Fancy Pants (24 page)
Francesca was wiser now than she had been a month before, and she
studied the shadows thrown by a few scraggly mesquite. "West!" she
exclaimed after a few moments. "We're going west. This isn't the
way to
San Antonio."
"It's a shortcut," he said, tossing down the map.
She felt as if her throat were closing up. Rape . . . murder ... an
escaped convict and a mutilated female body left at the side of the
road. She couldn't take any more. She was heartsick and exhausted, and
she had no resources left to deal with another catastrophe. She
fruitlessly searched the flat horizon for the sight of another car. All
she could see was the tiny skeletal finger of a radio antenna standing
miles in the distance. "I want you to let me out," she said, trying to
keep her tone normal, as if being murdered on a deserted road by a
crazed fugitive were the furthest thing from her mind.
"I can't do that," he said. And then he looked over at her, his eyes
hard black marbles. "Just stay with
me till we get closer to the
Mexican border, and then I'll let you go."
Dread coiled like a snake in the pit of her stomach.
He took a deep drag on the cigarette. "Look, I'm not going to hurt you,
so you don't have to get nervous. I'm a completely nonviolent person. I
just need to get to the border, and I want two people in the car
instead of one. There was a woman with me earlier, but while I was
waiting for her, this cop car turned onto the street. And then I saw
you walking down the sidewalk with that suitcase in your hand..."
If he had meant to reassure her with his explanation, it didn't work.
She realized that he truly was a fugitive, just as she'd feared. She
tried to suppress the hysteria creeping through her, but she couldn't
control it. As he slowed the car for another rut, she grabbed for the
door handle.
"Hey!" He hit the brake and caught her by the arm. The car skidded to a
full stop. "Don't do that. I'm
not going to hurt you."
She tried to twist away from him, but his fingers bit into her arm. She
screamed. The cat jumped up from the floor, landing with its rump on
her leg and its front paws on the seat. "Let me out!" she screeched.
He held her fast, talking with the cigarette clamped in his mouth.
"Hey, it's okay. I just need to get nearer the border before—"
To her, his eyes looked dark and menacing. "No!" she shrieked. "I want
out!" Her fingers had turned clumsy with fear, and the door handle
refused to give. She pushed harder, trying to throw the force of
her body against it. The cat,
disturbed by all the activity, arched his back and spat, then sank his
front claws into the man's thigh.
The man gave a yelp of pain and pushed at the animal. The cat yeowed
and sank his claws deeper.
"Leave him alone," Francesca shouted, turning her attention from the
door to the assault on her cat. She slapped at the man's arm while the
cat maintained its bloody grip on his leg, hissing and spitting all the
time.
"Get him off me!" the man yelled. He threw up his elbow to defend
himself and accidentally knocked the cigarette out of his mouth. Before
he could catch it, the cigarette wedged itself inside the open collar
of
his shirt. He swatted at it with his hand, yelling again as the
burning tip began to sear his skin.
His elbow hit the horn.
Francesca pounded on his chest.
The cat began to climb his arm.
"Get out of here!" he screamed.
She grabbed for the door handle. This time it gave, and as it swung
open, she vaulted out, the cat springing after her.
"You're crazy, you know that, lady!" the man screamed, yanking the
cigarette from his shirt with one hand and rubbing at his leg with the
other.
She spotted her case, abandoned on the seat, and raced forward with her
arm extended to claim it. He saw what she was doing and immediately
slid across the seat to pull the door shut before she could reach it.
"Give me my case," she yelled.
"Get it yourself." He flipped her his middle finger, threw the car into
gear, and hit the accelerator. The tires spun, spitting out a great
cloud of dust that immediately engulfed her.
"My case!" she yelled as he peeled away. "I need my case!" She began
running after the Cadillac,
choking in the dust and calling out. She
ran until the car had faded to a small dot on the horizon. Then
she
collapsed to her knees in the middle of the road.
Her heart was pumping like a piston in her chest. She caught her breath
and laughed, a wild, broken sound that was barely human. Now she'd done
it. Now she'd really done it. And this time there was no good-looking
blond savior to come
to her rescue. A deep-throated rasp sounded next to her. She was alone
except for a walleyed cat.
She started to shake and crossed her arms over her chest as if she
could hold herself together. The cat wandered off to the side of the
road and began picking its way delicately through the brush. A
jackrabbit darted out from a clump of dried grass. She felt as if
chunks of her body were flying away into the hot, cloudless sky—pieces
of her arms and legs, her hair, her face. . . . Since she had come to
this country, she had lost everything. Everything she owned. Everything
she was. She had lost it all, and now she had lost herself. . ..
Twisted verses from the Bible invaded her brain, verses half learned
from long-forgotten nannies, something about Saul on the road to
Damascus, struck down into the dirt, blinded and then reborn. At that
moment Francesca wanted to be reborn. She felt the dirt beneath her
hands and wanted a miracle that would make her new again, a miracle of
biblical proportions ... a divine voice calling down to her with a
message. She waited, and she, who never thought to pray, began to pray.
