Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
The recorded history of the genus Capsicum begins
with Columbus, who undertook his voyage
of discovery in search of (among other things)
black pepper, the most valuable of Eastern
spices. Columbus did not find what he was looking
for, but in the opinion of many people, he bit
into something much better. He became the first
European to blister his tongue on a hot pepper.
China Bayles
"Hot Pods and Fired-up Fare"
Pecan Springs Enterprise
Most times, it isn't easy to know where to start a story, or
what to include in the telling. The threads of any present
moment are spliced into the weave of the past in a complex
and often inexplicable way, and just when you think
you've got the pattern figured out, another seems to
emerge and the meaning unravels. Or to use a different
metaphor, the present and the past swirl together like different
colors of paint you're mixing in a bucket, one color
marrying with the other in swirls that eventually belong to
neither. Exactly when the two become something different
than either are alone, it's impossible to say.
I know where this story begins, although I don't yet
know how it ends, or what other stories may become
woven into it. My life got derailed when Mike McQuaid,
on temporary assignment with the Texas Rangers, was
gunned down on a lonely road west of San Antonio. Until
that rainy February night, I was moving along with confidence
into the future, dividing my time between my business
(my herb shop, Thyme and Seasons), my family
(McQuaid and his twelve-year-old son, Brian, with whom
I live), and a few good friends. On that night, the sky fell,
and for a long time I wondered whether the darkness
would ever end. But one morning, to my surprise, the sun
came up, and opened a new chapter.
I also know what this story, this chapter of my life, is
about. It's about partners and friends, partnership and alliance.
It's about deception and death and the various
ways we fail in our obligations to one another. But it's also
about trust and teamwork and accepting our mutual
interdependence.
But enough introduction. As Fannie Couch says, "Ain't
no point messin' around. Tell the good part first and then
the bad, and the rest will follow along on its own."
Fannie is widely venerated as the oracle of Pecan
Springs, Texas. I guess I'd better follow her advice.
The good part is that McQuaid is not going to die. The
bullet that was lodged against his spine has done the worst
of its damage, and unless some unforeseen complications
occur during his long recovery, he'll make it. He's a
strong, tough man who has been beaten, knifed, and shot
before, during the years he was a Houston cop. He is a
survivor. He's surviving.
The bad part is, well ...
"He is going to walk again," Brian says fiercely. He
looks up at me with his dad's eyes, steel-gray and angry
at the unfair hand that fate has dealt out to his father. He
pushes back the dark hair that has fallen across his forehead
and says it again, to convince himself and me. "He
is, China. I'm going to help him."
"Sure," I say, in as bright a tone as I can manage. Brian
appears confident, but I know where his demons are corralled,
and it's not fair to add mine to the herd. I give him
a hard quick hug, a rare thing between us, because he is
after all a boy and I am not quite his mother. "How about
taking a pizza when we go see him tonight?"
"Yeah." Brian is determinedly, heartbreakingly cheerful.
"With anchovies and jalapenos. And chocolate ice
cream. No, Double Chocolate Fudge. He has to keep his
strength up." The fierce look is back. "He's going to walk
again, China. I know he is."
McQuaid's parents aren't so sure. When we meet at the
hospital, Mother McQuaid is red-eyed and tearful and her
smile sags under its own weight. Like Brian, she is intent
on keeping McQuaid's strength up, delivering enough
cookies, cakes, and hand-knitted argyle bed socks to supply
every patient in the hospital.
But Dad McQuaid is angrily bluff, in turn raging at the
nurses and ranting at the doctors. "Them guys're s'posed
to be so smart, how come Mike ain't walkin' yet?" he demands.
"What'd they learn in medical school? What're
they doin' for all that money they get paid?" Then the
anger empties out, and he's limp and despairing and
numb. "He ain't never gonna walk agin," he says to me
outside the room, wiping his eyes. I murmur disagreement
but pat his shoulder, mimicking Brian's comforting gesture.
I feel as if we've all been flung into deep water, and
Brian and I are the only ones who can swim.
* * *
No, that's not true. There's my mother, who not only
knows how to swim but is sure that she is strong enough
to tow the raft, with all of us aboard.
