Yellow Mesquite Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  1 Horny Toad

  2 Fastball

  3 All That Glitters

  4 Leving Out

  5 Hitchhike

  6 Crump

  7 Sidney

  8 Aunt Grace

  9 Rebound

  10 Bad News

  11 Vinton, Louisiana

  12 Canned

  13 Unannounced

  14 Substitutte Son

  15 Return

  17 Joined Together

  18 Pumping Oil

  19 A Lovely Dinner

  20 For Real This Time

  21 Uncle Jay

  22 Leah

  23 M. D. Anderson

  24 The Work

  25 Memorial

  26 Yellow Mesquite

  27 Breakaway

  28 Arrival

  29 Museum Fever

  30 Election Night

  31 The Belmore

  32 Madison Avenue Art

  33 Martin Baldwin

  34 Loft

  35 Thaksgiving Dreams

  36 Rusty

  37 Sherylynne

  38 Ides of March

  39 Petition

  40 Texas Bank & Trust

  41 Reconnect

  42 Misplaced Mail

  43 Showdown

  44 Mrs. Riley

  45 Temporary Insanity

  46 Setback

  47 Separation Revisited

  48 San Angelo

  49 Mexico

  50 The Joyful Door

  51 Doodlebug Town

  52 Who Are You?

  Acknowledgments

  Yellow Mesquite

  by

  John J Asher

  Copyright © 2013 John J Asher

  All rights reserved. Thank you for respecting the rights of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any event, or actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Brazos River Press

  Austin, Texas

  Chapter 1

  —Separation, Texas—

  Horny Toad

  THE CROPS DIED in the fields and the men hauled water for the cattle and with flamethrowers singed the stickers off prickly pears to feed them, saying: “We sure could use a rain,” which was what they always said, and it hadn’t rained yet, at least not to amount to anything that Harley could remember, not in the twelve years since he was born in a little house over by the cotton gin that by now had been torn down—both the house and gin—so there was only the field. The houses they lived in were always old and his family was always moving, one to another.

  He sat now on the back step of a house they had been in two years, making drawings of a horny toad he had caught up in a John Ruskin cigar box. A windmill and a lone chinaberry tree stood motionless between the back of the house and the field. Out along the fencerow, cowsheds and farm machinery wrinkled in the heat, shimmying as if in time to the gritty music of a jillion locusts. Beyond the barbed-wire fence, a long field of drought-withered sorghum lay flat to the horizon, where it dissolved into a mirage. He had tried to draw the mirage, a trembling lake between earth and sky. He wondered if in a land of drought, a mirage might be a punishment.

  The horny toad was the size of his hand, dark brown spots ringed with white on its spiky back, a double row of spines around either side. Thornlike horns jutted back from its blunt head, its eyes like little seeds splitting their husks. From time to time the toad scrabbled around in the box. Then it would go suddenly still, open its wide lipless mouth, throat swelling. Harley moved back when the toad puffed up like that. People said that if a horny toad spit blood in your eye you’d go blind.

  He stood and shaded his eyes against the glare, seeing in the distance the Delaneys’ pickup, a brand-new 1954 Ford, trailing a boil of dust out of the mirage. He couldn’t help but grin, thinking Darlene might be in the cab. Darlene was eleven and he was in love with her—had been since two years before, when on the backside of the Delaney’s cotton field they had dropped their pants to check out each other’s privates. At the time he wasn’t quite clear on what it meant, only that the image was stuck permanently in his mind.

  He shut the lid on the horny toad, then placed the box, the pencil and the razor blade for sharpening on sheets of butcher paper and left everything on the back step. He went around the house between the clothesline and the butane tank to the unfenced front yard as Mrs. Delaney brought the pickup to a stop, waiting while the dust drifted past and settled. Darlene sat in the passenger seat. She glanced at him out the side window, tossed her head, looked away.

  Mrs. Delaney got out, fanning herself with a Ladies’ Home Journal. Darlene followed, looking off into the distance—Darlene, with her high cheekbones and big dark eyes, her mouth puckered and turned down at the corners.

