Sugar Daddy Read online

  I shook my head mutely, nearly quivering like a plucked guitar string at his interest.

  He began to reach out to me, hesitated, then gently pulled the brown-framed glasses from my upturned face. As usual, the lenses were covered with smears and fingerprints.

  “How do you see out of these?” he asked.

  I shrugged and smiled at the intriguing blur of his face above mine.

  Hardy polished the glasses on the hem of his shirt and viewed them critically before handing them back. “Come on, you two, I’ll walk you to Miss Marva’s. I’ll be interested to see what she makes of Liberty.”

  “Is she nice?” I fell into step by his right side, while Hannah walked on his left.

  “She’s nice if she likes you,” he said.

  “Is she old?” I asked, recalling the crotchety lady in our Houston neighborhood who had chased me with a stick if I ever stepped on her carefully cultivated front yard. I didn’t especially like old people. The few I had been acquainted with had been either cranky, sluggish, or interested in detailed discussions of bodily discomforts.

  The question made Hardy laugh. “I’m not exactly sure. She’s been fifty-nine ever since I was born.”

  A quarter mile down the road, we approached Miss Marva’s trailer, which I could have identified even without the help of my companions. The barking of the two hell spawn behind the chain-link fence in the back yard gave it away. They could tell I was coming. I felt instantly sick, my skin covered with chills and sweat, my heart pounding until I could feel its beat even in my scabby knees.

  I stopped in my tracks, and Hardy paused to smile quizzically. “Liberty, what is it about you that gets those dogs so riled?”

  “They can smell fear,” I said, my gaze glued to the corner of the fenced-in yard, where I could see the pit bulls lunging and frothing.

  “You said you weren’t scared of dogs,” Hannah said.

  “Not the regular kind. But I draw the line at vicious, rabies-infested pit bulls.”

  Hardy laughed. He fitted a warm hand around the nape of my neck and squeezed comfortingly. “Let’s go on in to meet Miss Marva. You’ll like her.” Taking his sunglasses off, he stared down at me with smiling blue eyes. “I promise.”

  The trailer smelled strongly of cigarettes and bluebonnet water, and something good baking in the oven. It seemed every square inch of the place was covered in art and handicrafts. Hand-painted birdhouses, tissue box covers made of acrylic yarn, Christmas ornaments, crocheted place mats, and unframed bluebonnet canvases of every size and shape.

  In the middle of the chaos sat a plump little woman with hair that had been moussed and teased into a perfect hive. It was dyed a shade of red I had never seen duplicated in nature. Her skin was webbed and furrowed, constantly shifting to accommodate her animated expressions. Her gaze was as alert as a hawk’s. Although Miss Marva might have been old, she wasn’t the least bit sluggish.

  “Hardy Cates,” she rasped in a nicotine-stained voice, “I expected you to pick up my paintings two days ago.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said humbly.

  “Well, boy, what’s your excuse?”

  “I got too busy.”

  “If you show up late, Hardy, it’s only decent to come up with a colorful excuse.” Her attention turned to Hannah and me. “Hannah, who is that girl with you?”

  “This is Liberty Jones, Miss Marva. She and her mama just moved into the new trailer on the loop.”

  “Just you and your mama?” Miss Marva asked, her mouth pursing like she’d just eaten a handful of fried pickles.

  “No, ma’am. Mama’s boyfriend lives with us too.” Prodded by Miss Marva’s interrogation, I proceeded to explain all about Flip and his channel-changing, and how Mama was a widow and answered the phone at the local title company, and how I was here to make peace with the pit bulls after they’d run up and scared me.

  “Those rascals,” Miss Marva exclaimed without heat. “More trouble than they’re worth most of the time. But I need ’em for company.”

  “What’s wrong with cats?” I asked.

  Miss Marva shook her head decisively. “I gave up on cats a long time ago. Cats attach to places, dogs attach to people.”

  Miss Marva steered the three of us into the kitchen and gave us plates heaped with red velvet cake. Between mouthfuls of cake Hardy told me Miss Marva was the best cook in Welcome. According to Hardy, her cakes and pies won the tricolored ribbon at the county fair every year until the officials had begged her not to enter so someone else could have a chance.

