Yellow Mesquite (20 page)

“He’s one of the pallbearers,” Harley said. “I think he’s gone to the cemetery already.”

“Goddamn his sorry hide. Oh, ’scuse me, young lady.” The old man tipped his hat to Sherylynne and went limping away, muttering to himself.
 

Sherylynne looked pale.

“You all right?” Harley asked.

She turned away, silent.

“He’s an old man,” Harley said.
 

Darlene and Billy Wayne had disappeared. His mom and dad stood with the twins, the four of them looking toward him and Sherylynne, ready to go to the cemetery.
 

Harley put his arm around Sherylynne’s thick waist, and they walked over to where his family were waiting.
 

They had started back to the car when he spotted Darlene again, standing with Billy Wayne and Mrs. Delaney, talking to Travis and Rosie. He was momentarily jolted, seeing the sun glint on the ankle chain above Darlene’s pump.
 

They all got in the Mercedes and Harley eased it across the graveled yard, past Darlene and the others toward the highway. Billy Wayne glanced up. He looked downright startled, seeing Harley behind the wheel. Harley lifted the first two fingers of his right hand off the steering wheel, nodded once, hello, and drove on.
 

THE BUCHANAN FAMILY
stood
under the canvas awning inside the cemetery walls.

“Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” monotoned the minister.

In a field two miles distant, a long plume of dust rose behind Garland Bailey’s tractor and hung on the still air before slowly settling back to earth.
Who might that be Garland was plowing up?

A sudden breeze flapped the canvas.

They let Uncle Jay down.

Chapter 22

Leah

T
HE ENTIRE BUCHANAN
clan showed up for lunch after the funeral—aunts, uncles and cousins, including several close friends who were considered family. They filled up the little house and stood out in the yard, holding paper plates of fried chicken, ham, potato salad, coleslaw, fried okra, sweet pickles and Jell-O salad. For the most part, they spoke in hushed tones; then someone would tell a story about Uncle Jay and they would laugh guiltily and shake their heads with a kind of dubious pride. Harley wondered if wives and husbands by marriage worried secretly about the family gene pool.

Sherylynne had been quiet since the funeral. After lunch, when just about everyone had left, she went in and lay across the bed. Harley got their things together.

“I hope this hasn’t been too much for her,” his mother said.

Harley woke her when it was time to leave. Sherylynne barely said good-bye, then rode in sullen silence.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, he reached across and patted her tummy. “This little turnip got that Buchanan blood pounding in his veins. Got a lot to live up to, this one does.” Sherylynne turned from him, looking darkly out the window toward a devil duster swirling manic in the mid-distance.

“So? What’s up? You mad about something?”
 

She turned, looking at him. “Why?”

“You’ve been awful quiet.”

She looked out the window again.
 

Between Colorado City and Big Spring, she said, “I think it’s time.”

“Time?”

“The baby.”

“You mean… Oh, shit! Maybe we’d better pull in at Big Spring and find the hospital.”

“No, let’s get on inta Midland.”

“Think you can make it?”

“I can make it.”

Harley pressed down on the accelerator. He had been cruising along at seventy, the speed limit, but now he kicked it up to eighty-five and ninety.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

She looked at her watch. “I can make it.”
 

He slowed a little through Big Spring. “How we doing?”
 

“Don’t call Carla Lynn until it’s over.” Carla Lynn was her mother’s closest neighbor with a phone.

“Right.”

“I guess you can call Wendell and Mavis. They’ll want to know.”

In Midland Harley peeled off the exit with the tires squealing and drove directly to the emergency room entrance. He jumped out and ran up to the sliding glass door, where he was met by an orderly.
 

“I need me a wheelchair out here!” Harley shouted.

“Emergency?”

“My wife, she’s about to have a baby!”

Sherylynne got out of the car. Harley ran and caught her by the elbow and walked her inside.

The orderly followed them through the glass doors. “Go put your car in the public parking,” he ordered.

“Soon as I get her settled here.”

The orderly went off mumbling about rich people thinking they could do whatever they damn well pleased.

“Name?” the woman behind the admittance desk asked.

