by Hondo Jinx
Brawley nodded and told about meeting the man. As he recounted the experience, one thing struck Brawley as curious: the shift in his own thoughts and emotions at the end of the conversation. He’d been madder than hell one moment and downright neighborly the next, telling Cherry he’d try to talk Pa into selling.
If Brawley didn’t know better, he’d think…
But no. That wasn’t likely. Not all the way out here in West Texas.
“Cherry’s crooked as the Brazos,” Pa said. “He offered me a lot of money for this ranch.”
“How much?”
“A million.”
Brawley nodded.
“Then two million a couple of days later,” Pa said.
Brawley whistled. “That is a lot of money.”
“It is,” Pa said, “but it’s still just money.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hooking a thumb back toward the farmhouse and the little fenced-in graveyard beside it, Pa said, “This is our land, son. My mother lies yonder among the elder generations. If Blanton Cherry thinks I’ll set a price on the grave of my own mother, he has another thing coming.”
Another explosion boomed to the west.
Squinting in that direction and wondering about the nature of the explosion, Brawley released a touch of Seeker juice.
His query faded into the distance, garnering nothing. Not even a whisper.
Was something wrong with his Seeker strand?
8
Pa spat dryly on the ground and spurred his dun.
They continued along the ranch road, riding across the rocky scrubland. The afternoon was ebbing away. Soon, the long twilight would begin. The prairie grass whispered in a light breeze blowing out of the north. Far to the south rose the mountains of Mexico, a dark and hazy wall like a reef of storm clouds.
Brawley rode, forgetting the concerns of recent days, his heart brimming over with fierce love for this rugged country. What could be better than crossing this wild, free land on horseback?
They cut through ridge breaks and rode down into the rocky scrubland of a barrial flanked by low hills bearded in mesquite and capped in gravel. In the distance, the heat shimmer stirred as antelopes streaked off in wavering blurs.
Pa left the road and angled eastward, cutting through the sagebrush and riding into a stand of creek-side pecans.
The air was cooler beneath the thick canopy. The horses’ hooves crunched over the dry leaves and pecan hulls.
The men dismounted and led their horses through the broomweed and down the short bank into the rocky creek bed, which was dry save for trickling pools in low spots between larger stones.
Pa rolled a cigarette and lit it and spoke with his back half-turned to Brawley. “A man can’t have four wives, son.”
“With all due respect, sir, I already do.”
“That ain’t even legal.”
“No, sir. But there wasn’t no paper to it. We’re hitched not churched.”
“So y’all just decided to throw in together and call yourselves betrothed?”
Brawley spat. “Wedded, sir. There weren’t no engagement to speak of.”
Pa took a drag and turned to study his son for a long moment. There was no surprise in his eyes, no offense, no confusion. Only calculation. “You can’t have four wives, Brawley. It don’t even make sense.”
“It makes all the sense in the world.”
“Even if you could, how would you feed them? Have you done the math? Your Mama and me worked hard just to feed the three of us. What if all four of these girls get pregnant at the same time? Hell, son, you could have eight or ten kids just a few years down the road.”
“I hope so,” Brawley said.
“You hope so,” Pa said. “The question remains. How will you feed them? Clothe them? You fill that trailer up, what then? You fixing to set them up in the barn?”
“No, sir, I’m fixing to build a house. Pronto.”
“A house.”
“Yes, sir. On the ranch, if you approve.”
“Brawley, despite your wild streak, you’ve always a good head on your shoulders, but I stand confounded. Now, I’m nothing but a dirty, rotten cowboy, so you’re going to have to go ahead and explain to me how one man having four wives makes sense. And don’t go telling no picture book stories about love. Just what in the hell did you get into over there in Florida?”
And just like that, Brawley stood upon the crossroads. From this point, two paths converged in opposite directions.
He could either release a river of juice, defer the truth, and ease Pa slowly along. Or he could tell him everything, all at once.
