Royce (65 page)

“Well what if I told you I know somebody who could help with this problem,” and he didn’t know what his grandfather did because he paused for a long time then he said, “Go on I’m listening,” and his mother said, “I know someone who would take care of this problem for us and make it disappear.” “Hmmm, okay what are you proposing?”  “I’m proposing we make this go away. Take away the problem and once it’s gone it will be like it never existed and the legacy of this family will go on as if it never had a problem.” “Okay if we can do that, then so be it.  What do you need from me to make it happen,” and he heard his mother laugh, “Oh just the funds to do it, it’s going to cost us.  And I don’t think I’ll have the money to do it,” at that time Tammy had no idea how much it would cost to kill someone, but with Walker Sr. behind her she knew cost wouldn’t be an option. “How much?”  His grandfather asked.  “I’ll find out and get back to you,” she said and he could tell his mother was smiling. 

He heard her walking towards the door and as she did she was saying, “I’ll find out and from there I’ll take care of our problem. I’ll make it go away,” and he heard his grandfather say, “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time,” and the door opened and he walked away like he was just passing by.

After that he was frozen and paralyzed with fear.  He had no idea what was going to happen.  He just knew it was something bad and he saw his dad and Ms. Joy happy and he was scared and didn’t know what to do, so he pretended nothing was going to happen and the next thing he knew his mother was being arrested and sent to jail and he knew his grandfather was involved.  He’d even heard his mother on her cell phone, he listened outside her door and Karen was oblivious, if it didn’t revolve around her she didn’t care.  She thought about nothing but soccer and at home she was mostly in her room while he heard his mother plotting to hurt Ms. Joy, and he was glad she was stopped. 

He didn’t want her to go to jail, but he didn’t want anything to happen to Ms. Joy either and if that meant his mother had to go to jail then that was okay with him and because he felt that way he felt guilty, so guilty that he was betraying his mother and Karen, so he chose to stay with them.  To be there for them because they needed him more, but he desperately wanted to go with his father.  He cried sometimes at night wanting to go to his father’s house, it felt like home, a real home.

His father’s and Ms. Joy’s house was the only place he wasn’t quiet, the only place he was himself, and it was mainly because Deon wasn’t quiet.  Deon ran down the stairs loudly when he went to get snacks, or to run outside, or to chase Lindsey, or to play with Justin, or to ask his mother a question and he did too.

He ran loudly down the stairs, and Deon talked loudly when they were running down the stairs, “Did you see that hit I made it was so cool!,” “Yeah man that was awesome!”  He’d respond and when they played video games they high fived each other and bumped chest when they made a good play or beat a game, since Deon was loud, boisterous, laughing and falling all over the place he became that way too, and when he stayed the weekends they laughed and talked long into the night.  When he was with Deon he was the kid he was supposed to be.  He was a normal kid, and he never snuck around in his father’s house, he had no reason too. 

But at his mother’s and grandparents house he was quiet as a little mouse and he heard things, and he heard his mother and grandfather and if Valerie had planted a bug in his room Jameson would have heard him say quietly as he lay on his bed tossing a baseball in the air, “Ms. Joy is nice mom.  What you and grandpa are doing is wrong,” and Jameson would have known then.

Joy could still see there was more and for Dillon he could always talk to Ms. Joy, not only did he think she was the best person he knew; he liked talking to her because it was talking and not like she was trying to find something out like he felt his dad was always doing.  He stood looking at Joy holding the pillows she brought in. “There’s this girl. There’s this girl and I… How’d you know dad was the right one?”  He asked and Joy smiled,
so Dillon was in love,
“Dillon let me say first of all, your dad and I never meant to hurt anyone, not you, not your mother,” and Dillon was thinking
but you did, you hurt us all
,  “And we were not involved until both of our marriages were over.  We both really tried to salvage our marriages, I want you to know that,” he nodded, but he remembered the damage had been done the day his father brought Justin home his life went to shit from then on.