“Harley Jay Buchanan.”

“You the patient?”

“No, no. My wife here, she’s about to have a baby.”

“Oh. Obstetrics.”

“Yes, ma’am. She’s about to have a baby.”

The registrar turned to Sherylynne. “Contractions?”
 

“About every five minutes.”

“Name?”

“Sherylynne Buchanan.”

“Age?”

“Eighteen. Almost nineteen.”

“Ever been a patient here before?”

“Look,” Harley said, “if you’ll just get her on in, I’ll answer all this stuff later.”

“No,” Sherylynne answered. “This is my first time.”

“Insurance?”

“No,” Harley said. “I’ve got money, though.”

The registrar looked over her glasses. “We require a five-hundred-dollar deposit and the balance on dismissal.”

“I’ll give you a check right now. How about getting her in a room?”

The woman looked at Sherylynne. “Date of birth?”

“November the third, nineteen—”

“Wait a minute,” the woman interrupted, thumbing through a sheaf of papers. “You’re Sherylynne Buchanan?”

Sherylynne paused.
 

“Oh.” The woman smiled brightly. “You can go right in. Your bill is all taken care of.”
 

Harley stared. “What do you mean, ‘all taken care of’?”

“Mr. Wendell Whitehead arranged it over a month ago.”

 
“Whitehead— The hell he did!”
 

In the same moment, Sherylynne bent, clutching her stomach. A gush of fluid ran down her leg onto the floor.

“Good lord,” the registrar exclaimed.
 

Harley shakily caught his arms around Sherylynne. “Dammit! I told you! Get her a doctor here!”

The woman turned and punched an intercom button: “James, bring a wheelchair to emergency. James, a wheelchair to emergency.”
 

Harley held Sherylynne as she leaned on the counter. Two nurses appeared as the orderly came through the door, taking his time with the wheelchair.
 

“Call Dr. Lowe,” Harley shouted to the registrar.

“Her water broke,” one of the nurses said to the orderly. “Take her up to prep.” The registrar got on the intercom again: “Dr. Vincent. Please report to the examining room in OB. Dr. Vincent.”

“Her doctor is Dr. Lowe,” Harley said again.

“Yes, we’ll try to reach him. Don’t go away; you still have to complete paperwork here.”

“You better move that car,” the orderly said, and wheeled Sherylynne away toward the double doors.

Harley glared after the orderly. A man appeared with a mop and a bucket as Harley went out to move the car.
 

Half an hour later, he was the only one in the maternity waiting room. He went to the nurses’ station. “Has Dr. Lowe shown up?”

“He’s here. Relax.”

Harley went back and sat down. The clock seemed to have stopped.
 

Presently a nurse stepped through the double doors. “Mr. Buchanan, Dr. Lowe would like to see you. Come with me, please.”
 

Apprehensive, Harley followed her back through the double doors.
 

Dr. Lowe, in green scrubs, a mask dangling around his neck, sat at a desk thumbing through papers. He stood to shake Harley’s hand. “Little problem here. Please sit down.”

Harley felt a weak sinking sensation. “Problem?”

“Nothing to worry about, really, but we need your permission to do a sectional.”

“A what?”

“A cesarean sectional, a surgical incision through the abdomen.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s not uncommon, especially in a young girl with a narrow pelvis like that. We need you to sign a release.” Harley stared at the paper. Dr. Lowe continued. “I’ve already consulted with Dr. Vincent and Dr. Marsh. The sooner we get on with it, the better.”

Harley picked up the pen. He felt as though he were holding Sherylynne’s very life in his hand. “You think this is really necessary, huh?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

Harley looked at the paper, then signed his name on the designated line. Dr. Lowe stood up and put his hand on Harley’s shoulder. “Nothing to worry about. Routine.”
 

Harley went back through the reception area, and down to the business office. Accounting was reluctant to tell him how much Whitehead had paid on the bill, even after he explained who he was, and that he wanted to repay him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take that up with him,” the clerk said.
 

“Oh, you can bet I will!”

