capacity or another, quickly swept up their stakes and scuttled
out. As soon as the last one cleared the door, Angus banged
it shut.
"What the hell's going on?" Junior asked.
"I'll tell you what's going on. Your friend Reede is about
to get the best of you again, while you're here in the back
room of this dump pissing your life away."
Junior meekly extinguished his cigar. "I don't know what
you're talking about."
" 'Cause you've got your head up your ass, instead of on
your business, where it belongs."
By an act of will, Angus calmed himself. If he hollered,
Junior would only pout. Yelling never got him anywhere.
But it was tough to keep his disappointment and anger from
showing.
"Alex was at the airfield this afternoon with Reede."
"So?"
"So, if I'd gotten there ten seconds later, I'd've caught
them screwing against the side of an airplane!" he roared,
forgetting his resolution to restrain his temper.
Junior bolted from his chair. "The hell you say!"
"I know when animals are in heat, boy. I make part of
my living breeding them, remember? I can smell when they
want each other," he declared, touching the end of his nose.
"He was doing what you should have been, instead of gambling
away money you didn't even earn."
Junior flinched. Defensively, he said, "Last I heard, Alex
was out of town."
"Well, she's back."
"All right, I'll call her tonight."
"Do better than that. Make a date, see her."
"Okay."
"I mean it!"
"I said, okay!" Junior shouted.
"And something else, just so you'll hear it from me first.
I've asked Reede to rejoin ME."
"Huh?"
"You heard me."
"What . . . what'd he say?"
"He said no, but I'm not taking that as final." Angus
walked toward his son until they were nose to nose. "I'll tell
you something else. I haven't decided who'll be working for
whom if he takes the job."
Junior's eyes reflected his pain and anger.
Angus poked him hard in the chest. "You'd better get busy
and do what I told you to do, or one of two things could
happen. Either Reede'll be sitting at your desk, assigning you
jobs like cleaning out the stables, or all of us will be making
license plates in the Huntsville prison. Either way, you won't
have afternoons to while away playing poker."
Angus stepped back and gave the edge of the table a vicious
kick with the pointed toe of his lizard boot. It toppled over,
sending cards, poker chips, ashtrays, and bottles of beer
crashing to the floor.
Then he marched out, leaving Junior to clean up the mess.
Thirty-one
The waitress set down two chicken salads served in fresh,
hollowed-out pineapples and garnished with sprigs of mint.
She asked Junior Minton if he and his guest needed refills
on iced tea.
"We're fine for now, thanks," he said, flashing her his
hundred-watt smile.
The country club's dining room offered a view of the golf
course. It was one of the few rooms in Purcell County that
didn't reek of Texana. The soothing pastel decor would have
fit in anywhere. Junior and Alex were among a small number
of luncheon diners.
She applied her fork to an almond sliver. "This is almost
too pretty to eat. It beats the B & B Cafe's blue-plate special
all to heck," she told him as she munched on the nut. "I'm
sure if I ever saw the inside of the kitchen, I'd never eat
there. It's probably crawling with roaches."
"Naw, they chicken-fry them and serve them as appetizers."
Junior smiled. "Do you eat there often?"
"Often enough. I've had gravy, which comes on everything,
and chili up to here."
"Then, since you refused to go out with me last night, I'm
glad I insisted on lunch today. I've frequently had to rescue
ladies who work downtown from the high-calorie clutches of
the B & B. The menu is hazardous to their waistlines."
"Not that this is much more slenderizing," she said, tasting
the rich, creamy salad dressing.
"You don't need to worry about that. You're as slender
as your mother."
Alex rested her fork on the edge of her plate. "Even after
having me?"
Junior's blond head was bent over his plate. He raised it,
noticed her earnest curiosity, and blotted his mouth on the
stiff linen napkin before answering. "From the back you'd
be taken for twins, except that your hair is darker and has
more red in it."
"That's what Reede said."
"Really? When?"
His smile faltered. The question had been posed a little too
casually to be taken that way. A telltale crease formed between
his brows.
"Soon after we met."
"Ah." The furrow between his brows smoothed out.
Alex didn't want to think about Reede. When she was with
him, the practical, methodical, professional detachment she
prided herself on disappeared. Pragmatism gave way to emotionalism.
One minute she was accusing him of first-degree murder,
the next, kissing him madly and wishing for more. He was
dangerous, not only from her viewpoint as a prosecutor, but
as a woman. Both facets of her, one as vulnerable as the
other, suffered under his assault.
