She opened the door of the big wooden icebox and rummaged around. She ate a deviled egg left over from dinner. Her mother came in from the back yard as she poured a glass of milk from the crockery pitcher.
“Are you eating again? I just got the dinner dishes put away,” her mother said.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Rose grumbled. “Everything is going wrong today.” She took a swallow of milk and made a face. “This milk is blinky.”
Mrs. Willet frowned. “It shouldn’t be. I just got it yesterday.” She opened the top of the icebox and looked into the ice compartment. She groaned. “The block of ice I got yesterday is almost melted.” She shut the lid. “There’s something wrong with this old thing. Air’s getting in somewhere. And this is Saturday. They won’t deliver ice again until Monday and everything will spoil. Your father will have to go to the ice house.” She sighed. “He won’t like it. If I didn’t have enough to do today, what with your party and going to the tent show and everything. If you’re not going to help, at least get out from underfoot.” She started toward the judge’s study.
Rose went back to her room and flopped onto her bed and thought of Kelsey Armstrong. Oh, Lord, what if Harold were to find out? She had every intention of marrying Harold next year when he finished college. He was handsome and sexy and pliable and would come into a lot of money when he got the farm. She’d heard some talk about the farmers going broke, but she decided it was a lot of nonsense. The farm. That was the only drawback. Well, she’d do something about that after they were married.
Kelsey Armstrong was Harold’s fault anyway. If Harold weren’t such a damned gentleman, she wouldn’t have to sneak out to see somebody else. She compressed her lips. On their next date she would do something about that too.
She was beginning to wish she hadn’t planned the party after all. Last night on the pile of cottonseed in the gin, she had felt nothing but fear when he asked to meet her again tonight, but now her body was overruling her caution. It was too late now.
She twitched on the bed, remembering his hard arms around her and his naked body on hers. It had been wonderful, marvelous, fantastic, terrific, sensational. She knew it would be as soon as he smiled at her when he took the tickets at the tent show.
Oh, Lord, what if her father found out!
15.
Dr. Horace Latham lived in the same house he was born in. He had been weaned on the odor of carbolic and ether. He grew in the house, an only child, carefully nurtured on mumps, whooping cough, measles, diphtheria, chicken pox, hives, pregnant women, and a variety of broken bones and abrasions. He had never considered not becoming a doctor.
He went to Kansas City, finished college, became a doctor, got married, had a baby, and established a nice little practice.
Then his father died. He brought his wife, his baby, and his practice to Hawley, to the house he thought he had left forever. It was a fairly old house, built a block from the courthouse in 1887, just three years after the courthouse itself was built. It reared up rather grandly, but it wasn’t as big as it seemed. The wide veranda on three sides gave it a deceptive appearance of size. The high peaked roof,crowned with gingerbread and lightning rods, added to the illusion.
But there was more than enough room for Dr. Latham and Francine. They were the only ones left. His mother had died within a year after his return; his wife and newborn son, both from influenza, in 1916 when Francine was four. Now the two of them rattled around in the old house, even with his office and small clinic sharing the downstairs with the kitchen, parlor, and dining room.
He stood at the front door, watching Francine through the closed screen, and wondered if she ever felt the same lack he had as a child. He hadn’t really put a name to it until he was grown, but the vague uneasiness had always been there. The lack of a refuge, of a hiding place. The lack of a home where strangers didn’t wander in and out all day.
Francine sat in the glider on the porch, swinging lightly, her mind a thousand miles away. The chain squeaked a little, almost like a cricket. Dr. Latham opened the screen and sat beside his daughter, putting his arm around her shoulders. She looked up at him and smiled faintly.
“What’s the matter, Francine?” he asked gently.
“Nothing, Daddy.” She looked back at her hands in her lap.
“Are you sure? You can tell me if there is, you know.”
“I know.”
“Well?”
“I don’t know, Daddy. I just feel kinda sad.”
“Sad? Did you have an argument with Billy Sullivan?”
“Oh, Billy,” she dismissed him completely.
“Well, whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll get over it when you go to Rose’s party tonight.”
“I don’t really want to go to Rose’s party.”
“If you don’t want to go, don’t go.”
“I don’t know how to get out of it.”
“Just tell her you don’t want to go.”
“I couldn’t do that.” Francine sighed. “She’s already called twice to make sure I’d be there. She’s acting like a real witch.”
“Well, do whatever you want to do.” He gave her shoulder a pat and went back in the house.
She looked after him without expression for a moment, and began to swing slowly again. The clock in the courthouse tower struck three.
16.
Louis Ortiz stretched his arm and shoulder from the bed and retrieved his fancy bracelet watch from where it lay on his neatly folded suit. He brought it to his face, squinted, blinked the sleep from his eyes. It was after five o’clock. He wound the watch and yawned, baring his large, even, white teeth. He put the watch back and stretched his arms over his head. His hands bumped against the brass bedstead. He looked up and watched the muscles play under his brown skin.
He let his arms drop back and scratched his chest, rubbing his fingers over his nipples. He slid his hands under the sheet, across his flat stomach, over his pelvis, down his hard thighs, and back up between his legs. He felt dry and crusty; he should have washed but he had been too sleepy.
He slid his legs from under the sheet and sat on the edge of the bed, yawning again. He stood up and stretched, then ran his hands over his buttocks, enjoying the feel of the tight muscles.
Louis looked at the woman still sleeping in the bed. He had dragged the sheet down to her waist when he stood up. She lay on her side, facing him, her large breasts drooping grotesquely sideways. She slept with her mouth open slightly. Spittle had made a damp spot on the pillow. Her marcelled brown hair had become frizzy with her squirming. Louis smiled. He could really make them squirm.
Shirley Ann Waldrop.
Tiny vertical creases appeared between his eyes. Why had he thought of Shirley Ann Waldrop? He hadn’t thought of her or the farm or El Paso in years.
The beautiful, beautiful, golden Shirley Ann; Mr. Waldrop’s youngest girl; nineteen years old; the daughter of El Patron.
Her long skirts sweeping the ground; her lace parasol keeping her skin soft and pale; her corseted waist cinched so small he could, even at fourteen, almost close his hands around it.
It all came back to him, all the old bad memories, sweeping over him like tepid syrup. He remembered how she drove her buggy past the adobe shack, waving cheerfully at the dirty little brown children playing in the sand under the hot Texas sun. There was no shade in the Mexican quarter, no trees but scrubby salt cedars. The big house, the house of El Patron, sat in green gloom under giant poplars and cottonwoods. To the Mexican children the temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees as soon as they walked into the yard, something that was not done lightly.