My relationship with Leatha has been an unhappy one,
even after she sobered up a couple of years ago, married
Sam, and moved from her luxurious Houston home to his
rather primitive ranch near Kerrville. It's hard to forgive
her for not being the mother I wanted so desperately when
I was growing up, hard to forget coming home from
school and finding her already embarked on her own private
happy hour, which invariably ended when I put her
to bed, drunk as a skunk, and cooked a frozen dinner for
myself. I know, I know--it's all in the past and I should
bury all those toxic memories and live with what she is
now, a recovering alcoholic who desperately wants to be
a part of her daughter's life. But it's been a stubborn hurt.
The only time we've held one another in years was the
night McQuaid was shot, when we wept with our arms
wrapped around each other.
Which Leatha took as an invitation. A week after the
shooting, I opened the door one afternoon and saw her
lugging three suitcases, two cosmetic cases, and a carton
of self-help books up the porch steps. In my surprise, I
didn't protest hard enough, and the next thing I knew she
had installed herself in one of the guest bedrooms of the
large Victorian house that McQuaid and I leased last year.
Having resprayed her silver bouffant and renewed her
mauve lipstick, she came into the office where I was on
the phone and the computer at the same time, checking
the ad copy that was due at the Pecan Springs Enterprise
office that afternoon. Brian was there, regaling me with
details of the lunchtime fight he had with his friend Arnold
and demonstrating the actual kung-fu punches and kicks
they had traded, punctuated with pows and blams. And
Howard Cosell, McQuaid's elderly and ill-tempered bassett
hound, was parked under my chair, licking a sore paw
and complaining in his gravelly voice that the boy was
interrupting his nap.
Leatha raised her voice above these cacophonies.
"You'll be spending a lot of time with Mike and you can't
neglect your business," she announced briskly, "so I've
come to stay for a while. As long as you need me."
I put down the phone. "I don't need--" I started to say,
but Brian preempted me.
"That's cool," he said, stopping his martial arts demonstration
and getting straight to the heart of the matter.
"Can you make waffles for breakfast? China used to, but
she's too busy right now."
"You're old enough to make your own waffles, Brian."
I spoke more shortly than I intended, but I was annoyed
that he'd gone over to the enemy so quickly. To my
mother, I said, "Brian and I can manage for ourselves,
Leatha. Anyway, Sam will get lonely--and what will happen
to all your projects?"
The energy that Leatha once poured into the bottle now
goes into worthwhile causes. She has taken on Kerrville's
Friends of the Library, the Courthouse Restoration Project,
and the Hospital Auxiliary. To judge from the newspaper
clippings she sends, she is a one-woman volunteer
army, always anxious to help whoever seems to need it.
To be honest, I find this pungently ironic. Where was she
when I needed her, forty or so years ago?
"Sam won't be lonely long," Leatha said with equanimity.
"His oldest daughter by his first wife left her husband
and is moving back home with the baby. And his youngest
son has dropped out of college and is living in the bunkhouse."
I don't try to keep up with the comings and goings
of Sam's family, which seems to ebb and flow like some
sort of mysterious tide. "And the projects will just have to
take care of themselves for a while. I'm taking care of you,
China." She smiled at Brian. "You, too, Brian. And
maybe, some of these weekends, you can go to the ranch
with me. That river is full of fish just dying to be caught,
and Sam hung a rope swing in the cypress tree, over the
swimming hole. He also bought a big brown horse named
Rambo. He's got four white socks and a white blaze on his
forehead -- and he's the perfect size for a big guy like you."
I gritted my teeth. Flattery, flattery.
"Rambo!" Brian squealed excitedly. "Oh, wow." He
turned to me. "When can I go, China? When, huh?" Then
he stopped and pulled his dark brows together, looking
serious. "But maybe I better not. I better stay and cheer
Dad up. He gets kinda down sometimes."
I made another effort. "Leatha," I said, "Brian and I
really don't need--"
"Yes, you do," she said, very firmly. "You certainly do.
Both of you."
Brian looked from one to the other of us, figuring the
angles. The ranch might not be in the cards, but there
were always waffles. "Blueberry is my favorite," he said.
"Mine too," she said with a bright smile that showed
all her teeth. "I absolutely adore making blueberry waffles.
Meanwhile, maybe you can tell me where the laundry
soap lives. There's a pile of very muddy jeans in the bathroom."
She wrinkled her nose. "With a monstrous creature
on top. It is green."
