The Right Side of Wrong (11 page)

I expected to find his truck rolling down the dirt drive at any time.

Pepper stepped inside. “We're here to help clean up some of this sawdust.”

Her voice was barely audible, and I was shocked to find myself standing at the base of the new porch steps. “Who you talking to?”

“Nobody, you idiot. He's not home. Come on! Don't you want to know about him?” She came back to the door. “He doesn't tell us anything. I bet there are some papers in the trunk that'll let us know what he did down there in south Texas. I bet he was a cowboy, or a big rancher. I bet that's it. He owned a giant ranch down there like the Ponderosa in Bonanza, and then he sold it and came back up here.”

Her eyes widened. “The trunk is probably full of money from the ranch. He hasn't moved it since we first came here, because it's probably full of twenty-dollar gold pieces and it's too heavy.”

And there I was, peeking in the doorway. “You think it's full of gold?”

“He's probably a bank robber that got away with a railroad payroll. That or cash money, what else?”

“Probably clothes.” Like filings drawn to a magnet, I found myself standing beside her.

“He'd have moved it to the bedroom by now if it had clothes in it.” She kicked the trunk, and we could tell it wasn't empty. Pepper dropped to her knees in the sawdust and put her hands on both sides of the battered lid. “Well?”

I couldn't take my eyes off it. I was so nervous I was shaking. “Okay, raise it up and let's take a peek. Then we go.”

Her eyes flickered, and she knew she'd won. The lid creaked when she raised it up, and she had to use some muscle. “Wow, this lid is heavy!”

Lying on a stack of leather-bound books was a hand-tooled holster holding a pearl-handled, cocked .45. I recognized it as a Colt 1911, like the one Uncle Cody carried, but this one was so worn and oily it made me think of a water moccasin laying there.

Then we found out why the lid was so heavy. Held against the inside curve with leather straps was a rifle like I'd never seen before. It wasn't in one piece, because the trunk was too short, but the barrel, breech and stock all fit neatly into the curved space. Several magazines were stacked in one corner beside the books, all fully loaded with ammunition.

Eyes glassy with excitement, Pepper reached out and caressed the pistol's handle. “Do you want to hold it?”

I knew better. Guns had always been around us, and Grandpa kept his service revolver on top of the television. The adults allowed us to move them if they were in the way, but we had to have permission to take one out of a holster. We knew it was wrong, but the trunk's power had almost total control over the both of us.

A carved box was nestled on top of a worn Bible beside the pistol. I was reaching for the Colt when Pepper lifted up the box. She carefully opened its lid, and discovered a black-and-white photograph a much younger Mr. Bell with his arm around a beautiful dark haired woman who looked Mexican, or Indian. Underneath was a badge on a folded red silk handkerchief that smelled like perfume.

My hand stopped short of the pistol. “That's a Texas Ranger badge.”

“How do you know?”

“I've seen them up close. Turn it over. It's stamped out of a Mexican peso, and if it's real, writing will still be on the back.”

She did, and there it was. “Wonder what he's doing with this?”

“He must be a Ranger.”

Texans think Rangers walk on water, and to actually hold an authentic badge, and to know the man who'd worn it, was something close to a holy moment.

I hadn't noticed, but though Pepper's radio was still on, it had gone silent. Then, the first harsh chord of “Hard Day's Night” filled the room. It jolted me like a charge of electricity. I glanced out the door. Mr. Tom's truck flickered through the trees.

Pepper noticed my reaction and recognized the truck. “Shit!” She quickly closed the box's lid, dropped it into the trunk, and stood up. That's when I saw the tracks of our tennies in the fine sawdust on the floor beside Hootie's paw prints. They all led from the door and into the house, and I hadn't even seen him come in.

She slammed the trunk lid, then rushed to the door and slammed it too. “What are we gonna do?”

I took one look at the truck flickering through the trees. “Out the back! Hootie!”

Completely familiar with the house, we shot through the living room and into the kitchen. Hootie came sliding around the corner and met us the second Pepper yanked the back door open. We ran onto the much smaller back porch and I tripped over a paper bag full of finishing nails. It exploded, scattering them everywhere.

Neither of us touched the steps, and in seconds raced across the tiny back yard to disappear into the woods. We charged down a deer trail and didn't stop running until we were well away from the house.

“Did he see us?” Panting, Pepper bent and rested her hands on her knees.

“I don't think so, but he'll know somebody was there, because we left tracks on the floor.”

She slapped at the sawdust on her jeans. “What do we do?”

“Hope he doesn't say anything.”

We took off down the branch, and I felt bad, because we'd somehow betrayed our new friend.

I corrected myself.

We'd betrayed a Texas Ranger.

Chapter Sixteen

My knees were still shaking when we finally snuck around the pasture and met Grandpa in the yard.

“I'm going by your Uncle Ben's house for a minute, y'all want to go?”