  “Hey,” he said, grinning.

  Mrs. Delaney smiled in turn. “Well, hey, yourself, Harley Jay.” She had on her town dress, hair rolled tight behind her ears.

  Darlene wore jeans and a T-shirt, dark hair plaited in a single rope down her back. She looked past him to the front door where his mother had appeared, a thin, muscular woman in a plain housedress, holding the screen door open.

  “Well, if this ain’t a nice surprise,” his mother said. “Y’all come on in.”

  Mrs. Delaney tucked the magazine under her arm. Harley followed her and Darlene up the one wooden step into the living room.

  “I declare,” said Mrs. Delaney, “ain’t this heat something? Our old house is so hot you could bake bread in it. I told Russell, ‘Russell,’ I said, ‘we gotta get us one a them wet-drip fans.’ But he’s afraid it’ll aggravate his arthritis.” She gave his mother a sly grin. “I told him he could sleep in the living room. Well, he didn’t take much to that, I can tell you.”

  “August is gone off to Fort Worth right now with the last of our stockers. He says he can’t feed ’em right, he’s not gonna feed ’em no prickly pears.”

  “Well, Russell ain’t keen on it neither, but he’s determined to hang on as long as he can.”

  Harley’s mother unplugged the iron and moved the board and a basket of clothes out of the way. “Y’all sit over here in front of this fan. It don’t put out much, but every little bit helps.”

  Mrs. Delaney looked about. “Where are those little girls today?”

  “Vacation Bible school. Arlene’s gonna drop ’em off later.”

  Harley was glad his six-year-old twin sisters, Anna Mae and Annie Leigh, weren’t home. Now he had Darlene all to himself.

  Darlene settled on the couch by her mother. Harley’s mom sat across in the matching chair. Her hands with their thick veins and blunt nails smoothed the crocheted doilies over the chair’s arms. Aside from the straight-backed chair Harley sat on, there were a couple of end tables with plastic-shaded lamps and a coffee table with a glass candy bowl that was always empty. The linoleum on the floor was worn through to the tar with scrubbing, the pine-plank flooring around the edges bleached white. A framed picture of Jesus at the Last Supper hung on the wall above the sofa. If you moved to one side, the picture shimmied and turned into a picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

  His mom got up and started for the kitchen. “I’ll fix us some iced tea.”

  “Vera, thanks, but I can’t stay. I gotta get on inta town for jury duty. Russell, he’s over in the field trying to pull the flywheel off that old John Deere, and Burl is off dove hunting with some boys. I didn’t want to leave Darlene by herself, so I was wondering if you might keep her for me till I get back.”

  “Why, of course. You know that. You sure you do
n’t have time for a glass of tea?”

  Mrs. Delaney looked at her watch. “I better be getting on up yonder. You know how they are about being on time.”

  “Well, don’t you worry about Darlene. She and Harley, they get along real good. The girls, they’ll be home soon, too.”

  “Darlene,” Mrs. Delaney said, “don’t you be no trouble now.”

  HARLEY SAT WITH Darlene at the table in the eat-in kitchen, the two of them drinking iced tea, eating peanut butter cookies, hardly looking at each other while his mother ironed clothes in the living room before the fan.

  Harley finished and put his glass in the dishpan. “We’re going outside,” he called to his mom.

  “It’s awfully hot out there.”

  Harley went out and held the screen door for Darlene, but she ignored him and went back into the living room with his mother. He let the door slam, then picked up the cigar box with the horny toad from the step and went out and sat on an upended bucket in the shade of the chinaberry tree alongside the windmill, one eye on the back door.

  Darlene pushed it open and sauntered out toward him, head cocked aside, one hand on her hip. “Whatcha got in that box?”

  “A horny toad. I been drawing ’im. You wanna see?”

  She made a face. “Yuck. Why would you draw a ugly thing like that?”

  “’Cause. It’s interesting.”

