“Where is it?” she whispered.
One glance toward the back and she saw the signs pointing toward restrooms. “This way.”
When they were in the ladies’ room Judd jerked her shorts down and sat down on the nearest potty without shutting the door. “You look pretty today,” she said as she swung her feet.
“Well, thank you, so do you. I’m going in this stall right here. When you get finished wash your hands and do not leave the bathroom without me,” Sharlene said.
“Okay. Why?”
“Because Waylon and Holt might not be out in the restaurant yet and you wouldn’t know where to go,” Sharlene explained.
“I like you,” Judd raised her voice. “I wish you would come live with us.”
Sharlene gasped. “I like you and Waylon too, but I have a job at the Honky Tonk and I can’t live with you.”
“You don’t like Uncle Holt? He’s nice and he knows how to cook and wash clothes. I bet he would even make you macaroni and cheese and he don’t use that kind in a box; he makes it with real cheese and butter. I bet if you lived with us he’d make you some and maybe even hot dogs. I’m going to wash my hands now and then I’ll wait right by the door for you,” Judd announced.
“Thank you.” Sharlene was glad that six-year-old little girls didn’t wait for answers to their questions. Of course she liked Holt but wild horses or promises of riches could never drag the words from her mouth aloud. Simply seeing Holt all dressed up that morning and then sitting so close to him for a couple of hours had already shaken the devil out of her resolve to keep Holt completely across a barbed wire fence from anything more than friendship.
“It won’t do a bit of good anyway because I’d have to be honest and that would send the best man in the world off in a dead run,” she muttered as she flushed and went to the sink to wash her hands. Judd pushed the button on the dryer and she held her hands under it until they were dry. Then she pulled a hairbrush from her purse and did what she could with her curly hair. She reapplied a coat of lipstick and leaned in closer to the bathroom mirror to check her eye makeup, running a finger under the lower lashes to smooth out the liner.
“I do not need complications and Holt Jackson is an enormous complication,” she whispered.
“Uncle Holt isn’t one of them things, whatever they are. Now you are beautiful. I used to tell my momma that when she fixed her eyes in the bathroom,” Judd said.
Sharlene blushed and hoped that Judd didn’t spit out the news that Sharlene was talking to herself in the mirror. “And I’m sure she appreciated it. Are we ready to go eat now?”
Judd reached up for Sharlene’s hand.
“I’m hungry to death,” she said dramatically.
Waylon and Holt were sitting at the nearest booth from the bathroom doors and Waylon sighed deeply when he saw them. “I thought you’d stay in there forever. I’m so hungry I could eat cold mashed potatoes.”
“That’s pretty hungry since you don’t like mashed potatoes when they get the least bit cold,” Holt said.
He’d stolen long glances at Sharlene all morning, but seeing her standing there made him want to take her on a real date, not just a hot chocolate or watching the clouds type of date. Every afternoon when she and the kids went inside her apartment for a nap and snacks, he wanted to go with them. When she sat in the ratty old lawn chair with her notebook and pens, he wanted to sit beside her and ask about her writing career. In the evenings when he left he wished she was going home with him. But common sense told him that the children did not need a bartender for their role model. Still, no woman had ever set his heart to racing and his hands to itching like Sharlene did when he held her.
“Are we going to eat or just sit here?” Waylon asked.
“I was trying to decide what I want to eat,” Holt said.
“Well, I want pancakes and Judd wants eggs. Can we tell the lady while you think about it?” Waylon asked.
“I want pancakes too,” Sharlene said. “Momma’s making ham for dinner.”
“Ham?” Holt stood up and followed the kids to the counter.
“You don’t eat ham?” Sharlene asked.
“Yes, I do,” he said.
Granted he’d been thinking about Sharlene rather than listening to her when she told him what they’d be doing at her family gathering, but he could have sworn that the next day was when the whole clan arrived for a get-together.
“Both. Sunday dinner is always a family thing at Momma’s. My brother’s wives all bring a couple of side dishes or desserts. Nothing is ever laid in stone since new recipes are always cropping up,” Sharlene said.
“I want pancakes,” Waylon told the cashier.
Holt hurried to the counter to order for him and both children then turned back to Sharlene. “What do you want?”
“Pancakes. The meal deal. Orange juice instead of coffee.” She fished in her purse and handed Holt a twenty dollar bill.
He shook his head. “Put that away. I’ll buy breakfast if we’re having ham for dinner.”
“The deal was that you’d provide transportation and I’d provide food,” she argued.
“That was before I realized there would be that much food. I’m just leveling the playing field here,” he said.
She put the money in her purse. He didn’t have any idea that it would take a hell of a lot more than pancakes to level out the hills and rough spots. Larissa once said that the heart would have what it wanted or else the person it lived in would be miserable. When she got back to Mingus, Sharlene intended to have a long sit-down conversation with her heart. It got its way when it didn’t want to stay in Corn and marry her high school sweetheart. It got its way when it wanted adventure instead of a home and children. It got its way big-time when it got the Honky Tonk. So it could damn well be satisfied with past victories and stop aggravating her about Holt Jackson.