Mama would be fine. He expected to ween her off the juice in a couple of weeks, maybe less.
But Pa was a quiet man who preferred deeds to conversation, and he had raised Brawley to mistrust the dishonesty and weakness of extensive explanations. Mere words would never suffice.
“Well, son? You going to tell me or what?” Pa said, squinting over his cigarette.
And one look at those hard eyes and weather-beaten face decided Brawley. “Sir, I reckon it’d be better for me to show you instead.”
“Show me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you jacking with me?”
“No, sir. I’ll wait for you to finish your cigarette.”
“You’ll wait for me,” Pa said, and cut off his words to take a long drag. Eyeing Brawley, he stubbed out the cigarette on the rocky creek bed and tucked the butt in his shirt pocket. “Show me, then.”
“Brace yourself, Pa,” Brawley said. “This might could get peculiar for you.” He laid a hand on the wiry man’s shoulder and threw open the flood gates.
Brawley released a river of images and experiences and emotions, flooding his father with the truth of recent days. The good, the bad, the stunningly ugly. All of it.
Pa froze in place, going rigid like a man locked onto electrical current.
Brawley showed him Mallory Square. Nina saving him. Even coupling with Nina, and the rush of bonding. Nina coming out of the darkness on her moped, blasting the men trying to kill Brawley.
He shared Sage and her unbelievable abilities, quirky humor, and unfettered love.
And his fierce lover, Remi; their desperate, bloody fight against the Miami Carnals; and the strange and deadly trip they had made to Red Haven.
Callie, his lithe and lethal cat girl; how she had saved Remi from Dos; and how this very morning, she had cracked his Bestial strand, transforming him into a prehistoric longhorn bison that obliterated its enemies.
All this he showed his father and so much more. The fights and mysteries and uncertain future.
Everything.
Then he broke contact, cutting off the rush of information.
Pa gasped, reeled, and fell backward.
Moving with Carnal speed, Brawley caught Pa and helped him stand again.
For several seconds, Pa just stared, mouth ajar, his breathing labored.
Fearing stroke or a heart attack, Brawley quickly calmed his father with a heavy pulse of calming force.
For a time, Pa just blinked at him. But then he came around, and the questions started. Once they started, they kept coming and coming. For the better part of an hour, they stood by the creek talking. It was far and away the longest conversation of their many years together.
And Brawley was thankful for it, because when they rode out from the grove and headed south toward whatever Pa wanted to show him, they were both riding easy again.
Pa would have more questions over the coming days. And the man might could have moments where he questioned everything. But they would get through it, because Brawley hadn’t sold him a story. He’d shared the truth.
And truth finds a way if you have the courage to share it.
After a time, they entered rough pastureland recently churned and denuded by the longhorns. Up ahead, Pink Bluff rose from the barrial like an ancient, half-excavated monument from some great, long-lost civilization.
/> Pink Bluff was an escarpment of rose-colored granite that looked like Enchanted Rock up in Hill Country, only smaller and flat-topped, more like a butte than a dome. With day fading into dusk, the longhorns gathered in Pink Bluff’s vast shadow, grazing alongside the bajada beneath the cave where, as a boy, Brawley had discovered ancient symbols left by the strange and mysterious First Men, the old Americans who predated the Plains Indians by millennia and about whom historians knew less than little.
Up the slope they rode, zigzagging along the rocky trail, until they reached the top of Pink Bluff, a rubble-strewn table roughly the size of a football field.
A curious lethargy settled over Brawley. He wasn’t tired, exactly. He felt merely normal, as if someone had unplugged his Carnal strand.
Trotting slowly, Pa led Brawley toward the center of the plateau. Halfway there, Pa reined his horse and dismounted.
They walked the rest of the way.
Brawley smelled the carcass before he saw it. With sickly sweet odor came a twinge of dread, but his Seeker senses sounded no alarms.
Walking closer, he saw the mess spread upon the ground and heard the buzz of the flies.
