Between Heaven and Texas (15 page)

C
HAPTER 27

W
hen she got to the Tidee-Mart, Mary Dell wedged Howard's car seat into the upper rack of her shopping cart and talked to him as they wheeled up and down the aisles, picking up objects and holding them close to his face so he could see that apples were red and peppers were green, brushing his little hand with the feathery tops of orange carrots, opening his curling fingers and rubbing the smooth, firm skin of a half-green banana along his palm.

At the checkout counter, Mary Dell continued her monologue with Howard, repeating the names of items as she piled them on the counter: diapers, baby wipes, Dr Pepper, MoonPies, beef jerky, and bananas.

“Because woman does not live by MoonPies alone, Howard. We just wish we did.”

When her basket was nearly empty she heard a familiar voice, a voice like green apples, sweet at the bite but sour to the chew—the voice of Marlena Benton.

“Well, speak of the devil! If it isn't Mary Dell Bebee! Diamond and I were just talking about you, weren't we, Diamond?”

“Yes, we were!” Diamond Pickens giggled and shot Marlena a meaningful glance.

Diamond, Marlena's cousin, was secretary of the Women's Club. She was also Marlena's sycophant-in-chief. This was, of course, an unofficial title, but as does any sycophant worth her salt, Diamond took her duties seriously. It was rare to see Marlena without Diamond dogging her heels and even rarer to hear her express an opinion contrary to her cousin's. Mary Dell felt sorry for Diamond, who was dumb as a watermelon and ugly to boot—not very sorry, but a little. Marlena, she just despised.

“And here you are—Mary Dell Bebee. Or have you gone back to calling yourself Templeton now?” Marlena sighed. “Bless your heart. I heard that your husband walked out on you.”

“Yes. There's a lot of that kind of thing going around,” Mary Dell said. “Don't know what's wrong with men these days. Irresponsible. Guess their mommas aren't raising 'em right.”

Marlena smirked, trying to pretend she didn't understand the insult. Mary Dell smiled sweetly, making it clear that she was not fooled by Marlena's pretended obtuseness.

Marlena craned her neck to look at Howard.

“I heard about your baby.” Marlena clucked. “Such a shame. That sort of thing runs in families, doesn't it? I mean, I always thought your daddy was a little . . . well . . . never mind.” She sighed. “He does have pretty eyes. That's something, I suppose.”

Mary Dell's neck turned red, and she felt the fingers of her right hand clench involuntarily. She wanted with all her heart to plow her fist into Marlena's smug, lipsticked mouth and follow it up with a left jab directly at the bridge of her thin, pointy nose, but she restrained herself. Howard was too young to be exposed to that kind of violence. Besides, in the unwritten rules of verbal warfare among women, it is well known that the first one to lose her temper also loses the battle. Mary Dell wasn't going to give Marlena the satisfaction.

Mary Dell opened her wallet and looked at the clerk. “What do I owe you?”

“Six dollars and eleven cents, ma'am.”

“Shoot. I've only got five-fifty. I'm going to have to run by the bank.”

“Maybe you ought to put the MoonPies back,” Marlena suggested in a sickly sweet tone. “Might help you take off some of that baby weight.”

Mary Dell turned to face her foe.

“Maybe,” she said with an icy smile, “but I'm still breast-feeding. It makes you awful hungry. Of course, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you? Seeing as you've had Jack Benny feeding off you for thirty years.”

Marlena's eyes blazed and the veins on her neck bulged.

“Well! Maybe if you and that sister of yours could manage to hold on to your men, you'd have enough money to pay for your groceries!”

Mary Dell picked up the beef jerky and handed it back to the clerk, who deducted it from the total.

“True,” she said in the sweetest possible tone. “It will be harder to make ends meet now. But I've got an idea how I can make more money than a porcupine has quills. I was thinking that I'd buy Jack Benny for what he'd bring and sell him for what
you
think he's worth.” She smiled brightly. “That'd do the trick, don't you think?”

Mary Dell looked at the clerk, who was working so hard to keep from laughing that his face looked like a blister ready to pop.

