On the Wilde Side Read online

  Johnny had felt his throat constrict.

  His teacher was a good woman if not a wise one, because he sure as hell didn’t need or want anything from his father.

  And then, on that last day of school, he came pedaling around the corner and saw his father’s black Coupe De Ville parked in front of her house.

  He skidded to a stop. He could feel his heart thudding. What was Amos doing here? He didn’t want to see him or talk to him. They had nothing to say to each other.

  He started pedaling. Slowly. Very slowly. All he had to do was pick up the pace and go right on by the big, ostentatious car.

  He didn’t.

  He brought the bike around to the backyard, the way he always did. Took his book bag out of the basket, the way he always did. Opened the rear door, the way he always did. Walked through the kitchen, down the short corridor that led into the small, always neat living room…

  Miss Cleary and his father were seated facing each other, she in her favorite wing chair, Amos in the center of the sofa.

  He looked from one of them to the other. Say something, he told himself, don’t just stand here, say something!

  But he didn’t.

  After what seemed an eternity, his father rose to his feet.

  “John.”

  Johnny swallowed dryly.

  “Father.”

  “Your teacher tells me you’ve done well this semester.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And that you have been helpful here.”

  He swallowed again. “Yessir. I mean, I’ve tried to be.”

  Amos folded his arms over his chest.

  “What are your plans, John?”

  “Plans?” Johnny said blankly.

  “For the summer. For the coming academic year.” Amos paused. “For your life.”

  Johnny glanced at Miss Cleary. She looked stern, but she gave him an encouraging nod.

  “I have a job lined up for the summer.”

  “Sir,” Amos said sharply. “I have a job lined up for the summer, sir.”

  Johnny swallowed hard again.

  “I have a job lined up for the summer, sir.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I’m going to work at the Texaco station part time.”

  “Part time?”

  “Yessir. I’ve got a weekend job at the Circle D. The dude ranch over in—”

  “I know where it is. What will you be doing there?”

  “Well, they hire extra hands in the summer. They get guests who’ve never ridden before and—”

  “You’re going to pump gas and shovel shit. Is that right?”

  “I—I guess you could put it that way. Sir.”

  Amos nodded.

  “And next year? Your senior year? What courses will you take?”

  Senior year was, for many students, a time to ease back. You took the minimum number of academic credits necessary to complete graduation requirements and filled the rest of the day with gym, shop, whatever took the least work.

  Johnny had chosen to do otherwise.

  He rattled off the courses he’d signed up for. Advanced trigonometry. Mechanical engineering. Military history.

  “Military history,” Amos repeated. “That’s a sudden interest for you, is it not?”

  It was. Military history had been Alden’s passion. Johnny had never understood why. He’d never understood Alden’s passion for math and science, either. But these past months, studying those subject made him feel—made him feel as if the two of them were connected by more than memories.

  “John? Is military history a new interest?”

  “Yessir. It is.”

  Amos’s mouth thinned. “I hope it is not because you believe you can somehow replace your brother in this world, John. Surely, you realize that such a thing is impossible.”

  Miss Cleary rose to her feet.

  “Mr. Wilde. John has suffered an immeasurable loss. He’s experienced great pain, physically as well as emotionally. I must ask you to—”

  “Thank you for your concern,” Amos said in a tone that made it obvious he was not thanking her at all. “But I have no need for your advice. John is not your son. He is mine.”

  Johnny looked from the elderly woman who had shown him such kindness to the man who had never shown him any.

  He wanted to defend her to his father, but all he could think of was that months ago, Amos had all but disowned him.

  Now, he was calling him his son.

  “You want to play around with oil and horse turds, you can do it at El Sueño.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Pack your things, John.”

  Johnny’s feet might as well have been rooted to the faded floral carpet.

  “Or leave them. Perhaps that’s best. You have everything you need at El Sueňo.” Still, Johnny didn’t move. Amos frowned. “Unless you have no wish to come home.”

  “No. No, I do. I mean—I mean—”

  He looked at Miss Cleary. She walked to him and put her hand on his arm, just as she had done so often in the past.

  “Go on,” she said softly. “And remember, you’re welcome here anytime.”

  He put his hand over hers. He wanted to say something eloquent or at least clever, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Amos made a sound of pure impatience.

  “I’ll be outside,” he said, “in the car.”

  The front door swung shut behind him. Miss Cleary clasped Johnny’s face in her hands.

  “You have a loving heart, John, and a fine mind. You’re going to go a long way.”

  Impulsively, he bent his head and kissed her cheek. Her skin was soft and velvety under his lips, and she smelled faintly of lemons.

  “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”

  She patted his chest. Then she went to a table that flanked the sofa where a cut glass vase held a spray of bluebonnets. Bluebonnets were the most common of Texas wildflowers. They flourished in the wild, but they needed care if you wanted them domesticated.

  She had helped him grow them.

  “For you,” she said, holding out the flowers.

