Unspeakable

by Sandra Brown

  But you’ve still got no business slathering on the Old Spice and going to supper at her invitation, he told himself as he let himself in through the back door, damn near breaking his neck by tripping over the threshold.

  In the kitchen, David was setting the table. Anna, looking a little flustered herself, was scurrying around setting bowls and platters of food on the antique sideboard. She indicated to Jack that he should serve himself buffet-style and handed him a dinner plate.

  He was amazed at the outpouring of generosity by the people to whom Delray hadn’t even been friendly. Jack had never experienced anything like this abundance of neighborly sympathy. As he spooned up potato salad and marinated cucumbers, baked beans, and honey-glazed ham spiked with cloves, he thought back to his mother’s death.

  He had grown up in Baytown, across the bay from Galveston. His mother had supported them by working in a dry cleaner’s ten or more hours a day. When she got home from work, she ate a quick meal and went to bed, sometimes crying herself to sleep. One of Jack’s earliest memories was of feeling helpless to relieve his mother’s apparent misery.

  On Sundays, her only day off, she had slept late, then did limited housekeeping and grocery shopping and retired early to get a head start on the coming week. The grueling routine didn’t leave much time for anything else. They rarely did anything frivolous or fun. Surviving consumed the majority of their time.

  Jack woke up one morning and found her dead in her bed. He’d called the police, who’d called the coroner, who’d made arrangements to take away the body. A routine autopsy revealed that a brain aneurysm had burst, killing her instantly. Without fuss or muss, she was laid to rest.

  His old man had shown up about a week later.

  Jack hadn’t known where to reach him to notify him of his wife’s death. He hadn’t been at the last address Jack’s mother had for him, so he was there by chance for one of his periodic visits.

  His father was only fifteen years older than Jack, younger than his wife by ten years, and much more handsome than she was pretty. He had derived cruel delight in pointing that out to her often. Jack was told that he had been the harvest of a wild oat. “Sown one Saturday night when I was shitfaced and looking at her through whiskey goggles,” his father had told him. When informed of her pregnancy, his father had married his mother, but that was where he felt his obligation ended.

  Whenever he did grace them with a visit, Jack hoped with a child’s innocent optimism that he would stay. He took Jack places. He laughed. He made his mother smile. Jack could hear her giggling in the night and knew that she was happy his daddy was in bed with her.

  But the happiness was always short-lived. A few days into the visit, the inevitable fighting would start. His dad bragged about the women he slept with when he was away. It was no empty boast. He had girlfriends among the local women, too. They called the house asking for him after he left.

  Sometimes he got drunk and yelled a lot. A few times irritated neighbors called the police, who came to settle him down. Jack wished for a father like other kids. He missed his dad when he was gone. But life was more peaceful and predictable when he was away.

  Although his mother died young and unhappy, the only tears cried over her passing were Jack’s. If his father ever visited her grave, Jack never knew about it. After coming home and finding Jack an orphan, he left again, telling his son, who was trying his damnedest to be brave and not to cry, that he had some business matters to finalize. “Then I’ll be back for good. I promise.”

  He didn’t return for six months. By that time the state had placed Jack with foster parents.

  When his mother died, nobody had come around with home-baked cookies and coconut cakes like the ones on the Corbetts’ sideboard. No one had lent a helping hand to Jack. The only hand extended to him was the open palm of the landlord demanding the rent, which he couldn’t pay because his old man had taken all the money in the house with him when he left.

  “I like this fluffy stuff with the baby oranges and the pineapples in it. Try some, Jack.”

  Following David’s recommendation, Jack tried the gelatin salad, and it was good.

  All of it was good—the home-cooked food, the homey ambience, the whole damn scene. There was only one thing wrong with this picture: him. No amount of grooming was going to change the fact that he didn’t belong here. He didn’t fit, and he was a damn fool for pretending even for one evening that he did.

  This wasn’t his house. This wasn’t his boy. He wouldn’t tuck him in and listen to his prayers, then go off to bed with the woman. Because she wasn’t his either and never would be. He believed that.

