Yellow Mesquite (15 page)

Mattie the cook came out to tell them good-bye. She handed Sherylynne a brown paper sack. “Sandwiches and some peanut-butter cookies,” she said. Sherylynne hugged Mattie and thanked her for all the wonderful meals and her kindness.
 

“Don’t you worry none ’bout Miz Grace,” Mattie said. “That woman, she kinda stuffy sometime.”
 

Harley went to shake Mattie’s hand, but she pulled him into her embrace. “Mattie,” he said, “you’re the only thing I’m going to miss around here.”
 

Mattie smiled, her eyes glassy with emotion. “I gon’ miss cleanin’ you messy room,” she said, and laughed.

Aunt Grace knew they were leaving, but she was nowhere to be seen. After a moment, Sherylynne asked Mattie to please tell her aunt good-bye. She gave Mattie one last hug. Harley opened the passenger door and Sherylynne got in.
 

She helped Harley with the map directions to the new Interstate 20, west. The highway passed through Hardwater, just twenty miles from Separation and Harley’s family. Sherylynne had already confided that she was nervous about meeting them; that, like Aunt Grace, they would suspect she was pregnant, suspect why Harley was marrying her.
 

The June sun was warm, but Sherylynne laughed and said she loved the feel of the heat and the wind whipping around the windshield, loved the way old men in pickups and trucks turned to look as they passed.
 

“I can just imagine us, rich, driving into Hollywood or somewhere in a car like this,” she said. “Of course, I would have to have some spiffy new clothes. Shoes. Lots of nice shoes.”

He couldn’t help but smile, seeing the pleasure she took in the car.
 

The rolling hills were patchy with live oaks. Then the landscape changed: ragged with mesquite, dry-looking pastures dotted with prickly pear. They stopped at a restaurant at the top of Ranger Hill and had a late breakfast of ham and eggs.
 

“Shouldn’t we call your parents? Let them know we’re coming?”

“They don’t have a phone.”

Two truckers entering the restaurant paused and watched them get back in the car. Four teenage boys drove up in an old Chevy. They got out and stood for a moment, watching as he and Sherylynne drove off in the Corvette.
 

SHERYLYNNE WAS QUIET
as he angled off I-20 into Hardwater
.
He passed the Bluebonnet Hotel, cater-cornered to the courthouse square.
 

“We could go in that courthouse and get married right now,” he said. “What do you think?”

“I’d rather get married by a preacher. Hadn’t you?”

“How about the preacher in Separation? We can get my family to join us.”

She frowned. “I hope they like me.”
 

“They’re gonna love you, same as me.”

He turned left down under the railroad overpass onto Texas 70, south. On the outskirts of town, he pulled in at a Gulf station and had the tank filled.

“Some car you got here,” said the attendant.

He smiled. “Unfortunately, it’s not mine.”

When they pulled back onto the highway, Sherylynne said, “You didn’t have to tell him that.”

“That what?”

“That it wasn’t ours. This car.”

He grinned. “Well, if I’d been on my toes, I’d’ve told him it was yours, that you’re a rich heiress, and I’m your kept man.”

She tilted her head at him, a hint of a smile.

In that moment, he realized again how much he loved her—her adventurous spirit, her graceful disjointed walk, her willingness to spend the rest of her life with him. Carrying his baby.
 

“Don’t worry,” he said. “My mom and dad are gonna love you. And my little sisters…well, they’re twelve now, and not so little. You won’t get a word in edgewise.”

He drove up and around the hairpin curves onto what was known as “up on the Divide”—a long plateau, maybe ten-by-twelve miles of rich pasture and farmland.
 

A mile beyond the crest, they came to Highpoint where Highway 153 split off of 70 to the left and Separation. A small service station stood in the junction where the highway split.
 

“It’s said that water running off one side goes into the Colorado, and off the other into the Brazos. I don’t know when they ever had enough rain to make that kinda judgment.”
 

A few miles farther, Harley drove into Separation—past the baseball field on the left—recalling again the silhouette of Darlene Delaney’s naked leg in Billy Wayne’s car behind the backstop, ankle chain glinting in the moonlight.
 

“
This
is where you grew up?” Sherylynne said, looking about, a wry little smile.

