Chapter Seven: The Downhill Slide

       When Mama was lying on her deathbed, growing weaker by the day, I would ask her a lot of questions about Daddy, how they'd met and things like that. She liked telling me those things. It took both of our minds off of the gravity of the situation we were in. She told me that in all their years together, she'd only seen him lose his temper once when she'd had embarrassed him in front of his dad. She'd knocked a glass of whisky out of his hand, and he'd pushed her in retaliation. Grandpa had lived in Salina back then, and it was a long ride back home. Petey and I both remembered it well. They'd fought back and forth almost the whole trip. We sat in the back cowering as we watched the storm rage. Mama even slapped him a couple of times. She told me that that night she had given him an ultimatum that if he ever laid a hand on her again, she would leave him. He never did. Never even raised his voice against her. I asked her if he had demanded the same from her. She just smiled and laughed at the thought then added, "He didn't need to."
 
       Then I asked, "Mom, why did you stay with him all those years?"
She looked at me with a little bit of fire in her eyes when I asked this one question.

     Normally, she her voice was just a little more than a whisper, but this time she sat up a little to answer. It was like she wanted to make sure I remembered what she told me, "You don't run out on the ones you love, Errol." She even looked at me like she was a little angry because I had asked such a stupid thing, as if the mere asking had called her character in question.

        "But he made things so hard for you, Mama."

       She lay back against her pillow, "Like I'm making things hard for you?"

       "It's not the same thing, Ma. You're my mother. You sacrificed your whole life for me, Pete, and Sissy. You've never a done a thing to hurt us, or to put our future in jeopardy. We couldn't pay you back in a hundred years. You gave us life."

        She didn't answer right away, but then pointed instead to the single drawer of the blue and gold nightstand that stood next to the her bed, then gestured with her right hand for me to open the drawer, so I did, and the only thing in it was a faded and folded piece of paper that looked something like a letter. She motioned me to hand the letter to her and I did. Then she lay back, carefully unfolded the paper and started reading in a shaky voice so quiet I had to lean forward to make out what she was saying.

       "My dearest Sophie, I'm so sorry. I made a horrible mistake tonight. One I couldn't get back once I made it. He made me feel so small, like I cheated you out of your future. I started thinking about how much I love you and the kids, and how much easier your lives would be if you weren't always having to get me out of a hole. I'm sorry for this, but I hurt so bad. Love your Billy"

       She handed the opened letter over to me and I read it myself. I could tell he had written it in haste because the letters and lines were all over the page; the saddest thing about the letter though were the still visible faint outlines of two tear drops near where he had signed his name and the crooked little heart he had drawn on the bottom of the page. I choked up and pointed to the teardrops, and Mama tilted her head nodded. She closed her eyes, and the biggest teardrop I've ever seen rolled out of the corner of her left eye and slid down her cheek.

      "He lost his head and he needed me and I wasn't there. You don't leave the people who need you most."

      It turns out that those were the last words my mama ever said to me. I carefully folded the letter back up and put it back in the drawer. I sat back down picked up a hymnal and started singing her favorite hymn to her so she could sleep.

"On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
the emblem of suffering and shame;
and I love that old cross where the dearest and best
for a world of lost sinners was slain."

       By the time I reached the third verse, she was softly snoring. So, I left the room to go sleep in the easy chair in the parlor and was awakened early in the morning by a car horn honking. It was Sissy signaling me to come help her carry groceries in from her car. I wrestled  a big box out of her trunk and carried it in as she head the screen door open and sat it on the blue tiled counter top in her tidy little kitchen, then hustled back to ask mama what she wanted for breakfast. I was in my socks, so I silently slid around the corner on the slippery wooden floor of the hallway. The soft morning light was seeping through her window shade. Her eyes were open, but she wasn't looking at anything in this world. Her right arm was frozen in the air as if she was reaching for something that wasn't there. I stumbled back into the kitchen and gave my sister a look that told her everything without a word.

      We held a wake and placed her open casket in the middle of her living room. That night, my Grandpa Long filled me in on the rest of the story. He told me that my dad was out playing cards at this road house a county over from ours, and his life-ling nemesis, a rich farmer named Long Eddie Tudder, who was reputed to have longest legs in the Oklahoma, sat down and started playing in the vacant seat right next to my dad. Tudder had been Mama's most ardent suitor when she was young, and he could never bring himself to understand why she had chosen my dad over him, so he let my dad have it pretty good the whole night.

