by Hondo Jinx
Brawley cleared his throat. “About that,” he said. “Frankie’s my friend. But the other girls are… more than friends.”
“Oh, is that right?” Mama said, popping the beers.
“They’re my wives,” Brawley said.
Mama turned with a smile, holding out two of the beers. “That’s nice, hun. Now which of you—”
Then his words must’ve hit her. Because Mama froze halfway across the kitchen. Her eyes swelled, and she struggled to maintain her polite smile. “Did you say…”
“Wives,” Brawley said.
Mama dropped the beers. The bottles hit the old hardwood floor. One rolled toward Brawley, spilling beer. The other shattered loudly.
Mama didn’t seem to notice. “Brawley, please tell me you are pulling my leg.”
“I ain’t, Mama. These women are my wives. I love them.”
“And we love him,” Nina chimed in, then added a hurried, “ma’am.”
At last the news was too much for Mama’s smile, which collapsed. “Oh, Brawley. You’re a polygamist?”
For some reason, that word struck Brawley funny, and before he could rein it in, laughter came stampeding out of his mouth.
Mama misread his laughter, smiled with relief, and put a hand to her chest. “Brawley, you scoundrel. Why would you do something like that? You really had me going for a second there.”
Brawley took her gently by the shoulders. “Mama, I wasn’t kidding. I married these women.”
Mama’s horror-stricken face blinked up at him. “Married? To all of them? I don’t understand.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess, Brawley thought. He hadn’t planned on dumping everything on his mother at once, but now he realized doing so would be a mercy. “I got a lot to explain, Mama. Sit down, please.”
“I’m okay. I just… I mean… married? Really?”
“Yes, Mama,” he said, guiding her over and settling her into a cane chair at the kitchen table. “Married. Let me get you some tea.”
Mama shook her head. “I reckon you’d best get me one of them beers instead, son.”
Stepping over the foaming mess, Brawley swept the remaining beer from the counter and carried it back to his mother, who rarely drank and never before sundown.
Nina stooped to pluck shattered glass from the floor, and the other girls moved to help her.
But Brawley waved them off. “Mama, brace yourself.”
His mother took a long pull of the beer and nodded.
“You might even want to set down that beer of yours,” he said.
Mama took another drink and set the beer on the table.
Brawley took one of her hands in his. Feeling her callouses, he experienced a rush of intense adoration for his mother. “Mama, like I said, I love these women.”
“Okay,” Mama said, and gave a quick sideways glance at the girls, who mostly looked like deer in headlights.
“But to explain that, I gotta show you something.”
“What is it, son? You didn’t join some kind of cult, did you?”
He laughed. “No, Mama. This is going to sound crazy, but I have powers.”
“Powers?”
“Powers.”
“Like magical powers?”
“Yeah, kind of like that.”
“Oh, Brawley,” Mama cried, suddenly distraught. “You’ve gotten into drugs? It was that long hospital stay, wasn’t it? Did you get hooked on the painkillers?”
“No, Mama,” he said. “I’m not on drugs. And I ain’t drunk. I’m sober as a hanging judge. I have powers. So do these women.”
Mama took a drink and shook her head. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but—”
Brawley lifted shards of shattered glass from the floor with his mind. They hovered, dripping foam onto the hardwood.
Mama started to say something but saw the levitating shards and went silent and still. All the color drained from her face. Her eyes fluttered, and she started falling forward.
Brawley caught Mama in his arms and lifted her into the chair again. Before stepping foot in his parents’ house, he had decided he would never use Seeker juice on his family. But now, just a few minutes into the visit, he found himself releasing a trickle. “You’re okay, Mama. You’re all right.”
Mama came around again. Her eyes flicked back and forth between him and the floating glass. “That’s not possible.”
“Last time I saw you, I would’ve thought the same thing. But it is possible, Mama. And I can do more than that.” But he stopped himself.
