by Kimball Lee
“Right, and it worked. I learned never to try and defend myself against him again.”
*
The next morning we stop for breakfast at Lupe’s in Tallulah on our way to the Corazon Perdido fishing lodge.
Holt doesn’t even open the vinyl menu, just points out his two favorite breakfast entrees on mine as I try to make sense of the names.
“What are you having, and how do you pronounce this word? Are those fried eggs covered in some sort of chili sauce? Is this for real, does it come with a side of Alka Seltzer?” I ask, looking up from the menu to his highly amused face.
“I’m a creature of habit. Only two logical choices for breakfast and it just depends on what I’m in the mood for. Huevos rancheros or chilaquiles, and no, I’m not sounding that out for you. I’m telling you, beauty, you gotta learn the lingo, Tex-Mex is necessary for a quality life. Let’s both have the chilaquiles, I’m telling you it’s the best thing you’ll ever put in your mouth.”
I widen my eyes and bite my lip when he says that, and his pupils dilate and he leans across the table to kiss me.
“Hmmm, are you trying to seduce me before I’ve even had my coffee?” He asks, tracing my bottom lip with his thumb.
“You’re the one who brought the subject up, and I suppose I could become a creature of habit, too. I do like certain things in my mouth, and I’m discovering new obsessions all the time,” I say, running the tips of my fingers over the faint shadows the rope left on my arms.
Holt looks like he’s ready to say ‘to hell with breakfast’ and throw me over his shoulder, but a waitress appears at the table smiling and shaking her head.
“Where’re your manners, boy?” She asks, removing Holt’s cowboy hat and ruffling his thick, dark hair. “You all wrapped up in this pretty girl so as you forgot you’re in this here fine restaurant? But that’s your workin’ hat, so this must not be a fancy ‘morning after’ social call!” She laughs and winks at him, pretends that she’s joking around, and although she’s old enough to be his mother, I can tell she’d be tickled pink to have a ‘fancy morning after’ with Holt Corrigan.
“Hey, Lena, que paso?” Holt says and she gives him a peck on the cheek and then fans herself with her little ticket pad and blushes.
“Not a damn thing happenin’ around here. How ‘bout you, what you been doin’? You headed out to the Corazon?”
“Yes ma’am, this is Scarlet O’Neal, from Atlanta. She’s the designer who’s gonna make the fishing lodge beautiful.”
“Well isn’t that somethin’? Atlanta, Georgia? Hmm. Is that your real name, darlin’, Scarlet O’Neal, just like in the movie? That’s the prettiest name I ever heard. So you’re just workin’ with Holt, huh? Whew, glad to hear it, there’d be plenty of local gals madder than a wet hen if Holt was to fall in love with a foreign gal!”
“I doubt anyone would be upset,” Holt says, handing her our menus. “I’m on my way to Montana for a project pretty soon, I can’t think of a single soul who’ll miss me.”
It feels like a small chunk of my heart is missing when he mentions Montana—he’ll be leaving and I’ll go home to Atlanta to begin the rest of my life. Without Holt. It just doesn’t seem right.
We finish breakfast, and he was telling the truth—the chilaquiles are one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.
“Come on beauty, we have to buy you a good pair of boots. You’ll love Bree and Martita, y’all can get acquainted and you’ll want to order furniture and… whatever else you need to make the fishing lodge hospitable,” Holt says kissing me full on the lips for Lena and the rest of the diners to see, which makes my bruised heart feel a little better.
The minute we walk through the doors of Ranches and Rhinestones two young women about his age squeal and smother him with hugs and kisses.
“Holt Corrigan you dirty dog, where in the hell have you been hiding? We never get to see you anymore! You want me to fix you a Bloody Mary, or maybe it’s not too early for margaritas?” The tall, pretty blonde says, laughing and kissing every inch of his face before turning to me and hugging me like we’re long-lost friends. “Hi, I’m Bree and you are gorgeous!”
“Damn! I didn’t think you could get any better looking, Holt, what’s going on, boy? Have you gone and got yourself an honest-to-goodness girlfriend? Wait, lemme check the weather channel and see if Hell has frozen over!” Martita says, she hugs Holt and slaps him on the ass, laughing a hearty contagious laugh as she grabs both of my hands, holds them out to the side and looks me over appreciatively. “Good job, Holt, this girl’s got it as bad as you do, when’s the wedding?”