       Daddy was usually pretty good about not losing more than he could afford, but that night he was drinking more than usual because of the ribbing from Tudor. Towards the end of the night, right before the card room closed, Daddy caught an ace of hearts, two red kings, and two black queens, and he threw away the ace and caught another king, so he  he went in more than usual. Tudor kept raising on every round doubling the pot, and on his last bet threw down a hundred dollars. Dad, didn't have the money, but was goaded on by Tudor, and he bet the gold bracelet, his prized possession, a gift that Mama had bought for his birthday back when things were still going well. Dad, in his anxiety quickly threw his hand down on the table with an almost magical laugh accompanied by a sigh of relief. Then Tudor rose up from his seat and put his crds face up, and one by one, threw down a J of hearts, an ace of hearts, an ace of diamonds, an ace of clubs, and finally the ace of spades.  

        According to everybody, Daddy immediately protested and told the others about his discarding of that last ace. Clarence Ludlow, who was standing behind Daddy vouched for the fact.The sheriff of the county was there, but he was Eddie Tudder's first cousin and quickly and loudly sided with his kin. The owner of the card room was the cousin of the sheriff. Daddy grew agitated and told them that he wasn't about to be cheated and made a lunge at the standing Tudder. The others grabbed them, and the sheriff looked at Ludlow and asked him in menacing voice, "Clarence, You sure you saw an Ace?"

     Ludlow wilted and shook his head no. Then they basically grabbed hold of dragged my daddy out of the room and shoved him out the door laughing as they closed the door.  Apparently, daddy got hold of a tire iron and waited in the shadows for Tudder to come out. When he did, Daddy lunged toward him out of the shadows. They all said that daddy caught him while he was getting into his car, bashed him over the head a couple of times, reached into Tudor's pocket and got his bracelet back before escaping in the darkness of the woods behind the card room.
Grandpa Long made sure that the bracelet was visible on daddy's wrist when they buried him. Daddy was right about Mama though, when she didn't have to bail him out all of the time, she prospered and became quite a formidable woman. Mr. Tudder eventually recovered, but was known as a card cheat and in those parts and those times, and turns out he was pimp and procurer too and did a lot  of wicked work with that sheriff and his deputies.


      When I got to work the day after the night Rosa and I had sat in the truck overlooking the ocean sharing all of our secrets, I knew something was wrong even before I got there. Coming down the hill, I could see Fitz walking around in circles and waving his arms like a wild man. I could see Hortensia half behind their screen door looking worried. I parked the truck and got out, and Fitz just gestured for me to follow him into the warehouse. It was a mess, there was paint splashed all over the tin-can wall, pieces of broken lamps and chairs everywhere, some of the colored window panes were broken out, and that beautiful desk that he had spend so many hours bring back to life had been chopped to pieces. He kept walking and pointed to the wreckage as he made his way to the open back door of the warehouse. Nothing could have prepared me for what was out there.

         My jaw dropped almost to the ground, and I actually had to rub my disbelieving eyes. Lewellyn, Fitz's beloved border collie was hanging upside down from one of the elm trees, right from the limb where Fitz had put a swing, and worse than that, the dogs throat had been cut and large pool of blood had formed in the depression in the ground that been created by the year after year of people swinging back and forth. The look on Fitz's face was made even more horrible by the fact that his was a face made for projecting hard won wisdom and empathy, not abject sorrow. I walked over and put my hand on his back and guided him over to a small concrete patio where there were three green deck chairs surrounding a fire pit. I saw Hortensia looking out the back door and gestured for her to bring us something to drink and she quickly returned with a pitcher of cold water and couple of glasses. I poured Fitz a glass and handed it to him and he took it a kind of robotic reaction and took a drink.

       I thought it would probably be best to get him talking and somehow away from the thoughts that were freezing his thinking.


      "Tell me, what happened here. Do you know."

      It took a second, but he responded, " That guy by here after you left with those two big goons."

      "Giancarlo came here! Oh man, I'm sorry if I brought this..."

