Tumbleweeds (41 page)

“Bobby Tucker. He’s the head football coach and athletic director now.”

“Can’t say that I remember him. Did he replace Coach Turner?”

“Bobby followed a couple of replacements in between. Coach Turner didn’t last but about another five years after your class graduated. When his daughter died unexpectedly, he just sort of lost interest in football and everything else.” He squinted at Trey quizzically. “You… know what I’m talking about?”

Trey nodded. “My aunt kept me informed. Some sort of infection, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. So sad. His wife passed away a few years afterwards. Ron became an alcoholic, lives like a hermit now, but I’m sure he’d be glad to see the best player he ever coached.”

“If you don’t count John Caldwell.”

“Well, yes, there’s Father John. A great pair of hands and feet,
judging by the old film footage. Football lost a good one when he went into the priesthood, so they say.”

“They say right.” Trey fished his car keys from his pocket.

Coach Willis looked perplexed. “Aren’t you going to look around?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have the time, after all. Nice to have met you.”

“Well, uh, wait—” Looking flustered, the coach stepped in front of him. “Where are you staying? Maybe we could meet for a beer….”

“At Harbison House with John, but I’m only in town overnight. I’ll catch you next time.”

Trey left the man puzzled, but he’d lost his nostalgic itch. The news of Coach Turner had sickened him. An irrational fury at Tara bloomed and then died. Laura—
Dr.
Rhinelander—had cautioned him as well about the dangers of impotent anger. “Let’s not rush things,” she’d said. But why the hell had the slut gone and died on her parents when she had already made them miserable enough? What he wouldn’t give to clear the slate with Coach Turner, explain to him why he’d cut out on Cathy, but Coach would still consider him horse manure for not manning up to the truth when it would have made a difference.

The next stop would depress him further, but at least it would be one change for the better. He wouldn’t go in. He’d merely drive by Bennie’s to see if he could catch a glimpse of Cathy’s blond head behind the windows. John would have told her Trey would be in town today, and he wondered if she was expecting him to walk through the door of the café any minute. His heart beat faster and his mouth went dry at the very thought of it. When Laura told him he was dying, in his frantic need for comfort his first impulse had been to fly home to Cathy’s arms for the months he had left, stay in his old room in Aunt Mabel’s house, have the spiritual consolation of the only true friend he’d ever had.

But after the initial shock of the prognosis, he’d laughed at himself for his outrageous arrogance. Considering the wreckage he’d left in
his wake, what had made him think that Cathy and John would take him to their bosoms again?

So he’d had to consider another way to ease out of this world into the next, and he’d decided to make a clean breast of his deceptions that had marred the lives of two loving parents and aborted the life journeys of his best friends. He’d kept his mouth shut out of a false sense of injury and betrayal, ego and pride, the self-destructive demons he’d allowed to destroy his soul. Facing death shed a light on things he’d refused to see before. Now he’d come to tell the truth and maybe undo some of the damage he’d caused. He’d leave this earth hated by the two people he loved and who’d loved him, but he could not die with a lie upon his soul.

He turned down Main Street, curious if anybody would recognize him as the driver of the unfamiliar BMW. Coach Willis would have to tell only one person about meeting him today for the news to make it around town.

A big Lincoln Navigator was tying up traffic waiting for a pickup to back out of a parking space in front of Bennie’s. The delay gave him an opportunity to note the revamped storefront with its blue-checkered awnings and bright flower boxes, a front door painted yellow. He strained to see Cathy moving about beyond the immaculate windows, but he recognized instead the dark-headed figure of Bebe Baldwin taking charge of the customer line. Again, teenage memories surged, and he was back in a fun-filled moment with Cathy and John and Bebe eating greasy hamburgers and fries and drinking Cokes that went down his throat like carbonated fire. Finally, the Navigator pulled in, clearing the street, and it was then he saw Cathy in a white Lexus stopped at a red light at the intersection.