  Miss Marva’s red velvet cake was the best I had ever tasted, made with buttermilk and cocoa, and enough red food coloring to make it glow like a stoplight, the whole of it covered with an inch-thick layer of cream cheese frosting.

  We ate like ravenous wolves, nearly scraping layers off the yellow Fiesta ware with our aggressive forks, until every bright crumb had vanished. My tonsils were still tingling from the sweetness of the frosting as Miss Marva directed me to the jar of dog biscuits on the end of the Formica counter. “You take two of those for the dogs,” she instructed, “and hand ’em through the fence. They’ll warm up to you right quick, soon as you feed ’em.”

  I swallowed hard. Abruptly the cake turned into a brick in my stomach. Seeing my expression, Hardy murmured, “You don’t have to.”

  I wasn’t eager to confront the pit bulls, but if it allowed me a few more minutes of Hardy’s company, I’d have faced down a herd of rampaging longhorns. Reaching into the jar, I closed my hand around two bone-shaped biscuits, their surfaces turning tacky against my damp palm. Hannah stayed inside the trailer to help Miss Marva pile more handicrafts into a liquor-store box.

  Angry barking littered the air as Hardy took me to the gate. The dogs’ ears were flattened against their bullet-shaped heads as they pulled their lips back to sneer and snarl. The male was black and white, the female light tan. I wondered why they thought harassing me was worth leaving the shade of the trailer overhang.

  “Will the fence keep them in?” I asked, staying so close to Hardy’s side that I nearly tripped him. The dogs were full of coiled energy, straining as if to leap over the top of the gate.

  “Absolutely,” Hardy said with comforting firmness. “I built it myself.”

  I regarded the irritable dogs warily. “What are their names? Psycho and Killer?”

  He shook his head. “Cupcake and Twinkie.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding.”

  A grin flitted across his lips. “Afraid not.”

  If naming them after dessert snacks had been Miss Marva’s attempt to make them seem cute, it wasn’t working. They slavered and snapped at me as if I were a string of sausages.

  Hardy spoke to them in a no-nonsense tone, telling them to hush up and act nice if they knew what was good for them. He also commanded them to sit, with mixed success. Cupcake’s rump lowered reluctantly to the ground, while Twinkie’s remained defiantly aloft. Panting and openmouthed, the pair regarded us with eyes like flat black buttons.

  “Now,” Hardy coached, “offer a biscuit to the black one with your hand open, palm up. Don’t look him directly in the eyes. And don’t make any jerky movements.”

  I switched the biscuit to my left palm.

  “Are you a lefty?” he asked with amiable interest.

  “No. But if this hand gets bitten off, I’ll still have my good one to write with.”

  A low chuckle. “You won’t get bitten. Go on.”

  I pinned my gaze to the flea collar that encircled Cupcake’s neck, and began to extend the dog cookie toward the metal web that separated us. I saw the animal’s body tense expectantly as he saw the treat in my palm. Unfortunately, it seemed in question as to whether the attraction was the biscuit or my hand. Losing my nerve at the last moment, I pulled back.

  A whine whistled in Cupcake’s throat, while Twinkie reacted with a series of truncated barks. I darted a shamed glance at Hardy, expecting him to make fun of me. Wordl
essly he slid a solid arm around my shoulders, and his free hand sought mine. He cradled it as if he held a hummingbird in the cup of his palm. Together we offered the biscuit to the waiting dog, who gobbled it with a gigantic slurp and wagged a pencil-straight tail. His tongue left a film of saliva on my upturned palm, and I wiped it on my shorts. Hardy kept an arm on my shoulders as I gave the other biscuit to Twinkie.

  “Good girl,” came Hardy’s quiet praise. He gave a brief squeeze and let go. The pressure of his arm seemed to linger across my shoulders even after it was withdrawn. The place where our sides had pressed together was very warm. My heart had lurched into a new rhythm, and every breath I drew fed a sweet ache in my lungs.

  “I’m still scared of them,” I said, watching the two beasts return to the side of the trailer and flop down heavily in the shade.