“Scarlet, these are two of my oldest and dearest friends, and as you can tell, Martita’s mouth has no filter. She just says whatever pops into her pretty head.”
“You got that right, mijo! It’s my hot Latin blood, words just bubble up in my brain and jump right off my tongue. If somebody doesn’t like what I have to say, they can kiss my ass, which is better than Jennifer Lopez’s ass, verdad?” she says, smiling and smacking the back of her jeans so that I swallow hard and glance up at Holt. He tilts his chin down and runs a hand across his mouth to hide a smile.
“Pleeeezzz don’t inflate Martita’s insufferable ego,” Bree says, rolling her eyes and slipping her arms through mine and Holt’s to lead us through the coolest Hollywood-meets-Texas-gypsy-hippie-chick-urban-cowgirl store I’ve ever seen. “I know without you saying a word what you’re here for, baby doll, we need to get you into a pair of respectable boots this very minute!”
“You’re such a bossy puta, Bree, like you have some kind of psychic powers! I like her gringa boots, and I bet she got them at Niemen Marcus.” Martita says dragging me over to a bar that’s covered in rhinestones, river rocks, and fossilized wood, it should be gaudy, but it’s not—it’s extraordinarily beautiful. “Let’s all have a margarita with a splash of tomato juice, that way it’s like a breakfast drink! Now, what do you need, mija? Clothes, furniture, anything covered in the skin of a dead animal? A stuffed road-kill armadillo with a faux-diamond collar and a stupid smile on its face? We have it all!”
“I do need boots,” I say, loving the banter between these two girls. It makes me lonesome for Gigi and Penn, and I wonder if we’ll stay close now that college is over and we are officially grownup. “I’m doing the interiors of the McCauley’s fishing lodge, Holt and I are on our way out there now. Do you have fabric swatches? I know I’m gonna want several of those leather chairs you have in the window, not sure how many. I’ll have a better idea once I see the lodge. It’ll have to be masculine and clubby, lots of leather and deer heads, I would imagine.”
“Oh, you can bet your ass it will have to scream ‘testosterone overload’,” Bree says, rolling her eyes and grimacing. “You know the motto of every man in Texas, and especially Campbell McCauley. If it has four legs and runs from you, shoot it and hang it on the wall, if it has two legs and a very short skirt, fuck it and carve a notch on your belt.”
“Si, that pendejo, Campbell! He broke up our She-Musketeers sisterhood, but only after Holt let him steal Emma-Lee away. Then that sorry cabron broke her heart! But guess what? You can be our new bestie, Scarlet! Trust me, we are the only beautiful girls in the entire State who love your man like a brother and have never slept with him. Isn’t that right, Holt?”
*
The fishing lodge was a rundown ruin before I got here, but under Holt’s skilled hands it’s been reborn. It sits on the edge of the San Antonio River, beneath a canopy of towering cypress trees, crafted from lodge-pole pine with a green metal roof sheltering its many gables and long rows of dormer windows. I think it’s grandly charming, and it has a romantic history. It was built at the turn of the twentieth century by the widow, Tallulah Campbell, as a wedding gift for her only son and his bride, who according to legend, conceived their first child, under this very roof.
I measure the rooms and windows, and work out furniture placement and design simple drapery treatments in my
head. Holt works outside mostly, now that the interior walls have been rebuilt, with the logs polished, windows re-glazed, bathrooms and kitchen updated. He works with a crew of ranch-hands, they cut and haul away loads of creeping vegetation, and I find myself leaning out windows from every room, unable to get enough of his awe-inspiring physique.
The man has been blessed by the gods in face and body, and kissed by the sun many, many times, to great effect. How did I ever think I could marry Corey Baumgartner when a man like Holt Corrigan was alive and breathing and about to rock my world? Holt stands outside sharing a laugh with the other men and although many of them are tall and nice looking, they look insignificant next to him. He’s shirtless, wearing that sexy sweat-stained cowboy hat pulled low over his hypnotic green eyes. His huge chest is sun-bronzed and his washboard abs glisten with sweat. His jeans hug his muscular thighs and cradle that beyond-magnificent ass, and even from a distance my eye is drawn to the maddening bulge below his fly. I’m in love with him, he’s the only thing I can think of, the only thing that matters, and I’m not sure what we—I—am going to do when our time together ends. My parents, my sister, my career in Atlanta, Gigi and Penn—I love and miss them, but I want Holt to be part of that—part of my life.
