Mockingbird Songs (5 page)

Carson dropped his gaze to the floor, stayed silent.

“The last thing I wanna do is beat you, boy, but I ain’t rulin’ it out. You tell me now. You let that pony go, didn’t you?”

Carson didn’t raise his eyes or his head, but he nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

William sighed. “Now, what in the world inspired such a notion? Tell me that much at least. I got you a pony when you turned five. You never took to it. Even got you a bicycle and you didn’t take to that neither. Evan’s a little kid, son. What on earth did you hope to gain by breaking his heart like that?”

William knew that Carson was not sufficiently self-aware to answer such questions, but he had to ask them anyway. Had to get them out of his mouth; they tasted coppery and sour, and that taste would not dispel until the words were spoken.

“Don’t know,” was all Carson could manage.

“I know you don’t, son, and I ain’t really askin’. I’m groundin’ you. You got extra chores, extra for you, and you’ll be doin’ Evan’s chores for a month as well. In the morning you’re gonna say sorry to your brother, and you’re gonna mean it from your heart. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now git, ’fore I change my mind and take your hide off with a horse whip.”

Carson slunk away, shamed and disgraced.

Later, lying in bed, Grace said, “I think we got a live one, William. Scared he’s not only troubled, but troublesome and a troublemaker to boot.”

“Kids ain’t dogs or horses. You can’t train ’em the same way. They come with too much that’s indelible.”

“Where’d he get it from—that’s the question,” Grace said. “That streak I see in him worries me.”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, but punishin’ him ain’t gonna do nothin’ but make it worse. You beat a child and you just provin’ to him how he can rile you. Instinct gonna make him do it again just to get revenge.”

“You’re a good man, William Riggs.”

“Was a champion asshole ’til I met you, though. Got the blue rosette and ribbon to prove it.”

Grace laughed. She kissed him. They lay beside each other and settled into a restless sleep. William Riggs rarely dreamed, but that night he did. Come morning he would recall little of it save the vision of his eldest son saying something vicious through the bars of a jail cell.

SIX

Nancy Quinn had the radio on in the kitchen. Howard Ulysses was nowhere to be seen. George McGovern had won the Democratic presidential nomination.

Henry was in the doorway for a good thirty seconds before his ma realized.

“You leavin’, then?” she asked. “Again?”

“I didn’t leave you last time, Ma. I went to prison.”

“Same thing, however you name it.”

“I’m not gonna start a fight with you,” Henry said. He could see she was hungover. Her actions were measured, as if trying to do everything without making a sound, as if to move suddenly would surprise even herself.

“Seems from my corner it’s already started.”

“Then you win,” Henry said. “You are the undefeated title holder.”

“You always had a sharp tongue.”

“Had the best teacher, Ma.”

Nancy Quinn turned from the sink. She looked her son up and down and then shook her head resignedly. “When did we get to this?”

“To what, Ma?”

“Sticking pins in each other to see who howls first?”

“Is that what we’re doing?”

“You’re still doing it, Henry. I didn’t make you how you is, and I sure as hell am not to blame for you getting yourself in Reeves. You done that all by yourself.”

Henry looked down at the floor. His feet were cramped into a pair of Luccheses that hadn’t been worn for three years. They would stretch and give in a while.

“If you gotta go, then you gotta go,” Nancy said.

“I gotta go.”

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Some, yes.”

“And why?”

“Gotta deliver a letter for someone.”

“Someone you knew in Reeves?”

“Yeah.”

“You ever gonna speak of it?”

“Nothin’ to say.”

Nancy frowned. “Three years in Reeves County and you have nothin’ to say?”

“It’s prison, Ma. You eat when they say; you sleep when they say; you shit when they say. Sometimes you get into a fight; sometimes you don’t. Most people are lookin’ to do whatever time they’ve got with as little heartache as possible. There’s a few that are never comin’ out.”

“And the letter?”

“From a friend of mine to his daughter.”

“This friend of yours ever gonna come out?”

“Nope.”

“Daughter ever visit him?”

“I don’t think she knows who he is, and I don’t think anyone’s ever gonna tell her.”

“’Cept you.”

“Right.”

“Mightn’t be good for her.”

“I know, Ma, but I made a promise, and a promise like that you don’t break.”

Nancy was quiet for a time, perhaps reflecting on promises made and never fulfilled. Maybe her life was full of them.

