She gave me her very best withering look.
“Megan, the flavor—it’s for you.” She walked out and went back to practicing the Texas Dip.
I knew that. I did. Really.
“Damn. I should have bought the bubble gum.”
Fourteen
In Which Megan Waxes Patriotic
LIKE MOST ATHLETES I’D HEARD “THE STAR-SPANGLED Banner” about a million times, and there were times, standing with my hand on my heart, mouthing the words, when my mind wandered. Sometimes it wandered to tactics for the upcoming game, other times to the butterflies the song brought on. But so much had happened in the past three days that today, my mind whipped and snapped this way and that like the big American flag in the north corner of the stadium.
Sunday afternoon Dad had called me to ask if I would invite Hank out to the ranch.
“What for?” I asked.
“Well, we got to talking at the museum and he gave me a different way of looking at this whole thing, so I’d like to drive him around, give him a look, and see what he thinks about it.”
“Wow. You’re serious about this.”
“I’m serious about thinking about it. Your mom won’t let it go and we’re kind of stuck here, and if there was a third way, well—I just don’t want to leave stones unturned.”
“Sure, I’ll ask him.”
“Thanks, honey. We’ll throw in dinner too.”
Dad wanted my help with ranch and family business. I swelled with pride. Even sweeter, I now had a reason to call Hank, which I wanted to do every few hours anyway, but had so far resisted. Our game on Tuesday ended at five, and Hank had already bought a ticket, so I figured we could go after.
“Going to my girlfriend’s soccer game and then having dinner with her parents,” Hank said when I asked him. “Not bad for a Tuesday.”
Girlfriend! Had I hoped? Of course. Had we talked about it? No. And then he just threw the word out so casually—GIRLFRIEND! I was afraid to speak, sure it would just come out a squeak.
“So I’ll see you after,” I managed.
“I’ll be there. And remember, you promised me a hat trick!” Grrr. I was hoping he forgot!
Now I glanced at the stands where the crowd stood. Normally friends or family at games didn’t bug me, but today was different. Up there somewhere were several of the girls from my deportment class, and for the very first time my honest-to-God real “boyfriend.” Why had I said I’d score three goals? He must have known I was kidding, right? That’s what I get for trying to flirt.
The crowd clapped, and the team huddled for a last pep talk.
“Keep your spacing—trust your teammates,” Coach Nash said. We all nodded. “You’re prepared, you’re ready. Relax and be the best version of yourself today.” Nods again. “Okay—team on three.”
Seconds later I stood at the center line, one foot on the ball. Relax. The whistle blew and I kicked the ball back to Mariah.
“She was amazing,” Hank gushed to Dad.
Hank rode shotgun and I sat in the back as we bounced and bumped along a dirt road on the Aberdeen in Dad’s truck. A cow raised its head as we passed, then went back to grazing.
“I got lucky,” I said.
“Three goals is not luck.”
“A hat trick?” Dad asked, glancing back. I nodded, and then blushed from the jolt of Hank bragging on me to my dad.
“The first one was from, like, thirty yards away,” Hank said.
“It was just outside the eighteen,” I corrected him.
“Well, it was from way far away, and she blasted it with her left foot right into the corner of the net.”
“She’s always kicked harder with her left,” Dad said. “Even when she was just tiny, when we’d go out and kick the ball around, she preferred that left foot.”
“Well, it was a crazy-good shot,” Hank said.
It was freaking unconscious. I had received the ball on a run toward the top of the box, and thought I’d slide it right to Mariah but my defender shaded that way. So I flicked it back onto my left foot and caught a glimpse of daylight between the crush of bodies and let it fly. The ball knuckled slightly and then peeled back into the top left corner as if controlled by a homing signal. The keeper never moved.
“Then just before halftime she scored again.”
“That was all Cat.” It really was. Cat had beaten a defender to the end line and then curled a perfect pass back over the keeper and into the goal mouth. It was a simple volley home.
“But you scored it.” Hank looked back at me and smiled.
“Even blind squirrels find nuts,” I said.
“And the third one, that was the best goal I’ve ever seen!” Hank said emphatically.
“Okay—how many soccer games have you been to?” I asked.
“One,” Hank admitted, and we all laughed.
“They were behind, and pressing, and were just open to that kind of counter off a long ball,” I said mildly, but I knew it was the best goal I had ever scored.
I broke forward as soon as Lindsay stole it, one-touched and settled her looping pass, then chipped it over the keeper all in a split second. Goals like that were instinctive. They resulted from thousands of hours of practice, and afterward you could never quite explain just how you did what you did.
I hadn’t actually been trying to score three goals. Once the whistle blew I forgot my rash boast and really didn’t think about Hank in the stands the whole game. But it happened just as I’d promised. Coach Nash was seriously impressed—she told me it was a watershed game, that my confidence and composure really showed in all three situations.
“People were chanting her name!” Hank said. “Afterward two girls asked for her autograph.”
“They’re from my deportment class!”
“Anybody ask you for your autograph this week?” Hank asked Dad.