“But how did I know he was the one…hmmm,” Joy seemed to think for a moment then said, “I trust him Dillon.  I trust him with my heart and that’s not an easy thing to do is give someone your heart and hope they’ll do right by it, but I gave my heart to your father, and your father with my heart totally in his hands loved me the way I needed to be loved Dillon.  He gave me the right kind of love for me, the good, strong, hold on tight kind of love I needed and he never wavered and he never hurt my heart Dillon.  He took good care of my heart and that’s why I love him and know he’s the right one for me.  I know my heart is in good hands,” and Dillon smiled, and so did Royce out in the hallway. 

Dillon left that weekend knowing three things.  One, that he loved Shanice and he wanted her to trust him with her heart too, he wanted her heart, and two, that his grandfather was dead but his mother was out and she might have a problem with it and do something crazy, and three, that he wanted to see Deon and take Shanice with him.  He wasn’t going to stop living and loving who he wanted just because his mother might have a problem with it, his father and Ms. Joy showed him that.  Their love was stronger than ever in spite of what his mother and grandfather tried to do.  Shanice had been mad at him, mad because he wouldn’t commit.  Well he wanted to change that; they’d been together three years and it was time he stopped being afraid.

Dillon had met Shanice Roberson his freshman year at Texas Tech and had wanted her ever since.  The only reason he chose to go to Tech was because his father went there, “Be a Red Raider, go red and black!”  It wasn’t his father’s motto it was the university's and he wanted something of his father.  He missed him so much and no one knew where he was, or if he was alive or dead, and he was sure his grandfather had something to do with it and maybe even his mother.  And because he missed his father he went to his alma mater and after he met Shanice he was happy, so happy he found his Ms. Joy.  It took him a year to get her to notice him as more than a friend and he loved Shanice with all his heart and in their senior year when she wanted to know, “Are we going to be together?  Do we want to try and find jobs in the same city or what?”  And he froze, he was so scared.  His father was still missing, his mother was due to get out of prison, and he knew his grandfather and mother had a serious problem with
negra's
as his grandfather said of Ms. Joy, and he didn’t know what to do. 

If anything happened to Shanice he’d die, so he stalled and maneuvered around her question, “I don’t know, I might have to go work with my uncle,” or “I can’t say right now I have to think about it,” and he did this and Shanice was fed up with him and mad as hell. 

“Okay Dillon, what have we been doing the last three years then?  Have you just been stringing me along, stringing the black girl along?” 

She cried and he knew she loved him just as much as he loved her.  He had been her first lover and she gave herself to him openly and honestly he knew that, but fear gripped him, and he didn’t know what to do.  His mother came home and at first it seemed prison had broke her, but then after being at the ranch she was becoming her old self and he was scared, did that mean she would do what she’d done before?   And when his father and Ms. Joy came back he wondered,
was it over?  Was it safe? 
He didn’t know. 

Then his father wouldn’t come see them, refused to see the family, especially his mother and he was scared she might retaliate and hire another hit man and through all this Shanice wanted answers and he couldn’t give her any and now she was mad as hell and thinking of taking a job in Seattle and leaving him behind, so he went to see his father. 

And after spending the weekend with his father and Ms. Joy he went back to Shanice and said, “I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.  Will you marry me?” Her eyes lit up and she kissed him on the lips and said, “Yes,” and he said, “But first I want to visit my best friend Deon, you want to go to England?”

Dillon was right Tammy had been broken when she came out, prison had beaten her.  After her parole hearing and what Bobby had done pissed her off, “How dare he?  How dare he accuse me of doing something I had nothing to do with!  Another fucking five years!”  She was boiling and her attitude showed, she was rude and snappish to everyone and it seemed the prison had it in for her after that, they busted up her group. 

Her lover Roxy was sent to another unit and so was she and the new unit didn’t take to her bullshit and she got in numerous fights and got the shit kicked out of her so many times she walked around with ball spots in her head from her hair being pulled out since that was the first thing anyone grabbed was a hand full of her blonde hair, “Stupid Bitch,” they called her after they beat her ass. 

