Valentine

by Elizabeth Wetmore

  Aimee is generous with her .22 gauge rifle, but Casey is afraid of it and Mrs. Ledbetter says that Lauralee is not to lay one finger on a firearm. So Lauralee is the record-keeper: how many shots fired, how many holes in the cans. D. A. takes a turn, but when she hits the wall instead of the cans and the bullet ricochets so wildly off the concrete and dirt that Casey gets tangled up in her long skirt and falls off the fence, D. A. decides she’ll just watch Aimee.

  Every day Aimee stands a little farther away from the targets, and every day she is a better shot. Aimee tells D. A. that some nights, after the rest of them go home, she and her mom stand in the backyard and practice until it is so dark out they can’t see the cans.

  Every morning, while the other girls are at swim lessons or vacation Bible school, D. A. carries food to Jesse and asks him if he’s earned enough money to go back home. Every afternoon, she watches Aimee set the rifle against her shoulder and shoot row after row of cans off the fence.

  In early August, Mary Rose stands on the patio and watches Aimee shoot forty in a row off the fence. She steps into the house for a few minutes and returns with two skeins of old crochet yarn and a small wooden awl. The girls form an impromptu assembly line—D. A. stabs a hole in the bottom of each can, Lauralee feeds the yarn through the hole and jiggles the thread until it comes out the top, Casey ties a knot to keep the can from slipping up the thread, and so on. It’s a Christmas garland made of aluminum cans, Casey says, when they have a strand of twenty. They drape half the strand over the lower branches of the small elm tree that Mary Rose planted the week they moved into the house. The rest of the strand dangles in the air. D. A. runs over and gives it a hard push and jumps out of the line of fire. The girls watch Aimee hit every one of the cans before she runs out of pellets. While Aimee rests her trigger finger, Debra Ann gathers up the cans and counts the holes in them. Five shots, she calls to Lauralee, five holes in a single can. Five cans, five shots, one hole in each can. Lauralee writes it down in her notebook.

  You’re a sharpshooter, D. A. tells Aimee. Maybe next summer you can teach me how to do it.

  * * *

  Here’s a good story that my mom used to tell me, Debra Ann says when Jesse tells her he’s too tired to come out and sit next to her on their milk crates. If it’s okay with you, he calls weakly from deep inside the drainpipe, I’ll just lie here on my bed and listen to you tell it.

  Is everything okay with the money? she asks and he tells her yes, he’ll have it soon, but this afternoon he’s real tired. It’s too hot to sleep nights, and his ear has been aching. D. A. stands up and walks to the mouth of the pipe. Can I sit down here at the edge? she asks him. You’ll be able to hear me better.

  Jesse’s voice is small. Okay, but don’t come in here. I don’t want no company right now.

  The mouth of the drainpipe is about six inches wider than Debra Ann is tall. She steps just inside the concrete lip and slides down the curved side to sit with her back against the wall. It is early August and the day is tired and still. Even in the shade, the air burns her face and neck and shoulders.

  There was this old rancher’s wife who lived down by the Pecos River, she tells him, back when they still ran sheep in this part of Texas. She was a beautiful woman with hair so thick and red that when she stood in the sunlight, she sometimes looked as if she were on fire.

  But she was unlucky. A blizzard came up suddenly while her children were out riding fence with their daddy, and they all froze to death. The searchers found the children in a dry wash, huddled together with their horses. Her husband was just a few feet away with his head resting against the barbed-wire fence the woman had helped him build just a few weeks earlier.

  For three years, nobody saw her. She didn’t come into town, not even for coffee or cornmeal. The stationmaster kept her mail in an old wooden crate behind the counter at the depot, and although a few men sometimes talked about going out to check on her, nobody wanted to interfere with her grief. And besides, it had been a bad couple of years. They all had their hands full with the Big Die-Up and the ban on Texas cattle and anyway, they figured, she was probably dead.

  Finally, somebody got the idea to draw straws and send the loser out there to cut her body down or pull the buzzards off her bones, but when the sixteen-year-old boy who drew the short straw arrived at the woman’s homestead, he found her very much alive and working in her garden. She was bony and sunburned, and her hands were covered with scars and sunspots. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were so sun-bleached they were practically white.