  And yet he just couldn’t stop looking at her. His stare drew hers like a magnet so that it became a source of irritation to David, who several times thumped on the table to get her attention, whining, “Mom, I’m talking to you.”

  Her nap had done her a world of good. Her tired, teary eyes had their blue sparkle back. The sleep had restored some color in her cheeks. She had exchanged the unflattering mourning dress for a pair of blue jeans and a ribbed tank top. The top was tight, but her hair was loose, brushing her shoulders every time she moved her head. Some glossy pink stuff was making her lips shine.

  Bad idea to look at her mouth, though.

  “May I be excused, Jack?”

  “Hmm?” Distracted, he turned to David, who repeated his question. “Shouldn’t you be asking your mom’s permission?”

  “I always asked Grandpa.”

  Jack looked toward Anna, who told David he could leave the table. He went into the living room to watch television. Over Anna’s protests Jack helped her put away the leftovers and load the dishwasher. When the chores were done, he edged toward the back door, ready to thank her and leave.

  But she motioned for him to follow her into the study, where she booted up the computer. Jack sat as he had before, straddling the chair seat backward and positioning it so he could see the computer screen and Anna could see his face.

  She typed, “I need your advice.”

  “Okay. Shoot.” The last word seemed to confuse her. He smiled, then said, “That means ‘go ahead.’ ”

  Delray had explained to him how the deaf must distinguish the appropriate usage when a word had several applications. In this case “shoot” could be used as a noun meaning the sprout of a plant. Or it could be the exclamation “Oh, shoot!” Or the verb to shoot. Or the idiom, as he’d used it. Anna had an excellent command of English. She was rarely stumped.

  “Please read this and give me your opinion,” Jack read off the computer screen. Having typed that, Anna pulled a letter from a file and handed it to him.

  The letterhead belonged to a regional timber company. According to the letter, the outfit wanted to partially clear some of the Corbetts’ wooded acreage. The company was offering to pay a competitive market price for the timber, which they estimated would amount to somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen thousand dollars. Jack whistled softly when he read that part.

  While he’d been reading the letter, Anna had been typing, “Delray wouldn’t even consider it. He didn’t want to change anything. He didn’t want the forest thinned out, especially by someone else. What do you think?”

  Jack massaged the back of his neck. “Well, it says here they’ll plant seedlings to replace the trees they cut down, which is good for the ecology. They’re going to pay you for the timber, and they do all the work. You should have a lawyer look at the contract before you sign, but what have you got to lose except the trees?”

  She wrote, “I can live without the trees. I can’t live without money. Lomax was at the funeral.”

  “The vulture.”

  “Exactly,” she typed. “I’m afraid he’ll call the note if I don’t agree to sell to EastPark. I must start repaying the principal. With the beef market as it is…” She looked to see if Jack was following her thought.

  “It supports you, but doesn’t make any extra.”

  “This timber deal
would give me some needed cash,” she typed. “Delray turned down similar offers. But if I don’t sell some of the timber, I might lose the whole property. To me it makes good business sense.”

  Jack smiled at her. “Lady, you don’t need my advice. In fact, I should be asking for yours on how to handle my own financial affairs.”

  She laughed and it was a beautiful sound. “I’ll call them tomorrow,” she typed. Then her expression grew troubled, and she wrote, “Is it wrong of me to go against Delray’s wishes the same day as his funeral? This letter is already weeks old. If I don’t give them an answer they might withdraw the offer.”

  “You’re the boss now, Anna. The last thing you should do is defend the way you manage the ranch. Especially to me. I’m no judge on how folks should manage their lives.”

  She looked into his eyes for a long time, then turned back to her keyboard. “What is your story, Jack?”

  He smiled wryly. “I don’t have a story.”

  “Everybody has a story.”

  “Not me. And, anyhow, it’s not very interesting.”

