The Ladies Farm (28 page)

The Hutto house sat high on a bluff on the south side of the Nolan. From the back porch, where Gladys held court on an old sofa, you could see down to the river and across to the Ladies Farm. When you looked up and focused far in the distance on a clear day, you could see the outline of southwest Fort Worth.

Gladys Hutto was a chain-smoking, sausage-curled mound of a woman who, with her husband, Ray, received the delegation from the Ladies Farm with a pitcher of tea on the metal table and a case of Dr Pepper on the floor in front of the sofa.

“It’s good to see you,” Della said to her, then looked around for a place to sit. Rita inclined her head to the low stone wall that formed the porch, and Della followed her lead and rested her butt on the warm stones.

“You want to keep a lookout for snakes ’fore you settle in over there,” Gladys warned with no particular urgency. “Little Ray like to have a fit the other day, playing with his action men over there. He comes in screaming, some damn snake knocked his little figures off into the bushes. Trying to get away from Little Ray, probably, but that child was furious. Wanted to find the thing and kill it, but we never did find it. Found a skin though. Rattlesnake. They’re all over. That child’s got a real guardian angel. We had to open five more boxes of cereal to replace that little plastic doll, too.”

Ray spent the duration of the monologue holding up Dr Peppers and making eye contact with each guest. Rita and Dave accepted, leaving Della not much choice about following suit. She guessed the tea was for show.

“They’re all over, this time of year,” Rita picked up the conversation. “We find them on the asphalt path up to the barn all the time. Did Little Ray’s mama get that job in Dallas?”

Della saw the agenda: First we talk about Little Ray; then Little Ray’s mama, whose moving to Dallas would relieve Gladys and Ray of babysitting duties; then Little Ray’s mama’s no-good ex-husband, their nephew Earl; then confirmation that they had gotten Earl to sign back the mineral rights; then the reason for their visit. Should take five, maybe six Dr Peppers apiece, Della thought.

She watched Dave, who had not removed his coveralls for this appointment. He leaned against the house, one leg bent, stork-like, with his foot braced against the masonry. Every now and then he
exchanged a glance with Ray, but for the most part, he stared down at his foot, silent.

Rita chirped on about Little Ray’s mama and her new job, then listened as Gladys enumerated the virtues of her former niece by marriage.

“Lord knows she works hard enough,” Gladys said. “Two jobs, most of the time, and not a bit of help from Earl with the baby. Not that he doesn’t pay child support. Even so, it’s a shame to see. Young people like that.” She looked up at Della. “You have kids?”

“One boy who’s grown. He lives in Portland,” Della said. “He and his wife have a little girl.”

Gladys continued her head-shaking. “That’s hard on kids too, being an only child. Ray and I always figured we’d have a house full.” She shook her head enough to make the sausage curls jiggle. “Didn’t happen. Here we are with this big, old place and no one to leave it to but that half-wit Earl.”

“I don’t suppose anyone sets out to raise an only child,” Della observed. The silence that followed assured her that Rita and Dave had shared her tragedy with Gladys and Ray. Bad move, Della chastised silently. Nothing stops a conversation faster than a dead child.

Finally, Dave picked up the earlier thread. “Well, now,” he said, “Earl’s okay. He just needs to find what he wants to do.”

“He’s bright enough,” Rita chirped. “He’s just not ready to be a grown-up yet.”

“Twenty-five with a baby, that’s pretty grown up,” Ray said. He had settled in next to Gladys and spent most of the conversation studying his Dr Pepper. Now he shook his head in agreement with his wife. “That boy’s worthless, I’m afraid. It’s good his mama and daddy’s moved on down to Corpus. It doesn’t make them glad to hear from him.”

“Your sister’s down in Corpus, Ray?” Dave slid his stork foot to the ground. “I thought she’d settled in the valley.”
“Nah. You know, her husband’s people are there on the coast.” Ray, as if suddenly aware that he had become the center of attention, clamped his lips and tightened his grip on the Dr Pepper.

“Well, the beach is nice, but I don’t think I’d want to live where it’s all that humid,” Rita opined. “Especially with all those hurricanes.”