  But what a garden she had! The boy had never seen anything like it. They hadn’t seen a good rain in three years, but the woman had plants growing out there that nobody had seen since they left Ohio or Louisiana—peach trees and ropy cantaloupe vines, corn plants and tomatoes. There was honeysuckle below her kitchen window, and one corner of her garden had been planted with wildflowers. Hummingbirds drifted from blossom to blossom. The boy stared and stared, trying to figure it out, and after a while he noticed a deep trench running between her garden and the Pecos River. All by herself, the woman had changed the course of the river!

  She sent him back to town with two baskets, one filled with melons, the other with cucumbers, and anyone who happened to be standing around the depot when the boy returned shared in a spontaneous and joyful feast. One man got out his buck knife and sliced up all the cucumbers. Another fetched his machete and split the cantaloupes in half, then quarters. The men scooped out the tender orange flesh with their bare hands and ate and ate until their chins were sticky, and their shirts were soaked through with juice. They feasted. And for a while everybody admired the woman for her green thumb and her fortitude. How was it possible to have such a garden out there in the desert?

  One night, while the men were sitting around the depot drinking somebody’s homemade whiskey and enjoying a basket full of peaches the woman had sent into town, one of them joked that maybe she was a witch. Maybe she had cast a spell and changed the direction of the Pecos River. Or maybe she dug a trench, one old man called from his table in the corner, but he was a known liar and lunatic, and nobody listened to him.

  Months passed, and each time a man rode out to check on her, the woman sent a basket of fruit and vegetables back to town with him.

  And then, predictably, there was an influenza outbreak.

  Predictably? asks Jesse. His voice is hoarse and low, nearly a whisper.

  Yes, Debra Ann says. That is the exact word my mama always used.

  Predictably, Ginny would say, and she meant that every tall tale has to have some kind of calamity.

  And because the men couldn’t believe it was just bad luck, or their own stupidity, they started looking for someone to blame. How could a woman grow such a marvelous garden all by herself? How could she change the course of a river? How could she bear to go on living without her husband and her children? Any self-respecting woman would have killed herself, one man said, or at least gone back to the Midwest.

  When several babies and young children fell ill and died, the woman’s fate was sealed. If she was bringing death to their offspring, five of the town’s men decided, they wanted to see it for themselves.

  They’d started drinking before sunset and they were about half stupid.

  They left the depot after midnight, and bad luck struck almost immediately. One man was so drunk he fell off his horse, struck his head on a rock, and choked to death on his own vomit. One wanted to take a detour and show the other men the strange pockets of gas between rocks where you could toss a lit match and watch the flames dance across the stones, but more gas than he expected had gathered in the crevices of the rocks and he was consumed with fire.

  This left three men riding out to see that poor woman and ask her if she was a witch. When a sudden thunderstorm came barreling across the land, as if summoned out of nowhere, one man and his horse were struck by lightning. When one of the two remaining men tried to save him—not one of them was smart enough to understa
nd electricity—he too died.

  And so, after all that, only one drunk, scared, and angry man made it to the woman’s door.

  And do you know what happened? D. A. pauses.

  What happened? Jesse’s voice is so quiet she leans forward and repeats the question. Do you know what happened?

  What happened? He sounds as if he is trying to speak louder, but it’s a sad effort, and Debra Ann wonders if her friend is all right, if the heat and loneliness and living out here have worn him down, if maybe she’s not enough to help him get back on his feet again.

  Well, she says, the man knocked on her door, pounded on it really, and he was hollering at her to open up, open this goddamned door!

  What happened to her? Jesse asks quietly. Something bad?

  That is exactly what I used to ask my mom.

  What did your mother say? Jesse wants to know, and Debra Ann closes her eyes.

  Her mother pauses and stands up from D. A.’s bed, then walks over and picks up a pile of clothes off the floor. The woman picked up her lantern and opened her door, Ginny says, and in the flickering yellow light, her hair looked like a fire burning.

