Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] (15 page)

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BOOK: Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers]
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When his farm came in sight, Tom braced himself to do battle with Emmajean. He slowed when he saw the black touring car with the Texas license plate in the yard. He drove slowly around it and stopped in front of the shed. He debated about going directly to the barn and starting the chores, but dammit, this was
his
house and he had a right to know who was in it.
“So you finally came home.” The words came from Emmajean the second he stepped into the room. “Marty has been here a long time.”
Tom’s glance took in his wife and her brother sitting at the kitchen table.
“I’ve got chores to do.”
“Chores!” Emmajean said disgustedly. “He’s always got
chores
.”
“How’er you doin’, Tom?”
“How do you think I’m doing?” Tom looked squarely at his brother-in-law for the first time.
“I told Marty what you did to me,” Emmajean said spitefully. “I showed him where you hit me.”
“Did you tell him why?”
“’Cause you were going to leave and wouldn’t take me with you.”
“Good Lord!” He muttered the words in disbelief and reached under a workbench for the milk bucket. At the door he stopped and looked back at his wife and her brother. Then, without another word, he left the house.
Emmajean had not even asked about their son.
Tom finished milking and returned to the house with a half a bucket of milk. The cow was going dry. She needed fresh green grass to produce. He’d not had time to stake her out, nor had he the money to buy feed. Emmajean and Marty were still sitting at the table when he entered the kitchen. She had made no effort to start supper. Tom placed the milk on the counter, covered the pail with a cloth to keep out the flies, and went back out to gather the eggs.
Marty was waiting for him when he came out of the chicken house. Pin-striped shirt, bow tie, and felt hat tilted at an angle; a Jelly-Bean, Tom thought with disgust.
“Where’s the kid?”
“With friends.”
“Emmajean said you beat her.”
“I knocked her out of the way so I could get out the door, not that it’s any business of yours.”
Marty shrugged. “She’s my sister.”
“You’re damn lucky she isn’t your wife.” Tom set the egg basket down and picked up a pitchfork.
“I realize she’s kind of strange—”
“Strange?” Tom looked him in the eye. “She’s crazy as a bedbug, and you know it. Your folks know it, too. They found a sucker to take her off their hands.”
“Now listen here. Just because she’s strange is no reason to beat her up.”
“Did she tell you why I was in such a hurry to get out the door?”
“You were anxious to get over to the Henrys’.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!”
“She also told me that you made her stay in her nightgown all day so that she’d be ready anytime you wanted to screw her.” Marty laughed. “That’s not such a bad idea. A man could get used to that.”
Tom glowered at him for so long that Marty became uneasy and shifted from one foot to the other. Finally he spoke.
“My . . . ah . . . partner and I have opened an office in Red Rock. To start it off we’re bringing in an air show on Saturday.”
“Bully for you.” Tom began to pitch dried grass to the mules.
“We’ll be offering oil leases. There’s an underground river of oil running through here.”
“Who says?”
“Geologist.”
“Harrumph!”
“Dammit, don’t you want to make a lot of money?”
Tom stopped and looked at him. “Who for? I haven’t seen many farmers getting rich off oil around here. What are you offering, twenty-five cents an acre?”
“We’re prepared to offer fifty cents an acre.”
“Oil is going for fifteen cents a barrel—if you find any, and you’ll be paying one-sixteenth of that to the landowner. Right?”
“Wrong. We’ll pay one-eighth.”
“But if you drill a dry hole and tear up the land, you’ll put it back?” Tom asked sarcastically.
A look of practiced disgust covered Marty’s face. “There isn’t an oil company in the world that’ll agree to that.”
“So that poor sucker who leases his hundred acres to you for fifty bucks, with the promise of an eighth of fifteen cents per barrel of oil, is going to get rich. I’ll take my chance on a cotton crop.”
Marty was astounded that Tom knew so much about the oil business.
