Sweet Return (25 page)

He poured another shot for her, then one for himself. After she quaffed the second, the alcohol’s warmth began to spread through her system and she felt more relaxed than she had in days. In fact, she believed she liked drinking tequila in this fashion better than she had thought she would. But she had to be careful. Two large drinks of tequila were more liquor than she had consumed at one time since New Year’s Eve nine months ago.

“That ought to get me through grilling these steaks.” He picked up the plate of meat. “Let’s go outside.”

He stopped off at the refrigerator and pulled out a couple of longnecks. He stuffed one in her hands and gave her a wink. Then he proceeded through the back door.

Holy cow
. It couldn’t be wise to drink beer on top of tequila. And she sure should be cautious about letting down her guard.

Still, she followed him.

Chapter 17

On the patio, the portable grill usually stored against the wall beside the back door had been rolled out to the middle of the huge limestone-paved square. The CD player that had a home in the kitchen now sat on the windowsill broadcasting Willie Nelson. Plates and silverware had already been placed on the cast-iron, glass-topped table that was tucked just under the patio’s partial roof. Joanna was growing more impressed by the minute. Dalton’s hosting skills were better than hers.

She spotted a slab of plywood leaning against the wall of the house, a long rattlesnake skin stretched and tacked to it. The skin was at least four feet long and a foot wide. “Is that it?”

“Yep. Big sucker,” he answered, fussing with the grill. “If he had struck you, it could’ve been bad. You want the rattles? I put them on the windowsill.” He tilted his head in the direction of the window.

She walked over for a closer look at the cluster of rattles, grateful again that he had been with her for last evening’s visit to the chicken yard. A shiver passed up her spine as the sound of the rattle echoed in her ear and a visual came to her of the hateful thing writhing on the ground. It was frightening even after Dalton had whacked it. She swallowed another drink of beer. “I was so upset, I forgot to say thanks for saving me.”

“Anytime, babe.” She turned and saw him grinning and holding a steak with a pair of tongs. For the first time she noticed he had near-perfect teeth. Before she could say more, he plopped the steaks onto the grate, generating a smoky sizzle. “How do you like your steak?”

“Um, medium.”

As the aroma of charbroiling meat filled the air, her mouth began to water. The lack of real food all day and the alcohol were starting to make her feel loose jointed and ever-more congenial. She sank to a seat at the table and swallowed another swig of beer.

The crickets’ serenade had begun with a rhythmic thrum. At the corner of the house, the bare branches of a giant sycamore tree clattered in a westerly breeze. Wind was almost as constant in Hatlow as time itself. In summer the tree’s canopy shaded the patio and its leaves rustled softly, and Joanna thought of the summer afternoons and evenings she had sat here in the shade with Clova, drinking iced tea, listening to country music on the radio and talking on into the evening. She wondered how many more times they would do that, if Clova would ever be completely well again, or if by this time next year, Farmers Bank would own the Lazy P. “I went by the hospital and saw your mom.”

“And how was Mom this evening?”

“Better, I think. That was nice of you to send her roses. I can’t recall her ever receiving roses from anyone.”

“No big deal,” he replied. “The least a man could do for his mother, right?”

The words came out in a flat tone, devoid of emotion, but she saw a subtle tic in his jaw muscle. She still remembered how confounded he had been yesterday after the ER doctor had told them Clova was too sick not to be admitted to the hospital. Joanna was convinced he cared more than he wanted anyone to know.

She watched his throat muscles as he tipped up the beer bottle and guzzled a long swallow of beer, reminded again of his blatant masculinity. Then she thought of something that, in her own mind, was exceedingly more important than a bouquet of flowers. “And you paid the taxes.”

He gave her a look. “Somebody had to.”

His critical opinion was glaringly evident in his tone and his expression. To avoid those eyes, she glanced down and picked at the label on the beer bottle, choosing her words carefully. “If you hadn’t been willing to do it, I don’t know what might have happened. Our bank isn’t like it used to be. It really isn’t
our
bank anymore. The people who run it don’t have much understanding or sympathy for the needs of the people in agriculture.”

