. . .
To my surprise, Kevin listened to me and didn’t say one word after we left the Meeting Center. After we arrived at the Pape Ranch, he remained in the truck while I saddled the horses. A half hour later, when we reached the top of the mesa I told him to dismount his horse and we rested them under the lone surviving tree. It was gnarled and twisted from decades of fighting for its life on the top of the windswept mesa. I could identify with it.
“Okay, you can talk now,” I finally said to him. I had calmed down enough to deal with the situation.
He looked at me with a defiant expression. I supposed he thought he was being a tough guy, but I wasn’t going to give him that.
“Did you tell your mother?”
He didn’t answer nor change his hard expression.
“Don’t get pissy with me, Kevin. I’m not in the mood. Right now, I’m as apt to toss your stupid ass off the edge of this mesa, as not. Answer me.”
“No.”
“How about Ariana’s parents? Do they know?”
He shook his head, no.
“Okay. That’s good. We’ll break the news to Sunny together, tonight. But you’re going to be on the first plane out there tomorrow to face the music.”
“No, I’m not. You can’t make me go.”
“You’re right, I can’t.”
Talk about déjà vu. How many times had I been in this situation before with James Lee and Kevin’s brother, Nick? Too many and it seemed like nothing ever really changed. The divide between father and son, man and boy, was a matter of perspective and had little to do with wisdom or intelligence. I got up and walked over to Sally. I took two water bottles out of the saddlebag and pitched one to Kevin. He caught it with the ease of a former star high school ball player that he once was.
“If you’re not man enough to go face your mother, I want you out of our house. You’re nineteen now and it’s time for you to grow up. Go get a job so you can support your family. I don’t want to see you on the ranch again except to get your stuff.”
I finished off my water and then untied the reins of the two horses from the tree branch. I stepped up into the saddle and paused a moment. “I didn’t have shit when I married your mother. When we finally got some money, I didn’t want to see you guys want for anything. I’ve indulged you and Nick ever since then. That was a mistake and I didn’t do right by you boys. I realize that now. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, how am I supposed to get home?” he demanded as I rode off.
I pulled up and turned in the saddle to look back at him. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Following a horse trail and hitching a ride back to New Haven is a lot easier than what life has in store for you from this point on, Kevin.”
On the way down from the mesa I had plenty of time to think about what I had done. It was on me. “What’s a man supposed to do?” I asked Sally. “You can’t force a kid to grow up. The best I can do for him is to give him opportunities to learn from.”
Kevin wasn’t like his brother Nick. Kevin was the sensitive of the two. I was too hard on him, I knew. I had let my frustration at him get the better of me for ruining Sunny’s dreams for his future. Then there were Ariana’s dreams for herself and those of her parents. Kevin, I supposed, might have had dreams at one time, but if he had them now he had tossed them out the window. The price of my anger might be greater than I was willing to pay, I realized. Sunny could very well leave me for good over this.
I knew her well enough to know that she might choose to ignore the hard fact that it was her son who had knocked-up Ariana and instead focus her anger onto me for kicking Kevin out of the house. “No good deed goes unpunished, Sally.”
The Pape ranch house was in sight so I changed direction and rode over to a large oak tree for the shade. It was around eleven and already getting hot. I needed a moment to compose myself before I said hello to Shane. His truck was at the ranch house.
My phone rang. It was Emily.
“What’s Kevin’s truck doing here?” Emily asked before I could even say hello. “Is he having mechanical problems?”
Emily, bless her heart, was very conscientious about the upkeep of the Meeting Center and had spent a lot of time landscaping the grounds. She would never admit it, but I knew she was more worried about the beat-up old ranch truck Kevin drove sitting in her pristine parking lot than she was about any problems he was having with it.
“Good morning to you, too. We’re out at the Pape Ranch. He’ll move it as soon as he gets back.”
“It was just unusual to find the truck is all. The keys are in it. I can have Clete take it up to your house.”
“I’m sure he’d appreciate it. Are we making any money yet?”
“It’s been slow, Dad. Social bookings are up, but that’s not where the money is. We need more business meetings during the week. Why? Is there something wrong?”
“No, not at all. I was thinking maybe you should hire Ariana full time after she graduates. She’s doing a great job interpreting the Journal for me.”
“We can barely afford to pay her now for the hours she puts in. Oh, by the way, Constance Pickering called here looking for you. She wants you to call her.”
“I’ll make sure Ariana’s salary is covered each month. You handle it and she doesn’t need to know I’m involved. And, make sure she’s covered under our medical insurance.”
“What medical insurance?”
“You don’t have medical insurance?”
“No. I’m covered under Ted’s policy.”
“Is Clete and his family covered?”
“He’s covered by his wife’s employer. That’s why she’s still working.”
“Make sure Ariana is covered, along with Clete. She’s gonna need it.”
“That’s going to kill any chance of a profit this year, Dad.”
“I don’t care. Take care of it for me, please. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”
“Wait, what do you mean she’s going to…?”
I closed the call before Emily could get started. There was very little I could get past her. I gave Sally a nudge and she and Roberto reluctantly left the shade of the tree for the walk up to the ranch house.