  Debra Ann can see the circles under her mother’s eyes, the fingernails she’s chewed to the quick. What did the woman do next?

  Ginny laughs quietly. Well, she shot him on the spot and dragged his body to the edge of her property. She walks over to D. A.’s bed and tucks the blanket around her legs and arms.

  After that, nobody bothered her much. The woman spent her days working in her garden, though she never again sent baskets into town for the men to enjoy. Evenings, she sat on her front porch and watched all the stars come out, one by one. She lived to be a hundred and five years old and died peacefully in her sleep, and by the time it occurred to anybody to ride out there and check on her, she was nothing but a pile of dusty bones in her bed.

  And her garden? Debra Ann asks her mother. What happened to that?

  I guess it probably died, Ginny shrugs, but it was remarkable while it lasted.

  There is a rustling sound in the drainpipe and the cat ambles out of the dark, arching its back and rubbing against D. A.’s leg. After a few minutes, Jesse climbs out and sits down next to her with his arms wrapped around his knees. In the bright afternoon sun, his eyes are shining. That’s a good story, he says. I’m sorry your mom left.

  D. A. shrugs and starts worrying the ringworm that has spread from her ankle to her calf. I don’t really give a damn one way or the other. She pulls several black hairs out of her eyebrow. What about your truck? When are you getting it back?

  Jesse pulls the napkin from his pocket and shows it to her. I guess Boomer lives out there now, he says.

  That’s way out there in the sticks. D. A. grabs the cat and flips him on his back. Too far to walk to.

  Will you look at the balls on this guy? She laughs and Jesse rocks slightly, trying to laugh along with her. He leans over and rubs the cat’s belly, and they sit without talking until it’s time for Jesse to go to work, and D. A. to go home and start supper.

  Mary Rose

  Barely nine o’clock in the morning, and already it’s hot enough to wish I’d skipped the pantyhose, but I can’t walk into a courtroom with my legs bare. By the time Aimee and I walk across the street to Corrine’s house, my lower torso feels like encased meat. Aimee dawdles a few steps behind me, in a snit because she thought she would be testifying in court today, too. She sat with Gloria Ramírez in the kitchen, she reminds me. She called the sheriff, and she can’t understand why nobody wants to hear what she has to say. Because a courtroom’s no place for a little girl, I tell her for the umpteenth time. Because I’m going to tell the story for both of us.

  When I hand the baby to Corrine, she leans in and stares into his eyes for a few seconds, then makes a face and hands him off to Aimee. She is still wearing her nightgown, and one side of her thin hair is sticking straight out, perpendicular to the rest of her head. Thanks for taking them, Corrine, I say. Karla’s baby came down with the stomach flu.

  Aimee lifts one finger to flick the baby on the forehead, but when Corrine promises an endless supply of Dr Pepper, television, and D. A. Pierce if she doesn’t wake him up, my daughter pivots on her heel and heads down the hallway to the living room without so much as a goodbye. The baby is slung over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, his little head bouncing like a bobbin, and I start to call out Careful. Instead, I run back across the street to fetch the diaper bag.

  When I tell Corrine that Keith Taylor says I should expect to be gone most of the morning, she squints and tilts her head to the side. Her gaze is sparrow sharp, like she’s maybe wondering where Robert is on a day like today, why he isn’t here to drive me over to the courthouse, to help me get through this, and I want to tell her that I don’t need his help. We were in trouble long before Gloria Ramírez knocked on our front door. But him resenting me for opening the door to that child? The way he blames her for what happened out there? His hatefulness and bigotry? I guess I never noticed it before, but now I cannot think of him without thinking of her. I would like to say some of this to Corrine, but here we are, standing on her porch in the heat, and my kids are already stealing some of her day.

  I don’t know what I’d do without you, Corrine, I say. Robert’s got cows dropping like flies out there. Get it, flies? Blowflies?

