CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

It was the best Christmas in recent memory, and there is no doubt in my mind that having Brenda present made all the difference. When we arrived, a tall cedar tree already stood in the corner of the living room ready to be trimmed, the first one we’d had in years. My aunt had been shopping in town, and she showered more presents on Brenda than any little girl needed. Alonzo and the other vaqueros doted on her and argued among themselves about which one would get to ride her around on the front of his saddle. After the second day, Nora pronounced the kid completely ruined by all the attention. It was a fine time, and I was able to forget for a while the dark cloud that hung on my horizon.

*   *   *

The night before they were due to leave, Nora entered my room quietly through the connecting door and slipped once more between the covers beside me. Later, over brandy and cigarettes, we talked for a while, me reclining propped up on my pillows, she leaning against the footboard of the bed, her legs stretched out in front of her. She was wearing one of my old shirts, her hair was disheveled, and her eyes were sleepy. But she looked gorgeous anyway. I finished my brandy quickly, feeling it warm my insides, then poured a couple more inches into my glass.

“I just want you to know, Virgil,” she said, “that I believe Madeline was basically a good kid, and I think it was really decent of you to do what you did for her. Not everybody would have.”

I grinned at her. “I’ll accept a verdict of decent,” I said, “but I don’t want anybody thinking I’m some kind of starry-eyed idealist.”

She laughed. “That’s never gonna happen, Virgil. Not anybody who knows you, anyway.”

“I hope not. But, I think I’m getting even worse the older I get. Almost as cynical as old Charlie Grist, in fact. When this war first started I was all cranked up to go do my duty. I tried to get my naval commission reactivated, but they wouldn’t have me. And to tell the truth, I felt guilty as hell that I wasn’t in uniform. But in the last few days I’ve been thinking about the war, and I realize now that in my heart I’ve known all along that it’s just another damned catastrophe brought on by rascals and fools. When you put aside all the political crap they spout to justify themselves, Hitler and the Jap warlords are really no different from Scorpino and Walsh and Salisbury.”

“Virgil…”

“And if that’s not disgusting enough, add in the half dozen or so big American banks who were doing business with the Japs and the Germans both, and who used every bit of political clout they had right up to the day Pearl Harbor was bombed to keep us from breaking off diplomatic relations with them so’s not to kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs. Then on top of that put the munitions makers and the chemical firms who wanted war just as bad as the banks wanted peace because that’s where their profits were going to be. So when you get right down to it, why should I give my life to pay for their stupidity and greed?”

“You sound like my daddy,” she said.

“Really?” I asked. “Well, did he ever tell you that the human race is just a great big buzzard perched at the top of a rotting tree waiting for an opportunity to pick its own carcass clean?”

She’d been amused by my little tirade, and her eyes were full of mischief in the lamplight. “Not in those exact words. But he got the idea across. And I suspect there’s a lot of truth in what you say. But when you boil it all down, the human race is all we’ve got.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” I said. Then at that moment it hit me just how many years her face and her ash blond hair and her impish smile had been lurking in the back of my mind. So long, in fact, and so omnipresent that I’d become unconscious of it. I realized, too, how much I cared for her and how hopeless it all was. “Nora, let’s get married,” I said impulsively, all but certain what her reaction would be.

She shook her head sadly. “We can’t, Virgil.”

“Is it the climate down here in South Texas?”

“Partly. But there’s more to consider than that.”

“What?”

“Daddy. I can’t take Brenda away from him. Besides, he’s getting older, and we’re all he’s got. The time will come—”

“Hell,” I said, “bring him down here, too.”

She got out of bed and poured more brandy into her glass, her flanks under my old shirt shining golden in the dim lamplight. Then she took a long pull of her drink and turned to face me. “Virgil, up at home Daddy’s somebody. He’s known in a half dozen counties as the best hunter and dog man in the Neches River bottom. People come to him for advice and small loans and all kinds of help, and even the Liquor Control Board officers and the game wardens who try to catch him respect him. But down here?” She shook her head and grimaced. “Down here he’d just be another old geezer with a bunch of stories nobody wants to hear.”

“So maybe I could move up to Palestine,” I said, knowing even as I spoke that it was a fool’s notion.

“Now there’s a really fine idea,” she said sarcastically. “Then a few years from now you could start sitting on the front porch and brooding all the time because Tía Carmen had died and you’d sold off La Rosa and thrown away your birthright. What good would you be to me then? Hell, I’d have to start having affairs just to have somebody to talk to.”

“You’re right, of course,” I said, smiling a little at her blunt honesty.

She drained her glass and set it on the bedside table, then said, “There are things in this world that outweigh romance, Virgil. Family and place and a person’s obligations are all more important. And you know it as well as I do.”

We dropped the subject and talked on for another half hour until finally she came around the bed and climbed in. I turned off the light and spooned her up against me, pressing her back close to my belly. After a little while we both drifted off to sleep. About an hour later I half awoke as she slipped from my bed and went back to her own room. Early the next morning she and Brenda and Press left for Palestine, and except for a few quick hugs over the years, I never held Nora Rafferty in my arms again.