“While I’m here,” I said to the salesclerk, giving Dove the eye, “I have a hat I left to be cleaned and blocked. Could you see if it’s ready yet?”
Dove had the grace to turn slightly pink. “I see a real nice-lookin’ shirt over there that might near fit Ben. May as well pick it up for him.”
“Good idea,” I agreed.
While our purchases were being wrapped, I wandered over to see how Angel and Becky were faring.
“You’re just in time,” Becky said. “I think we’ve finally got the right look. Okay,” she yelled into the dressing room. “You can come out now.”
“I’m not coming out,” I heard him grumble.
“If you don’t, we’re coming in to get you,” Angel called.
I gasped when he walked out wearing the most sheepish look I’d ever seen on his face. Across the store, one of the female clerks let out a loud wolf whistle.
His faded, prewashed Wranglers fit him snugly in all the right places; a deep turquoise Western shirt with white pearl buttons made his blue eyes glow against his dark olive skin. With glossy Roper boots, a black cowboy hat, a silver belt buckle you could fry an egg on, and his thick sexy mustache, he looked like the star of a Western movie.
“Wow,” I said, scanning him from boots to hat.
“George Strait,” Becky said, “eat your heart out.”
“Don’t even think I will ever wear these clothes again after tomorrow,” he warned me, his face flushing an attractive burnt sienna.
“Wow,” I repeated.
“So what did you buy?” he asked on the drive back.
“Something she shouldn’t be wearing in public,” Dove carped. I almost fell out of my seat when Kathryn smiled and gave me an amused wink.
Gabe grinned. “Oh, yeah? Sounds interesting.”
I complained in front of the mirror the next day as we got ready for the party. “I wish my legs were tanner, then maybe the bruises wouldn’t show as much. But I refuse to wear pantyhose in this weather.”
“Dove’s right,” he said, looking at my outfit with both a warm-blooded male appreciation and husbandly uncertainty. “That dress is pretty short.”
“With the way you look in those skintight Wranglers, Friday, ain’t nobody going to be looking at me.”
“These things are embarrassing,” he said, inspecting himself in the long mirror. “Becky and Angel made me buy a size too small.”
“Nope,” I said. “They’re perfect. That’s how cowboys wear them when they dress up. And today you’ve promised to be a real cowboy.”
At that moment, a pained look swept over his face, and I knew he was thinking about Dewey. I also knew that if and when he was ready to talk about it . . . and anything else, it would have to come in his own time. I didn’t have the right to push him to open up any faster than he felt comfortable doing. I had the right to ask—and I would keep on asking—but intimacy had to be freely given, just like love.
I slipped my arms around his neck, kissing him hard. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” I whispered.
He took my face in his hands and looked at me for a long moment. “I wouldn’t want to live without you,” he said.
At the party, for the first time since we’d been in Kansas, we relaxed and just had fun. Everyone got into the spirit of Becky’s theme, and there was enough denim, leather, and pearl buttons to outfit an Alan Jackson road show. The highlight of the evening was the opening of our wedding presents. Some were practical, like the towels that Janet and Lawrence bought us; some were funny, like the matching T-shirts from Angel that said “There’s No Place Like Home On the Range” along with a Victoria’s Secret gift certificate made out to Gabe. Others were touching, like the antique Wedding Ring quilt from Becky and Stan. When all the presents appeared to have been opened, I looked over at Otis, who had been the last person to arrive at the party. He was holding a tiny gold box in his hands. The smile on my face was so big, I thought my face would splinter.
“What are you and Otis smirking at each other for?” Gabe asked.
“I think there’s one more present,” I said.
Otis passed the box to Gabe.
“You open it,” Gabe said.
“No,” I said. “This is one you have to open.”
He untied the ribbon slowly, his face puzzled, until he lifted the lid of the shiny box and took out the worn truck key. For a minute, I thought I might see my new husband cry for the first time. Without a word, he stood up and walked out the front door. The old Chevy pickup was parked behind our rented Camaro.
