His mother frowned. 'Wombs?'
'Natalie wants to hire an Indian surrogate to have their baby. It's a lot cheaper.'
'Global economy,' his father said. 'Americans shopping the world for cheap labor. Literally, in Natalie's case.'
'You really thinking about getting a liver in India?'
'Nah. Those poor folks don't need us coming over there to take advantage of their poverty, buying their body parts on the cheap like we buy auto parts from China.'
The Prescott men were hopeless liberals and lovable losers. They voted for McGovern, Humphrey, Mondale, Gore, Kerry, and even Kinky Friedman. Their votes guaranteed the candidate would lose.
His father downed a handful of vitamins and chased them with iced tea then slowly pushed himself out of his chair.
'Hell, I gotta go again.'
He walked inside the house. Andy looked to his mother.
'The diuretics,' she said. 'They make his body produce more urine, to get rid of the fluid in his abdomen.'
'His skin and eyes, they're a lot more yellow than the last time I saw him.'
She nodded. 'The jaundice. Doctor said he'll look like a pumpkin before it's over.'
'I signed the organ donation authorization on the back of my driver's license.'
'Your face looks better.'
His father returned and said, 'Made a hundred bucks this month, selling electricity back to those bastards.' He sat and pointed a fork at the log owl sitting by the back door. 'The hell is that thing, Andy?'
'It's yard art, Paul,' his mother said.
'You buy that in Austin?'
'Yep.'
'Couldn't have come cheap… or that fancy bike outside.'
'I got a new client this week.'
He waited until he had their full attention; he felt like a kid about to surprise his parents with a straight-A report card.
'Russell Reeves hired me.'
His parents stared at him as if he had said Dick Cheney would be joining them for dinner. When his mother could finally speak again, she said, 'Did you cut your hair for him?'
Only his mother would ask such a question. He answered with a lame nod.
'Russell Reeves hired you for a traffic ticket?' his father said.
'No. He wants to build low-income housing in SoCo.'
'Andy,' his mother said, 'you're representing a developer? '
'No, Mom. A renovator. '
'What's that got to do with you?' his father said.
'He needs a SoCo lawyer. He's paying me four hundred dollars an hour.'
'Why would he do that?'
'He built low-income housing in East-'
'No. Pay you four hundred bucks an hour?'
'He needs me.'
'Russell Reeves needs you?'
'I'm trusted in SoCo.'
'Is he?'
'Nope. That's why he needs me.'
'He's a billionaire ten times over.'
'Fifteen.'
'That's fifteen billion reasons not to trust him.'
His parents had fed their son a daily dose of populist politics right along with organic carrots and squash from the day he was born. And one article of that faith was to never trust 'The Man'-and The Man was always rich and powerful and politically connected… like Russell Reeves.
'Dad, Russell Reeves has done a lot of good for Austin. And, Mom, he didn't give his money to the UT football team. He built a research lab… and he has a sick kid.'
Now Andy was defending The Man.
His mother's expression softened. 'His son is dying, Paul.'
'But why Andy?' His father turned back. 'Nothing against you, son, but there's ten thousand lawyers in Austin who-'
'Did better than me in law school?'
'You're a traffic ticket lawyer, son. Now that's fine with me, but why is it fine with Russell Reeves?'
'Dad, he just wants to help regular people live in SoCo.'
'That's like politicians saying they want to help regular people when rich people put them in office.' He shook his head. 'Andy, when things don't seem right, they're usually not.'
'Dad…'
'A billionaire just walks into your office one day and hires you for a big real-estate deal? That make sense to you?'
'Don't worry, Dad. It's all good.'
His dad wasn't convinced. He chewed on that and the tofu, then said, 'How about staying the night, son? We'll go into town for dinner, get that cheeseburger, maybe check out the movie at the Corral-'
The Corral Theatre was an outdoor walk-in theatre that showed movies under the stars. You took your own chair.
— 'maybe go to church tomorrow morning. I feel like eating meat Saturday night and singing gospel Sunday morning.'
Andy glanced from his father to his mother. She was trying to nod a yes out of him.
'Can we have cheeseburgers, Mom?'
'You and your father can.'
'Okay, Dad, I'll stay over.' He had promised Tres he'd ride the greenbelt with him the next morning, but he'd just have to break in the Stumpjumper another day. 'On one condition.'
'You want real French fries, too?'
'Well, yeah, I do, but that's not the condition.'
'A chocolate malt?'
'That, too, but you've got to let me buy you those boots, for your sixty-sixth birthday.'
His father had long yearned for cowboy boots handmade by the same boot maker who had made boots for Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner when they had come to Austin to film A Perfect World, his father's favorite movie. The boots didn't come cheap; they started at $1,200. Just when his father had decided to bite the bullet and buy the boots, he had been diagnosed with liver disease; he had lost all desire for new boots.
'With my billionaire client, I can afford them. Any leather you want… except ostrich.'
Cowboy boots made of ostrich skin were highly coveted by Texans. But Andy had grown up with the big birds-the same ones outside had been his childhood pets; ostriches lived to be seventy-so he couldn't very well make them into boots.
'Maybe elk, Dad. That's soft leather, they'll fit like foot gloves.'
'Andy, those boots, they'll take six, seven months to make.'
'That means you've got to be here when they're ready.'
'Who says?'
'I do. And one other thing: I'm going to be real busy for a while, working for Reeves-would you keep Max?'
His father's yellow eyes brightened.
'You sure?'
Andy nodded. His father looked down at the dog.
