CHAPTER 21
Graydon Bebee popped a last bite of cornbread into his mouth and washed it down with a gulp of coffee before getting up from the table.
L. J. “Little Jim” Spreewell, Graydon’s boss, who looked to be in no hurry to get back to work, dumped another spoonful of sugar into his cup and flipped through a pile of mail.
“You figure out what’s wrong with the tractor yet?” he asked without looking up.
The Spreewells owned a farm outside of Liberal, Kansas, where they grew wheat and corn and raised fifty head of sheep. In exchange for room, board, and one hundred dollars a week, Graydon worked the fields, tended the sheep, and did anything else L. J. said needed doing. Graydon ate his meals with the Spreewells but otherwise kept to himself. He spent nights in his room, a rustically remodeled shed, with no phone, no TV, and no companion except for his old friend, Jack Daniel’s. L. J. knew about that, but as long as Graydon didn’t let his drinking interfere with his work, he didn’t ask questions. They were men of few words, and so the arrangement worked well for both parties.
“Yeah, I took a look. Think it just needs new spark plugs.”
L. J. glanced up expectantly. “Well?”
“I’m driving to town to pick some up right now.”
L. J. sniffed as if to let Graydon know it was about time and tossed a grocery circular into a wastepaper basket. Graydon settled his battered black Stetson onto his head, the last remnant of his days in Texas, and grabbed the keys to the truck from a hook by the back door.
“Hey, Bebee. You got a letter here.” L. J. squinted at the postmark before holding it out to Graydon. “Looks to be from your brother and sister-in-law.”
Graydon took the envelope and shoved it in his shirt pocket before heading out the door. He didn’t have to look at the return address to know L. J. was right. Donny and Mary Dell were the only people who sent him letters and then only once or twice a year—a card at Christmas and again on his birthday. Graydon never wrote back.
He liked his brother, and he liked Mary Dell too. But he didn’t want to talk to them any more than he had to or be reminded of things he’d rather forget. Even though they weren’t identical twins and Mary Dell had six inches on her sister, she reminded him too much of Lydia Dale; the facial resemblance was strong. The year Mary Dell started putting pictures of her and Donny on their family Christmas cards was the year Graydon started throwing them away, usually without even opening the envelope.
Graydon hadn’t seen his brother since Donny drove up from Texas about three years back. Things got out of hand. Graydon felt bad about the fight, about blacking his brother’s eye and splitting his lip, but he had asked for it, butting into things that were none of his business. It was a shame they’d had to part that way, but Graydon figured it was for the best. Up until then, Donny just hadn’t taken the hint. If his brother wasn’t married to Mary Dell and living in Too Much, it might have been different, but as it was . . .
After the fight, Donny let him be, sending only those two cards during the year, and Graydon was pretty sure that Mary Dell was the one who actually sent them. But it wasn’t Christmas, and his birthday wasn’t for another three months. Why were they writing now?
Graydon closed the door of the truck, pulled the envelope out of his pocket, and opened it.
The card was decorated with a drawing of a stork wearing a delivery cap and holding the ties of a blue bundle in its beak and the words “It’s A Boy!”
Inside, written in a loopy lady script he figured belonged to Mary Dell, he found a listing of his new nephew’s birth statistics and a picture of a baby boy with dark hair and almond-shaped eyes. The card didn’t say anything about the baby having Down syndrome, but the people who ran the liquor store in town had a five-year-old daughter, Jenny, with Down’s, so Graydon recognized the facial characteristics. She was a sweet little girl. Graydon figured this little guy would be too, but it must have been a shock for Donny, at least at first.
Strange to think that his baby brother was a father. Even stranger to think that Donny hadn’t told him the baby was coming. Of course, he’d made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with Donny or his family . . . still. A baby boy. His nephew.
Graydon read the note again and smiled to himself. Howard Hobart Bebee. Huh. So they’d named him after the old man. Graydon wondered if his father knew about that. Probably not. Hell, Graydon didn’t even know if his father was still alive—though he supposed he must be. If Howard Bebee had exited this earth, surely there’d have been some sort of cosmic event to announce the news . . . rock faces would have split or meteors fallen from the sky . . . something. His daddy had been a force of nature, as outsized in personality as he’d been in body, a hard-drinking and hard-living grizzly of a man, idolized by his sons and just about everyone who knew him, who had made a small fortune wildcatting oil, then lost even more than that and disappeared. As a boy, Graydon had worshipped his father, but he got over it pretty quick. Donny never did. But then, Donny had been so little when Howard ran out on them. He hadn’t lain awake in bed listening to their mother’s tears coming from the next room or understood how worried and exhausted she was, working three jobs to support them. Over his mother’s protests, Graydon left school as soon as he was able and got a job at the stockyard. It still wasn’t easy, but they got by. Grace Bebee had never said a word against Howard in front of the children, not to her dying day. It just wasn’t in her nature. Graydon never said anything against his father either, never corrected or amended the stories Grace told about Big Howard’s adventures as a wildcatter or tried to offer his little brother a different version of the family history than his mother’s. It wasn’t his place. But he knew what he knew.
He laid the birth announcement on the seat but held the baby picture carefully between his fingers so he wouldn’t leave prints on the photo.
“Isn’t he something? Look at all that hair.” He shook his head. “So Donny’s a daddy. And I’m an uncle. Damn.” He pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and slipped the photograph carefully inside.
Graydon drove to town and picked up spark plugs. Next he drove to the Rexall, picked out a card that said, “A Baby Boy Is a Gift from Above,” slipped a ten-dollar bill inside, signed it, stamped it, mailed it, and drove back to the farm.