The rest of us followed Gabe out, crowding behind him on the porch.
“Oh, Otis,” Kathryn said, her hand on her chest. A tear slowly made its way down her cheek.
Otis cleared his throat and stuck his hands deep into his pockets, trying not to show the emotion he was feeling, too. When Gabe turned to thank him, he said, “Thought since you live out there in cattle country now, you’d be needin’ yourself a truck.”
During the next half hour, the men did what all men do when one of them gets a new vehicle—they walked around it, admired the paint job, kicked the tires, checked under the hood. Dove, Becky, Angel, and Janet wandered back into the house to get the steaks and chicken ready to barbecue. Eventually the only two people left on the porch were Kathryn and me.
“It’s been a rough two weeks for you,” she said, resting her hand on one of the posts.
“Yes,” I said. “But there were good times, too.” I turned and faced her. “We didn’t get to know each other very well, but I’m glad we met. For Gabe’s sake.”
She studied me with her clear, no-nonsense eyes. “My son isn’t an easy person to love.”
I lifted my chin slightly and met her direct gaze, knowing she wouldn’t fall for any feigned protestations. “No, he isn’t.”
She smiled slightly. “Neither was his father. And he is so much like his father. Gelio and I had some fights that would, as my father used to say, peel the paint off a barn door.”
I felt my eyes widen, surprised by this woman for the second time in two days.
“Yes, he really upset the apple cart in this old schoolmarm’s life, no doubt about it.” For a moment, her eyes filmed over. “But for all the passion in our fighting, it didn’t hold a candle to the making up.”
“Yes,” I said, smiling in agreement. “There’s always that.”
Her lips tightened, as if to say, Enough of this nonsense. “So, Benni Harper, do you love my son?” The question was put with the same tart inflection I could imagine her using when she demanded that one of her fifth graders name the first ten Presidents of the United States.
I answered without hesitation. “Yes, ma’am, I do.”
She dropped her head in an approving nod. “Well, I guess a mother can’t ask for any more than that.” She started for the door, then turned around. “One more thing. About your name.”
Involuntarily I stiffened. Just when we’d made some kind of bridge, here was a stick of dynamite all fused up and ready to blow it to smithereens. “What about it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“I want you to know I agree with you and I told Gabe so. I asked him how he would like it if I remarried and changed my name to Terkle or Lundquist or Perkins. He, of course, was horrified. He said that would be an insult to his father’s memory. I said he was absolutely right. I told him that the only thing you have left to honor Jack with is his name and that he didn’t have a right to take that away. Gabe, after all, has you.”
I looked up at her, my heart pounding as hard as if I’d sprinted a mile. She had said what I’d never been able to verbalize. In the last year and a half, each time I’d taken Jack’s name off bank accounts, insurance policies, next-of-kin listings, it felt like he died over and over again. I guess I realized unconsciously that soon there would be nothing left of him except the engraving on his headstone. She was right—Jack’s name was the last thing on earth that he had left. Unlike Gabe, who had a son t
o carry on his name, Jack had only me.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You don’t have to thank me, Benni,” she said, touching my shoulder lightly. “Just take good care of my son.”
After the men were done admiring the truck, Gabe came over to me. “Let’s go for a ride,” he said.
“But we’re going to eat in a minute.”
“They’ll save us some. I want to show you something. Actually, there are two places I need to go.”
The first stop was someplace I’d been wondering about since we’d arrived in Kansas. He pulled into the El Paso Cemetery and drove slowly down the gravel paths, stopping when he came to the right spot.
“Come on,” he said, opening the door and taking my hand.
It was an old-fashioned cemetery, the kind that looked just like what it was instead of trying to fool people into thinking it was a park or a golf course. We crisscrossed through rows of graves until we came to his father’s. It was an upright black marble stone with a rounded top.
Rogelio Tomas Ortiz—January 30, 1923-June 12, 1966—Dearly loved and missed by his wife, children and friends—Vaya Con Dios.
