Sweet Return

by Anna Jeffrey

  They had been friends ever since Joanna returned to Hatlow thirteen years ago to work as a hairdresser and nail tech. Clova was one of the first Hatlow citizens to let Joanna do her hair. Brave on her part, Joanna always thought. Clova’s willingness to let a struggling twenty-two-year-old earn twenty dollars for cutting and perming her hair had forged an unwavering loyalty in Joanna.

  Back then, Clova’s hair had been coal black and hung straight as a string, genetic evidence of her Comanche ancestry. Her daddy had claimed to be related to Quanah Parker, so Clova claimed that, too. Tonight, strands of black and gray hair had come loose from the bun on the back of her head and she looked to be held together by a skeleton as fragile as toothpicks. She was somewhere around fifty-five years old, younger than Joanna’s mother, but she looked ten years older. Weathered by winter’s blue northers, summer’s blazing sun and the hot, dry wind that showed no mercy in its ceaseless sweep of the high plains, Texas Panhandle ranchwomen often looked older than their years.

  Since Clova didn’t show a reaction to what the nurse and the DPS trooper had said, Joanna didn’t mention it. Conversation only added to her fatigue. She leaned back in the chair, propped her neck on its cold steel back and closed her eyes, her thoughts settling on Dalton Parker.

  Clova might not want to talk about him, but other people in Hatlow did. In a West Texas town of seven thousand, he was one of the few who had ever climbed to even token celebrity. Joanna hadn’t heard much about him of late, but she remembered that in high school he had been a hunky football player. Quarterback, she recalled. Everyone said he was smart. He had a high IQ, had been valedictorian of his class. Most of the girls in school had a crush on him, she among them. Strictly from a distance, though, in her case, because in truth, she had known him only by sight.

  Then it dawned on her that with him being in the same grade as Lanita, he must be thirty-eight or so. She opened her eyes and looked at Clova again.

  “Dalton’s what, nearly forty?”

  “He turned thirty-seven back in April.”

  Hearing the number spoken reminded Joanna that Clova had been a teenager when her oldest son was born. Joanna knew she hadn’t finished high school, and was sure that when Clova was a teenager, unmarried pregnant girls didn’t stay in school. “When’s the last time you called him?”

  Clova shook her head. “I don’t call him. I used to, but I quit. He’s always gone somewhere.”

  “Then when’s the last time he called you?”

  “He don’t call me, neither. We don’t talk much anymore.”

  “Where’s he living now?”

  “Los Angeles, far as I know.”

  Joanna felt renewed compassion at the gap that existed between Clova and her son, but feeling sorry didn’t solve the problem at hand, which was the operation of a working cattle ranch with no man around to do a man’s work.

  Joanna Faye Walsh never let trouble fester. At some point in her life, without consciously knowing it, she formed the notion that it was better to face a crisis head-on and do something about it, even if what you did was wrong. She could thank her mom for that attitude. Alvadean Walsh could not—and had never been able to—deal with so much as a simple problem without turning it into a calamity. Not that Joanna didn’t love her mother, but Mom, plain and simple, was a dingbat.

  In self-defense, as Joanna had grown up, she had morphed into a person who “fixed things.” That trait had seen her through a chaotic childhood. That same trait contributed to the hectic disorder that sometimes existed in her present life. Every day, she fought the compulsion to insert herself into other people’s business in some circumstance or other.

  “Do you still have Dalton’s number?” she asked Clova.

  “I got an old number. I don’t know if it’s any good now.”

  “Look, give it to me and I’ll call him for you. It might be better for a stranger to call him anyway.”

  Without a word, Clova picked up a stained tooled leather purse from the floor and pawed through it. She came up with a worn address book, the kind you get for free at Christmas from some insurance company that wants your business. It was badly frayed and the loose pages were held together by a red rubber band. With work-worn fingers, Clova slowly removed the binding, found a ragged page and handed it over. “Just take the whole page,” she said. “I don’t need it anyway.”

  Joanna looked down at it and saw one phone number. No name. Just a faded number. “I left my cell at home on the charger, but there must be a pay phone around here somewhere. I can call him collect. It’s two hours earlier in California.”