“Hey Scarlet!” He calls up to me as I lean out the window mooning over him like every ‘other girl he’s slept with’ according to Bree and Martita. “Guess we should be more careful down by the river, one of the men found a dozen water-moccasins curled in a nest on the banks.” He holds up a hideously long snake, gripping its head so it can’t strike, shrugs and tosses it a few feet away where one of the men shoots it with a pistol.
What the fuck am I doing here?!!! I better be damn sure I’m ready to give my heart to a savage!
A pattern emerges over the course of days that turn into weeks: We wake up and make love, we work at the fishing lodge, make love there on the floor, in the fields, against the trees near the river, when it gets wild and out of control we admit that we’re fucking, but it’s still our way of making love. We go into town to eat at Lupe’s and order furnishings from Bree and Martita, we drink the margaritas they always have on hand and laugh with abandon at their hilarious ‘When Holt was a teenager’ stories. We bathe in the copper tub on his screened porch, weed his garden, feed the wild animals who have the run of his land, make love some more and fall into bed, exhausted and content. He talks about the log home he’s going to build for a family in Montana, says the Flathead River is a breathtaking sight, but lonely with the mountains and glaciers cutting it off from the rest of creation. A man could get the blues way up there by himself without the woman he loves, it’s so far from the equator and the long Texas days. I wait for him to say the words and when he’s quiet my heart beats in an unnatural rhythm knowing that our days are numbered.
*
When every piece of furniture has been delivered to the lodge and Holt and his helpers are placing sofas and I’m straightening curtains on the rods they’ve bolted above the windows, I’m overcome with a deep sense of sadness. Tomorrow is the day I’m going to get in my sleek red convertible, drive to the airport in San Antonio, and leave Texas—and the man I love—behind. We haven’t discussed any alternatives, he watched as I gathered my clothes and piled them neatly next to my bags last night, then he grabbed a bottle of Traeger’s tequila and wandered out into the night. Later, after I was asleep in his big bed, he slid in next to me and woke me with kisses. I didn’t have to ask him to get the rope, he brought it with him and bound me so well that I never wanted to be free again. We made love all night long, rough and wild, wilder than we ever knew we could be, savage, shouting, quaking, but without saying a single word.
A truck pulls up to the lodge in a cloud of dust and two men step out, laugh as they look around and climb the steps to the front door. They’re both handsome, tall but with a hitch when they walk as if they’ve spent more time in a saddle than on their feet. I don’t need to ask who they are, it’s obvious, one is Wes McCauley and the other, taller, and with a frightening glint in his emerald eyes, must be Tom Corrigan.
“Fixed this place real nice, made it look downright homey, good for you,” Wes says, sauntering up next to me and fixing me with a watery blue stare. “You’re friends with that gal that’s got Jon-Wylder all messed up, ain’t ya?” Wes asks, bending too close, squinting to catch my expression. “That’s one high maintenance gal that dumb kid is thinkin’ of hitchin’ his wagon to.”
“You do realize Gigi’s my best friend?” I say, they’re just blustery old men, I tell myself, somewhere in their sixties and already used up and perpetually pissed off.
“You the gal that’s after my boy for his money? You don’t look like your hard up for cash, but that’s how women are, looks are deceiving,” Tom Corrigan says, he makes himself at home in one of the new armchairs, crosses his legs at the ankles, and looks at me expectantly.
“You have to excuse my father, Scarlet,” Holt says, he’s standing over Tom Corrigan glaring at the two old men. His neck is corded and tense and I can see the vein beating wildly in his neck. “Tom’s definition of a high maintenance woman is one who doesn’t offer him a lap dance for free.”
“Hey now, boy, is that any way to talk to your old daddy? Why don’t you offer us a drink of that high-dollar scotch you and Wes’s boys are so fond of? Better yet, why don’t we go into town and get a real drink, you too good to for rot-gut whiskey now that you got all your football money stashed away? Your little gal will be here when you get back, you can bet on that. Besides, she ain’t got no business in an old shanty of a bar, and women always fuck up a good conversation.”
“You both need to move on, go get drunk, get in a knife fight, Dad, if that’s what you’re after,” Holt says and he walks over and stands between me and Wes. “Why don’t you take Tom and go, Wes? You can see he’s looking for trouble, he’s got no business bringing his bullshit out here for Scarlet to see. Does Campbell know where you are? Seems like he wants you to stay out of ranch affairs.”
