Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] (6 page)

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“It’s up to you. But if you stay, you’ll do your share of the work and you’ll stop hanging out with thieves and bootleggers like Pete Perry. I don’t want him here.”
“I guess you’re wishin’ you hadn’t brought me here.”
“Daddy and I wanted to give you a chance for a decent life. If you want to go back to the city, go. If you want to go to the Perrys, go. But don’t come back.”
Johnny walked quickly out the door, stepped off the porch, and headed for the corral. Pete, who had been standing at the door listening, followed.
“What did you say to him?” Isabel demanded as she came into the kitchen.
“That’s between me and Johnny and no business of yours.” Henry Ann wanted to cry. It seemed to her that the sky had opened and spilled grief all over her.
“It is, too, my business. He’s my brother.”
“Don’t give me any sass, Isabel,” Henry Ann said sharply. “Or I’ll slap your face, too.”
“Well! Try it and you’ll get slapped back.” She placed her thumb on the end of her nose and wiggled her fingers in a defiant gesture, before she flounced out the door, slamming it behind her, and hurried across the yard to the corral.
Pete Perry was in his middle twenties: a tall, lanky man with straw-colored hair, springing thickly from the scalp and pushed back in deep waves. He had hazel eyes, strong white teeth, and a deep dimple in his chin. He considered himself quite attractive to the female population. Henry Ann didn’t know if he’d ever had a steady job, but he seemed always to have money in his pocket.
“She tryin’ to run ya off?” Pete asked when Johnny came from the house, climbed atop the rail fence, sat down, and hooked his heels on the lower rail.
Silence from the boy on the rail fence.
“What she needs is a hour or two on her back with a man between her legs. A real man with a long pole’d take the sass outta her.” Pete enjoyed talking nasty about women.
Johnny’s dark eyes moved to the man and then away. It was impossible to know what the boy was thinking when he wore his Indian face.
“Listen, kid. With old Ed gone you stand to get a piece a this place. Ain’t no mortgage on it far as I know. Hell. It ain’t fair for that tightass woman to get it all. You could go to Dallas or New York—maybe even to California.”
Again Johnny’s eyes flicked to Pete’s face and away.
“Ya and the girl’s got as much right here as that stuck-up Henry Ann. Old Ed was still married to your mama, you know. Betcha he didn’t make out no will.”
Johnny slid off the fence, slipped the bridle on his pony, and sprang on its back. Without a word to Pete, he nudged open the gate and rode off down the lane toward the woods.
“Johnny! Wait—” Isabel called. “Where’s he goin’?” She came to stand beside Pete.
“Ridin’.”
“Where? What’d he say about what she did?”
“Nothin’.” Pete looked down at the girl and grinned. “Don’t worry ’bout it. He gets that way sometimes. He’ll come around when he thinks about it.”
“Are you really my cousin?”
“Name’s Perry. Your mama was a Perry.”
“Are we close kin?”
“Me and Dorene had the same grandma somewheres down the line—so Pa says.”
“Ah . . . shoot!”
“Now why’d you go and say a thin’ like that?”
“I’d just as soon you wasn’t . . . kin.”
“You flirtin’ with me, honey? How old are you? You look like you ain’t been outta diapers long.”
“Seventeen,” she lied.
“Then I reckon you’re old enough.” He chucked her beneath the chin with his fist, then let it fall to sweep lingeringly across her small breast. He turned to get his horse. “Got to be gettin’ on home. See ya . . . cutie.”
“Ain’t ya got a car?” Isabel called.
“Yeah, I got one.”
“Then why’er ya ridin’ a horse?”
“So I can get places I can’t get to in a car, sweet thin’. And so pretty little girls will ask questions.” He finished saddling his horse. “If I’d knowed I wasn’t gettin’ an invite to dinner, I’d not a unsaddled my horse.”
Isabel glanced toward the house, then back to Pete, who was sitting atop his horse rolling a cigarette.