“I want a nice little double-wide down on the Rio Grande,” Gladys said. “Nothing fancy, just a little prickly pear and sage out front, nothing to mow and no fencing.” She turned to Della. “So if you’re here to make that happen, let’s get on with it.”

Nothing is ever the way it seems, thought Della.

“Well, not so fast!” Rita said. “This isn’t just Della, you know. Dave and I are in this too. And Kat.”

“And Castleburg, if you don’t hurry up,” Gladys said. “Daddy, reach me another one of those Dr Peppers.”

“Well now, Gladys,” Dave said, “what are you looking at for this place?”

“Well, you know, it’s over twenty acres,” Gladys said. “I hear Castleburg’s offering five-sixty for yours, and you’ve got less than ten over there, don’t you?”

She was looking at Della, but it was Dave who answered. “I guess young Hugh’s been ’round.”

“Well, he makes some sense,” Gladys replied. “Though I don’t much like dealing with Dallas lawyers.”

Now Dave shifted a little and planted both feet wider on the concrete porch. “Whatever happened with Earl’s gravel adventure?” he asked Ray.

Ray shook his head and shrugged. “That boy.”

“I don’t think Earl could find gravel if you poured it over him,” Gladys expounded. “That boy just does everything on the cheap, didn’t want to hire the geologists, you know?”

Dave worked them through it slowly: how the unlikelihood of gravel and the fact that the Hutto place lay outside city limits made it less valuable; how the buildings at the Ladies Farm increased its
value; how Castleburg’s offer through Hugh Jr., was not all cash and that theirs—Della’s and Kat’s and Rita’s—would be.

“It’s not that Mama and I want to be greedy,” Ray assured them. “We just want what’s fair. After all, we’ve got our future to consider.”

“And Little Ray’s, too. His own grandparents can’t do much for him, someone’ll have to educate that boy. That’s what Daddy means.”

Mama and Daddy. Little Ray’s future
. Della resisted the urge to choke. She resisted the urge to describe the red cooler full of cash. She resisted the urge to ask if the sofa came with the property.

“The thing about it is,” Della tried to speak slowly, “we don’t want to mine any gravel.”

“Well, we know that,” Gladys said. “That’s why we want to sell to you. I just hate thinking that old man’s going to send those bulldozers over here and dig the place up.”

“You know,” Ray said, “when we built this place, the farm-to-market road was just paved. We were the first house on this side of the river.”

“It’s pretty over here,” Della said. “I always love seeing those peaches come into bloom on the hill that faces us.”

“I imagine those lady guests would enjoy a picnic on that hill,” Ray said.

“Plus, you’ll be able to rent out this house,” Gladys said, blocking Della’s impulse to tell Ray that their lady guests had enjoyed many picnics on his hill. “It’s got three bedrooms, plus a big, old family room.”

Della looked at the couch but held her tongue. The house is solid stone, she reminded herself. Even if you have to gut the interior.

“How’s the kitchen?” Rita asked.

“Why, we had that designer down from Fort Worth just two years ago,” Gladys said. As she spoke, she pulled a fleck of tobacco from her outstretched tongue. “Redid the whole thing, put in one of those
islands. I prefer a big, old country kitchen myself, but he said this would raise the resale value. It’s the latest thing.”

“Well, let’s go look at it!” Rita motioned Della off the wall. “No, no,” she assured Gladys as the woman stirred. “You sit still. We’ll look on our own, and we won’t touch anything. I promise.”

“Touch all you want,” Gladys invited, settling back into the couch. “Open the cupboards, flush the toilets.”

Inside, the paneling was dark, but real, Della saw. We could strip it, she thought. We can yank these drapes and put up wooden blinds, or shutters. We can strip the floor, too.

“I guess she just likes a sofa on the porch,” Della murmured as she and Rita inspected the kitchen.

“Oh,” said Rita, “that’s one of those habits she picked up in Cuba, she says. She and Ray were down there before Castro. Some kind of bridge building.”

“Bridge building?”

“Oh, you know. Ray’s an engineer. I think Gladys taught school or something down there, too.”

“Gladys taught school?”

“Well, not school, exactly. Some kind of science academy. She taught chemistry.”

