The Sweet Spot Read online

  Jimmy would slide in beside her and pull her into his arms. They’d lie like spoons in a drawer and talk about the day. Well, Jimmy would talk. She would listen to the deep rumble of his voice, as she slid seamlessly to sleep. Cradled, sheltered, safe.

  A tear slipped to the pillow. Only time’s veil separated her from that glittering dream, and if wanting was enough, she’d be there right now. Instead, she lay here, her heart as cold as the sheets. God was a cruel jailor, taking both her precious possessions, one after the other.

  The tailwind of regret hit, and Char shifted, restless.

  It’s not really fair to blame God for what you had a hand in, Charla Rae.

  Was that her mother’s voice in her head?

  Jimmy had tried. For months. On a night much darker than this, he’d lain facing the wall, on the far side of the bed. Not because he wanted it that way but because she couldn’t stand to have him touch her, have anything touch her.

  After all, that’s what the pills were for, weren’t they, Missy?

  Go away, Mom.

  Then one night Jimmy’s deep voice had shattered her dark refuge: telling her he’d reached his limit. He had tried everything, but she’d gone somewhere he couldn’t follow. He had to let go.

  She understood then, saw clearly the fork in the river, but in the churning current, sinuous shapes slid past, baring teeth. Hungry, guilt-tipped teeth. Petrified to numb cowardice, she let him leave and floated away on her life raft of Valium.

  Face it, Charla Rae, he didn’t leave the marriage first. You did. The voice in her head wasn’t her mother’s. It was hers.

  If only I had it to do over again… The cold, damp spot under her cheek had spread, so she shifted to a fresh spot on the pillow. No. Given the meager resources she had left at the time, she’d done all she’d been capable of: survive.

  The past’s veil was inviolate. All she could do was get up tomorrow and begin with what she had left. She rolled over, punched the pillow, and willed herself to sleep.

  Two hours later, she snatched the phone from the charging cradle in the bathroom, then stalked back to bed. “You happy now, Mother?” She almost snapped on the bedside light but flopped onto the tossed sheets instead. This would be easier done in the dark. She hit speed dial.

  “Charla? What’s wrong?” His deep rumbly voice held no sleepy edges.

  “Nothing that an exorcism wouldn’t fix, Jimmy.” Realizing she lay facing his pristine pillow, she rolled to her other side, to the accusatory glowing numbers on the alarm: 2:30.

  “I’m sorry to call you so late. But I had to. I saw that little girl in the store the other day. The one you had out here the day you came to pick up the bulls? I know she’s not your girlfriend.”

  “Char, I—”

  “No, let me get it all out before I lose my nerve, Jimmy.” Rev. Mike said confession was good for the soul. But stripping naked in church would have been easier than this. She swallowed. “I’m sorry too, for pushing you away. After B—” She took a shaky breath. “You know, after. I couldn’t have done anything else. But I want you to know. I know what I did was wrong.”

  “Oh, Charla—”

  “I can’t do anymore tonight, Jimmy. I’m sorry for this too.” She hit the “end” button.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.

  —Rita Mae Brown

  A spot above JB’s right eye beat to the rhythm of the throbbing engine as he hit the lever to drop the bucket on the skip loader. “This job’s not all glamour, he says.” Since he’d taken the job as manager of the feedlot a week ago, Junior assigned him nothing but work like this—clearing a month’s worth of manure from corrals.

  “Right up my alley, huh? When I finish, I’m putting this job right up his alley.” JB adjusted the bandanna tied around his face that did little to block the stench. The sun seared his shoulders and the humid air clung like a damp wool blanket. This job sucked now. By summer it would be excruciating. They’d find him passed out, facedown in a foot of cow brownies. At the end of the row, JB raised the bucket and drove to the railcar-size Dumpster to drop his load. Pulling upwind of the mess, he shut down the Bobcat and yanked off his hat. A stray breeze tickled his sweaty scalp, and he raised an arm to wipe his face on the sleeve at the crook of his elbow.

  It wasn’t just this job eating him. Benje came to him in dreams most nights now. Waking to the breath-stealing guilt seemed a fair trade to see his son’s face. He yearned for the ranch and working with his bulls. He wanted the soul-feeding routine of home.