Truthfulness was one thing. Rushing straight into the news that he could regrow severed limbs or turn into a giant bison that had gone extinct twenty thousand years ago might could be a tad much to dump on Mama all at once.
Brawley and the girls took seats around the table, and he glossed over the last few days.
Historically, Brawley and his parents kept few secrets, as he had told the girls. His parents were straightforward in their dealings, as open and honest as the land itself.
But as he explained the recent events of his life, his mother looked grayer and more confused. This was going to be harder than he had expected.
In fact, he realized, watching his mother’s eyelids flutter when he mentioned the Key West psi mob trying to kill him, Mama was completely overwhelmed. He didn’t want her to have a nervous breakdown or a heart attack or something, so he released another trickle of juice.
“Everything’s okay, Mama,” he explained, and imagined waves of comfort washing over her. “You’re starting to feel better about this. I’m okay, and you don’t have to worry about these things I’m telling you. Just take it in, and you’ll see that everything’s okay.”
“Do you not hear yourself?” Mama protested. “My son has been dabbling in some kind of voodoo, has four wives, and people are trying to kill him. How is that okay?”
He patted her hand, beaming love. “This is good news, Mama. I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out.”
He continued telling his story. Against his original expectations, he ended up having to hose her down with a good deal of Seeker force to keep her from passing out or losing her mind.
That surprised him. But that happens sometimes when we endure stretches of extreme experience. Having survived the tempest, we expect others to take the news in stride. But they are, of course, shocked—and we, in turn, are shocked by their shock.
Mama had no way of understanding any of this, including the deep love he and these women shared after spending only a few days together.
Thanks to Seeker juice, however, Mama made it through his whole story without having an aneurism. And once he’d told it all, things did improve slightly, as things often do once we unload our wagons.
Over the coming days, he would back off on the Seeker juice. But for now, he would do whatever he had to do in order to keep Mama safe and conscious.
She asked for another beer.
Frankie fetched one for her.
“Thank you, hun,” Mama said. “You’re not married to Brawley?”
“No, ma’am,” Frankie said.
“Good,” Mama said. “No offense, dear. You seem like a very nice young lady. It’s just… four wives, Brawley? I don’t understand.”
Then she started with the questions, and he reckoned that was a good sign, Mama moving past wholesale denial to try and make sense of things. Where did these powers come from? What could each of the girls do? And what was a power mage again?
On and on and on, she questioned Brawley and the girls.
Nina gushed about Brawley and her sister-wives, holding nothing back as she answered Mama’s questions.
Grinning, Remi rocked back onto her chair legs and answered Mama’s questions with characteristic, unapologetic candor.
Callie seemed nervous and spoke in whispers, and Brawley realized this was the first time the girl had ever met a lover’s parents. Talk about diving in with both feet. The poor girl sat on her hands and fidgeted and bl
ushed.
“How old are you, sweetie?” Mama asked her.
“Eighteen, ma’am,” Callie said, her voice barely audible.
“And you have powers, too?”
Callie nodded slightly but merely said she was “good with animals.”
Unsurprisingly, Sage offered the most informative responses. And, Brawley suspected on more than one occasion, squeezes of calming juice as well.
Normally, he would’ve resented someone manipulating his mother’s perception. But given the circumstances, it was a mercy.
“I assure you, Mrs. Hayes,” Sage said, “that my sister-wives and I will do anything for your son and that we will honor and respect you and your husband and do whatever we can to bring joy to your lives. But first, I believe we should remove your pie from the oven, or it will burn.”
“Oh,” Mama said, sitting up straight. “I had forgotten.”
She wasn’t the only one who straightened abruptly. Nina popped up like a prairie dog peeking from its hole. “Pie?”
“Yes, dear,” Mama said, crossing the kitchen and fetching her hot pads.
Brawley considered grabbing the pie for her, but his intuition rejected the notion. Better to let Mama experience this bit of normalcy, this sliver of control. She was doing something she had done thousands of times. Pulling something from the oven and avoiding a mundane crisis.