“I’m askin’ ya . . . to dinner.”
With his eyes on her face, he licked the edge of the cigarette paper to seal the tobacco in, twisted the end, and stuck it between his lips. He lit it before he spoke.
“You ain’t got ’nuff say ’round here yet, cutie. Maybe later . . . huh?” He dropped his lid in a flirtatious wink and put his heels to his horse.
Isabel watched him until he disappeared into the wood. Then, with her heart beating with excitement, she ran back to the house.

 

Chapter Three
C
ONROY
, T
EXAS
Tom Dolan sat in one of the white wicker chairs on the long veranda and listened to his father-in-law and Marty try to outtalk each other. They had ignored Tom as if the conversation were beyond him. Young Conroy was trying to impress his father with his knowledge of the oil industry.
“We’d not have to lease a whole section, Daddy. Hell, set a well a hundred feet from the section line and drill down at an angle. They do it all the time.”
“I’d think a fellow can get himself in a mess of trouble draining oil out from under another man’s land.”
Marty laughed. “You have to get caught first, Daddy. How do you think Tom Slick made all his money? By hook and by crook, that’s how. He went out and leased a hundred thousand acres, raised two hundred thousand dollars, and sank a dozen wells. We can do it with a lot less money. We can pick up leases from these sod-busters for next to nothing.”
“That remains to be seen.” The elder Conroy smiled indulgently at his son, as if he were a schoolboy.
“We’re opening an office across the river.” Marty glanced quickly at Tom. “An old wildcatter named Rigger Haines is drilling up there. The old bastard’s a millionaire twice over, but he just keeps on drilling. I saw a map of where he’s drilled, and it’s headed straight down from the Healdton field.”
“I’ve heard of Rigger Haines.”
“He brought in a gusher in the old played-out Marlow field and made a pile of money.”
“They say he’s tough as a boot.”
“Not so tough that he don’t need a little . . . ah . . . protection now and then, huh, Daddy?” Marty smirked and glanced at Tom.
After each of the half dozen times Tom had met Marty Conroy he had come away with the impression that all that was on the man’s mind was big money and how to get it without working for it.
Marty began to talk about the Chicago gangster, Al Capone.
“He made a hundred million a year, Daddy. More money than Henry Ford. He was only twenty-six years old, a year older than I am, when he took over the bootlegging and gambling in Chicago. He had to be smart to outwit the Feds for so long. They couldn’t get a thing on him.”
“I wouldn’t say he outwitted them,” Tom said drily. “He’s in jail for income-tax evasion.”
“Ha! He’ll be out by the end of the year. He’s too smart—”
Tom’s mind suddenly turned off their conversation when he heard Jay’s cry, and Emmajean’s shrill voice scolding him. He got up and went into the house, not bothering to excuse himself.
Emmajean was holding the child’s shoulders and shaking him vigorously.
“I told you not to touch anything. Mother’ll not let us come again. You’re bad . . . bad—” The last words were accompanied with a sharp slap on the cheek.
Tom hurried forward and picked up his son. The sobbing child wrapped his arms around his father’s neck and hid his face.
“I’ve told you not to hit him in the face!”
“See, Mother? See what I have to put up with?” She turned to the frowning woman standing by the settee holding a satin pillow and examining it for damage. “When I try to make him mind, Tom pets him. I just don’t know what I’m going to do. He just makes me so . . . mad!” Emmajean’s voice got louder and more shrill.
“Here, here. Stop yelling, Emmajean. The neighbors will hear you.” Mr. Conroy had come in, followed by Marty.
“He just makes me so mad!” Emmajean said again. “Let me stay here, Daddy. I hate that old dirt farm. Let me come back home. He can have Jay. I don’t care. Mother? Daddy? Pl . . . ease! I don’t even have electric lights or a radio out there, and I have to get water out of a well. And he wants me to . . . cook and wash his dirty old clothes. Please . . . let me stay—”
“We’ve gone over that before,” Mrs. Conroy said patiently. “Your place is with your husband and child.”