  Home? Hell, he didn’t even have a place to lay his head.

  This month’s expenses had devoured the rent money. Come Monday, he had to either be out of the apartment or face eviction.

  His knees cracked like pistol shots as he jumped from the tractor. Once he told Junior where to put this job, he’d run down to the 7-Eleven off the interstate to see if they needed help. Crappy pay, but spending the summer in air conditioning looked pretty good about now. He swiped his sweaty neck with his bandanna and started the long walk to the office.

  A wall of air conditioning hit him like a slap as he opened the door. He stood savoring it as he wiped his feet. Gilda, Junior’s big-haired Jabba the Hut receptionist eyed him over her glasses to make sure he made a good job of it. She had the temperament of a harpy and struck fear into the heart of more than one hombre. Junior hired her decades ago to keep order and collect his receivables. Needless to say, no one owed Junior money.

  “Hey, gorgeous. Junior in?” Spying his boss through an office window, JB walked back and knocked on the door, ignoring Gilda’s exaggerated sniff as he passed. As he stepped in and closed the door behind him, Junior looked up from his computer screen.

  “Beef futures are up at the close of the bell, JB. That’s good for us.”

  “I can see how that affects the quality of manure dropped in the south corral.” Ignoring the chair, he stood across the table from his boss.

  Junior’s button eyes sharpened and his lips pursed. “You got something you want to say to me, JB?”

  “Yeah, I do.” He leaned his knuckles on the desk. “If you wanted payback for what happened between Char and me, you’ve done it. Can we stop playing this little game now?” The exasperation of the past two weeks rang in his voice. “You hired me to be your manager, then gave me every scut job on the place.” He ticked off the offenses on his fingers. “First, you had me castrating and cleaning out feed troughs that hadn’t been scraped in months. Then you wait for the first hot day, and I’m skip-loading manure.” He shook his head. “This isn’t a job, it’s hell. I quit.” He strode to the door.

  “Got your attention, did I?”

  Hand on the knob, JB spun and glared.

  Junior opened his hand, gesturing to the chair. “Sit down, JB. Now that you’re listening, I’ve got a story to tell you.”

  He hesitated, hand on the door. Ten more minutes wouldn’t matter. Curious in spite of himself, JB strode to the chair and sat.

  “You know that Charla Rae’s dad, Ben, and I go back a good ways.” Junior leaned back in his oversize executive chair and steepled his fingers. “No one knows this but him and me, so I’ll trust you to keep my confidence.”

  At JB’s nod, he continued. “He and I ran with the same crowd but didn’t know each other well. We were all farm kids, full of beans and ourselves, wanting something to happen.”

  His unfocused gaze strayed to the window. “Ten or so of us were out to the fairgrounds for the rodeo, and we ended up at the racetrack. You know they race the quarter horses there every night during the county fair.” He sounded wistful. “We watched for a while, and couple of us decided to bet our date money for the week.” He smiled, but it looked sad. “I bet on a gray filly. Still remember the name, Silver Dollar. The guys thought I was throwing away money but all I could see were the odds. At twenty to one, if she won, I’d turn a twenty into four hu
ndred twenty.”

  JB leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You won, didn’t you?”

  Junior nodded. “I won. Big time.” His smile broadened and his face lit up. “I tell you, I was legendary. Four hundred bucks in the sixties was a lot of money, especially in these parts. I strutted the halls at school for a week. The girls noticed me. Hell, I even took Gilda out.”

  Junior laughed at JB’s horrified expression. “Hey, she was a looker back then.”

  He sobered. “I’da been better off losing those twenty bucks. See, I found I liked being the big man. But it’s like trying to balance on a ball: When you step up, the view is great, and everyone looks up to you. Then you start slipping off, and you scrabble to get back on top again.

  “I took the money I hadn’t blown and went down to Austin on the weekends. They used to have a dog track there.” He shook his head. “I was hooked. On the excitement, the money, and most of all on how people looked at me. Like I was somebody, you know?” He shot a pointed look across the table.