“We didn’t all have the good fortune to grow up in a cosmopolitan city like Vinton, Louisiana,” he said, trying to affect a light tone.
 

Five minutes later, he came to his family’s mailbox mounted on a cedar post, turned in over the cattle guard, and drove up the dirt track to the house, its windmill, cow sheds, and farm machinery strung out in back.
 

Both the car and the pickup were gone, the yard empty.

Chapter 17

Joined Together

“
I
’M A NERVOUS WRECK
,” Sherylynne said as he pulled to a stop in front. He got out and went around and opened her door, and she got out and stood by as he went up to the front entrance.
 

The screen popped open and his sisters burst out, squealing, “Harley Jay! Harley Jay!” running down off the step in jeans and T-shirts—all knees and elbows, big front teeth in freckled faces. Sherylynne stood by as both girls threw their arms around him. Then, laughing, he stepped back and looked them over.

“Wow! I never seen such good-looking women in all my life!”

“You big tease,” Anna Mae said, both girls coloring with pleasure, slapping him on the shoulder, casting curious glances at Sherylynne.
 

“Ladies,” Harley said, “this is Sherylynne. Sherylynne, Anna Mae and Annie Leigh.” He grinned. “I still don’t know which is which.”

“You’re just as pretty as Harley said,” Sherylynne said, flushing. She held out her hand and the girls shook it, each in turn, awkward, checking her out.

Then they wanted to know about the car, and Harley told them about the job.

“Well, shoot,” Annie Leigh said, “I wanted you to live in Dallas so we could come live with you in the big city!”
 

“Y’all come on in,” the Anna Mae said.

“Where’re the folks?” Harley asked.

“Papa, he’s running the road-grader for the county, and Mama’s helping Mrs. Ivy Johnson paint her kitchen,” Annie Leigh said.

Harley looked at his watch. “That’s too bad. We’ve got to get to Midland before night. We thought we might get married first.”

The twins looked at him, at each other. Annie Leigh narrowed a quizzical gaze on Sherylynne, a half-smile fixed on her face. “He’s just teasing? Right?”

Sherylynne blushed again. “It’s true.”

“Shoot. I’d hoped Mom and Dad could join us,” Harley said.

The twins continued to watch them, one to the other, curious half-expectant smiles on bright faces.
 

“You mean it?” Anna Mae said. “Y’all are really gonna get married? Here? Today?”

“How about you two coming along? You can act as witnesses.”

The girls went into a little fit of squealing, hugging each other, parading around him and Sherylynne in unbridled excitement.
 

Anna Mae stopped, collecting herself. “What’re Mom and Dad gonna say?”
 

“They’re prob’ly gonna say they wish they’d been here.”

The twins looked at each other, still not entirely convinced.

“Even it it’s true, we couldn’t go looking like this,” Annie Leigh said, gesturing at their jeans and T-shirts.

“Besides, we can’t all of us fit in that little car, either,” Anna Mae added.
 

“And just who’s gonna marry you?” Annie Leigh asked.

“How about Brother Evans, up at the Baptist Church?”

“He’s not here. Took the RA boys off to Lueders Encampment for a week.”

“What about Brother Watson?” Annie Leigh said, looking at Anna Mae.

Anna Mae nodded. “He fills in for Brother Evans sometimes. He’s ordained,” she added to Sherylynne.
 

“What does that mean?” Sherylynne asked.

“Official. He graduated from Hardin Simmons, the seminary, or something.”

She went on to explain that he had given up a church in some little place called Haskell for health reasons. He had pretty much quit the ministry except filling in now and then for Brother Evans.
 

“Sherylynne, how about you drive. One of you girls can sit on my lap, and the other can sit on the panel behind the seats where the top folds down.
 

“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom first,” Anna Mae said. “Me too,” Annie Leigh echoed. They hurried inside, and when they came out again, both had changed from T-shirts to white blouses, but still wore jeans and sneakers.
 

He saw that Sherylynne was excited, driving the Corvette, even with everybody packed in like sardines.
 

“I feel like we’re riding in one of those little circus cars with all the clowns piling out,” Annie Mae said.

