Just look at all the bad stuff that happens to good people. If good beat bad, then all that stuff wouldn’t be happening. I don’t get it. I mean, if you’re who everybody says you are, and you can do all the stuff you can do, then why is it like that? Momma tells me all the time that I ask too many questions and that makes me pernishus. I don’t really know what that means yet ’cause I can’t find it in the dictionary either but I do ask a lot of questions. But what do you want me to do? I got all this stuff swirling around my head and what am I supposed to do with it? Some of those questions have got to be answered. They’re like those itchy bumps on my skin. The doctor calls them “scay-bees.” Little bugs crawling all over me. Making me itch. My questions are like that. They crawl all over and make me want to scratch my skin off. But you, you’re like that cream the doc prescribed and Cowboy bought. Maybe that’s how you beat the bad. Maybe you use people like the doc and Cowboy to put cream on kids whose skin is itching and who hurt down there ’cause some man stuck something in there he shouldn’tve stuck in there.
I’m just being honest… I hope Cowboy shoots Billy.
Dear God,
Momma just shook me awake. Headlights in the drive…
Dear God,
Thank you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The house was lit up like a runway when I drove back into the drive. I could almost hear the meter spinning. Dumps and Sam were standing on the porch. Sam was barefooted, arms crossed. She met me at the truck, her eyes sunk in dark shadows, and asked without asking. I stepped down, rubbed the stiffness out of my thigh and answered her. “When I got there, he was gone. I let myself in and found the house in a bit of disarray. The sofa had been moved and the vent ripped up and out of the floor. There was no thumb drive. Nothing. Some smeared blood on the floor but that’s about it.” She stood stone-faced. “Best I can figure is that Hope’s blanket made a faint trail down the floor. He followed it and it led him to the vent.”
This information did not satisfy her. “So, what now?”
I shrugged. “You certain it was in the vent?”
“Yeah, I could see it. Hope could, too.”
“Then, he got what he was looking for. Case closed. He’s probably glad to have you running. He’s got nothing to worry about. The absence of any evidence on Hope—” I shrugged a second time trying to soften the blow. “We—you don’t have much of a case. Your word against his. And he’s decorated.”
She nodded. “And I’m not, I know.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“I know. I’m sorry. So, what do we do?”
“First, we get some sleep. All of us. Then, over some coffee and a hot breakfast, we figure out tomorrow—tomorrow. You probably ought to spend some time figuring out if you want to start over in Rock Basin. If you do, I can help you. You want to do it someplace else, I’ll help you get there.”
She nodded. Smiled. But the smile did not erase the wrinkle between her eyes.
Hope met me on the steps, stared up at me with sleep in her eyes. “Hi, Hope.”
She squinted against the porch light. “Did you really shoot a man eight hundred yards away?”
Sam put her hand over Hope’s mouth and said, “Shhh.”
I laughed. “You two are nosey.”
Sam started apologizing. “We were—I’m sorry.”
I knelt down in front of Hope. “Yes, I did.”
“And is that why they gave you the honor medal? For killing that man?”
I shook my head. “No, they gave me that medal because that little girl got a chance to grow up. She’s in Brodie’s school now. Her name is Chelsey.”
“Did your daddy die trying to stop a bank robbery?”
“I think when Dad got there, they were finished robbing the bank.”
“Then, why’d he have to die?”
“ ’Cause they, the men robbing the bank, were hurting a woman who worked there.”
She reached up and touched my neck, touched me for the first time. Ran her fingers along the ripples of the burn. “Is Brodie going to be like you and your dad?”
I shook my head. “No. He’ll be better than us.”
“Is he going to be a Ranger?”
“That’s up to Brodie. But he’s got a few years to figure it out.”
I stood and started walking to Brodie’s room. She spoke from behind me. I turned. “Brodie told me today that the people who discovered that river down there call it ‘The arms of God.’ Is that right?”
