Tumbleweeds (10 page)

“The hell I will. This is my house, Deke. I can do anything I damn well please in it.”

“Maybe so, but not to your son.”

“
My son!
Hell, he ain’t my son. He’s some bastard’s who screwed my wife when I was out on a rig!”

Silence fell like a stone. Sheriff Tyson and the deputy looked curiously from Bert to John and saw what John had suddenly realized. He looked nothing like his black-haired, blue-eyed father. Trey, wide-eyed, let out a delighted yelp. “Hey, that’s cool, John! He’s not your old man. You got no parents, either.”

John had gotten to his feet unsteadily, all four feet of him. He stared
up at his father, who was biting his lip, averting his eyes. “You’re not my dad?”

Bert Caldwell threw down the belt. “Forget I said that. You got my name, ain’t you?”

“You’re not my father?”

Bert spat on the floor. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“But you did.”

“Don’t sass me! I didn’t say that. I said it’s hard to believe you’re my kid sometimes. That’s what I said.”

“
Liar!
” Trey yelled, going for Bert’s knees.

Sheriff Tyson had intervened, taking Trey gently by the shoulders and passing him to his deputy. Deke Tyson was a tall, powerfully built man, a former Green Beret, and John saw that even in Bert’s drunken stupor, he knew better than to tangle with him. “We’re taking John with us tonight, Bert,” Deke said. “You sober up, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

John had an idea what they’d talked about. In the Texas Panhandle, a county sheriff had pretty much a free hand to do what he had to do to protect the citizens of his jurisdiction, a license Deke Tyson wouldn’t have hesitated to take to safeguard a child. John’s father never laid another hand on him again.

But he carried the faint scars still… both on his back and in his heart, and he never felt the same about the man who had raised him.

John pocketed the comb, made sure of his keys, and settled the florist box containing a carnation corsage under his arm. He shouldn’t be recalling bad memories on a night like tonight. He had other unpleasant thoughts to occupy his mind. Tonight Trey planned to make a move on Cathy.

“What do you think, John? Don’t you think it’s time?” Trey had asked John earlier in the week after telling him that he’d reserved a motel room in Delton.

John had bent down to tie his shoe. They were in the field house, just showered and dressed after running laps around the track.

The muscles of his jaws tensed when he finally said, “There’s only one way to find out, TD, and the sooner the better considering that we’re all planning on going to Miami together next year. But why after the prom? Cathy will be in her finery, her hair done up in a fancy do. And if you two don’t go to the breakfast afterwards, everybody will know where you are, what you’re doing. They’ll talk. You have to think of Cathy’s reputation.”

“What’s there to think about? Everybody knows she’s my girl and always will be. I’m going to
marry
her once we’re out of college.”

“That’s a long way away, Trey. A lot can happen between now and then.”

“
Nothing
is going to happen to us. Nothing can. I won’t let it.” Frustration darkened his face. “I can’t keep myself from her much longer, John. I’ll have to have her or stop going with her, and I’d rather die than give her up.”

“Have you discussed this with Cathy?”

“Which part?”

“Both, TD, for God’s sake. Does she know that you’re hurting for her and the consequences if she doesn’t play ball?”

“You make it sound like I’m
threatening
her!”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“No, dammit! Jesus, John, I thought you’d understand. If you were in love with somebody as much as I am with Catherine Ann, you’d know the hell I’m going through.”

John said nothing for a few minutes. He opened his locker door to take out his latest varsity letter jacket, the sleeves covered in sewn-on badges of sports in which he’d qualified and excelled. Trey had one like it, but it hung in Cathy’s closet, far too big for her, and he wore last year’s version. John hoped his cheeks weren’t burning. He knew exactly the hell that Trey was going through.

“Have you thought of Miss Emma?” John asked. “She’ll wait up for Cathy and know the minute she lays eyes on her what you guys have been up to.”