      He interrupted me before I could finish. "No, he didn't even know you worked with me. They came to shake me down like they've been doing to everybody else around here, like Cleo's garage, Mrs. Gonzales's cafe, Hero at the produce market, and old man Jackson's drug store. I heard they recently acquired permission from Jimmy DiLeo to create their own little thing around here, so they've been trying to muscle in on everybody's livelihood."

      "I take it you didn't pay them."

      "You're damn right I didn't. It'll be a cold day in hell before I get bamboozled by the likes of those clowns. I pretended as if I was going to give them the money and went and got my gun and ran them off. For a second, I was going to have to shoot the bigger of the two galoots. They got in their car and left, but that little bugger swore that I'd be sorry. I didn't think it would be so soon."

      "Well, I'm sorry Fitz, but I think the best thing for us to do right now, is to start cleaning this mess up, give us time to think."

       He thought about what I said, and then shook his head in agreement, so we started to work. While he went inside, I cut the dog down, grabbed a shovel and threw some dirt to cover up the pool of blood, then went back inside and started helping him and Hortensia to restore some order to the place. We worked for over six hours straight without a break, using some turpentine to get most of the paint off of things. Fitz had some extra panes of colored glass, so I held the ladder as he replaced the broken ones. Hortensia kept busy sweeping up broken glass and shattered wood. I piled most of the broken furniture outside to take away to the dump. About thirty minutes before we finished, Hortensia went inside an whipped us up a simple feast featuring slabs of roasted beef, goat cheese, fresh-baked bread, home made butter, boiled spinach and water melon. We washed it down with some ice cold pitcher lemonade.

           I could tell that Fitz  was feeling a lot better though occasionally he would tear-up when he remembered Lewellyn. He asked me if I could take care of the dog because he didn't think he could handle it. I told him I would need to borrow his truck again, and he said that it was ok as long as I brought it back by midnight. I was  going to ask him about why the curfew when he called Hortensia, who was taking the left-overs back inside, to come over.

          "Hortensia has something she needs to tell you, Errol."

          "I hope it ain't bad. My plate is kind of full in that regard."

          He didn't answer, but held out his hands, palms upright, as if to say it is what it is. She came over to where we were, and I could tell right away that it was something bad by the look on her face and the way she was wringing her hands. She started speaking in Spanish and after a while, Fitz turned and told me what she said.

        "She attends Mass with Lennie's grandmother."

        I was stunned. When Rosa had told me her story,  I had just assumed that she meant by hiding was that she had put a whole city the size of Los Angeles between her and her past, and here I was finding out that Hortensia and Guadalupe went to the same church.

        Fitz went on and occasionally Hortensia would add something to the narrative and he would translate that too, "Lupe is loud in her grief for the loss of her son. Even in the confessional booth, she is loud and crying. The other mothers can hear what she tells the priest."

         This was bad. It meant that at some point, hidden things were going to be exposed. Now, I not only had to worry about Hector's brother Johnny showing up unexpectedly with burning need for revenge, there could also be an unwanted visit from the police.

         "Errol, she says the mother is saying that Rosa killed Hector because he was trying to force his way on her and that she helped Rosa hide the body."

            "Tell her it wasn't Rosa. It was the other way around," I felt revealing even that much of Rosa's secret, but I thought I needed to explain Rosa's participation. "Hector had pimped her out to somebody and she wasn't going along with the deal."

            He let Hortensia go back to what she was doing before, "I thought that you needed to hear that, just in case, you guys are getting serious."

           "I'm falling in love with her, Fitz. She needs my help. apparently even more than I knew. Tell me something did you know Hector, or his brother?"​ 

            "Hector was a good kid for a while. He would come in and watch me work sometimes. He would come and borrow glue for his model airplanes. The he got into selling drugs trying to help his mom and got in way over his head. He got a lot meaner. The people him and Johnny worked for are bad people. They got the police and some judges on the payroll. Even that guy that Giancarlos works for Jimmy DiLeo is tied up with them. Now, Johnny is the devil incarnate, he's never been anything but evil since he stepped out of the cradle."

             We talked some more and then I remembered to ask him why he needed the truck back at midnight.

             "Well, actually I need you and the truck. I have some business to attend to."

               "Business?"

              "Surely, Errol, you didn't think I was going to let this," and he directed my gaze toward the shop floor, "slide until I saw what they were going to do next."