Disgraced (8 page)

FOURTEEN

Lola had to give
Pal credit. No matter how much she'd drunk the night before—and the routine deposit of empties in the kitchen trash can bore mute witness to exactly how much—she arose every morning in time to be at the table, nursing a cup of coffee, when Delbert arrived and Lola emerged from her own room. Lola attributed it to Pal's military training. But the morning after Lola's interview with Arlie Colton, that training deserted Pal.

Lola was already at the stove, flipping pancakes when Delbert arrived, grateful that among his earlier purchases had been a mix that required the addition of nothing but water. Delbert stood in the doorway, seemingly paralyzed by Pal's absence. His glance darted around the kitchen. “Come on in,” Lola said. “We won't bite. Although, Margaret might if she doesn't get her pancakes.” Lola thought that in the healthy-eating department, the pancakes probably were only marginally better than doughnuts, but they saved her from wrestling more eggs into submission. Delbert, whose default gait was a shuffle, crossed to the table in two steps. “Where's Pal?”

Lola wielded the spatula. A pancake fell back mid-flip, folding over on itself. Lola prodded it. “Still sleeping, I guess.”

“You guess? You didn't check?”

“I know she likes her privacy—” Lola began. Delbert headed down the hall. Lola turned off the flame under the griddle and followed. “Margaret, you stay there,” she called, even as Margaret slid from her chair. They burst into the room, four of them, Delbert and Lola, Margaret and Bub. Pal lay motionless on the bed, clad in a tank top and shorts, arms flung above her head.

“Oh, Christ, she's on her back. She could have choked.” Delbert put his ear to Pal's lips and his hand to the chest that showed ribby through the flimsy fabric. “She's breathing. Thank the good Lord. Help me turn her.”

Lola moved to the other side of the bed. She took one of Pal's arms and pulled as Delbert pushed at her shoulder. Pal flopped boneless onto her side. Lola dropped Pal's arm. Even in the dim light, the scars showed pale, the newer ones healing fast. Lola ran her finger over them. “What are these?”

Delbert pulled a blanket over Pal. “Her business is what those are.”

Message received, Lola thought. “Fair enough,” she said. A small hand slipped into hers.

“Mommy, is she sick?”

Delbert answered. “She's going through a very hard time. It's our job to help her. Make sure she eats, keep her in clean clothes. We got to do something else for her,” he said.

“What's that?” Pal barely made a bump beneath the covers. Lola put her fingers to Pal's neck, seeking the reassurance of a pulse. It fluttered beneath her fingers, life trapped within a body that appeared to be doing its best to snuff it out.

“We got to get her out of this house,” Delbert said. “She's turning it into a grave of her own making. She needs to be amongst people again.”

Lola led the way back to the kitchen. “How do you propose doing that? Tie her up and kidnap her?”

“Fourth of July parade is tomorrow. Hard to say no to a parade. I say we make an expedition. All four of us. It'll be good for this one, too.” He put his hand on Margaret's head.

The word “parade” grabbed Margaret's attention. “Candy!” Until they'd been presented with Delbert's doughnuts, Halloween candy and the treats tossed at parades had been the only sweets allowed Margaret.

“Be good for you, too,” Delbert said to Lola. “You need a day off.”

Meaning, Lola supposed, everybody needed a day off from her cooking. Which, despite her credible attempt at barbecued chicken the previous night (chicken pieces doused with bottled barbecue sauce, an hour at 350 degrees, turned halfway through) was just fine with her. They could eat at the café in town after the festivities. “A parade sounds like fun,” she said. “What time does it start?”

Thirty's Fourth of July parade began late in the afternoon. “That way, people who come in from out of town for the parade don't have so long to wait for the fireworks,” Delbert said. “That's the reason they give, anyhow. Me, I think it's so you don't have folks drinking all day long and starting fights by noon.”

Despite the holiday, the event was better known as the Aunt Millie parade, he explained as they sat at the curb, waiting for it to start. Pal had agreed to the outing only if Delbert brought her home immediately after the parade, so Lola and Margaret had followed them into town in Lola's truck. Lola told Delbert they wanted to watch the fireworks. She didn't tell him she thought the parade would make for a perfect place for her to interview people about the veterans. She hadn't anticipated how large that crowd would be.