He stared, not daring to blink for fear of losing a second of her face taking shape like a photo in a developing solution. She had not seen him. He recognized the small frown between her brows as a sign her mind was clearly on something else as she waited for the light to
change. What would he do if she should suddenly snap out of her concentration and turn those big blue eyes on him? The motorist behind him gave a prompting little toot of his horn and Trey accelerated, but the traffic light remained on red and he was caught at the intersection a few feet away from where the white Lexus waited for a turn signal.

It came within seconds, and Cathy, still preoccupied, passed in front of him, the sun glinting off the swirl of her short blond hair, illuminating the remembered features of her profile. Riveted to his seat, he watched her drive a short distance before turning into the back of the café where stray dogs used to paw through garbage cans for scraps. In the seconds before the trailing motorist tooted his horn again, Trey was tempted to follow her. There might still be a chance that, in the time he had left, she’d take him back and his secrets would be buried with him, but he couldn’t do that to Cathy—cause her to love him again when he’d have to leave her once more. He pressed the gas pedal and gave up his last chance to see face-to-face the only woman he had ever loved.

D
eke Tyson lowered his body gingerly onto the ancient swing of Mabel Church’s front porch before subjecting it to his full weight. It appeared sturdy enough, and he relaxed to wait for Trey Don Hall while his wife, Paula, was off taking a last look at the house before finalizing the deal. At her urging, they’d arrived early to look over the property again before the owner arrived and bird-dogged their steps. Deke didn’t think they had to worry about the owner bird-dogging their steps. He’d gotten the impression from Trey Don Hall’s attorney that it didn’t matter to Trey one way or the other whether they bought it. The lawyer had named a price, and he and Paula had dealt with him in working out the details for inspections, repairs, and documents.

Which was the reason Deke was surprised and oddly moved when Trey, after not being home since he graduated from high school, had written to say he’d fly out to deliver the deed in person and they could settle up.

Deke placed his hands on the overhang of his belly, a change from the last time TD Hall had seen him. In 1986, when Trey and Melissa had graduated from high school, Deke’s stomach had been hard and flat and he hadn’t cut too bad a figure in his western-styled
uniform that Paula had kept pin sharp. Now the once solid mass of his chest muscles had sloped down to settle at his midriff as Paula’s ample, round bottom had traded shapes with her level stomach. Age was nothing if not humbling. He wondered how much TD Hall had changed since the last time he’d seen him on television. Eleven or so years ago, was it? Melissa and her friends had called him the Heartbreak Kid in high school, but that was mainly because of the female hopes he disappointed by going steady with Cathy Benson. Who would have figured he’d go off and leave her like he did? No other permanent attachment had worked for him, apparently, and he still had no children. Did Trey have regrets about Cathy and the wonderful son they could have raised together?

Deke had just stretched out his legs and tilted his Stetson forward to doze in the spring sun when he heard a car drive up to the curb.
Son of a gun! The kid was on time.
Somehow, he’d expected him not to be. Deke recognized the famous but older and thinner face instantly and went down the steps feeling the thrill that used to come over him when he watched Trey play in high school, then later in college and the NFL. Trey Hall might be a reputed horse’s behind, but he was one hell of a great quarterback.

“Hello there, TD,” Deke said, meeting him on the walk. “Welcome back to your hometown.”

“Looks like I can say the same to you, Sheriff Tyson,” Trey said, shaking Deke’s hand. “Amarillo doesn’t suit you?”

“Not for the golden years. It’s gotten too big and noisy. And Melissa lives here now with her husband and our grandson.”

“Melissa?”

“Our daughter. You and she were classmates. Graduated the same year.”

“Oh, right.” Trey looked about ready to smack his forehead. “I went blank there for a second.”

“And it’s not
Sheriff
anymore,” Deke said. “Just plain ol’ Deke Tyson.”

“Well, just plain ol’ Deke Tyson, let’s go inside and see what we can work out.”

Still a smart-ass
, Deke thought, remembering the crooked grin, but for some reason Trey’s cussedness had endeared the boy to him. “After you,” he said, to allow Trey to go first into his boyhood home.