I unsaddled the horses, cooled them down with the hose, and then turned them loose in the horse pasture near the barn. Then I walked up to the house to see what Shane was up to. On the way there I saw Kevin in the distance walking toward the ranch house. I was glad he could at least follow horse tracks in the dirt. He looked pretty worn out.
I debated whether to offer him a ride home. Then I decided I wasn’t done with him yet. He still needed stomping on. I was anxious to see what he was made of and how he would handle his new-found circumstances. I turned away from the back door of the ranch house and walked around the side of the house to my truck. I got in and drove back to New Haven.
. . .
I was a few miles outside of New Haven’s city limits when I had a call. I pulled over to take the call from the Medical Examiner’s Office for Solms County.
“Max Howard,” I said.
“This is Pamela Ann Goodwin with the medical Examiner’s office, Mr. Howard. The Sheriff’s Department has notified us that you wish to claim the body of Rebecca Haas. It’s ready for release. Which funeral home will you use?”
“Which ever one does the cremations in the county.”
“That would be Dietert. The body needs to be picked within twenty-four hours. Would you make sure the arrangements are made and the proper release forms are filled out? They can guide you through the process. Please let me know if there are any problems.”
“Sure, I’ll take care of it today.”
“Thank you.”
I drove past my ranch and headed into New Haven to make arrangements for Rebecca Haas. My stomach was growling worse than a coyote howling at the moon so I swung into the local Sonic for a chili-cheese dog and tots before heading over to the Dietert Funeral Home.
It was close to six when I finished up
in town and got home. Kevin’s truck was gone as were most of his clothes when I checked his room. His computer and gaming device were gone also, which was no big surprise.
I wasn’t real hungry, but I had a thirst for a Shiner Bock. I grabbed one out of the refrigerator and went outside to sit on the back patio. I could watch the sun set in about three hours, which would give me time to finish the six-pack still in the fridge and gather my courage to call Sunny. I doubted there would be any good that would come out of that conversation with her. No matter how irresponsible Kevin had been, no matter how many lives would be altered by his actions, he was Sunny’s youngest son and my kicking him out of the house would be more egregious than his knocking up Ariana.
After the sun had gone down and I had run out of beer and excuses for not calling Sunny, I fell asleep in Sunny’s chaise lounge chair. It was dark outside and the ringing of my phone was not enough to wake from my deep sleep. I heard the phone; I just didn’t want to answer it. The ringing stopped and the call went to my voice mail, but I knew the ring tone. There would be no messages. The phone started ringing again with the same ringtone.
“What in God’s name is wrong with you,” my daughter Emily demanded after I opened the call. “Have you lost your mind?”
“I don’t think so. Why, did you find it?”
“You’re not funny at all. Have you been drinking?”
My daughter knew me well. “No, for your information, I was sleeping,” I said and tried to sound indignant. “Let me guess. Kevin is there and asked you to let him spend the night at your house?”
“I can’t believe you told him to get out of your house.”
“It’s called tough love, Sweetheart. The boy is sorely lacking in responsibility. I don’t have much time left on this earth to teach him the things that are important in life. Did he tell you why I told him to leave?”
“He didn’t have to. I already knew. Ariana told me. I told her they could stay with us. Your sense of moral indignation is appalling. I am ashamed of you, Dad, really, I am. Have you told Sunny?”
“I was just going to call her.”
“You’d better or I will.”
Emily hung up on me. Did she really think this was about Ariana getting pregnant out of wedlock? She knew about Laura Miller. She also knew about Sunny. Did she think I would ignore my own history and blame Kevin for doing the same thing I had done? I was disappointed in Emily for jumping so fast to the wrong conclusions.
I closed my eyes for a moment and quickly fell back asleep. I knew I shouldn’t but I just didn’t have the will power to resist the call of mind-numbing sleep.
I heard the coyote yipping at something around two in the morning. He was out in the pasture and probably laughing at me. I was still clutching my phone after falling asleep. It was a little after midnight on the Lummi Reservation. I called Sunny.
. . .
“Max?” Sunny mumbled from a deep sleep.
“Hey, Sweetheart. Sorry to call you so late. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
Sunny moaned. I couldn’t tell if it was a moan that meant she was missing me or one of annoyance that I had woken her up.
“What’s wrong?”
“How’s Ruby? Why didn’t you tell me she had a relapse?”
“We thought she was in remission after her last operation. We just found out the cancer is back.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She doesn’t want to fight it anymore. She says God has finally called her. She’s back at home now.”
“How are you holding up?”
“Okay, considering. How’s Kevin?”
“You know Kevin. Are you going to stay out there much longer?”
“I want to be with Ruby at the end, but I may bring Katie home. I’ll come back out the next day.”
“Call me when you’re ready. I miss you, Sunny.”
“Me, too. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Sorry, I woke you. Sleep tight.”
“Max?”
“Yes.”
“Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing that you being here by my side wouldn’t cure. Come home soon.”
“I will. You know I’m going to call Emily in the morning, don’t you?”
