Chapter Eighteen #2
“I do the same, and I’ve been around family of one kind or another my whole life.”
The two tall glasses of sweet tea I had drunk before he arrived were making me wiggle in my seat.
I could surely sympathize with the folks who got off the bus and did a fast trot all the way to the restroom.
I saw a sign advertising a gift store and café just up ahead.
It pained me and my dignity to ask him to stop so I could use the restroom, but it was either swallow my pride or arrive at a nice steak house with wet spots on my denim skirt.
He braked and turned right into the parking lot of a conglomeration of buildings. “This is the last stop before we get to El Paso, and I need to find a restroom.”
“Have you been here before?” I unbuckled my seat belt before he even turned off the engine.
“Nope, I always stop at the Tumbleweed,” he answered, got out of the truck, and opened the door for me.
According to the signs, one side of the long, low-slung building in front of us was May’s Café.
The other was a gift shop. I’d been in enough convenience stores to figure out that in cases like this, the café was probably built first. Therefore the bathrooms were most likely in that part of the place.
Jackson laced his fingers with mine and headed for the first entrance. The sign on the window said that they were open from eight a.m. to five p.m. He pushed the door, and it opened. I almost made the sign of the cross and sent up a prayer of thanks that they weren’t closed.
“We are closing in five minutes,” the lady behind the register said.
“We just need to make a fast trip through the bathrooms,” I told her and headed across the room.
I hadn’t ever been in a store or café that was so crowded—not with people, but with stuff everywhere.
There wasn’t a square inch of empty space on the walls or on the countertop.
I would have loved to come back some afternoon and get a better look at everything, but Scarlett would have had a heart attack thinking about dusting all the merchandise.
Jackson was sitting at a booth when I came out of the ladies’ room. “Ready?”
I nodded and smiled at the lady. “Thank you. I’ll come back another time when you are open.”
“Where y’all from?” she asked.
“I live at the Tumbleweed,” I answered.
“Over near Dell City,” Jackson said.
“You must be the new help over at the Tumbleweed. I heard there was a new woman over there.” She followed us to the door. “Come back and see us another time. Like the sign out there says, we make the world’s best burger.”
“Will do.” I waved over my shoulder as we left.
“I doubt very seriously that their burgers are any better than Rosie’s,” Jackson said on the way across the lot to the truck.
“I agree, but it might be fun to drive back over here and check out the competition. After all, this place and the Tumbleweed are pretty much the only stops for a long time after leaving El Paso.”
“Consider it a date for another time,” Jackson said.
The scenery along the hour-long drive from Cornudas to El Paso changed very little. With snow piled up on either side of us, it still felt like something out of a paranormal movie.
“Ada Lou says that this is pretty country in the spring when everything begins to bloom,” I said after a few minutes.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Jackson chuckled. “I do like the way the bigger yucca plants stick up out of the snow. Look, there’s a cardinal.”
“Ada Lou told me that when you see one, it means someone who has passed away is thinking of you,” I said.
“I’ve been told that, too, and I’m choosing to think that one is my grandfather. I was away on a mission when he died, and didn’t get to come home to the funeral.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Thank you. My grandpa was a blunt old guy, and I could hear his voice telling me not to come home, because he was dead and wouldn’t know if I was there anyway. Dad assured me that Grandpa would have wanted me to stay right where I was and save lives,” he said.
We seemed to hit every traffic light in town before he finally parked in front of a place called the 170 Degree Steak House.
“We are here,” he said.
“How did you ever find this place?” I asked. “And why is it called that?”
“I have no idea. It’s only been open for a little while. It’s part of the Hotel Paso del Norte, a place where my folks like to stay when they are in this area,” he answered.
I was a little worried about whether I was dressed for such a fancy place.
My long, straight denim skirt and cowboy boots would have been much better suited to May’s Café than in a high-class place like we walked into.
When he mentioned steak, I’d figured on something like LongHorn SteakHouse or maybe Saltgrass.
I mean, I’d been to some of the fanciest restaurants across the country—from the Odeon in New York City to Top of the World in Las Vegas to Le Pichet in Seattle.
I sure wished I’d worn one of my poker-playing dresses that evening.
