Bethany Campbell - Home To Texas

JONAH DROVE GRADY AND BRET to the scene of the accident. Grady felt a numbing sense of surrealism. The Crystal Creek Fire Department had sent two dump trucks filled with sand to soak up the oil in the ditch. Grady’s pickup had yet to be pried from under the glistening, dripping tanker. The whole countryside stank of old French-fry grease.

Grady truly didn’t know whether to weep or to storm up and down the highway, raging and shaking his fists at the sky. Since he couldn’t decide, he simply stared. The truck had been beautifully restored. Now probably only parts could be salvaged, if that.

“You know, I think this could only happen to you.” Bret shook his head in disbelief. “Why were you driving such an old junker?”

Grady said nothing of the truck’s true worth. He had long ago tired of trying to explain or justify things to his father. Now the truck looked only like what it was, a congealing wreck.

Jonah’s face was pained with sympathy. But then, all of a sudden, he began to laugh. And laugh. And laugh. Grady couldn’t help it. Although he was filled with something close to despair, he laughed, too. Until tears came to his eyes.

“IT’S REALLY NOT FUNNY,” Jonah said that night. They were in a pink bedroom full of ruffles and teddy bears. It was where Mrs. Gilligan had quartered Grady, his bed a pink canopy with side curtains.

As he lay stretched out on this innocent confection of a bed, Grady wished he was back in the sleaze and tinsel of Las Vegas.

Jonah sat by a dressing table with a skirt on a white wrought-iron chair with a pink velvet cushion. He had his leg crossed over his knee and a somber look on his face.

“I mean,” Jonah said, “that cooking oil’s bad news. When it spills, it’s worse than fuel oil. A guy at the university said it was actually harder to get off a seabird’s feathers.”

Grady put his hands behind his head and stared gloomily up at the pink canopy. The buyer in New Orleans had cussed him out over the phone, calling him a stupid son of a bitch for not taking out more insurance. Grady had counted on his skills as a driver and a mechanic to get him safely to the Big Easy. He’d counted on his luck, too, but it seemed to have run out.

His insurance wouldn’t cover the oil damage to his truck, nobody was admitting liability and it looked like he was going to have to join Jervis Jensen in suing the tanker company. A lawsuit could drag on forever. Grady was marooned. Thirty-five years old, nearly broke and back living with his father. His depression felt bone-deep.

“Change the subject, will you? Whose room is this? It looks like something out of a damned fairy tale. I keep expecting the Seven Dwarfs to troop in.”

“It’s Jennifer’s. J.T.’s daughter by his second wife. They’re in Paris.”

“I never met them.” Grady remembered only J.T.’s first wife, Pauline, and their two sons and daughter. He supposed J.T.’s sons had done better by their father than Grady had by Bret.

“Where’s Tyler?” he asked moodily.

“California. His father-in-law died. He and his wife have to decide if they’re going to run the winery he owned out there or come back to the one they started here.”

Either choice sounded plenty cushy to Grady, but he didn’t have an envious nature. He let the thought pass. “What about Cal? Still doing fine?”

Jonah nodded. “He and his two partners just bought the old Kendell place. The one that got turned into a dude ranch. Sank a lot of money in it. Taking a big chance.”

Grady turned his head and frowned at his brother. “Sank money in that spread? It wasn’t anything special. What do they want with it?”

Jonah gave an indifferent shrug. “Couple of different things. Part of it’ll be a development. Try to pump new life into the town.”

“It needs it.” Grady stared at the pink canopy again. After Vegas, Crystal Creek looked like Podunk, U.S.A. Once he’d thought it the finest spot on earth. He’d learned a lot since then.

Jonah said, “They’re fixing it all up. They sent some woman here to be in charge of fixing up the house and lodge.”

A woman. Grady’s spirits rose slightly. “What’s she like?”

“Don’t know,” Jonah said. “She’s got a kid. She must have money. She’s sister to one of the partners. Lynn knows her.”

A rich woman with a child? Scratch that possibility. Grady had had his fill of rich women. And kids were always a complicating factor. He’d trained himself to avoid complications. He sighed in resignation. “And how’s little cousin Lynn?”

“She’s good,” Jonah said. “Married. Family. Keeps her horses here. She’s the only one of ’em around right now. Cal’s down in Mexico selling assets or something.” He paused. “Seems funny being in their house.”

Grady cast a gaze around the pink room. “You’re telling me.”

Both men were silent for a moment. Grady said, “And it seems weird, J.T. having a different wife. How long was he single?”

“Five years.”

Grady mused on this. “Mom’s been gone two.”

Jonah said nothing. Sometimes he could talk about their mother, and sometimes he couldn’t. It was like he was still sorting out his feelings about her death. So, in truth, was Grady. She’d always believed in him.

Grady asked, “You think Dad’ll ever get married again?”

Jonah stared at the carpet and shook his head. “I don’t think he even considers it.”

Grady wondered. His father must have had a sex drive once, or he and Lang and Jonah wouldn’t be here. Yet he couldn’t imagine it. No, Bret would spend the rest of his life being true to his wife’s memory. Once Bret got a notion, he hung onto it like a bulldog.

Grady settled more heavily against the ruffled, rosy pillow. “Too bad about Lang and Susie.”

“Yeah.”

“Why’s he coming here?”

“No place else to go, I guess.”

“What’s he going to do?”

“Work for Dad.”

Grady set his jaw. “I’m going to have to find a job, too. I’m not going anywhere without wheels, but I’ve only got five hundred bucks and a lawyer to pay.”

Jonah’s expression became uneasy. “I don’t know that Dad can hire all three of us. I mean, the ranch needs fewer hands in the winter, and he felt funny about giving Lang a job.”

“Oh, hell.” Grady squared his jaw defensively, “I won’t even ask him. It’d give him too much satisfaction. I can find a job on my own.”

“Not much doing around here. Except over where Cal and his buddies bought. There’ll be some construction and stuff soon.”

Grady tossed him a mild look. “Hey, Professor. I’ve done construction. I’m not too proud to do it again.”

“I don’t look down on it,” Jonah countered. “I’ve done my share of grunt work.”

“Yeah, kid, I know.” Grady yawned. He’d already made up his mind. Tomorrow he’d go over and talk to the rich boss lady from California.

He didn’t know what he’d say to her, but inspiration would come to him. It always did around women. She wouldn’t know what hit her.

DEL DREAMED HE WAS LOST on a dark planet. Shadowy craters pitted the bleak landscape, and three red moons hung in the sky. He was all alone, his heart pounding so hard it hurt.

Behind him, he heard noises rustling wetly in the depths of the closest crater. He turned and saw what he always saw: a terrible set of tentacles reaching up from the darkness. They whipped and twisted toward him.

He wanted to run to safety, but couldn’t; there was no safety. Out of every crater, jungles of tentacles rose, writhing and glistening in the red moonlight, and they lashed, slithering toward him from every side.

Slime creatures! Surrounded by slime creatures! A dripping tentacle shot out and seized his ankle. A second wrapped around his shoulders in a crushing embrace.