“Hell, man, you’ll be lucky to make twenty bucks off that cotton patch. What’s it selling for now? Five cents a pound? By the time you get it to the gin it’ll probably go for three cents.”
“Well, don’t you worry your head about it.”
“Goddammit, Tom. I’m trying to help—”
“Can it! You’re trying to help yourself. You want to get your foot in so you can tell the others that a well on my land will drain the oil out from under theirs. You’ll get them to sign up for a little or nothing and have control over their land.”
“That’s business, and if you’re too dumb to know it—”
“I’m not so dumb that I’d sign my land away—if I was going to sign, without seeing a geologist’s report. There’s no reason to think that because there’s oil south of here and north of here that it’ll be here.”
“Think what you like. If you’re so damn smart, why are you a dirt farmer?”
“If
you
had the brains of a flea, you’d have found out who
owns
the mineral rights to this land before you came around making your pitch.”
“Jesus Christ! Don’t
you
own them?”
“No.”
“Shit! Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
“Why should I tell you anything?”
“Did you sell off the rights?”
“They were kept by the heirs when I bought the place, and the heirs are now somewhere in China.”
“What are they doing in China?”
“Making Christians out of the heathens, I reckon.”
“How can I find them?”
“How the hell should I know?” Tom walked into the barn, picked up a long stick, opened a gate, and drove his cattle through to take them to the fresh grass along the creek.
Marty, wiping the sweat from his face with a snowy white handkerchief, got in his car and left without even saying good-bye to his sister. He hated to go back to town and tell Walter he’d not been able to swing the deal with his brother-in-law.
* * *
Johnny seemed to be genuinely glad Aunt Dozie had come back. When she went to the washbench, handed him a towel, and told him curtly not to drip water on the floor, he flashed her one of his rare smiles.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and then said to Grant, “She gets cranky when things ain’t goin’ her way.”
“I shore as shootin’ does.” Dozie shot back, her dark face creased with smiles even as she spoke gruffly, making it clear that she had a fondness for the coppery-skinned boy. “I ain’t havin’ no water sloshed on de floor, I ain’t havin’ no cow stuff tromped in de house, and I ain’t having no sass outta a youngun like you is, Johnny Henry.”
“Told ya,” Johnny said to Grant. “No cow stuff tromped in the house,” he repeated, and lifted up first one boot and then the other to make sure they were clean.
“Sit yoreselves down. You been foolin’ ’round for so long dat dis corn bread is gettin’ cold.”
“Jay is still sleeping.” Henry Ann came in and went to the cupboard for a jar of tomato preserves. “Last of last year’s preserves, Aunt Dozie.”
“I’s hopin’ dat babe sleep all night long.”
“Sit down and say the blessing,” Henry Ann said. “Johnny is about to gnaw on the table leg.”
Dozie hesitated, glancing at Grant, who stood politely behind his chair waiting for Henry Ann to be seated.
“Sit,” Henry Ann said again, then with a knowing look at Grant conveyed a silent message.
If you act in the least like you’re offended to eat at the table with a colored woman, you can hit the road.
He met her look squarely without the slightest change of expression.
After the blessing was said and the dishes of food were passed, Henry Ann asked how long it was going to take to weed the field.
“Shouldn’t take more than a few more days if I could get this kid here to work,” Grant said, teasing. “But I don’t want to finish it too soon, I’ll be out of a job. Ma’am,” he said to Dozie, “I’ve eaten corn bread all over this country, and this is the best I’ve had in a donkey’s age.”
“Mr. Henry, he love my corn bread too. He say, Dozie, use as many eggs as yo want. He like it with milk gravy. Never could fatten up dat man. He work too hard to get him any fat on.”
“I’ve got a dishpan of green beans ready to can.” Henry Ann helped herself to butter and passed the crock on down the table.
“I see dat. There’s a mess of okra to pick and taters to dig. Lawsy, dat garden doin’ mighty fine without rain.”
“I watered while you were gone to the city.” Johnny glanced at Henry Ann. “I did it again the night Ed passed on.”