"Please, God . . . make a miracle for me. Please, God. . . send me a
voice. Send me a messenger. ..."
Her prayer was fierce and strong, her faith—the faith of
despair—immediate and boundless. God would answer her. God must answer
her. She waited for her messenger to appear in white robes with a
seraphic voice to point out the path to a new life. "I've learned my
lesson, God. Really I have. I'll never be spoiled and selfish again."
She waited, eyes squeezed shut, tears making paths in the dust on her
cheeks. She waited for the messenger to appear, and an image began to
form in her mind, vague at first and then growing more solid. She
strained to look into the dimmest corners of her consciousness,
strained to peer at her messenger. She strained and saw . . .
Scarlett O'Hara.
She saw Scarlett lying in the dirt, silhouetted against a Technicolor
hillside. Scarlett crying out,
"As God is my witness, I'll never go
hungry again."
Francesca choked on her tears and a hysterical bubble of laughter rose
from her chest. She fell back
onto her heels and slowly let the laughter consume her. How typical,
she thought. And how
appropriate. Other people prayed and got thunderbolts and angels. She
got Scarlett O'Hara.
She stood up and started to walk, not knowing where she was going, just
moving. The dust drifted like powder over her sandals and settled
between her toes. She felt something in her back pocket and, reaching
in to investigate, pulled out a quarter. She gazed down at the coin in
her hand. Alone in a foreign country, homeless, possibly
pregnant—mustn't forget that calamity waiting to happen—she stood in
the middle of a Texas road with only the clothes on her back,
twenty-five cents in her hand, and a vision of Scarlett O'Hara in her
head.
A strange euphoria began to consume her—an audaciousness, a sense of
limitless possibilities. This was America, land of opportunity. She was
tired of herself, tired of what she had become, ready to begin anew.
And in all the history of civilization, had anyone ever been given such
an opportunity for a fresh start as she faced at this precise moment?
Black Jack's daughter looked down at the money in her hand, tested its
weight for a moment, and considered her future. If this was to be a
fresh start, she wouldn't carry any baggage from the past. Without
giving herself a chance to reconsider, she drew back her arm and flung
the quarter away.
The country was so vast, the sky so tall, that she couldn't even hear
it land.
watched Dallie hitting practice balls with his two-iron. It was his
fourth basket of balls, and he was still slicing all his shots to the
right—not a nice power fade but an ugly slice. Skeet was slouched down
at the other end of the bench, his old Stetson pulled down over his
eyes so he wouldn't have to watch.
"What's wrong with him?" Holly Grace asked, pushing her sunglasses up
on top of her head. "I've seen him play with a hangover lots of times,
but not like this. He's not even trying to correct himself; he's just
hitting the same shot over and over."
"You're the one who can read his mind," Skeet grunted. "You tell me."
"Hey, Dallie," Holly Grace called out, "those are about the worst
two-iron shots in the entire history of golf. Why don't you forget
about that little British girl and concentrate on earning yourself a
living?"
Dallie teed up another ball with the head of his iron. "How 'bout you
just mind your own business?"
She stood and tucked the back of her white cotton camisole into the
waistband of her jeans before she wandered over to him. The pink ribbon
threaded through the lacy border of the camisole turned up in the
breeze and nestled into
the hollow between her breasts. As she passed the end tee, a man
practicing his drives got caught up in his backswing and completely
missed the ball. She gave him a sassy smile and told him he'd do lots
better if he kept his head down.
Dallie stood in the early afternoon sunshine, his hair golden in the
light. She squinted at him. "Those cotton farmers up in Dallas are
gonna take you to the cleaner's this weekend, baby. I'm giving Skeet a
brand-new fifty-dollar bill and telling him to bet it all against you."
Dallie leaned over and picked up the beer bottle sitting in the center
of a pile of balls. "What I really love about you, Holly Grace, is the
way you always cheer me on."
She stepped into his arms and gave him a friendly hug, enjoying his
particular male smell, a combination of sweaty golf shirt and the damp,
leathery scent of warm club grips. "I call 'em like I see 'em, baby,
and right now you're just short of terrible." She stepped away and
looked straight into his eyes. "You're worried about her, aren't you?"
Dallie gazed out at the 250-yard sign and then back at Holly Grace. "I
feel responsible for her; I can't help it. Skeet shouldn't have let her
get away like that. He knows how she is. She lets herself get tangled
up in vampire movies, she fights in bars, sells her clothes to loan
sharks. Christ, she took me on in the parking lot last night, didn't
she?"
Holly Grace studied the thin white leather straps crisscrossing the
toes of her sandals and then looked at him thoughtfully. "One of these
days, we've got to get ourselves a divorce."
"I don't see why. You're not planning on getting married again, are
you?"
