Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

Normal sights. As if nothing were wrong. As if his brother weren’t an alcoholic who went around picking fights with billionaire land barons. As if the rift between the two of them weren’t as wide as the Royal Gorge.

“Now, go easy on the boy, J.D.,” Tucker began.

J.D. nudged his horse into a lope and left the old man behind.

Zip played keep-away with the Frisbee, trotting toward Will, then ducking away when he reached for the toy. There was a certain sadistic gleam in the dog’s blue eye that made Will think he knew perfectly well the pain it caused him to bend over and reach. His ribs ached as though he had been crushed between a pair of runaway trains, and when he bent over, his broken nose throbbed like a beating heart.

Each pain was brilliantly clear and separate from the next, dulled by neither drugs nor drink. The colossal stupidity of what he’d done at Bryce’s had struck full-force sometime after Mary Lee had left him and Doc Larimer had yanked his nose straight and wound twenty yards of tape around his ribs tight enough to keep his lungs from expanding. He had limped out of the emergency room to find Tucker’s truck waiting for him in the parking lot. Sent down by Bryce, no doubt. He wouldn’t have wanted the brute cluttering up his driveway and ruining the presentation of Mercedes and Jaguars. It was a wonder he hadn’t just run it off a cliff.

His temper still simmering, Will climbed behind the wheel with every intention of going straight to the Hell and Gone to throw a little fuel on the fire. But as he drove through town, he caught himself turning down Jackson and parking in front of that empty little sorry-looking house he had once shared with his wife.

Ex -wife. Ex -wife. Ex -wife.

It squatted there on the corner of a yard that was weedy in patches and bare in others, where the dog had done his business. The place looked forlorn and abandoned. Mrs. Atkinson next door came out onto her porch with her hands on her bony hips and stared at him as he made his way up the walk. He gave her a wave. She scowled at him and went back into her house.

You’ve sunk pretty low when the folks in this neighborhood turn their nose up at you, Willie-boy.

He let himself in and wandered aimlessly around the living room and kitchen, then into the bedroom he hadn’t seen in weeks. The bed was made, the cheap blue chenille spread tucked neatly beneath the pillows. Sam was a good housekeeper, even though she’d never had much of a house to keep. Nor had she ever asked for one. He knew she dreamed of a nicer place, a place with shrubs and flowers in the yard and a kitchen big enough that you didn’t have to go into the next room to change your mind. But she had never asked him for that. She had never asked him for fine clothes or expensive jewelry or a fancy car.

She had never asked him for anything but that he love her.

One thing to do and you managed to screw that up, didn’t you, Willie-boy?

He stood in front of her dresser and ran his fingertips over the collection of dime-store necklaces and drugstore cosmetics and recalled the look on her face when he said he’d never wanted a wife.

You sorry son of a bitch, Willie-boy. Stood right there and broke her heart in front of God and all the millionaires. Way to go, slick.

He looked up at the reflection in the old mirror that needed resilvering and saw a pretty poor excuse for a man. Excommunicated by his family. A lost cause to his friends. Just a beat-up, boozed-up cowboy who had thrown away the one good thing in his life.

You wanted your freedom. You got it now, Willie-boy.

But it didn’t feel like freedom. It felt like exile. And he ached from the loss of those things he had never wanted. The ranch. The wife.

He sat on the bed and cried like a baby, his head booming, his face feeling as if someone had stuck it full of thumbtacks, his cracked ribs stabbing like a rack of knives with every ragged breath. The sun set and the moon rose and he sat there, alone, listening to the distant sounds of traffic and screen doors slamming and Rascal whining at the back door. Samantha did not come home. No one came to rescue, redeem, or reconcile. Mary Lee’s parting shot was like a sliver beneath his skin: grow up .

He straightened now, ignoring Zip as he pranced by with the Frisbee in his mouth. J.D.’s big sorrel had dropped down into a jog. His brother’s face was inscrutable beneath the brim of his hat, but he stepped down off the horse as he drew near the truck and Will took that as a good sign. A gesture, a courtesy. Better than a kick in the teeth.

J.D. looked at Will’s battered face and pained stance and choked back the automatic diatribe. Too many bitter words had already been spoken between them. This was no time for accusations. He was as guilty as Will, just for a different set of sins.

“You look a little worse for wear,” he said, pulling off his hat and wiping the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.

Will cocked his head and tried to grin, but it held little of the usual mischief and a lot of pain. “Got my clock cleaned by a city boy. It was a sorry sight to see.”

“I should think so.” He sat himself down on the tailgate of Tucker’s old H, his reins dangling down between his knees. Sarge leaned down and rubbed his nose against a foreleg, then promptly fell into a light doze. “Looks like you’ll live to fight again.”

“I’ll live,” Will said, sitting down gingerly on the other end of the tailgate. Zip came with the Frisbee and presented it with much ceremony, placing it in the dirt and looking up with contrition and hopefulness that went unrewarded. “Don’t guess I’ll fight that fight again. I pretty well blew it.”

“Samantha?”

“If she comes back to me, it’ll only be to serve me with papers or to stick a knife in my chest. Can’t say that I’d blame her either way.”

J.D. made no comment. He looked up at the house where they had been boys together and tried to imagine strangers living in it. The idea cut as sharp as glass.

“What about you and Mary Lee?” Will asked.

He moved his big shoulders, trying to shrug off the question and his brother’s scrutiny. “That’s not gonna work out.”

“Because you’re a stubborn son of a bitch?”

“Partly.”

Will sighed and picked at a scab of rust on the tailgate. “That’s a poor excuse for losing something good. I oughta know.”

J.D. said nothing. He thought Will was hardly the man to give advice on the subject, but he wouldn’t say so. He didn’t kick a man while he was down. Besides, if he cared to look, there was probably too much truth in his brother’s words, and it was just better to let this thing between him and Mary Lee die a natural death. In a week or two she would be back in California. Life would go on.

“I figured I could sign over my share of the ranch to you,” Will said. “Keep it out of divorce court. I’ll sell it to you outright if you want to make it permanent. We’ll have to get a lawyer, I suppose. Man can’t take a crap in this country without needing to have a lawyer look at it.”

J.D. said nothing. This was what he had always wanted, wasn’t it? To have the ranch to himself. He was the one who lived for it. He was the one who loved it. Sitting beside a brother he claimed he’d never wanted, that sounded pretty damn sick. He braced his hands on his knees as if to balance himself against the shifting of his world beneath him.

“What are you gonna do? Rodeo?” He heard himself ask the question and almost looked around to see if someone else had joined the conversation. From the corner of his eye he could see Tucker, fifty yards away, climbing down off his chestnut by the end of the barn.