“You never told me that!”
He shrugged, his eyes on his plate.
“I saw where a trench had been dug down between the rows. I though maybe Daddy—”
“—He showed me how to irrigate. I did it at night.”
“Why?”
“So the ground would stay wet longer.”
“Johnny. You surprise me.”
“Kid might know gardens, but he doesn’t know beans about chopping cotton.” Grant’s eyes caught Henry Ann’s, and he winked.
“You’re not going to let that go, are you?” Johnny asked.
“Not on your life. I’m going to stand by and watch you pay your debt.”
“Do you have to refer to that bet while we’re eating?” Henry Ann put her fork back down on her plate.
“Sorry, ma’am. Guess I wasn’t thinking.”
Dozie had been quiet. The white man had called her ma’am, too. She didn’t know what to think of that. Johnny liked him. Henry Ann seemed to like him, too. Dozie hoped that he stayed for a good while. That Mister Dolan could mean trouble for her girl. He was a married man, but he looked at Henry Ann like a man hungry for something he couldn’t have.
* * *
“Wal, here ya are, purty little bird. This here’s Hardy Perry’s place.”
Pudgy fingers suddenly gripped Isabel’s elbow and squeezed. She jerked her arm free from the fat man’s grasp, set the suitcase down, and moved to the other side of it.
“This is where Pete lives?”
“Yup. Ain’t much to look at on the outside, but they got one of them iceboxes in there and a wind-up Victrola. Got a feller named Rudy Vallee singin’ on it. Hardy’s got a likin’ for music. Sometimes he makes Jude dance with him ’nd Jude’s dang near big as his paw. Hee, hee, hee.” The fat man’s beady eyes shone like glass as he eyed Isabel. “Hardy’ll take a likin’ for you, too, purty little bird.”
“Who’s Jude?”
“His kid. Only one he claims ’side of Pete. Hee, hee, hee. He ain’t foolin’ nobody. There’s Perrys strung all up and down Mud Creek, and he’s got kids by most of ’em.”
“Relatives?”
“Hell. Cousins and aunts ain’t close kinfolk. That Hardy is the limit. He’s hornier than a bull moose,” he said. “’Course, I ain’t no mouse myself,” he added proudly.
The small unpainted house had appeared suddenly when they rounded a bend in the road. It squatted on blocks amid the weeds and scrub growing out of the sandy soil. Behind it was a lopsided outhouse and a shed with a new tin roof. To the side was the slanting door of a root cellar and the well. Chickens picked and scratched among the debris that littered the area around the house. It was worse than Fat’s place. Isabel’s heart sank.
This couldn’t be where Pete lived!
All was quiet except for the buzz of a dozen june bugs and the call of a whippoorwill. From a distance a cowbell sounded gently, mellow and muted. Then from the house came music.
“Hardy’s home. Ain’t nobody touchin’ that Victrola but Hardy. Listen. Ain’t that pretty?”
“I’ll see you in my dreams,
hold you in my dreams—”
“That’s that Vallee feller singin’. He sure sings pretty. I’m goin’ to have me a record player someday.”
“Why don’t you buy one,” Isabel said absently.
“’Cause I ain’t . . . ready yet, that’s why,” he answered crossly. “There ain’t no call for ya to get sassy. I brung ya over here when I could’ve been fishin’ or huntin’ squirrels.”
“Let’s go. I want to see Pete.”
“‘Let’s go. I wanna see Pete,’” he mocked, and walked away, leaving her to struggle in the deep sand with the suitcase.
A chorus of frenzied barking from dogs penned behind the house announced their arrival. The music stopped, and a man came out onto the porch. He was big, with a head of thick gray hair and hands like scoop shovels. Although he wasn’t overly fat, he had a big belly that hung over the belt that held up his britches. His open shirt showed a mass of gray chest hair, and the stubble on his face said it had been some time since he’d shaved.

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