Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“I think it’s like Linda Gail said.”

“What did she say?”

“We chopped a hole in the bottom of our own boat.”

I felt like telling him to kick Linda Gail Pine in the butt. Instead I waited until I had showered and put on fresh clothes and eaten dinner, then I called Lloyd Fincher in San Antonio, my throat so dry I could hardly speak when he picked up the phone.

“There’s some static on the line. I can’t hear you,” Fincher said. “Who is this?”

“Weldon Holland, Major.”

“I declare. What can I do for you, son?”

ROSITA AND I checked in to the Menger Hotel, close by the Alamo and the River Walk, the night before we were to meet with Lloyd Fincher and his attorney. The hotel was built in 1859 and had inlaid ivory-colored and royal blue marble floors and potted palms and slender white columns with gold trim in the lobby, and a balcony that wrapped around the atrium and allowed the visitor a wonderful overview of the hotel’s interior, which looked more like ancient Rome than modern-day Texas.

I threw our bag on the bed. Through the window, I could see the facade of the Alamo’s chapel, the building that had served as an infirmary during the siege of the mission in 1836. I opened the French doors and stepped out on the balcony. “Jim Bowie died right there,” I said to Rosita, pointing at the chapel. “He was bayoneted to death on his cot. Davy Crockett probably died by the barracks wall.”

Rosita didn’t reply. I stared at the plaza. I had been there many times and had always walked away with the same sensation. I felt that the spirits of the 188 men and boys who had died after thirteen days of siege were still among us, their ashes under the stones we walked on, their voices whispering to us in the wind, should we ever choose to listen.

“Are you worried about tomorrow?” Rosita asked.

“I’m gambling on Fincher, a man who got a lot of GIs killed at Kasserine Pass.”

“That was then. This is now,” she said.

“That’s what I tell myself.”

“You’ve done all you could to raise money, Weldon. Everything you’ve done is for Hershel. I just wish he understood that.”

“If it wasn’t for Hershel’s welding machines, we’d be living on the GI Bill. Let’s go to a restaurant on the river and get something to eat.”

“Just wait a minute. The real question is whether this man Fincher is honest or not,” she said. “Do you believe he’s honest?”

I could hear the music in the outdoor cafés along the River Walk. I didn’t want to think or talk about Lloyd Fincher. I didn’t want to believe I had deliberately put myself in a relationship with a man for whom I had no respect. I hadn’t slept in three nights. “Sometimes you have to do business with the devil,” I said.

“He’s not that bad, is he?”

“Probably not. But I wouldn’t count on it.”

She put her arm in mine. “We’ll always be together, no matter what happens,” she said. “You’ve always done the right thing, Weldon. That’s all that counts.”

When I needed someone to back my play, Rosita Lowenstein never let me down.

We walked along the river’s edge under the cypress and willow trees, over the pedestrian bridges, past a gondola filled with mariachi musicians wearing white sombreros and brocaded jackets and trousers. Up ahead was a tree with the bark and long thin leaves of a willow, but it was blooming with clusters of purple flowers that trailed in the water. I did not know its name. “What a beautiful tree,” I said.

Then I realized that a few feet away from the tree, Hershel and Linda Gail were sitting at a table with Lloyd Fincher and a heavyset peroxide-blond woman in an orange sundress. Her skin was like tallow, with the kind of tan you see on people who sunbathe in the nude. Fincher stood up, a bottle of Corona in his hand, his face flushed, as though he had run upstairs. He had on a tropical shirt printed with parrots and flowers that he wore outside a pair of pleated white slacks. A saucer of salted limes and a silver flask in a leather case sat in the middle of the table. “Hail, Sir Weldon, and hail your ladyship,” he said. “We’re rewriting the outcome of the Alamo. Help us clean Santa Ana’s clock.”

There was a glass of iced tea in front of Hershel, and a plate with three tacos and a scoop of avocado salad, but no bottle of beer. Good for you, Hershel, I thought.

“We’re taking a walk,” I said.

“Definitely not. You have to sit down,” Fincher said. “Travis is mortally wounded and the little brown buggers are coming over the wall. Time to give them a face full of chain and grape and send them back across the Rio Grande. We used to have a cheer in high school: ‘Two bits, four bits, six bits a peso. All good pepper-bellies stand up and say so.’”

“Don’t offend him,” Rosita whispered.

“What’s that?” Fincher said.

“We’d love to join you,” I replied.