The Perk (13 page)

Meggie said again, "Better call J.B."

"Need some help, Beck?"

Beck looked up to a middle-aged woman standing
over him; she seemed vaguely familiar. She had blonde hair and blue eyes, a
stocky build, and a full round face; she was wearing a summer dress and sandals.
Four young blonde children surrounded her like kids around their nanny goat. Beck
stood.

"I recognize those boots," the woman
said.

Beck had worn jeans and his old cowboy boots.
They were going to meet J.B. at the goat auction after shopping, and you don't
wear Nike sneakers to the goat auction. It was easier to scrape goat shit off
leather boot soles than rubber sneaker soles.

"But you don't recognize me," she
said. "I know, I'm fat now. Four kids'll do that."

A little girl about Meggie's age licking on a
sucker said, "You're not fat, Mommy."

"Yes, I am, honey." She then leaned
close to Beck and whispered, "All those nights in the river?"

"
Mary Jo?
"
Mary Jo Meier. "Wow. And these are your kids?"

"Yep." She pointed them out: "Bobby,
Sally, Arlene, and Stanley Junior. Ten, eight, six, and four. Stanley wanted them exactly two years apart. I told him it's not like buying goats at the
auction, but Stanley, he's kind of anal. You remember Stanley Jobst, he was a
year older than us?"

"His folks owned the spread next to your
place?"

"We own both places now."

"Stanley Jobst. Wasn't he your …?"

She nodded. "Cousin. Second cousin."
She shrugged. "We kept the land in the family. So I hear you're running
for judge."

"I've heard that, too."

"Saw the article in the paper."

"What article?"

"About you. Big deal in today's paper, how
you're back and want to be judge. You haven't seen it?"

"No. I guess J.B.'s been out campaigning
again." Beck stared at his old girlfriend. "So how are you, Mary
Jo?"

"I'm good." The kids had engaged each
other, so Mary Jo stepped closer and spoke softly. "I waited for you,
Beck. When I read you stayed on at Notre Dame for law school, I stopped
waiting. That's when I knew you weren't coming back."

"I'm sorry, Mary Jo."

She shook her head. "You didn't lie to
me. You told me you weren't coming back. I just didn't believe you. Beck, I'm
real sorry about your wife. Did you hear about Aubrey's daughter?"

Beck nodded. "Saw him at practice."

"She was a beautiful girl … drugs."

"What do you know about her?"

"Heidi?" She shrugged. "She was
special … like you." Mary Jo hesitated, as if she wanted to say more
but thought better of it. She backed up a step and her face brightened.
"So, first time buying school clothes?"

"Does it show?"

"Like a tourist on Main Street. All right,
let's figure this deal out." She turned to Luke. "You must be Luke.
You need jeans. Wranglers or Levis?"

Luke shrugged.

"Wranglers," Mary Jo said. Then to
the older boy: "Bobby, you take Luke over to the boys' department, show
him the Wranglers. He looks about your size. Slim cut."

Luke followed Bobby down the aisle. Mary Jo now
faced Meggie and leaned over and put her hands on her knees.

"And this is Meggie."

Meggie nodded and held up the doll. "And
this is Mommy."

Mary Jo's head swiveled, and her eyes turned up
to Beck.

"She, uh …"

Mary Jo waved him off. Back to Meggie: "Okay, Meggie, let's
find you some pretty things to wear to school. Come on, kids."

She took Meggie's hand and led her to a rack of
girls' clothes. Beck and her children followed.

"We'll start with the sale rack first. Your
daddy, he's not a rich Chicago lawyer anymore. He's gonna be a poor small-town
judge, so we gotta save him some money."

Meggie smiled. "Mommy likes sales,
too."

An hour later, Mary Jo had outfitted the
children with clothes, backpacks, lunchboxes, and supplies. Before they parted,
she said, "I'm happy, Beck. I'm happy how my life turned out, and I'm
happy you're back. This is where you belong."

Mary Jo checked out first. Just as Beck and the
kids walked out of the Wal-Mart and into the blazing sunlight of a hot July day,
Mary Jo drove by in a red Suburban. She waved and her kids waved, and Beck and
his kids waved back. On the back bumper were JESUS LOVES YOU and BECK HARDIN
FOR JUDGE stickers.