I was bemused by the thought of my elegant mother
(who for years had a maid to rinse out her stockings) actually
washing Brian's grubby jeans and making blueberry
waffles for him. But Brian (who is supposed to put his
own jeans in the washer) was enthusiastic.
"I'll show you the soap," he offered helpfully. "The
monster is Einstein. He's an iguana, and he's very smart.
But he won't bite unless he's sitting in the sun."
Leatha looked startled. "In the sun?"
"Yeah. Sunshine makes him frisky. It triggers his aggressive
genes." He prodded Howard Cosell with his toe.
"Hey, Howard, you dumb old dog. Wake up. We're going
to do the laundry." Howard Cosell raised his head and
bared snaggly yellow teeth, promising that he would bite,
if certain people didn't go away and let him finish his nap.
Leatha had recovered her poise. "Well, come along,
then," she commanded, rattling her silver bangle bracelets.
"And while I'm here, it might be better to keep Einstein
in the dark." She narrowed her eyes. "What about
those other creatures of yours, Brian? That ... tarantula?"
"Ivan the Hairible? Oh, I still have him," he said eagerly.
"Would you like to see?"
Leatha shuddered. "I think not." She turned around,
surveyed me, and said, briskly, "Really, China, don't you
think you ought to get your hair cut? I'm sure Mike would
appreciate a less straggly you when he's able to be up
and around."
Howard Cosell gave a resigned sigh and covered his
eyes with his paws. I suppressed a snarl and went back to
the computer. I didn't need a crystal ball to know that this
arrangement was not going to work.
Through the long, anxious weeks that followed, I wasn't
sure which hurt most: being with McQuaid or not being
with him. Like most people, I hate hospitals--the chill
white sterility of the hallways and rooms, the antiseptic
smell, the curt, crisp efficiency of the nurses. I wonder if
they're taught not to care in nursing school or whether
those frozen faces come with the uniform--or whether
they really do care and have to pretend they don't or fall
apart.
But the hospital was only a backdrop to the real pain.
Before the shooting, McQuaid was a big man with a big
man's powerful presence, a former football quarterback
and ex-cop who'd kept his strong muscles and his flat belly
and--most notably--his cheerful attitude. He could be
commanding and authoritative, especially when he was
lecturing in one of his classes at Central Texas State University,
where he's on the Criminal Justice faculty. But
most of the time, he was confident and optimistic, your
basic nice guy.
McQuaid was still big and still strong--it would take
more than a couple of weeks on his back to change that--but
the attitude was gone. Trussed up with plastic tubes,
wired to machines, and able to move only his hands (even
that little bit was an enormous improvement over the first
few days, when he couldn't move at all), he would close
his eyes and go inside himself, away from me, silent, remote,
utterly despairing. I understood what took him
away, but my understanding didn't ease his pain or calm
his fear or bring him back from the dark place he had
gone.
The suffering wasn't just his, either. For five years,
McQuaid had wanted us to get married. Out of pride in
my independence and self-sufficiency, I had always refused--until
just before the shooting, when I woke up to
the way I really felt about him and was ready to agree.
But by that time, he'd gotten involved with somebody else.
With Margaret Graham, a woman fifteen years younger
than me, his partner in an investigation into corruption
high up in the Texas Rangers' chain of command.
But although their brief affair was over and Margaret
and I had become friends, the shooting changed
McQuaid's view of the future--and his desire to get married.
"Let's let it ride for a while" was all he'd say when I
brought it up. He didn't have to tell me why. I knew that
he feared he'd never be whole and healthy again, and he
didn't want to burden me with his care, with half a
husband.
But as I sat beside his bed, reading provocative snippets
from Constance Letterman's gossip column in the Enterprise
or reporting on my recent consultation with Brian's
math teacher or just watching Mike sleep, I would think
of the numbing moment when I feared I had lost him, and
feel grateful. Whole or half, healthy or disabled, it didn't
matter. McQuaid was here, he was alive, and that was
enough.
Beneath the gratitude, though, I was heavy with sadness
and loss. Why had I been so afraid of intimacy, of
caring, of marriage? Why had I built such a wall against
his love? If only I had been able to give more, we might
have shared more. If only I hadn't been afraid to be vulnerable,
we might have been more open with each other.
If only ... if only ...
At those moments, I had to turn away to keep him from
seeing the tears. I didn't want him to think I was weeping
for him--for what he had been and might not ever be
again. I was weeping for myself, and regretting what I
had been.