He should have known we'd been up to something by the way we acted, but I reckon he had other things on his mind. Pepper mumbled something about a headache and went in the house. I couldn't think of a good excuse not to go.

When we got there Aunt Sylvia was hanging dingy sheets on the sagging clothesline out back. The open windows caught the breeze, and the curtains were sucked against the rusty screen wire. Chickens and one raggedy turkey scratched in the dirt yard behind her. Thirty yards away, a sow grunted in the hog pen. The smell of soured water and mud filled the yard.

For the first time I could remember, I wondered why they didn't bother to paint their house. It wasn't a bad looking place. A coat of paint would have spruced it up.

We parked on the side of the house and got out. Aunt Sylvia had a mouth full of wooden clothes pins when we walked up. She took them out, dropped them into her apron pocket, and gave us a grin. “What are you boys up to? Y'all out cattin' around today?”

Grandpa stopped beside an overgrown rose bush and stuck his hands in the pockets of his overalls. “Working. Where's Ben? It's too early to plow.”

Grandpa never planted a single seed in either the garden or a field until after Easter, and he didn't think anyone else should put in a crop until then, either, because of the danger of frost.

Aunt Sylvia didn't answer for a moment. She absently ran her red fingernail through my white hair. “Cotton Top, I have some Dr Peppers in the icebox. Why don't you get a couple for you and your Grandpa?”

Cotton would have stuck on me, but we already had kinfolk with that nickname, so they settled on calling me Top, for my name, Texas Orrin Parker. Yeah, we already had a Tex, too.

He nodded that it was all right, and I climbed up the rickety porch steps and went in through the loose screen door. There was rust everywhere. It had eaten holes in the screen, and colored the white porcelain sink a crusty reddish color. The water faucet coming out of the wall under the window had almost rusted through and hung on by a promise. Rust even grew through the worn enamel coating of their rattling and wheezing icebox.

I opened the stained door and found very little food. Half a pan of biscuits, a full bottle of milk, and a dish with a soft stick of butter were the only things on the top shelf. The second was full of Dr Peppers and Miller Highlife beer.

It was mostly beer.

The bottom shelf contained only two bowls covered with foil. Miss Becky's icebox was always so stuffed with food that you could barely add another fried drumstick, and you'd never find beer in her house.

I grabbed two lukewarm Dr Peppers and slammed the door with my knee. We always had a drawer right beside the refrigerator that contained a lot of junk, tools, and always a churchkey. There wasn't one beside the icebox, so I opened drawers to find an opener. Uncle James screwed a fixed opener on Aunt Ida Belle's cabinet, like the one on the cooler up at the store, but I didn't find anything like that, neither.

I crossed the kitchen with the bottles in hand, intending to call through the open window and ask Aunt Sylvia where she kept her opener. Through the screen, I saw her and Grandpa standing real close together between two lines of clothes, hidden from the road by her flat sheets.

I thought at first he was kissing her. The thought made my head reel, because that wouldn't be right, but their heads were real close and they were talking. Their voices barely carried into the house, lifted by the morning breeze.

“I'll be gone by the time he gets home.”

“You sure you want to do this?”

“I'm sure, and so is he. We'll never be able to come back to Center Springs again, because Ben will kill Leon when he finds out we've run off together.”

My head spun again. I only knew one Leon, and he was married to Aunt Rose, Uncle Ben's sister.

The two married-in people were running off to leave the brother and sister behind.

I'd heard about people running off together. That meant they were married to other people when they packed a suitcase and disappeared, leaving behind everyone and everything they owned.

“He sure will. I wouldn't put it past Rose to come looking for
you
, too.”

“It don't make no difference. I'm done with Ben, and Leon promised me a house on a hill somewhere far away from here.”

“The grass ain't always greener, girl.”

She rubbed her hands on the stained apron tied around her waist and wiped a stray strand of bleach-blonde hair out of her eyes. “It'll be a sight greener than what I've got here. Look, I didn't sign on to raise chickens. I want more than a shack up here on this old river. I want to see the lights. I want to go dancing on Saturday nights where everybody ain't kinfolk. I'd like to have concrete under my feet every once in a while, instead of sand and mud.”

Grandpa took off his hat and rubbed his head. “Sooner or later, them lights will get tiresome and you'll have to come home and do dishes and sweep and cook and make the bed. It'll be the same thing, just somewhere else with somebody different.”

“It'll be better than here, with him.”

“Well, hanging sheets on the line don't look like you're going anywhere.”

“I wanted to leave him with a clean house. I've washed his clothes, folded the towels, and swept the floors. It's the least I can do after twenty years.”

“How are you getting gone?”

“Leon will be here in an hour or so.”

“Where's Ben?”

“He went to town. He won't be back 'til dark.”

“I reckon I'll have to come back tomorrow, then. He won't be in a good humor, either, when I get here. He told Neal up at the store he wanted me to stop by. Something about what he found in y'all's barn.”

