Yellow Mesquite (44 page)

The woman gave Harley a flinty glance, then smiled at Leah, holding out her hands. “Hi, there. You want to come with me and see what we have in our toy box?”

Leah locked her arms around Harley’s neck, shaking her head no.

“I’ve got a big old toy box over here. Okay?”

“Give her to me,” Sherylynne said, stepping forward again.

Harley dropped his bag and stood back. “She’s not touching this kid.”

The younger policeman stepped in front of Sherylynne. “Lady, I’m not telling you again.”

Leah sniffled, touching Harley’s face with her fingertips. “Dad-da, I won’ stwa-bewwy.”

“You hear that?” Harley said. “Daddy. She called me daddy. Now what do you make of this…this
kidnapping
?”

“Ice cream?” said the policewoman. “Sure, we’ve got ice cream. Come with me, okay?”

“Pee pee,” Leah said.

There was a moment of silence. Then: “You need to go to the bathroom?” Maria asked.

Leah ducked her chin, nodded.

“Here,” Maria said, holding out her arms. “My, you’re a big girl. I’ll take you to the bathroom, okay?”

Leah paused, then reached out and slid into Maria’s arms.

“Duhon,” the older cop said to the younger man, “wanna run in back and get some ice cream outta the freezer?”

Duhon, glared briefly at Sherylynne. “Sure.”

Harley took out his wallet as Maria disappeared with Leah toward the back.

“Don’t worry about it,” said the big cop. “Taxpayers’ll take care of it.”

Harley handed over a dollar. “I’d like to get it, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, sure!” Sherylynne said. “Just listen at the goody-goody father!”
 

“Suit yourself,” the older cop said to Harley, passing the bill to Duhon. “Put this in petty cash, will you?”

“He
kidnapped
her!” Sherylynne shouted. “I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it!”

“Looks to me like she was trying to kidnap him,” said the older man.

“He’s not even her real daddy!” Sherylynne yelled.

All eyes turned on Harley.

“I am too her real daddy—or was, until two days ago, I found out.”

All eyes fixed on Sherylynne.

Sherylynne glared. “She’s
my
kid, not his!”

The big cop sighed. “Well, we can’t settle that for you.”

“I want him arrested,” she insisted.

“No, I want
her
arrested,” Harley said. “Child abuse, abandonment, neglect. I mean, you saw that poor kid!”

Duhon returned with a pint of ice cream, followed by Maria, Leah toddling along, holding Maria’s hand. Maria sat Leah at a table, and took a seat alongside.

“Stwa-bewwy,” Leah said. Duhon handed Maria the ice cream, and she took the lid off.
 

“We’re turning her over to the parish welfare,” Maria said, spooning a little ice cream to Leah. “The courts will decide.”
 

Tears welled up in Sherylynne’s puffy eyes. “Welfare? You can’t do that…”

Harley stared. “No way in hell is she going into any welfare!”

The older cop sighed. “Now listen here son, you’ve been respectful up until now. So don’t go making problems for yourself. She’s going to the parish welfare until this is straightened out. Now, you want, I can give you a lift back out to the airport.”

“She’s not going anywhere but home with me!” Sherylynne shouted.
 

The big cop narrowed his eyes on her. “Now, you, on the other hand, you haven’t exhibited any cooperation at all. That won’t bode well for you in court if you keep it up.”
 

“Listen,” Harley said, “everybody knows about these welfare places. I don’t mean to make trouble, but it’s not gonna happen.”

The older cop studied him. “Well, son. You may be right for all I know, but we have to play by the rules. Right or wrong, as each case may be, the rules say she’s gonna be looked after by the parish until you two straighten this out.” The cop studied him further. “You
do
understand how it may affect the child if we have to take her from you forcibly? Do you really want that? Because that’s what’s gonna happen.”

“She’s going home with me, where she belongs!” Sherylynne said.

“No,” said the older cop quietly. “We’re going to see to it that she’s looked after properly. Read me?”
 

“This is no way to treat a mother!” Sherylynne whimpered, wiping at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“Wait a minute,” Harley said. “If there’s no other way, then let her go with Sherylynne. That’s got to be less traumatic than taking her somewhere where she doesn’t know anyone.
 

