Sweet Return

by Anna Jeffrey

  “And just what’s she supposed to do with her chickens? They ain’t like cows. You can’t just herd ’em around or get ’em all upset. They got feelin’s.”

  Chicken feelings? Bullshit. He leaned forward, holding his mother’s gaze. “I don’t know what she’ll do. That’s not the problem I’m dealing with. But chickens or no, you can’t just on a whim give away a bunch of land to someone outside the family. This has been Parker land forever.”

  “It ain’t a whim. Joanna is family to me. Nobody’s ever treated me as good as she has.” Her dark eyes began to shimmer with moisture.

  She might be on the verge of tears, but her words came at him like a punch. And at the same time, so did the realization that this was what his absence from Hatlow and his failure to maintain a relationship with his mother had wrought.

  “And I don’t have nothin’ else to give her,” she added when he didn’t reply.

  A kaleidoscope of unpleasant childhood memories came at him. Perhaps not, he thought bitterly, but she had somehow managed to find enough money to hire a lawyer to do something unnecessary. He rose, scraping his hand through his hair and putting distance between himself and the woman he had never understood.

  He walked over to the dining room window that overlooked the driveway and the chicken yard. In his opinion, those friggin’ chicken houses looked like piles of trash. The mismatched feeders and waterers looked like a cobbled-up hodgepodge. And he didn’t even know a word to express his opinion of the stupid flags and plastic owls perched around the chicken yard. In general, the whole area suddenly looked even trashier and dirtier than before.

  Memories tangled in his mind: the hours of love-making in Joanna’s bed; his entire childhood and all of the times his mother had failed him or had taken Earl’s side against him. “Those chickens live on fewer than twenty acres. That’s a far cry from a section.”

  His mother sat back in her chair. “If you just got to do it, drill your well somewheres else. It ain’t like there ain’t no more land.” The cold defiance in her voice pierced him.

  Dalton’s teeth clenched. He couldn’t believe she could be so pigheaded to her own detriment. But as that thought came to him, so did another one. She was perfectly capable of cutting her nose off to spite her face. God knew he had seen her do it a hundred times.

  “No,” he said firmly, giving as good as he got from her. He went back to the table, slid into his chair and leaned forward, both hands on the table. “Mom. I’m willing to invest a helluva lot of money to try to save this goddamn place. Not for myself and not even for Lane. For you. I found that old well with a metal detector. It’s right square underneath that donkey shack. It’ll cost me less and the experts say it’s more of a sure thing to drill alongside it.”

  She turned her head and looked away. “I wish I’d never told you where that ol’ oil well was. I ain’t goin’ back on what I promised Joanna.”

  Patience abandoned him like a flock of spooked buzzards. Rage he hadn’t felt in years exploded within him. “Look at me, Mom.”

  Her head slowly turned back to him, her mouth set in a flat line.

  “Here’s a news flash,” he said softly, struggling to keep a civil tone in his voice and holding her eyes with his. “I’ve taken a pretty good look around here. This place is overstocked, overgrazed and debt heavy. Everything, the barns, the outbuildings, the fences, they’re all falling apart from neglect. And you’re letting a woman use what was one of our prime pastures to raise a bunch of goddamn stinky chickens without even paying for it. All of the above adds up to gross incompetence.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she sat there stoically and took his venom. But, hell, he figured she was conditioned to it. How many times had he seen her cowed and even knocked around by Earl, only to come to the bastard’s defense later if somebody condemned him.

  “You’re out of options,” he went on. “Me paying the taxes bought you some time. The government helping to pay Lane’s medical bills will save you a few dollars, but the way things are going, you can’t keep this place up.

  “Lane’s coming home in another couple of weeks, but as for work, he’s gonna be worthless. In fact, taking care of him will add more work. You’re not physically able to do it all, and you can’t afford to hire help. Hell, Lane won’t even have a goddamn driver’s license when the dust all clears here. I don’t know the DUI laws in Texas these days, but they might even throw his ass in jail. How’re you gonna manage after that?”

