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BOOK: Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers]

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He slowed the truck when he came alongside Clara. The face she turned to him was pale with a bright slash of red lipstick. She had a bruise on one of her cheeks and a swelling on the bridge of her nose.

“Hello, Clara. Need a ride?”

“Oh, Johnny,” she squealed, and let the bag drop to the ground.

Johnny got out of the truck and lifted the suitcase up onto the bed of the truck. Clara lifted her tight skirt up past her knees, stepped up on the running board, and slid onto the seat beside him.

“Jesus, you’re a lifesaver. I wasn’t sure I’d make it carryin’ that damned old suitcase.”

“Does Hazel know you’re coming?” He knew the answer, but he asked anyway.

“No. I wanted to surprise her and Emily. I brought presents for Emily’s birthday.”

“Isn’t Emily’s birthday on the Fourth of July?”

“So they’re a little late. A kid don’t care. It’s a hell of a lot more than I got on my birthday. I was lucky to get a piece of corn bread with syrup on it.”

“It was worse for a lot of kids. Some were starving. Your folks did the best they could by you.”

“Well, dog my cats! There it is. The old dump looks the same.” Clara’s quick dry laugh spoke of her contempt. She opened the door when the truck stopped, and slid out, her skirt slithering up to mid-thigh.

Johnny lifted the bag off the truck bed and followed her up the walk to the porch. Clara opened the screen door and went inside.

“Mama, I’m home. Put my suitcase in my room, Johnny.” She winked at him. “You know where it is.”

Johnny set the bag down beside the door just as Hazel came from the back of the house wiping her hands on her apron. When she saw Clara her face lit up like a full moon.

“Clara? Honey, is that you? I thought I heard you call, but I wasn’t sure.” Hazel folded her daughter in her arms. “Oh, honey, I’m so glad to see you. Here, let me look at you. My, but you’re as pretty as ever. Emily will be beside herself. She been asking about you a lot lately.” Hazel hugged Clara again. “I’ve been so worried. Why didn’t you write?”

Clara twisted out of her mother’s embrace and dropped down onto a chair.

“Don’t start in on me, Mama. I just got here.”

Hazel drew in a deep breath. Then, “Hello, Johnny. I didn’t see you at first. I was so excited to see Clara.”

“Hello, Mrs. Ramsey. I met her out on the road. Where do you want me to put the suitcase?”

“Put it in my room,” Clara said. “Where else? I see you’ve got the door shut, Mama. I used to love havin’ the door shut, but you’d come along and open it to see if I had a boy in my bed.” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

“Clara, honey, I rented out your room. You’ll have to sleep on the couch here, or back on my bed with Emily. I’ll take Emily’s bed.”

“You what?” Clara jumped to her feet and stormed across the room to throw open the door. She looked around the room with her hands on her hips. “Well, I swan. You really want me out of here, don’t you? You rented out my room so I’d not have a place to come back to.”

“It wasn’t like that at all. I needed the money. I couldn’t make enough by ironing to keep us going.”

Clara picked up Kathleen’s brush and flipped it over onto the bed. She pecked at the keys on the typewriter, pulled open the drawer in the table, and attempted to lift the lid on the trunk, but it was locked.

“What’d she lock the trunk for? She think you’re goin’ to steal somethin’?”

“You’ve no right to meddle with her things, Clara.”

Clara ignored the rebuke. “You never kept it like this when I was here. Who is she? It is a
she.
I’d not be lucky enough for it to be a good-looking
he.
”

“Her name is Miss Dolan, and she works for the newspaper.”

“Now ain’t that just a fine kettle of fish?” Clara brushed by her mother as she left the room.

Hazel closed the door and eased herself down onto a chair as if a sudden move might break her in two.

“What was I to do, Clara?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t know. Whine, whine. It’s all I ever get when I come back here.”

“Then why don’t you leave?” Johnny said quietly. “I’ll take you to the highway.”

“Oh, no, Johnny. Not before she sees Emily. It would break the child’s heart.”

“All you care about is that kid. Isn’t that right, Mama?”

“That’s not true. I—”

“—Mrs. Ramsey,” Johnny interrupted. He had to get out of there before he shook the stuffings out of Clara. “Miss Dolan will not be here for supper. She asked me to tell you.”

“You
feed
her, too,” Clara spun around and glared at her mother who got to her feet and faced her angry daughter.

“I do what I have to do,” she said firmly. “Miss Dolan pays for her meals if she eats here or not.”

“She must pay pretty good. I saw a car out back when we drove up.”

“It’s Miss Dolan’s car.”

“She must be rollin’ in dough.”

“She’s a nice lady, Clara. I won’t allow you to be nasty to her.”

“She took my room, for God’s sake!”

“How long are you going to stay?”

“Is this my home or not? Should I write and ask if you have room for me before I come home?”

“I’ve got to be goin’,” Johnny said. “But first I’d like a private word with Clara.” He took her arm and propelled her out onto the porch and let the door slam behind them.

“Let go of me. You ain’t got no right to be pushin’ me around.”

“I’ve always known, from the first time I saw you, that you are nothing but a worthless piece of shit. Until now I didn’t know just how rotten you are. You go off and leave your mother to raise your child when that little girl is your responsibility. She’s been workin’ like a dog to keep food in that child’s mouth. Then you have the guts to come back here and treat her like dirt.”

“To hell with you.” She jerked her arm from his grasp and tried to get back into the house, but his back was to the door. “You’re not the boss of me. At least my kid ain’t a half-breed. I didn’t go out and screw some dirty Indian like your mama did.”

“You’re pitiful, Clara. You’ve got a mother who loves you and a little girl who thinks you get up every morning and hang out the sun. What do you do, but go whoring around and come back to them when you’re broke. Has it ever occurred to you to come back here, get a job, and help your mother?”

