and studied him down along his nose. “Hoss, what the hell you doin’ here, anyway?”
“First I was gonna play a little tennis. Then I thought I’d take a dip in the pool.”
Wesley Earl gave him a squint-grin. “Whitehead showed up at my place this morning ’fore daylight. Said he done fired your sorry ass.”
“You don’t say. Well, that old man’s full of it.”
Wesley Earl rolled the knot of tobacco in his jaw and studied him, waiting.
“He didn’t fire me. I quit.”
Wesley Earl nodded, his grin fixed.
Yellow Mesquite Page 19