“Yes, they do.”
“Well is it?”
“If it’s not—” I shook my head once—“then, I don’t know what is.”
I pushed open Brodie’s door and found him lying sprawled across the bed like his mom. Taking up every square inch of the mattress. Sleeping with him was like snuggling with an octopus. “Hey, big guy.”
He rolled toward me. “Hey, Dad.”
I knelt next to his bed. “You okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
I brushed his face with the back of my palm.
“Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a Ranger again?”
“Son, I’ll always be a Ranger.” I slid off my father’s badge, laid it on his chest and kissed him on the forehead. “Get some sleep. Morning’ll be here ’fore you know it.”
“Dad?” His hand closed across my badge. “Can we get ice cream in the morning?”
“Yes, on one condition.”
He sat up, rubbed his eyes. “What’s that?”
I smiled. “Nobody sets me on fire.”
“Hah. Like the Scarecrow?”
“Yes, like him.”
He rolled over, curled up, closed his eyes, then stuck his arm straight in the air and showed me my father’s badge buried in the hollow of his hand. “I got your back.”
The house quieted. Everybody went to bed. My adrenaline had yet to play out so I grabbed a towel, a bar of soap, and walked down to the river. Above me, ten trillion stars shined down. The Big Dipper was scooping up West Texas above the Cap Rock. I got to the bank, slipped off my boots, then my clothes, and walked down into the water in my birthday suit. When it got knee deep, I sat down, leaned into it, and let the water roll over my shoulders. That’s the second time I’d taken off that badge and I still had no idea who to be without it. It had created a lot of good, but a lot of bad had happened, too. I lay in the river and tried to make sense of that.
I could not.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
When Andie moved out, I quit sleeping in our bed. Too many smells that brought back too many memories and surfaced too many questions. I threw a twin in the room with Brodie and we bunked together when I didn’t crash on the couch or sleep in the hammock on the front porch. Dumps had taken to calling me a bed nomad and he was right. Sleeping alone, after having not done it for twelve years, didn’t set well with me. Neither did the waking alone. Many a morning I woke to the sound of her breathing in my ear, drooling on my pillow, her left leg anchored over mine, her hand laid flat across my chest. I’ve seen vines do the same thing around the columns on our porch. And in my experience, if you pull one away from the other, both die.
I woke to the smell and sound of breakfast so I dressed and assumed, wrongly, that Dumps was cooking. Thought I’d help him out. It wasn’t so much that it had become his job as he was an early riser and liked it. I let him. I was surprised to walk in and find Sam creating a breakfast fit for the club floor at the Ritz. I don’t know where she got it all but we had eggs, grits, sausage, handmade biscuits, orange juice, coffee. It’d been a long time since that table had seen a spread like that.
“Hi.”
Sam was flipping pancakes in an iron skillet on the stove. “Help yourself.” I stared at the mountain of food. Flour dotted her nose and cheek. “Dumps offered to go to the store yesterday. Hope you don’t mind.”
I poured myself a cup and blew off the steam. “Not at all.”
Brodie walked in with bed head
, sat down, and started eating.
I turned to Sam.
“I thought that maybe after breakfast, if you feel up to it, that I’d take you to town.”
She wiped her nose with her sleeve, smearing flour further across her face. “That’d be great.”
“I know Brodie’s principal if you want to talk to them about school. It’s public, so, it’s free and they’re good people.”
She nodded but didn’t take her eyes off the skillet.
“Speaking of, how’s she doing?”
“Good. She’s… she’s been using the bidet. Hope you don’t mind. She’d never seen one and—”
I half laughed. “Well, take my word for it, ain’t none of us using it.”
“I told her real ladies use them and that your, well, your wife must be a real lady.”
I nodded. “She is—one of a kind.”
I piled butter on a biscuit, smothered it in raspberry preserves, and shoved it in my mouth. By the time Hope joined us and we finished eating, Brodie and I could barely move. I pushed back. “Why don’t you two let me and Brodie do the dishes and then we’ll take you two to town.”