Brother Watson lived in a little rock house between the cotton gin and a maze of roping pens, picket fences constructed of cedar posts laced together with barbed wire.
 

Sherylynne kept looking around, and he could see the country from her point of view—everything so different here than Dallas or Vinton—the thin air, the treeless land, prickly pears, mesquite.

Brother Watson was repairing a bicycle in a little garage workshop out back when his wife called for him to come inside. She would stand in as official witness, as the girls weren’t old enough.

Brother Watson was a small, sunken-chested man with a cough and a tick in one eye that blinked every few seconds so it looked like he was winking. He wore black work shoes, white socks and khaki pants. He put on a clean white shirt and a plaid sport jacket for the wedding. Sherylynne stood at Harley’s side on the flowered linoleum in Brother Watson’s living room, the twins, one on either side. The surrounding walls were decorated with a collection of ceramic plates, one for every state in the union.
 

The ceremony was short. Brother Watson pronounced them man and wife. The girls giggled when Harley put the ring on Sherylynne’s finger and kissed the bride. Mrs. Wilson wished them good luck and went back into her kitchen where she was pickling beets. Brother Watson looked pleased when Harley gave him a twenty-dollar bill.
 

“C’mon back here to the tool-shed for a minute,” he said to Harley. “We’ll have a quick snort of Jim Beam to get you started off right.”
 

Harley hesitated, glancing reluctantly at Sherylynne. “It’ll have to be quick. We need to get to Midland before night.” He followed Brother Watson out, leaving Sherylynne and the girls, the twins hugging her, taking her hand, letting go, taking her hand again, saying how pleased they were to have another sister. They were good, well adjusted girls.

“A quick one it is.” Watson poured an inch of Old Crow into two small jelly glasses. Watson lifted his in a toast. “Son, A man’s life is determined by the woman he marries and the work he chooses. May God bless you in both.”

“Thanks,” Harley said. They downed the shots, and went back inside where everyone shook hands again. “Tell your mom and dad hi,” Watson said to the twins, and the foursome climbed back in the car.
 

After they dropped the twins off with what seemed like an excess of emotion—teary-eyed hugs and good-byes all around—and all around again—they backtracked to Hardwater, and once more headed west.

“Sherylynne Buchanan,
”
Sherylynne said aloud. She frowned. “Do you think that sounds like me?”

“I like the sound of it,” he said.

She leaned across, put one hand behind his neck, and kissed him on the cheek.

They hadn’t gone twenty miles before a reddish-brown wall became visible, low on the northern horizon. “Sandstorm coming,” Harley said.

Sherylynne stared. “Really? That’s not mountains?”

As they neared Big Spring, the wall loomed larger. The sky darkened. The wind picked up. The air tasted like dirt and dried out his nose.

A scattering of oilfield equipment began to appear as they neared Midland. Harley pulled off into a strip mall. He left Sherylynne in the car while he hurried into an IGA supermarket. He grabbed a basket and filled it with make-do essentials that he managed to fit into the footwell alongside Sherylynne’s feet. He unlocked the hatch behind the seats and put the top up on the car.
 

Presently he drove off the blacktop onto a graveled road. A street sign read C
HAPARRAL
. The road cut through prickly pear and weeds, past a few trailers and little shoebox houses with small porches in front. He turned into one of the yards, a big mesquite tree beating about along one side of the house, another visible in back. Harley jumped out and ran ahead and unlocked the front door. Wind fluttered his shirt. Briars beat about, rattling against the stucco walls.
 

He hurried back and opened the trunk. Sherylynne took a box of
 
her things out while he grabbed the two sacks of food.
Sand stung as they ran to the front door. Harley let Sherylynne in, set the sacks down, then ran back to get his own suitcase. He returned to find Sherylynne standing just inside, looking about. He jerked the door shut and stood at her side. A green vinyl-covered sofa sagged against one wall, a coffee table, two stuffed chairs, a floor lamp. There was a small eat-in kitchen, metal cabinets and a rusty sink. A yellowed 1948 calendar on the wall pictured a bank of silos and thousands of cows disappearing over the horizon. The advertisement read: “R
EINHARDT’S
F
EEDLOT
–
S
NYDER
,
T
EXAS
.
”