The mutilated remains of a longhorn steer lay eviscerated upon the flat stone like a grisly sacrifice to a pantheon of cruel desert gods.
“This is a damned abomination,” Brawley said.
“Yes, it is. Dogs found it today.”
“This don’t make no sense,” Brawley said, studying the scene. “A steer wouldn’t come up here.”
“Not on his own,” Pa said. “You look over yonder, you’ll see the drag marks.”
“Drag marks? You’re telling me somebody drove up here? How?”
Pa shook his head. “Men didn’t do this.”
Brawley edged closer to the dead steer. The animal had been ripped wide open, and something had hauled its guts out and spread them through the surrounding scrub like ghoulish Christmas lights. The steer’s throat was torn out, and four long slashes had raked its side, splitting its hide and laying it open to the ribs.
What kind of animal could do this?
Brawley was going to throw some Seeker juice at it, but his father distracted him, saying, “Not a single bite eaten.”
Brawley nodded, seeing what his father meant. For all the gory mutilation, nothing was missing. Some powerful predator had killed the steer for sport.
“That ain’t natural,” Brawley said.
“Not by a long shot,” Pa said. “And here’s something else that don’t add up. Judging by all the blood on the ground, I reckon that steer was alive, probably kicking and fighting, until whatever did this had dragged him up here.”
“What could do that?”
Pa pointed to an impression in the dust. “You tell me.”
Brawley crouched down for a closer look. Pressed into the dusty ground was an animal track, roundish and big as a dinner plate, with a large heel pad and four distinct toes.
They looked like… but no. That wasn’t possible. Not here.
Fear tiptoed up his spine on icy little paws.
He queried his juice but received no answer. Not even a whisper. Remembering his unsuccessful query into Blanton Cherry’s blasting, he wondered again if something was wrong with his Seeker Strand.
“Well,” Pa said, “what do you reckon?”
“I can do more than reckon, sir. I believe that I recognize those tracks. But what I’m seeing don’t make any damn sense.”
“No, it doesn’t make sense. But that don’t change a thing,” Pa said. “Facts is facts. Those are cat tracks.”
“Big cat,” Brawley said.
“Mighty big. If I didn’t know better, I’d say a lion killed our steer. And I’m not talking a mountain lion. Those are bigger than puma tracks.”
“Yes, sir. By a stretch. But I reckon they probably ain’t lion tracks.”
“No?”
“No, sir,” Brawley said, and instinctively panned his gaze across the surrounding country. “Those are tiger tracks.”
9
Brawley entered the Lone Star as the jukebox started playing Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.”
Dinner had gone well. Mama and the girls had thrown together an impressive spread. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and pecan pie with Blue Bell ice cream for dessert. Conversation flowed naturally.
Brawley didn’t mention the way his juice had dried up, the mutilated steer, or the worrisome tracks. He didn’t know what any of it meant, and on the ride home from Pink Bluff, his psionic energy had returned to him.
Had the Tiger Mage found his ranch?
No, he didn’t reckon so. Otherwise, they’d all be dead. Right?
So Brawley said nothing, and instead of fretting, his family embraced the moment and broke bread for the first time. They ate and talked and got to know each other. At one point, Nina even got Pa to laugh.
Later, when Brawley told the girls he was taking them into town, it was Nina’s turn to laugh.
“Haboob, Texas?” she said. “What kind of a name is Haboob?”
“A sensible one,” Brawley said. “Picture a mile-high wall of dust blowing across the plains. That’s a Haboob. You stick around long enough, you’ll see one yourself, darlin.”
“Well, I’ll see one, then,” Nina had said, “because I love it here.”
All up and down the bar, people nodded, waved, and hailed Brawley.
A second later, the girls entered the Lone Star, and everyone forgot about him.
People nudged and elbowed and whispered.
Brawley couldn’t fault them. These were the five most beautiful women to ever enter this long-standing establishment, and they were all with him.
“There they are,” Brawley said, pointing to where his friends were throwing darts.