Rock Basin, Texas, is little more than an old brownstone courthouse surrounded on four sides by several buildings that house a drugstore, pharmacist, attorneys, a barbershop, land surveyors, a bail bondsman, and others needing to be close to the courts. There’s only three other noteworthy structures in town. The bell tower stands 127 feet in the air. Bill and Jason’s Bar-B-Que is run by two overall-clad bubbas that dress out somewhere north of 300 apiece. They sweat grease rather than salt, and cook possibly the best brisket and smoked sausage this side of eternity. And the federal prison, a steely gray world surrounded in double fences, concertina wire, hardened guards with rifles, and roaming German shepherds.
Rock Basin’s public school isn’t what you’d call college prep but it’s K–12 and run by good people, many of whom I went to school with. I introduced Sam and Hope to the principal—a girl named Beth that I’d known all my life—and gave the short version of their story. She listened, picked up the intercom, and called one of her teachers. Next thing we knew, Brodie was showing Hope to her new classroom. It was a neat picture, but not nearly as neat as watching Hope grab Brodie’s hand as they walked down the hall. Sam stood there shaking her head, dabbing her eyes with a tissue that Beth gave her. We thanked Beth, walked out in the sunshine, and Sam turned to me.
“Do you always cut through red tape like that?”
“What do you mean?”
“That. That right there.”
“Oh. Folks around here think rather highly of Rangers. It’s a Texas thing.”
I slipped on my Costa Del Mars and she shook her head. “There’s more, isn’t there? You’re not telling me everything.”
“I caught Beth’s eighteen-year-old son, Pete, dealing marijuana. I cuffed him, took him to jail, and put him behind bars. Mainly, to scare him. Before I told him he ‘had the right to remain silent,’ I called her, let her come down, and watched her read him the riot act between the bars. By the time she finished, he was begging me to let him stay there. We released him and he’s been clean ever since. Some kids need a wake-up call.” I nodded. “I did. He’s no different.”
“And she’s always remembered that.”
“She wants the same thing I do. The best for the kids we bump into. Hers. Mine. Yours. Kids today are growing up in a dark world.” I shrugged.
A Super Walmart sat on the outskirts of town where the interstate intersected the state highway. I drove Sam out there where she talked with management and arranged to pick up her last check. Several hundred dollars. She inquired about a job and they said they wanted to call her former boss first and see if he’d recommend her. It made sense.
Walking out, we passed the optical center. I said, “You think they have your prescription on file?”
“Probably.”
“Why don’t we get you some glasses?”
“You don’t mind?”
“No.” A chuckle. “I don’t mind.”
She checked with the lady at the counter, who did have Sam’s prescription in her computer. The lady said, “Pick out a pair of frames and I can have them ready in maybe thirty minutes.”
Sam began shopping frames while I tried to act like I wasn’t paying attention but when she started looking at the bargain frames under twenty dollars, I inched forward and handed her one of the designer styles. She shook her head. “Too expensive.”
“Look, I realize I am not a fashion consultant but you can’t go around wearing”—I blocked her view of the bargain rack—“those. They look—”
One side of her lip raised. “That bad, huh?”
“Pretty bad.” I offered the designer frames again.
She shook her head. “Those will take close to my whole paycheck when it comes in.”
“I’ll put it on your tab.” Slowly, she began looking at the nicer frames. I pulled down a pair of titanium frames that drilled directly into the glass so that the lenses were free of any metal. Somewhat rectangular, they were really attractive. She stared in the mirror. I nodded. “Get those.”
She handed them back and shook her head. “I can’t. Hope needs—”
I walked to the lady at the cashier who was listening to us talk while trying to act like she wasn’t. I handed her the frames. “Can you put her prescription in these frames?”
She smiled. “Give me half an hour.”