  He put his fingertips on the edge of the lease and nudged it closer to her. “The ranch and the land have always meant more to you than anything.” He paused, letting silence surround them. “Or anyone,” he added because he felt mean. “I recommend you do yourself and the Parker ranch a favor and sign this lease. Let me try to fix this problem. Because I won’t lift a goddamn finger without a legal document that protects my money.”

  Her lips twisted into a sneer. “Money. If that’s all you’re interested in—”

  “Damn right, that’s all I’m interested in. Because you know what? Mine came a little harder earned than some. Too many times it came at the risk of my life.”

  “Don’t throw that up at me. And don’t tell me you wanna do this for me. You wanna do it for y’own self. I ain’t dumb. I know you’re gonna get money out o’ this for y’self.”

  She sat there glaring at him with a look that had been directed at him often in his youth. He no longer feared it. Christ, he had been glared at by machete-toting dictators. “And what’s wrong with that?” he said coldly. “I’ve never asked you for anything, Mother. But I’m asking you now for a little cooperation. God knows, you owe me a little something if, for no other reason, because I’m your son.”

  She sat there a few beats. Clova the Stoic. “I’ll have to think on it,” she said.

  Dalton tapped his finger on the lease. “Don’t take too long. I need to get back to LA. This trip to Hatlow’s costing me.”

  She stood up and walked to her bedroom.

  “Goddammit,” he growled. He shoved his chair back and stomped outside. He got all the way to the barn before he began to calm and his racing heart began to slow. Inside the dim space of the ramshackle barn, he sank to a hay bale, realizing for the first time since his return that nothing, absolutely nothing, had changed between him and his mother.

  He let a dose of self-pity seep into his thinking. In school, the only period of his life he and his mother had really shared, he won many scholastic awards, but she had rarely been present when he received them. He had been an above-average athlete, but she had never gone to watch a game or a track meet. She had been present at his graduation from high school, but, he had always believed, only because he had informed her he would be leaving home for good the next day. In the Marine Corps, he had climbed in rank in record time, but he hadn’t told her and she hadn’t asked. In fact, to this day, she didn’t even know the branch of the military in which he had served. She thought he had spent eight years in the army.

  In the span of a heartbeat, he squelched the unrealistic notion he had entertained that he might actually come back here and make this his base of operation. So he could be around “family.” Family. That was still a fuckin’ joke.

  His mother’s promise to give Joanna a whole goddamn section of land showed the two women’s relationship in a new light. Just how long had Joanna been working on his mother to instill such blind, hardheaded loyalty? Jesus Christ, had his initial impression of Joanna been accurate after all? Had she taken advantage of a lonely old woman?

  He thought of the special connection he thought he had found with Joanna, which might be the biggest joke of all. Had he fallen into the trap of her Pollyanna notions of the world? Had he been duped by the naive hope of a small-town girl who, by her own admission, had seen nothing of the world? Or had she simply duped him in the same way she had conned his mother? Quite an accomplishment considering that he thought he was beyond being fooled by women.

  He walked to the barn
door and looked out into the pasture where the horses grazed. His enthusiasm for saddling the gray and rounding up the cattle tomorrow had vanished. Now it became a huge chore he dreaded. Yep, he had to get out of here. Had to get back to the swimming pool he had missed daily.

  His cell phone bleated and he plucked it from his belt. “Yo. Hi, Candace.”

  “Dalton. Guess what.” He heard breathless excitement in her voice. “I got a part. I’ve got to leave here.”

  “A part?”

  “Remember that TV Western I auditioned for a long time ago?”

  Dalton searched his mind but had no memory of it. It seemed that she had been auditioning for some damn movie every week. “Not offhand, but—”

  “They’re shooting in British Columbia,” she said excitedly.

  “That’s good, baby. I’m glad.”

  “I’ve got to get up there by next week.”

  His stomach sank. “Christ, so soon? The house will be vacant.”