  “Wait, Joanna. Give me back that number. On second thought, I don’t want you callin’ him.”

  “Why not?”

  Clova looked down at her hands, which were clenched into a tight knot. “I don’t want him thinkin’ I call him up only when I got problems.”

  But he’s your son. Joanna looked at the number again, doing her best to commit it to memory. “Okay. But I think you should call him.” She handed the page back to Clova, who returned it to the tattered address book.

  Joanna ran the seven digits through her mind again, knowing Clova wouldn’t call him. If Joanna ever saw home again, she vowed, she just might make that call anyway. If she didn’t, who would come to Clova’s rescue?

  Chapter 2

  After Lane had been brought out of surgery, barely alive and bandaged and mummified by a plaster cast, a stubble-jawed surgeon met for a few minutes with Clova. Joanna stood in the background and kept her silence, but her weary mind translated the medical jargon into real words she understood: busted spleen, broken ribs, broken collarbone, shattered left leg. Lane was more hurt than either she or his mother had imagined.

  “Death” and “crippled” were the next words that floated into Joanna’s mind, but the doctor offset her thoughts with a positive prognosis.

  Still, a single tear leaked from a corner of Clova’s eye and a shard of anger pierced Joanna. Lane Cherry, at times, had been the most irresponsible twenty-nine-year-old man she could think of, with little apparent consideration for how his behavior affected those around him. Because he was younger than her own thirty-five years, Joanna had known him only since he had become an adult. His diligent pursuit of wine, women and song was a common topic of conversation in Joanna’s Salon & Supplies, the Hatlow beauty salon/beauty supply/janitorial supply store she owned.

  Tonight Lane had broken more than bones; he had broken his mother’s heart. Again.

  Soon she and Clova were on the road back to Hatlow. They rode in silence for the most part. Clova showed little emotion and Joanna wanted to say nothing to make her feel worse.

  They arrived just as the world turned from darkness to predawn’s translucence. Joanna dropped Clova off with a brief good-bye and a promise to see her later.

  The Parker ranch was located ten miles south of town, but Joanna lived inside the city limits. By the time she reached her own cozy cottage, she had been up three hours short of twenty-four. Her exhausted body felt as if it had just completed a marathon run.

  In her garage, while she waited for the door to rumble to a close, she keyed in the number of the beauty salon and left a voice mail message for her mom to pick up when she opened. It was too early to call Mom at home.

  Joanna entered the house through the utility room door but didn’t turn on a light. On her way to her bedroom, she trudged through the kitchen, then the dining room, skirting furniture made colorless by dawn’s filmy light. She plopped her purse on the dining table as she passed it.

  With her last ounce of energy she changed into a pair of knit shorts and a holey T-shirt, then climbed into bed, thinking all the while that her life was killing her. Thirty-five was too damned old for this staying-up-all-night shit.

  The phone’s warble jarred her awake. She popped up on the edge of the mattress and grabbed the receiver, her brain cells and eyesight only half functioning. She grunted a greeting.

  “Hey, you, rise and s
hine.” Shari Huddleston, Joanna’s best friend. Shari, her husband, Jay, and Joanna had started kindergarten together. Brothers and sisters couldn’t know one another any better.

  Joanna shoved a hank of hair off her face and managed a harrumph. “What time is it?”

  “High noon. Where were you last night? We waited for you.”

  A frown creased Joanna’s brow. She just now remembered she had told Shari she might drop in at Sylvia’s Café after work and join her, Jay and Owen Luck for supper. “Crap, Shari, I forgot all about it.”

  Not entirely a true statement, but Joanna considered it a tactful fib rather than a lie. Owen Luck was a newly divorced accountant who looked after Shari and Jay’s business bookkeeping and their taxes. Both he and his ex-wife were long-standing customers in Joanna’s Salon & Supplies. And Hatlow was the gossip capital of Texas. Even if Joanna found Owen personally appealing, which she didn’t, going out with him wasn’t worth losing a customer. She had told them she would meet them in the first place only because Shari had nagged her into it.

  “I told Owen you probably got tied up,” Shari said. “We tried to call you on your cell, but all we got was voice mail.”