"Junior," she said, after they'd finished eating, "why
couldn't Reede forgive Celina for having me? Was his pride
that badly damaged?"
He was staring out the window at the golf greens. When
he felt her eyes on him, he looked at her sadly. "I'm disappointed."
"About what?"
"I thought--hoped--that you accepted my invitation to
lunch because you wanted to see me." He let out a discouraged
breath. "But you just want to talk about Reede."
"Not Reede, Celina. My mother."
He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "It's
okay. I'm used to it. Celina used to call me and talk about
Reede all the time."
' 'What did she say when she called and talked about him?''
Junior propped his shoulder against the window and began
to play with his necktie, idly pulling it through his fingers.
"I usually heard how wonderful he was. You know, Reede
this, Reede that. After your father got killed in the war, and
she was available again, she was afraid that she'd never get
Reede back."
"She didn't."
"No."
"Surely, she didn't expect him to be glad about Al Gaither
and me."
"No, she knew better than that. Neither of us had wanted
her to go away for the summer, but there wasn't much we
could do about it once she'd made her mind up," Junior
replied. "She went. She was there. We were here, three-hundred-plus
miles away. One night, Reede decided to borrow
a plane and fly us there to bring her back.
"That son of a bitch had convinced me that he could get
us there and back safely before anybody realized the plane
was missing. The only person who would notice would be
Moe Blakely, and in his book, Reede could do no wrong."
"My God, you didn't do it?"
"No, not then. One of the stable hands--Pasty Hickam,
in fact--overheard us plotting it and told Dad. He gave us hell and threatened us within an inch of our lives not to ever try something that crazy. He knew all about Celina trying to
make Reede jealous and advised us to let her have her fun.
He assured us that she would eventually tire of it and come
home, and everything would be just like it had been before."
"But Angus was wrong. When mother came back to Purcell,
she was pregnant with me. Nothing was ever the same."
She toyed with her iced tea spoon for a long, silent while.
"How much do you know about my father, Junior?"
"Not much. How about you?"
She raised her shoulders in a small shrug. "Only that his
name was Albert Gaither, that he was from a coal-mining
town in West Virginia, that he was sent to Vietnam within
weeks of his marriage to my mother, and that he stepped on
a land mine and died months before I was born."
"I didn't even know where he came from," Junior told
her regretfully.
"When I got old enough, I thought about going to West
Virginia and looking up his family, but I decided against it.
They never made any attempt to contact me, so I felt it best
to leave it alone. His remains were shipped to them and
interred there. I'm not even certain if my mother attended
his funeral."
"She didn't. She wanted to, but Mrs. Graham refused to
give her the money to make the trip. Dad offered to pay her
way, but Mrs. Graham wouldn't hear of that, either."
"She let Angus pay for Mother's funeral."
"I guess she thought that was different, somehow."
"Al Gaither wasn't any more to blame for the hasty marriage
than Mother."
"Maybe he was," Junior argued. "A soldier going off to
war, that kind of thing. Celina was a pretty girl out to prove
her allure."
"Because Reede wouldn't sleep with her."
"He told you about that, huh?"
Alex nodded.
"Yeah, well, some of the girls he did sleep with flaunted
it in Celina's face. She was out to prove she was woman
enough to snare a man. Gaither no doubt took advantage of
that.
"To your grandma, his name was a dirty word. Because
of him, your mother missed her senior year of high school.
That didn't go down too well with your grandma, either. No,
she had a real ax to grind with Mr. Gaither."
"I wish she had at least saved a picture of him. She had
thousands of pictures of Celina, but not a single one of my
father."
"To Mrs. Graham, he probably represented evil, you
know, the thing that changed Celina's life forever. And for
the worse."
"Yes," she said, thinking that Junior's words could apply
to how her grandmother felt about her, too. "I don't even
have a face to associate with the name. Nothing."
"Jesus, Alex, that must be rough."
"Sometimes, I think I just sprang up out of the ground."
In an effort to lighten the mood, she said, "Maybe I was the
first Cabbage Patch kid."
"No," Junior said, reaching for her hand again, "you had
a mother, and she was beautiful."
"Was she?"
"Ask anybody."
"Was she beautiful inside as well as out?"
His brows drew together slightly. "As much as anyone is.
She was human. She had faults as well as virtues."
"Did she love me, Junior?"
"Love you? Hell, yes. She thought you were the most
terrific baby ever conceived."
Basking in the glow of his words, Alex left the country