Della opened the pantry door and inspected the adjustable shelving. “You’re joking, right?”

“No ma’am. Here’s her degree, right here on the wall.” Rita pointed to the alcove above a built-in desk. “University of Texas. I guess this is a mixed marriage. Ray’s an Aggie.”

“Kitchen’s better than I thought,” Della murmured, heading for the door.

“Where’re you going?” Rita hissed. “Come here!”

“What?”

Rita shot her a fierce look and motioned her closer.

“What?”

“Dave’s talking to them,” Rita said.

“I know. That’s why I want to be out there.”

“Here!” Rita exclaimed in a loud voice, “look at the view out the side, toward town.” Then in a whisper, “They won’t talk if you’re there.”

“What?”

“For such a smart person, you sure are dense,” Rita grumbled, guiding Della out onto the kitchen steps. “Dave’s talking price. Right now. We can’t go back out till he’s done.”

“What?”

“He’s negotiating price!”

“That’s why we need to be there. Price being the amount you and I have to shell out.”

“Now you just sit right down on this step and let Dave handle that. He knows what we’ll pay.”

Della looked with astonishment at the woman who had seated herself on the wooden step. “I don’t believe this. You’re saying I should let your boyfriend determine how many hundreds of thousands I should pay for a place I’m only half-interested in. As in: Don’t you worry your pretty little head, honey, we’ve got a man to take care of us?”

“Well, no one said that at all,” Rita countered. “After all, Gladys is out there, and she’s female. But Dave’s kin, and they’re all from Sydonia. It’s home cooking.”

Della eased herself down onto the step and looked out the back of what would soon be the Ladies Farm. “I hate it when you make sense,” she muttered. Dave would negotiate a good price, probably without having to lead Gladys and Ray over to his truck to display the contents of the red cooler. Della was disappointed. She had enjoyed imagining the Huttos’ reaction.

“Nothing’s ever as good as you imagine it,” Della mourned. “I rehearsed for this. I practiced my steady gaze for my final offer.”

“I know, baby, but you can trust Dave.” Rita patted her arm. “Try to keep your mind off it. Think about something else. Tell me what’s
up with you and Tony. Tell me what’s in that cooler. Talk about anything else.”

Kat knows, thought Della. Melissa knows. Hugh Jr. knows. Della leaned back and tilted her head up to the gathering dusk. But not Rita, Dave, or Tony. And maybe not Barbara.

Barbara knew she looked much worse. It had been less than a week since Della had left, but Barbara couldn’t cover the purple wells beneath her eyes. “I’m feeling a lot better,” she assured Della, but Della looked unconvinced.

She had wheeled a cooler into the room and Barbara, from her seat next to the window, looked quizzically at the thing.

“It’s cash,” Della explained. She pushed it right up to Barbara’s feet and knelt before her. “Here.” Della opened the cooler top, reached in, and pulled out a stationery box, setting it atop the wheeled hospital table.

Barbara watched as Della lifted the top from the stationery box on the table between them. The bills were packed neatly and wrapped in rubber bands. “They were transferring one twenty-five to you yesterday. That’s the official sale, for the record,” Della said. “Did you get it?”

Barbara nodded. “The bank called.”

“The rest is here in cash: seven hundred fifty-eight thousand, two hundred and sixteen dollars.” Della said it slowly and methodically and she looked shaken by the sum.

“Thank you for this,” Barbara said. She took a breath. “For doing it, and for letting me help.” She stopped and gulped for air.

“Barbara?” Della leaned forward, grasped her good arm. “Should I get someone? Do you need … is there medicine?”

Barbara waved her off and shook her head. She tried to smile her reassurance, but the cough prevented it. “I’m just short of breath.
The morphine helps.” Barbara noted the alarm in Della’s eyes, but knew she would have to depend on the others to explain that the low-level morphine doses were not the pain-relieving doping she would require later. She had to shepherd her strength.

“Okay,” said Della, “you listen and I’ll talk. I’m taking this money because I have no choice, just as we’re letting you sign over your interest to us. But these are loans. And we—Kat, Rita, and I—will pay you back.”