Yellow Mesquite (25 page)

“Well,” he said, getting up with Leah, “since Whitehead’s being so
nice
to me, I guess I should get on over there and grovel.”

He went inside, made himself two baloney and cheese sandwiches, seeded a jalapeño pepper, took a bag of chips from the cabinet, and poured the rest of the coffee into his thermos.
 

HE TURNED THE
pickup off Kickapoo Road and crossed the cattle guard toward Whitehead’s house. A cloud of caliche dust rolled up from the shoulder behind. He brought the truck to a stop halfway around the circular drive, killed the engine and sat for a minute, looking at the big red pump-jack by the swimming pool. Down back, Álvaro looked up from where he was breaking up several bales of hay to mulch the garden.

Paladin came loping around the house, head down, tail curled under, the hair on his back bristling. Harley sat watching the dog until Whitehead came out on the porch. Then he got out. Now that he was here, he was at a loss where to begin.

“You know I’m leaving,” he said. “I just came to tell you that I’m not somebody to leave a man in a bind. I’ll keep those wells up two more weeks if you want. Or until you find somebody else, whichever’s first.”

Whitehead squinted, head craned forward on his shoulders. “Harley Jay, you’ve been acting crazier’n a hoot every since Mavis died.”
 

“Who told you that? Sherylynne?”

“I don’t thank anybody could miss it.”

“Look, I didn’t come out here to discuss my mental condition. You want me to work, or don’t you?”

Whitehead’s shoulders drew up. “You really gonna do this thing? Going off up yonder to New Yark and all?”

“I’m all but gone, even as we speak.”

“Son, you ought’a thank about it some before you get all kinked up here and go do something you’re gonna regret. We had us some good times, you’n Sherylynne, and me’n Mavis. And that little ’un. Now you’re gonna take her off too?”

Harley regarded Whitehead briefly. “You’ve had your losses the last few years. I understand that. Buddy and Mavis. And I know you’re pretty keen on little Leah. I figure that’s what you’re
really
out of joint about, that I’m taking her away. But I can’t help that.”

“I thank it’s a damn fool idee all around.”

“And you know I don’t give two hoots in a well whether you think it’s a fool
idee
or not.”
 

Whitehead looked into the distance, eyes red-rimmed. “It ain’t something I like to talk about, but I’ve got to tell you, son. I miss Mavis more’n I ever thought I could. Sometimes I feel like my head ain’t on real straight.”

Harley tried not to show his surprise. He had never seen Whitehead even come close to baring his feelings.
 

Whitehead lowered his gaze. “Over three years you been with me, pumpin’ these wells. I know I wasn’t always as good with you as I might’uv been. Fact, I was kinda jealous.”

This wasn’t something Harley was prepared for.

“See, Mavis was plumb stuck on Buddy. When he got killed, I knew she was gonna leave. Then she latched onto you, same as him. She put up with me, and I should of been grateful for small favors, but there you was, gettin’ all the attention I never did.” He laughed ruefully—a stranger Harley had never expected to meet, this grizzled man standing before him who never asked for or gave quarter. Whitehead forced a grin of sorts. “That’s a fine howdy-do for a feller to tell on hisself, now, ain’t it.”

“I’m sorry,” Harley said.
 

“You and them two—Sherylynne and that little ’un—you’re the only family I got. I guess I’ve been bad as Mavis was, conniving to keep y’all around.”

Harley was torn between guilt for having berated Whitehead so harshly—whose bluster, it appeared, was mostly coverup for feelings he was unable to express. At the same time, Harley felt uncomfortable that Whitehead had confided in him so intimately. It was an unwelcome burden, this being forced into sympathy, a kind of emotional blackmail. Harley wondered if Mavis had tolerated Whitehead because she’d seen through his coarse facade to his emotionally damaged core.

Whitehead studied hard at the ground near his feet. “How about letting them two stay in that little house till you get settled in up yonder?”
 

Harley hadn’t yet come to terms with how to manage Sherylynne and Leah. Remaining in the house would simplify the situation, and Sherylynne had already said Whitehead had agreed to it. But he would also be indebted to Whitehead. And while Whitehead was showing this new side, Harley wasn’t ready to trust either himself or Whitehead completely.
 