  Her expression told him that she didn’t believe that. It told him something else, too—that even though they had met less than two weeks ago, she knew him pretty well. She had been compensated for her deafness with the perception of anyone who has lost one of his or her five senses. Whereas the blind usually have sharper hearing and sensitivity, Anna possessed incredible insight into an individual’s thoughts.

  Jack read the words as they appeared on the blue computer screen. “You’re going to leave, aren’t you?”

  He signed his answer. “Yes.”

  Her eyes moved from his hand up to his lips, then to his eyes.

  It might be less than an hour, or a day or two, maybe a week at the outside, before the Herbolds were either captured or killed. Whenever it was, Jack would leave. Leaving was a foregone conclusion. He couldn’t stay.

  He didn’t look forward to it. When he came here, he hadn’t counted on getting so personally involved. He wouldn’t trade the experience of knowing Delray, Anna, and David. Collectively and individually they had made an impact on him, no denying that. They had given him some good memories to take with him. To most folks that wouldn’t seem like much, but to Jack Sawyer it was a lot, a hell of a lot. It was the best he could hope for.

  Anna signed a single-word question. He didn’t recognize the sign, but it was safe to guess. “When? Soon, Anna.”

  She cast her eyes down, but only briefly. One corner of her lips twitched slightly with what he took for regret. Then, turning back to the keyboard, she wrote, “Will you do something for me before you go?”

  “Of course. I won’t leave you high and dry. You make up a list of projects, and I’ll see that they’re all finished before—”

  She stopped him with a wave of her hand. “No, a favor,” she typed. “A personal favor.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Here’s what I think.” Cecil speared a dill pickle with his pocketknife and pulled it from the jar. “I think we ought to lay low for as long as we can.”

  “How long do you figure is long?”

  “Several days. Maybe even a week.”

  “A week? Jesus! Are you stupid or just plain crazy?”

  “Hear me out, Carl. We ought to let things cool down before we venture out. You want one?”

  Cecil offered the harpooned pickle to Carl, who actually recoiled. “Fuck, no. It smells like dirty feet. Who planned our menu, anyway?”

  “Connie and me have been stocking up on groceries when they came on sale. Anything nonperishable. Because we didn’t know how long we’d be here, and there’s no refrigeration.”

  “No shit,” Carl muttered as he drank from a can of lukewarm Budweiser.

  Throughout the day his mood had gone from foul to fouler. The hideout cabin belonged to somebody Connie knew, a cousin’s brother-in-law or some such nonsense. Carl had tuned her out as she explained the lineage.

  Her description hadn’t sounded very promising. He’d held out little hope that he was going to be charmed by the accommodations, but he had clung to a sliver of a chance that he would be pleasantly surprised.

  Unfortunately, the structure lived up to his low expectations and then some. They had arrived late last evening, but even darkness couldn’t conceal the cabin’s defects. It wasn’t much more habitable than the hut he’d shared with Myron for the last few days leading up to the bank robbery.

  That was the only thing he felt good about—the robbery. At least that much of Cecil’s planning had panned out. Not every bill had been counted, but they had left the bank with more cash than Carl had anticipated.

  What a damn shame that it had to be split four ways.

  Sitting on that much cash was making him antsy to spend some. He was rich now. Money bought power, respect, and fear. People were going to know who Carl Herbold was. From here on, folks would sit up and take notice of him. Enemies old and new would shiver in their shoes whenever they heard his name. Cash in hand was as good as a sword. Carl planned to wield it mercilessly, hacking down anyone who opposed him. All his life he’d had to answer to other people, assholes for the most part. Not anymore.

  But it was hard to accept that he was a rich man who left fear and trembling in his wake. Look at him. He was eating unheated pork’n’beans from the can in a hot, dirty one-room cabin in which a varmint had died not too long ago and left an indelible odor. He was cut out for a better life than this, and he wanted it sooner rather than later.

  He crumpled the empty beer can in his hand. “Why wait so long, Cec?”

  “Because every cop within a five-hundred-mile radius is on the lookout for us.”

