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 messénger 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, FU 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 and 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 a
utumn 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, even 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.
That evening he found himself hanging around in the alley behind Purity Drugs where she worked for her uncle after school. He leaned his shoulders against the wall of the store and dug the heel of his boot into the dirt and thought about how he should be meeting Skeet at the driving range right now and practicing shots with
his three-wood. Except right now he didn't care about his three-wood. He didn't care about golf or hustling the boys at the country club or anything but trying to redeem himself in the eyes of Holly Grace Cohagan.
A ventilation grid was set into the outside wall of the store a few feet above his head. Occasionally he heard a sound coming from the storeroom on the other side—a box being dropped, Billy T calling out an order, the distant ringing of the telephone. Gradually the sounds had died down as closing time approached, until now he could hear Holly Grace's voice so clearly he knew she must be standing right beneath the grid.
“You go on, Billy T. I'll lock up.”
“I'm in no hurry, honey bun.”
In his imagination, Dallie could see Billy T with his white pharmacist's coat and his florid face looking down his big putty nose at the high school boys when they came in to buy rubbers. Billy T would pull a pack of Trojans off the shelf behind him, lay them on the counter, and then, like a cat playing with a mouse, cover them with his hand and say, “If you buy those, I'll tell your mama.” Billy T had tried that crap with Dallie the first time he'd ever come into the store. Dallie had looked him straight in the eye and said he was buying them so he could fuck his mama. That had shut up old Billy T.
Holly Grace's voice drifted out of the vent. “I'm going home, then, Billy T. I have a lot of studying to do for tomorrow.” Her voice sounded strange, tight and overly polite.
“Not yet, honey,” her uncle answered, his voice as slick as oil. “You've been slipping out on me early all week. The front's all locked up. You come on over here, now.”
“No, Billy T, I don't—” She stopped speaking abruptly, as if something had settled over her mouth. Dallie straightened against the wall, his heart pounding in his chest. He heard the unmistakable sound of a moan and he squeezed his eyes shut. Christ... that's why she was holding out on all the senior boys. She was giving it to her uncle. Her own uncle.