“But if you don’t know what happened and Carson won’t talk to me, then what do I do to find this girl?”
“My advice?”
“Yes.”
“Drop it like a hot stone, Henry Quinn. Really, seriously, no bullshit. If Carson Riggs don’t want her found, then you ain’t gonna find her. And if he don’t want her found, there’s a reason. Maybe it’s spite, maybe nothing more than another way to get back at Evan, but if I were you, I would let it go. Can only lead to the kind of trouble you don’t want.”
“But I promised—”
“Man makes a promise when he gets married. ’Til death do us part. But what happens if she turns out to be a drunk and a philanderer? Does that mean he’s gotta keep that promise? I don’t think it does. Circumstances change. People change, too. You made a promise in good faith, but you were unaware of the reality out here. You also gotta ask yourself whether the girl really wants to be found.”
“Sheriff Riggs said the same thing.”
“Maybe he’s got a point.”
“Maybe he has, but I feel like I haven’t even started in on this yet. I’m here, sure, but have I really made any great effort to find her? No, not yet. I can contact the adoption people in Eldorado or San Angelo. If not there, then there will be records in San Antonio or Austin or someplace. People don’t just get adopted and vanish without a trace. There has to be a way to find her.”
“And your mind is set on it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, I can’t help you,” Clarence said. “Not because I’m unwilling, but because I just don’t know anything.”
“I appreciate your time, nevertheless.”
“Not at all. Now, do you want some more coffee before you go?”
Henry smiled. “I’ll take a rain check. No offense, Mr. Ames, but I have to say it really is the worst coffee I ever tasted. The stuff they gave us at Reeves was better than this, and I think that came off the packing-room floor.”
“Well, I’ll take that as a compliment, son,” Clarence said, smiling.
They shook hands on the porch. Henry drove away. Clarence Ames stood there for a moment and then sighed audibly. He headed back into the house and made a call.
“Sheriff Riggs there?”
Clarence waited while Riggs was fetched.
“Carson. Clarence here. He came down, asked a few questions.”
Clarence listened.
“Like you said, not a word. Must say he has a mind to get under this thing, whatever this thing is.”
Clarence closed his eyes for a moment.
“I know, Carson. I know. Leave it be, okay? We all know what you want, and we don’t even want to know why. You do whatever you have to do. It’s none of my business.”
Clarence Ames didn’t wait for a response. He hung up the phone and stood there for quite some time without moving.
And when he did move, it was back to the kitchen. He half filled his cup with bad coffee and then reached down for a bottle of bourbon and filled his cup to the rim.
Back in the front room, he paused to look at the picture of Evan Riggs on
The Whiskey Poet
.
“Why d’you have to send him down here, Evan?” he asked the picture. “Why couldn’t you just leave it all alone?”
By Christmas of 1945, Evan Riggs knew he could stay no longer. Calvary had become a different place. Even his home was a different place, and there was a dimmed light in his father’s eyes that made it clear a fight was not going to happen. At some point William Riggs had decided that Carson as sheriff was a good thing, and now the decision was made, he would not change his mind. He all-too-clearly remembered the sense of nothing he’d felt when Carson was born. Now he could redress the balance. Acknowledge Evan’s musical aspirations though he did, his support for Carson was both vocal and unvarying.
“I know you have to go,” Grace told her younger son. “Even when you’re here, you’re always leaving, if not physically, then spiritually. I see it in you, the gypsy blood.”
“Same gypsies that left me on the porch,” Evan said, smiling.
“Spent all these years waiting for them to return so I can give you back, but have they sent word? Hell, no. Nothing so much as a postcard.”
“I’m worried about Carson,” Evan said. “I was speaking to Clarence Ames, Doc Sperling, some of the others. They seem scared of him, like he’s railroading them into this oil business.”
“Carson is headstrong. He’ll settle down.”
“I think Pa is being too easy about this. I think he needs to tell Carson that the farm is staying a farm.”
“And when me and William are gone, what then? You gonna come back and take care of it all?”
“You both have a lot of years ahead of you, Ma. You’re gonna be here for a long time. Pa isn’t even fifty.”