Then she smiled some internal smile and looked up at Henry. “Coffee’s been on the stove a while. Probably not so good. Let me make some fresh. Have a bite to eat with me before you go, okay?”

“Sure, Ma.”

By the time Henry hefted a knapsack and a guitar case into the back of the Champ, it was noon. Sun was high, sky was cloudless, air as crisp as crepe.

He started the engine, then climbed out and stood for a while as the engine ticked over. He smoked a cigarette and waited for his ma to come on out for the farewell.

She’d made him up a paper sack of sandwiches.

“Just some ham,” she said. “Smoked kind you like.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

He held out his hand and she came to him. He was a head taller, and it felt like he was putting his arms around a child. She seemed frail.

“Where’s Howard gotten himself to?” Henry asked.

“Work.”

“He here often?”

“Often enough.”

“He good for you?”

“He ain’t bad for me.”

“Drinks a lot, I noticed,” Henry said.

“He’s just thirsty.”

Henry laughed dryly. “That the bill of goods he’s selling, is it?”

“Same one we’re all selling, Henry,” Nancy replied. “Always got an explanation for what we do, what we done, what we’re plannin’ on doin’.”

“He seems a little lost to me.”

Nancy didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. Souls with similar afflictions gravitate toward one another. Usually it’s not ’til they separate that they realize how similar they are.

“So, it’s a goodbye, then.”

“Au revoir, as the French say,” Henry replied. “I’ll be back soon enough.”

“Well, I stood you gone for three years. Guess I can stand you gone for a while longer. You don’t need to phone or nothin’. That’ll just remind me that you could be here when you’re not. I ain’t gonna worry none, ’cause I know you can take care of things.”

Henry hugged her close. “You always had more faith in me than I did in myself, Ma.”

Henry stopped over at the garage on Pearsall.

“Where’s Gus at?” he asked a stranger in rust-colored overalls.

“Gus Maynard?”

“Only Gus I know. He owns the place.”

“Don’t own it no more.”

“How so?”

“He’s dead.”

Henry paused. Reminders of his absence were everywhere. Learning things like this just served to make him wonder what else he didn’t know.

“You own the place now?”

“I do.”

“What’s your name?”

“Hoyt.”

“I’m Henry. Been away for a while. Going on a trip now. Can you check her over, fill the tires, oil, gas her up, all that stuff?”

“Can do.”

“I’m gonna go get a cup of coffee.”

“At Stella’s?”

“Sure.”

“You come on back with a cup of coffee and a slice of angel food cake, I’ll chip that off your bill.”

“No problem, Hoyt.”

Stella’s had been there forever, and Henry was pleased to see that the end of forever wasn’t arriving anytime soon.

In truth, Stella Roscoe wasn’t even seventy, but the smoking and drinking had put at least a decade in her voice and on her face. When she spoke, her words were like chunks of coal floating up through a barrel of pitch.

“Henry Quinn,” she announced as Henry appeared in the doorway of the diner.

“Stella Roscoe.”

She came toward him, arms wide. “So, they let you out, then?”

“They did, Stella. They did.”

She hugged him hard enough to crack ribs.

“You come sit yourself down and get some coffee and pie, son. Can’t imagine you been eatin’ anything but sowbelly and blackstrap.”

“Some beans, too,” Henry said. “Collard greens on Sunday.”

“Oh, livin’ the high life, eh?”

“Near as dammit.”

Stella busied herself with coffeepots and pie dishes as Henry took a seat at the counter.

“Gonna take a drive out an’ see some people,” Henry said. “Hoyt there is fixin’ up the Champ. He said Gus gone an’ died.”

“Yep. More ’an a year ago now. Liquor finally drained a hole through his liver, I guess.”

“He liked a drink, that’s for sure.”

Stella laughed like a broken locomotive. “Think that there goes in the understatements ledger.”

“His wife?”

“Hester. She upped sticks and went out to her sister’s. Someplace near to Abilene. Baird, Cisco, Sweetwater. One o’ them burgs.”

“And Hoyt?”

“Hoyt is a good man. Don’t know a great deal of anythin’ but cars, but he owns Gus’s garage now, so it kinda works out fine.”

“He come from?”

“Somewheres oily,” Stella said, cracking a smile in the leather satchel of her face.

