Fancy Pants (21 page)
Chapter
15
Francesca heard Dallie call out her name. She began to move15
faster, her eyes nearly blinded with tears. The soles of her sandals
slipped on the gravel as she ran through the parking lot toward the
highway.
But her short legs were no match for his long ones, and he
caught up with her before she could reach
the road.
"You mind telling me what's going on here?" he shouted, catching her
shoulder and spinning her around. "Why'd you run out, cussing at rne
like that and embarrassing yourself in front of all those people who
were starting to think you were a real human being?"
He was yelling at her as if she were the one at fault, as if she were
the liar, the deceiver, the treacherous snake who'd turned love into
betrayal. She drew back her arm and slapped his face as hard as she
could.
He slapped her back.
Although he was mad enough to hit her, he wasn't mad enough to hurt
her, so he struck her with only a small portion of his strength. Still,
she was so small that she lost her balance and bumped into the side
of
a car. She grabbed the sideview mirror with one hand and pressed the
other to her cheek.
"Jesus, Francie, I hardly touched you." He rushed over and reached out
for her arm.
"You bastard!" She spun on him and slapped him again, this time
catching him on the jaw.
He grabbed both of her arms and shook her. "You settle down now, do you
hear me? You settle down before you get hurt."
She kicked him hard in the shin, and the leather of his oldest pair of
cowboy boots didn't protect him from the sharp edge of her sandal.
"Goddammit!" he yelped.
She drew back her foot to kick him again. He thrust out his uninjured
leg and tripped her with it, sending her down into the gravel.
"Bloody bastard!" she screamed, tears and dirt mingling on her cheeks.
"Bloody, wife-cheating bastard! You'll pay for this!" Ignoring the
stinging in the heels of her hands and the dirty scratches on her arms,
she began to push herself back up to go after him again. She didn't
care if he hurt her, if he killed her.
She hoped he would. She wanted
him to kill her. She was going to die anyway from the horrible pain
spreading inside her like a deadly poison. If he killed her, at least
the pain would be over quickly.
"Stop it, Francie," he yelled, as she staggered to her feet. "Don't
come any closer or you'll really get hurt."
"You bloody bastard," she sobbed, wiping her nose on her wrist. "You
bloody married bastard! I'm going to make you pay!" Then she went after
him again—a pampered little British house cat charging a full-grown,
free-roaming ail-American mountain lion.
Holly Grace stood in the middle of the crowd that had gathered outside
the front door of the Roustabout to watch. "I can't believe Dallie
didn't tell her about me," she said to Skeet. "It doesn't usually take
him more than thirty seconds to work my existence into any conversation
he has with a woman he's attracted to."
"Don't be ridiculous," Skeet growled. "She knew about you. We talked
about you in front of her a hundred times—that's what's making him so
mad. Everybody in the world knows the two of you've been married since
you was teenagers. This is just one more example of what a fool that
woman is." Worry etched a frown between his shaggy eyebrows as
Francesca landed another blow. "I know he's trying to hold her off
without hurtin' her too much, but if one of those kicks lands too close
to his danger zone, she's gonna find
herself in a hospital bed and he's gonna end up in jail for assault and
battery. See what
I told you about her, Holly Grace? I never knew a
woman as much trouble as that one."
Holly Grace took a swig from Dallie's bottle of Pearl, which she'd
picked up off the table, then remarked to Skeet, "If word of this
little altercation makes its way to Mr. Deane Beman, Dallie's gonna get
his ass kicked right off the pro tour. The public doesn't much like
football players beating up women, let alone golfers."
Holly Grace watched as the floodlights caught the sheen of tears on
Francesca's cheeks. Despite Dallie's determination to hold that little
girl off, she kept going right back after him. It occurred to Holly
Grace that there might be more to Miss Fancy Pants than what Skeet had
told her on the telephone. Still, the woman couldn't have much sense.
Only a fool would go after Dallas Beaudine without holding a loaded gun
in one hand and a blacksnake whip in the other. She winced as one of
Francesca's kicks managed to catch him behind the knee. He quickly
retaliated and then managed to immobilize her partially by pinioning
both her elbows behind her back and clamping her to his chest.