“Nope. Sounds like a helluva game, honey. Sorry I missed it,” Dad said. I could tell he was happy I scored the goals, and also that I had a guy who wanted to brag about it.
“I got so excited I bought a foam finger,” Hank said.
“You’re sweet.” I smiled at him, and put my hand on the big blue SMU foam finger on the backseat. It was pretty romantic.
Dad stopped the truck and as we got out I grabbed the scatter gun off the rack. Hank took my hand and then noticed the shotgun in my other hand.
“Should I be afraid?” he asked.
“Only of snakes,” I explained, holding it up.
Hank looked down suddenly and noticed Dad and I were both wearing boots.
“Wrong shoes,” he said, nodding at his sneakers.
“I’ll protect you.” I smiled at him and squeezed his hand.
Planted deep in the earth by time and gravity, the barn in front of us was as much a part of the Aberdeen landscape as any tree or hillock. It was a western raised center, wide on the bottom with a narrow second floor. It had shed roofs to either side, big double doors at either end, smaller doors in the haylofts, and a paddock on one side. The red cedar, stripped and refinished dozens of times in the past 140 years, was now pumpkin orange with dark knots.
“My great-great-grandfather built it around 1873,” Dad said. “He built it first, before any house, ’cause back then job one was taking care of the cows—if they died, there was a good chance you died. He lived in here with the cows for a decade or so.” Hank checked to see if he was serious. He was. “Different times,” Dad added wistfully.
Hank took my hand and we walked closer. He reached out to touch the wood—it was as smooth as marble.
“We don’t use it much, just some tack in here and some old hay, but I thought we’d start here because from up there”—Dad pointed to the hayloft—“you get the best view. He built here ’cause it’s the highest point.”
“It’s .
. . amazing,” Hank said.
Dad opened the doors, turned on the lights, and we went in. Empty stalls. An old saddle perched on a rail. He walked over to the ladder, which led up to the hayloft. There, nailed to one of the original timbers, was a rattlesnake skin six feet long. Hank stared at it.
“You weren’t kidding,” he said.
“That was a special one,” Dad said. “When Megan was eight or so, we came out here for something or other and she startled that fella.”
Hank looked at me—really? I nodded.
“What’d you do?” he asked breathlessly.
“Exactly what she was supposed to: nothing,” Dad said proudly. “He was chattering away, coiled up, and she’s staring right at him—most girls, hell, grown women and some men even, would have screamed and jumped around and probably got bit. But not her. Just stayed rock still and whispered, ‘Daddy, there’s a rattler over here.’ I grabbed a shotgun, came up beside her, and blew its head off.”
Hank looked stunned. Dad patted me on the shoulder.
“I skinned him and pinned him, so she’d always remember.”
“He’s only told this story a hundred times,” I said sarcastically. “I’m surprised it hasn’t turned into a whole nest of rattlers by now.” But I was secretly proud he’d told it, and it had clearly impressed Hank.
Upstairs, Dad threw open the doors on either side, and light flooded in. It really was an amazing view. To the north the horizon lay unbroken by man, and it felt like you were looking straight to Oklahoma. On the other side was a good stretch of the Aberdeen, the main creek, and a number of cows, and it felt like staring into the past.
“Wow,” Hank said. He had his phone out and was taking pictures. “This is special.” Hank looked directly at Dad. “This has everything you want in a first-class development: great land, lots of water, history, perfect location, far enough out from the city but not too far.” Hank held Dad’s gaze. “People would eat this up.”
Dad pointed to El Dorado in the distance. It marred the effect.
“That there’s the kind of thing I hate,” he said. “The houses are all built on top of each other—it’s like China.”
“That’s just density,” Hank said, still snapping away in all directions. “I wouldn’t do anything like that here—no way. I’d go with big lots, forty or fifty acres, and where that creek runs I’d forbid any development on either side, let it be a greenbelt.”
“You can do all that?”
“Sure—you can do whatever you want, impose any kind of restrictions because you’re in the catbird seat.” He swiped through a couple of pictures. “Besides, it fits. The people that want this want to have space. Let ’em have horses, keep this barn, keep the name the Aberdeen. They’ll feel like they’re buying a piece of history.”
“How do you deal with the mineral rights?” Dad asked.
“You just exclude them. It’s done all the time. If you don’t mind, Mr. McKnight—”
“Angus,” Dad said firmly.
“Angus—if you don’t mind I’d love to just sketch some ideas, give you an idea of what it could look like.”
“I don’t want you doing any work for free,” Dad said.
“I don’t mind. I’m just starting out, and I need turns at bat. It’s always great to have the first crack at something. And that way, you’d have something to look at.”
“All right, then, I’d appreciate it.”
Mom served dinner on the terrace—steak, of course, thick marbled rib eyes that Dad grilled over coals. There were baked potatoes, a wedge salad, and hand-twisted rolls.
“That was the best steak I’ve ever had,” Hank said when we were done, and I believed him. Most people who ate steak at our house said the same thing.
“Well, if I can’t put a good steak on your plate, then I’d better get out of this business,” Dad said.
