“How much what?”
“Look, your friend Ms. Giocopazzi is being very decent about all of this, so I owe it to her to at least hear you out. You might not get what you came for, and I’m sad to see that Patrick Kelly’s children aren’t as proud as he was-not that I ever had any great admiration for your stiff-rumped old man, but at least he did have pride.”
I swallowed a little of mine along with a retort about someone else’s admirable old man and said, “Forgive me, Travis, but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“How much?” he demanded.
Rachel said, “Travis.”
He looked at her.
“You’re about to make a Clydesdale-sized horse’s ass out of yourself- for the second time in less than two hours. It’s kinda amusing to me, because your cousin here gets herself in trouble the same way you do-she’s a hothead, too.”
“I’ll fight my own fights, thank you very much,” I said.
“See what I mean?” she went on. “But what I’m trying to tell you is, Irene isn’t here for your money.”
“Is that what you thought?” I said to him, outraged. “You thought I came up here to borrow money? From someone I haven’t seen in over twenty years? Of all the-”
“Irene-” Rachel said.
“If it’s true that you aren’t after money,” Travis said, “then I’m sorry. Perhaps I jumped to a conclusion.”
“No perhaps about it,” I said.
“Then why are you here?”
I hesitated. “Because-”
“Not now,” Rachel said firmly. To Travis, she said, “Drive us back to Las Piernas. You know where Mary Kelly lives?”
He thought for a moment. “Irene’s great-aunt? The one who drives the Mustang?”
“Yes.”
“Not exactly. I haven’t seen her in over a dozen years. Is she the one who needs money?”
“For godsakes,” I said, “nobody wants your damned money.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong about that,” he said.
“Well, Aunt Mary doesn’t. I don’t. Rachel doesn’t want more of it than will be needed to fix her car.”
“Mary asked Irene to find you,” Rachel said, holding a hand up to silence me. “It wasn’t easy, and-well, I think we should go to Las Piernas, to Mary’s house, and we can explain it there.”
“All right,” he said, starting the motor. “But now you’ve really piqued my curiosity.”
That was enough to shut me up. At least for a few minutes. Until Travis said, “Rachel, Irene did warn you that you’re accepting a ride from the bastard son of a murdering bigamist?”
“Oh, for pitysakes-” I began, but Rachel elbowed me.
“I’ve heard something of the family history,” she admitted. “Maybe I should hear your version, though.”
He smiled again. “I’ll warn you ahead of time-I’m a liar. Being my father’s son, what else could you expect- right, Irene? That’s why I went into storytelling-a gratifying way to use my natural abilities.”
I thought of taking a different tack, of telling him how much we had enjoyed watching his storytelling performance, but I saw him look over at me, trying to see if he had riled me. There was something smug about that look. I started watching cars again.
I heard him laugh. “Should I begin at the very beginning?” he asked.
“Sure,” Rachel said.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Once upon a time,” he began, “a long, long time ago, in the time of our fathers’ fathers, there was a rich old king who owned a kingdom of sugar, a magical land of green fields and blue skies.
“The king loved his queen, who had given him a fine son. The king said, ”I have everything in the world a man could want. Rich land, a beautiful wife and a fine son.“ But then the king began to worry, began to fret in the way so many of us do when everything is going well. ”What if my wife should leave me? What if a dragon should take my son? What if my fortune should be lost?“
“Nothing could ease his sense of foreboding. Even when his wife announced that they would have another child, he only worried. He worked harder and harder-for he was a hard-working king, not one of the lazy sort of kings who sit about on big thrones all day. Soon he had a great deal of money in the castle, and said to the queen, ”Now I can protect you and our children from anything.“
“A little brown sparrow dared to speak up and say, ”Your highness, this life is hard. Nothing can protect us, except God in a good mood.“
“The king had no love of sparrows, and certainly did not want to hear them talk. He shooed this one from the castle. Some believe that sparrow cursed him as she flew away, but others simply believe that God had a mood swing.
“Whatever the cause, tragedy struck. Shortly after giving birth to their second son, the queen died. The king was nearly inconsolable, saying ‘Just as I feared! My queen has left me!”
“In his grief, the king only worked harder. As his children grew up, the first son became a strong, brave young man, who pleased his father in every way. The second son was weak and bitter, and had a stone where his heart should have been.”
“Do these young princes have names?” Rachel asked.
“Name them, if you’d like,” he said.
“The younger one should be Horace DeMont,” she said.
“And the older?”
“You’ll have to tell me.”
“Richard,” he said. “Prince Richard. And like another Richard before him, he was lionhearted. He chafed at his father’s protectiveness, and was something of a daredevil, and even learned to fly airplanes. He married a beautiful princess from the east, a lively woman who understood him, and he brought her to live at the castle. She was a good woman, and for a time, seeing his son’s happiness, the king forgot his grief.
“Prince Horace became jealous, for he was already in the habit of looking about the castle and thinking of how much he would like to sit in this chair or own that painting when the old king died. He did not like the idea of sharing these things with the new princess, and complained about her frequently. The king tired of this, and banished him from the castle, giving him a home in another city, and telling him to stay away.”
“Huntington Beach?” I asked.
“Yes. In those days, that part of the world was far away from the castle. But over the years, the land began to shrink and shrink and shrink, and it’s much closer now.”
He was quiet for a time, and I wondered if he would go on, or if my speaking was enough to bring an end to the tale. But then he said, “The king’s worries were soon to begin again. A Great War was being fought in Europe, and Richard volunteered-enlisted in the fight even before his country did.
“While Richard was in France, his wife came to the king and told him that she was expecting a child. The king at once sent a message to Richard, to tell him of this wonderful news, but poor Richard was slain before the message could reach him. He had died a courageous death, but the king found little comfort in that, saddened that a dragon had indeed taken his son.
“Horace now asked his father to welcome him home as his only remaining son, and to remove the princess. This angered the king, who cut Horace out of his will. He saw to it that the princess had the best of care. He was overjoyed when the princess gave birth to a little girl, and was especially pleased when she named her new daughter Gwendolyn, after his late and much beloved queen.
“Again tragedy struck, and there are those who will tell you that this one disordered the old king’s mind. The king and the princess traveled to the east, so that the princess might see her family, and to show them the fair Gwendolyn. And while they were there, a plague struck, the worst in five hundred years.”
“The influenza epidemic?” I asked.
“Yes. Do you know about it?”
“Not much,” I admitted.
“Twenty-one million people died because of it-more than twice the number killed in World War I. So many died in Washington and Baltimore, they ran out of coffins.”