  “I guess that’s your problem, Dalton. You’re the one who said I needed to get a job and start taking care of myself. I stayed here and looked after things like I said I would, but now I want to go.”

  Dalton rolled his eyes. Yep, he had told her that because it was true. He had no right to detain her. “Look, darlin’, I’m about to wind up here. Another week. Can you wait ’til I get back?”

  “They said they want me to be there next week. I’ve already bought my plane ticket.”

  For a fleeting moment, he wondered where she had gotten the money for a plane ticket. He had given her a little money for her efforts, but he doubted it was enough to buy a plane ticket to Canada. “Okay, I hear you. I’ve got a couple of things going on here right now, but I’ll call you back tonight and we can talk about it.”

  “Oh, and Dalton?”

  “Yeah, what?

  “A real estate agent came by here. She said someone would like to see this house, but I told her it isn’t for sale.”

  “Did she leave a card? What’s her phone number?”

  “Du-uh. I didn’t take her card. I told her the place isn’t for sale.”

  Dalton disconnected and overcame the urge to throw the phone against the barn wall. Candace had gotten a job? Jesus, Joseph and Mary. She had actually gotten hired by somebody. And she wanted to leave town. Now he had no choice. He had to return to LA.

  Mentally making a new plan, he returned to the house. He went to the refrigerator and dragged out a beer. His mother came into the kitchen.

  “I thought about it,” she said. “I don’t un’erstand why you drillin’ your well would keep me from givin’ Joanna a little piece o’ land.”

  “A section isn’t a little piece. A section will graze twenty or so cows. Why would you want to give away a part of the ranch? To her or to anybody? I don’t understand it, Mom. You’ve let her have run of things around here for over two years. And in the second place, it isn’t just my oil well. As clichéd as it might sound, I’m trying to save the goddamn ranch. And right now, the oil well is about the only idea I’ve got and about the best I can do.”

  “I don’t wanna talk about it,” she said. “I’ve signed your lease.” She handed over the document. “But it ain’t keepin’ me from givin’ Joanna land for her chickens.”

  He took the document, holding back the sigh of relief he felt over her signing it. “For all I care, you can give her the the whole goddamn place. Except for that land around that old oil well.”

  He glanced down at the childlike signature. He had forgotten that his mother could barely read and write. Her father, his granddad, had seen no reason for women to be educated.

  With the lease in hand, he was free to pursue Plan A. He started for the front door, folding the document and sliding it into his shirt pocket.

  “Dalton?”

  He stopped at the door without looking back. “Yeah?”

  “I only signed that lease for one reason. I signed it ’cause you’re my son. If you make a well…if the deal turns out and it helps the ranch, that’s just a extra blessin’.”

  For him, the fight was over. He turned and faced her. “Mom—”

  “You don’t have to tell me I owe you, Dalton. I know it. I know I never did right by you.”

  “Water over the dam,” he said in a lifeless monotone. “I’ve put it behind me. I don’t even hate Earl as much as I used to. I’ve seen worse.”

  “I wish I could make you know how it was,” she said. He heard sorrow in her voice, saw pain in her eyes. Her hand braced on the dining table and she sank to a chair. “When I was a girl, I didn’t have nobody takin’ up for me, no brothers or nothin’. Not my mama, either. I ’spect it wasn’t that easy for Daddy to find somebody to marry me. But he found Earl. I thought I didn’t have no choice. Then after Lane come along, well…my future was…was what it was.”

  Dalton’s temples began to throb. Two hours’ sleep wasn’t enough. “What are you telling me? You didn’t care about Earl?”

  A tear trailed down her cheek. “I mostly felt sorry for him, Dalton. He was weak.”

  Dalton shook his head and stared at the ceiling, begging for understanding. “But he treated you awful. He treated me and Lane awful. If you knew you were the stronger, why did you put up with it?”

  “It was what Daddy expected me to do.” She shook her head and wiped her eyes. “I was his wife, Dalton.”