"Of course not. It's just—maybe it's not good for either one of us,
going on like this, using our marriage
to keep us out of any other
emotional involvements."
He regarded her suspiciously. "Have you been reading Cosmo again?"
"That does it!" Slamming her sunglasses down over her eyes, she stomped
over to the bench and grabbed her purse. "There's no talking to you.
You are so narrow-minded."
"I'll pick you up at your mama's at six," Dallie called after her as
she headed toward the parking lot. "You can take me out for barbecue."
As Holly Grace's Firebird pulled out of the parking lot, Dallie handed
Skeet his two-iron. "Let's go on over to the course and play a few
holes. And if I even look like I'm thinking about using that club, you
just take out a gun and shoot me."
But even without his two-iron, Dallie played poorly. He knew what the
problem was, and it didn't have anything to do with his backswing or
his follow-through. He had too many women on his mind, was what it was.
He felt bad about Francie. Try as he might, he couldn't actually
remember having told her he was married. Still, that wasn't any excuse
for the way she'd carried on the night before in the parking lot,
acting as if they'd already taken a blood test and made a down payment
on a wedding ring. Dammit, he'd told her he wouldn't get serious. What
was wrong with women that you could tell them straight to their faces
that you would never marry them, and they'd nod just as sweet as pie
and say they understood what you were saying and that they felt exactly
the same way, but all the time they were picking out china patterns in
their heads? It was one of the reasons he didn't want to get a divorce.
That and the fact that he and Holly Grace were family.
After two double bogeys in a row, Dallie called it quits for the day.
He got rid of Skeet and then wandered around the course for a while,
poking at the underbrush with an eight-iron and shagging lost balls
just like he'd done when he was a kid. As he pulled a brand-new
Top-Flite out from under some leaves, he realized it must be nearly
six, and he still had to shower and change before he picked up Holly
Grace. He'd be late, and she'd be mad. He'd been late so many times
Holly Grace had finally given up fighting with him about it. Six years
ago he'd been late. They were supposed to be at the funeral home at ten
o'clock to pick out a toddler-size coffin, but he hadn't shown up until
noon.
He blinked hard. Sometimes the pain still cut through him as sharp and
swift as a brand-new knife. Sometimes his mind would play tricks on him
and he would see Danny's face as clearly as his own. And then he would
see Holly Grace's mouth
twist into a horrible grimace as he told her that her baby was dead,
that he'd let their sweet little blond-haired baby boy die.
He drew back his arm and took a vicious slice at a clump of weeds with
his eight-iron. He wouldn't think about Danny. He would think about
Holly Grace instead. He would think about that long-ago autumn when
they were both seventeen, the autumn they'd first set each other on
fire...
"Here she comes! Holy shit, Dallie, will you look at those tits!" Hank
Simborski fell back against the brick wall out behind the metal shop
where Wynette High's troublemakers gathered each day at lunchtime to
smoke. Hank grabbed his chest and punched Ritchie Reilly with his
elbow. "I'm dying, Lord! I'm dyin'! Just give me one squeeze on those
tits so I can go a happy man!"
Dallie lit his second Marlboro from the butt of the first and looked
through the smoke at Holly Grace Cohagan walking toward them with her
nose stuck up in the air and her chemistry book clutched against her
cheap cotton blouse. Her hair was pulled back from her face with a wide
yellow headband. She wore a navy blue skirt and white diamond-patterned
tights like the ones he'd seen stretched over a set of plastic legs in
the window at Woolworth's. He didn't like Holly Grace Cohagan, evee
though she was the best-looking senior girl at Wynette High. She acted
superior to the rest of the world, which made him laugh because
everybody knew she and her mama lived off the charity of her uncle
Billy T Denton, pharmacist at Purity Drugs. Dallie and Holly Grace were
the only really dirt-poor kids in senior college prep, but she acted
like she fit in with the others, while he hung out with guys like Hank
Simborski and Ritchie Reilly so everybody knew he didn't give a damn.
Ritchie stepped away from the wall and moved forward to catch her
attention, puffing up his chest to compensate for the fact that she
stood a head taller than he did. "Hey, Holly Grace, want a cigarette?"
Hank sauntered forward, too, trying to look cool but not quite making
it because his face had started to turn red. "Have one of mine," he
offered, pulling out a pack of Winstons. Dallie watched Hank lean
forward on the balls of his feet, trying to give himself another inch
of height, which still wasn't enough to draw even with an Amazon like
Holly Grace Cohagan.
She looked at both of them like they were piles of dog shit and began
to sweep by. Her attitude pissed Dallie off. Just because Ritchie and
Hank got into a little trouble now and then and weren't in college prep
didn't mean she had to treat them like maggots or something, especially
since she was wearing dime-store tights and a ratty old navy skirt he'd
seen her wear a couple hundred times before. With the Marlboro dangling
from the corner of his mouth, Dallie swaggered forward, shoulders
hunched into the collar of his denim jacket, eyes squinted against the
smoke, a mean, tough look on his face. Even without the two-inch heels
on his scuffed cowboy boots, he was the one boy in the senior class
tall enough to make Holly Grace Cohagan look up.