“What kind of a job could I get around here? You think I’d go out to the tannery and work with the blanket-asses? Well, think again, Mr. Johnny Blanket-Ass Henry.”

Johnny held his temper even though he ached to slap her.

“It’s decent work. If not that, you could help your mother with the ironing.”

“You may be surprised to know that I’ve been singing in a nightclub down in Fort Worth.” Clara lifted her head and preened. “Ever’body thought I was really good. I just came home to get ready to go to Nashville and get on the Grand Ole Opry. When I’m a star, I’ll come back here and ever’body in this shitty one horse town’ll sit up and take notice of Miss Clara Ramsey.”

Johnny shook his head. “You’ve got about as much chance of making it to the Grand Ole Opry as you have reaching up and touching the moon.” He walked off the porch and headed for his truck.
Like Isabel, she wasn’t going to listen to anything he said.

“If you’re so much, Johnny Henry,” Clara called, “how come you’re drivin’ that old rattletrap of a truck?”

Johnny glanced over his shoulder at the girl with her skinny arms wrapped around the porch post. He tried to muster up some sympathy for her, but it just wouldn’t jell. He thought of how his half sister, Henry Ann, had tried to reason with Isabel, and had offered her the opportunity to go to school and make something of herself. Isabel’s mind, like Clara’s, had been only on the pleasure of the moment.

Johnny started his truck and drove away wondering what was going to happen when Kathleen met Clara. One thing was sure. From now on, she’d better lock her valuables in her trunk when she left the house.

Chapter Seven

J
ohnny parked his truck behind the newspaper building and, with a bundle under his arm, went in through the back door. Paul was breaking down a page from last week’s paper and throwing the lead into a bucket to be melted and reused.

“I’m going to leave my truck back here tonight, Paul. I took my groceries back to the store and will pick them up in the morning. The store will be closed by the time I’m ready to go home.”

“You could’ve left them here.”

“I never thought about it. I’ve never had anything taken from the truck, but I don’t trust those two yahoos I took down to the sheriff.”

“They’re trouble all right.” Paul dropped a handful of lead in the bucket. “There’s a canvas cot over there in the corner if you want to sleep here. Pound on the door tonight, and I’ll let you in.”

“Thanks. Mind if I wash up here?”

“Go back to my room if you want. There’s soap and water back there. There’ll be no danger of your lady friend walking in on you while you wash that horse-hockey smell off.”

“Thanks,
friend.
By the way, don’t forget the two bits you owe me.”

Paul’s head swung slowly around. “That was for the picture show.”

“You crawfishin’ out of the bet?”

“The deal was to take her to a show.” Paul’s smile was smug. “Drag up enough courage to ask her out to a show, and the two bits is yours.”

“To hell with you,” Johnny snorted, and stomped off toward the partitioned room in the corner.

The room was nicely furnished with a neatly made bed, a bureau, and a long table on which sat a typewriter and two big radios with antenna wires running up along the ceiling and out the single window. Paul’s clothes hung on a rod that spanned one corner of the room.

Johnny stripped off his shirt, poured water from a pitcher into a granite washbowl, and washed. He soaped his face and stared at his image in the oval mirror above the washbasin. Thank goodness he had shaved before he came to town this morning, although he hadn’t expected to see Kathleen, much less take her out to supper. He borrowed Paul’s comb and tried to tame his hair.

He pulled the new shirt out of the sack, shook it out, and put it on. He now regretted buying a white shirt. Kathleen would know that it was new. But, what the hell? Johnny slammed his hat down on his head and left the room. He paused just outside the door when he heard Kathleen’s voice. She was showing Paul a two-page article she had written.

“Can we set the first four lines after the headline in ten point?”

“Sure. I’ll set it tonight. If it isn’t what you want, we can change it in the morning.”

Kathleen hung the sheets of paper on the hook beside the linotype machine, turned, and saw Johnny.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said, almost in an accusing tone.

“I came in the back door.”

“I’ll be ready to go as soon as I wash the ink off my hands, that is if you haven’t changed your mind.”

“I’m ready when you are.”

Unaware that Paul was watching him, Johnny watched Kathleen. For days her image had stayed in his mind. Her fiery curly hair and her pretty face were enough to draw a man’s eyes to her, but what riveted his attention to her now was her utter unawareness of just how striking she was. She accepted her good looks as being only a part of her, the other part being a woman completely at ease with herself and her abilities.

Johnny Henry, you don’t have the brains of a loco steer or you’d get the hell out of here.

“Pretty, isn’t she?” Paul murmured after Kathleen went back to the front office.

“You’d better not let Adelaide hear you say that!”

“She knows it. Sometimes beauty is more of a hindrance than an asset. Addie thinks you’re just the man for Kathleen.”

“Well, thanks for arranging my life. I don’t agree. Now tend to your own business.”

“She is my business, cowboy. What concerns Addie concerns me. We’re afraid that she’ll be in deep trouble before she discovers how to get along in this town.”

“She’s already in trouble. Why do you think I’m sticking around? It was just luck that I found out that Webb and Krome bragged that she’d get what was coming to her before they left town. That could be tonight or tomorrow. I can take care of tonight.”

“She’s got a date with Leroy Grandon tomorrow night.”

“Grandon? From the men’s store? How do you know? She tell you?”

“Just because I’m back here doesn’t mean I don’t know what goes on up front.”

“Shee . . . it. He’s old enough to be her daddy.” A chill held Johnny motionless for a long minute. “Webb or Krone’d chew him up and spit him out.”

“Not if they got orders from higher up. They’d not want one of the merchants, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, to know. It might raise a stink.”

BOOK: Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers]

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