All that went into the trash can was empty containers and plates when they’d finished eating. Judd and Waylon hadn’t wasted a single bite of food and they’d sucked their milk cartons completely dry just to make noise. They’d barely gotten settled back in the truck and headed west toward Vernon when Waylon grabbed his pillow and shoved it up against the back door.
“Shhhh,” Judd said. “Waylon is sleeping.”
“I don’t suppose you need to rest your eyes for a little bit, do you?” Holt asked.
“I’m not sleepy, but if I put my pillow on Waylon’s side and lay on it, it’ll keep him from waking up,” she said.
Holt looked up in the rearview mirror and talked to Judd. “Well, we wouldn’t want him to wake up, would we? He gets pretty grouchy if he wakes up too soon.”
“If he’s grouchy, he’ll color outside the lines and get mad at me when I don’t. I’ll just keep him asleep for a little while and then he’ll be nice.” She snuggled in next to his side and shut her eyes.
Sharlene poked a finger in Holt’s arm. “You’re a sneaky son of a gun.”
“Parenting takes being sneaky,” he said. “I’m just repeating tricks my mother used on me and Callie when we were kids.”
“How much older are you than Callie?”
“Four years. She would have been twenty-four in June but she died a few weeks before her birthday. She was eighteen when the twins were born. I’m twenty-eight. And you?”
“It’s not polite to ask a woman how old she is, but I’m twenty-six. My brothers are thirty, thirty-two, thirty-three, and thirty-four. Momma had three in three years, waited a couple of years, had Miles, and then I came along four years after that.”
“What are their names?”
“Jeff is the oldest. He’s married to Lisa. Then there’s Matthew and Clara, and Bart and Fiona, and Miles and Jenny,” she said.
“They all redheaded?”
“No, I’m the only one with red hair. They say that Great-Grandma Waverly had red hair and it waited a few generations to pop back up. Momma says that I’m just like her. Independent. Willful and headstrong.
What about Callie? Did she have green eyes and dark hair like you?”
Holt chuckled. “Callie had light brown eyes like Waylon and her hair was blond. No, that’s too general. It was corn silk yellow like Mother’s. She was almost as tall as I am and very slim built. Her husband was full-blood Hispanic. They’d gone to school together from kindergarten up. Ray might have grown up to be a good man but he was just a kid with too many responsibilities. They were barely eighteen when they married and they both still had a lot of running around and play left in them. Then he was killed and Callie had to grow up too fast. She had two kids to raise and she couldn’t even take care of herself. Her in-laws did what they could, but hell, they weren’t even forty yet so they didn’t want to be strapped down to the job of raising two little babies. I did what I could. I was out in east Texas on a big job trying to make enough money to help support her and the kids when the accident happened.”
“Why didn’t you take them all with you on jobs like you do now?” Sharlene asked.
“Hey, don’t take that tone with me. I did what I could. Callie refused to leave Mineral Wells. Her in-laws moved there when she and Ray were in high school so it was only natural for them to rent a place over there when they married. Her excuse was that she had Ray’s relatives to keep the kids while she worked, but I knew she liked her wild friends. I don’t see a one of your brothers setting the road on fire from Corn to Mingus to drag you out of a beer joint. There’s not a lot of difference, is there?”
“Not a one of my brothers knows I have a beer joint and besides, it’s different. I don’t have two children,” she smarted off.
“Yeah, that really does make it different,” he answered coldly.
She clamped her mouth shut. There wasn’t a single doubt in her mind that all four of her brothers and her father would blaze a trail to Mingus if they knew she was a bartender. They’d be worse than Ruby Lee’s preacher father had been. He would have stood in the parking lot thumping on his Bible and saving souls from the scorching fires of hell brought on by beer and loose-legged women. Her brothers would storm past Luther and carry her out like a sack of potatoes over their shoulders back to Corn where they’d put her in chains in the storm cellar until she agreed never to go back to the Honky Tonk.
And that would mean I’d grow old and gray surrounded by Momma’s canned peaches and jelly because they’d never get that kind of promise from me. And Holt Jackson had better keep his mouth closed tightly or I’ll show him just how much temper a red-haired Waverly has.
“Tell me more about Iraq,” he said.
“Why?” She wasn’t through pouting.
“Because it’s still a long way and I don’t like this uncomfortable silence.”
“What do you want to know?” Sharlene asked.
“Did you know anyone that left kids behind and their folks had to take care of them?” he asked.
“My friend Maria was a nurse in the hospital. She had a little daughter, Abby. She used to kiss her picture a dozen times a day. I caught her crying in the supply room more than one time when they brought in the children who’d been hurt,” Sharlene said.
“Did Maria come home?” Holt asked softly.
Sharlene nodded. “She was one of the four friends who I was with that night in Weatherford. Abby is in first grade now and Maria has remarried.”
“That would be tough, dealing with the hurt children,” Holt said.
“It was. One night Maria called me down to the emergency bay from the office and she was holding a blanket. They’d brought a baby no more than six months old in wrapped up in that blanket. Her mother, father, and older sister were all dead. Her grandmother brought her in but it was too late. The grandmother was wailing and Maria just stood there holding the bloody blanket.”