  “No real artist would draw a dumb thing like that.”

  “Real artists draw any damn thing they want to,” he said, feeling a little thrill, cursing in front of Darlene, talking back. For good measure, he flipped the lid up and pushed the box at her, the horny toad trying to scratch out over the rim.

  Darlene stumbled backward. “Harley Jay Buchanan! You dumb shitass!”

  He laughed. “What, you scared of him?”

  She flashed him a defiant look and at the same time her hand whipped out and snatched the horny toad from the box. She held it at arm’s length, its bowed legs clawing the air between her white knuckles.

  Harley took a step back. “You crazy? That toad’ll spit blood in your eye and make you blind!”

  Her mouth twisted down at the corners. “You dumb sissy coward,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Gimme back that damn toad!”

  “Try and get it!” She yanked the toad in close and swung around, her back to him.

  He plowed into her, locked his arms around her, and they slammed to the ground with a thumping grunt. Darlene rolled away and hunched her shoulders against him, cupping the toad in both hands between her thighs. He got one arm around her neck, then reached up between her legs from behind and tried to pry her hands loose. She jerked up stiff and he realized he was touching her privates. The image of her in the cotton field, her pants dropped, popped into his mind.

  In the same moment, she turned and slapped the toad against his face. A hairline of red shot from the toad and spotted the end of his nose. Darlene stared, then wriggle-scooted back in desperation, frantically flinging that toad out into the broom weeds.

  Harley stared cross-eyed at the little red splotch on his nose.

  “You gonna be blind…” Darlene whispered, big eyed, pale.

  Carefully, he took off his shirt and wiped the spot from his nose. “See,” he said, voice quavering, “it ain’t nothin’ about a poison toad to be scared of, not if you’re as fast as I am and can get your eyes out of the way in time.”

  Darlene collected herself, crossed her arms, defiant. “You done ruint my brother’s shirt.”

  He stared at the short-sleeved seersucker shirt wadded in his hand. “What…?”

  “That’s Burl’s shirt.”

  As much as he liked Darlene, he disliked her older brother, Burl. Burl picked on the little kids, and once he shoved Delmer Fry down in a ditch on the edge of the school ground and Delmer couldn’t get out. Delmer was retarded and spent all his lunch money on bubble gum.

  “Mama give it to you ’cause Burl outgrowed it. Now you done ruint it with toad blood.”

  Harley stared at the shirt, then slammed it in the dirt and stomped it. He snatched it up and tried to rip it in half, jerked it first one way, then another, but it refused to tear and he slammed it down and stomped it again. He stormed over the ground, searching among the broom weeds. “Where’s that dang toad!”

  They saw it at the same time. Darlene tried to step on it, but he shoved her with his hip, snatched it up and held it over his head.

  “See?” he said, breathless. “I ain’t scared a nothin’.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then why don’t you stick him in your face if you’re so brave.”

  He took a breath and lowered the toad, face-to-face with its spiked head, its tiny eyes. The toad swelled and paddled the air with its scaly legs. Harley went weak, heart thumping in his chest—if he was blind he could never be an artist.

  In the same instant, Darlene grabbed his wrist with both hands and dropped her weight on it. “Gimme that toad!” She yanked his hand down level with her own face and held tight, squinting against the toad’s open mouth, its neck swelling, heaving. “Admit it. I’m braver than you,” she said, so low and raspy he barely heard.

  He grabbed her and lunged aside, and they went sprawling in the weeds. She caught his finger and bent it back. “Damn,” he muttered, and let go, clutching his hand. Darlene dashed out of the weeds with the toad, grabbed the razor blade off the butcher paper and slit a thin line down its underbelly from neck to tail. She held the toad toward him at arm’s length, its mouth gaping as it raked the air with its clawed feet.

  Harley stumbled back against the windmill post.

  “There ain’t nothing else you can do but kill it,” she whispered fiercely, “and that ain’t the same.” With a long, underhanded sweep, she pitched the squirming toad high in the air, end over end, some twenty feet out into the broom weeds with their thin stems and flat tops.

