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The Dairy Queen at noon was a gathering place for Lockett citizens. As they ate burgers, Jolie had no doubt many people were watching them and were talking. She couldn’t make herself worry over it, though she was sure the sighting would get back to the Strayhorns sooner or later. Jake seemed not to be concerned about it, either.
“You’re taking your gun?”
“I’m always armed, even in Lockett.”
“But you weren’t the day we ate enchiladas.”
“I’m always armed, darlin’. See, cops don’t always know where the bad actors are, but the bad actors usually know where the cops are.”
He carried a hidden gun? That fact served as an even more invasive reminder of who and what he was. Even if she went on a worldwide search, could she ever find anyone more opposite from Billy? “I guess I’ve never looked at it that way.”
The only other anxiety Jolie had was leaving the Circle C’s pickup parked in the Dairy Queen’s parking lot while she took a ride with Jake.
“Drive it to my apartment and park it in the driveway,” he told her. So she did.
As she belted herself into the passenger seat in his pickup, she noted that no more than two feet spanned the space between them. She had never been inside a pickup cab with any man other than Billy and not often with him. The scent of something woodsy and masculine filled the small space. She would love to ask him the name of his cologne, but she wouldn’t. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“About ten miles out.”
She kept silent as he drove and so did he, but she stole glances at him, admired his strong profile, his straight nose, his efficient hands on the steering wheel. “Have you taken those driving lessons?” she finally asked.
“Driving lessons?”
“I watched a program on TV that showed cops learning special driving skills.”
He smiled. “I’ve done some of that. Not much call for it in Lockett, though. My job here is mostly administrative. When I first got elected, the sheriff’s office was a big mess. Amanda and I worked hard cleaning things up and bringing everything up to date. There might not be much crime in Lockett’s population, but you never know who’s going to pass through town.”
People like Billy, Jolie thought.
Soon they came to a run-down gate. Jolie recognized it as a “cowboy gate,” made of barbed wire and wooden posts, one of the many things she had learned in the short time she had been in Willard County. Jake scooted out and opened the gate, then came back and drove through the opening. He scooted out again and closed the gate. Jolie had also learned that in livestock country, opening a closed gate and not reclosing it could turn into a catastrophe.
They proceeded slowly along a dirt road. The day was warm and bright, the sky a brilliant blue with only small puffy clouds in the distance. Black and russet-colored cattle grazed at the green grass growing on both sides of the road. Looking ahead, she saw a hawk floating in the air against the blue backdrop.
“See that hawk?” Jake said, looking up and out the windshield. “He’s probably hunting field mice.”
A feeling of peace and freedom and happiness filled Jolie’s chest, as if she had no worries about her and Danni’s futures or about the uncertain arrival of Danni’s father. “Poor mice,” she said.
“Everything has a purpose,” Jake said. “If it wasn’t for the field mice, those hawks might get awful hungry.”
They reached an older one-story brick house that had an almost flat roof. It screamed neglect. Jolie couldn’t guess its age. What had been a lawn was grown up with weeds and knee-high grass going to seed. A wooden gate of vertical slats with swatches of white paint here and there hung by one hinge. Jake stopped in front of it and scooted out of the pickup, so Jolie got out, too, the slam of her door clapping loudly in the hush that surrounded them. No sound penetrated the deafening silence save a distant birdcall.
A gentle breeze touched her cheeks and ruffled her hair and she thought of Danni’s comment about the wind blowing all the time. Something else she had learned since being here was that even in this modern age, the Texas Panhandle was a vast, raw and untamed silence. Maybe it would never be tamed. Maybe that was part of its mystique.
Jake walked over and lifted the gate to the side. “Don’t know what this gate is protecting,” he said. “The cattle are fenced off.”
“Whose house is this?” she asked.
“Mine. I bought it a couple of months ago.”
“You’re going to move here?”
“Eventually. It’s got a good well and in West Texas, that’s a big item. I’ve been talking to a designer in Lubbock about remodeling the whole place. New kitchen, new bathrooms, new floors.”
She looked around. Most of what she could see was older than she was. “That will be so nice.”
In the distance, she could see cattle grazing. “I don’t think I’ve heard you have cattle,” she said.
“I don’t. Those you’re looking at belong to somebody else. The land’s leased out for grazing.”
