Valentine(59)

What happened? Jesse’s voice is so quiet she leans forward and repeats the question. Do you know what happened?

What happened? He sounds as if he is trying to speak louder, but it’s a sad effort, and Debra Ann wonders if her friend is all right, if the heat and loneliness and living out here have worn him down, if maybe she’s not enough to help him get back on his feet again.

Well, she says, the man knocked on her door, pounded on it really, and he was hollering at her to open up, open this goddamned door!

What happened to her? Jesse asks quietly. Something bad?

That is exactly what I used to ask my mom.

What did your mother say? Jesse wants to know, and Debra Ann closes her eyes.

Her mother pauses and stands up from D. A.’s bed, then walks over and picks up a pile of clothes off the floor. The woman picked up her lantern and opened her door, Ginny says, and in the flickering yellow light, her hair looked like a fire burning.

Debra Ann can see the circles under her mother’s eyes, the fingernails she’s chewed to the quick. What did the woman do next?

Ginny laughs quietly. Well, she shot him on the spot and dragged his body to the edge of her property. She walks over to D. A.’s bed and tucks the blanket around her legs and arms.

After that, nobody bothered her much. The woman spent her days working in her garden, though she never again sent baskets into town for the men to enjoy. Evenings, she sat on her front porch and watched all the stars come out, one by one. She lived to be a hundred and five years old and died peacefully in her sleep, and by the time it occurred to anybody to ride out there and check on her, she was nothing but a pile of dusty bones in her bed.

And her garden? Debra Ann asks her mother. What happened to that?

I guess it probably died, Ginny shrugs, but it was remarkable while it lasted.

There is a rustling sound in the drainpipe and the cat ambles out of the dark, arching its back and rubbing against D. A.’s leg. After a few minutes, Jesse climbs out and sits down next to her with his arms wrapped around his knees. In the bright afternoon sun, his eyes are shining. That’s a good story, he says. I’m sorry your mom left.

D. A. shrugs and starts worrying the ringworm that has spread from her ankle to her calf. I don’t really give a damn one way or the other. She pulls several black hairs out of her eyebrow. What about your truck? When are you getting it back?

Jesse pulls the napkin from his pocket and shows it to her. I guess Boomer lives out there now, he says.

That’s way out there in the sticks. D. A. grabs the cat and flips him on his back. Too far to walk to.

Will you look at the balls on this guy? She laughs and Jesse rocks slightly, trying to laugh along with her. He leans over and rubs the cat’s belly, and they sit without talking until it’s time for Jesse to go to work, and D. A. to go home and start supper.





Mary Rose

Barely nine o’clock in the morning, and already it’s hot enough to wish I’d skipped the pantyhose, but I can’t walk into a courtroom with my legs bare. By the time Aimee and I walk across the street to Corrine’s house, my lower torso feels like encased meat. Aimee dawdles a few steps behind me, in a snit because she thought she would be testifying in court today, too. She sat with Gloria Ramírez in the kitchen, she reminds me. She called the sheriff, and she can’t understand why nobody wants to hear what she has to say. Because a courtroom’s no place for a little girl, I tell her for the umpteenth time. Because I’m going to tell the story for both of us.

When I hand the baby to Corrine, she leans in and stares into his eyes for a few seconds, then makes a face and hands him off to Aimee. She is still wearing her nightgown, and one side of her thin hair is sticking straight out, perpendicular to the rest of her head. Thanks for taking them, Corrine, I say. Karla’s baby came down with the stomach flu.

Aimee lifts one finger to flick the baby on the forehead, but when Corrine promises an endless supply of Dr Pepper, television, and D. A. Pierce if she doesn’t wake him up, my daughter pivots on her heel and heads down the hallway to the living room without so much as a goodbye. The baby is slung over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, his little head bouncing like a bobbin, and I start to call out Careful. Instead, I run back across the street to fetch the diaper bag.

When I tell Corrine that Keith Taylor says I should expect to be gone most of the morning, she squints and tilts her head to the side. Her gaze is sparrow sharp, like she’s maybe wondering where Robert is on a day like today, why he isn’t here to drive me over to the courthouse, to help me get through this, and I want to tell her that I don’t need his help. We were in trouble long before Gloria Ramírez knocked on our front door. But him resenting me for opening the door to that child? The way he blames her for what happened out there? His hatefulness and bigotry? I guess I never noticed it before, but now I cannot think of him without thinking of her. I would like to say some of this to Corrine, but here we are, standing on her porch in the heat, and my kids are already stealing some of her day.

I don’t know what I’d do without you, Corrine, I say. Robert’s got cows dropping like flies out there. Get it, flies? Blowflies?

Corrine’s lips curve upward, her face rich with complicated lines that remind me of the old pecan wood on my porch back at the ranch, or the dried-out creeks that crisscross our property. But when I study her face a little longer, I see that it is a thin smile, a barely there smile that says, Oh cut the shit, Mary Rose. You and I both know he’s punishing you for agreeing to testify in the first place.