  Glancing down at her fingers, Joanna toyed with a hangnail, reluctant to reveal last night’s whereabouts and fuel a gossip bomb that had probably already exploded. “I didn’t have my cell with me. Was Owen mad?”

  “A little. He ate and left. Said he was going over to the bars at the state line.”

  Joanna’s mouth flatlined, but she wasn’t surprised. Many Hatlow citizens, including Joanna herself, sometimes sought to interrupt the sameness of small-town life in the bars and nightclubs at the New Mexico state line. Not even a beer could be bought legally in Wacker County.

  Shari chortled. “He said he wanted to go where he could find a woman who was more interested in him than in a bunch of damn chickens.”

  That remark brought a scowl to Joanna’s mouth. Everyone in Hatlow, including all of her friends, thought her poultry-and-egg venture was a dive off the deep end. And lately, she had to admit, she had entertained similar thoughts herself. “It’s just as well. One thing I do not need is a newly divorced guy crying on my shoulder about his ex-wife and three kids. Besides, Shari, he probably spends all his money on child support.”

  “Yeah, yeah. At least he can afford the price of supper. So where were you?” Joanna recognized the determination in her friend’s voice.

  “I hate to tell you. But you’ve probably already heard about Lane Cherry’s wreck. I drove Clova to the hospital in Lubbock.”

  “My God, Joanna. That must’ve taken all night. I did hear something about him having a wreck. How bad was he hurt?”

  Joanna didn’t even ask how Shari had heard. Gossip in Hatlow seemed to move through the ether from out of nowhere. “Pretty bad. Broken bones. Internal injuries. He’s out of commission for a good long while.”

  “Uh-oh. That’ll upset Megan Richardson. She’s sleeping with him, you know. She’s been telling everybody in town what a hot lay he is.” Shari giggled. “She says he’s hung like a bull. I hope, for her sake, that part of him wasn’t damaged.”

  Joanna’s shoulders sagged as she stared at a cheap framed print of a wolf face on her wall. When it came to relationships between men and women, Shari’s first thought was always of sex. Probably why she had given birth to four kids. As a girl growing up, Joanna’s source of sex education might have been her big sister, but as an adult, it had been and continued to be Shari Huddleston. “Shari, forgodsakes. He could have died. He could still die. He’s in ICU.”

  “I’m just repeating what Megan said.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about his bedroom prowess, but if that’s all Megan’s interested in, she might have to go elsewhere. If Lane makes it through this, I imagine he might not be laying for the rest of the year.”

  The digital clock on Joanna’s nightstand whirred and clicked past one o’clock. “And speaking of laying, I’ve got to get going. I’ve got to get out to Clova’s and check on my hens and gather my eggs.”

  She pictured Shari rolling her eyes.

  “Did he run into another car or what?” Shari asked, persistent in her quest to learn more details.

  “Rolled his pickup. Hit a power pole. Or vice versa.”

  “Where at?”

  “On the Lovington highway, just this side of the state line.”

  “Good God. How weird is that? There aren’t that many power poles along that highway.”

  “I know. I guess one just happened to be standing in the right place.”

  “I’ll bet he was partying at those joints at the state line. It’s a wonder he didn’t run into Owen Luck. Was he drunk?”

  Joanna almost said, Hell, yes, he was drunk, but then she remembered that Shari worked for the insurance agency that probably carried Lane’s auto insurance policy, if he had one. She suddenly didn’t want to be disseminating information to her. “I don’t know,” she lied. “He was already in surgery when Clova and I got there.”

  “I hope Clova’s okay. That boy’s given her a lot of grief.”

  “He’s not a boy. And that’s the disgusting part. But, yeah, Clova’s okay. She’s used to getting bad news about Lane.”

  “Bless her heart. Now would be a good time for Dalton to come home and help her. It’s a crying shame to have two grown sons and neither one of them does a damn thing for her. If my boys grow up to treat me like that, I’ll just kill ’em.”

  “Shari, I’ve got to get going,” Joanna said.

  “Wait a minute. Do you want Jay to fix up another date with Owen?”