Deke was curious to see what Trey Hall’s reaction would be when he stepped inside the house he hadn’t visited in twenty-two years. Surely the bric-a-brac, framed photos, his aunt’s hand-stitched pillows, the treasures she had loved, would have some meaning for the boy who had grown up here. Deke held back at the threshold to give him time for the memories, the ghosts to rush out to welcome their long-lost boy, and for a moment, he thought they had. Trey stood still in the musty living room, his body tense as if he heard voices from long ago.

“It’s smaller than I remember,” he said.

“Places we come back to after we’re grown nearly always are,” Deke said quietly, hearing Paula exclaim over some find in another part of the house. “Excuse me, and I’ll go get my wife. She’s around somewhere.”

“You can have any of this stuff you want,” Trey said suddenly, sweeping his arm about the room. “I won’t have a use for it.”

“Oh?” Deke said politely, his policeman’s ear catching
won’t
instead of
don’t
. “Does that mean you’re moving to another place out there in San Diego?”

“That’s right. I’m not taking much with me.”

“Sounds like you’re downsizing.”

“You could call it that.”

“Well, that’s awfully generous of you,” Deke said. He glanced around the room, saddened that the boy placed no value on the things that had been such a part of his life. “There are some fine items here, and you haven’t been through the house yet. There might be something you want to keep.”

“No, there’s nothing,” Trey said, “and I’d appreciate your taking it all off my hands. Whatever you don’t want you can sell or give away.”

Paula stood in the doorway, wearing the expression Deke understood well. She disliked the rough-and-tumble game of football and placed no stock in professional athletes with bad manners and worse morals who were paid fortunes for their talents while her daughter drew a paltry salary as a public school teacher. Never on Paula’s good side, Trey Hall had zoomed to the top of her bad list for his treatment of Cathy. She looked at him now as if he were a dead bug in her soup.

“What about the attic?” she asked, her tone cold. “Boys’ things are usually relegated to the attic when they leave home. I imagine Mabel did the same with yours. You might find something up there you’d like to have.”

Trey flashed his devilish grin, apparently amused at his cold reception. “Hello, Mrs. Tyson. It’s nice to see you again. No, I can’t think of a thing. The only items I remember stored in the attic were my uncle Harvey’s stuffed hunting trophies. I imagine they’re in pretty bad shape by now and ready for the trash heap.”

“Whatever,” Paula said, ending the discussion with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But just remember. What we don’t keep we toss or sell. Don’t change your mind a year later and ask for something that’s not here.”

“I believe I can assure you I won’t,” Trey said. “Now, Sheriff Tyson, why don’t we go out on the porch and finish our business?”

It was done in less time than it would have taken to drink a cup of coffee. Deke handed over the check and Trey the deed. A muscle worked along Trey’s jawline, and Deke was glad to see some visible sign that the boy was sorry to see the place go. “Will you be going back to San Diego or staying around for a while?” he asked when Trey slipped the check into his shirt pocket.

“I’m planning to take off tomorrow morning after I finish taking
care of a few things. I’m staying with John Caldwell at Harbison House.”

“That’s nice,” Deke said, wondering if Cathy Benson and her son were among the few things Trey would be taking care of. “You’ll be a treat for the kids. They’ve never seen a real, honest-to-goodness superstar.”

Trey threw a mock punch at his arm. “You’re dating yourself, Sheriff. Those kids are too young to have a clue of who I am.” He put out his hand. “You and Mrs. Tyson enjoy the house. I’m glad I’m leaving it in your care. My aunt would be pleased.”

“I wish you’d reconsider and look through the house, son. I imagine your high school trophies are still in your room.”

“History,” Trey said. “I couldn’t take them with me to my new digs anyway. So long, Sheriff. You’ve been a good man to know.”

Hands in his pockets, his Stetson pushed back, Deke watched Trey go down the steps to his car, oddly depressed. Trey Don Hall impressed him as a very sad man. It wasn’t an enviable position to be in at his age with the career over and the money gone and no loving wife waiting at home, no child to give him grandchildren, at least not the son he’d left Cathy to raise. Will Benson wanted no part of Trey Don Hall, so county gossip went, and Deke found that especially tragic, since the boy had made one mighty fine young man.