  Still facing me, Hardy rested his hand on top of the fence and lent some of his weight to it. He looked at me as if he were fascinated by something he saw in my face. “Being afraid’s not always bad,” he said gently. “It can keep you moving forward. It can help you get things done.”

  The silence between us was different than any silence I’d known before, full and warm and waiting. “What are you afraid of?” I dared to ask.

  There was a flicker of surprise in his eyes, as if it were something he’d never been asked before. For a moment I thought he wouldn’t answer. But he let out a slow breath, and his gaze left mine to sweep across the trailer park. “Staying here,” he finally said. “Staying until I’m not fit to belong anywhere else.”

  “Where do you want to belong?” I half whispered.

  His expression changed with quicksilver speed, amusement dancing in his eyes. “Anywhere they don’t want me.”

  Chapter 3

  I spent most of the summer in Hannah’s company, falling in with her schemes and plans, which never amounted to anything but were enjoyable nonetheless. We rode our bikes into town, went out to explore ravines and fields and cave entrances, or sat together in Hannah’s room listening to Nirvana. To my disappointment I seldom saw Hardy, who was always working. Or raising hell, as Hannah’s mother, Miss Judie, said sourly.

  Wondering how much hell-raising could be done in a town like Welcome, I culled as much information as I could from Hannah. It seemed to be a matter of general agreement that Hardy Cates was born for trouble, and sooner or later he would find it. So far his crimes had been minor ones, misdeeds and small acts of mischief that broadcast a frustrated voltage beneath his good-natured exterior. Breathlessly Hannah related that Hardy had been seen with girls much older than himself, and there had even been rumors of a dalliance with an older woman in town.

  “Has he ever been in love?” I couldn’t resist asking, and Hannah said no, according to Hardy falling in love was the last thing he needed. It would get in the way of his plans, which were to leave Welcome as soon as Hannah and her brothers were old enough to be of some help to their mother, Miss Judie.

  It was hard to understand how a woman like Miss Judie could have produced such an untamed brood. She was a self-disciplined woman who seemed suspicious of pleasure in any form. Her angular features were like one of those old-time prospector scales upon which were balanced equal amounts of meekness and brittle pride. She was a tall, frail-looking woman whose wrists you could snap like cottonwood twigs. And she was living proof you should never trust a skinny cook. Her notion of fixing dinner was to open cans and ferret out scraps in the vegetable drawer. No wilted carrot or petrified celery stalk was safe from her reach.

  After one meal of leftover bologna mixed with canned green beans and served on warmed-over biscuits, and a dessert of canned frosting on toast, I learned to take my leave whenever I heard the rattling of pans in the kitchen. The strange thing was, the Cates children didn’t seem to notice or care how terrible the food was. Every fluorescent curl of macaroni, every morsel of something suspended in Jell-O, every particle of fat and gristle disappeared from their plates within five minutes of being served.

  On Saturdays the Cateses went out to eat, but not at the local Mexican restaurant or the cafeteria. They went to Earl’s meat market, where the butcher dumped all the scraps and cuts he hadn’t been able to sell that day—sausages, tails, ribs, innards, pigs’ ears—into a big metal tub. “Everything but the oink,” Earl used to say with a grin. He was a huge man with hands the size of catcher mitts and a face that glowed as red as fresh ham.

  After collecting the day’s leftovers, Earl would fill the tub with water and boil it all together. For twenty-five cents you could pick out whatever you wanted, and Earl would set it on a piece of butcher paper along with a slice of Mrs. Baird’s bread, and you would eat at the linoleum table in the corner. Nothing was wasted at the meat market. After people were through with the tub, Earl took what was left, ground it up, added bright yellow cornmeal, and sold it as dog food.

  The Cateses were dirt poor, but they were never referred to as white trash. Miss Judie was a respectable God-fearing woman, which elevated the family to the level of “poor white.” It seems a minor distinction, but many doors in Welcome were open to you if you were poor white and closed if you were white trash.

  As a file clerk to the only CPA in Welcome, Miss Judie earned barely enough to put a roof over her children’s heads, with Hardy’s income supplementing her meager earnings. When I asked Hannah where her daddy was, she told me he was in the Texarkana State Penitentiary, although she’d never been able to find out what he’d done to get himself there.