Holly Grace spoke quietly to Skeet. "She's getting ready to kick him
again. We'd better step in before this goes any further." She handed
off her beer bottle to the man standing next to her. "You take her,
Skeet. I'll handle Dallie."
Skeet didn't argue about the distribution of duties. Although he didn't
relish the idea of trying to calm down Miss Fran-chess-ka, he knew
Holly Grace was the only person with half a shot at handling Dallie
when he really kicked up. They quickly crossed the parking lot, and
when they reached the struggling pair, Skeet said, "Give her to me,
Dallie."
Francesca let out a strangled sob of pain. Her face was pressed against
Dallie's T-shirt. Her arms, twisted behind her back, felt as if they
were ready to pop from their sockets. He hadn't killed her. Despite the
pain, he hadn't killed her after all. "Leave me alone!" she screamed
into Dallie's chest. No one suspected she was screaming at Skeet.
Dallie didn't move. He gave Skeet a frozen stare over the top of
Francesca's head. "Mind your own goddamn business."
Holly Grace stepped forward. "Come on, baby," she said lightly. "I got
about a thousand things I've been saving up to tell you." She began
stroking Dallie's arm in the easy, proprietary manner of a woman who
knows she has the right to touch a particular man in any way she wants.
"I saw you on television at the Kaiser. Your long irons were looking
real good for a change. If you ever learn how to putt, you might even
be able to play half-decent golf someday."
Gradually, Dallie's grip on Francesca eased, and Skeet cautiously
reached out to draw her away. But at the instant Skeet touched her,
Francesca sank her teeth into the hard flesh of Dallie's chest,
clamping down on his pectoral muscle.
Dallie yelled just long enough for Skeet to whip Francesca into his own
arms.
"Crazy bitch!" Dallie shouted, drawing back his arm and taking a lunge
toward her. Holly Grace jumped in front of him, using her own body as a
shield, because she couldn't stand the thought of Dallie getting kicked
off the tour. He stopped, put a hand on her shoulder, and rubbed his
chest with a knotted fist. A vein throbbed in his temple. "Get her out
of my sight! I mean it, Skeet! Buy her a plane ticket home, and don't
you ever let me see her again!"
Just before Skeet dragged her away, Francesca heard the echo of
Dallie's voice coming from behind her, much softer now, and gentler.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Sorry . . . The word was repeated in her head like a bitter refrain.
Only those two small words of apology for destroying what was left of
her life. And then she heard the rest of what he was saying.
"I'm sorry, Holly Grace."
Francesca let Skeet put her into the front seat of his Ford and sat
without moving as he turned out onto the highway.
They drove in silence for several minutes before he finally said,
"Look, Francie, I'm gonna pull into the gas station down the road and
call one of my friends who works over at the county clerk's office to
see
if she'll put you up for the night. She's a real nice lady.
Tomorrow morning I'll come on over with your things and take you to the
airport in San Antonio.
You'll be back in London before you know it."
She made no response and he looked over at her uneasily. For the first
time since he'd met her, he felt sorry for her. She was a pretty little
thing when she wasn't talking, and he could see that she was hurt real
bad. "Listen, Francie, there wasn't any reason for you to get so riled
up about Holly Grace. Dallie and Holly Grace are just one of those
facts of life, like beer and football. But they stopped making
judgments about each other's bedroom lives a long time ago, and if you
hadn't gotten Dallie so mad with all that carrying on, he probably
would have kept you around a while longer."
Francesca winced. Dallie would have kept her around— like one of his
mongrel dogs. She swallowed tears and bile as she thought how much she
had shamed herself.
Skeet stepped down harder on the accelerator, and a few minutes later
they pulled into the gas station. "You just sit here and I'll be right
back."
Francesca waited until Skeet had gone inside before she slipped from
the car and began to run. She ran down the highway, dodging the
headlights of the cars, running through the night as if she could run
away from herself. A cramp in her side finally made her slow her pace,
but she still didn't stop.
She wandered for hours through the deserted streets of Wynette, not
seeing where she was going, not caring. As she walked past vacant
stores and night-quiet homes, she felt as if the last part of her old
self had died ... the best part, the eternal light of her own optimism.
