Michael’s Wife (28 page)

“Hey,” he whispered, taking her hands from her face and holding them. “What we had was nothing to be ashamed of. It was good, Sunny.”

“Didn't you ever wonder about my past?”

“I thought it was something you wanted to forget. And anyway, I never question gifts from heaven.”

They sat holding hands in silence for long minutes. She felt the appeal of this soft-spoken skinny boy, sensed something beautiful in his very ugliness. And then she told him about Laurel Jean Devereaux, tears rushing to her eyes when she mentioned Jimmy. He listened calmly, showed no surprise at her strange story.

“How'd you find him—your husband?” Sid asked her when she'd finished.

“I had written his name on a piece of paper and stuck it in the waistband of my slacks. Do you have any idea of how I got that name?”

“No. Sometimes an old paper turns up out here. Maybe you got it there. I still want to know what you want here, Sunny.”

“I want to know why I left my baby in the hospital.”

A look of disappointment passed over his face and was gone. She sensed his withdrawal. “Maybe you forgot then, too.”

Laurel sighed and stood up, brushing the dirt from her skirt. “I wonder if I'll ever know. I have to get back now. Thank you.”

“Sunny?”

She turned; she was out in the sun now and it seemed so dask under the roof of the corral she could barely see him.

“Any chance you'll come back?”

“I'm sorry, Sid.”

“Don't be. Never be sorry for love, Sunny. I have some of yours stored up inside.” His voice came out of the darkness in a whisper. “Some cold night it'll keep me warm.”

She left him as she'd found him, squatting on the dirt floor of the corral. And a heaviness tightened around her chest and caught the breath in her throat.

22

Tears filled her eyes as she rounded the end of the corral. She had to blink them away to be sure she saw the blue pickup truck parked beside the Jaguar. Rollo stood with his feet apart, his hands on his hips, facing Harley McBride. Harley wasn't grinning.

A girl with a baby on her hip watched from the sagging porch of the ranch house. Two boys held the barking dog by the neck and several others waited near the pump.

Laurel started running just as Harley took a step toward Rollo. “No, Harley.”

Harley stopped and blinked as if he wasn't sure he saw her.

“He's just here to cause trouble, Sunny,” Rollo said.

“I'll take care of this, Rollo. Sid wants you now,” she lied and took Harley's arm as Rollo backed toward the corrals.

“You know these creeps?” Harley let her lead him over to the picket fence.

“I used to live here.”

“So did I,” Harley said, still looking over his shoulder at the retreating Rollo, his arm trembling under her hand. “You turn up at the goddamnedest times.”

They stood side by side, looking at the mounds beyond the fence. Behind them the dog quieted finally.

“They got no right here.” His breathing came hard between his teeth.

“Harley, no one's using this place, and you don't own it anyway.”

“No,
you
do, Mrs. Devereaux. Were you livin' here with them when I picked you up down on the highway last spring?”

“Yes. Or so they tell me. Harley, why did you come here today?”

“This morning my sister let it slip that they were squattin' here last winter. She didn't tell me then because she thought I'd make trouble. I knew they were around … but not right here. I came up to see if they'd come back.”

Harley relaxed a little and leaned his elbows on the fence. “This is the first time I been here since they put my old man in that hole. That's my ma next to him and my brother Elvie next to her. Had two brothers in the big war; they never made it back here. First two are the Milners, the folks that homesteaded the place before old Devereaux moved in and married their daughter.”

Laurel caught herself nodding at the mention of the Milners, Paul II's grandparents, as if they weren't just mounds in the desert. She wondered what they'd make of the present occupants of the Milner Homestead.

And then Harley noticed the sixth grave. “Hey, what the … they been diggin' in there?”

“Harley, that's a grave, too.”

“They got no right.…”

She grabbed his arm again, for fear he'd start off toward the tents. “Your family buried its dead here and they didn't own it.”

“Well, that ain't the same thing.” But his guard was down and the grin crept back into his eyes. “How is it when I'm around you the real world just goes away?”