He stepped directly into her path and curled his top lip in a trace of
a sneer so she'd know exactly what kind of bad-ass she was dealing
with. "My buddies offered you a smoke," he said, real soft and low.
She curled her lip right back at him. "I turned them down."
He squinted a little more against the smoke and looked even meaner. It
was about time she remembered that she was back behind the school with
a real man, and that none of those squeaky-clean college-prep boys who
were always drooling over her were around to come to her rescue. "I
didn't hear you say 'no, thank you,'" he drawled.
She stuck up her chin and looked him straight in the eye. "I heard
you're queer, Dallie. Is that true? Somebody said you're so pretty
they're going to nominate you for homecoming queen."
Hank and Ritchie snickered. Neither of them had the nerve to tease
Dallie about his looks since he'd beaten them up when they first tried
it, but that didn't mean they couldn't enjoy watching someone
else go
after him. Dallie clenched his teeth. He hated his face, and he'd done
his best to ruin
it with a sullen expression. So far, only Miss Sybil Chandler had seen
through him. He intended to keep it that way.
"You shouldn't listen to gossip," he sneered. "I know I didn't listen
when I heard that you'd been putting out for every rich boy in the
senior class." It was a lie. Part of Holly Grace's appeal lay in the
fact that nobody had managed to get any further with her than a few
incomplete gropes and some tongue-kissing.
Her knuckles gradually turned white as she clutched her chemistry book,
but other than that she didn't betray a flicker of emotion at what he'd
said. "Too bad you won't ever be one of them," she jeered.
Her attitude infuriated him. She made him feel small and unimportant,
less than a man. No woman would have ever talked like that to his old
man, Jaycee Beaudine, and no woman was going to talk like that to him.
He moved his body closer so he could hover over her and she would feel
the threat of six feet of solid male steel getting ready to run her
down. She took a quick step to one side, but he was too fast. Pitching
his cigarette down on the blacktop, he sidestepped with her and then
moved closer, so that she either had to retreat or bump against him.
Gradually, he backed her up against the brick wall.
Behind him, Hank and Ritchie made smacking noises with their mouths and
let out catcalls, but Dallie didn't pay any attention. Holly Grace
still held up her chemistry book gripped in her hands so that instead
of feeling her breasts against his chest, he felt only the hard corners
of the book and the contours of her knuckles. He braced his hands
against the wall on either side of her head and leaned into her,
pinning her hips to the wall with his own and trying not to pay any
attention to the sweet scent of her long blond hair, which reminded him
of flowers and fresh spring air. "You wouldn't know what to do with a
real man," he sneered, moving his hips against her. "And you're too
busy wrestling the pants off those rich boys to find out."
He waited for her to back down, to lower those clear blue eyes and look
upset so he could let her go.
"You're a pig!" she spat out, glaring at him defiantly.
"And you're too ignorant to know how pitiful you really are."
Ritchie and Hank began to hoot. Dallie wanted to punch them . . . punch
her. ... He would make her deal with him! "Is that so?" he scoffed.
Abruptly, he slid his hand down along her side to the hem of her navy
skirt, keeping her body pinned against the wall so she couldn't get
away. She blinked. Her eyelids opened and closed once, twice. She
didn't say anything, didn't struggle. He pushed his hand up beneath her
dress and touched her leg through the diamond-patterned white tights,
not letting himself think about how much he'd been wanting to touch her
legs, how much time he'd spent dreaming about those legs.
She set her jaw and gritted her teeth and didn't say a word. She was as
tough as nails, ready to take on any man who looked at her. Dallie
thought he could probably take her right then, right against the wall.
She wasn't even fighting him. She probably wanted it. That's what
Jaycee had told him—that women liked a man who took what he wanted.
Skeet said it wasn't true, that women wanted a man who respected them,
but maybe Skeet was just too soft.
Holly Grace glared at him, and something pounded hard in his chest. He
curled his hand closer to the inside of her thigh. She didn't move. Her
face was a picture of defiance. Everything about her told him how tough
she was—her eyes, the flare of her nostrils, the set of her jaw.
Everything except the small, helpless quiver that had begun to destroy
the corner of her mouth.
He backed away abruptly, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his
jeans and hunching his shoulders. Ritchie and Hank snickered. Too late,
he realized that he should have moved more slowly. Now it looked as if
she'd gotten the best of him, as if he'd been the one to retreat. She
glared at him like he was a bug she'd just squashed under her foot, and
then she walked away.
Hank and Ritchie started to tease him, so he began to brag about how
she was practically begging for it and how lucky she would be if he
ever decided to give it to her. But all the time he was talking, his
stomach kept twisting on him as if he'd eaten something bad, and he
couldn't forget that helpless quiver spoiling the corner of her soft
pink mouth.
studied the shadows thrown by a few scraggly mesquite. "West!" she
exclaimed after a few moments. "We're going west. This isn't the
way to
San Antonio."