No matter how bleak things had been since Chloe's death, she had always
felt her difficulties were only temporary. Now she finally understood
they weren't temporary at all.
Her sandal slipped in the dirty orange pulp of a jack-o'-lantern that
had been smashed on the street, and she fell, bruising her hip on the
pavement. She lay there for a moment, her leg twisted awkwardly beneath
her, pumpkin ooze mixing with the dried blood from the scratches on her
forearm. She wasn't the kind of woman men abandoned— she was the one
who did the abandoning. Fresh tears began to fall. What had she done to
deserve this? Was she so terrible? Had she hurt people so badly that
this was to be her
punishment? A dog barked in the distance, and far down the street an
upstairs light flicked on in a bathroom window.
She couldn't think what to do, so she lay in the dirt and the pumpkin
pulp and cried. All her dreams, all her plans, everything . . . gone.
Dallie didn't love her. He wasn't going to marry her. They weren't
going to live together happily ever after forever and ever.
She didn't remember making the decision to start walking again, but
after a while she realized her feet were moving and she was heading
down a new street. And then in the darkness she stumbled over the curb
and looked up to see that she was standing in front of Dallie's Easter
egg house.
Holly Grace pulled the Riviera into the driveway and shut off the
ignition. It was nearly three in the morning. Dallie was slumped down
in the passenger seat, but although his eyes were closed, she didn't
think he was asleep. She got out of the car and walked around to the
passenger door. Half afraid he would slump out onto the ground, she
braced the door with her hip as she pulled it slowly open. He
didn't
move.
"Come on, baby," she said, reaching down and tugging on his arm. "Let's
get you tucked in."
Dallie muttered something indecipherable and let one leg slide to the
ground.
"That's right," she encouraged him. "Come on, now."
He stood and draped his arm around her shoulders as he'd done so many
times before. Part of Holly Grace wanted to pull away and hope that he
would fold up on the ground like an old accordion, but the other part
of her wouldn't let him go for anything in the world—not a shot at
being southwestern regional sales manager, not a chance to replace her
Firebird with a Porsche, not even a bedroom encounter with all four of
the Statler Brothers at the same time—because Dallie Beaudine was the
person she almost loved best of anybody in the world. Almost, but not
quite, since the person she'd learned to love best was herself. Dallie
had taught her that a long time ago. Dallie had taught her a lot of
good lessons he'd never been able to learn himself.
He suddenly pulled away from her and began walking around the side of
the house toward the front. His steps were slightly unsteady, but
considering how much he'd had to drink, he was doing pretty well.
Holly
Grace watched him for a moment. Six years had passed, but he still
wouldn't let Danny go.
She rounded the front of the house in time to see him slump down on the
top porch step. "You go on
to your mama's now," he said quietly.
"I'm staying, Dallie." She climbed the steps, then pulled off her hat
and tossed it over onto the porch swing.
"Go on, now. I'll come over and see you tomorrow."
He was speaking more distinctly than he usually did, a sure indication
of just how drunk he really was. She sat down next to him and gazed out
into the darkness, deciding to force the issue. "You know what I was
thinkin' about today?" she asked. "I was thinkin' about how you used to
walk around with Danny up on your shoulders, and he'd hold on to your
hair and squeal. And every once in a while, his diaper'd leak so that
when you put him down you'd have a wet spot on the back of your shirt.
I used to think that was so funny—my pretty-boy husband goin' around
with baby pee on the back of his T-shirt." Dallie didn't respond. She
waited a moment and then tried again. "Remember that awful fight we had
when you took him to the barbershop and got all his baby curls cut off?
I threw your Western Civ book at you, and we made love on the kitchen
floor. . . only neither of us had swept it in a week and all Danny's
Cheerio rejects got ground into my back, not to mention a few other
places."
He spread his legs and put his elbows on his knees, bending his head.
She touched his arm, her voice soft. "Think about the good times,
Dallie. It's been six years. You got to let go of the bad and think
about the good."
"We were crummy parents, Holly Grace."
She tightened her grip on his arm. "No, we weren't. We loved Danny.
There's never been a little boy
who was loved as much as he was.
Remember how we used to tuck him in bed with us at night, even though
everybody said he'd grow up queer?"
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