“That's all right. You can keep the change,” she said, then wheeled her groceries and baby right out the door.

 

“That probably wasn't the smartest thing I ever did,” Mary Dell said to Howard as she secured the seat belt around his seat and tugged to make sure it was tight enough. “Marlena holds a grudge longer than anybody I know. But I couldn't help myself. I don't care what people say about me, but anybody who talks mean to you or down to you had better be wearing an asbestos flak jacket, honey! Because I'm going to come at them a hundred miles an hour with my hair on fire and guns blazing! That is the way it is and the way it's going to be!”

Howard blinked at his mother with innocent eyes. Mary Dell laughed and kissed him on the nose.

As they drove out of town, she said a prayer, asking God to look down from heaven, find a spot of peacock blue, and steer her to it. Or, barring that, toward something or someone who would help her family, fill their gaps, and teach her how to shoulder the burden.

“Take the wheel, dear Lord. Show me the way.”

She drove north and took highway 84 to Waco, but instead of continuing west when she got there, she felt a sudden urge to take the ramp to 35 North and did so, figuring that having asked for divine direction, it would be rude to resist. She drove north to Fort Worth, then west again through Wichita Falls and Childress, then north across the Oklahoma line, driving as long as she could between Howard's insistent cries, then pulled into the parking lot of the nearest gas station or burger joint to feed him before setting off again. It was slow going with a baby on board.

When she crossed the Kansas border, well after dark, she was exhausted and Howard was howling. The Bluebird Motel promised clean rooms and free local calls, and so Mary Dell pulled into the driveway and checked in for the night.

C
HAPTER 28

A
fter Graydon replaced the spark plugs, the tractor ran fine for about a week and then conked out entirely.

Now Graydon lay on his back underneath the old John Deere, flashlight in hand, trying to locate the exact source of the oil leak that was causing the problem. Of course, the real problem, Graydon knew, was that the tractor was about forty years old. It belonged in a museum, not on a working farm. The Spreewell farm was quite a profitable operation, due in no small part to Graydon's hard work. In spite of this, L. J. was too frugal to spring for a new tractor, not until this one finally fell to pieces.

Graydon heard the popping sound of rubber tires on gravel and wondered who it could be. Being so far from town, they didn't get many visitors. He scooted out from underneath the tractor and walked around the back of the shed, wiping motor oil from his hands with an old bandana.

A car door slammed. He caught a glimpse of a face as he rounded the corner, and for a moment, just until the woman climbing out of the sedan stood up to reveal her full height, his heart pounded.

“Mary Dell?”

She turned toward him with a startled expression, which quickly gave way to a wide grin. “Hey, Graydon. You know, for a second I thought you were Donny. You two sure look alike.”

Graydon didn't mention that he'd been thinking the same thing about her, how much she looked like Lydia Dale; taller and with more curves, but just as pretty. Nor did he mention how the sight of her had caused his heart to race.

“Have you seen him?” Mary Dell asked. “Donny?”

Graydon shook his head, surprised by the question. “Well, no. I sure haven't. You don't know where he is?”

The screen door to the farm house slammed, and L. J. walked out onto the stoop. His wife, Grace, followed close behind.

“My sister-in-law,” Graydon said by way of explanation and tipped his head in the direction of Mary Dell, who was bent over in the backseat of the car, getting Howard out of his car seat.

“Is the tractor fixed?”

“Working on it. I'm still trying to figure out where that oil is coming from.”

L. J. frowned.

Mary Dell, with Howard in her arms, smiled sweetly and said, “Oh, we won't stay long, Mr. Spreewell. Just long enough to say hello and maybe give me a chance to change the baby; do you mind? We were in the neighborhood, so I thought it'd be nice to stop by and introduce Howard to his uncle Graydon.”

L. J. wasn't convinced. Nobody stopped by his farm because they were “just in the neighborhood.” She had to have come out here for a reason. He didn't like people taking his hired man away from his work, but the woman had come all the way from Texas, so he couldn't very well say no.

L. J. looked at Howard, and his frown deepened. “Something wrong with him?”

Mary Dell's bowed lips went flat and the smile left her eyes. “Not a thing,” she said.

