Texas Dust and Denim

1. Chapter 1

one

Ihadn’t imagined I’d come back to Texas, but here I am, driving west with a song I didn’t ask for stuck in my head. It found me as I drove through Fort Worth, unleashing a flash flood of long-buried memories. “I saw miles and miles of Texas…”

And I have, for the past five hours. Forests giving way to concrete, then prairie, then the climb up Ranger Hill into the high country, where the sky looks like it could swallow me whole.

Maybe I wish it could.

It’s like seeing a long-lost friend, the West Texas sky—shifting and glowing in colors no painter can capture.

I’m going home with a lump in my throat and an anvil sitting on my heart. Or, at least, to the place that used to be home, before life rerouted me.

“Mommy?”

My eyes jump to the rearview mirror. “Yes, Baby?”

My three-year-old rubs his eyes with the back of his fists. “Tee-tee.” Bowie squirms in his car seat, reaching for me. “I’m hungries.” He flexes his fingers. “Goldfish?”

He makes me smile, even now, with my nerves stretched thin and the miles stacking behind us. A road sign flashes by. Cisco 3 miles. “Three miles, Baby, and we’ll stop. Can you hold it three minutes?”

“No. Tee-tee now.” He grabs himself with both hands, his little brow furrowed. He’s wearing a pull-up, but if he doesn’t want to wet himself, I’m not going to make him wait.

“Okay. One minute.”

Easing onto the shoulder, I check for traffic and circle around to his door.

When I set him on the ground, he yanks his pull-up down and lets go immediately.

His blond curls stick to his forehead, his back straight, like he’s trying to impress me, blue eyes shining with relief as he sighs, “Ahhh.” His shoulders drop like he just got the weight of the world off them.

It brings a curve to my lips, even with the ache in my chest. He’s getting so big. “Good boy, Bowie!” I grab him and swing him high. “You get extra Goldfish for that.”

He beams at me, proud as anything. “I’m a big boy now.”

“Yes. You. Are! We’ll stop in Cisco, and I’ll get you a burger and fries.”

“Nuggies, Mommy!” Bowie corrects me as I buckle him in.

“You’ve got it. Nuggets.” I kiss his forehead, stroking my thumb across his adorable, chubby cheeks.

I have to fill up with gas, anyway, then head south on U.S. 183.

We’ve been on the road since Texarkana. It’ll do us both good to stretch our legs and feel the wind in our hair. I’ve missed the wind all these years in Tennessee, where the breeze struggles to sift through all the trees.

My phone rings on Bluetooth. “Hey, Mom.”

“Where are you now?”

Good grief. She just called in Fort Worth. “Coming into Cisco.”

“Oh, Lord, Laurel. It’s taking forever.”

“Mom. Really? Do you want me to get a ticket?”

“No. How’s my Bowie Boy?” she yells, I guess to be sure he hears.

“I’m hungries, Grammy!” he answers, leaning forward in his seat.

“Laurel, are you starving my grandson? Shame on you.”

I roll my eyes and shake my head. “We’re getting gas and a burger in one minute.”

“Nuggies!” Bowie reminds me. “You promised nuggies.”

“Sorry. Nuggets.” I flash my son a mock-stern look in the rearview. “He ate in Fort Worth.”

“Well, he’s a growing boy.”

That he is.

“Okay, well… be safe,” she says. “Watch for deer. Call me when you get to Brownwood.”

“I will. Is… everything okay, Mom?”

“We’re fine, sweetheart. Dad’s out messing with that mower again. I’m just ready to have you home.”

“I’ll call when I get to Brownwood,” which will put me about an hour from their house. The house I grew up in.

After getting gas and Bowie’s nuggets, I turn south. The highway unspools between barbed-wire fences—hay bales, windmills, cattle, mesquite—rolling past like a familiar movie I haven’t seen in years.

And suddenly I’m sixteen again, back in Ladera, watching Calder race to the top of a windmill about this time of day. God, he could move—long limbs, easy confidence, that lopsided grin with a solitary dimple that made my stomach flip.

It was a contest. He and Tanner bet on who could get up and down fastest, the loser having to buy beer. Calder won, of course, with time enough to pick me up and twirl me around before Tanner put his boots on the ground.

He used to do that—pick me up, lift me above his head—looking at me like he was starving and I was his strawberry shortcake.

Calder.

What does he look like now? Mercy said he’s never married. But I stopped asking my best friend about him a long time ago.