“Um,” he mumbled. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

Whitehead glanced up again, but avoided eye contact, looking a little aside. “Son, it’s a damn good idee. It’s the only sensible thang. If you don’t want to feel obligated, how about I have her come out and cook a meal now and then? I could use the company.”

“What about Lupe?”

“She’s been bitchin’ about going to see her family down in San Anton’ for god knows how long. Fact, she’s way overdue for some time off. Two birds with one stone, as they say.”

“I don’t know… I’ll see what Sherylynne says.”

“That lease out there, you wanna work, I can use you till I find somebody else.”

“I hear Len Barkley’s boy is looking for work.”
 

“He any good?”

“Beats me.”
 

Whitehead was silent, looking into the distance again. Harley was newly moved, seeing his old eagle eyes rimmed wet.
 

“Son,” he said with a long sigh, “you gotta do what you gotta do.” He turned and held out his hand. “I guess I always knowed you was gonna go. I just wasn’t ready for it.”

Mind reeling, Harley shook his hand. “Thank you,” he heard himself saying.
 

Barely knowing what he was doing, Harley got back in the truck and drove off—as if he’d discovered the earth wasn’t round after all.
 

THE LEASE WAS
situated within twenty-two thousand acres of wide-open wasteland in a long stretch of West Texas known as the Permian Basin just off Route 349. The highway ran straight as a chalked line for fifty-one miles, Midland to Rankin, nothing between but barbed-wire fencing, pump-jacks, a scattering of scrub mesquite and a few scruffy patches of sage, thistle, and a smattering of shin oak. Tumbleweeds broke free from their roots in the fall and skittered back and forth over the long country before the winter winds. It was said that nothing else would grow because of salt water pumped into the ground for the oil wells.

By noon he had the donkey engines gassed and greased, the tanks thieved and the sediments run on all the wells to the southwest. He drove to the section known as Rattling Square, parked the pickup and killed the engine. He took the .22 revolver from the glove box and stuck it in his belt, then took his lunch bucket from the seat. He selected David Hume’s
A Treatise of Human Nature
from the box of books in the floorboard, then got out and walked past the powdered remains of an early frontier dwelling, discernible now by nothing more than a ten-by-twelve-foot rectangle of adobe rubble. Just beyond stood the weathered remains of a wooden windmill frame, and alongside that an empty, galvanized water tank sagging on an angle-iron platform. At some long-ago time the fan had blown off the windmill and lay fifty yards away, crumpled, half-buried in sand.
 

It was to the shade underneath the galvanized tank that he took his lunch. It was the same shade that rattlers sometimes took refuge from the sun, and the reason he carried the revolver.

A ragged line of scrub mesquite followed a gully, meandering across the plain. After the rare rain, a little water ran in the cut. He sat in the shade under the tank and ate the two sandwiches with the jalapeño pepper and the corn chips. Afterward, he poured coffee into the thermos cap and sipped, looking out over the country. Ugly country. But he realized he might actually miss it. It had its own beauty if you knew how to look.

Ten feet away, a horned lizard scrabbled along the edge of the shade, then stopped. It looked at him with its beady eyes. He suffered a stab of guilt, recalling how Darlene had slit open the horned lizard when they were kids.

A rooster tail of dust rose, coming toward him in the distance. Soon Wesley Earl’s pickup pulled up alongside the ruins, Wesley Earl killed the engine. Dust settled behind as he got out.

Harley stood up, hands in his back pockets, thumbs hooked over as Wesley Earl sauntered toward him. Wesley Earl grinned, leaned to one side and spat a stream of tobacco juice.
 

“Hoss,” he said, “I hope you got the air conditioner on.”
 

“Just took some ice cream out of the freezer, too.”

“While you’re at it, how ’bout hauling out a couple a them six-packs.”

“Well, I tell you, I would but it wears me out drinking in the middle of the day. A couple a cold beers and I’m as liable to lay down and go to sleep alongside one of these rattlers as not.”

“Hell, it wouldn’t be the first rattler I snuggled up to.”

“I bet.”

“Some of ’em was two-legged and good-lookin’.” Wesley Earl grinned, leaned to one side and spat again.

“And don’t be spittin’ on the furniture,” Harley said.