God, I hated being so transparent. Even worse was having so many women in my life that I couldn’t get away with a damn thing.
“Okay. I was worried that you had enough going on with your sister and I thought the news could wait.”
“What news?”
“Ariana’s pregnant.”
I heard her gasp. I could only imagine what she was going through. It took her a good while to warm up to the idea that Kevin was engaged to a sixteen-year-old girl in high school and even longer for her to quit blaming Ariana for trapping her son into marriage. They had shattered her dream of Kevin attending the University of Washington and being the first of her family to do so.
“Sunny?”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“You should know I kicked him out of the house. I was pretty upset, too.”
“You did what?”
“I told him it was time for him to grow up. He had to get a job now so he could support his family.”
“You told my son that!”
“Kevin is my son, too. He’s staying at Emily’s for now.”
“I’ll be home as soon as I can. I can’t believe you. You won’t even let me take care of my dying sister before you do something crazy again.”
“Let’s not lose our focus here. I didn’t get a minor pregnant. Kevin is an adult now who has impregnated a high school girl and things could get real sticky if her father wanted to make a stink about it. Then there’s the issue of how he’s going to support her and the baby. The boy has no marketable skills to get a decent paying job with, much less any work experience.”
“You can give him a job.”
“I’m not comfortable with that, Sunny. He’s in this predicament because we were too indulgent with him. He never learned any responsibility. If we bail him out now he’ll never grow up. Let’s let him deal with this and be ready to lend them a hand if he can’t manage it.”
“Our people do not abandon a family member because we disagree with their choices. The Lhaq'temish look after their own.”
Whenever she used the native word for her people with me, it was her way of emphasizing the cultural divide between her and me. “I’m not saying we should abandon Kevin. I gave him a nudge out the door and the opportunity to find his own way.”
“Oh, like you did Nick.”
“I didn’t tell Nick to enlist in the Marines. Nick is doing fine. I’m very proud of him and you should be too. When life wrestles him to the ground, his time as a Marine is something he can look back on and use to help him get back up. What’s Kevin got to look back on except that he knocked up his girlfriend?”
“Just like his stepfather. I’m coming home.”
That was uncalled for, I thought, but Sunny had already hung up.
. . .
Three days later, I was on Sally again headed up to the top of the mesa on the Pape Ranch. Rebecca’s ashes were in a faux bronze urn, compliments of the Dietert Funeral Home, and tucked snuggly in the saddlebag. Sally knew the trail well and she didn’t need my attention to make it safely to the top. It gave me some time to think.
Sunny had not come home yet. It was more likely her sister had taken another turn for the worse and she didn’t feel she could leave yet. If she didn’t call tonight, I would call her tomorrow, I assured myself. My unease at calling Sunny did not go unnoticed by me. But as I was as much a man of habit, as I was of action, my habit for procrastination gave my ego the cover it needed.
I had in my back pocket a handwritten letter in Spanish from Tomás Martinez the caretaker on the ranch. It had arrived at the Pape Ranch yesterday and between Shane and my limited Spanish we had deciphered the letter a little while ago. He wasn’t coming back and he wanted his two weeks’ severan
ce pay. There was little chance of that happening just on principle. The man had disappeared on me without a word and I was of no mind to be generous with him. I’d pay him for what I owed him and that was all.
“Everybody wants something for nothing, Sally.”
I felt like I hadn’t given Rebecca Haas her due when I emptied her ashes over the mesa facing the east. I didn’t know the woman that well and while I felt sorry for what had happened to her, I couldn’t find the words in me to say more than, “Rest in peace.” I doubted she would. She had been an angry woman at the injustice of what had happened to her while she was alive and probably pissed-off like hell in her last moments on this earth at being bitten by a rattlesnake. I sure hoped when my time came, I was lying in the comfort of my own bed.
I could see three vultures in the distance circling an area of the ranch that was less than a half a mile from the ranch house. They could have picked up the scent emanating from the house where I’d found Rebecca Haas, but that was too long ago. More likely it was a dead deer. I decided I’d check it out when I got back to the ranch house.
On the ride down, I had a call from Andy. The reception was so bad that I had to repeat into the phone several times for him to text me his message. By the time I was at the bottom of the trail, his message had arrived in my inbox and it would be there when I could get better reception at the ranch house if I needed to talk to him. At the moment I was engrossed in another matter.
I had avoided stopping by the Meeting Center since the dust-up with Kevin. I had no desire to get into it with Emily, much less Ariana, if she was there. I was curious, though, about where Ariana was in her translation of the Journal. I had a feeling that there had to be a connection between the cistern and the Journal. What the connection was, I had no idea. Outside of the Journal being owned by the Pape family and the cistern being on their land, there had been no mention so far in the Journal of the young Jesuit’s destination other than New Orleans.
When I reached the open pasture, I noticed two vehicles parked in front of the ranch house that hadn’t been there when I started the ride. I paused in the shade of an oak tree to read Andy’s message. He had found a match between the carving on the back of the capstone and a river. I called him back immediately.
The Turbulence of Butterflies (Max Howard Series Book 6) Page 15