Grace poked her husband in the back and stepped out from behind him.

“He's a sweet little thing, isn't he? Think I see a little of his uncle in him. Graydon, why don't you take your sister-in-law out to your room, so she can change the baby and the two of you can visit. I'll bring some refreshments out directly.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” Mary Dell said, ignoring the look on Graydon's face. “That's real nice of you.”

 

Graydon walked into the shed that served as his living quarters a step ahead of Mary Dell, nudged an empty bottle of Jack Daniel's underneath the bed where she couldn't see it, and quickly pulled the blanket up over the rumpled sheets.

“It's kind of a mess in here,” he mumbled apologetically. “I don't get much company.”

“Do you mind if I lay him down here to change him?” she said, nodding toward the bed. “He's wet.”

Graydon sat down on the only chair, a wooden ladder-back with wobbly legs and a frayed cane bottom, to watch. He smiled when Howard, freed from the confines of his diaper, kicked his chubby little legs.

“Cute little fella. He's sure got a lot of hair, doesn't he? Donny did too, when he was born.”

Mary Dell slid a clean diaper under Howard's bottom and looked up.

“You haven't seen Donny, have you? He hasn't been here?”

Graydon assured her that he hadn't, reminding her they weren't exactly on speaking terms.

Mary Dell sighed and nodded, as if to say she'd expected as much, then sat down on the bed with Howard in her arms and told him the whole story from the beginning, about how much Donny had wanted a baby, how excited he'd been during the pregnancy, what a blow it had been to him when Howard was born with Down syndrome, how Mary Dell had been so wrapped up in taking care of the baby that she hadn't realized the depth of his distress, and, ultimately, how Donny had disappeared without a trace, leaving no word of his whereabouts until the letter had arrived, how much she needed some help with the ranch and why, though she knew her chances of success were slim at best, Mary Dell had decided to go looking for him.

Halfway through her story, Mrs. Spreewell dropped off a tray with lemon bars and a pitcher of iced tea, assuring Graydon that he could take his time and that she'd square things with L. J.

Mary Dell finished her story at the same time as she finished her tea.

“I planned on going to Midland first and then driving up to Lubbock, but something told me I ought to try here first. Guess I was wrong.” She shrugged, tipped her glass up to get the last drops of liquid, then took a bite of a lemon bar.

“Oof!” she said, and made a face. “That'll put some pucker in your lips. Guess Mrs. Spreewell was running low on sugar. Didn't have any in the tea either. I was so thirsty I didn't care but, really, why would anybody drink unsweet tea if they didn't have to?”

Graydon smiled and pulled on his nose. “Grace isn't much of a cook. She's nice enough, though. A whole lot nicer than her husband.”

Mary Dell nodded and scanned the sparse barrack of a room with her eyes. “Uh-huh. And you've worked for them all these years?”

“Never planned it out that way. I just figured to be here for a season or two, but . . .” He shifted his shoulders. “I guess it's as good as anyplace. No worse, anyway.”

“Suppose not,” Mary Dell said. “Well, I guess I should get out of your way and let you get back to work. If you do see Donny, you'll call me right away, won't you?”

“Yes, ma'am. Well, first I'll clean his clock,
then
I'll call you.” He gave her a regretful look. “I'm real sorry about this, Mary Dell. For what it's worth, I think Donny's crazy to have run out on you. You and this sweet boy.”

He reached out and took hold of Howard's hand. The baby curled his tiny fingers around his uncle's thumb. Graydon grinned.

“Do you want to hold him?”

“Can I?” Graydon responded with a touching mixture of surprise and wonder, like a boy who has just been offered the keys to his daddy's new car.

Mary Dell handed the baby to him, showing him how to support the baby's head in the crook of his elbow.

“Hey, Howard. How are you there, son? I'm your uncle Graydon. What do you think about that?”

Graydon's voice was low and gentle. When he looked up at Mary Dell, there were tears in his eyes.

“He's perfect, Mary Dell. Just perfect. I know things are hard for you now, but on the whole, I think you're a real lucky woman.”

“I think so too,” she said.