“As if that would ever happen,” Mom said drily.
“Hank seems to think a development could really work, Mom,” I offered, hoping to break the tension.
She rose to clear the plates.
“I hope you’re not just running this poor boy around,” Mom said to Dad.
Clearly whatever had been going on between my parents was still going on.
“Can I help?” Hank asked, starting to stand.
“No, you stay,” she answered, but I stood and began stacking dishes.
When I got to the kichen, Mom stood at the sink with the water running, looking out the window to the patio where Dad and Hank were still talking. Was she crying?
I set the plates on the counter, came up behind her, and gave her a hug. I pressed my head against her shoulder and she tilted her head till we were touching.
“Mom? Are you and Dad okay?” I asked.
She patted my hands and breathed deeply and I heard the low sniffle it caused.
“Your father and I have been married for twenty-three years, and that is not easy. It’s hard work. It’s compromise. There are different stages—for a long time you girls were my job, and I don’t really have a job anymore. Your debut is keeping me busy but that will be over in January. Your father has the ranch and I don’t . . . have anything.”
“Yeah. But you still love each other, right?”
“Of course.” She dabbed at her eyes. “Please don’t worry, sweetie. Things will be fine.”
She began loading plates in the dishwasher while I tried to digest what I had just heard. It was the most adult conversation we’d ever had, and if that’s what lay ahead, I wasn’t anxious to grow up. When she shut the dishwasher, she smiled and reset.
“We need to talk about your party,” she said, and I happily let her change the subject to something far less serious. “We have less than two months now and we have to decide on a theme. It was very inconsiderate of the Battles to take Denim to Diamonds—we’re the cattle ranchers, and it would’ve been a perfect theme for us.”
“I know, Mom,” I said mildly, trying not to get her really going. She was aggravated no end that Lauren Battle had chosen Denim to Diamonds as her party theme, and had already let both me and Julia know it on several occasions. Not only was it a perfect theme for us, it also would have saved us a little money. We could have held it out here, at the Aberdeen, rather than having to rent a space.
“Really, they’re oil people. But I suppose there’s nothing to be done now.” The phrase oil people implied that somehow the Battles had not earned their money; rather they had lucked into it. It was a phrase that non-oil-moneyed Texans used to convey mild disdain while also offering themselves cover for not being able to afford things—“They bought a yacht, don’t ask me why, but well, they’re oil people.”
I tried to get her on track.
“Do you have any other ideas?”
“We could do Bollywood. I think that would be festive and colorful,” Mom said.
I rolled my eyes.
“Mom, no. What are we going to wear—saris and bindis?” I didn’t even bring up the wrongness of cultural appropriation, not that Mom would have been all that sensitive anyway. Her debut party twenty-five years ago had been Gone with the Wind, with her as Scarlett O’Hara and the men as ruffled Rhett Butlers and even Confederate officers. It was tough enough to talk to my soccer teammates about why making a debut was important, and why I was doing it, without outright offending any of them with the theme of my party.
“A Night in Paris?” Mom asked.
“Ewww. No.”
“Why not? It would be so romantic!”
“Trust me, Mom—it would not be romantic.”
“Okay—then how about Cleopatra?”
“There are two of us, Mom—who’s going to be Cleopatra?” I hoped this answer would halt any further talk about what I felt was a just plain dumb idea. I truly wanted to get through the debut season with my pride intact,
and gallivanting around in thick black eye makeup in a gold sheath dress and crown wouldn’t help.
“It’s all well and good to shoot down ideas, but we have to decide on some theme, and it has to be soon. There is so much to plan, and the designers can’t begin to work on swatches and color and decorations, linens, food—anything—until we come up with a theme.”
“Look, Julia and I are driving out together to Lauren’s on Friday. We’ll discuss it then and I promise we’ll come back with at least two solid ideas. Then you can pick—okay?”
“Saturday then. And if not—a Night in Paris,” she threatened. “Go on now, go show him around.”
Hank and I stepped off the terrace and walked out across the side yard and then down the gravel road toward the barn. The air was fresh and the October sun, a butterscotch candy halfway down in the western sky, turned the tall grass shades of tangerine and marigold.
“It’s really a great place,” Hank said admiringly.
“Thanks. It was awesome growing up here.”
We heard the clatter of hooves behind us, and three dusty men rode up on horses.
“Hola, Megan!” Silvio called out, smiling warmly. A former professional bull rider the same age as Dad, Silvio was the ranch foreman, and my favorite uncle. The two others were hands, a little closer to my age.
“Silvio! Cómo está?”
“Bien, chica. Y tu?”
“Bien, gracias.” I looked at Hank. “This is my friend Hank,” I said.
Silvio reached down and they shook hands.
“Silvio Vargas.”
“Hank Waterhouse.”
“Con mucho gusto, Hank,” Silvio said, tipping his hat.
“Mucho gusto,” Hank replied, smiling.
“Mom saved you some dinner,” I said to Silvio.
“Okay. We’re gonna put the horses away, and then I’ll come to the house.”
“Great to see you!”
The Season Page 13