“That’s why we’re going to a motel. She can fix herself up afterwards, and her grandmother will never know the difference.”

Don’t bet on it
, John had thought. “Why haven’t you told Cathy how you feel?” he asked.

“Because I don’t want to scare her.”

“Cathy doesn’t scare easily.”

“I know, and I guess that’s what scares
me
—explains why I’ve waited so long. We’re close, but would she want to become… intimate? What if she… doesn’t want me like I want her?”

“Just because she doesn’t want to have sex now doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you or will not want it later. We’re only seventeen. Cathy might be afraid of becoming pregnant.”

Trey twirled the knob of the combination lock to secure his locker, a muscle jumping along his jawline. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

“How can you prevent it? Condoms aren’t all that guaranteed—not with the workout you probably give ’em.” Trey had been initiated into gymnastic sex by a popular senior cheerleader when he was a sophomore, their secret carried safely away with her when she left for Texas Christian University in the fall. John knew of two other girls Trey had known sexually—high school students from Delton. News of his sorties had never drifted back to Cathy. John wondered what would have happened if it had. Would she have been jealous, hurt, outraged? Would she have dumped Trey and turned to him? Or would she have looked upon Trey’s canters off the range not as a breach of trust or faithlessness but as his way of protecting her from him until she was ready? It was hard to tell. Beyond being an open book when it came to certain things—like attitudes and principles and her strong self-image, for instance—Cathy wasn’t easy to read, or anticipate. Of the three of them, she was the most mature. She may
look small and defenseless, but physical size didn’t matter when you had the strength of a healthy self-esteem, and Trey had yet to test that in Cathy.

“Those girls mean nothing to me, John,” Trey had assured him. “The only girl who means anything to me or ever will is Catherine Ann. She’s my world, my life, my heart. I couldn’t breathe without her. I’ve tried to. I’ve thought of what it would be like to… cool it with her for a while, sample the field, but then I think of what it would be like to lose her….” His voice had trailed off and he’d stared into space like a shell-shocked war veteran.

John had a pretty good idea of what it would be like to lose Cathy, worse than loving her from afar, but she’d gravitated toward Trey from the start, the reason he’d never given away by so much as the twitch of an eyebrow how he felt about her.

He tried one last argument. “Don’t you think you ought to tell Cathy your plans beforehand—give her a chance to say, ‘Some other time’?”

Trey made a fist and struck the locker door. “That’s so
like
you, John—to give people an
opportunity
to reject what in your gut you know is best for them.”

There was no point in trying to make Trey see that what he perceived as best for someone else was really best for him, especially when most of the time his gut was right.

Which was why John hoped with all his heart that whatever went on between Trey and Cathy after the prom tonight, they were both ready for it.

T
rey checked his reflection for one last time in the floor mirror in his aunt’s bedroom. Too tall to get a full view, he bent down to make sure his black tie was aligned with his matching cummerbund. He hadn’t particularly looked forward to wearing a monkey suit to the prom—too much to get out of—but he did look pretty sharp in it, and the girls would go wild over him. He hoped Cathy was one of them.

He took another handkerchief from his drawer, not from the box of crisp new linen ones that his aunt had insisted on buying when they went to select his tuxedo—“you simply can’t carry along an everyday handkerchief in the pocket of your tuxedo, Trey, dear”—but from the stack of his old ones. His forehead was damp, an outward manifestation of his nerves. The tension in his gut annoyed him, since his looks told him that not a girl alive would be able to resist him tonight.

But his looks might have no effect on Cathy. She simply didn’t fall for the things that grabbed other girls. She wasn’t like any other girl he knew, period. Other girls were good-looking. They were funloving and loose with their favors. They bounced and jounced and flirted and flipped their hair and batted their lashes and he smiled back, but none had a lock on his heart like Cathy. The first time he heard the song “My Funny Valentine” sung was by Frank Sinatra
crooning forth from one of Aunt Mabel’s old long-playing records. The lyrics had made him think of Cathy. She played in the band, a flute, and wore a uniform a size too big for her small build and a hat that forced her to tilt her head back in order to see under the brim when she marched in the halftime activities. But like everything else she did, she stayed in step and never missed a beat of the maneuvers. She hated that she wasn’t tall and regarded her less-than-medium height as a physical imperfection, but to him, she was just right. She was his funny valentine, and he wouldn’t have wanted her any other way.