  “I couldn’t make the trip to the track every weekend, so I discovered the world of bookies. I could bet over the phone! Problem was, I was lucky. I was on top of that ball, and I loved it. I got way too good for this little burg.

  “Right up till I woke up one morning into the bookie for two grand. If four hundred bucks was a lot of money back then, two thousand was unthinkable. Turns out, my buddy the bookie had connections, and he wasn’t a patient man.”

  JB rested his chin in his hand, a bit irritated as he grasped the moral of the story but captivated just the same.

  “Ben Enwright did some snooping around and found out. When he came to me, I thought it was over, thought he’d tell everyone. That was the only thing I could think of worse than the bookie’s threats.” Junior reached over and snapped off the computer monitor. “How stupid was that? A man had threatened to drown me in the Pedernales, but I thought it would be worse if everyone knew how dumb I was.” He shook his head.

  “Ben didn’t, though. He said he’d help me. Told me that if I’d give him my solemn oath to never gamble again, he and I could work all summer and fall, and we’d have the money to pay off the debt.

  “I was stunned. Why would he do that? I asked him, but he just smiled and told me that, underneath all the bullshit, I was a good person. Besides, he said, it was an investment; I’d have to agree to pay him back.” Junior smiled, looking out the window. “With interest.”

  JB resented lectures. He resented preaching. More than anything, he resented condescension. “I’m a little old for bedtime stories, don’t you think?”

  Junior raised a sausage-fingered hand. “Hey, you’re the one who asked me why you got all the crap jobs. I want you to understand why I’m protective of the best man I’ve ever had the privilege to know.” His eyes were small but piercing. “And that includes his family.”

  JB pushed the chair back and strode to the door. Junior had been manipulating him all this time. And here he’d been sweating his butt off, trying to prove something to the shifty little turd.

  “JB?” If it had been a demand, he’d have walked out. The quiet request made him turn to the fat little man in the big chair. “Ben taught me that everybody deserves a second chance.”

  He jerked the door open.

  “You coming back after the weekend?”

  JB didn’t turn. “You’ll know if you see me coming.” He walked out.

  JB had hoped to work a deal with the landlord, to pay this month’s rent in installments. That would be tough to do now that he was out of a job. Again. He leaned back and put his stocking feet on the coffee table, put the laptop on his thighs, and fired it up.

  Why are people in this town so damned comfortable wandering around in my business?

  Junior’s story had stirred dust he thought long settled. He missed Ben. Junior was right about one thing: His father-in-law was a good man. Ben had given his time, his knowledge, himself, with his patient explanations when JB was learning the bull business.

  But Charla had slammed that door and locked it. It felt like for the second time in his life, JB’s family had been killed in a car crash.

  Only this time he’d been driving.

  He signed onto the Denny Bucking Bull website. He’d always liked the photo of Mighty Mouse on the home page, bucking almost vertical on his front feet.

  “Now, there’s one damn fine bull.” He smiled, reading the Mouse’s stats, then clicked to the semen order page. “Goddamn!” He grabbed for his phone and hit speed dial for the house. What the heck was Charla Rae thinking, raising the price?

  She was laughing as she picked up the call. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, just relax. Hello?”

  He hadn’t heard that delighted, tinkling laugh in over a year. It slammed into his chest like a fist. He sat up and dropped his feet to the floor. Who made her laugh again? “Char?”

  “Oh, hi, Jimmy. We’re about to head out.”

  She sounded like a carefree teen, off for a day of partying. Something in him tore open, unleashing a flash of fury. “Why the hell did you change the price of Mighty Mouse’s straws? Don’t you realize that you’re gonna price us out of the market? You shouldn’t be messing in something you don’t know anyth—”

  “Sales are up.” Her voice bristled with ice. “Way up. Check out the income statement. Oh, and Jimmy?” She hesitated. “Keep your opinion out of my side of the business.”

  Click.

  His fingers flew, signing onto their accounting software. He pulled up a current income statement. Damn. Little Bit was right. The semen had been undervalued. She’d made a good business decision, and she could use the money. So why did it feel like someone had taken a torque wrench to his innards?