“I know. It’s not a matter we have to deal with right now, and we’re going to keep this place on for as long as we can. Your father has absolutely no intention of turning it over to the oil people.”
“It wouldn’t be right,” Evan said. “Everything doesn’t have to be about money.”
“It’s a good sentiment,” Grace said, “but there’s not many folk who have it.”
“I would stay and fight with him, but I am not—”
Grace touched Evan’s arm. “Evan … you don’t need to tell me who you are. I know exactly who you are.” She smiled, and there was nothing but love and empathy in her eyes. “And even though your father might not find it easy to say, he also understands why you’ll never be a West Texas farmer. Only kind of man who can do that has to be more stubborn than the dirt and the weather in this godforsaken place, and your father can be
that
stubborn, believe me.”
“I’ll stay through Christmas,” Evan said, “and then I’m heading for San Antonio. That’s the plan.”
“You never made a plan in your life, Evan Riggs,” Grace said. “And I wouldn’t start now.”
Evan did stay through Christmas, January, too, and in early February of 1946, he packed what little he possessed into a beat-to-hell station wagon and said his goodbyes.
William Riggs shook his younger son’s hand and told him to watch out for three things: women, cards, and liquor. “First will break your heart, second your wallet, third your spirit,” he said out of Grace’s earshot. “You get involved with them country-singin’ fellas, they’re gonna have drugs and whiskey and women all around them. You got a square head on your shoulders when it suits you, so you know what I’m sayin’.”
“I’m gonna be fine, Pa.”
“Famous last words, son. That and ‘It’ll come out right in the end.’ Sometimes it doesn’t.”
“I know where to come if I get into trouble.”
“You do,” William said. “Home is home, even when you don’t live there no more.”
Grace was quiet and tearful. She held him close and didn’t want to let go. She wondered if the abiding memory of her life would be that of farewells with Evan. Eventually he whispered something to her and she released him.
“What did you say to her?” his father asked.
“Told her that I survived a war. I can survive San Antonio and whatever else might happen.”
“You gonna go see your brother?”
“Sure I am.”
“I told him you were heading out today. He said that he still had a job to do, that you could come find him at the Sheriff’s Office. Said if he wasn’t there, he wouldn’t be far.”
“I’ll find him.”
“Don’t rile him, okay?”
Evan frowned.
“Don’t act dumb, Evan. You know how wound up he can get around you. You were always smarter, and he doesn’t care that people know it. If you’re gonna part company, then do it civil and pleasant. Don’t leave on bad terms with your brother.”
“I won’t.”
“Give me your word, Evan.”
“I give you my word, Pa.”
“Okay, now git, ’fore your mother starts weepin’ and all that theatrical business.”
Carson was at the Sheriff’s Office. Evan could still not get used to him in uniform. It seemed anomalous.
“So you’re outta here, then,” Carson said.
“I am.”
“Think you’re on a fast road to nowhere, Evan, but that’s the last time I’m gonna say it.”
“I know what you think, Carson. I know we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but we ain’t ever been enemies and there’s no reason to start now.”
“No intention of bein’ your enemy, Evan. Just think this game you’re playin’ ain’t worth a hill o’ beans.”
Evan didn’t respond. Carson was winding and Evan wasn’t going to snap. It wasn’t worth it, and he’d given his word to their father.
“So, San Antonio, is it?”
“Yep.”
“Safe journey, little brother.”
Evan extended his hand. Carson hesitated, and then he grinned like a fool.
“I am just kiddin’ you,” he said, and opened his arms wide. “Come here.”
They hugged, and Carson leaned close to his ear and said, “You are the best brother a man could wish for. I think you is one crazy son of a bitch, but I hope you wind up happy and drunk and rich as a king.”
“I appreciate that, Carson, and I wish the same for you. Take care of Ma and Pa.”
“Will do.”
They parted smiling, which is what William Riggs had hoped for.
Of all the goodbyes, Rebecca was the toughest.
Her father was there when Evan arrived; he shook Evan’s hand, clapped him on the shoulder, wished him fair weather and good fortune. He then left the two of them alone, knowing that the words they would share were not for his ears.