  He stared at the spot where the horny toad had disappeared under the groundcover.

  Darlene’s gaze followed his, then back. The expression on her face changed suddenly. “I don’t know what made me do that…” Her eyes brimmed with tears, fingers pinching at the hem of her T-shirt.

  “Why don’t y’all come on in now and have a sandwich.”

  He spun around to see his mother holding the screen door open.

  “I made some nice pimiento-cheese sandwiches with pork and beans and cantaloupe.” His mother blotted one temple with the back of her hand. “It’s so hot out here. I don’t know why y’all don’t play in the house. Well, come on now, before the ice melts in your tea.” She started back inside, but stopped. “Harley Jay, where’s your shirt?”

  “Uh, it got tore up.”

  “Tore up?” She frowned. “I declare, if you ain’t the worst on clothes I ever seen. I don’t see—” She was about to go on when her gaze shifted. She tilted her head. “Darlene…are you crying?” She stepped down into the yard and let the screen door shut behind. “Hon, what’s the matter?”

  Darlene lowered her face, shook her head.

  “Tell me. What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

  “He…he touched me,” Darlene said, hugging herself.

  His mother went pale. “Harley…what…what on earth is she saying?”

  “It wasn’t on purpose,” he said, barely able to breathe. “See, we was wrestling over…wrestling over this toad and she had it and I was trying to get it and…and…it was a accident.”

  His mother’s gaze bore down on him, an expression of shocked disbelief. She looked again at Darlene. “Is that true? You were wrestling? An accident?”

  Darlene shrugged weakly. “Kinda, I guess. We was wrestling, and—”

  “She was hiding that toad between her legs, and I was just trying to get it. And…and that’s what happened.”

  Darlene sniffed and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand.

  His mother stared, one to the other. “I want you to listen to me. You two, you’re getting too old to be wrestlin
g like that. See what happens? I don’t want any more of it. Do you understand me? Both of you?”

  “It was a accident,” he mumbled.

  “I’m not saying it was or wasn’t. I’m saying I don’t want you two playing like that anymore. You hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  His mom looked them over again, each in turn. “Y’all come on in now. Darlene, you stay in the house with me until your mother comes.” She gave him another look, then took Darlene by the hand and gentled her up the step into the kitchen.

  THAT NIGHT, long after the house was quiet and everyone was asleep, he slipped out of bed and turned the light on above the little table where he did his homework. He took the drawings of the toad out of the drawer and spread them over the tabletop. They were among the best he had ever done. He tore them into tiny pieces and fed them into his trash basket.

  He had hardly gotten back into bed when he heard the old International truck pull up out front, and then his daddy entering the house—home from taking all but two milk cows to the Fort Worth stockyard.

  WIND WHINED IN the windowpanes, fluttering the paper shade in the first light. The windmill squealed out back, sucker rods bump-thumping against the well casing.

  Harley lay still, listening to the sizzling and scraping, the clinking and clanking of his mother making breakfast, smelling the pork frying and the biscuits baking and the coffee boiling, watching her shadow flicker across the sharp slit of light under his door.

  Out back, the screen door groaned and the wood door bumped open, and his daddy’s boots stomped over the sill. Then the screen slammed, the spring whanging, and the wood door jarred shut.

  Harley heard their voices, low and flat, and then a chair scraped and the floor groaned, and his door burst open and the light and the suddenness jarred his senses, even against the tightness of his stomach, and his daddy said, “Time to hit it,” just like he always did. Not harsh but not gentle either.

  “Yessir,” Harley said, wondering why his daddy hadn’t come at him with the belt for touching Darlene. He scrambled out of bed, pulling on his Levi’s and the stiff-ironed khaki shirt and worn-out tennis shoes. Was it possible his mother hadn’t said anything? He combed his hair back and went out through the kitchen, glancing sideways at his daddy spearing slices of tenderloin, swiping it through the red-eye gravy, snapping it off the fork.