“Son,” the big cop said, “I know this is hard, but for what it’s worth, you’re probably making the best decision. Now, once more, you want a lift to the airport or not?”

“No, thanks. But I’d appreciate directions to a good lawyer.”

AT FIVE THAT
afternoon, he sat across from a Mr. Bernstein in Bernstein’s office.

“Yes,” Bernstein said, “if she’s a resident of this parish, you can file for custody here. It’s iffy though. Our courts down here, they aren’t big on awarding children to fathers, even if the wife is a no-goodnik.” He smiled. “Especially if the husband is a damn Yankee from New York, and not the biological father anyway. And especially if the damn Yankee has a damn Jew lawyer.”

Harley tried to smile. “One of your local cops said you’re the best in town.”

“That’s true. Depends on the judge, though. Now, you get a redneck judge, you’re not going to win no matter what. Okay? Good. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I want you to get a blood test. However, you understand that’s not going to guarantee anything. Thirty percent of the male population is automatically disqualified. The whole thing has to do with blood types and what’s possible and what’s not.”

“I’m going to level with you,” Harley said, thinking of Leah’s amber eyes, her fair skin and reddish blond hair, “I have serious doubts about a blood test being any help.”

Bernstein nodded, brow lifted in sympathetic understanding. “I see. Well, as we both know, there’s more to being a father than just blood. But can we convince a court of that?” He sighed. “Iffy. Iffy all around.”

Bernstein said it would probably be a couple of months before the case came up. In the meantime, Harley was torn, wondering if Leah might have been better off with the welfare after all. He signed papers, wrote Bernstein a deposit check, then drove to a clinic on Ashford with a requisition for a blood test.
 

Afterward, he found a clothing store, picked up two more pairs of jeans, two shirts, extra underwear and socks. At a Walgreens, he bought a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a box of gauze, Q-tips, a tube of Neosporin, and a roll of medical tape.
 

HE TOOK A
seven o’clock flight to Abilene, rented another car, drove to Hardwater, and took a room at the Holiday Inn a little after midnight.

He showered, then cleaned and redressed his wounds. The peroxide foamed in his nose, burned, and made his eyes water. The flesh around both eyes was swollen, but not as much as earlier, purple now, going yellowish around the edges. He was shocked at his image in the bathroom mirror—a reject from a third-rate horror movie. No wonder Leah backed off when she first saw him.
 

The two punctures just above his ankle pained him less than he would have expected, mostly when he pulled his boot on and off. The one boot had two lacerations in the upper where the Doberman’s canines had penetrated, but otherwise the boot was perfectly serviceable. He could only imagine what his leg would have looked like had he been wearing shoes.
 

He went down to the motel’s restaurant. A few men lounged about, drinking coffee. Ignoring their curious stares, he tried to eat a chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, green beans and julienned carrots, and while eating was painful, he managed a few bites and a glass of iced tea.

Back in his room, he thought about calling Frankie, but it was late and even later in New York.

He spent a sleepless night, reliving again each moment from when he walked out on Frankie, to shooting the Doberman, to the revolting sensation in his arms as he slammed the shotgun against Whitehead’s face, to poor Mrs. Riley, and then Sherylynne. Sherylynne, ultimately so pitiful he felt sorry for her. But then, any compassion he might have felt for her faded when he thought of Leah. Poor, neglected Leah. All of it, replaying again and again.

At 1:00 a.m., he gave up on sleep and turned the TV on. Race riots were taking place in Chicago and Cleveland. The Ku Klux Klan were attacking blacks and civil rights workers in the South. The U.S. Military was increasing its strength in Vietnam. Now that he was single and no longer a father—
officially,
anyway—maybe he’d be drafted and killed. At the moment, that suited him just fine.

Chapter 47

Separation Revisited

U
P AT DAWN
, ears ringing from exhaustion and lack of sleep, he showered and redressed his wounds. Then he drove out East Broadway. He picked up two breakfast burritos at a roadside trailer and ate them while he washed his clothes in a Laundromat, including the new jeans in order to get the stiffness and some of the blueing out.
 