  “The car’s clean,” Carl argued. They had switched cars fifteen miles from the bank. Connie had left the second car parked at a twenty-four-hour truck stop, where vehicles came and went at all hours, the theory being that it would go unnoticed. “They won’t be looking for this car, Cec. Unless you lied to me.”

  “Why don’t you just lay off him?” Connie piped in.

  “Why don’t you just kiss my ass?” Carl shot back.

  “The car’s clean,” Cecil quickly interjected. “So are the plates. But if we’re on the road, we’re exposed. Somebody is going to recognize us. The smart thing to do is reduce the risk factor.”

  “Pretty fancy words there, big brother. Nonperishables. Radius. Risk factor. You’ve been watching a lot of HBO.” Carl hitched a thumb toward Connie. “Or did she teach you all those big words?”

  “All I’m saying is that we should stay here until our pictures aren’t showing up on TVs all over the state,” Cecil replied. “You want one of these peaches, honey?”

  He offered a can of spiced peaches to Connie. She fished one out with a plastic spoon, then picked it up with her fingers. Smiling suggestively at Carl, she took a bite, virtually sucking the flesh of the fruit off the pit. Juice dribbled down her chin. The symbolism didn’t escape him, and he realized that was her intention.

  Laughing, she wiped away the sticky syrup with the back of her hand, and playfully poked Cecil in the gut with a fingernail painted the color of an eggplant. “Since I’ve been seeing you, my table manners have gone to pot. My mama would have a conniption fit.”

  Carl scowled into the can of pork’n’beans. He had pretended to turn the ass-chewing he’d given Cecil into a joke, but he’d meant every word he’d said. This bitch had made herself useful during the actual holdup. Having an insider had helped, no doubt. She had also proved her mettle by blasting that cop to kingdom come; no argument there, either.

  But the last thing a group of men needed when they were on the run was a Connie Skaggs throwing in her two cents’ worth every step along the way. This one had a fatter mouth than most, and she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. Even more bothersome was that she wasn’t afraid of him.

  Cursing, Carl jammed the plastic spoon into the can of Van Camp’s and set it on the table with a hard thump.

  “
You through with those, Carl?”

  He motioned for Myron to help himself. He had scraped clean a can of ravioli and was swabbing the bowl of his spoon with his tongue. Before that, he’d polished off a tin of sardines. Now he started on the beans.

  This is fuckin’ great, Carl mentally grumbled. He should have a señorita with tits that would knock your eyes out straddling his lap while he swilled hard liquor and smoked an expensive cigar. Instead he was stuck in this stinking godforsaken shack in the middle of nowhere. His companions were his cowardly brother, a piece of tail that was nothing to brag about, and an idiot with the eating habits of a goat.

  He didn’t like the way Cecil had taken charge, either. Who had anointed him lord and master? Connie. Yeah, she was the culprit who had filled Cecil’s head with a lot of crap about who should be boss.

  Carl knew how easily Cecil could be swayed. Connie had played him like a fiddle. He had been easily flattered into thinking he was braver and smarter than he was.

  When the time came, Carl would set him straight.

  In the meantime, he would play along. He opened a package of salted peanuts with his teeth, spit out the chunk of cellophane, and poured the nuts into his palm. “Another thing I don’t get about this plan of yours, Cecil, is why we’re taking this route. We’re traveling due south. If my geography is right, if you start in far northeast Texas, shouldn’t you head southwest if you want to bump into Mexico?”

  “Not enough places to hide out there,” Cecil mumbled. Connie had stuffed one of the slippery peaches into his mouth and he was talking around it.

  “Can I have one?” Myron asked.

  Connie hesitated, then slid the can across the table toward him. He plunged his skinny fingers into the can and fished out a peach. “Oh, Jesus,” she screeched. “You whitewashed freak! You ruined them! Do you think I’d eat one of those now?”

  “Shut up,” Carl thundered. “Can’t hear myself think when you start that goddamn caterwauling. What were you saying about places to hide?”

  “If we strike out across west Texas, they can spot us by plane, helicopter.”