She set a cup of coffee on the counter, followed it with a slice of buttermilk chess pie.

“So where’s you headed now, boy?”

“Calvary.”

“Man on a mission.”

“Seems so.”

“You gonna stay out of trouble?”

“Doubtful,” Henry replied, cutting into the pie with the edge of his fork.

“Well, whatever trouble you get into, make sure you don’t go back to Reeves, huh?”

“Do my best, Stella. Do my best.”

“You know what they say.”

“What’d that be?”

“Sometimes your best ain’t good enough.”

Henry smiled ruefully. “Thanks for the encouragement there, Stella Roscoe.”

“You’re more than welcome, Henry Quinn.”

Henry finished up his pie and coffee, took another cup for Hoyt, the angel food cake, too.

Stella said there was no charge, but Henry left a couple of bucks anyway.

He bade her farewell, and she hugged him once more, told him to relay her best wishes to Calvary.

“They know you down there?” Henry asked.

She shook her head. “Nope, but that don’t mean they shouldn’t.”

Over at the garage, Hoyt took delivery of the cake like it was Christmas.

Hands like that, Henry would have worn gloves to eat, but Hoyt didn’t seem to mind. Maybe he had a hankering for greasy fingerprints. Maybe you got a taste for such things.

“’S a good ’un you got there,” Hoyt said. “Nothing wrong with her but a good run on the highway won’t fix. Done your tires, oil, gassed her up, and she’s itchin’ to go.”

“’Preciated, Hoyt. How much I owe you?”

Hoyt told him and Henry paid up.

“Where you headed?” Hoyt asked, like the curiosity was conspiratorial. What was the ex-con up to now? He off to find some other innocent woman needs a .38 in her throat?

“Calvary,” Henry said it. “You know it?”

Hoyt shook his head. “Can’t say I do.”

“Fifty miles or so south, then west on 10 another seventy, eighty.”

“West Texas,” Hoyt said. “Folks pretty much live and die within a five-mile radius. Dirt they played in as kids is the same dirt they get buried in. Calvary may as well be France.” He drank some coffee, maybe helped to wash them Valvoline fingerprints out of his mouth. “You have a good run. Hope you find whatever you’re lookin’ for.”

“Thanks, Hoyt. See you when she needs a checkup.”

“God willin’,” Hoyt said, and disappeared into the shadowed cavern of the garage.

Radio worked fine. No reason it shouldn’t have, but Henry was pleased all the same. He found an FM station out of San Antonio—KDXL 109.4—and they played a good mix of things he liked. Allmans, J. J. Cale, Barefoot Jerry, Bo Diddley, a bunch of soul stuff out of Muscle Shoals. Henry took 277 down through Eldorado to Sonora, headed west then to Ozona. On the other side of Ozona, almost to the Pecos River, he knew he’d gone too far. How he knew he wasn’t sure, but he knew. He turned around, headed back the way he’d come, eyes peeled for signage.

After half a dozen miles, he saw pretty much the only indication that Calvary even existed. It was a right turn, said that his destination was all of twenty miles, but the road he found was rutted and broken, like a dirt track aspiring to something more substantial. Calvary was a town, he’d guessed. Maybe it wasn’t so much of a town as a backwater burg. For a place to have a sheriff, it surely had to be something more than a half dozen tar-paper shacks and a redundant water tower. Regardless, Evan’s brother was down here, and if what Evan told him was true, then the sheriff knew of Sarah, perhaps had news of her current whereabouts. Hell, maybe she’d been here all along and this was going to be nothing more than a handshake, a postal delivery, and a hundred-and-eighty-degree about-face for home.

But there was a ghost of something. Maybe it was the fact that Calvary looked like it was hiding from the world down some beat-to-hell nothing of a road. Maybe it was the fact that whenever Evan had spoken of this brother, Carson, he’d worked up an expression like vinegar mouthwash. Henry sensed there was no love lost between the siblings, but that was all of an assumption, and history was wall-to-wall with examples of where assumption got you. No, there was no reason to feel anything other than the original sense of duty. He said he would do it, and do it he would. That was the start and finish of it.

He gunned the engine into life once more, put the radio back on to find T-Bone Walker had been waiting for him, and headed the Champ down that wheel-rutted road to Calvary.

SEVEN

The pony episode lost its strength of color in the natural tides of time.