“I don't know. Take me on a walk and show me the old homestead.”
And let's get you away from trouble until you've cooled off
.

“There ain't much to look at.” But he led her past the garden and behind the stone house. There had been a back porch, too, but it was now a heap of weathered wood and shingles with a flap of rusty screening for the wind to whistle through. A white enamel dishpan, chipped through to the blue in places and partially filled with earth, lay up against a young saguaro.

“What do you do, Harley? I mean for work. You don't seem to have any hours.”

“Most anything that comes up at the right time. If it comes up at the wrong time, I don't do it. I been in the Navy a couple of times.” He walked along with his hands in his pockets, kicking a rusty can with his boot. “Been around the rodeo circuit some. Used to gamble a lot. Made a fortune once on the market and lost it the same year.”

“The stock market?”

“No, greens … produce. Buy up a field or two of cauliflower or somthing and then try to sell at the right time. Paid off Ray's mortgage on the motel and bought my sister a café in Florence. Can't really do it no more. They got fancy regulations and such. Now only the big boys can make it in greens.”

“How'd you lose it?”

“Reinvested in a fall lettuce deal. It turned hot when it wasn't supposed to, and I became sole owner of whole fields of green slime.” He spread his arms as if to conjure fields of wilted mushy lettuce out of cacti and scrubby trees.

They walked up a mountain path where a large jagged boulder provided some shade and sat on the ground behind it.

“What are you doing now?”

“Living off my investments.”

“Your brother's motel and your sister's café?”

“Right.” Harley picked up a pebble and threw it at another boulder a few feet away. “You are looking at one of the last of a dying breed of good-for-nothing loafers. Poor but proud.”

“Like those kids we just left?”

“I keep telling ya, they're different. Let's talk about you for a change. Only woman I ever met who had to be asked.”

“Most of what I know about myself is hearsay.” But she told him of her month in the hospital, the demonstration, and her short sojourn in jail, a sketchy outline of what she'd learned from Sid. They sat close together, Harley alternately smoking and pitching stones at lizards. The tiny reptiles were so much the pinkish brown color of the earth and rocks that she didn't see them until Harley startled them into movement.

“Once was I thought I knew what this old world was all about. But somewheres I lost track of it,” he said when she'd finished. “What's your big deal husband going to think of this John the Baptist guy?”

“I don't think he'll like the idea much. But don't you think he'll just be glad to know where I was?”

“Might be kind of hard to live with a woman who could just take it into her head to walk out of the house and be somebody else. And even forget how to get back.”

Laurel had been sitting there in a warm peacefulness, the real world (as Harley called it) far away and hazy, talking about herself as though she spoke of someone else. But now she was aware of that sense of urgency, a desire to get away from this place and back to her own world of the beige bungalow and safety. She had the creepy sensation that images were trying to force their way up through her consciousness, that she soon would be unable to stop them. She had to be safe at home before they swamped her.

“I have to go, Harley. I left Jimmy with the neighbor and I haven't had any lunch.” She started to rise and then sat back down, staring at Harley. Nausea and a sweaty weakness came over her.

The same pinkish rocks and lizards alternately freezing and scurrying … the same place … but she wasn't seeing Harley McBride.…

“Hey, this your family? Devereaux?” He pushed a crumpled newspaper at her.

“I told you to leave me alone, Larry.”

His long curly hair was tied back with a leather shoestring. His lips looked feminine and pink over the shaggy beard. A beard like Sid's. Why couldn't she convince him that he could never be another Sid to her?

“Just asked you a simple question, Sunny.” Larry leaned against the rock and smiled at her. A lizard darted away from his boot as he stretched out his legs. “You'd better read this.” He tapped the newspaper and put it on her lap. “There's an article in there about a wealthy Arizona family by the name of D-e-v-e-r-e-a-u-x. Ring a bell?”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Larry.”