Maybe you can’t leave everything behind.
Jackson ushered me inside and told the hostess his name and that he had reservations for two.
The paneled walls, crystal chandeliers, and padded leather chairs reminded me of the dining rooms in some of the really fancy hotels I had visited for poker games through the years.
I seldom stayed in them, because even when I was flush, I was a little too tight with my money to fork over what a room cost.
“You should have told me that we were going to a place like this,” I fussed at Jackson while we followed the lady to our table. “I would have dressed up.”
He helped me remove my denim jacket and handed it to the lady, along with his leather jacket.
Then he pulled out a chair for me and kissed me on the cheek.
“I thought you were dressed up. You are beautiful in that outfit—but, darlin’, you would be gorgeous wearing a gunnysack tied up at the waist with a length of baling twine. ”
“What do you know about either of those things?” I asked.
“Oil isn’t the only thing my family is interested in,” he answered.
“Remember my four older sisters? My folks handed Jenny the reins to the Armstrong Cattle Company a while back. She doesn’t only run that business, but she, her husband, and her three sons work right out on the ranch with the hired hands. ”
“And the other three?” I asked.
“Joy is the prissy one,” he said with a smile. “She and her husband are the oil company’s lawyers. They live in Dallas, don’t have any children, and from what she says, don’t intend to ever have them.”
I was sure enough out of my league, even if I had eaten in high-class places. “What about the other two?”
“Jaylynn is the oldest child and the bossiest. She wanted to shoot me when I joined the military. She and her family live in Frisco, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, and have three daughters. All of them have business degrees and run the Armstrong Trucking Company.”
“Sweet baby Jesus!” I muttered.
“They’re all ambitious women,” he said, “but when we all get together for holidays, it seems like we revert to when we were kids. They try to boss me, and I retaliate by teasing them.”
“And the last one?”
“That would be Jessica, who is a couple of years older than me. She doesn’t have a finger in any of the family pies.
She and her husband are both doctors and have a son who is studying music in Nashville.
He has hopes of being a country music star.
He’s got the backing from his parents if the industry likes his voice. ”
“You all have names that start with a J?”
“Yep, my Dad is James. Mama is Julia. They thought it was cute,” he answered. “If you had five kids, would you do that to them?”
“Would you?”
“Hell no,” he said. “None of my sisters did. We didn’t mind being the J’s, but still . . . Seven J’s in one family?”
“Neither would I, but I don’t expect that I’d ever have five kids anyway. I’m thirty, so even by spacing them out two years apart, that would mean I would be forty by the time the last one was born. I can’t imagine having enough energy to chase five of them around,” I said.
The waiter came by and filled two of the stemmed glasses with water. He laid two leather-bound menus on the table and asked if we wanted to see the wine menu.
“No, we’ll have two beers,” Jackson answered and looked across the table at me. “Imported or . . .”
“Whatever you are having. I’m adventurous.”
“DeadBeach it is,” he said.
“Never heard of that one,” I told him once the waiter left to retrieve our drinks.
“It’s a Texas beer. My dad introduced me to it when I was twenty-one. We both pretended that it was the first one I’d ever tasted. Who bought your first legal beer?”
“I did,” I answered with a shrug. “On my twenty-first birthday, at the hotel bar. I had my real ID, but the bartender didn’t even ask for it. I was very disappointed that I didn’t get to flash it.”
The waiter brought our beer and two frosted mugs. Then a second server came over to ask if we wanted appetizers.
Jackson looked across the table at me. “I’m ordering a garden salad. Do you want something else?”
“I’ll have one, too,” I answered and handed the menu back to her. “And I want the eight-ounce filet mignon with grilled asparagus.”
“I want the fourteen-ounce New York,” Jackson told her. “And truffle mac and cheese.”
“Good choices,” she said and left with the menus.
“I’ve told you about the J’s,” Jackson said. “Now tell me about your family.”
“I already did,” I answered. “As far as I know, Frank is still alive and living in Kentucky. The closest thing I might have to kinfolk are his people.”
“Do you ever go back there for one of the holidays?”
“Absolutely not! I don’t think I would enjoy being around them any more than I did when I was forced to attend the events.”