A half hour passed. Harley walked the floor. He watched the clock, and fumed over Whitehead and the bill. He supposed Whitehead thought he was “being good” to him and Sherylynne, but Harley was having none of it: Not only was he going to write Whitehead a check as soon as possible, he had to figure some polite way to tell him and Mavis to stay out of his business, regardless of their good intentions.

A nurse in green scrubs with a surgical mask dangling around her neck burst through the double doors. “Mr. Buchanan,” she said brightly, “you have a six-pound, seven-ounce girl!”

Chapter 23

M. D. Anderson

S
HERYLYNNE CAME OUT
of the house with Leah in her arms and stepped off the porch to meet Harley as he brought the pickup to a stop next to their old Chevy. He was always impressed by the way Sherylynne moved in space, as though she were swimming.
 

He kissed her on the cheek, and handed her his lunch bucket in exchange for Leah, a year old now. Sherylynne held her hand against the small of his back, her thigh swinging against his as they went into the house. The fact of a perfect wife and perfect baby daughter continued to soften the disappointment of studying in New York.

Sherylynne poured two coffees in the kitchen and followed him outside to the lawn chairs. She placed his coffee on the little cast-iron table beside his chair. He held Leah. Leah, watching him with her big amber eyes, her toothless smile, her little hand fumbling to touch his face.

“Wendell says Mavis wants you to come see her.”

“Oh?”

“He says she’s never gonna leave that clinic.”

He cradled Leah in his left arm, picked his cup up with his right hand. “I never understood what she saw in him.”

“He knows how to make money.”

“She probably has more money than he does.”

“Just think how much he’s gonna have, once she’s gone.”

He glanced up. “That’s an odd thing to say.”

“Odd? Why?”

He set the cup back on the table, lifted Leah and made baby sounds to her.
 

THE NEXT DAY
Harley packed a bag and stowed it in the cab of the company pickup. Álvaro would cover for him.
 

He and Sherylynne had lunched earlier and now, just before leaving, he sat with her in the aluminum lawn chairs in the thin shade of the mesquite. Sherylynne held Leah, Leah taking her bottle.

Harley wore pressed jeans and a Western-style shirt with snaps up the sleeves. He also wore the ostrich skin boots that Mavis had had made for him at M. L. Lettys for his twenty-first birthday in February. Whitehead called them “wart boots” because of the big wartlike bumps where the quills had been. Harley had tried to protest the gift without hurting Mavis’s feelings, but knew he had failed when she said, “Harley, you must learn to accept graciously. Accepting is an art, just like giving.”

“That Mavis, she sure is crazy about you,” Sherylynne said. “Calling you to come down there and see her. Just like family.”

“We can blow the whole world all to hell, but we can’t cure cancer or the common cold.”

“Wendell says they don’t want to. Says they couldn’t make money off it if they cured it.”

“He’s full of it.”

“He’s gonna be lost without Mavis, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, prob’ly.”

“What is it now…nearly three years since Buddy got blowed up?” Sherylynne shook her head. “And now this.”

“Some families don’t have any luck.”
 

Sherylynne frowned. “Don’t say that.”

Harley gazed across the empty plains toward Odessa. Leah sucked at the bottle and watched him, her big amber eyes full of light.

“They’d treat us like family if you’d just let them.”

“They treat us like family whether we let them or not.”

“She likes your paintings. She’d have bought those two paintings if you’d just let her. She wouldn’t say so because she knew you’d try to give them to her. Shoot, you should take the money. It’s nothing to her.”

He gazed into the distance.
 

“Mavis just wants somebody to spoil,” Sherylynne said. “Somebody to treat good.”

“She’s got Whitehead to treat good.”

“You think she can baby him?”

Harley gave her a look. “So, she can’t baby him, but she can me?”

Sherylynne looked away. “I guess she won’t be babying anybody. Not now.”

Harley stood up with Leah. “We’d better go.”

They got in the pickup and Sherylynne drove him to the Midland-Odessa airport. He got out and placed Leah in a nest of blankets in the floorboard, then leaned across and kissed Sherylynne on the lips.

Sherylynne took an envelope from her bag. “Give Mavis my love. And give her these pitchers. She’ll want a see these pitchers of little Leah.”