Chapter Six #2
“Those come with beans and rice. That okay?” she asked.
We both nodded at the same time.
“Have it out in a few minutes. Enjoy the corn bread and honey.” She pointed to a container on the condiment tray at the far end of the table and then rushed off to wait on more new customers.
Our hands brushed against each other when we reached for a hot muffin at the same time.
I didn’t know how it affected him, but I felt another rush of heat.
Hoping it was only the warm bread and not hormones, I tried to ignore it.
This was not the time to get romantically involved with anyone—not when I was still figuring out whether I wanted to stay or go.
“So, your family is in the oil business?” I asked.
He slathered a muffin with butter. “Yes, and the land where we have started setting up to drill is right up next to the New Mexico border. I’ll be going to work early and leaving my office after the café is closed .
. .” He shrugged. “But I’ll be free in the evenings.
Maybe we can meet up for coffee sometimes? ”
“I’d like that. Give me your phone, and I’ll put my number in it.”
He wiped his hands on a napkin before he removed his cell from his pocket. I added my number and handed it back to him.
“I’ve never had friends before now,” I said.
“For real? How is that possible?”
“I told you, I am a professional poker player—we like to move around.”
His expression said that he doubted me.
“Are you also an exotic dancer named Sweet Clara in between card games?” he asked.
“I’m serious!” I snapped. “I was eight when my mother died. Frank and I went on the road. He taught me to play, and I am very good at it. I was never in one spot long enough to make friends.”
“What about school?” he asked.
“I finished third grade before my mama passed away. The rest I did with homeschooling until I was a sophomore. Then Frank remarried and gave up gambling, but I didn’t.
I played at the high school where I went for one semester and won enough money during lunch to strike out on my own. That was fourteen years ago.”
His eyes said that he was doing math in his head. “How did you get into games at sixteen? Don’t they require an ID? Who is Frank?”
“How old were you when you got your fake ID?” I shot back, not wanting to get into a discussion about ol’ Frank.
“Sixteen, but—”
I held up a palm to shush him. “Frank bought mine when I was fourteen—at that point, I could pass for twenty-one with the right clothes and makeup. I took home so much money the first night I sat in on a game that I played every time he did from then on. And so we had twice as much money to blow through until the next game. By the time he remarried, I knew how to read people, how to bluff, and that I had a good memory for cards. I also knew how to live off the grid and all that. Clara Williams is well respected in poker circles.”
“You are serious, aren’t you? You aren’t teasing me.”
“Do you still want to be my friend?” I asked.
“Of course. What about family? Like cousins or siblings?”
“I come from a long line of only children on my mother’s side of the family tree. Frank and his wife, Paula, have two boys, but I have never met them.”
“Why?”
I shrugged and took a big bite of my muffin. I had already shared more with him than I had with any other person. Not even Scarlett and Rosalie knew my gambling name. When I swallowed and sipped my tea, I figured In for a lamb, might as well go for the sheep, as the old saying goes.
“I didn’t leave on good terms. Paula found my stash of poker winnings in my room and pitched a fit.
She said that to live in her house and work in her café, I had to promise to never play again—not at school, where I could get suspended if the principal found out, and certainly not in the backroom games in the seedy part of town that I had been sneaking out at night to go to.
I chose not to live in her house, packed up my things into the used car I had bought with my money, and left. ”
“Didn’t Frank put up a fight to keep you from leaving? Y’all had been traveling together for a long time, right?”
“We had, and he did not. I believe he was relieved. Paula was pregnant by then, and they would have a family that I wouldn’t fit into.
My leaving made life easier for everyone.
” I washed the lump in my throat down with a sip of tea.
Sure, it hadn’t been difficult to drive away, but the idea that he hadn’t even stood up for me still stung.
“That you have been taking care of yourself for so long is incredible,” he whispered.
I didn’t want to talk about my past anymore, so I forced a smile. “Thank you. Now, tell me about your friends.”
He smiled. “You intrigue me, Carla. I bet you have lots more stories to tell.”
“Your friends?” I asked again.
“I had, and still have, a few buddies from high school, but most of them are married with kids. One even has a son who is a senior in high school. Seems surreal to me that that is even possible, but we all choose our own path. I guess you could call my Special Forces team my long-term friends and family.”
I remembered what Ada Lou had said about having a family. “Do you keep in touch with them?”
“Yes, I do. Since their base is in the States, we have planned get-togethers at least twice a year.”
The waitress brought our food and refilled our drinks. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Looks like we’re good,” Jackson told her.
“If this is as good as it smells, I’ll be coming back here every Monday.” I took my first bite and gave it a thumbs-up.
“I’ll have to make a trip to the bank every few weeks. We could ride together, have a midafternoon meal, and catch up,” he suggested.
“Sounds good to me—and you better get after that food because I might steal some of it if you don’t.”
He chuckled and took a bite of enchilada. “You are right. It is good enough to be a tradition.”
The waitress refilled our glasses once more as we ate and laid the bill on the table. We grabbed for it at the same time, but after a brief tug-of-war, he wound up with it.
I crossed my arms over my chest and shot an evil look across the table. “This is not a date. I will pay for my own food.”
“My mother would make me cut a switch and then beat me with it if I let a lady pay for dinner, especially when I invited her to join me,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to see me come into the Tumbleweed carrying a pillow for me to sit on, would you?”
I laughed at the visual of him toting around one of those inflatable doughnut pillows. “I guess I wouldn’t—but next time is on me.”
“My mama is like God. She knows everything, and I don’t cross her, especially when it comes to what she taught me. No, ma’am!” he said with a fake shudder.
