Jeannette Walls - Half Broke Horses

Rosemary, for example, was a terrible poker player. It didn’t matter how many times I explained the rules, she was always asking questions that revealed her hand. No sooner had I dealt the cards than she looked at hers and asked, “Does a straight beat a flush?”

“You’ll never win if you give yourself away like that,” I said.

“Winning’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Rosemary said. “If you win all the time, no one wants to play with you.”

I let that one pass.

As we got deeper into the game, I could tell Rex was a good player. To him, the game was not about reading your cards, it was about reading your opponents, and at first he seemed to know exactly when to fold and when to raise the stakes.

But he’d kept the bottle of hooch at his elbow. Jim and Rosemary hadn’t touched their whiskeys, and I’d taken only a few sips of mine. Rex kept refilling his glass, and as the evening wore on, he started playing too grandly, overbluffing, overbetting, losing pots he never should have tried to win, and getting mad at his cards when they let him down.

After a while he stopped pouring himself shots and started swigging straight from the bottle. That was when I knew I could take him to the cleaners. I waited until I had a solid hand-a full house, eights over fours-and then I let him think he was bidding me up, but I never called him, and soon he was in deeper than he realized.

I laid my cards on the table. Rex studied them, his expression turning sour, then threw his own cards facedown at the pot. After a few seconds, he chuckled. “Well, Lily,” he said, “that gelding didn’t have any balls, but you sure got yourself a pair.”

Rosemary giggled. I had the feeling she liked the way her boyfriend had just gotten cheeky with her mother. Truth be told, he was the first fellow she’d brought home who hadn’t been even a little bit scared of me.

Jim looked at Rex with raised eyebrows. “Watch yourself, flyboy,” he said.

“No offense, pardner,” Rex said. “I was paying the lady a compliment.”

Jim shrugged. “She’s taken many a ranch hand’s paycheck that very same way,” he added.

Rex reached for his bottle to take another swig, but it was empty. “Guess we polished that off,” he said.

“You polished it off,” I said.

“Maybe we’ve played enough,” Rosemary said.

Rex nodded. He set the bottle on the table, stood up, then lurched to one side.

“You’re drunk,” I said.

“Just got a little buzz,” Rex said. “But I do believe I’ll be taking my leave.”

“You can’t drive that road in the condition you’re in.”

“I’m fine,” Rex said. “I drive like this all the time.”

“Maybe Mom’s right,” Rosemary said.

“You can sleep in the garage,” Jim said.

“I said I’m fine,” Rex told him, and started fishing in his pocket for his keys.

“Listen, you boneheaded boozer,” I said, “you’re too drunk to drive, and I’m not allowing it.”

Rex leaned both his fists on the table. “Listen, lady, Rex Walls don’t take orders from anyone, certainly not some old leather-faced, hard-assed biddy. And with that, I will bid you good night.”

We all sat there in silence as Rex staggered out, slamming the screen door. We heard him turn the engine on, gun it, and then, with a screech of tires, he drove off into the darkness, down the mountainside on Agnes Weeps.

THE NEXT DAY Ifelt I needed to have a serious talk with my daughter about her boyfriend.

“That scalawag might be fun,” I said, “but he’s also a danger to himself and others.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” she said. “We’re all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.”

“True enough,” I said, “but not everyone lines up exactly in the middle. Rex is unstable. You’ll never have any security with him.”

“I don’t really care about security,” she said. “And anyway, I don’t believe I’ll ever really have it with anyone. We could all be killed by an atom bomb tomorrow.”

“So you’re telling me the future’s not important? That you’re going to live your life like there’s no tomorrow?”

“Most people spend so much time worrying about the future that they don’t enjoy the present.”

“And people who don’t plan for the future get ambushed by it. Hope for the best but plan for the worst, my dad always used to say.”

“You can’t prepare for everything that life’s going to throw at you,” she said. “And you can’t avoid danger. It’s there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit around wringing your hands about it, you’ll miss out on all the adventure.”

I felt there was a lot more I could say about the subject of danger. I could have given her an entire lecture on it, talking about my dad getting his head staved in by a horse when he was three, about my Chicago friend Minnie getting killed when her hair got caught in machinery, about my sister, Helen, taking her own life after accidentally getting pregnant. Life came with as much adventure and danger as any one body needed. You didn’t have to go chasing after them. But the fact of the matter was, Rosemary hadn’t really listened to what I had to say ever since that time we visited the Havasupai and I gave her the whipping for swimming with Fidel Hanna.

“I don’t know what I did wrong raising you,” I said. “Maybe I tried too hard. But I still say you need an anchor.”

Later that day there was a knock on the door. When I answered it, Rex Walls was standing outside. He had a big bouquet of white lilies in one hand, and he held it out to me.

“Lilies for Lily, by way of apology,” he said. “Though they’re not as lovely as their namesake.”

“That’s not exactly the tune you were whistling last night.”

“What I said was inexcusable, and I’m the first to admit it,” he said. “But I was hoping you’d cut a fellow some slack.” He’d had a tough day, he went on, falling off a runaway horse in front of the woman he loved, then getting beat by her mother in poker, all of which led him to take a few nips too many. “But you started it, you know, calling me a bone-head.” He paused. “And I do know how to drive drunk.”

I shook my head and looked at the lilies. “I could cut you all the slack in the world, but I still think my daughter needs an anchor.”

“The problem with being attached to an anchor,” he said, “is it’s damned hard to fly.”

What a scoundrel, I thought. Always having to have the last word. But the lilies were pretty. “I’ll go put these in water.”

“You like to fly,” Rex added. “If it would get me back into your good graces, I’d be honored to take you up for a spin.”

I HADN’T BEEN UPin a plane for years, and though I was still steamed at that hooligan, the idea thrilled me, so of course I agreed. When Rex arrived to pick me up the following Sunday, I was standing outside in my aviator’s jumpsuit, carrying my leather helmet.

Rex leaned out the window of the two-toned Ford sedan he was always borrowing from a friend. “Amelia Earhart!” he called. “You’re alive after all!”

Rosemary wanted to come along, but Rex told her the plane was only a two-seater. “This trip’s just me and Amelia,” he said.

Rex drove like a demon, the way I liked to, and in no time at all, we had hurtled down Agnes Weeps, climbed out of the canyon, and were heading along the Apache Trail.

I asked Rex a little bit about his background.

“Ma’am,” he said, “if you’re looking for pedigree, you’re going to find more in the local dog pound.” He’d grown up in a coal town, he said. His mother had been an orphan, his father had worked as a clerk for the railroad. His uncle made moonshine, and as a teenager, Rex sometimes ran the hooch into town.