They didn't have a phone in the house. A lot of folks in Center Springs that didn't have phones left word up at the store if they wanted to talk to someone. If it was an emergency, they drove to the person's house.

“I know what he wanted.” Aunt Sylvia took another sheet out of her laundry basket and threw it over the line, like everything was normal. “It wasn't this here barn behind the house. Ben was feeding in the back pasture and followed a set of fresh tracks leading to the hay barn down there. We haven't used it in years, and he was curious about the tracks. When he went inside, he found a pile of full 'toe sacks stacked against the back wall.”

There wasn't nothing unusual about 'toe sacks in our part of the world. We used them for everything from dog beds to hauling anything you could stick in the burlap bags. Grandpa perked up, though. “What was in 'em?”

“Said he knew what was in 'em as soon as he stepped inside because he could smell it. They was full of dope.”

“Marywana? You know that for a fact?”

“Yep. He brought one sack to the house. Little Ben said that's what it was. He knows a lot about that stuff. When they went back out there the next morning, the rest of it was all gone.”

“How many sacks was it?”

“I don't have any idea. They didn't say and I didn't ask.”

“Well, I knew it'd finally get up in here, but I never expected to hear about
sacks
full of that mess in this county so soon.”

She gave him a funny, half smile. “Ned, things are changing fast these days. It's been here a long time, but you ain't run across it yet.”

“I guess I will before much longer, then. Where's that sack Ben brought to the house.”

She grinned wider. “It's gone.”

“I figured as much.”

“Little Ben smoked some of it last night, and then he left and took the rest with him.”

“What'd you tell me that fer?”

“I thought you might like to know.”

“I'god, you beat all.” Grandpa must have already expected me to be on the back porch. “Top, what are you still doing in there?”

I waited a beat. “I can't find a bottle opener.”

Aunt Sylvia moved the same strand of hair out of her eyes. “There's one on top of the icebox, hon. Can you reach it?”

“I'll use a chair.”

“Then get on out,” Grandpa called. “You don't need to be messin' around in there.”

“Yessir.”

I knew their conversation would be over when I came back outside, so I took my time pulling a creaky wooden chair across the cracked linoleum. The opener was right where she said it was, so I pulled the caps and put it back where I found it, because it was expected. Adults were always telling us kids stuff like that, like we didn't have good sense.

There was a little red lard can up there without a top, and when I put the opener back, I knocked it over. Half a dozen cigarettes scattered up there in the dust. I recognized hand rolled cigarettes, because a lot of the men in Center Springs still rolled their own from white cotton bags of Bull Durham, but these were different. Each one was wrinkled, and twisted together at the ends.

Grandpa and Aunt Sylvia were farther apart when I went back outside. I handed him one of the bottles and sat on the back porch steps to drink mine while they finished talking. It didn't take long before he put his empty on the steps and I could tell he was ready to go.

He reached into his pocket. “He hasn't finished that drink, so here's two cents for the bottle.”

Aunt Sylvia laughed. “Two cents won't make a bit of difference come tomorrow morning, Ned.”

“I know it, but that ain't our bottle.” He put two pennies in her apron pocket. “We're even.”

The breeze came up and Aunt Sylvia's dress flapped around her legs. “Even?” She wasn't wearing sensible shoes like everyone else in Center Springs. She had on a pair of high heels that were trying to bury themselves in the damp ground.

She held a wet towel between them and they said a lot for a few seconds without saying anything at all. It was strange, but I knew something was going on.

“You be careful, gal.”

“I will, Ned.” She surprised me by standing on her toes and giving him a quick peck on the cheek, marking him with her bright red lipstick. “You take care of things around here. We'll be checking back from time to time.”

He rubbed the mark on his cheek. “Don't you do it. Don't come back. Keep going and don't get caught. You don't need to be around here for a long while.”

Instead of answering, she came over to the porch where I was sitting, bent over, and kissed my forehead, marking me too with her red lipstick. She rubbed it away with her thumb while Grandpa rubbed his own cheek clean. I was so surprised, I didn't know whether to thank her or run away. She took my head in her hands and gave me a grin that made her eyes crinkle. “You mind your Grandpa and Miss Becky.”

My attention disappeared down her neck and into the top of her blouse that was cut lower than most that I'd ever seen. I could see a little bath powder between her big titties and it smelled pretty good. “Yessum.”

“Let's go, boy,” Grandpa said gruffly. His voice sounded hoarse. “I'll come back in a day or so to talk with Ben and Ben Junior.”

“He's eighteen. He'll be fine, Ned. And I don't much care about the other'n.”

“I was talking about the marywana.”

“Oh, well, all right then.”

“Y'all be careful. C'mon, hoss.”

We climbed in the truck, and I wondered why Grandpa was so quiet on the way back to the house.

It didn't make sense to me for him to be sad. Running off sounded like a great adventure and I hoped to run off some day myself, and be a cowboy.