I couldn’t imagine someone as big as Jackson being afraid of the devil himself, much less his own mother.
“Are we ready to go?” he asked.
I took one more drink of my tea and nodded. “I suppose we had better be, if I’m going to get back before Rosalie and Scarlett send out the Texas Rangers to find me.”
“Why would they do that?” he asked. “You are a grown woman who has been making her own way for years.”
“They gave me their paychecks to deposit, and they don’t trust me enough to really believe that I wouldn’t cash them and leave this area to go to another poker game,” I answered.
“They must have felt like you were honest, or they wouldn’t have given their checks to you in the first place.”
I pushed my chair back and stood up. “Everything is a test. Someday I might even pass enough of them to be able to call Rosalie Rosie.”
“I have faith in you.” He paid the bill, and we walked out.
“When did you get to call her Rosie?” I asked.
“A while back, when I broke up a fight between a couple of guys in the café,” he answered. “But don’t worry. You’ll pass whatever she throws at you.”
No one had ever said that they had faith in me, though Frank and I had used to do our lucky handshake before we went into a game.
In retrospect, he shouldn’t have passed me off as twenty-one so I could join the others at the poker table when I was fourteen.
But in his defense, I’d always looked older than my years.
A whole rash of tumbleweeds danced across the road and got hung in everything along their way—doors, windows, vehicles, and even the legs of my jeans.
“’Tis the season,” Jackson chuckled and kicked them away with the toe of his cowboy boot. “Instead of snowball fights, we could have tumbleweed battles. Course, they are a nuisance when we are drilling for oil.”
“They are trouble anywhere.” I told him about thinking that I had run over a person when it was only the granddaddy of all tumbleweeds.
He laughed out loud at the story, but I must admit that I did embellish it a little.
“We don’t see so many in the Dallas area, but Dad warned me about them, especially this time of year. If things are dry, they can be a fire hazard, and that’s bad around oil wells.”
“They are a nuisance at the café, too, but I didn’t think about them being a fire hazard.” I stopped at my SUV and opened the door.
What you thought of as troublesome brought you to the place you are, so they can’t be all bad. My mother’s voice was back in my head.
The whistling at the beginning of an old song I had heard in first grade, “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” came to mind. I shook it out of my thoughts and said, “Thanks for supper and the conversation.”
“Right back at you. Do you think you’ll still be around these parts after a year goes by?”
“Do you?” I shot back.
“It looks to me like we both have some things to figure out in the coming months, don’t we?”
“Yep.” I slid in behind the steering wheel. “Thanks again for everything.”
“You are welcome.” He closed my door and walked over to his big white truck.
Knight in shining white truck, I thought as I started the engine and headed back north. “But I am not a damsel in distress who needs saving. Never have been. Never will be.”
Before I’d driven five miles, clouds began to roll in from the south, giving everything a gloomy feeling, and that silly song came back to my mind. One of the lyrics talked about not having a place to put your head because someone came along and took your bed. I laughed at how true that was.
Listen to the words, and don’t worry about a year from now or next week. Be happy where you are right now. Ada Lou was in my head now.
“Yes, ma’am. I will try to do that,” I promised with a smile on my face.
The first big drops of rain fell as I cleared the mountains and got back on flat land.
The temperature on the dashboard said that it was forty-five degrees, so I didn’t have to worry about the roads icing over.
However, the roads were wet, which meant I couldn’t use the cruise control.
Since I tended toward a lead foot, I had to keep watch on the speedometer the whole way back to the trailer.
Rosie’s truck was parked close to the porch.
Scarlett’s vehicle was beside hers, leaving me to have to dash quite a way to the trailer in the pouring-down rain.
I tucked the bank bag under my coat, made sure my purse was zipped up tight, and ran from my SUV to the trailer.
I was still soaking wet when I got inside.
I shed my boots and jacket at the door, threw the bank bag on the counter, and headed back to my bedroom to change into dry clothes.
I heard two doors open while I was putting on a pair of flannel pajamas and a dry T-shirt.
“Bag with all the deposit slips is on the counter,” I yelled down the hallway.
“We found it, and thank you,” Rosalie hollered back. “Are you coming out?”
“On my way.” I smelled Italian food the minute I stepped back out into the hallway.
After feeling like I would starve to death on the trip from Tucson to the Tumbleweed, I’d vowed I would never pass up food when it was offered. Not even when I had eaten two hours before.
“Want us to heat up some food for you?” Rosalie asked. “You didn’t have time to eat before you had to go to the bank.”
“Yes, please,” I answered, but I didn’t tell them about dinner with Jackson, or that we were going to drive down together when he needed to go to the bank again. I wanted to hold that nice moment close to my heart.
“We’ve been talking about it, and we decided since we take turns with the shower, then we should do the same with that boring drive to Sierra Blanca,” Rosalie said as she filled a bowl with spaghetti and meatballs. “So after next week, you will only have to go every third time.”
“Why after next week?” I asked.
“I have plans on Monday afternoon with Grady. But if you don’t want to go, I can change them,” Scarlett answered.
“And I promised Father Luis that I would help with the books since his secretary is out on maternity leave for a couple of weeks.” Rosalie slid the bowl of pasta into the microwave.
“No problem. I’ll be glad to go next week, and any other time that y’all need a day off.”
“You are a good friend,” Scarlett said.
When she said that, I remembered a greeting card I saw in a shop a few years before. What had caught my eye was the picture of an old couple on the outside. The sentiment on the inside read “It was only me, until it wasn’t.”