  He looked at those bluebonnets. His vision blurred. He nodded, took them from her and because he was afraid he might do or say something stupid, he turned on his heel and fled from the room, the house, the life he’d led within its walls.

  The chauffeur stood at attention beside Amos’s Cadillac.

  “Mr. John.”

  Mr. John. Who was that? He’d been “Johnny” to virtually all the servants at El Sueño—The Dream—for as long as he could remember.

  He got into the car. A shudder went through him. The air conditioner was on at full blast.

  The chauffeur shut the door and got behind the wheel.

  The car began moving.

  Panic gripped Johnny’s throat.

  “Wait,” he started to say, but his father spoke at the same instant.

  “What,” he said coldly, “are those?”

  Johnny followed his gaze.

  “Bluebonnets,” he said, looking up at Amos.

  “I know they’re bluebonnets, for Christ’s sake. What are you doing with them?”

  “I grew them. From seed. Miss Cleary—”

  “Miss Cleary is a foolish old woman. You are a man.”

  Amos put down his window and snatched the flowers from his son’s hand. The bluebonnets went flying and the window shot up again, sealing in the chill of the air conditioning. “Now. Let’s talk about your future.”

  The car moved faster and faster, and when Johnny looked back, Miss Cleary’s house was part of the past.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SUMMER SPED BY.

  Johnny worked hard, mucking out stables, riding herd on cattle, breaking horses, doing whatever filthy, backbreaking labor a leasehand did on an oil rig.

  He was generally exhausted at the end of the day and he alternated between showering and falling into bed or showering, then taking one of the ranch trucks into
town to see Connie.

  Their relationship had made no real progress beyond kissing and copping a few quick feels of her tits. The truth was, Johnny, who had once been as horny as any guy his age, had lost interest in sex. Or maybe he just couldn’t get interested that way in Connie.

  He didn’t know how far things had gone with Alden and her and he didn’t want to.

  There was something creepy in putting his hand under her T-shirt and suddenly wondering if Alden’s hand had been there, too.

  As for his relationship with Amos…

  It was close to nonexistent.

  Amos led a busy life. He was active in politics, both state and local. He spent a lot of time out of town, meeting with people he described as important to Johnny’s future, which struck Johnny as questionable since he, Johnny, had no idea what he wanted that future to be.

  One evening in late August, Amos decided to tell him.

  He rapped on Johnny’s bedroom door, stepped inside without waiting to be asked, and was seated in a chair beside the window, a glass of bourbon in his hand, when Johnny came out of the adjoining bathroom, a towel wrapped around his hips.

  “Jesus,” Johnny said.

  “Did I startle you?”

  “Yes. A little.”

  “John. We need to talk.”

  “Well—well give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  “Sit down, John.”

  It was unpleasant to be invited to sit down in his own room, but Johnny said nothing. He went to the closet to get a pair of jeans. His father didn’t move. Johnny turned his back, dropped the towel, stepped into the jeans and zipped them up. He grabbed a light blue denim shirt from a hanger, pulled it on and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “School starts soon,” Amos said.

  “Yessir. Another ten days.”

  “But football practice already began.”

  Johnny nodded. “Yes.”

  “Coach tells me you haven’t shown up for it.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I’m not going to play this year.”

  “The team needs you, John.”

  Johnny shifted uncomfortably.

  “I don’t want to play football anymore.”

  “Nonsense. Your prowess on the field is one of the things that makes you a desirable candidate.”

  Where was this conversation going?

  “Candidate for what?”

  Amos crossed his legs and swung one booted foot back and forth.

  “For West Point.”

  Johnny blinked. “What?”

  “Your grades the last semester were excellent, but before that they were abysmal.”

  “Father…”

  “However, those excellent grades, coupled with similar ones in this, your senior year, will go a long way toward moving you to the top of the list. Add on your value as a football player—”

  “Wait a minute.” Johnny got to his feet. “I’m not interested in West Point. Even if I was, playing football and getting a few good grades isn’t enough to—”

  “Senator Duncan is a very good friend of mine. I’ve been one of his staunchest supporters.” Amos smiled thinly. “You do know that appointments to the military academies pass through the hands of elected representatives, don’t you, John?”

  Johnny took a long breath, then slowly expelled it.

  “Alden was the one who wanted to go to West Point. He wanted to be a soldier.”

  “Not just a soldier. An officer.”

  “Whatever,” Johnny said impatiently. “The point is I don’t. I don’t know what I want to be, but I know that it isn’t a—”

  “Wildes were warriors long before these United States existed.”

  Johnny ran his fingers through his hair. He knew the stories. He and Alden had been raised on them. Anglo-Saxons. Vikings. Men who’d crossed the sea and opened the American West.

  “Are you listening to me, young man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yessir.”

  Johnny knotted his hands into fists.

  “Yessir, I am—but I don’t think you’re listening to me.”

  Amos rose to his feet, his eyes narrowed, his mouth a knife-sharp line.