It seemed as though all of Thirty's residents, plus everyone from the surrounding ranches, had packed themselves into its three-block business district. Lola's time in Afghanistan had left her panicky in crowds. Women reporters learned within days of arrival in the country that the men thronging the streets took the opportunity to grab their breasts or their rear ends, to slide their hands between their legs, before melting unseen into the masses. Whenever Lola covered anti-Western demonstrations, she found herself among a line of women journalists sliding along a street, their backs plastered to the buildings, fending off at least one angle of attack. The photographers had it worse. They had to wade into the fray, subjecting themselves to the worst sorts of manhandling, or risk verbal abuse from editors safe in their offices in their home countries, wondering why they hadn't captured the same arresting images as their male colleagues. Now, as people brushed past Lola on Thirty's main street, her buttocks clenched and her elbows went up. She raised a shaking hand to her face and rubbed sweat from her temple and tried to concentrate on the fact that the day was supposed to be fun.

Margaret pestered Delbert about the parade's name. “Who's Aunt Millie?”

“Well, now. Millie's one of them Kendricks,” he said, as though that explained everything.

“The Kendricks have been in Thirty forever. There are about a million of them,” Pal said. Her raspy voice, when she was talking about something other than herself, rose and fell like a normal person's. “They started the town, and the newspaper, too. You know, the
Last Word
. Remind me to pick up a copy today.”

Lola already had that particular task on her list. She couldn't wait to see the paper, to see if Dave Sparks had written anything more about the veterans. But she didn't want to seem too eager. She pressed Pal for more details on the parade.

“Millie Kendrick was born on the Fourth of July.” As Pal told it, when Millie was still a teenager, she took to wrapping herself in a green sheet, holding up a green-painted flashlight, and marching in the parade as Lady Liberty. It didn't take too many years for the rest of the Kendricks to get into the act, following behind Millie with kazoos, playing all the patriotic songs they could think of. Now that Millie was getting on in years, she rode in a convertible from the local car dealership.

“She's upped her game in the costume department, too,” Pal said. Some years back, Millie had ordered herself a new get-up from a store in Denver, with a realistic looking crown and torch, and a gown that draped flatteringly around her expanding form, and about half the town marched behind her now. People still played kazoos, but the high school band came along, too, and there was always a float or two, and the whole bunch of them ended up at the park, where Benjy's Banjos, the band that played at the Stockman on Friday and Saturday nights, set up a makeshift stage and people had themselves a time.

It was, Lola thought, the longest speech she'd ever heard Pal make. Delbert's eyes met Lola's. He gave the slightest of nods, an acknowledgment that the outing was already accomplishing its purpose. A bass drum boomed. Margaret jumped up. Lola leaned forward and took firm hold of Bub's collar. He wasn't used to parades. The last thing she needed was for him to run beneath a passing fire truck.

Baton twirlers led the way. Of course, thought Lola. She looked again. These were no teenage girls. Two women stepped high in white tasseled boots, shiny short skirts, and skimpy tops that revealed too much of their leathery bosoms. Their sprayed-stiff spit curls were more white than blond. Creases spiderwebbed their faces. They pirouetted, bent, passed the batons through arthritic knees spread wide, shook skinny bums at the crowd, all to dutiful applause. Delbert put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.

Lola turned to Pal. “What the hell?”

“The Becker Babes.”

“Are they like the Kendricks?”

A high school marching band appeared, kids in red T-shirts and khaki shorts and sneakers. They raised their instruments to their lips and burst into the “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Trombone slides dented the air. Margaret clapped her hands over her ears.

“Those two are all that's left of the Beckers,” Pal said. “But what they lack in number, they make up for in—let's call it personality.”

“What's their deal?”

“Twins. They won some sort of twirling championship in high school, so they got to lead the parade that year. Once they got that spot, they never gave it up. Never married. Twirling is their life. You've got to give them credit. The Becker Babes are about as strange as they come, but those girls figured out early who they were and never strayed from it. I think those costumes are the same ones they wore in high school.”

