Love, Mom

Joanna addressed an envelope, sealed the letter inside it, and then carried the letter, the phone, and her writing materials back inside. The three old army cots were stowed in the back of Jenny’s closet. Joanna dragged one out, brought her pillow and a set of sheets, and returned to the porch. For tonight, at least, she wouldn’t be dealing with Reba’s double bed problem.

She was on her way back outside for the last time when the phone rang. That late at night, there were only two real possibilities-something had happened at work, some new emergency that demanded the sheriff’s attention; or else, things had quieted down enough at the Roundhouse Bar and Grill up in Peoria and Butch Dixon had found a spare moment to give her a call.

“Did you get Jenny off to camp safe and sound?” Butch asked. “How did it go?”

Glad to hear the sound of his voice, Joanna slipped onto the chair beside the telephone table and tucked her feet up under her. “It went fine,” she said, giving Butch the benefit of only the smallest of white lies. “No problems at all.”

Later, lying there on the porch, waiting to fall asleep and watching the intermittent flickers of lightning, Joanna reviewed what had gone on during the day. One of the things that stood out in her mind was Ernie’s objection to Joanna’s use of the word enemies in conjunction with Bree O’Brien. Having raised only sons, Ernie was more familiar with little boy kinds of disputes-ones that included straightforward fistfights and uncomplicated rock throwing.

Joanna, however, was acquainted with the kinds of insidious, ego-damaging warfare traditionally practiced on young women by other young women. Joanna Lathrop Brady had been there and done that. Her nemesis at Bisbee High School had been a girl named Rowena Sharp.

Popular and smart and blessed with two doting parents, Stub and Chloe Sharp, Rowena had been everything Joanna Lathrop wasn’t. In fact, now that she thought about it, Bree O’Brien reminded Joanna of Rowena. Going through adolescence is tough enough, but Joanna Lathrop had also been dealing with the loss of her father. For some reason, Rowena had singled Joanna out as the object of unmerciful torment and contempt. Not only that, Rowena’s gal pals had risen to the occasion and joined in the fun, not unlike a flock of cannibalistic chickens pecking to death some poor wounded and defenseless bird that had happened to wander into their midst.

Joanna never knew what she had done to merit Rowena’s scorn, but it was something she had been forced to endure, day in and day out. There had been bitchy remarks about “Miss Goody Two-shoes” in the girls’ rest room and the cafeteria lunch line. There had been numerous and undeniably deliberate pushings in the hall and gym when Joanna’s back was turned to open her locker. It wasn’t until late in their senior year that things had changed ever so slightly.

Rowena had been one of two contenders for the position of salutatorian, but she was having a terrible time grasping the basics of chemistry. On her own, she would have earned a solid B in the course, but a B wouldn’t have done enough for her GPA. She had persuaded one of her friends-a girl who worked in the principal’s office during second period-to lift a copy of Mr. Cantrell’s final exam. Word of the pilfered exam had traveled like wildfire through the senior class. Even Joanna heard about it, and she alone had tackled Rowena on the issue.

“Why cheat?” Joanna asked. “Why not just take the grade you’ve earned on your own?”

“Because it won’t be good enough,^” Rowena shot back. “Be-cause if Mark Watkins is salutatorian instead of me, my parents will just die.”

Not wanting to be saddled with more “Miss Goody Two-shoes” remarks, Joanna had kept her mouth shut. Rowena Sharp received her illicit A and graduated second in their class, with Mark Watkins coming in a close third. As for Joanna, she could never look at that page in her senior yearbook without feeling a stab of guilt whenever she saw Rowena’s smiling face staring back out at her.

The last time Joanna had seen Rowena Sharp Bonham had been at their ten-year class reunion, where the printed bio had announced that Rowena was an attorney practicing law in Phoenix. Clearly, the passage of time hadn’t helped Rowena forget any more than it had helped Joanna. When they encountered one another in the buffet line, Rowena had cut Joanna dead.

Good riddance, Joanna thought as a surprisingly cool breeze wafted over her, letting her drift off to sleep. As Eva Lou would say, good riddance to the bad rubbish.

Long after midnight, Francisco Ybarra sat in the kitchen of his darkened home, keeping company with a bottle of Wild Turkey and worrying.

Frank wasn’t much of a drinker. Nonetheless, he poured himself another glassful of bourbon. The hundred-proof liquor warmed his gut as it went down. Maybe eventually sleep would come, but right now he was still wide awake.

Frank’s worries had two separate sources-his ailing wife, Yolanda, and Pepito. Hector had told him about the blond girl in the red truck, about how she had come by the station the previous afternoon and about how today Nacio had been in a foul mood all day long. Frank’s nephew had left the station after first lashing out at Hector. When he had returned to the station much later in the day, Hector claimed Pepito hadn’t been worth a plugged nickel.

Hector had long ago alerted Frank Ybarra to the existence of the girl in the red pickup truck-the one who came by the station, usually when Frank wasn’t there and sometimes even when he was. He knew about her long blond ponytail, her long tan legs, and her cute little ass. Frank was sure she had to be the same girl from Bisbee, the one Yolanda had been all over Pepito about last winter.

Frank had known from very early on about what was going on, but he had decided to let it go-to allow the affair to run its own course-because he was confident Pepito would get over it eventually. Now he wasn’t so sure.

From outside the house, came the sound of familiar tires crunching the gravel of the back alley. A pair of glowing head-lights dissolved into darkness. Not moving, not reaching for the light, Frank Ybarra sat in the dark and waited, listening for the telltale creak of the iron gate and for Nacio’s limping steps on the wooden planks of the back porch.

Stealthily, almost as though he were willing the sometimes fussy lock to silence, Nacio’s key clicked in the keyhole. The door opened. Almost simultaneously, the overhead light came on. Illumined in the glaring fluorescent glow, Ignacio Ybarra was a bruised and bloodied mess. His scraped and scabby face looked as though it had been dragged along a sidewalk. Underneath the torn material of a ragged shirt, Frank glimpsed a layer of bandages encircling the boy’s chest.

“What happened?” Frank asked, even though he thought he already knew the answer.

The door was still open when Nacio saw his uncle. He turned and would have fled back into the night, had Francisco Ybarra not stopped him. “I asked you, what happened?”

“I got in a fight,” Nacio said, slipping unconcernedly onto a chair and trying to sound casual. “A guy beat me up.”

Uncle Frank stood up, a little unsteadily, and walked around the table to the far side of Nacio’s chair. He stared down at his nephew for a moment, then, walking with great dignity, Frank returned to his chair. He had seen beatings before. He knew what they looked like.

“What guy?” he asked, his face going still and cold. “An Anglo?”

Nacio nodded.

“Which one?”

“Just a guy,” Nacio answered. “I can’t say.”

“The hell you can’t!” Uncle Frank returned savagely, pounding the table with his fist. He realized then he was more than a little drunk. “You can tell me, and you will. People can’t get away with this kind of shit anymore. You tell me who it was who did this. I’ll call the cops.”