“But . . . but . . . I hate him!” Emmajean’s voice had reached an hysterical pitch. “Mama—” she said pleadingly to the slim, elegant woman still holding the pillow and inspecting it. “Don’t make me go back . . . there.”
“Mother,” Mrs. Conroy corrected. “Mama, is so . . . common.”
“Calm down.” Mr. Conroy shook his head at Marty when his son gave a snort of disgust. “Calm down. You’re a grown woman now, Emmajean. A grown,
married
woman.”
“I knew this would happen if they came.” Mrs. Conroy looked accusingly at her husband then back to her daughter. “Emmajean, straighten up and behave,” she said firmly.
Tom carried his son out onto the porch. A scene similar to this one took place each time they came for a visit which, thank God, wasn’t very often. He was embarrassed for Emmajean, not because she didn’t want to go back to the home he had provided for her, but because she was begging, pleading to stay when it was so obvious that her parents didn’t want her.
He had known the morning he had taken her home and she had blurted out the fact that she had spent the night with him that these people were like none he’d ever known. There had been no outrage. They had calmly set about planning a quick wedding. It was not until after he became aware of his bride’s erratic behavior that he realized the Conroys had found a respectable way to rid themselves of an embarrassing daughter. What had been their problem was now his.
A half hour later, when they headed back to Red Rock, Emmajean was still crying. Jay lay asleep on the seat between them, his head on his father’s leg.
Tom was silent. What a mess he’d made of his life!
* * *
Henry Ann sat beside her father’s bed and fanned him with a cardboard fan that advertised White’s Drug Store in Red Rock. The doctor had come back, given Ed another shot of morphine, and promised to return before dark. As the afternoon lengthened, the breeze that had earlier stirred the window curtains stilled. The air in the room was hot and oppressive.
“What’s the matter with the radio?” Isabel asked from the doorway.
“It needs a new tube.”
“Well, poot! I wanted to listen to it. There’s nothin’ else to do ’round here.”
Henry Ann didn’t bother to reply. Isabel stood for a moment pouting, then left the room singing the theme to a popular radio show.
“When the moon comes over the mountain—”
How was it possible the girl could be so uncaring? The pain in Henry Ann’s heart made her feel as though a wide chasm lay between her and the rest of the world.
Old Shep slunk into the house and under her father’s bed as if waiting for something vague and fearful to happen.
Minutes spun into hours. In the late afternoon a car stopped out front. Aunt Dozie came to the bedroom door.
“Chile, Mr. Dolan is here.”
Henry Ann reluctantly left the room and went out onto the porch. The man stood there with his hat in his hand.
“Thank you for sending the doctor.”
“Glad to be of help. Is there anything I can do?”
“No. But thank you for offering.”
She was aware of the big, dark man towering over her. Their eyes met and held. She was afraid if she said another word, she would burst into tears. That must not happen. Pride kept her head up and her eyes dry.
“Doctor Hendricks told me about Mr. Henry. I’m sure sorry. If I can help in any way, send the boy to fetch me.”
“Thank you.”
He turned and stepped off the porch.
So much pride. So much dignity.
The image of the woman’s lovely haunted face stayed in his mind as he strode quickly to the car. Emmajean was on the verge of one of her rampages. When she was like that he feared leaving Jay alone with her, and, also, he wanted to get away from the Henrys’ before she started yelling at him.
* * *
The end came for Ed Henry at dusk. It was symbolic that his life ended at the golden time of day when the sun had set and the birds were settling into the trees for the night—the time of day that he liked to take his guitar to the front porch, play a few chords, and sing his favorite songs for his own enjoyment and for that of his daughter. He knew dozens of ballads: “Strawberry Roan,” “The Prisoner’s Song,” “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” and his favorite, “Red River Valley.”

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