He led her over a crumbling sidewalk to the house’s front door, dug a key from his jeans pocket and opened the wooden door. They stepped into a stuffy empty living room with a floral-patterned linoleum floor. Dust motes swirled and danced in the bright light coming through the windows. Patches of sand showed in places on the floor. The room smelled dusty and unused. “Needs some cleaning,” Jake said.
She walked from the living room into the kitchen and was confronted by old and well-used appliances and scarred cabinets.
He followed her. “Kitchen needs upgrading in a big way. I told the designer to gut it and just start over.”
They moved out a door on the opposite end of the kitchen and into a hallway that led to an empty bedroom. “It’s got four bedrooms,” he said, leading her from one room to the other, his boot heels thudding softly on the linoleum-covered wooden floors. “That designer wants to turn one of the bedrooms into a bathroom and a big closet and have a real master suite.”
“You mean like they show on TV in those remodeling shows?”
He chuckled. “I don’t watch remodeling shows, but maybe.”
“Wow,” she said. “It could be nice.” Still, she couldn’t imagine how much work would be required to make it so.
He started back to the kitchen. “Let me show you the view from the back porch.”
He led her out of the kitchen onto a large covered wooden porch, also in need of painting. Along a wooden rail, a row of scraggly bushes grew, showing tiny buds. She hardly knew one plant from another, but she thought she recognized them as rose bushes. A short distance away, below the measureless blue sky, she could see one wall of a deep canyon showing variations of rusty red and yellow layers. Scrubby dark green plants she couldn’t identify grew along the rim on the opposite side. Jake raised his arm and pointed to his right. “At this time of year, the sun sets right over there.”
Jolie braced the heels of her hands on the porch rail and looked out. The panorama of sky, canyon walls and endless open space was almost too much for her eyes to take in. “Do you come out here and watch the sunset?”
He stood beside her, also leaning on the porch rail. “I have a few times since I bought it. It’s beautiful.”
Jolie saw no sign of a tree. “Here, it’s a lot different from East Texas.”
“Do you miss the pine trees?” he asked.
For the first time, it dawned on her that she hadn’t even missed the tall pines that were part of the landscape where she had grown up. She looked up at him and smiled. “Not really. Now that I think about it, I suppose I had so much to do back there, I hardly noticed the trees. I’m busy at the ranch, but compared to what I left behind, cooking for Jude and Brady and Mr. Strayhorn is almost like a vacation. I have a lot more time to appreciate things now. Every day makes me realize more that it’s a blessing I was able to come here. I’ll probably never go back to East Texas.”
“I’ll probably never leave here, either,” Jake said.
“I’m hoping I’ll be like the Strayhorns’ last cook,” Jolie said, straightening and laughing.
“Windy? He died from a sudden heart attack.”
“I know. I’m hoping I’ll just keep living in that little cottage and working in the Circle C’s kitchen until I drop in my tracks like he did.”
“There could be worse things,” Jake said.
“I know. I’ve lived through some of them.”
“So you like being out at the Circle C, then.”
She looked up at him. “This is the first time I’ve ever lived in a real house.”
Jake didn’t reply, only appeared to be studying her face.
“You might not know what that means to me,” she said. “From the day I was born, I lived in a trailer house. Or several trailer houses, really. I think I’ve already mentioned my mom moved us around quite a bit. When I married Billy, all I did was move into a different trailer house, smaller and rattier than the trailers I grew up in. My mom bought it for us off a used trailer lot in Terrell. She didn’t want us living with her.” She managed to laugh. “She demanded that Billy and I pay her back. Fortunately, it didn’t cost much.”
When Jake still didn’t say anything, she looked him in the eye. “I wanted you to know what I come from.”
“Everybody comes from something somewhere,” he said. “Just because you started in a place doesn’t mean you have to stay in it.”
As their gazes held, a stillness grew between them, which was fine with her. She was happy just standing near Jake Strayhorn without saying a word. Besides, she didn’t want to talk much about her life in Grandee or about Billy, especially on such a beautiful day in this exquisite place that obviously meant a lot to the man who was coming to mean something to her. She was grateful he didn’t ask her any more questions about herself. She turned her attention back to the landscape.
“Have you thought about me being nine years older than you?” he asked.
“A little,” she said, hoping and praying that question meant all that she interpreted it to mean. “Have you thought about it?”