"It's a shortcut," he said, tossing down the map.
She felt as if her throat were closing up. Rape . . . murder ... an
escaped convict and a mutilated female body left at the side of the
road. She couldn't take any more. She was heartsick and exhausted, and
she had no resources left to deal with another catastrophe. She
fruitlessly searched the flat horizon for the sight of another car. All
she could see was the tiny skeletal finger of a radio antenna standing
miles in the distance. "I want you to let me out," she said, trying to
keep her tone normal, as if being murdered on a deserted road by a
crazed fugitive were the furthest thing from her mind.
"I can't do that," he said. And then he looked over at her, his eyes
hard black marbles. "Just stay with
me till we get closer to the
Mexican border, and then I'll let you go."
Dread coiled like a snake in the pit of her stomach.
He took a deep drag on the cigarette. "Look, I'm not going to hurt you,
so you don't have to get nervous. I'm a completely nonviolent person. I
just need to get to the border, and I want two people in the car
instead of one. There was a woman with me earlier, but while I was
waiting for her, this cop car turned onto the street. And then I saw
you walking down the sidewalk with that suitcase in your hand..."
If he had meant to reassure her with his explanation, it didn't work.
She realized that he truly was a fugitive, just as she'd feared. She
tried to suppress the hysteria creeping through her, but she couldn't
control it. As he slowed the car for another rut, she grabbed for the
door handle.
"Hey!" He hit the brake and caught her by the arm. The car skidded to a
full stop. "Don't do that. I'm
not going to hurt you."
She tried to twist away from him, but his fingers bit into her arm. She
screamed. The cat jumped up from the floor, landing with its rump on
her leg and its front paws on the seat. "Let me out!" she screeched.
He held her fast, talking with the cigarette clamped in his mouth.
"Hey, it's okay. I just need to get nearer the border before—"
To her, his eyes looked dark and menacing. "No!" she shrieked. "I want
out!" Her fingers had turned clumsy with fear, and the door handle
refused to give. She pushed harder, trying to throw the force of
her body against it. The cat,
disturbed by all the activity, arched his back and spat, then sank his
front claws into the man's thigh.
The man gave a yelp of pain and pushed at the animal. The cat yeowed
and sank his claws deeper.
"Leave him alone," Francesca shouted, turning her attention from the
door to the assault on her cat. She slapped at the man's arm while the
cat maintained its bloody grip on his leg, hissing and spitting all the
time.
"Get him off me!" the man yelled. He threw up his elbow to defend
himself and accidentally knocked the cigarette out of his mouth. Before
he could catch it, the cigarette wedged itself inside the open collar
of
his shirt. He swatted at it with his hand, yelling again as the
burning tip began to sear his skin.
His elbow hit the horn.
Francesca pounded on his chest.
The cat began to climb his arm.
"Get out of here!" he screamed.
She grabbed for the door handle. This time it gave, and as it swung
open, she vaulted out, the cat springing after her.
"You're crazy, you know that, lady!" the man screamed, yanking the
cigarette from his shirt with one hand and rubbing at his leg with the
other.
She spotted her case, abandoned on the seat, and raced forward with her
arm extended to claim it. He saw what she was doing and immediately
slid across the seat to pull the door shut before she could reach it.
"Give me my case," she yelled.
"Get it yourself." He flipped her his middle finger, threw the car into
gear, and hit the accelerator. The tires spun, spitting out a great
cloud of dust that immediately engulfed her.
"My case!" she yelled as he peeled away. "I need my case!" She began
running after the Cadillac,
choking in the dust and calling out. She
ran until the car had faded to a small dot on the horizon. Then
she
collapsed to her knees in the middle of the road.
Her heart was pumping like a piston in her chest. She caught her breath
and laughed, a wild, broken sound that was barely human. Now she'd done
it. Now she'd really done it. And this time there was no good-looking
blond savior to come
to her rescue. A deep-throated rasp sounded next to her. She was alone
except for a walleyed cat.
She started to shake and crossed her arms over her chest as if she
could hold herself together. The cat wandered off to the side of the
road and began picking its way delicately through the brush. A
jackrabbit darted out from a clump of dried grass. She felt as if
chunks of her body were flying away into the hot, cloudless sky—pieces
of her arms and legs, her hair, her face. . . . Since she had come to
this country, she had lost everything. Everything she owned. Everything
she was. She had lost it all, and now she had lost herself. . ..
Twisted verses from the Bible invaded her brain, verses half learned
from long-forgotten nannies, something about Saul on the road to
Damascus, struck down into the dirt, blinded and then reborn. At that
moment Francesca wanted to be reborn. She felt the dirt beneath her
hands and wanted a miracle that would make her new again, a miracle of
biblical proportions ... a divine voice calling down to her with a
message. She waited, and she, who never thought to pray, began to pray.
