“All finished. Everything with four legs has been fed and watered. Horses are all exercised, and even Haskell’s dog and cat are fed. His niece is over there now. She can take care of Hooter and Blister from now on.” He turned up the bottle and downed a fourth of it before coming up for air and a loud burp.
Dewar plopped down on the porch step beside Raylen. “Is she going to keep the place, or do you have a chance at buying it?”
“She says she’s going to keep it. I asked her what she was going to do to make a living in Ringgold, Texas, and she said she was going to feed the dog and pet the cat. If Haskell is giving her all of his money as well as those twenty acres, she won’t have to do anything but feed a dog and pet a cat.”
“What’s she look like?”
“Damn fine. She’s got jet-black hair and the darkest brown eyes you’ve ever seen.”
“You took with her?”
“Not me. That could be a big problem if things don’t go right, what with us being neighbors and all,” Raylen answered.
***
Liz stood in the middle of the living room floor and turned around slowly. The room was bigger than the fifth-wheel travel trailer where she’d lived her entire life. A fireplace with a real chimney was centered on the north end with a stone apron in the front. Two brown leather recliners flanked the sofa. The coffee table sat on a real cowhide area rug. A wheeled cart on the east side of the fireplace held a small television set, and as if something had to be used to balance the arrangement, a ladder-back chair was on the other side with a pot of silk greenery on it. That whole arrangement scarcely took up half of the big room.
The south end was covered with empty bookcases, floor to ceiling. Uncle Haskell had said that she’d have to start her own collection because he was taking all his beloved Westerns with him. Another sofa faced the bookcase. That one was orange and yellow floral velvet, had deep cushions and big round arms that begged for someone to settle in with a good book. A wagon wheel chandelier hung in the middle of the room over a library table with a set of horse head bookends and a well-worn Webster’s Dictionary in the middle. An antique oak business chair was set at an angle as if waiting for Uncle Haskell to come back and look up a word.
It wouldn’t take a lot of rearranging to give the room a more open and less cut-up look. Take the table and put it in front of the bookcases. Move the floral sofa under the window to the east and angle the fireplace arrangement.
“Oh, oh! And a Christmas tree right there with lots of presents under it, and garland looped around the ceiling caught up with Christmas bulbs. And cedar boughs strewn on the mantel with a nativity scene in the middle.” Liz talked to the dog and imagined just how things would look.
But that was another day’s work. Right then she was hungry, and she hadn’t even thought about bringing groceries with her. She wandered into a country kitchen with cabinets making a U on three sides and a small maple table and four chairs set right in the middle. A picture of her, back when she was ten, was stuck to the front of the refrigerator. It had to have been taken that summer when she showed Raylen up by staying on the top of the fence longer than he did. There was only one more photo, but this one was framed and sitting on the window ledge above the sink. She was fourteen in that one. Those were the only two times her mother let her spend the day at Uncle Haskell’s place.
She remembered her short, stocky uncle inviting her for the day and her mother shaking her head.
“What can it hurt, Marva Jo? She just wants to see my new puppy. His name is Hooter, and he loves little kids,” Haskell had said. “Come on. I promise not to put fertilizer on her feet.”
On the way to his house, she’d asked him why he’d want to put fertilizer on her feet. “It’s a joke, Lizelle. Your mama is afraid if you see how I live that you’ll like it.”
Later, when she was older, her mother had admitted that she had seriously never wanted her to get acquainted with the way the other side of her family lived, for fear she’d want that instead of the carnie life.
“We were all born into the same family. All grew up in the carnival. But Haskell, the one who is supposed to be running this business, wanted roots. I don’t want that for you, my child. I want freedom and wings for you. And I’ve been afraid you’d get more of his DNA than mine—that you’d want the other side’s life. He is like Mama. She stayed with the carnival because she loved Daddy, but she always liked it best when we settled down for the winter months and were in one spot,” Marva Jo had said.
Liz’s stomach grumbled and she forgot about the pictures of her young self and looked inside the refrigerator again. It was empty except for a chunk of cheddar cheese and the half empty pitcher of sweet tea. She found half a loaf of bread still within its date on the cabinet. She opened a pantry door to find a walk-in room with loaded shelves on three sides. Supper would be soup and cheese, and soon, because she was starving. She’d left Jefferson, Texas, that morning with butterflies the size of dragons in her stomach, so she’d skipped lunch.
She heated a can of vegetable soup, leaned against the counter, and let the scene from two days ago replay in her mind. Her mother had come into the trailer late and opened a can of beer. She’d propped a hip against the cabinet in the tiny kitchen and took a long gulp as she watched Liz remove her fortune-teller’s makeup.
“What do you want for Christmas, kid?” Marva Jo asked.
As if by rote, Liz grinned and said, “A house with no wheels and a sexy cowboy.”
“Your Uncle Haskell called a couple of weeks ago. Poppa is ailing and needs full-time help these days. Tressa and I’ve been talkin’ about one of us staying with him for the first half of the run next year, and then switching off and the second one staying with him the last half. But Haskell drove out to visit him last week and came up with another idea. He says that he’s used to living in one place and is ready to retire. He’s already sold off most of his ranch. We talked about it, and Poppa likes the idea of having his son nearby. Haskell bought one of those prefab houses and had it moved on the land. It’s built to be wheelchair accessible so if Poppa gets to where he can’t get around or take care of himself with Haskell’s help, then he can live there too. Now here’s the rest of the story. The part that I don’t like but Haskell and Poppa both say is the right thing.” Marva Jo had looked like she’d just come from a funeral, or worse yet was about to go to one.
Liz would never forget the pain on her mother’s face. “Haskell is offering for you to move into his house on the last twenty acres of his ranch. If you like it, come spring he’ll put the whole thing over in your name. We’ll be in Bowie the last week in November just like always, so I will see you then. That’s a month from now and by then I hope you have changed your mind about living in a real house. So, it’s up to you, kid. You really want a house with no wheels, or has it been a big joke between us all these years?”