Gabe stood for a long minute staring at the grave. Looking at the dates, I realized for the first time that Gabe was now the same age his father had been when he died.
“When my father and I were alone, he would speak only Spanish to me,” he said in a low voice. “He never told me about how important my Mexican heritage was . . . I mean, he never actually said the words. But he showed it to me. In that way and in lots of others. That’s why I was raised Catholic. It must have been a deal he and Mom worked out early, because until the day he died, I would go to Mass with him every Sunday, and Mom and the girls would go to the Methodist church.” He smiled to himself. “As a teenager, I used to complain about it because I thought the Methodist girls were prettier than the Catholic ones. Anyway, I heard they kissed better.” He looked at me and winked. “Of course, if I’d only known then what I know now about Baptist girls . . .”
“Better not let Dove hear you say that,” I said, laughing. I punched him on his good arm. He slipped it around me, pulling me close. In the white-oak trees surrounding us, a flock of birds rustled the leaves. We both looked up. He looked again at the headstone and started talking quietly, almost as if to himself.
“No one knows the whole story about my Silver Star. We were ambushed that day—me and Dewey and Sal and this fat old colonel from Maryland. The colonel was just along for, as he put it, the ‘life experience.’ He wanted to see what his boys were going through. Our lieutenant told us to take him out, hump him around for a few days until he got tired and dirty and couldn’t take the leeches anymore, then bring him back. We walked him in circles for two days, telling him we were scouting for snipers. He had no idea we were just screwing with his head—letting him play soldier. Sal got word over the wire that some Vietcong had been spotted, and we’d better get our asses back to the main camp. We were ambushed trying to get the colonel back. We never did see them. It was crazy, like bushes and trees were trying to kill you. There must not have been that many, because after a couple of hours they stopped firing. We’d either capped them all or they ran off. But the colonel, Dewey, and Sal had all taken a hit and were out. I remember standing there, staring at them, thinking, What do I do now?
“Sal jabbed me with the butt of his M16. ‘You gotta get ’em out, mano,’ he said. ‘I’m todos para la chingada .’ All messed up. They’d got him in the legs. ‘Take them to that clearing about half a mile back,’ he said. ‘I’ll call and tell them it’s a colonel. Those puercos will get a chopper there with no shit asked.’
“ ‘What about you?’ I asked. He nodded at Dewey and the colonel. ‘They’re out, man. I can still protect myself.’ He held up his rifle. So I did what he said. I carried Dewey out first, then the colonel. I had to drag him, he was so big.
“ ‘Don’t forget me, man,” Sal said when I came back for the colonel. ‘Don’t let that chopper fly without me.’
“ ‘I won’t,’ I said.
“The chopper was waiting when I got the colonel there. Sal was right; because it was a colonel, we got service on a silver platter. They yelled at me to get in, and I screamed, ‘There’s one more.’
“ ‘No time,’ the medic yelled back. ‘They’ve spotted a mess of Vietcong advancing. Orders are to fly with what we got.’
“I jammed my rifle in his throat and told him I’d hunt him down and kill him if he was gone when I got back. I ran back for Sal. That’s when I got this.” He touched his right hip.
“It slowed me down, and by the time I reached Sal, they’d already gotten him. He took a round right in the skull. There was skin and blood and pieces of bone everywhere. There was so much blood. I swear I couldn’t believe a human being had that much blood inside him . . .” His voice caught. “There was one of them left scavenging. He was pocketing the gold Saint Christopher’s medal that Sal’s grandmother had given him. I told him to didi mau. Get out. This kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. He just stared at me with these black empty eyes. Then he held up his hands to show he was unarmed. I pointed to the medal he was holding. He threw it back down on Sal’s body, turned around, and started walking into the bush. Then, without thinking twice, I fired a round into him. I threw Sal over my shoulder and carried him to the chopper.” He took a ragged breath and looked back out over his father’s headstone. “So Señora Quintera got her son’s body, an unarmed Vietnamese boy got shot in the back, and I got a Silver Star. Like Dewey said, a regular John Wayne movie.”