“So this is it?” she said, already knowing the answer.
“I’d ask you to come with me, but I know you wouldn’t.”
“I can’t, Evan, and you know it, so sayin’ that is just unfair.”
Evan looked away toward the horizon, didn’t respond.
“You have nothing to say to me?” she asked.
He could hear the break in her voice, the telling edge of loss and anger. She believed he was deserting her, for that’s how it felt, like a desertion, some kind of betrayal. It was not, but that didn’t change the emotion.
“I can’t stay here forever,” he said. “You of all people should understand that.”
“I do,” Rebecca said, “but that doesn’t stop me from hating you for going away.”
Evan smiled. “You don’t hate me, Rebecca. If you hated me, you would feel nothing but relief.”
“Why do you have to make my life so complicated?”
“I don’t think I am. You are the one who is being unfair now.”
She took a step closer, put her hand on his arm. “What would happen if you stayed, Evan? I mean, really … what would happen if you stayed?”
“I would die a little more every day,” he said, for this was what he believed. “I would drink too much and I would argue with Carson, and I would fight with my father about the land and the work and everything that he wants me to do. I don’t belong here … and if you want to know the truth, the only people that have kept me here as long as I’ve stayed is my ma and you.”
“Do you love me, Evan Riggs?”
Evan looked at her. “You know the answer to that question, Rebecca Wyatt.”
“But are you
in love
with me?”
Evan sighed. “Now it’s your turn to make things complicated. You accuse me of something, and then you do the very same thing yourself. If you have a question, then ask me, Rebecca.”
“Could you not bear to stay here if I were by your side … I mean really with you, as your wife?”
“Could you not bear to go with me, wherever things took us, if I were beside you as your husband?”
“Is that how it is, then?”
“You know it is.”
“Then you are really going?”
“And you are really staying.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “It isn’t right and it isn’t fair,” she said, and her voice was a cracked whisper, barely audible.
“I think that describes life in general,” Evan said. He pulled her close, his arms around her, and he could feel the racing of her heart against his chest.
Everything she imagined he felt, he then felt it a hundred times more. He could not tell her. It would only make things worse. He was caught between one thing and another, and whichever one he chose, he would have to compromise and sacrifice something. But, in truth, the decision had been easier than he would ever tell her, for the pull of his vocation, his music, the desire to travel, to see the world, to find himself in far-flung corners, even the wish to return someday with stories that no one else could tell, was so much stronger than the love he felt for Rebecca Wyatt. Perhaps not stronger, but different. Like a drug. Worse than a drug.
Rebecca pulled back a little and looked up at Evan. “My father says you are irresponsible, a dreamer … that you’ll come to grief.”
“Does he, now?”
“Yes, he does, and I can’t say that a little of me doesn’t agree with him.”
“I don’t believe you,” Evan said.
“You’re calling me a liar now?”
“No, but I know how clever and manipulative you can be, Miss Wyatt.”
“To hell with you,” Rebecca said, but she pulled him close again and closed her eyes and breathed even more deeply, as if to draw him deep inside through the atmosphere.
“I’ll be back,” Evan said.
“That doesn’t mean anything, and you know it. Of course you’ll be back. Everyone comes back. How long? When? Why? You’ll come back with a wife and horde of children, or you’ll come back in a pine box …”
“Enough,” Evan said. “I can’t apologize for who I am, and I’m not going to. We meet halfway on so many things, but not this, and that’s just the way it is.”
Rebecca pulled away. Evan wrested her back, but she didn’t want to be held.
“Go,” she said. “This is just making it worse.”
Evan stood for a moment, and then he reached out and touched her cheek with the fingers of his right hand.
“Until whenever,” he said, and then he crossed to the steps and walked down to the car.
“Evan?” she called after him.
He paused, glanced back.
“Will always love you,” she said, “whatever happens.”
Hindsight, cruel adviser that it was, told him that he should have said something in return. Perhaps then, with some vague hope of being together, she might have made different choices, taken a different path.
A single word and everything could have worked out so very differently.
But Evan Riggs said nothing, and that moment—along with so many others—would haunt him for the rest of his life.