“Yeah, I have. Nine years is a lot of time.”
“Do—do you think it’s a problem?”
“Not for me. Is it a problem for you?”
“No. I just know you’re the best man I’ve ever been around. Your age doesn’t matter.”
“I’ve got a lot of flaws, Jolie. I’m hardheaded and set in my ways. I’ve lived alone a long time.”
“I’ve lived alone, too. I wasn’t alone, but I lived alone.” Then she laughed, lightening the moment. “Just so you’ll know, I’m not the least bit hardheaded. And I’m a pushover. I can be talked into anything.”
His brow arched. “You’re no pushover. I saw that much right away.”
He picked up her hand and stared down at it, rubbing the top with his thumb. Her breath caught, but she tried not to show how his touch affected her.
“I’ve been single fifteen years,” he said.
“What are you trying to tell me, Jake?”
He looked up, his beautiful eyes serious, his square jaw set. “It’s just that in that length of time, a single man gets to know quite a few women. It just happens.”
Was he talking about sex? Was he making a confession? Should she tell him she had never been with a man other than Billy and that she hadn’t been with even him for more time than she could say without thinking about it? Sex had never been as important to her as keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table, both daily challenges for most of her life. She felt a flush crawl up her neck. “I, uh...well, I guess that’s just the way life is,” she said.
He reached for her hand. “Come on. I’ll show you the canyon.”
He led her off the porch, through the rustling grass to the canyon’s rim, where they stood and looked into the deep chasm. “Oh, my gosh,” she said. “It’s a lot deeper than it looks from back on the porch.”
“Couple hundred feet probably. The canyon floor’s sandy and damp a lot of the time. If you go down there, you’ve got to look out for quicksand.”
“Quicksand?”
“Wet sand with no bottom. It can engulf a person or an animal. Even a vehicle.”
“It sounds dangerous.”
“It is. You can’t get out of it. It’ll eventually suck you under.”
“Like life,” she said, staring down at the canyon’s sandy floor.
He gave her a look but didn’t comment. Then he said, “When Brady Fallon and Cable Strayhorn and I were boys, we used to come here and play. We crawled over every foot of this canyon.”
“It’s a wonder you weren’t swallowed.”
“We knew where we shouldn’t go,” he said. “A hundred fifty years ago, this was Comanche country. There are lots of stories about them and this canyon. It was a sacred place for them. When we were kids, Cable was into that history. He knew their stories and he used to tell us.”
She looked up at him, squinting and tenting her hand to shade her eyes from the bright sun. “Cable’s your other cousin besides Jude?”
Jake nodded. “He and Brady are the same age.”
With no warning, he lifted off his hat and placed it on her head. “There,” he said. “That’ll give you some shade.” He grinned. “You look cute. We need to get you a hat.”
The hat brim sat on the top of her ears and eyebrows. She touched the edge with her fingertips. “But what about you? The sun doesn’t bother you?”
His lips quirked. “I’m used to it.”
“I’ve seen your cousin’s picture in the ranch house and I heard his name from Buster in the cookhouse. Buster said his daddy was killed in a war.”
Jake nodded. “Vietnam. My uncle Ben. He was in the Marines. Jeff could’ve used his influence and kept him out of the military like he did with J.D. and my dad, but the story is Ben wanted to serve. So he joined the Marines.”
“I only went to the tenth grade, so I don’t know much, but I had customers in the Cactus Café who were Vietnam veterans. They used to wear those caps that said so. I’ve heard them talk about it. Your uncle’s wearing a uniform in the picture I saw of him and there’s a flag in the frame with it.”
“One of the things I remember from living at the Circle C,” Jake said, “is Ben had war hero status. Even though Cable never knew him, Jeff and Penny Ann taught him that his daddy was a war hero. For that matter, they taught us all.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone with the name Cable before.”
“It’s a nickname. It came from Jude. When she was a little girl, she couldn’t say ‘Campbell,’ so she said ‘Cable.’ Everybody picked it up.” Jake bent and plucked the top from a stalk of grass and ran it through his fingers. “His real name is Campbell Davis Strayhorn. Davis comes from Jefferson Davis. The whole damn family’s named after him, you know.”
Jolie tried to think if she had ever heard the name Jefferson Davis. Jake had said it as if she should know who that person was. Her brow knit. “Who’s that?”