Checking the rearview, Bowie’s engrossed in some game on his tablet. With his tummy full, he’ll fall asleep again soon. The rocking of the car hypnotizes him, making his eyes heavy.

I can’t believe I’m really back in Texas… to stay.

The phone rings again on Bluetooth and this time I swallow bile seeing the name and number. I send the call straight to voicemail, checking my son in the rearview. I’m not going to let him upset Bowie tonight. Just hearing his father’s voice—No. Not tonight.

Seeing the May City Limit sign, “That’s new.”

“What?” Bowie rises up in his car seat, craning his neck to look out his window.

“A new dollar store.”

“Oh.” He goes back to his game. There’s not much exciting for a three-year-old to see in May, Texas. Population 286.

“Wow. A new convenience store, too.”

No response.

I’ve spent too many years in the bright lights of Nashville. I don’t remember May looking so… I don’t know… tired. Like me. Do I look as old as I feel? I catch my reflection in the rearview. Yes. Definitely older. But not so much wiser. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’m just starting over.

A large scrap of denim flaps on a barbed-wire fence, pelted by dust blowing across the road. Any other fabric would’ve shredded by now. Out here the wind and dust chew through everything, but for some reason, that scrap of denim held on. Stubborn. Tough. Too tough for its own good.

Denim and dust. That’s the Texas I grew up in.

It’s beautiful in a way that only things that have endured can be. Like the craggy gray bark of a towering cottonwood tree that has lived two hundred years. Or the Palo Duro Canyon. Or Copper Breaks, the white rock cliffs of the Devil’s River.

Waiting at what is still the only stoplight in town, the sun glowing like an iridescent melon on the western horizon, I swallow the lump that rushes unexpectedly to my throat—remembering him bulldogging in the May Rodeo, that split-second drop from saddle to dirt, the whole arena holding its breath until he threw that steer on its side.

Me in the stands, my hands over my mouth, terrified he could get hurt—facing a sky exactly like this one. As the sun slid down in a riot of color, I remember thinking I’d never seen anything so breathtaking.

Not the sky. Him.

His chiseled jaw, sun-streaked brown hair, his strength and confidence. Raising his arms into the air with the steer down, his eyes searched for me in the stands, flashing that deep-dimpled grin when he saw me watching.

The way he looked at me back then—quiet, sure, like he’d already decided I was his future. His blue eyes inhaled me, and I felt his love. I saw it in his eyes. That, I never doubted. He loved me.

But we were kids. What do kids know?

I crane my neck to see—yes. Below the water tower. The rodeo arena is still there.

The memory fades as the red light turns to green, leaving that familiar hollow ache—the one I learned to live around and finally put to rest.

Whatever happened to us?

I tighten my fingers around the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. “Get a grip,” I mutter to myself, my eyes checking the rearview to see Bowie now sound asleep. “Spilled milk.”

If things were different, you wouldn’t have him. Nothing is more important than Bowie.

I tell myself that, take a deep breath and let it go. I’ve perfected that technique through the years. Smothering memories.

And there it is—dammit. The highway sign pointing to Stephenville, and memories rush back with it. Daddy. That’s the truth I never say out loud. My father is what happened to us. He didn’t raise me—he directed me.

And I let him, the good little girl who always minded her parents. Sometimes I wonder if there’s such a thing as a Stepford daughter.

I could’ve fought harder to go to Tarleton. No. His daughter had to go to Rice because he went to Rice. In Houston. And that changed everything.

The life I’d wanted slipped right through my fingers. “Why, Daddy… why?” The words slip out soft, stupid, aching.

I clear my throat, shift in my seat and try to focus on the road as the stars come out, but all I can think is how long it’s been since I let myself remember him like this. Calder Boone. The boy I left. The man I’m sure to run into in a town of a few thousand.

The land, the sky, and the sunset were exactly the same back then.

But I’m not.

“He’s asleep,” I whisper to Mom, who’s standing on the porch, holding the door as I carry Bowie inside, his head on my shoulder.

She nods knowingly. “Your father’s asleep, too.”

Relief loosens something in my chest I didn’t realize I’d been holding. Thank you, God. I can’t deal with him and his disappointment tonight. “One too many?”

“No. He was just worn out from work.”

“Worn out from me disappointing him, Mother. Tell the truth.” My father has always been the hardest person in my life to please.

Scratch that.

Second hardest.

And somehow, that hurts worse.