of water crackers. 'Thanks,' I said, oddly touched by the old man's visit. 'You came a long way to see me laid up.'
'Down at the nurses' station, they said that you're comin' along fine,' he expounded. 'Said you should be outa here in a couple shakes of a puppy's tail.'
'That's not what they tell me,' I said. 'I'm wearing pieces of my ass on my neck, a dead man's ligament in my knee, and an assortment of screws and pins in my elbow worthy of a hardware store.' Then I wondered, 'How did you know I was in the hospital?'
'Hell, I don't know,' he said, 'somebody must have mentioned it. Austin may be on the verge of making Gatlin County look like a city, son, but you know it's a small town as far as gossip goes. And speaking of gossip, I hear you've settled your cash flow problem.'
'I don't have a cash flow problem,' I said, 'so I don't know what the hell you're talking about.'
'I'm talking about your sudden acquisition of my brother's ranch.'
'Shit, Trav,' I said. 'That's not gossip, that's criminal behavior. The goddamned will hasn't been probated yet. So how the hell did you know about the will?'
'Word gets around,' he said innocently.
'Then maybe you can tell me what the hell Tom Ben had in mind?' I said. 'Leaving his place to me?'
'Couldn't speak to that, son,' he said, 'but I have some idea what that land is worth. Particularly if it's parceled out to the right people at the right time.'
'It all seems like a long way away,' I said. 'I'm going to be in this bed for a time.'
'You're coming back to Texas, aren't you?' he said, his face furrowed with worry. 'You got a passel of business interests down there, son.'
'I don't know what I'm going to do,' I said, suddenly very tired and reaching for the nurse's call button. I wasn't going to criticize Tom Ben – he was clearly a man of some honor – but I sure as hell wasn't all that happy about being dropped into the middle of the Wallingford family's troubles. 'Right now I'm going to see if I can't beg a shot out of these stingy bastards,' I said, 'then see about a
We chatted aimlessly until the nurse came, and I begged like an egg-sucking dog until she gave me a jolt of Demerol just to shut me up. Travis Lee made his exit, explaining that he had spent so much time on the ground at the Salt Lake airport that he had to turn around and head right back to Texas. I wanted to ask him about Sissy Duval, but it slipped my mind. As I drifted off behind the painkiller, I thought that it was nice of Travis Lee to come all the way up here to see me, then I wondered, sleepily, why he had gone to the trouble – he hadn't bothered to mention his investment ideas – but then I let it go as I slipped into the warm, drugged slumber.
Once out of the hospital, I went over to Meriwether to spend a couple of weeks with my ex-partner and his family. Baby Lester wasn't a baby anymore. Which he reminded me every time I slipped and called him that. And they were too busy with law school and a growing Lester to spend much time with me and my problems, and I got tired of watching them try, so I climbed on a plane and hopped back to Texas. I didn't really care if anybody knew I was back, but for some reason I didn't want to return to my room in the Lodge to wait for Tom Ben's will to go into probate. So I rented a car and stopped by my place to check with Lalo and ran into one of my grass widows, Sherry. She invited me up for a drink that turned into a few pleasant days. And nights. Until her big-shot computer-chip-on-the-English-tweed-shoulder husband came back from Boston. Then I crashed with Renfro and Richie at their place off Bee Caves Road for a few more days, but they took such good care of me that I began to feel as if I was either an invalid or a leeching guest at a chichi bed-and-breakfast. A guy can stand out-of-season strawberries and clotted cream for breakfast only so many days in a row.
So I went over to Travis Lee's office to ask him if I could borrow his place down on the Gulf for a few weeks, but he said he was having some work done on the place. When I thought about that last weekend Betty and I had spent there, I decided perhaps I didn't mind too much not going. I asked him if he couldn't get Gatlin County to speed up the probate process.
'Oh, son, I don't know,' he groaned, a Confederate cavalry saber balanced on his knee, 'down here a favor always calls for a favor in return. You scratch my balls, I'll scratch yours. I strongly suspect those old boys around the courthouse are a little worried that you might be considerin' removing my brother's land from the tax rolls. 'Cause of your former relations with my niece.' Travis Lee stood up, holding the old saber in front of him. From this angle I realized that his golden belt buckle wasn't a snake's head but a bullfrog's head, and now I knew what it meant. He pointed the saber at me. 'Now if I could go over there and give them some reassurance in this rather important matter,' he continued, 'I'm sure they would be more than happy to move things along.'
'You tell them,' I said, fighting to keep the anger out of my voice. 'You tell them old boys that I don't have any plans to take the ranch off the tax rolls.' Truth was I didn't have any plans about the ranch at all. But I had some plans for Mr. Wallingford, plans he wasn't going to like.
'You sure you didn't check out of that hospital too soon?' he asked.
'Maybe,' I admitted. 'But I was bored.'
Travis Lee nodded his head as if he understood exactly. But he didn't understand anything at all. I didn't understand why I didn't jerk the saber out of his hands and shove it up his ass. Maybe I was learning restraint in my golden years.
When the will went through probate the next day, I decided to move into Tom Ben's ranch house. Over the fervent objections of Betty and some lawyer I didn't know, objections that Tom Ben's lawyer quickly stifled. When it was over, he handed me a sealed envelope. Betty watched, her face with a haunted look, as if she hadn't slept in weeks. When she had first seen my new old man's face in the judge's chambers, a ripple of concern crossed her pale face, and she took one small step in my direction, then pulled herself up, stopped, and just stood there, her face angry with hurt and betrayal, staring at me. But I didn't understand any of it. Not how we had gotten together, or how we'd fallen apart.
That afternoon I bought a four-wheel-drive crew cab pickup just like any other all-hat-and-no-cattle Texan, picked up my new gear, and moved myself into Tom Ben's house. It seemed like a good center of operations for what I had planned. I made a few quick changes: two more telephone lines installed; a wall between two bedrooms removed to make space for the computers and the exercise equipment; and had one of the bulldozer guys build me a new road out the backside of the ranch so my comings and goings wouldn't be quite so visible.
Tom Ben's foreman had towed the burned hulk of my Caddy out into the pasture with a bulldozer, then buried it. I told him to keep the hands doing whatever the old man had been doing, then went about my business.
The afternoon Red's scrambled cell phone came by FedEx with a sweet note from Mrs. McCravey, I decided to pick up Gannon's. When I called, I caught him in the office. I still used one crutch and kept a fiberglass cast on my left elbow, mostly for cover, and with the white beard probably looked like my grandfather's ghost. At least Gannon looked at me as startled as if I were some kind of specter.
'Jesus, man,' he said. Today he was dressed like the rest of the boys in cowboy boots and a western-cut suit. 'I heard that you'd been in a car wreck, but I had no idea.'
'You should see the other motherfucker,' I said.
'You have any luck with your notions?'
'Not a bit,' I said. 'It was a long tiresome chase into a pile of slick, slippery gooseshit with not a rose petal in sight. And as you can see, I'm a little too beat up to go on with it.'
'I can see that,' he said. 'Are you going to be all right?'
'The rumors of my near demise haven't been exaggerated,' I said, 'but unfortunately for my enemies, I'm not dead yet.'
'Well, if there's anything I can do, let me know,' he said, ignoring my line about enemies. He honestly seemed to have no idea of the real story.
'Absolutely,' I said. 'Hey, how's that kid doing? Culbertson, I think his name was.'
'Released when we downsized last month,' Gannon said, but I suspected I knew the real reason.
'How's your job looking these days?' I asked. 'You're not in uniform. They put you back in the detective division?'
'For a few weeks,' he said. 'While they decide if they're going to fire me. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.'