  Corrine’s lips curve upward, her face rich with complicated lines that remind me of the old pecan wood on my porch back at the ranch, or the dried-out creeks that crisscross our property. But when I study her face a little longer, I see that it is a thin smile, a barely there smile that says, Oh cut the shit, Mary Rose. You and I both know he’s punishing you for agreeing to testify in the first place.

  Lady, she says instead, you look worn out.

  Really, I say, because you look fantastic.

  She laughs gently. Fair enough.

  I’m fine—I reach into the diaper bag, pull out a tissue, and pat the sweat that’s threatening to ruin my makeup—looking forward to seeing justice served.

  Is that so? Corrine reaches into the pocket of her housecoat and I am already thinking about having a cigarette, even if it means standing in the heat for a few more minutes, but then she lifts her shoulders apologetically. I am losing things left and right, she says. Cigarettes, matches, sleeping pills. Hell, I even managed to lose a saucepan and a jar of chow-chow. Grief makes you stupid, I guess. She winks at me, but she’s not smiling when she asks again how I’ve been sleeping.

  I could tell her about the phone ringing day and night, the messages being left on my new answering machine, and the baby wanting to nurse every two or three hours. When he falls back to sleep, I pull my nipple out of his mouth and rise from my bed to check the doors and turn the lights on. I check and recheck the windows, listening carefully to every little sound, the wind drawing its fingers across a window screen or a pickup truck peeling out after the bar has closed or the plant whistle’s solitary wail. Sometimes I think I hear a window being tugged open at the other end of the house, and I am sure somebody is coming to harm us. And every night I think the same thing—once Dale Strickland is sentenced and sent to the penitentiary in Fort Worth, this will all die down. People will get bored and the late-night calls will stop, and I will have done my part to set things right for Gloria.

  I hand the diaper bag to Corrine and tell her that I haven’t been sleeping well, but I expect to start doing so real soon. And by the way, I am also losing things right and left—cans of food, matchboxes, aspirin, even a couple of bath towels.

  Must be something in the water, she says.

  * * *

  In the parking lot outside the courthouse, Keith Taylor hands me a paper cup filled with coffee that looks thick enough to clog a drain. Mr. Ramírez, the uncle? He called me again this morning, he says. She’s not coming, Mary Rose.

  This should not surprise me—Keith has been warning me for weeks that Victor hasn’t let anyone from Keith’s office interview
his niece since June, that they are not even sure where she’s living—but I still cry out, Why not?

  Two men standing next to a tow truck look over at us. They wear sports coats over white shirts, cowboy hats, and top-dollar snakeskin boots. They stop talking to watch us for a few seconds, and then the one in the white Stetson leans forward and says something quietly in the other man’s ear. The man nods in our general direction and I fight the urge to yell at both of them, Y’all have something to say to me? You two sons of bitches been calling my house late at night?

  Mary Rose, I warned you this might happen, Keith says. Mr. Ramírez doesn’t want to put her through it, and I can’t blame him. He raises his coffee cup and lifts one finger toward the men, a little greeting. He is tall and good-looking, known locally for his unwavering commitment to taking every case to trial and to remaining a bachelor. He is at least ten years older than me, but this morning he looks ten years younger, and about half as worn out.

  She has to testify, I tell him. We stand together under the sun, me fighting the urge to yank at the waistband of my blue-jean skirt, the pavement burning a hole in my shoes. When the stenographer, Mrs. Henderson, walks past us with her arms full of file folders, Keith gently strokes his blond mustache with his index finger and puffs up his chest.

  When she steps into the courthouse, he exhales and lets his shoulders fall back into their usual slight slump.

  Look, Mary Rose, that girl has lost everything, even her mother, and Mr. Ramírez knows how some people around town are talking, he has to, and maybe he thinks she’s suffered enough. Maybe he doesn’t want to expose her to any more scrutiny.

  I can hardly believe I am hearing this. That’s it? You’re going to let him do this?

  Keith hitches up his slacks and wipes a bit of sweat off his forehead. He looks up at the sun like he wishes he could shoot it out of the sky. Honestly, he says, I don’t blame him, not even a little bit.

  She ought to be in that courtroom, telling them what that bastard did to her. Can’t you make her testify?