“No? Well, I'll just tell you, Sunny. I was sitting in the two holer reading the toilet paper and came across this article, and this name Devereaux just kind of jumped out at me and I asked myself why? Well, I have a cousin married a Devereaux, but that wasn't it. Then I remembered a couple of years ago, this man hanging around that place in Colorado where I met you and Sid.…”

“Larry.…”

“Now wait, it gets better, this story. This man had a picture and he was showing it around and I said, ‘That's Sunny,' and I pointed you out. He looked at you and said, ‘No, that's
blank
Devereaux.' I don't remember the first name now but the Devereaux stuck because of my cousin. He watched you and Sid for a while and asked some questions and said he was just checking to see if you were all right and I never saw him again and I kind of forgot about it till now.… Getting interested, aren't you?”

Sunny picked up the paper. It was really too much to hope for. ONE OF TUCSON'S FIRST FAMILIES. Below the title was a row of pictures with captions. “Paul Elliot Devereaux I, pioneer, land and mining baron of early Arizona, died.…” Her eyes moved to the second picture, “Paul Elliot Devereaux II, author and professor of.…” Again she was disappointed.

“Janet Hamlin Devereaux”… “Captain Michael James Devereaux, Luke Air Force Base”… “James Michael Devereaux”… Her eyes left the picture of the baby at the end of the row and came back to the picture just before it … those eyes … the mouth … were they familiar or did she just want them to be?

“Larry, can I have this?”

“Oh, no.” He tore it away from her and stood up. “I'm going to keep this, Sunny gal.” A slow smile separated his mustache from the shaggy beard. “I can tell by your face that I got the right Devereaux. Tell you what, you be a little nicer to me and I won't go into Tucson and tell them where you are. Poor little rich girl runs away from home? Something like that?” He started to chuckle.… “And to think I almost wiped my ass on your family.”

But Sunny didn't care if Larry Bowman laughed at her. She'd find something to write that name on before she forgot it …
Captain Michael James Devereaux, Luke Air Force Base
.…

“Doe Eyes, you going to sit there dreaming? Thought you wanted to go.” Harley stood looking down at her as Larry had. But Harley wasn't laughing.

“I'm starting to remember things … being here. Harley, I'd feel better being home right now … I.…”

“Sure. Want me to drive you?” He helped her up.

“No. Thanks anyway. I don't want to leave my car here.”

He held her arm as they walked down the path. The smell of food came to them from the ranch house, and it seemed that the whole tiny community had gathered on the porch and the steps for lunch. Their noisy chatter and laughter stopped as she and Harley passed. Laurel avoided their eyes for fear she'd recognize some of them.

“Got half a mind to round up some of the boys for a little target practice. Might scare 'em out.” He opened the door of the pickup and looked past her to the diners on the porch.

“What if one of the women or children got hurt? Wouldn't that make you feel like a big man for the rest of your life? Harley, promise me you won't do it.”

“Oh, for.…”

“Please?”

His glance came back to rest on her. “Okay,” he said softly, a half-grin on his lips that wasn't in his eyes. “But I'm going to have to tell the sheriff about that new grave over there.”

“I know.”

“You'd better get out of here before I do.” Then he bent down and kissed the end of her nose. “Good-bye, Doe Eyes. This time I mean it. Take care of yourself.”

Laurel watched the old blue pickup until it disappeared and then the dust clouds that traced its path in the sky above the cacti. Even after the dust had settled and the sun had washed the sky clean again, even then she didn't move.

Laurel. Sunny. Doe Eyes. Which one? Or was she really any of them?

23

“I just couldn't get those kids to stop horsing around and go to sleep, so I took Jimmy over to his own bed. He snuggled down with his Teddy bear and the puppy and went right off.” Myra opened her screen door and joined Laurel on the front step. “Don't look so shocked, Laurel, I've been checking on him.”

“It's not that … I'm just … I've had a strange day and I'm not feeling too well.”

“Come on, I'll take you over and tuck you in with Jimmy. You probably could use a nap yourself.” Myra took her arm and led her down the steps. “You're shaking. Do you want me to call your doctor?”