“Fuck him! Takin’ over this place and treatin’ me like I’m no better than a goddamn peon or a used-up stud horse. My fuckin’ boys have turned on me, think they can buy me and sell me, every sorry one of them with that high and mighty attitude like their Granddaddy!” Wes says and takes a swig from a flask that he pulls from his hip pocket. “Let’s fuckin’ go, Tom, if I have to listen to Campbell one more time I’ll slit my own fuckin’ throat.”
“Watch your language, would you?” Holt says and sweeps his arm out pointing them to the door.
“We ain’t goin’ unless you come with us, boy,” Tom says, he stands and stretches, he’s stooped but still nearly as tall as Holt and just as wide. He has a headful of silver hair and a thick white mustache, it’s clear that he was just as handsome and imposing as his son, in his day.
“Fine, I’ll go with you for one drink, but only to spare Scarlet the embarrassment of seeing what an asshole you can be when things don’t go your way,” Holt says and he leans down and kisses my cheek. “Take my truck and go spend a couple of hours with Bree and Martita. It’s okay, I’ll see you at home later.”
My stomach churns and I feel like throwing up as I watch him climb in the truck with those two bastards. There is no way this will have a happy ending.
*
I drive into town and settle in for an evening of girl talk and margaritas at Ranches and Rhinestones. Bree locks up the store and turns the sign on the door so that it says “closed” and a customer on the sidewalk sighs and walks away. Martita pops in a Miranda Lambert CD, pours margaritas, we clink our glasses together and get comfy in down-filled chairs and an overstuffed sofa.
“So who is this Emma-Lee I keep hearing about?” I ask, gulping my drink and then regretting it when I get a sharp stab of brain-freeze.
“Emma-Lee Travis, she’s the missing link in our She-Musketeers, that’s what everyone used to call us,” Bree says, sighing as if it’s the saddest story in the world
. “One thing you should know about Tallulah, this piss-ant town is a hotbed of dirty little secrets. And in a way, you look like her, doesn’t she ‘Tita? Killer face, gorgeous hair and eyes, tall and thin, but curvaceous in the front and back—fabulous tits, by the way—just the way men like a woman to be.”
“Really Bree, you’re so dramatic,” Martita says. “Emma-Lee is great, we grew up together, I mean we’ve been friends since preschool. In all our childhood memories she was the center, the one who made life fun and cool out here on Tobacco Road. She and Holt were a couple all through high school, but not like heavy-duty in love or anything. They just sort of fit together, he was the hot football jock, she was the head cheerleader, small town royalty, boring, but the sun rose and set with them as far we were concerned.”
“Emma-Lee’s father was super strict, though,” Bree chimes in as the margaritas do their thing and loosen us up. “He was our sheriff and his wife just ran off and left them when Emma-Lee was like four or five. The woman fucking disappeared— Poof! Gone! She left a note saying not to look for her, and honey, she was fucking gone-girl. After that Emma’s daddy was sooo strict, constantly preaching how a girl should keep herself pure and not turn into a runaway whore like his wife. Emma-Lee had a nine o’clock curfew, nine-o-fucking-clock! Can you believe that?”
“Ay Dios mia! Soooo,” Martita pours herself another margarita and she too, is feeling no pain and jumps right in to finish the story. “Holt graduated and went off to college when we were seniors, and honestly it wasn’t like he and Emma missed each other, they were more like buddies. They had this pact, this understanding that romantic love didn’t exist, or wasn’t for them or some shit. All because they seriously believed that no one would ever truly love kids like them whose mother’s died or abandoned them. Loco! Then Holt came back the next summer and Miss Meredith McCauley threw this huge debutante ball for Emma-Lee out at the ranch. Well, Campbell had just graduated from Texas A&M and was home for the summer. Campbell never had a girlfriend, you see, just a string of girls he used to fuck and toss aside. Anyway… where was I? Oh yeah, Holt was Emma-Lee’s escort to the big debutante ball, but somehow that night she and Campbell had this bolt-from-the-blue attraction to each other and that was that. Like I said, it wasn’t a big deal for Holt, maybe his pride was hurt a little cuz he’d gone along with Emma’s ‘keep-it-platonic-until-marriage’ bullshit. But, you know, no biggie cuz he doesn’t believe in love.”