I laid my hand on his arm. “It was a war, Gabe. They had just killed your friend. What you did was . . .” I paused, trying to think of the right word, remembering how I felt when Dewey pointed that gun at Gabe. “Understandable.”
He shook me off. “I shot a kid in the back, Benni. And I was given a medal simply because the person I happened to save was a colonel. Do you realize how political those medals are? Do you think I would have gotten it if I’d left him there and saved Sal first? Do you know how many times I’ve wondered if what I did was the right thing?”
“What you did was right, Gabe,” I said. “I know you. You didn’t save the colonel because he was ranked higher. You saved him first because he was the most helpless. What Sal told you was right. When you left him, he was still able to protect himself.”
He turned hard eyes on me. “That’s why I don’t care about that medal. It’s just a fancy way of saying you killed people. That’s all.”
We stood for a moment staring at each other. “One more thing,” he said.
“What?”
“About my drinking.”
I took a deep breath, wondering what other revelations he was about to pour out. I had said I wanted him to open up to me, and like a dam’s overflowing floodgate, it appeared to be coming out all at once. “What about it?”
He leaned over and ran his fingertips over his father’s engraved name. “You know my father died of a heart attack.”
“Yes.”
“A couple of years ago I went in for a physical exam. The doctor jumped all over me because my cholesterol and triglycerides were so high and my blood pressure was in another stratosphere. After reading my medical history, he said if I didn’t quit living on junk food, start exercising, and learn to handle stress better, I’d be visiting my father sooner than I’d probably prefer. That’s all it is, querida. Nothing earthshaking. I just want to live a longer life than my dad.”
“Diet, exercise, and stress. Well, two out of three isn’t too bad.”
He pulled me to him, laughing softly under his breath. “I was doing fine on handling stress until I came to San Celina.”
“Experts say that certain kinds of stress can actually prolong your life.”
“Well,” he said, nuzzling the top of my head, “it may not prolong it, but it certainly makes it more enjoyable.”
I kissed his neck and asked, “Are you ready t
o go back to the party now?”
“Not quite yet. I’ve got one more place to show you before we leave Kansas.”
We drove out of Derby on a small southbound highway. The sun had already set, and everything was that soothing lavender color that makes dusk my favorite part of the day. The humidity, for a change, was low, and though the air wasn’t as crisp and fresh as San Celina’s, for the first time since arriving in Kansas, I didn’t feel as if I were suffocating. Of course, the events and revelations of the day might have had something to do with it, too.
He pulled up in front of a red pipe gate that led into a heavily wooded area. A square, hand-painted sign said “Picnic Grounds—VFW Post 7235.” The gate was closed with a huge metal padlock. Gabe hopped out, went over, and studied it closely.
I rolled down my window. “What are you doing?”
“I wanted to show you the picnic grounds. We used to sneak in here when we were teenagers. You can drive down to the river.”
“It looks like we’re locked out.”
He continued studying the lock. “We used to be able to pop this open when we twisted it the right way.”
“Gabe, that was twenty-five years ago. It couldn’t possibly be the same lock.”
He gave it a sharp twist, and it popped open. He grinned at me. “This is Kansas, Benni. People here don’t throw out things as long as they still work.”
We drove through a small clearing where we passed some redwood picnic benches, a replica of a covered wagon, and a faded hand-painted sign stuck in a moldy hay bale that said “Haunted Valley.” In the tall grasses surrounding us, the pale glitter of fireflies sparkled like a tiny Disney parade.
“I think they used this for some kind of Halloween fund-raiser,” Gabe said, driving deeper into the trees. We came to another, smaller clearing where he turned off the engine. “The river’s not much further, but the ground’s a little soggy. I don’t want to take a chance on getting stuck.”
Kansas Troubles Page 30