  Maybe the family’s troubled past was the reason Miss Judie had established a spotless record of church attendance. She went every Sunday morning and Wednesday night and was always to be found in the first three pews, where the Lord’s presence was the strongest. Like most people in Welcome, Miss Judie drew conclusions about a person based on his or her religion. It confounded her when I said Mama and I didn’t go to church. “Well, what are you?” she pressed, until I said I thought I was a lapsed Baptist.

  This led to another tricky question. “Progressive Baptist or Reformed Baptist?”

  Since I wasn’t sure of the difference, I said I thought we were progressive. A frown appeared on Miss Judie’s forehead as she said in that case we should probably go to First Baptist on Main, although from what she understood, their main Sunday service featured rock bands and a line of chorus girls.

  When I told Miss Marva about the conversation later, and protested that “lapsed” meant I didn’t have to go to church, Miss Marva replied there was no such thing as lapsed in Welcome, and I might as well go with her and her gentleman friend Bobby Ray to the nondenominational Lamb of God on South Street, because for all that they had a guitarist instead of an organist and held open communion, they also had the best potluck in town.

  Mama had no objection to my attending church with Miss Marva and Bobby Ray, although she said it suited her to remain lapsed for the time being. It soon became my habit on Sundays to arrive at Miss Marva’s trailer at eight o’clock sharp, eat a breakfast of Bisquick sausage squares or pecan pancakes, and ride to the Lamb of God with Miss Marva and Bobby Ray.

  Having no children or grandchildren of her own, Miss Marva had decided to take me under her wing. Discovering my only good dress was too short and small, she offered to make me a new one. I spent an hour happily sorting through the stacks of discount fabric she kept in her sewing room, until I found a bolt of red cloth printed with tiny yellow and white daisies. In a mere two hours Miss Marva had run up a simple sleeveless dress with a boatneck top. I tried it on and looked at myself in the long mirror on the back of her bedroom door. To my delight, it flattered my adolescent curves and made me look a little older.

  “Oh, Miss Marva,” I said with glee, throwing my arms around her stalwart form, “you are the best! Thank you a million times. A zillion times.”

  “It was nothing,” she said. “I can’t take a girl in pants to church, can I?”

  Naïvely I thought when I brought the dress home that
Mama would be pleased by the gift. Instead it set off her temper and launched her on a tirade about charity and interfering neighbors. She trembled with anger and hollered until I was in tears and Flip had left the trailer to go get more beer. I protested that it had been a present and I didn’t have any dresses, and I was going to keep it no matter what she said. But Mama snatched the dress from me, stuffed it in a plastic grocery sack, and left the trailer, marching to Miss Marva’s in high dudgeon.

  I cried myself sick, thinking I wouldn’t be allowed to visit Miss Marva anymore, and wondering why I had the most selfish mother in the world whose pride meant more than her own daughter’s spiritual welfare. Everyone knew girls couldn’t go to church in pants, which meant I would continue to be a heathen and live outside the Lord, and worst of all I would miss the best potluck in town.

  But something happened in the time that Mama was gone to Miss Marva’s. When she returned, her face was relaxed and her voice was peaceful, and she had my new dress in hand. Her eyes were red as if she’d been crying. “Here, Liberty,” she said absently, placing the crackling plastic bag into my arms. “You can keep the dress. Go put it in the washer. And add a spoonful of baking soda to get rid of the cigarette smell.”

  “Did you…did you talk with Miss Marva?” I ventured.

  “Yes, I did. She’s a nice woman, Liberty.” A wry smile tipped the corners of her mouth. “Colorful, but nice.”

  “Then I can go to church with her?”

  Mama gathered her long blond hair at the nape of her neck and secured it with a scrunchie. Turning to lean her back against the edge of the counter, she stared at me thoughtfully. “It’s certainly not going to hurt you any.”

  “No, ma’am,” I agreed.

  Her arms opened, and I obeyed the motion at once, speeding to her until my body was crowded tightly against hers. There was nothing better in the world than being held by my mother. I felt the press of her mouth at the top of my head, and the tender shift of her cheek as she smiled. “You’ve got your daddy’s hair,” she murmured, smoothing the inky tangles.