“Looks like they've updated their routines,” Lola said as the sisters circled the band, shimmying, running their tongues around scarlet lips, touching fingertips to hips and jerking their hands away as though burnt. A baton landed at Margaret's feet.

“Don't touch that!” Lola said.

Margaret picked up the baton and handed it to a Becker babe. “Thank you, little girl,” the twirler croaked.

“Look there!” Delbert hollered.

A fire truck followed the marching band. Its siren whooped. Candy showered around them. Margaret scrambled. Bub lunged against Lola's grip. People rose and began to applaud. Quite a frenzy for candy, Lola thought. Then she saw the cause. A contingent of veterans followed the fire truck, the World War II vets on folding chairs in the back of a flatbed truck, the Vietnam graybeards marching behind them, and finally—the obvious cause of the crowd's adulation—veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, led by Skiff Loughry.

“Skiff! Skiff!” People shouted, clapped, stamped their feet. Lola would have recognized him anyway, from the same square face and prominent ears she'd seen in the newspaper and yearbook photos. He marched eyes front, flushed face the only acknowledgement of the cheers. But when the veterans passed the spot where Lola and the others sat, Skiff broke ranks and veered to the curb, his shadow splashing across them.

“Pal? Private First Class Palomino Jones? Is that you?”

Lola and Delbert rose. Pal remained seated at the curb, her body twisted into itself like a question mark.

“Hey, Delbert. How you holding up? Tough deal about Mike.” Skiff grabbed Delbert's hand, knuckles whitening as he squeezed. Delbert let his hand fall away. He seemed somehow diminished in Skiff's presence, shoulders rounded, head angled downward. Lola wondered if that was simply because Skiff was so big, not just tall but with the blocky shoulders and taut physique of someone who'd retained his Army workouts along with the haircut. He had a snub nose and a wide generous mouth that suggested a smile even amid the military solemnity.

“Aw, Delbert. You got to pay no mind to what people say. None a them know what it was like over there. Right, Pal?”

Pal said nothing at all.

Skiff looked to Lola, awaiting an introduction. When none came, he stuck out his hand. “Skiff Loughry.”

“Lola Wicks.” She put her hand in his and braced herself. He stopped just short of cracking bone. Skiff reached for Margaret. She dodged behind Lola's knees.

“Shy, huh? She'll need to outgrow that. Lola, how do you know these fine people?”

“Old family friends. Just passing through. Stopped for a visit.” Lola thought she was going to have to develop a standard story for her association with Pal.

“You come on by the barbecue after the parade. It's in the park. You'd like it. All of you. Delbert, it's been too long. And Pal, I haven't seen you since we got back. Time you quit being a stranger.”

Lola expected Delbert to leap at the invitation, given his concern for getting Pal out and among people. But he wagged his head, regret creasing his features. “Much appreciated, Skiff. But Margaret here, she runs down pretty quick. Afternoon is naptime.” Lola shot him a look. Delbert knew good and well Lola wasn't bringing Margaret back to the ranch for any afternoon nap. “You give my regards to your folks.”

“Sure thing.” Skiff stepped past Lola and stood over Pal. “Invitation's open. Anytime. We can get reacquainted. Put all that shit past us. Karma's a bitch, huh?”

Pal jerked as though he'd slapped her. Skiff whacked Delbert between the shoulder blades, a guy's equivalent of a hug.

“You take care, Delbert. Lola, nice to have met you. And you, too, little girl.”

Lola looked down at Margaret just in time to catch her sticking out her tongue. She never took kindly to being reminded that she was little. Skiff, already walking away, seemed not to have noticed. Lola sank back down on the sidewalk, mulling over Pal's silent reception of Skiff, as well as Delbert's own reticence. Aunt Millie cruised past, weighing down the back of the convertible, torch held high, loose flesh flapping from her upper arm. Margaret strained in Lola's grasp. Another fire truck approached. Firefighters balanced on its steps, hanging on one-handed, their other hands filled with candy. Margaret escaped Lola's arms. “Go!” said Lola, admitting defeat.

Click.