  “Bad news?” Bella stood, hand on the back door.

  Char shook her head to rid it of Jimmy’s angry voice. “Old news.” She picked up her pocket knife, slipped it in her jeans pocket, and strode to the door. “Are you ready for a day in the life of a rancher?”

  Bella laughed. “I get a day off at the feed store, and I’m spending it playing cowgirl. If my friends in New York saw me, they’d have me committed.”

  Char looked her friend over, from hair to boot tips. This time, at least, Bella wore jeans, but Char insisted she wear a denim work shirt over the tube top so she wouldn’t burn to a crisp. “Hang on a minute.” She snagged a battered straw cowboy hat from the rack that hung next to the door and slapped it on Bella’s head. “Now you look the part.”

  Bella settled the hat at a jaunty angle and winked. “Let’s go rustle us some cattle, pardner.” She spun and strutted out the door, hips rolling.

  “Rosa, we’ll be out back!” Char yelled.

  “We’re fine.” The nurse’s muffled voice came from the living room. She’d gotten out the old albums, and Ben was telling her stories behind the photos. Char’s step was light as she crossed the yard. Rosa was a godsend, literally. She had to remember to call Reverend Mike and thank him for the referral.

  That afternoon, with Bella’s help, Char got ahead of the chores for the first time. They mucked stalls, tossed bales of hay from the loft, and fed the cattle.

  Now Char reclined on a hay bale, instructing Bella on the finer points of currying a horse. Her new friend worked her way down to the hindquarters when the stocky bay whisked her tail, slapping her across the cheek. Bella ignored it, gave the shiny flank one more swipe, and walked to the horse’s head to give her a pat.

  “Well? How do we look?”

  “Bar B looks super.” Char grinned. “You, on the other hand, could use some work.” Bella’s pretty boots were covered in manure and her two-hundred-dollar jeans were grass-stained at the knees. Straw dangled from the sleeve of her filthy work shirt, and the white tube top looked like a ragbag escapee. The tail swish had left brown stripes, like war paint, across Bella’s sunburned cheek. But her blue eyes sparkled over a self-satisfied grin. With thumbs hooked in her front pockets, she stood hi
pshot like a saucy teenage tomboy.

  “It’s not fair. You look as cute in dirt as I do dressed for church.” Char heaved herself to her feet and crossed the aisle. Lifting her shirttail, she licked it, then scrubbed it across Bella’s cheek.

  Bella ducked away. “Yuk.”

  Char felt blood pound to her cheeks. “Sorry. Habit.” She glanced to where afternoon sun stood centered in the barn doorway. “Should we save the horseback riding lesson for another day? There will be another time, won’t there?” She felt guilty about putting Bella to slave labor, but she’d insisted, and Char was learning that this woman didn’t do anything by halves.

  Smiling, Bella trailed ragged fingernails down the horse’s smooth flank. “Can I ride Bar B?”

  “I take back most of what I’ve thought about city girls. They’re tougher than they look.” Char shook her head. “Just remember, you asked for it. Next lesson, how to tack up a horse.”

  Twenty minutes later, Char backed Pork Chop into a corner, put her foot in the stirrup, and swung her leg over. The past weeks had given her a tentative pride in her improving riding skills but not much confidence in the vagaries of equine behavior.

  Bella sat aboard Bar B, a white-knuckled grip on the saddle horn, beaming as if she’d just been crowned Gillespie County Rodeo Queen. Char gathered the bay’s reins with her own—no reason to take chances with a greenhorn.

  Once her toes found the stirrups, Char squeezed with her thighs. The mare’s ears twitched. She gave a gentle nudge with her heel, and the horse stomped a hoof. “Dang it, Pork Chop, you’re lazier than a hound dog in the sun.” Char gave her a good kick. The mare snorted, then stepped out. As they clopped down the breezeway of the barn into the hammered sun of the yard, she looked over at Bella. “I’ll be glad when I can afford a four-wheeler. So much more efficient.”

  “Those loud, nasty things? Besides, you’d miss this gorgeous view.” Bella’s head swiveled, trying to see everything at once. Char had been too busy lately to see the homestead as much more than a job to be done.