Sam and I walked to the in-house McDonald’s and she bought us both a cup of coffee with my three dollars. She was quiet and I was afraid I’d embarrassed, or worse yet, shamed her. I made eye contact. “Did I goof? Do you not like those? You can get some others if you—”
“No, I like them very much. The most. I’ve just never spent two hundred dollars on glasses.”
“Well, if the advertisements are true about titanium, those can be wrapped into a pretzel, then hit with a hammer and they’ll retake their shape, which will be helpful if you keep hanging out around truck stops.”
She smiled, sipped her coffee, then spoke softly. “Thanks.”
Thirty minutes later, the lady walked out of the optical center and flagged us out of the McDonald’s. Including a scratch-free guarantee, and a free replacement if they break, the lady said, “Two hundred and seventeen dollars.”
I turned to Sam. “Do you wear contacts?”
The lady behind the cash register broke in. “Yes, she does. I have her contacts over there on the wall. Boxes of ten. She can wear each one for about a week.”
I nodded and she added them to the bill. Sam slid on her glasses, the lady made sure they fit her face and we walked out. Sam hung her head slightly. I realized it wasn’t like that when we walked in there. Then I realized I was the reason it was hanging. We stepped into the sunshine. “Sam?”
“Yes.” She spoke without looking at me. Her glasses complemented her face and looked really good on her.
“I didn’t mean to shame you. Please don’t hang your head around me.”
She looked at me. Crossed her arms. “I don’t know how to… I already owe you so much right now. I’ll be months paying it off and Hope needs—”
“Sam?”
She looked away.
“Sam, please.”
She turned toward me. “What if I can’t repay you?”
“I told you once that a man once gave me what I didn’t deserve and withheld from me what I did. When I told you it changed the way I see people, I wasn’t kidding.”
She squinted and shook her head slightly. “I still intend to pay you back.”
“Okay, but we’re going to a job interview and you can’t go in there with your head hanging. I know these women and—”
“Job interview?”
“Yep. And—”
“What am I interviewing for?”
I laughed. “You grown particular in the few days I’ve known you?”
“No.” She smiled. “I’m just afraid by t
he way you said it that it’s marginal or illegal… or involves me doing something I’m not going to want to do.”
I pulled my hat down. “Well, looks like you’ll have to trust me on this one.”
She crossed her arms. “I’m not real good at that.”
I nodded. “I don’t blame you.”
We drove back into town, walked two blocks to a building with a giant peach as its marquee, and I led her up the sidewalk. The Georgia Peach is the only salon in town. It’s a full-service place where they pride themselves on being able to set, cut, color, and gossip with the best of them. I don’t know about the set, cut, and color, but they’ve got a corner on the market when it comes to knowing everything about everybody. Georgia owns and runs it. She’s midfifties, well endowed, maybe on the bigger side of plus-sized, wears enough red lipstick to keep Revlon in business, and loves everybody. Hence, everybody loves her. Something of a Texas version of Marleena come to think of it. She employs four stylists, a lady who washes hair, and a receptionist, and they are always busy. Georgia has got somewhat of a monopoly on the market, as women drive a hundred miles just to spend three hours in there.
I pushed open the door and she screamed from across the room. “Tyler Steele! You big, good-looking hunk of a man, come here! I need to kiss you on the mouth.” She doesn’t really walk as much as levitates. When she moves around it reminds me of that land scooter thing that Luke Skywalker rode in Star Wars. She floated across the room, I removed my hat, and she threw herself at me—something she did with the few men who dared walk into her shop. Oh, and every time I see her she’s colored her hair a different color. Right now, the color of the week seems to be fire-engine red with streaks of blond and black thrown in for accent. She kissed me with a big wet slobbering kiss that made me blush. She sized me up. “You look thinner. You look like you could use a chicken fried steak or two. Where you been? Were your ears ringing?” Hands on her hips. “We were just talking about you.”