But now he wished he’d tested the waters more for some indication of her willingness to go along with his hopes for tonight. It wasn’t that they didn’t make out, but it was done on a… well,
spiritual
level—a special plane reserved only for them, and that was very satisfying, too. He’d been content with those times when they studied or watched television or Rufus’s antics together, their thighs touching, his arm around her, now and then kissing but never making it something heavier. There was just nothing like those delicious, goose-bump moments when their eyes caught in a crowd, or in passing she brushed her hand over his shoulder, the back of his neck, straightened his collar, carelessly, like you do something that is yours, and he felt more intimately connected to her—more physically fulfilled—than when he made out with another girl in the backseat of his Mustang.

There had been something exciting about waiting—like a cake you want to bite into but don’t want to spoil its frosting.

So he hadn’t pushed it. The time would come, he’d thought. And now it had. He loved her. He loved her until it hurt, and he’d come to a point in their relationship where he needed to express that love and feel hers for him. Wasn’t that the whole point of sex? But if her feeling for him wasn’t the same… The fear that it wasn’t almost nauseated him, but he had to know, and he intended to find out tonight.

He wiped his forehead and shoved the handkerchief into another
pocket. He’d use that one and save the linen one for Cathy if she should need it.

“Trey Don? Are you ready for your close-up?” his aunt asked, coming into the room. “I’ve got the camera ready.”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, certain his aunt would miss the irony. He turned from the mirror. “How do I look?”

“Simply too smashing,” Mabel said. “When did my little nephew grow up to be such a tall, dark, and impossibly handsome man?”

It wasn’t her fault, but “my little nephew” added further play on his nerves. It should have been “my little son.” Lately, he’d been thinking of his parents a lot, wondering where they were, if he’d ever see them again, if they’d be proud to learn he was among the top “blue-chip” high school quarterbacks in the state and that he had earned almost a four-point grade average. Aunt Mabel was closemouthed on the subject of his parentage, but he figured his father had gotten his mother pregnant out of wedlock and wanted no part of her or her kid. He gathered his mother was the flighty sort who didn’t have a maternal bone in her body, so she’d given him as a gift to Aunt Mabel and his uncle, who couldn’t have children. That possibility made Trey feel better than believing his mother hadn’t wanted him.

He felt guilty mooning for his deadbeat parents when Aunt Mabel had been so good to him. As an orphan, he’d had a better go of it than John, even better than Cathy, though Miss Emma loved her dearly. John’s father—or whatever you wanted to call him—wasn’t worth the cost of an ounce of cat meat as a dad, and Miss Emma struggled financially to provide for Cathy. Aunt Mabel had been left well off by Trey’s uncle, who’d owned a farm equipment business, the reason she could buy Trey a tuxedo while John, who allowed Bert Caldwell to pay only for the essentials, had to rent his suit with money he’d earned as a bag boy at Affiliated Foods over Christmas vacation.

Scholarships would be a godsend to all of them, the only way Cathy could go to premed school and John earn a business degree and he get
out from under his aunt’s financial generosity. And they would all do it together. They’d get their college diplomas, he and Cathy would marry, he’d shoot for the NFL, and if that didn’t work, he’d fall back on his own business degree, and they’d all live happily ever after.

But first, there was tonight. “Shoot away, Aunt Mabel,” he said. “This will be one evening I’ll want to remember.”

“Y
OU’RE NOT DOUBLE-DATING
with John and Bebe?” Emma asked Cathy. “Why not?”