Wesley Earl angled his head and studied him down along his nose. “Hoss, what the hell you doin’ here, anyway?”

“First I was gonna play a little tennis. Then I thought I’d take a dip in the pool.”

Wesley Earl gave him a squint-grin. “Whitehead showed up at my place this morning ’fore daylight. Said he done fired your sorry ass.”

“You don’t say. Well, that old man’s full of it.”

Wesley Earl rolled the knot of tobacco in his jaw and studied him, waiting.

“He didn’t fire me. I quit.”

Wesley Earl nodded, his grin fixed.

“Okay,” Harley said. “You might argue it’s a point for debate. I quit but didn’t say so, and he fired me and he didn’t say so. Only thing is, I went over early this morning and told him I quit before he had a chance to say he fired me. So I figure it’s my point.”

“By god, I never thought it would come to this.”

“There’s a little coffee left here.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Harley drained the thermos into the cup and handed it to Wesley Earl. “Sit yourself down there in that recliner and prop your feet up.”

They sat cross-legged on the ground in the shade.
 

Harley said, “So what’re you doing way off over here?”

“Thing is, what’re
you
doing way off over here. I mean, you said yourself you done quit.”

“I told him I’d work two more weeks, unless he found somebody first.”

“Hoss, I’m plumb tickled to hear that. This is mightily interfering with my regular work habits, trying to keep all these pumps going.”

“You been out pumping my wells this morning?”

“Álvaro was gonna help, but Whitehead got him tied up back at the house. I done ’em all back northeast to that Newton line.”

“How ’bout down toward the Pickett place?”

“Nah. Didn’t get them yet.”

“I’ll get them. Then I’ll give you a hand with yours.”

“Nah. I done mine before I started yours.”
 

“You did all of your wells already? And mine too?”

Wesley Earl slanted a guilty grin at him.
 

“Uh-huh,” Harley said. “I see what you mean about messing up your work habits.”

Wesley Earl got up and walked out to the edge of the shade and spat again. He stood looking into the distance. “Old man Rattling. Before Whitehead bought him out, he tried to raise sheep here.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Coyotes and wolves did him in. That and drought.”

“This is sorry country for livestock.”

“Sorry country for anything, you ask me. These people out here had all this land, shoot, they didn’t have nothin’ but prickly pears and rocks till they hit oil. It was land didn’t nobody want. A cow would walk off whatever fat she put on trying to get from one little patch of grass to the next. Sorry damn country.”

“Well,” Harley said, “I guess you never can tell for sure what something is till you look beneath the surface.”

Wesley frowned at the
Treatise of Human Nature
lying near Harley’s lunch bucket. “For an old country boy, you got some peculiar reading habits.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t know. Some of that stuff’s pretty heavy going, all right. I make myself do three pages a day whether I want to or not. Actually, you get to kinda liking some of it after a while.”

“Yeah? What do you get out of something like that?”

“I don’t know, sort of an attitude, I guess.”

“Shoot. I done got more attitude than I can handle.”

“This guy, Hume, he influenced a lot of big-time thinkers.”
 

“Yeah? What is it these big-time thinkers think about?”

“Now, that, I couldn’t say. I guess you’d have to read their books to find that out.”

Wesley Earl studied him through narrowed eyes, then into the distance again. “You be careful up there in New Yark, hear? Shoot, I can’t even sleep around here with the dogs barking, much less up there with all them people stabbin’ each other on every street corner all night.” He shook his head. “I can’t even pitcher it.”

Chapter 28

—Manhattan—

Arrival

“T
HIS IS YOUR
captain speaking. Due to heavy air traffic, we’ll be in our holding pattern for another twenty minutes.”

Below, New York City sprawled out over the long curve of the earth, a grid of jeweled light shimmering in a darkness without visible dimension. Flight attendants collected the last cans and cups and saw that the seats were returned to the upright position.
 

A SHUTTLE DELIVERED
him from JFK to the Port Authority on Eighth Avenue and Forty-second. He tried to look out the bus’s windows, to get a fix on the city’s skyline from the distance, but it was a big scramble of glass and light; then they crossed a bridge into Manhattan, and those walls swallowed him up into chaos—a yellow river of horn-screaming taxis, manic neon, an indefinable roaring that seemed to permeate everything.