“You didn’t say what you’re going to do in New Orleans.”
“Mine not to reason why, Ma’am, mine but to ride into the Valley of Death, or wherever it is. You keep forgetting, Ma’am, that I’m just a lousy first lieutenant, and they don’t bother to tell me a hell of a lot. Just do it.”
She chuckled.
He purposefully changed the subject. “Jim’s pistol is in the glove compartment. Did you know that?”
“That’s my pistol,” Martha said. “His guns are in town. They had to inventory them when they probated the will. You got them, too, of course, except for the .250–3000 Savage. Beth killed her first deer with that, and he thought she should have it.”
They rode in silence for several minutes down the dirt road—really no more than tracks in the land leading down from the highest spot on the ranch toward the ranch house, which was built in a small valley to get it out of the wind.
“Your car is in town,” Martha said, breaking the silence, “up on blocks. But if you’re going somewhere where you can have a car, maybe you’d better get it running.”
“I thought I would go into town anyway, to have a drink at the Petroleum Club. Is somebody at the house?”
“Juanita’s there. I just hope she doesn’t find out you’re here and didn’t stop by there first to see her.”
“It was after midnight when I got to Midland,” Clete said.
“Well, we’ll fix you some lunch, so that you’ll have something in your stomach before you hit the P-Club bar, and you go see Juanita. Before you go to the P-Club.”
“You don’t want to go with me?”
“I don’t think I could handle that, not yet, honey,” Martha said.
“I’m not sure if I’ll be able to either,” Clete said. “But I think I should go.”
“Just go easy at the bar, honey. All the booze in the world isn’t going to bring him back.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Clete said.
He turned on the seat to look at her.
I really love this woman. She is not biologically my mother; but that’s what she is in fact. She took me in when I was eighteen months old and she was for all practical purposes just a bride. I was her husband’s sister’s motherless child, and she still raised me as her own. I must have been four or five before I understood that I had another mother, a dead mother.
“Martha,” Clete said. “I don’t know if I ever told you before, I don’t know why I didn’t, but I love you.”
She turned to look at him quickly.
“Clete, honey, that’s nice. That’s real nice. But you didn’t have to say it. I know.”
She returned her attention to the road for a moment, then said, “I think I could use another little taste, honey. Or did you drink it all?”
[THREE]
The Petroleum Club
Midland, Texas
1615 21 October 1942
The very black, very dignified bartender in the very white jacket handed Clete Howell a Jack Daniel’s and water. He was still feeling the pulls he’d taken in Aunt Martha’s car and really didn’t want the drink; but it occurred to him that if Uncle Jim happened to be peering over the edge of his cloud looking down, he would like to see him having what he himself drank in his club.
“Were you here when it happened, William?” Clete asked.
“Yes, Sir, Mr. Clete. I was.”
Clete looked at him, waiting for him to go on.