“What did you do?”
“I put my arms around the grandmother and sat with her until she got it under control. She’d lost four that night to a suicide bomber. The family had been in the marketplace buying food for the next day.”
“And Maria?”
“She had trouble letting go of the blanket. Abby is a dark-haired, part Hispanic child, like Judd, and she had a security blanket.” Sharlene hesitated and looked out the side window for a while before she went on. “It’s not something that you can put into words. The feeling when they bring our troops into the hospital all blown to hell. And all I did was the paperwork. I never had to shove my hand inside a wound to stop the bleeding until a surgeon could get there.”
She thought about Jonah and the night she sat beside his body in the hospital. The hole in his neck and the blood. His dark eyes staring off into nothing.
She went on, “But the children are the hardest part. They should get to grow up and run and romp. They should color outside the lines and get yelled at when they don’t put their toys away. They shouldn’t be carrying rifles or letting some zealot tell them they are dying for the greater good when they strap enough C4 on them to blow up fifty people in a marketplace.”
“I’m not sure I even agree with this war,” Holt said.
“Well, I’m sure I don’t. We’re over there fighting a civil war that’s never going to end. It’s another Viet Nam and there will be no winners, only losers. And the children are the biggest losers. They’ll never know a country that isn’t blown to hell and back. And our troops… it changes everyone who goes there. One way or the other, they don’t come home the same person that first set foot on the desert sand.”
“How did it change you?” Holt asked.
“It made me appreciate things like quietness and grass. The little things that I got up every morning and took for granted.”
“Wouldn’t want to go back then?”
“After the first tour I didn’t want to go back but that’s where they sent me after a two-week leave. I thought since I’d already done my year it was over but it didn’t work that way. I was deployed right back to my same old duty station. And no, I don’t ever want to see that kind of pain and suffering again,” she said.
“But were there good times that you can latch onto and remember?” he asked.
“Of course. There’s a camaraderie that can’t be explained. It goes almost as deep as blood kin because you have to depend on each other so much. But it’s crazy because when you come home, you aren’t so sure you want to see those people again.”
Holt nodded. “Because even though there were good times, seeing them reminds you of the bad ones?”
“That’s right,” she said. “It took four years for the five of us who shared a barrack to get together again. We enjoyed a day and night and we had a good time but we couldn’t get that feeling of dependence on each other back again. We’ve each moved on and it’s in different directions. I’m not so sure that we’d have even been friends if we’d all known each other in high school.”
“Tell me about the other four. You ever plan on seeing them again?”
“I made a drunken promise to go see each of them this fall when my book comes out. They’re setting up book signings in each of their towns for me. It’s a big thing for them and me too. Now I wish I hadn’t made the promise but I’ll keep my word,” she said.
“Why do you wish that?”
“I don’t do so well with public appearances,” she said.
“Hey, just remember the people who attend are interested in your writing and want to hear about it,” he said.
“Thanks.” She smiled.
“Now tell me about the other four.”
“Okay. Kayla was from a little podunk town in Oklahoma just like me. She joined the military for the training and for the GI Bill benefits when she got out. She was smart but poor and grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. She’d seen more in her eighteen years than any of the rest of us. Her mother was a drunk and her father had flown the coop when she was too little to even remember him. She used to say that war wasn’t anything compared to the fights she’d seen between her mother and her boyfriends.”
“
And Maria?” Holt asked.
“Half Hispanic. Got married her first year of college and let her sorry husband talk her into joining the Air Guard with him. It would only be one weekend a month and just look at all the money they’d have for that weekend’s work. She got pregnant. He finished his time with the Guard and decided not to reenlist but she still had a couple of years. He filed for divorce when Abby was born and her unit got sent to Iraq.”
Holt shook his head. “That’s sorry luck. Two down, two to go. Tell me about the others.”
She almost smiled.
“What?” he asked.
“Lelah. She could make you laugh even in the worst of days.”
“What’s her story?”
“She joined when she was hungover. Got drunk the night of her bachelorette party and decided she wasn’t ready to get married. The next morning she walked into the recruiting station and joined the army. Her fiancé called off the wedding the day before the ceremony because he said he couldn’t be married to the military. She told us that’s exactly what she wanted him to do. She’s the oldest one of us and had a degree in nursing. The army didn’t even hiccup when they shoved the papers at her. She’s in Florida now. Says she likes that sand better than Iraqi sand.”
“And the fourth one?” Holt asked.
“That would be Joyce. The quiet one. Her mother sent her a food package every week and she shared with us. We ate lots of Skittles and beef jerky because that’s what she liked.”
“What was her story?”
“She believed in the war, that we should take out all the terrorists.”
“And?” Holt pressed.
“After a tour, she changed her mind. She heads up a committee against it now,” Sharlene said.
“And now the fifth one of the bunch? What about Sharlene?”
“Sharlene is nearly home where she will be a good daughter for a couple of days then go back to being a barroom hussy,” she laughed.
He reached across the back of the seat and massaged her neck. “You are too tense, Sharlene. Loosen up or you’ll have a headache before we even get there.”
Honky Tonk Christmas Page 11