The Riggs family survived through the Depression, William doing whatever he could to assist those who did not fare so well. He was an even-minded man, attended church and the like, held a personal philosophy that you got as good as you gave. That kind of thinking didn’t come from the Bible; seemed to him it was common sense. Stock dwindled dramatically, simply because there was no place to feed and water them, but William had predicted this and sacrificed numbers accordingly. They wrestled themselves out of the twenties, and by the time things started to ease, it was 1936 and the boys were in their teens, Carson heading for manhood, Evan close on his heels.

And then Rebecca Wyatt showed up.

Rebecca’s father, Ralph Wyatt, bought a farm to the west of the Riggses’ land for a song in the fall of ’37.

Ralph Wyatt had no wife. Where she was, no one seemed to know, and no one asked. The Calvary womenfolk chattered like sparrows about it, but none had an answer.

Wyatt hadn’t been there more than a week when he came a-calling on the Riggs family. He was a big man, filled the doorway with his shoulders, forehead hard enough to hammer home fenceposts, hands sufficiently rangy and rough to spool five-strand barbwire and never catch a nick.

“Ralph Wyatt,” he said, “and this here’s my daughter, Rebecca.”

Wyatt extended his hand, Rebecca curtsied politely, and William invited them in for lemonade.

Carson looked like he’d been trampled down by a longhorn, teenage hormones boiling under the surface as he sat across from Rebecca Wyatt at the long kitchen table.

Rebecca was fixing to be a heartbreaker, no doubt about it. Midteens, and already she had the grace of a swan. She did her best to hide it beneath dungarees and flat shoes and a mess of unruly bangs, but there was no denying the fact that she was destined to be a very beautiful young woman.

Grace busied herself with drinks and comestibles. Ralph Wyatt and William Riggs asked questions designed to plumb depths and ascertain toeholds. That they would grow to be fast friends as months became years was perhaps indicated by the warmth with which William spoke of Ralph Wyatt to Grace once the Wyatts had departed.

“Seems a good man.”

“He does,” Grace replied.

“Tough thing to raise a girl alone, but he sure seems to have done a fine job.”

“Reckon Carson would agree with you on that one. Boy looked thunderstruck from the moment she walked into the house.”

“Girl like that gonna break his heart.”

“Everyone has to get their heart broken sometime, William. May’s well get it done and over with.”

William smiled wryly. “That’s a hard line from such a soft woman.”

“Who knows, eh? Maybe she’ll take to Carson. He’s a bright boy in his own way. Never was one for book learning, but you’ve done a good job, William. What he lacks in imagination, he makes up for in common sense and pragmatism. He’s got a level enough head on his shoulders, and I think he’s gonna do fine.”

“
We
’ve done a good job, Grace. You have more patience than I’ve seen in anyone.”

“That’s very sweet of you to say so, William.”

“Hell, Grace, you’ve been an absolute wonder with both of them. This music thing that Evan’s so fired up about still leaves me speechless. Boy can sing just beautiful, and he’s hankering for a guitar now and I don’t see a reason not to get him one.”

“He has a gift, that’s for sure.”

Grace, done with dishes and whatnot, came and sat beside her husband at the kitchen table. “So, we done congratulating ourselves on what fine parents we are, or you want to do some more?”

“We’re done,” William. “Only so much applause I can take.”

“Has to be said that I don’t worry about Carson like I used to.”

“He was young, my sweet. He had a skewed idea about a few things, but I reckon he’s pretty much straight now.”

“I hope so.”

“Sure loves Evan. No doubt about that. Takes care of him just fine at school.”

“Way it should be. That’s what big brothers are for.”

“So let’s see if the pretty girl breaks his heart, and we’ll jump off that bridge when it happens.”

The hammer of footsteps in the hallway, and Evan burst through into the kitchen, shouting loud enough for Ralph Wyatt to hear, “It’s Carson! He done fell! Carson fell and there’s blood everywhere!”

William leaped from his chair, Grace hard and fast behind him, running headlong after Evan across the yard and out to the barn where once Evan’s pony had been stabled. A smaller barn now served that purpose, despite the fact that Rocket, as Evan had chosen to call him, was now full-grown. The barn where Carson lay bleeding had become a storehouse for machinery, a redundant tractor, an old flatbed that William had never found the time to fix or sell. Two-tiered, an upper hayloft that served no other purpose had become a play area for the boys when they were younger, and it was from this loft that Carson had fallen, dropping a good twenty feet and striking his head on the wheel arch of the flatbed as he landed.