"Please, God . . . make a miracle for me. Please, God. . . send me a
voice. Send me a messenger. ..."
Her prayer was fierce and strong, her faith—the faith of
despair—immediate and boundless. God would answer her. God must answer
her. She waited for her messenger to appear in white robes with a
seraphic voice to point out the path to a new life. "I've learned my
lesson, God. Really I have. I'll never be spoiled and selfish again."
She waited, eyes squeezed shut, tears making paths in the dust on her
cheeks. She waited for the messenger to appear, and an image began to
form in her mind, vague at first and then growing more solid. She
strained to look into the dimmest corners of her consciousness,
strained to peer at her messenger. She strained and saw . . .
Scarlett O'Hara.
She saw Scarlett lying in the dirt, silhouetted against a Technicolor
hillside. Scarlett crying out,
"As God is my witness, I'll never go
hungry again."
Francesca choked on her tears and a hysterical bubble of laughter rose
from her chest. She fell back
onto her heels and slowly let the laughter consume her. How typical,
she thought. And how
appropriate. Other people prayed and got thunderbolts and angels. She
got Scarlett O'Hara.
She stood up and started to walk, not knowing where she was going, just
moving. The dust drifted like powder over her sandals and settled
between her toes. She felt something in her back pocket and, reaching
in to investigate, pulled out a quarter. She gazed down at the coin in
her hand. Alone in a foreign country, homeless, possibly
pregnant—mustn't forget that calamity waiting to happen—she stood in
the middle of a Texas road with only the clothes on her back,
twenty-five cents in her hand, and a vision of Scarlett O'Hara in her
head.
A strange euphoria began to consume her—an audaciousness, a sense of
limitless possibilities. This was America, land of opportunity. She was
tired of herself, tired of what she had become, ready to begin anew.
And in all the history of civilization, had anyone ever been given such
an opportunity for a fresh start as she faced at this precise moment?
Black Jack's daughter looked down at the money in her hand, tested its
weight for a moment, and considered her future. If this was to be a
fresh start, she wouldn't carry any baggage from the past. Without
giving herself a chance to reconsider, she drew back her arm and flung
the quarter away.
The country was so vast, the sky so tall, that she couldn't even hear
it land.
Chapter
17
Holly Grace sat on the green wooden bench at the driving range and17
watched Dallie hitting practice balls with his two-iron. It was his
fourth basket of balls, and he was still slicing all his shots to the
right—not a nice power fade but an ugly slice. Skeet was slouched down
at the other end of the bench, his old Stetson pulled down over his
eyes so he wouldn't have to watch.
"What's wrong with him?" Holly Grace asked, pushing her sunglasses up
on top of her head. "I've seen him play with a hangover lots of times,
but not like this. He's not even trying to correct himself; he's just
hitting the same shot over and over."
"You're the one who can read his mind," Skeet grunted. "You tell me."
"Hey, Dallie," Holly Grace called out, "those are about the worst
two-iron shots in the entire history of golf. Why don't you forget
about that little British girl and concentrate on earning yourself a
living?"
Dallie teed up another ball with the head of his iron. "How 'bout you
just mind your own business?"
She stood and tucked the back of her white cotton camisole into the
waistband of her jeans before she wandered over to him. The pink ribbon
threaded through the lacy border of the camisole turned up in the
breeze and nestled into
the hollow between her breasts. As she passed the end tee, a man
practicing his drives got caught up in his backswing and completely
missed the ball. She gave him a sassy smile and told him he'd do lots
better if he kept his head down.
Dallie stood in the early afternoon sunshine, his hair golden in the
light. She squinted at him. "Those cotton farmers up in Dallas are
gonna take you to the cleaner's this weekend, baby. I'm giving Skeet a
brand-new fifty-dollar bill and telling him to bet it all against you."
Dallie leaned over and picked up the beer bottle sitting in the center
of a pile of balls. "What I really love about you, Holly Grace, is the
way you always cheer me on."
She stepped into his arms and gave him a friendly hug, enjoying his
particular male smell, a combination of sweaty golf shirt and the damp,
leathery scent of warm club grips. "I call 'em like I see 'em, baby,
and right now you're just short of terrible." She stepped away and
looked straight into his eyes. "You're worried about her, aren't you?"
Dallie gazed out at the 250-yard sign and then back at Holly Grace. "I
feel responsible for her; I can't help it. Skeet shouldn't have let her
get away like that. He knows how she is. She lets herself get tangled
up in vampire movies, she fights in bars, sells her clothes to loan
sharks. Christ, she took me on in the parking lot last night, didn't
she?"
Holly Grace studied the thin white leather straps crisscrossing the
toes of her sandals and then looked at him thoughtfully. "One of these
days, we've got to get ourselves a divorce."
"I don't see why. You're not planning on getting married again, are
you?"