Thematically, saving the pie was setting up the right frame of mind for Mama to accept the slightly more confounding situation her son and his wives had just unleashed upon her.
“Pecan,” Mama said, pulling the pie from the oven, filling the kitchen with a good smell he had to this point barely noticed thanks to the gravity of the conversation. “Do you like pie, Nina?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nina said, her mismatched eyes gleaming. “I love pie.”
“That’s nice,” Mama said, sliding the pie onto a short rack to cool. She turned to Nina with a brave smile. “I do enjoy baking, but Brawley and his father can’t piece together a sweet tooth between them. I suppose if you’re my daughter-in-law now, that means I can start baking more.”
And just like that, Brawley knew things would be okay. It would take time and patience, but everything would be okay.
7
Two hours later, the screen door banged in its jam, and Brawley heard his father’s boots coming down the hall.
It was a sound that had meant many things over the years. Dinner, mostly. But also, occasional ass whippings when Brawley was a boy and had sassed Mama or done something willful and stupid.
On other nights, when storms ravaged the ranch, young Brawley had shuddered with relief to hear those approaching boots. Because the sound meant Pa was alive. A thing not to be taken for granted in this land, especially when the weather turned.
On those tempestuous nights, young Brawley would sigh with relief when Pa at last strode out of the storm and into the kitchen; his clothes twisted by wind and draining sand; or soaked to the bone, lightning still flashing in his eyes; or covered in a mantle of snow, his hands blue as rare sirloin.
Tonight, the sound of Pa’s boot heels drove home the reality of Brawley’s situation in a way that barging in on Mama had not.
Pa swaggered into the room. He nodded to Brawley and tipped his hat to the girls, who were helping Mama prepare dinner.
Pa was a compact man. Five feet seven inches, one hundred and forty pounds of rawhide. Ironically, between Brawley and him, Pa was the one built like a bull rider.
And in fact, Lawton Hayes had ridden bulls. And ridden them well.
But he had been too busy working to train like you had to if you wanted to make a living of it. And after Pa had busted his arm, he called it quits. Not because of the pain and certainly not out of fear. He was, after all the son of Grandma Hayes, her blood.
At that point, Pa’s father was already five or six years in the grave. Pa was the man of the house. So he stopped going to school until they let him quit and did his best to run the ranch and look after his mother and his three younger sisters. He was fifteen years old.
Now this man who had never really been a boy turned to Brawley with a question in his eyes and a statement on his lips. “You’re home.”
“Yes, sir,” Brawley said.
Pa looked at the girls. Their appearance would be wholly outside his experience, Brawley knew, but Pa merely glanced at them, read the situation, and returned his attention to Brawley.
“That’s good,” he said. “I could use a hand.”
Brawley nodded. He didn’t have to say he would help. That was a given. Just as it would’ve been if the tables were turned. If family needed help, you gave it. No matter what and no questions asked.
“Brawley,” Mama interrupted, “where are your manners? Aren’t you going to introduce your wives?”
Pa’s eyes narrowed at the word wives, but the old cowboy mostly kept a poker face. And no surprise there. The man could be standing shirtless in a blizzard and wouldn’t even mention the cold unless you were holding an extra coat you might lend him.
Pa had self-control and the rarest of virtues, integrity.
Mama grinned, seeing what Brawley saw. And in that instant, Brawley knew a couple of things.
First, the girls had to some degree won Mama over. Maybe it was the juice and maybe it wasn’t. These women were, after all, amazing. And Mama wasn’t just kindhearted. She was also perceptive and, like most Texans, heroically accepting. Despite her plain spun life, Mama had seen through the tattoos and purple hair to behold the hearts and souls of these women.
The second thing he realized was that Mama was going to let Brawley deal with Pa. And judging by the slight twinkle in her eye, Mama was enjoying the notion. It was that twinkle more than anything else so far that convinced Brawley that she really was going to be okay. And perhaps much sooner than he had feared based on her original reaction.