Tanner was a red-haired giant. In his boots and hat, he looked about seven feet tall. His deep voice joked, “Don’t mess up, Sean.”
Sean rolled his shoulders, stepped to the line, and sighted down the dart. His white straw stockman was tilted back. “Inform your woman that it is time to don her lamenting cap,” Sean said. A grin split his dark beard. Behind his glasses, his eyes narrowed with concentration. He threw the dart and roared like a barbarian.
Tanner hung his head. His hulking body sagged with dejection.
Elated, Sean held out an empty pitcher to the big redhead. “Fill ‘er up, bitch!”
Brawley smiled. That was Sean, either busting balls or weeping softly.
Tanner turned, pitcher in hand. “Hey, Brawley. You’re back.” Then he saw the girls, and his big jaw dropped.
Brawley introduced everyone, simply saying the girls were with him.
Sean studied Brawley and the girls, obviously trying to sort everything out.
Tanner went to the bar and came back carrying four pitchers with a stack of plastic cups tucked under his chin.
Over at the bar, people stared, trying to figure things out.
Brawley considered hosing them down with Seeker juice just to take the edge off but decided against it. Better to face this thing head on and see were the cards fell.
They grabbed a booth. Brawley slid in between Nina and Callie. Frankie’s impressive curves wiggled as she slipped in across from them.
Tanner and Sean grabbed chairs and pulled them over.
“Billiards,” Sage said, smiling toward the pool table, where Santiago Cruz, the closest thing Haboob had to a pool shark, was crushing someone Brawley half-recognized. “I have always wanted to play that game.”
“Say what?” Remi blurted. “You’ve never played pool?”
Sage shook her head. “It seems like a fascinating diversion.”
“Come on,” Remi said, taking the blond Seeker by the arm. “I won’t tolerate a sister-wife who’s never shot pool. We’ll be back, handsome.”
“Have fun,” Brawley said.
“Sister-wife?” Sean asked, watching the two depart.
Brawley smiled. “Things have cha
nged. You got keys to the store?”
Sean nodded. His intelligent eyes flicked back and forth between Brawley and the girls. “Why?”
“Sell me a couple of king-size mattresses.”
“Okay,” Sean said, and then a maniacal grin split his beard. “Dude, are you messing with us?”
Brawley leaned back, enjoying the moment, and laid his arms over Callie and Nina. “I ain’t messing with you, Sean. We need two king-size mattresses. No frames, though. We’ll just lay them on the floor side by side. You carry sheets and pillows?”
Tanner slapped the table. “Stop yanking our chain, Brawley.”
“These are my women,” Brawley said.
“Bullshit,” Tanner laughed.
“It’s true,” Nina piped up. “We’re all with Brawley.”
Callie nodded enthusiastically, squirming beneath Brawley’s arm.
“Not me,” Frankie objected.
Nina rolled her eyes. “Not yet, you mean.”
“You’re serious?” Sean asked Brawley.
“Serious as a seven-year drought.”
Tanner started to say something, but Brawley cut him off with “I promise,” and that was that.
His friends were rocked, but they believed him.
When the questions started, Brawley said he’d met the girls in Key West and they just kind of fell in together.
Tanner elbowed Sean. “We gotta go to Key West.”
“You, maybe. I’m married, and one wife’s enough for me.”
They talked and drank and laughed. Callie was quiet, but Frankie and Nina jumped right into the conversation. The girls seemed very happy.
Brawley glanced at the pool table. Remi grinned against one wall, her tattooed arms folded beneath her perfect breasts. Sage leaned over the table, blew an errant golden lock from her face, and took her shot.
At first, Brawley thought she’d screwed up. The cue ball rushed across the green felt, missing an easy shot. The ball bounced off the side rail, tapped the green-and-white six-ball and rolled into the open. The six-ball dropped into the pocket, and the cue ball came to rest, setting up a nice shot on another solid. Sage moved down the table, looking out of place in her heels and tight white dress.