  “You took my firstborn son,” he said coldly. “You took my wife. You will be a man. You will be a Wilde. You will rejoin the Wilde Cats, you will get only A’s throughout this coming year, and you will interview for the Point and leave a glowing impression on those who will recommend you for appointment to it. Do I make myself clear?”

  Pain knifed through Johnny’s gut.

  “I didn’t kill Alden,” he whispered. “I didn’t kill my mother!”

  “That’s what that foolish old woman would like you to believe, but you and I know the truth. You’ve taken and taken.” Amos’s jaw shot forward. “Now it’s time to give back.”

  Johnny wanted to yell. He wanted to put his fist through the wall or maybe through his father’s face, but it was all true. His mother was dead because of him. So was his brother. He was worthless. Useless. He had come into the world a failure and he’d never been anything but a failure.

  Amos grabbed him by the shoulders. “You owe this to us all, dammit, to your mother, your brother, and me!”

  It was true, all of it. He owed them everything.

  Amos let go of him.

  “I have done my part with Senator Duncan. You will do yours at school. Do we understand each other?”

  Johnny swallowed hard.

  “Answer me! Do we understand each other?”

  He met his father’s hard gaze.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, sir, what?”

  “Yes, sir, we understand each other.”

  Amos nodded. “Good. Fine.” His tone was conversational; he smiled, clapped his son on the shoulder, then turned for the door, but at the last minute, he looked at Johnny again. “The situation with the Grimes girl. Connie. She isn’t for you.”

  “She’s a nice girl,” Johnny said. “You don’t know her at all.”

  “Her father is a shopkeeper. He doesn’t move in the right circles.” He smiled thinly. “I let Alden spend time with her because she could do him no harm, but the relationship would have ended on his graduation.”

  Johnny stared at Amos.

  “You let my brother—“

  “Of course. He understood.”

  “I don’t believe that. Alden would never have agreed to something so—so coldblooded. I knew him in ways you never did.”

  “Think that, if it makes you feel better. Just understand that she will be out of your life come next June. And remember, watch yourself with her until then. Each time she pulls down her pants, you pull on a rubber.”

  Johnny’s face blazed.

  “She’s a nice girl, Father.”

  Amos grinned. “Doesn’t mean she doesn’t fuck, John. I’m sure she did for your brother. If she hasn’t for you, why, you have a lot of catching up to do.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost suppertime. I’ll see you in the dining room in ten minutes. We have plans to make.”

  * * * *

  Yes, but the plans weren’t Johnny’s.

  He tried not to think about that all through the next week.

  He didn’t go into town to see Connie, but he didn’t attend football practice, either. He refused to think about anything beyond getting up in the morning and falling into bed, exhausted, each night.

  The one thing he did let himself think about was Miss Cleary. About going to see her.

  He missed her.

  Her decency, her kindness, her no-nonsense way of looking the world in the eye.

  He considered seeking her advice, but what would be the point? He knew what she’d tell him.

  She’d say his father was wrong. He didn’t bear the blame for his mother’s death or for his brother’s, and the rational part of him knew that that was th
e truth.

  The part that was pure emotion scoffed.

  If your mother hadn’t got pregnant with you, she’d still be alive. If your brother hadn’t climbed into your car, he’d still be alive, too.

  Amos was away on business, so he didn’t know Johnny hadn’t shown up for football practice.

  The coach phoned the house a couple of times. Johnny got the answering machine messages, but he didn’t return the calls.

  What for?

  The coach wanted him back playing football. So did Amos.

  Never mind Amos.

  Deep in his heart, Johnny wanted the same thing. Not so he could seem a more attractive package for entrance to the Point. Not because it would please his father and the coach.

  He wanted to be out on that field because he missed the game.

  He’d spent all these months pretending he didn’t, but he couldn’t pretend anymore. He missed the other guys, missed the crowds that hung out at preseason practice. He missed the bone-jarring hits and the feeling that came of soaring into the air and catching what was surely an uncatchable ball.

  He found excuses to go into town. Somebody needed a replacement wrench? A dozen sacks of oats? I’ll go for it, he’d say, and on his way there or on his way back, he’d take a detour that led him past the high school to the football field, where he’d park whatever ranch or rig pickup he was using and watch as the Cats went through drills and plays.

  After a while he stepped from the truck, jogged through the gates, climbed high into the stands where he figured nobody would notice him.

  But people did notice.

  TJ. Tim Stantos. A couple of other guys. They came into the stands, sat down next to him and said Hey,man. How you been? How’s it hangin’? When you comin’ back? and he’d smile and give them five and avoid answering the question.

  Then, one day, the kid trying out for tight end screwed up. Totally. It was just a practice game, but he made such a piss-poor play that Coach marched up to him, his fleshy face scarlet, and chewed him out so badly that Johnny could hear each word even where he sat, almost at the top of the stands.

  The kid’s shoulders slumped. He hung his head like a whipped dog.

  Coach yelled some more. Then he looked into the stands, pointed his finger at Johnny and bellowed, “Wilde! Come down here and show this asshole how it’s supposed to be done.”

  Johnny didn’t move.

  The team did.