“The president of the Confederacy. During the Civil War, the founder of the Circle C was a dyed-in-the-wool, loyal-to-the-bone Confederate sympathizer. That could’ve been why he had to leave Missouri.”
Jolie did know a little something about the Civil War, even if she hadn’t known who Jefferson Davis was. “I guess I hadn’t heard that. So, what’s your name? Are you named after him, too?”
“Nope. My name is Jacob Campbell Strayhorn. Guess my folks didn’t feel that much loyalty to the South. Campbell was the founding father’s name.”
“Oh, my gosh. Your name’s Campbell, too? Like your cousin’s? Then who are you named after?”
“Everybody named Campbell is named after Alistair Donahue Campbell. He came from Scotland. He was a farmer in Missouri. In 1866, he took his family to South Texas and homesteaded. His son, Jefferson Davis Campbell, didn’t want to be a cotton farmer. He had a dream of being a cowboy and a cattle rancher. When he was nineteen years old, all alone, he drove a hundred head of strays and mavericks up from South Texas, lived in a dugout here in the middle of Comanche country and started the ranch where you now cook. He must’ve had his share of guts and ambition.”
“Something tells me you know who’s in that picture in the dining room.”
“That picture’s been hanging in that house since it was built in 1899. That’s the man I’m talking about. Mine and Jude’s great-great-grandpa. He’s standing beside the Comanche chief, Quanah Parker.”
“Wow,” Jolie said, awed. “All that history. And I don’t even know my daddy’s name.”
Jake chuckled. He squatted and plucked two small clusters of rust-colored flowers with gold-tipped petals and dark brown centers, then stood and offered them to her. “Indian blankets,” he said, smiling, a fan of fine lines at the corners of his eyes.
No one had ever given her flowers, even wild flowers. “Oh,” she replied softly, taking the little clusters. She touched the petals delicately, then raised a flower to her nose. “It doesn’t smell.”
“But it’s so pretty to look at, it doesn’t need to smell. Those dark centers remind me of your eyes.”
Her heart swelled so she could hardly swallow. She had an urge to cry. She looked up at him. “I know it probably isn’t the right thing to say, but I’m so glad I met you.”
He smiled and took her hand again. They walked together back to the porch, sat down on the old porch swing. She returned his hat and he set it on the porch rail. He continued to hold her hand and she hung on to the cluster of flowers. They sat there quietly, arms touching, hands joined, easily moving back and forth in the swing. Eventually, she put her head on his shoulder; he touched his cheek to her hair and they continued to swing slowly.
She sensed she was experiencing something with Jake Strayhorn that few people had. “If you know so much about the Circle C and its history,” she said, “why won’t you go there? Someone said you haven’t been there since you were a kid.”
“That’s true. I haven’t.”
“But if you don’t want to associate with them, why did you come back here?”
“I said before, this is home, which doesn’t have anything to do with the people who live here.”
She straightened and looked into his face. “I guess I don’t understand.”
Jake laid an arm along the swing back behind her. He gave a great sigh. “It’s a long story, Jolie. I’ve never talked about it with too many people.”
“Couldn’t you talk to me about it? You know a lot about me and my life, but I don’t know hardly anything about you.”
He shook his head. “The man I am now is what’s important, not what happened years ago.”
“But what happened years ago is what made you the man you are now. I learned that much about people from living with Billy and listening to the people who used to try to counsel him.”
A chuckle came from Jake, but it wasn’t an expression of amusement. “You’re too wise for your years, Jolie. That must be what I like about you.”
She looked down at the flowers in her hand. They were already wilted. “Gosh. Wildflowers don’t last long, do they?”
“They’re like some people. They need a connection to the land to stay alive.”
“Mr. Strayhorn and Jude are like that, aren’t they?”
“They see the land as permanent and static, something greater than they are. It’s embedded in their souls. In their deepest places, it’s all they care about.”
“But Jude doesn’t love the land more than she loves Brady. Every day I see how much she cares about him.”
“If she ever has to make a choice between him and the ranch, it’s my guess she’ll choose the ranch. It’s an unconscious thing, you see. Something Jude doesn’t yet know she has. I suspect J.D. has made choices his entire life with that philosophy in mind. So did my grandfather. Remember what I said once about life being about choices? It doesn’t make any difference if you’re rich or poor.”