  To Joanna’s annoyance, Shari and Jay constantly searched for “a man for Joanna.” “No, Shari. I’m not interested.”

  “Joanna, listen to yourself. I swear to God, you’re gonna die an old maid.”

  “Shari. I’ve got to go.”

  After she hung up, Joanna called the beauty salon and told her mom she had returned to the land of the living and that she would be in as soon as she tended the hens.

  “You don’t have to go out there,” Mom said. “I got your message ’bout you bein’ up all night. Alicia come in and I sent her out. She didn’t get all the eggs, but she filled up the feeders and changed the drinkin’ water.”

  Thank God. Alicia Garza was Joanna’s conscientious seventeen-year-old employee who helped her do almost everything. She worked for Joanna’s Salon & Supplies part-time and was one of the few people who didn’t make fun of Joanna. She was so fascinated by the egg business and the hens, Joanna let her choose names for the new chicks. She didn’t have to worry about the teenager doing a poor job.

  Joanna showered and shampooed, then dried her hair and dressed in a T-shirt, a pair of Cruel Girl jeans and boots, her attire for every occasion these days. A few dresses hung in her closet, but she couldn’t remember the last time she had worn one. She brushed on a scant layer of makeup, then spritzed herself with something that smelled like roses. Since she sold cosmetics and fragrances at the beauty supply store, she tried to always wear her products. The mirrored oval tray that sat on her bathroom counter held so many bottles of various colognes and perfumes, she didn’t even concern herself with the brand or name. She just picked one and sprayed it.

  She moved on into the kitchen. The sight of her purse on the dining table brought thoughts of Clova’s oldest son back to her. At the hospital, while she still remembered his phone number, she had gone into the ladies’ room and written it on a grocery store receipt she found in her purse. She chewed on her lower lip, wishing Clova hadn’t asked her not to call Dalton. The compulsion to do it anyway was almost overwhelming. The woman needed help from somewhere.

  You’re butting in, her sister would tell her. But was Lanita going to come to Hatlow, go out to the Parker ranch and help Clova? No.

  Stickin’ your nose in other people’s business gets you in a lotta trouble. Her mom had said those words to her just last week. Was Mom going out to the Pa
rker ranch to help Clova? No.

  Still undecided, Joanna veered her thoughts to something she could decide on: food. She peered into the refrigerator and saw poor pickings—sliced ham with an expired date on the package, sliced processed cheese and stale bread. No telling how long the bread had been there, but it appeared to be free of mold. She smoothed mayonnaise on a slice, added a squirt of mustard and folded it over some ham and cheese. It’s fine, she told herself as she filled a glass with ice cubes and Diet Pepsi.

  She carried her lunch to the dining table. The purse that held the California phone number sat there staring back at her like a dare. What would she say to a son who hadn’t returned to visit his mother more than a dozen times in twenty years? Without sounding like a hysterical lunatic, how could she convey to him the seriousness of his brother’s condition and the gravity of his mother’s dilemma?

  Through all of her dithering over the phone call, Clova’s state of mind, Lane’s condition and a million other niggling little worries, the bottom line kept pushing its way toward the forefront of her thoughts. Joanna hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, even to herself, because she hadn’t wanted to seem callous. But she couldn’t forget that her two hundred hens lived at the Parker ranch and she had mortgaged the very roof over her head to pay for her free-range egg business. Didn’t that fact alone make her interest in what happened to the Parker ranch extend beyond caring about Clova and Lane as friends?

  She easily convinced herself that it did. On a note of determination, she carried the phone and the yellow legal pad she kept beside it back to the table. While she ate, she made a few notes—“talking points,” the sophisticated businesspeople called them.

  Clova had told her Dalton traveled a lot. Since Joanna wasn’t sure he would even be at home, she decided to abandon talking points and wrote out the voice mail message she would read if necessary.

  She finished her sandwich, then dug the receipt from her purse and smoothed out the wrinkles. Maybe Clova would never know she had called him. The decision to butt in made, she summoned her nerve and keyed in the California number. Sure enough, she got voice mail. She left her rehearsed message and her business number, but the machine cut her off before she could leave her complete home number.