bandages to try to seal the cuts on my face.
'It's about ninety miles to Beaumont,' Betty said. 'You going to bleed to death?'
'Why do you ask?'
'Because you're going to have some stitches when I get there.'
'No fucking way am I going to sit around some goddamned emergency room.'
'You may not have to,' Betty said, then reached for the cell phone in her purse as I reached for the codeine bottle again.
Stunned by the codeine, I didn't exactly pay much attention to where Betty led me in the medical office complex next to the Beaumont Hospital, but when she hugged the tall, black doctor with a short gray beard before she introduced us, I knew exactly where I was.
'Warren Reeves,' the doctor said as he shook my hand.
'Good to meet you,' I said. And I meant it. Reeves and Betty had been engaged when she had killed the black kid who had raped her. Reeves had stuck by Betty all through the troubles afterward, but her guilt had driven a wedge between them that no amount of love could extract.
Reeves led me into the examining room filled with children's toys, cleaned me up quickly, and deadened the cuts. Then hit me with tetanus and antibiotic shots. 'I hope I remember how to do this,' he said, 'but from the look of your face it doesn't need to be plastic surgery. This isn't your first rodeo.'
'I only agreed to the needle work because she made me,' I said. 'She's a hard woman.'
'Don't I know,' Reeves responded, grinning.
'You boys want me to leave the room while you talk about me?' Betty asked.
'I love it when she's shy,' I said.
'Me, too,' Reeves said, then began stitching.
Afterward, Reeves refused payment, but I stuck five hundred dollars in his pocket. 'Donate it to your favorite charity.'
'You sure y'all won't stick around for dinner?' Reeves said to Betty. 'I know Anna and the kids would love to see you. It's been too long.'
'Milo's hot on the trail of something or other,' Betty said. 'Maybe on the way back. I'll call.'
'Do that,' Reeves said. Then to me, 'Any doctor can take those stitches out for you.'
'I can do it myself.'
'Of course you can,' Reeves said. 'Just sterilize the fingernail clippers before you do it.'
We laughed, shook hands again, then I left Betty and Reeves to make their goodbyes alone. But Reeves shouted at me before I got out the office door. 'You sure you won't spend the night? The guest house is always ready, and there's forty pounds of blue cat in the freezer.'
I was suddenly very old and tired, the pain of the beating seeping through the drugs, and the invitation so warm and generous. 'Why the hell not? Lake Charles ain't going anywhere.'
Later that night, Reeves and I, stuffed with catfish and hush puppies, loafed on the patio listening to the frogs and insects sing along the brackish slough that stretched just behind the dark screen of thick brush at the edge of the yard. Domestic sounds came from the kitchen – the rattle of pots going into the dishwasher, the soft murmurs of the children, and Anna's lilting voice, her accent a charming mixture of French, Vietnamese, and Southern – Reeves and I sipped Cognac and smoked good Havanas.
'Keeps the mosquitoes off,' Reeves said quietly as if apologizing for the cigar.
'Maybe for you,' I said as I slapped one on my wrist, leaving a large freckle of blood on my skin and an odd pain in my hand. 'I think they're using me as a drug smorgasbord. At least they're easy to kill. Too fat and stoned to fly.' I slapped another one on my forehead.
'You been rustling cattle?' he asked.
'No. Why?'
'Looks like you've been butchering a calf with a chain saw.'
'Don't believe I've ever had that pleasure.'
We chuckled softly, then sat quietly for several minutes, listening again to the buzz saw of the night. Then Reeves said, 'Betty's as happy as she's been in a while. You should be proud.'
'If I thought I had anything to do with it, man, I might be proud,' I admitted, 'but sometimes I think she's just a slave to her moods.'
'I blame her folks for that,' Reeves said. 'Distant father. And a mother who should have been on lithium.'
'She never talks about them.'
'Her old man wasn't my favorite person, but he was interesting,' Reeves said. 'Really the last of the great country doctors. House calls and the whole number. Also, a great mechanic. He could stitch up your ranch hand, tune your pickup truck, pull a calf, then take a flat of free-range brown eggs in payment. But the money changed all that.'
'Money?'
'He patented an improvement to a surgical staple gun or something that made him a considerable fortune. Then the gravel company that owned the dump truck that hit her folks head-on settled a heavy piece of change on Betty,' he said. 'Lord knows her mother's ranch never made a dime after they gave up deer leases.'
'Her father wasn't your favorite person, 'though?'
'He was a hard son of a bitch,' Reeves said. 'Betty told me that after her first menses, he never touched her again. Never a hug, never a held hand, never even a hand ruffling her hair, or an encouraging word. She was a mess when I met her. Nobody could live up to Dr. Porterfield. Same kind of charmingly arrogant Southern jerk as her lawyer uncle.'
'Travis Lee?'
'You know the old boy?'
'We're sort of partners,' I said.
'Well, I'd surely watch him,' Reeves said. 'He started off as the sort of lawyer who'd start a fist-fight just to drum up clients, then graduated down to politics, and further down to shady land deals.'
'I thought he was too rich for that kind of sleazy,' I said.
'Last time I was over in Austin, an old friend of mine suggested that Wallingford had taken a bath in the last oil glut, mis-read the computer boom, and was badly overextended. Very badly.'
'When was that?'
'I don't know. Five or six years ago.'
'Hell, I'm supposed to be suspicious by nature. And profession,' I said, 'so I had my lawyer go through the contracts. Travis Lee's always come up with his share of the payments. And he is Betty's uncle.'
'I've been wrong before.'
'And I've misjudged a few women.'
'And Betty a few men…'
'The rape?'
'Not just that,' Reeves sighed. 'After her mother and father were killed in the wreck, she took off two years before she started medical school, and I suspect she ran a little wild, cocaine cowboys and that ilk. In fact she just eased back to a semi-normal life when…' Reeves paused, puffed on the cigar, then blew a perfect smoke ring into the humid air. 'Ah, hell, the rape and the killing and all the troubles afterward.'
'Troubles?'
'She put five rounds in the guy's back. If he'd been white, and if she couldn't have afforded Phil Thursby,' Reeves said, 'she would have done hard time. And she knew that. She was guilty, and nothing I could do or say seemed to ease that guilt. She quit medical school, ran wild again until she went to vet school somewhere in California, then left the twentieth century and moved out to the ranch.
'I didn't see her again until Anna and I got married. And as far as I know, you're the first man she's been involved with for any length of time for a long time,' Reeves added, then paused again. 'I suspect it hasn't been easy.'
'Since people started trying to kill me, she's been a lot easier to be around,' I said.
Reeves gave me an odd look.