"Of course not. It's just—maybe it's not good for either one of us,
going on like this, using our marriage
to keep us out of any other
emotional involvements."
He regarded her suspiciously. "Have you been reading Cosmo again?"
"That does it!" Slamming her sunglasses down over her eyes, she stomped
over to the bench and grabbed her purse. "There's no talking to you.
You are so narrow-minded."
"I'll pick you up at your mama's at six," Dallie called after her as
she headed toward the parking lot. "You can take me out for barbecue."
As Holly Grace's Firebird pulled out of the parking lot, Dallie handed
Skeet his two-iron. "Let's go on over to the course and play a few
holes. And if I even look like I'm thinking about using that club, you
just take out a gun and shoot me."
But even without his two-iron, Dallie played poorly. He knew what the
problem was, and it didn't have anything to do with his backswing or
his follow-through. He had too many women on his mind, was what it was.
He felt bad about Francie. Try as he might, he couldn't actually
remember having told her he was married. Still, that wasn't any excuse
for the way she'd carried on the night before in the parking lot,
acting as if they'd already taken a blood test and made a down payment
on a wedding ring. Dammit, he'd told her he wouldn't get serious. What
was wrong with women that you could tell them straight to their faces
that you would never marry them, and they'd nod just as sweet as pie
and say they understood what you were saying and that they felt exactly
the same way, but all the time they were picking out china patterns in
their heads? It was one of the reasons he didn't want to get a divorce.
That and the fact that he and Holly Grace were family.
After two double bogeys in a row, Dallie called it quits for the day.
He got rid of Skeet and then wandered around the course for a while,
poking at the underbrush with an eight-iron and shagging lost balls
just like he'd done when he was a kid. As he pulled a brand-new
Top-Flite out from under some leaves, he realized it must be nearly
six, and he still had to shower and change before he picked up Holly
Grace. He'd be late, and she'd be mad. He'd been late so many times
Holly Grace had finally given up fighting with him about it. Six years
ago he'd been late. They were supposed to be at the funeral home at ten
o'clock to pick out a toddler-size coffin, but he hadn't shown up until
noon.
He blinked hard. Sometimes the pain still cut through him as sharp and
swift as a brand-new knife. Sometimes his mind would play tricks on him
and he would see Danny's face as clearly as his own. And then he would
see Holly Grace's mouth
twist into a horrible grimace as he told her that her baby was dead,
that he'd let their sweet little blond-haired baby boy die.
He drew back his arm and took a vicious slice at a clump of weeds with
his eight-iron. He wouldn't think about Danny. He would think about
Holly Grace instead. He would think about that long-ago autumn when
they were both seventeen, the autumn they'd first set each other on
fire...
"Here she comes! Holy shit, Dallie, will you look at those tits!" Hank
Simborski fell back against the brick wall out behind the metal shop
where Wynette High's troublemakers gathered each day at lunchtime to
smoke. Hank grabbed his chest and punched Ritchie Reilly with his
elbow. "I'm dying, Lord! I'm dyin'! Just give me one squeeze on those
tits so I can go a happy man!"
Dallie lit his second Marlboro from the butt of the first and looked
through the smoke at Holly Grace Cohagan walking toward them with her
nose stuck up in the air and her chemistry book clutched against her
cheap cotton blouse. Her hair was pulled back from her face with a wide
yellow headband. She wore a navy blue skirt and white diamond-patterned
tights like the ones he'd seen stretched over a set of plastic legs in
the window at Woolworth's. He didn't like Holly Grace Cohagan, evee
though she was the best-looking senior girl at Wynette High. She acted
superior to the rest of the world, which made him laugh because
everybody knew she and her mama lived off the charity of her uncle
Billy T Denton, pharmacist at Purity Drugs. Dallie and Holly Grace were
the only really dirt-poor kids in senior college prep, but she acted
like she fit in with the others, while he hung out with guys like Hank
Simborski and Ritchie Reilly so everybody knew he didn't give a damn.
Ritchie stepped away from the wall and moved forward to catch her
attention, puffing up his chest to compensate for the fact that she
stood a head taller than he did. "Hey, Holly Grace, want a cigarette?"
Hank sauntered forward, too, trying to look cool but not quite making
it because his face had started to turn red. "Have one of mine," he
offered, pulling out a pack of Winstons. Dallie watched Hank lean
forward on the balls of his feet, trying to give himself another inch
of height, which still wasn't enough to draw even with an Amazon like
Holly Grace Cohagan.
She looked at both of them like they were piles of dog shit and began
to sweep by. Her attitude pissed Dallie off. Just because Ritchie and
Hank got into a little trouble now and then and weren't in college prep
didn't mean she had to treat them like maggots or something, especially
since she was wearing dime-store tights and a ratty old navy skirt he'd
seen her wear a couple hundred times before. With the Marlboro dangling
from the corner of his mouth, Dallie swaggered forward, shoulders
hunched into the collar of his denim jacket, eyes squinted against the
smoke, a mean, tough look on his face. Even without the two-inch heels
on his scuffed cowboy boots, he was the one boy in the senior class
tall enough to make Holly Grace Cohagan look up.