February, but the Laundromat was still decorated with paper Christmas bells, looping chains of red and green construction paper, aerosol snow on the windowsills. Two Mexican children watched him with somber interest while their mother folded clothes into a basket. Soon they all got into a pickup and left.

His clothes in the dryer, he took a deep breath and dinged a dime into the pay phone. He had the operator place a call to Frankie and charged it to his home phone.
 

She picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Frankie, I’m so sorry I haven’t called sooner.”

A moment of silence. Then: “Where are you?” He could hear the cool reserve in her voice.
 

“Hardwater. But I found Sherylynne and Leah in Lake Charles, Louisiana.”

“You left here with a gun.”

“Well, yes, I—”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No, not really, I—”

“Then don’t call me.”

Click
.
 

He stared at the phone, the dial tone amplifying an abject sense of loss, curdling his stomach.
 

HE TOOK HIGHWAY 70
south out of Hardwater. At Highpoint, he turned off onto 153 toward Separation. The pastures glittered, ice melting on buffalo grass, mesquite, prickly pear.
 

He was eager to see his family, but dreaded explaining the divorce, the situation with Leah. While he hadn’t exactly lied to them, other than by omission, that omission came with its own weight. He had been tempted to put the visit off until he returned to Louisiana for the custody hearing; but his pulse raced in anticipation as the car sped across open country.
 

Separation itself looked abandoned, a woeful cluster of buildings huddled beneath a forlorn winter sky.

A few miles farther, he slowed and crossed the cattle guard by the mailbox where his dad had stood with him six years before as he was leaving home, hitchhiking to Dallas. The house and its outbuildings stood in silhouette at the top of the slope, dark against the February light.
 

The family car was gone, the pickup parked out to one side. It hadn’t occurred to him that they might not be home. He stopped at the front yard, fenced now with sheep wire, and got out. He let himself into the yard and knocked on the front door. But the house was silent. He backed up and looked the place over. The windmill stood still out back, the fan tied off.

He walked around the side of the house where the propane tank stood near the clothesline. The cultivator, disk harrow and other odds and ends of farm equipment lay strung out along the fencerow. A faucet stuck out from between the cemented rocks that made up the house’s foundation. The soil around the faucet was dark, laced with ice crystals. When he tried the spigot, he discovered it was open—which meant his dad had drained the water pipes so they wouldn’t freeze, which, along with the fact that the windmill had been tied off, meant they hadn’t only gone to town shopping.

He went back and stood in the front yard, looking the place over again. His watch read 7:30 a.m. He was about to get back in the car when in the far pasture he saw a pickup easing down a two-rutted track through a shallow draw, coming toward the house. He stood by, waiting as the pickup came up the slight incline.

Only when the pickup stopped did Harley recognize Mr. Barrow, the neighbor whose place adjoined his mom and dad’s over across the draw. Mr. Barrow opened the door and eased himself out, studying Harley, his bunged-up face.
 

“Mr. Barrow, it’s me, Harley.”

Mr. Barrow stared a second, then visibly relaxed, his old frame going slack, a grin growing on his face. “Well, then. I guess I won’t need this.” He half-turned, placed a revolver on the seat, and held out his hand. “I thought for a minute there the space aliens done landed. Good to see you, Harley Jay. What the heck happened to your face?”

Harley shook Mr. Barrow’s hand. “You know that old story—ran into a door.”

Mr. Barrow laughed. “Yep. Some door. I ran into a couple of them kind when I was a young feller. What the heck you doin’ here?”

“Just dropped in for a visit but looks like I picked a bad time.”

Mr. Barrow tilted his head, eyes narrowed. “You mean you came all the way down here from New Yark, and they didn’t even know you was a-comin’?”

“Sort of.” He didn’t want Mr. Barrow to know how dumb he was. But then, his family didn’t yet have a phone, and there was no help for it. “I was in the neighborhood.”
 

“Well, they’re gonna be plumb put out that they missed you.”
 

“Where the heck did they go, anyway?”

Mr. Barrow grinned. “Well, sir. They went off up yonder to Texas Tech. Them and those little girls, they was goin’ on to Disneyland.” Mr. Barrow looked at Harley, one eye asquint. “Disneyland. California. Can you beat that?”