“Buster told me about your father and Mr. Strayhorn’s wife. That must’ve been about choices, too.”
She was prepared for him to blanch, but he remained relaxed and quiet. “Without a doubt. Did he also tell you about my mother?”
“No. He didn’t act like he knew anything about her. Where is she?”
“In a cemetery in Dallas. You might say she could be included in all that Campbell Curse bullshit that my great-grandmother used to spout.”
“You mean the woman everyone calls Penny Ann.”
“My mother killed herself. Accidentally, I believe. Booze and tranquilizers. Bad combination. She wasn’t strong. She was no match for the Strayhorns. When she and I left the Circle C, we went back to Dallas so she could be close to her two sisters. Not long after we got resettled, a check started coming from Penny Ann every month. I’ll always be grateful to Penny Ann for that because Mom wasn’t educated to work at a job that would pay enough to live on, nor was she in any shape emotionally to hold down a job.
“I was a kid, but I gave her as much support as I could. By the time I turned eighteen, she was going to some doctors and seemed to be better. I went to college in Dallas for a year, but at the time, I wasn’t cut out for it. I joined the army. I figured Mom would be okay there near my aunts.”
“She wasn’t?”
He shook his head. “When I got back from overseas, that’s when I realized how much she was drinking and I learned she was getting prescriptions from half a dozen doctors. My aunts had given up on her. I liked the army, had some thought about staying in for twenty years, but with Mom in the shape she was in, I didn’t reenlist. I got a job with the Dallas PD, bought a little house and moved her in with me. I thought it would be enough if she was with me. It wasn’t. You remember asking me if I thought people were born doomed?”
Jolie nodded.
“I’ve had similar thoughts about my mother. Something was missing inside her. She never got over what happened with my dad and J.D.’s wife. Never was able to put it behind her and move on. I came home from work one day and found her dead in bed.”
Jolie’s hand flew to cover her mouth reflexively. “Oh, my gosh, Jake.”
He raised his palm and shook his head. “I blame myself for being so blind to her needs and her weaknesses and not making a greater effort to figure out how to help her. But I also blame the Strayhorns and all their power and arrogance.”
All at once Jolie realized she had bit down hard on her bottom lip. “But why blame them? They didn’t—”
“Do anything? Not directly. I’ve thought about it many times. I’ve come to some conclusions. My old man apparently was a worthless, spoiled asshole who ran roughshod over everybody. He’d had everything he ever wanted and had been required to do damn little to earn it. He didn’t care about anybody but himself. A lifetime of too much money and being part of a family with too much power made him that way.
“According to my mom, J.D.’s second wife, Karen, was a gold digger. She married J.D. thinking marriage to a Strayhorn was a ticket to do anything she damn well pleased. So with two people with the attitudes she and my dad had, both living under the same roof, I suppose it was inevitable they’d get together.”
“Does Jude know what happened to your mother?”
“I’ve never told her. I doubt anyone else has, either.”
“Does Mr. Strayhorn know?”
“I’ve never told him and I don’t think my aunts ever did. My dad’s buried in the Strayhorn family cemetery, but the idea of burying my mom beside my dad didn’t even come up for discussion. I believe Penny Ann knew about her death, because the checks stopped coming.”
“She wouldn’t have told Mr. Strayhorn?”
“Possibly not. From what I’ve head, J.D. didn’t want to hear it. The Strayhorns have cast-iron constitutions, you see, and wide shoulders. I don’t think any of them spend a lot of time dwelling on past events and their causes. No matter what happens, they keep moving ahead. If any member of the family epitomizes that notion, it’s J.D.”
Jolie’s eyes welled with tears. She had problems, but they were obvious and unhidden. She couldn’t imagine how Jake had kept his pain a secret for so long. “Did your grandpa ever get in touch with you?”
“Not personally. He took care of me with money through his lawyers. Made my life easier than it might have been otherwise. I can’t complain about that. I rejected his help at first, but his lawyers never let up on me. Nagged me constantly. Eventually, I gave up and stopped resisting. Now, thanks to him, I have no financial worries.”
“Oh, Jake, that’s all so sad. Mr. Strayhorn’s your uncle. I don’t even have an uncle. Haven’t you ever wanted to make up with him?”
“No. I’ve made my life without him.”
