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Hunter rubbed her forehead. How could her mother think that? “I didn’t do anything wrong. Garcia pulled a gun, he was bringing in heroin, he was a bad man, and he was going to kill me if I didn’t shoot first.”
“My baby, my baby,” the soft crying continued, “I believe you think that, but what Ronald said, what the papers printed, even that song…”
Oh, not the song, Hunter thought, “That was a corrida, Mom, a Mexican ballad. It wasn’t true, what it said. It was just a song.”
“I don’t want my baby girl to go to prison,” Belinda said in a small voice, “I wish your father was here.”
Hunter wiped at the sudden sting in her eyes, “Me too, Mom.”
“I miss him so.”
“Yeah,” Hunter heard the faint clink of ice in a glass, “Mom, things will work out. You just get some rest, it’ll be better in the morning.”
“I worry about you, honey, especially since you and Wayne broke up. He seems like such a fine man.”
“Don’t worry about me, okay?”
“All right, Hunter,” there was another clink, then a sigh, “You were your dad’s favorite, you know.”
“I’m hanging up now. I’ll call you next week.”
“I love you, my baby. Call me when you can, okay?”
Hunter sat there, head hanging, phone loose in her hand. Finally, she hung it up and rubbed her forehead where the throbbing was coming on strong. “Damn, Ronnie,” she said, thinking about her brother, a man so handsome women sometimes stopped in mid
-stride to look at him. He was so much fun when they were little. She had idolized him, followed him everywhere around the small town where they grew up.
He’d been exceptional in school, so brilliant and eloquent that he was the leader in everything he did. Valedictorian, Class President, Most Likely to Succeed, Captain of the football team, basketball team, baseball team, and two dozen other honors. The achievements listed by his senior picture were twice as long as anyone else and it hadn’t included the academic scholarship to Harvard.
He graduated Magna Cum Laude, entered Harvard Law School, graduated with Juris Doctor Honors, and then worked for three years in Washington on the staff of the Democratic Senator from Texas. Men in power made him promises, political events were nonstop, and always, always, Ronnie was in the front and center of the action. It had started there, his ambition for politics.
But they weren’t rich, so Ronnie joined a law firm in El Paso, worked his way up to partner, became a big player in the ACLU, and an integral force in the state’s Democratic political machine. Things were falling in place for him, except for the public’s perception that he was soft on law enforcement officers.
Hunter went to the kitchen, got out the bottle of Tito’s Vodka and some orange juice from the refrigerator, made a strong one, and walked into the back yard.
***
Hunter finished her story and looked at Raymond, “And that brings us to now.”
Raymond shook his head. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Hunter took another drink and looked at the trees.
Raymond stood up, dusted the loose grass from his pants and said, “I’ll be around, you want to talk.”
“I’m okay.”
“See you.”
“Yeah.”
Raymond went out the gate and Hunter watched the high cirrus clouds take on evening colors. At full sunset, she went into the house, added more vodka and orange juice to the glass and carried it upstairs to the bathroom. The death smell was still strong on her. Hunter stripped down, still sipping her drink. She turned on the shower and adjusted the water as hot as she could stand it. The drink fit in its familiar place on the ledge beside the shampoo, and Hunter took drinks from it as she washed herself from head to toe, three times. Her skin was red when she finished, but she felt clean.
The scent from her discarded clothes reached her while she was drying off, so she tossed the wet towel on top of them. She slipped on a pair of lime green running shorts and an oversized white tee shirt, and then retrieved the empty glass from the shower ledge.
Downstairs, Hunter fixed another drink, went into the living room, turned on the television, and began flipping channels with the remote. She went through them four times before turning it off.
Restlessness ran through her tired body like unwanted adrenaline and she couldn’t relax, couldn’t stop thinking about the three children. She paced through the big house before going into the back yard and looking up at the night sky. Stars were everywhere. Her thoughts returned to the girls and the baby and she couldn’t stop the images, the feelings. Hunter’s eyes filled. She took a long ragged breath, drained the glass and went into the house and upstairs to bed. She finally closed her eyes at 3AM.