There. She had revealed she knew of the ranch’s deep problems. She waited for a sarcastic comeback.

“I suppose you could say I’ve got a vested interest,” he said instead. “I don’t want to see my mother homeless, and Lane’s in no shape for an ass-kicking. Of course, the key to avoid being strung up by your thumbs by a bunch of blood-sucking bankers is not to get in hock to them in the first place.”

Joanna tilted her head to the side and suppressed a sigh of resignation. From what she saw going on around her every day, it seemed that you couldn’t be in the business of farming or ranching without borrowing, at least not in Wacker County. Even if Lane hadn’t been off on whatever trip he had been on for the last couple of years, Clova would still have had to get operating funds from somewhere. All of the ranchers and farmers Joanna knew owed money, either to the credit union or to Farmers Bank. Another thought followed that one: And Suzy Martinez made sure she kept the Joanna’s Salon & Supplies patrons aware of who and how much every time she came in to have her hair done.

“That’s easier said than done,” Joanna said. “Maybe you aren’t aware of what an iffy business ranching has become nowadays. It’s a struggle for even the big operations.” She swallowed another drink of beer. “Clova mentioned the cattle sale. Are you going to be around to get the cows to the sale?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it.” He clamped tongs onto the edge of a steak, lifted it and peeked at the underside. “I haven’t been on a horse in a helluva long time, but I guess I could saddle up that gray nag in the pasture and round ’em up and move ’em out.” He chuckled at his attempt at levity. He dropped the tongs onto the empty plate and crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes met hers again. “If I don’t, are
you
gonna take care of it?”

Her palm automatically flew to her chest. “
Me?
Well, no.”

“Guess that settles it, then.” He glanced at his watch. “Those potatoes must be ready.”

“I’ll check,” she said, feeling put in her place by the abrupt change of subject. Though she suspected he might like to grab her by the hair and drag her off to his cave, he obviously had no intention of discussing his family or its business with her. So be it.

Inside the kitchen, she removed the potatoes from the oven and wrapped them in foil, then made her way to the bathroom. Returning, she glanced at the large computer monitor on the dining table and saw it filled with small pictures. She walked over to look closer. All of the pictures were obviously from the Middle Eastern desert. She homed in on a vivid photograph of four smiling, brown-eyed, black-haired girls posing for his camera.

“Steaks are ready,” he said, coming up behind her and startling her. He placed his hand on the mouse and enlarged the picture with a click. “Good shot, huh? I captured just what I wanted to in that one. Look at the eyes. Those poor kids are happy.” He stared at the picture for a few seconds.

His tone told her something wasn’t quite right and made her study the photograph closer. The girls looked to be around ten years old. Gathered shoulder to shoulder and smiling broadly, they were wearing Western-style dresses with white lacy collars and had their hair in neat braids. “They do look happy. And pretty. Where are they, Iraq?”

“Baghdad,” he said grimly, his eyes still fixed on the picture. “Everybody involved was pretty happy in that picture, including the army. This was opening day at a school those GIs put together.”

Something was definitely wrong, but Joanna couldn’t spot it. He clicked off the enlargement and moved the pointer to another small print. “This one I shot about ten minutes later.”

He enlarged the photograph and she recognized some parts of the same tan background, but now the four girls in their pretty dresses lay among piles of rubble, other broken bodies and puddles of blood. Joanna’s fingers flew to cover her mouth as a breath caught in her throat. “Oh, dear God. Are—are they dead?” She sank to the chair in front of the monitor, unable to take her eyes off the powerful picture.

“I don’t know. I heard later one of them might have made it. The Americans tried to save them, of course. I think it was around thirty kids and teachers that bought it that day.”

She continued to stare at the picture, shaking her head, Words didn’t exist in her safe, American, small-town lexicon for such senseless barbarism. And she was unable to relate to his having been there, having had his wits about him well enough to take pictures of the carnage, and now being able to speak of it so clinically. It dawned on her that he had seen a depth of pain that most ordinary people would never see or understand. No wonder he had such a hard edge.