  Only today, Dalton had begun to consider that the same provincialism that had influenced and plagued all of the previous generations of Parkers was still alive and well in his mother. If he hadn’t yet come to a solid conclusion about that, this conversation confirmed it. As tolerance and compassion filtered through him, his heart opened and he saw his mother in a way he hadn’t seen her before. He walked over and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “When you was a little boy,” she said, her eyes downcast, “I used to think you’d be the one that would keep the ranch a-goin’ after I’m dead and gone. If you could come back here, maybe things could be different now.”

  A burn rushed to his eyes and a huff burst from his throat. “I don’t know, Mom. I just don’t know.” He squeezed her shoulder. “But I’ll think about it.”

  She nodded. “That’d be real good if you would.”

  He squeezed her shoulder again and walked outside without looking back. He was in danger of bawling himself. He crossed the driveway to the chicken yard and stared at the nasty damn things gathered in little clusters, scratching and pecking and clucking in the sun. Two began to peck at another one, squawking and chasing it away from their little group. He thought of women.

  That stupid self-pity came back again. Most of the deep pain in his life had been administered by women.

  Before negative thoughts could derail him, he pulled himself together, plucked his cell phone from his belt and called Skeeter Vance.

  Chapter 26

  Though having so little sleep made Joanna feel as if she were functioning in a vacuum, her day had gone better than any in a long while. The sun had shone brightly in a cloudless sky, the temperature had been warm rather than hot and the air almost crackled with the ambience of fall. Her mom had refrained from carping at her about nothing.

  She had spent a huge block of time smiling at her memories and humming along with the radio. Only one question loomed at the forefront of thought. Would Dalton tell Clova about them? Would they tell her together? They would have to tell her something. How could they continue to see each other if they didn’t?

  She reached the ranch before sundown, coming to a stop in her usual place in front of her egg-washing room. As she shoved the Silverado into park, Dalton came out of the barn stalking toward her in his usual get-out-of-my-way gait. He had on work clothing, a chambray shirt and jeans and boots. Even from the front seat of her pickup, she could see that his hair curled at his collar. He looked rowdy and sexy and downright delectable. An awareness of his maleness snaked through her and she wondered if the sight of him would always affect her th
at way. She opened the pickup door and turned to scoot out.

  “I’m going back to LA in a few days,” he said, his voice brittle as glass. No hello, no kiss. Her heart began to race.

  His face was a thundercloud, his eyes an onyx stone. She still didn’t know him well enough to anticipate his moods and behavior, but the bubble of happiness she had enjoyed all day popped. She stayed where her feet hit the ground behind her pickup door and drew a calming breath. “Oh?”

  His fists jammed against his belt. “I’m giving you notice. You need to do something with those chickens. I’m putting an oil well down over there.” He pointed a finger toward the chicken yard. “It’s gonna be just about where that donkey shack is. That fence will be relocated in the next two or three weeks. You’ve got that much time.”

  Her mind reeled, leaving her speechless. “Uh…well—”

  “This ranch is broke. I’m hoping to see enough money to pay it out of debt. I’ve already hired a drilling contractor. I’m leaving it up to him to get the fence moved where he thinks it should be. I’m going back to LA, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  “But—but…That—that…” Dear God, she was breathless and stammering. She stiffened her spine. “That won’t leave much room for my hens.”

  “Take it up with my mother. She’s the one you dealt with in the first place.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go.” He gave her his back, stalked toward the old work truck, climbed into it and drove away in a cloud of caliche dust.

  She stood there unmoving for long seconds as her thoughts tried to jell. Why had he picked a fight with her? Why hadn’t he given her some kind of explanation? Or plainly asked her in a simple conversation to move the chickens?

  She had already been a victim of his ire when they first met. She knew he pulled no punches in a skirmish. She also knew he had learned to fight for survival as a child. He might have the strength of will and character she wanted in a companion and lover, but those traits also meant he viewed every battle as one to win. Tears rushed to her eyes, but she blinked them back and headed for the house.