ears and a squashed nose and curly hair colored the distressing red of rust streaks in an old bathtub. “It’s been my experience that women don’t have much imagination, and y’all can really see that when it comes to naming their kids. One year everybody gets named Jennifer and Tim, next year it’s Matt and Margaret.”
Mary looked at Quinette, pleading silently to forgive Wes, as if he were some idiot child who couldn’t be held responsible for the things he said. That certainly had been a stupid observation, but it described Quinette’s mother to a T. Ardele never could imagine a life other than the one she had. For some reason, alternatives never occurred to her. If they did, she never acted on them. She was only forty-four when she was widowed, but she never remarried. She was Ted Hardin’s widow; nothing else was possible.
“So who named you?” she asked Wes.
“My mama, who else? Wesley ain’t very imaginative. If it had been up to my old man, I would’ve been named Quanah.”
That drew a little shriek from Mary. His glance shot to her, then ricocheted back to Quinette.
“On account of my great-grandma was a full-blood Comanche, back when their big chief was Quanah Parker.”
Quinette squinted skeptically.
Wes pulled out his wallet and produced a laminated card, with his photo on it, testifying to his enrollment in the Comanche Nation. “Where do y’all think these come from?” He thrust his head toward her, prying his eyes into circles with his thumbs and forefingers to better display his chocolate-brown pupils. “I’m like Fitz. A genuine mongrel. This here”—he tugged at a lock of his hair—“comes from the man great-grandma married. Not the color, the curl. He was a storekeeper on the reservation. Part white, part Comanch, and part black. His grandma was an escaped slave.” Wes hesitated for half a breath, and his tone of voice changed, taking on an edge. “Now I reckon that oughta give you a nice warm glow.”
“I’m afraid not. Should it?”
“You being in the business of freeing slaves, I figured it would.”
“It isn’t a business.”
“There’s some might say it is.”
She saw that he’d been setting her up with his genealogical discussion, and that she’d walked right into it.
“I’ve got you pegged,” she replied, whetting her own voice to cut back at him. “You like to jerk people’s chains to see which way they’ll jump. Your technique needs work.”
Fitz laughed, slapping the table, and Wes picked up his sunglasses and gave them a quick twirl. “And here I thought you were a sweet young idealist.”
“Guilty to the last two. The last time I remember being sweet, I was in eighth grade and even then I had to work at it.”
Wes said, “Would you bet that I was once an idealist?”
“I don’t gamble.”
“I was. Fresh out of Texas A and M with a degree in aero engineering in the late sixties. I think I smoked too much bad dope back then, because I decided to teach math to underprivileged Messican kids in El Paso. Did that till it come to me, like a light, that I hated kids of any creed or color. So I signed up with Air America to fly in Indochina, doin’ my bit to fight Communism. My mama wrote and asked me, ‘Wes, what are y’all doin’ over there?’ I wrote her back, ‘Mama, I’m flyin’ good to the good and bad to the bad.’ Ten years later I’m flyin’ guns into the Nicaraguan Contras for Southern Air, and I told Mama that I was flyin’ good to the good and bad to the bad, but it was sometimes right hard to tell which was which. Few more years go by, and I’m flyin’ photo-recon missions for the Royal Saudi Air Force, so we could liberate those useless Kuwaitis from those scum-suckin’ Eye-Raquis, and I wrote to Mama and said I was flyin’ good to the good and bad to the bad, but there wasn’t any difference. And now that I’m flyin’ in Africa, I tell her that I’m flyin’ bad to the bad because they’re all bad over here.”
The monologue pummeled everyone into a few moments’ silence. Then Mary said, “Jesus, did you sugar your cereal with cocaine this morning or what?”
Quinette looked at her watch and stood up suddenly. “Hate to leave this brilliant conversation, but I’ll be late. I’m meeting Malachy at the Red Cross hospital.”
“Do you have a car?” Diana asked.
Quinette shook her head.
“You intended to walk there?”
“Sure. It isn’t far.”
“Don’t be