He must have sensed her incomprehension. “Making a record is what I do, babe,” he said quietly, drilling her with another dark gaze. “I’m telling a story. Pictorial accounts of mankind eating its own. This crap goes on every day. And not just in
that
country. Don’t you watch the news?”

“Not much,” she admitted, still unable to take her eyes off the graphic picture. “I don’t have time.”

“It’s just as well. Most Americans don’t get it even when they see it. The American press doesn’t get it, either. They’ve got their own agendas and they do a lousy job of reporting.”

“Did you see it…it explode?”

He shook his head, moving on to another shot. “I was down the street, about a hundred feet away, loading up my equipment. The blast still knocked me off my feet. I knew what had happened, so I grabbed my camera and ran back.”

“Is this going in your book?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m inclined to focus on the more positive activities that are taking place over there.”

“You mean there are some?”

“Here’s one.” He clicked through several more photographs until he came to one of a young blond American soldier, doling out candy to a dozen black-haired, dark-eyed boys dressed in bright green and pristine white uniforms. The soldier had a whistle on a lanyard around his neck and a soccer ball tucked under his arm. The boys looked as if they could have been American children, all smiles and excitement over a ball game.

“It’s the kids who suffer the worst,” Dalton said. “Being helpless, they’re easy victims. In all of the backward societies I’ve seen, and sometimes I feel like I’ve seen damn near all of them, it’s always the kids who have it the toughest. I used to take kids for granted, but traveling in the Third World has changed my perspective on childhood.”

Though she had no basis from which to imagine what horrors his eyes had witnessed and the lens of his camera had captured, she began to process all she had heard about his childhood. She looked up at him and held his gaze. “Are you talking about your own childhood?”

“Maybe. When I was a kid, I thought I had it rough. After I left home, and eventually the States, I found out what rough was. There’s a lot of sadistic lunatics out there. Some of them are running countries. Compared to them, Earl Cherry was a creampuff.”

Without volunteering more, he clicked off the photographs and shut down the computer. “Let’s eat. Grab those potatoes and some butter and the wine.” He picked up the bowl of salad, bottles of salad dressing and two jelly glasses and started for the back door.

She did as he ordered and followed him, beset by the harsh realization that the chasm between his world experience and hers was as wide as the state of Texas.

To avoid being carried off by flying insects, they sat down with the supper in the lampshine falling through the window from inside the house. He poured a jelly glass half full of red wine and handed it to her. He didn’t apologize for the glassware, didn’t attempt to explain it away. Just a further reminder of what she had already concluded about him: He couldn’t care less what other people thought. Of anything.

“I’ve been trying to remember you from high school,” he said, “but I’m sorry to say I can’t.”

She almost mentioned her sister Lanita and the fact that she and Dalton had dated, but she stopped herself and remained content to concentrate on her perfectly grilled steak and to sip wine. She didn’t drink wine any more often than she drank anything else, but she didn’t dislike it. “I was only a sophomore when you were a senior. I wasn’t very memorable back then. I didn’t get out much. I was one of those boring good girls.”

“Past tense? Does that mean you’re not anymore?”

“Not what, boring?”

“A good girl.”

Only because she rarely met the opportunity not to be. She couldn’t keep from laughing. “What I am mostly is a tired girl. I got up at four this morning.”

He laughed, too, but she sensed his question hadn’t really been a joke. “Long day,” he said.

“Delivery days are always long. Lubbock and Amarillo both in one day. It’s a trip. It’s a considerable distance from Hatlow to anywhere there’s a market.”

“Tell me about it. What makes you stay here? From what I can see, there’s not much going on.”

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s a lot if you look for it.”

“What’s the population now? When I went to the courthouse today, I drove around a little. Looks like half the buildings are vacant. Some are even boarded up.”

“Yeah. Want some cheap real estate? Now we have about seven thousand people, roughly.”

“It was twice that when I lived here.”

She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Hatlow’s had some problems. Oil died. A lot of cotton comes from foreign countries now. Kids aren’t staying around to take over their parents’ farms and ranches like they used to. Once, that was expected, but now…” She shrugged again. “Most of them can’t find a good enough reason to do it. They’d rather live in Austin or Fort Worth or even Houston, where they can make more money.”