The boy was out cold, and though Evan had declared that
there was blood everywhere
, there was very little blood at all, everything considered. Nevertheless, William knew enough of accidents and misadventures to understand that the external often did not reflect the internal. There was nothing to do but get the boy to the clinic in Sonora.

The entire family went, Carson and Grace in the back, Carson laid out, his head in his mother’s lap. He was stirring within minutes of the journey’s outset, and she merely held him close, a muslin wrap of ice close against the point of impact to inhibit the swelling. It was a bad collision, and when Carson’s right eye flickered open, she could see it was crazed with blood. Hemorrhaging was her primary concern, that or some kind of fracture, and when they reached Sonora and the doctor told them that San Angelo was really the place for the boy, she fretted further.

“They have a radiography machine up there, Mrs. Riggs,” the doctor explained. “That’s why you need to get him there, see if there’s some internal damage.”

It was a fifty- or sixty-mile drive. The doctor offered an ambulance, but William said he and the family would take him.

“I’d send someone with you,” he explained, “but I only got two people here—a nurse and a receptionist—and I need both of them.”

“We’ll be fine,” William Riggs said. “We’ll get him there, and everything will be fine.” He said these words to allay his own fears as much as those of his wife. Carson was trying to speak, and it seemed like the muscles down the right side of his face weren’t playing ball.

Evan said he’d come into the barn after Carson had fallen. He just found him there. Seemed intent on ensuring that no blame was being apportioned for the accident.

“Accidents happen,” Grace told Evan, though there was hesitancy in her voice. Had she been pressed, she would have ventured the idea that everything happened for a reason, that
accident
was a label folks hung on things for which they weren’t willing to be responsible.

It was late afternoon by the time they reached San Angelo. Things happened swiftly. The radiography machine was employed, and William and Grace and Evan sat quietly in the waiting room, hoping for the best, anticipating the worst. Not pessimism, just human nature.

When Dr. Gordon came to them, it was almost dark outside. They had been there for more than two hours, and there couldn’t have been more than three dozen words shared.

“He’s going to be fine,” were Gordon’s first words, and they produced a flood wave of relief. Grace shed tears. William held her. Evan just sat white-faced and wide-eyed.

“He has a hairline fracture here,” Gordon said, indicating a point on his brow up and behind the right eye. “It really is very small, perhaps three-quarters of an inch, and it will heal quickly. There is no indication of internal bleeding, no hemorrhaging, no swelling of the brain. It was just a very bad concussion, and the external swelling is superficial. You get an impact, and blood rushes there as fast as possible to aid and speed healing. That’s all you’re seeing. Same principle as a bruise.”

“That is wonderful news, Doctor,” William said. “Thank you so much.”

Gordon smiled. Three hours earlier he’d had to tell a father that he wasn’t one, that his firstborn had died in childbirth. This was altogether better news to be delivering.

“He may have headaches for a while, and he certainly shouldn’t be involved in anything strenuous or physically demanding for a month or so, but I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t recover fully and with no adverse effects.”

William stood and shook Dr. Gordon’s hand. He clapped the man on the shoulder and gripped it firmly. “You have no idea how relieved we are,” William said, but Dr. Gordon reckoned he did.

Carson stayed overnight. Grace stayed with him.

On the run home, Evan sat up front with his pa and once again explained that he hadn’t been involved in the incident.

“I know that, Evan. We’ve been distracted. We were just worried about Carson. If we didn’t pay you much attention, it was simply because of that.”

Evan nodded. “Okay,” he said, seemingly satisfied. “I just didn’t want you and Ma thinking that maybe I pushed him for what he done to Rocket.”

“Rocket?” William asked. “What did Carson do to Rocket?”

“When he let him loose, remember?”

Which William did, but that had been all of eight years earlier, and he couldn’t have thought of it more than twice or thrice since.

It was an odd moment, somehow disquieting, and though they changed the subject and talked of many other things on the way home, William couldn’t get it out of his mind that there must still be some shadow of resentment between his youngest and his eldest.

That did not sit right, and he made a mental note to speak of it with Grace.