He stepped directly into her path and curled his top lip in a trace of
a sneer so she'd know exactly what kind of bad-ass she was dealing
with. "My buddies offered you a smoke," he said, real soft and low.
She curled her lip right back at him. "I turned them down."
He squinted a little more against the smoke and looked even meaner. It
was about time she remembered that she was back behind the school with
a real man, and that none of those squeaky-clean college-prep boys who
were always drooling over her were around to come to her rescue. "I
didn't hear you say 'no, thank you,'" he drawled.
She stuck up her chin and looked him straight in the eye. "I heard
you're queer, Dallie. Is that true? Somebody said you're so pretty
they're going to nominate you for homecoming queen."
Hank and Ritchie snickered. Neither of them had the nerve to tease
Dallie about his looks since he'd beaten them up when they first tried
it, but that didn't mean they couldn't enjoy watching someone
else go
after him. Dallie clenched his teeth. He hated his face, and he'd done
his best to ruin
it with a sullen expression. So far, only Miss Sybil Chandler had seen
through him. He intended to keep it that way.
"You shouldn't listen to gossip," he sneered. "I know I didn't listen
when I heard that you'd been putting out for every rich boy in the
senior class." It was a lie. Part of Holly Grace's appeal lay in the
fact that nobody had managed to get any further with her than a few
incomplete gropes and some tongue-kissing.
Her knuckles gradually turned white as she clutched her chemistry book,
but other than that she didn't betray a flicker of emotion at what he'd
said. "Too bad you won't ever be one of them," she jeered.
Her attitude infuriated him. She made him feel small and unimportant,
less than a man. No woman would have ever talked like that to his old
man, Jaycee Beaudine, and no woman was going to talk like that to him.
He moved his body closer so he could hover over her and she would feel
the threat of six feet of solid male steel getting ready to run her
down. She took a quick step to one side, but he was too fast. Pitching
his cigarette down on the blacktop, he sidestepped with her and then
moved closer, so that she either had to retreat or bump against him.
Gradually, he backed her up against the brick wall.
Behind him, Hank and Ritchie made smacking noises with their mouths and
let out catcalls, but Dallie didn't pay any attention. Holly Grace
still held up her chemistry book gripped in her hands so that instead
of feeling her breasts against his chest, he felt only the hard corners
of the book and the contours of her knuckles. He braced his hands
against the wall on either side of her head and leaned into her,
pinning her hips to the wall with his own and trying not to pay any
attention to the sweet scent of her long blond hair, which reminded him
of flowers and fresh spring air. "You wouldn't know what to do with a
real man," he sneered, moving his hips against her. "And you're too
busy wrestling the pants off those rich boys to find out."
He waited for her to back down, to lower those clear blue eyes and look
upset so he could let her go.
"You're a pig!" she spat out, glaring at him defiantly.
"And you're too ignorant to know how pitiful you really are."
Ritchie and Hank began to hoot. Dallie wanted to punch them . . . punch
her. ... He would make her deal with him! "Is that so?" he scoffed.
Abruptly, he slid his hand down along her side to the hem of her navy
skirt, keeping her body pinned against the wall so she couldn't get
away. She blinked. Her eyelids opened and closed once, twice. She
didn't say anything, didn't struggle. He pushed his hand up beneath her
dress and touched her leg through the diamond-patterned white tights,
not letting himself think about how much he'd been wanting to touch her
legs, how much time he'd spent dreaming about those legs.
She set her jaw and gritted her teeth and didn't say a word. She was as
tough as nails, ready to take on any man who looked at her. Dallie
thought he could probably take her right then, right against the wall.
She wasn't even fighting him. She probably wanted it. That's what
Jaycee had told him—that women liked a man who took what he wanted.
Skeet said it wasn't true, that women wanted a man who respected them,
but maybe Skeet was just too soft.
Holly Grace glared at him, and something pounded hard in his chest. He
curled his hand closer to the inside of her thigh. She didn't move. Her
face was a picture of defiance. Everything about her told him how tough
she was—her eyes, the flare of her nostrils, the set of her jaw.
Everything except the small, helpless quiver that had begun to destroy
the corner of her mouth.
He backed away abruptly, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his
jeans and hunching his shoulders. Ritchie and Hank snickered. Too late,
he realized that he should have moved more slowly. Now it looked as if
she'd gotten the best of him, as if he'd been the one to retreat. She
glared at him like he was a bug she'd just squashed under her foot, and
then she walked away.
Hank and Ritchie started to tease him, so he began to brag about how
she was practically begging for it and how lucky she would be if he
ever decided to give it to her. But all the time he was talking, his
stomach kept twisting on him as if he'd eaten something bad, and he
couldn't forget that helpless quiver spoiling the corner of her soft
pink mouth.
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