They met J.B. out front of the auction house a few blocks south
of Main Street. It was an old metal building with a split-rail fence out
front, livestock pens out back, and a satellite dish on the roof. The place
looked like a pickup convention; trucks and goat trailers packed the dirt
parking lot and surrounded the building.

Goats were auctioned off every Tuesday in Gillespie County.

J.B. was talking to two old-timers wearing plaid
shirts. Just as all the old Volkswagen Beetles in the world had found their
way to Mexico, all the plaid shirts had found their way to Fredericksburg.
J.B. was wearing another Tommy Bahama shirt; this one had a bright floral print
of gold, yellow, red, and green. As they walked up, Beck heard one old-timer
say in a thick German accent, "J.B., it looks like someone throwed up on
that shirt."

The old-timers laughed; J.B. shook his head.

"You old Germans ought to get out
more."

"You're one to talk, J.B.," the other one
said. "We ain't seen you in so long, we figure you died."

"That'll be the day."

It was all smiles and good times until one old-timer
said, "Still can't believe you gave up the goats to make wine, J.B… . and
with a Mexican."

The man's last words had the same effect on J.B.
Hardin as a punch in the nose. The smile dropped off his face, and the old
fire came into his eyes.

"His name's Hector Aurelio, and he's a damn
fine man. And he ain't never taken no government money, welfare or
mohair."

"Now, J.B., don't go righteous on us."

"You boys been bitching about Mexicans long
as I can remember. Wish to hell you'd come up with something new to bitch
about, just for a change of pace."

J.B.'s face was redder than normal, and when he
pointed a big finger at the old-timers, Beck knew he was about to tell them
what he really thought; but he noticed Meggie standing there with the doll, and
his face softened. He turned away from the old-timers without another word.

"Why, here's my
little
schatzy.
" His little sweetheart. "Now, honey, I want
you to pretend you didn't hear your J.B. say those bad words, okay?"

"Okay, J.B., we'll pretend."

"That's a good little gal."

They walked over to the metal stairway leading
up to the catwalk above the open pens.

"Used their mohair money to buy ranches in Montana and New Mexico and more land here," J.B. said to Beck. "Now they're
selling to Californians, making millions. Had their hands out to the
government for forty years, but they bitch about welfare for Mexicans."

Meggie was walking between them. "J.B.,
what's a Mexican?"

"A human being, honey, just like you and me.
Some folks around here just ain't figured that out yet." J.B. took her
hand. "All righty, little darlin', let's find you a goat."

Beck thought, They say a man never really
respects his father until he's a father himself. They're right.

Meggie and the doll
went up the stairs to the catwalk with J.B. Beck followed with Luke. Beck had
climbed these same stairs every Tuesday of every summer from the day he could
walk until the day he had left for Notre Dame. Below them, thousands of bleating
goats—Angora and Boer; kids, nannies, and billies; brown, black, white, tan
with black highlights, black with tan highlights—huddled in pens tended by old
men in cowboy hats. It looked like a scene from a John Wayne movie—
Red River
, but with goats instead of cattle. The smell was no better. The
goat stink was strong enough to taste. Meggie was pinching her nose.

"J.B., it stinks!"

J.B. laughed. "It does at that. Look
around, doll, pick one out. A little one."

"We can have a baby goat? For our very
own?"

"Yep, for your very own."

"What are we going to do with a goat?"

"It's gonna be your pet."

"We had a goldfish for a pet in Chicago."

"Well, petunia, in the country we have fish
for dinner, not for pets. We have animal pets."

"It died."

"The goldfish?"

"Unh-huh. Will our goat die?"

"Nope. Goats are tougher than bark on a
shin oak."

"They don't get cancer, do they?"

"No, honey, they don't."

"That's good."

Meggie walked along the catwalk, peering down
into the pens and carrying on a conversation with the doll. She waved at a
girl about Luke's age who was tending goats.

"Is she a goat girl?"

"I reckon she is," J.B. said.

"Can I be a goat girl one day?"

"I reckon not. We're in the wine business now, honey."

Beck followed J.B. and Meggie around the catwalk.
It was like going back in time, except that twenty-four years before the
hundreds of pens had been full; today, many were empty. Meggie suddenly cried
out, "J.B., that's the one we want!"

She was pointing down at a black kid with a tan
face.

