I started fighting tears then, couldn’t help it. The old Verlaine line always came back to me like a bitter plea: Why are we born to suffer and die? There was no explanation for life, let alone for death.
I reached across the back of my father and took my mother’s hand. She nodded. She’d given up her own reluctance to cry. Her eyes gleamed.
I left to the sounds of a gunfight and then horses riding fast out of town.
3
“I get real nervous.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know, maybe this time they won’t get together at all.”
“Umm-hmm.”
“Turk says my breasts aren’t as big as hers.”
That got my attention. Mention of Turk always gets my attention.
“He told you that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you slap him?”
“No. It kind of hurt my feelings, but then Turk always says he’s just being honest when he says stuff like that.”
Well, I thought, then maybe it’s time I laid a little truth on Turk.
Jamie Newton became my secretary in a version of a slave auction. I’d represented her father in a boundary dispute. It was a long shot and we lost. He couldn’t afford to pay me, so he gave me his teenaged daughter as a part-time secretary. She was quite a looker. She could have modeled for half of those paperback covers depicting ripe young teenage girls who used their jailbait wiles to seduce men into killing people for them. But that was only how she looked. She was actually sweet and considerate. The problem was that she was also sort of dumb. She couldn’t type, file, or take telephone messages with any precision. Twice a day I want to fire her, but I know that she would never understand. All her life, people have told her how stupid she is. Firing her would only confirm her worst fears. She now worked full-time for me.