Brawley introduced the girls one at a time.
His father nodded to each in turn, saying it was nice to meet her, then said to Brawley, “Everything okay here if you help me for a bit?”
Brawley heard the question beneath the question. Are these girls okay?
Pa didn’t understand what was happening here. But he wouldn’t start blatting like a lost calf before these women. At the same time, Pa understood that something was strange, and the man wouldn’t step one boot outside this room if he thought doing so might endanger his beloved wife.
“Yes, sir,” Brawley assured him. “That’ll be fine. Just give me a minute, and I’ll be out.”
“All right, then.” Pa tipped his hat to the girls again. “Ladies.”
Brawley’s women said goodbye.
Pa turned and left, the sound of his boot heels clocking toward the door.
“Y’all come back now, you hear?” Nina called nervously after him. A second later, her face glowed bright red.
Remi laughed. “Y’all come back now, you hear?” she mimicked in a warbling, high-pitched mockery of Nina’s well-intentioned exclamation. “What are you, a Muppet?”
“I feel so stupid,” Nina confessed to everyone. “I was just trying to sound like a Texan.”
“Why bless your heart,” Mama said. “Have another slice of that pie, Nina. It’ll cure what ails you.”
Nina smiled weakly. “Thank you, ma’am. It just might.”
Brawley laughed and gave Nina a peck on the cheek. “You’re all right, darlin. Don’t you quit. You’ll get the hang of it.”
“Was your father mad?” Callie asked. “He seemed angry.”
“Who, Pa?” Brawley said. “Naw. He’s what you might call a man of few words. But I best not keep him waiting. He might could have a question or two.”
Brawley kissed his mother and wives goodbye, smiled at Frankie, and went outside to face his father.
Pa stood between the house and the barn, smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes.
Without speaking, the men went into the barn and readied their steeds.
Pa would talk when he saw fit.
Redbone nickered happily as Brawley approached. Brawley smoothed a hand over the stallion’s muscular neck. The horse’s coat was the same rich hue as a redbone coonhound.
Good to see you too, buddy, Brawley thought, saddling up, and sensed waves of happiness coming off the horse.
Brawley had always been good with animals, and since childhood, he’d shared a special bond with Redbone. But this was different.
He could feel Redbone’s perspective as if their very beings were tethered by a cordage twisted from longstanding affection and his crackling Bestial strand.
Brawley settled into the saddle, feeling the familiar quiver of Redbone’s muscles beneath him.
They rode up the lane. Pa stopped in front of Brawley’s trailer. “Best fetch your rifle.”
Brawley pulled up his shirt to show he was already armed.
“Bring the rifle anyway,” Pa said.
Brawley dismounted, willed Redbone to stay put, and went inside.
He loaded the Winchester and threw a few extra .32 special cartridges into his pockets but didn’t lever a round into the magazine. You had to be extra careful with those old cowboy guns on account of the hammer.
He spared the old Colt .45 Peacemaker a quick glance. Now that was a cowboy gun, but he couldn’t carry it because it hadn’t been fired in a century.
He had inherited the weapon from Grandma Hayes, whose great grandfather, legendary Texas Ranger Randall Haggerty Hayes had carried the pistol during the twilight of a storied career that had begun in the early days of the Republic and ended here on this ranch, when a Comanche raiding party trapped him atop the escarpment of rosy granite known as Pink Bluff.
Someday, Brawley hoped to get the heirloom restored.
He went back out, and the men headed south on the main ranch road, cutting across the rocky brushland.
A loud explosion boomed to the west.
Brawley reined Redbone to a stop and wheeled in that direction. A pillar of pale smoke rose from somewhere within the vast acreage of Widow Callahan’s ranch.
“That would be Blanton Cherry’s crew,” Pa said. “They been blasting day and night. Blasting what, exactly, I have no idea. It’s a topic of some debate around these parts. Some say he’s quarrying. Some think he’s cracking a well.”