"Then that's the one it'll be, sweet pea."

J.B. wrote the pen number on his palm and
pointed the goat out to the man tending that pen. They followed the catwalk around
to the door leading into the auction arena. Inside, a dozen spectators sat in
plastic seats bolted to a wood platform that stepped down to fashion theater
seating; the auction pen was down front. Goats were being herded into the pen
through a sliding door to the right and out through a sliding door to the left.

The auctioneer sat above the pen; the bidders, old
men wearing straw cowboy hats and boots with goat shit stuck to the soles—a
buyer's degree of savvy could be determined by the amount of goat shit on his
soles; savvy buyers examined the goats in the pens outside before bidding inside—sat
directly in front of the pen. Their plaid shirts glowed under the exposed fluorescent
lights fixed in the yellowed acoustical ceiling tile. An air conditioner and
two ceiling fans were blowing but couldn't blow out the goat stink. The
auctioneer was calling into a microphone: "Ninety-five, ninety-five …"

One old-timer gave a little wave.

"Ninety-six, ninety-six …"

Another nodded.

"Ninety-seven, ninety-seven …"

No heated bidding contest broke out among the
old-timers. They just nodded or raised a finger or touched the brim of their
hats to up the bid while a young girl in short-shorts took the bidders' lunch
orders; a small grease board on the wall noted that day's lunch special: barbecued
beef and pinto beans. Beck picked up a few German words spoken by the same men
he had last seen here; they were just twenty-four years older. It was as if
these old goat ranchers were just going through the motions, buying and selling
goats just for the sake of buying and selling, trying desperately to prolong a
way of life, like a dying patient on life support. After a few more rounds,
the auctioneer announced, "Sold to John Ed for ninety-eight."

That lot of goats was prodded out. The door to
the outside pens was slid open and a fresh blast of goat stink blew in like a norther.
Beck wondered how he had ever gotten used to the stink. A few sales later, a
dozen kids were led into the auction pen by the nanny goat.

"That's us, honey," J.B. said.

He walked down the steps hand-in-hand with
Meggie. When they arrived, he waved at the bidders then said something to the
auctioneer. He pointed at the kid that Meggie had picked out and shook hands
with the man tending the auction pen.

"Boys, we got us a special guest today,"
the auctioneer said. "J.B. Hardin. Yep, that's him looking like a
tourist on Main Street. J.B., you ain't gone Democrat on us, have you?"

"I hate to break it to you boys," J.B.
said, "but I've always been a Democrat."

That brought a big round of laughter. The auctioneer
said, "J.B., you always been a kiddin' son of a gun. Say, is that your
boy Beck back there?"

The bidders turned in their chairs and waved at
Beck. He waved back.

"We're gonna win state again this year,
Beck," the auctioneer said. "We got Slade."

"Beck's running for judge," J.B. said.

The bidders chuckled as if sharing a private
joke.

"Well, J.B.," the auctioneer said, "we
can help you with the goat, but ain't much we can do about that
election." To the bidders, he said, "J.B.'s little granddaughter
come to buy herself a goat. She fancies this pretty little kid here. We'll
start the bidding at ninety-five."

J.B. leaned down to Meggie. She held her hand
up.

The auctioneer called out: "Ninety-five to
Miss Meggie. Ninety-five, ninety-five …"

One old bidder held up a finger, and everyone
froze. J.B., the auctioneer, and every other bidder turned and stared at him as
if he were Bill Clinton just walked in. He glanced around then lamely withdrew
his finger. The auctioneer banged his gavel.

"Sold, to Miss Meggie Hardin for
ninety-five. And good to see you, J.B., if not that shirt."

J.B. waved at him, then he and Meggie walked
back up.

Meggie said to the doll, "Mommy, we own a goat!"

J.B. said to Beck in a low voice, "I wasn't
kidding. I've always voted Democrat."

J.B. took Luke, Meggie, and the goat back home for lunch.
Beck drove to the bookstore to get a coffee and collect the books he had
ordered. Taped to the front door was a hand-painted campaign sign: BECK
HARDIN FOR JUDGE.

He opened the door and stepped inside. He
hadn't been back since he had learned about Jodie and Janelle, so he tried not
to act differently. He walked up to the counter/coffee bar where Jodie was
working.