The last five years of her sentence no one touched her intimately and she missed that, missed the connection and the contact of another person.  The other inmates seemed to hate her, her bitchy attitude when she arrived set the tone and she never recovered and they never gave her a second chance.  She was beaten, tormented and ridiculed by the other inmates and she blamed that stupid ass Bobby who should’ve mined his own damn business.  Dillon was the only person she could talk too but once he went to college he hardly ever came to see her, he was always off somewhere, “He’s at a rodeo in Colorado ma’am,” the butler would say or “He’s not coming home this summer, he’s completing his studies,” and she missed him.  Karen was volatile even in her love.  Dillon was soft and kind and would listen endlessly to her complaints, but Karen was the only one who stood by her to the end.  She went to Baylor University so she could be near her and she came to visit often, and bought her things and put money in her account and she talked a mile a minute about her life, and didn’t want to hear much about Tammy’s, “You’re in prison mom, what is there to do except wait to get out?”  She’d scoff and say, so when her ten years was up she was grateful. 

And when she went to live at the ranch she thought her mother-in-law would hate her, but she didn’t she accepted her and let Karen take her shopping and buy her a whole new wardrobe and get her hair colored and styled, and her nails polished and she started to feel human again and Royce was still gone and no one knew where and she hoped he’d never come back.  Walker Sr. was dead and she was glad of that, and before long she was back to her old self.  She walked around like she belonged in that house and she felt at least she was owed that much since she took the rap and Walker Sr. got off scot free and after she came to that conclusion she made herself at home and decided she was never leaving.

Although Royce’s relationship with his family was strained he took Joy and the kids to see Hennie.  One of the main topics at dinner the day he discovered them was politics and every time he saw the president on TV or heard something about him he thought of Hennie.  He had never been into politics, but Joy was and believed in voting, “It’s our right and the only voice we have,” so he was registered now, but when he was sitting at the dinner table at Hennie’s he didn’t know who said it but someone said, “You can’t say you want less government for yourself but more government for other people that’s imposing your will and taking away the freedom of others and giving you more freedom than you deserve, that’s not a democracy,” and that stuck with him, because that’s exactly what his father had done to him.  Had tried to impose his will, to make him live the way he wanted him to, so after they registered to vote he thought of Hennie and told Joy, “I want you to meet her Joy and see the family,” and one weekend he rented a private plane and flew them all to Amarillo. 

He rented a van and drove up to Hennie’s. This time he noticed all the cars parked out front.  The first time he came he was in a fog and didn’t notice anything until he went inside and saw all the people. “I’m sure she’s invited everyone, so don’t be surprised if the house is full,” he said as they got out the van and Joy had made one of her special desserts, a peach pie, since Royce said, “She wants us to come for dinner this Saturday,” and she’d carried that peach pie on her lap the whole flight and on the van ride.  And he’d tried to explain to the children who they were, but he was having a hard time of it since no one knew they existed, and he knew he couldn’t start broadcasting all over Texas his father had a mistress and she had seven children by him and
here are my brothers and sisters! 
That wouldn’t be fair to them, so he let it go at, “They are very dear friends of my father’s.” 

They walked up to the house and rang the bell and when the door opened there were lots of people, the house was full of adults and children, all standing with smiles on their faces to welcome them, and this time all his siblings were there. “I thought you might like to meet Wallace, Collette and Warren,” Hennie said, and Joy was struck too by how much they resembled her children, Wallace and Justin could have easily been father and son.

“Oh my, you have a beautiful family, a beautiful family,” Hennie said and after that they sat at a full table and talked and ate until they were full and Joy felt like she was at home at one of their family reunions and the house and Hennie’s green thumb reminded her of her mother.  Joy smiled and Hennie’s family welcomed them and the accents got to them, so much so that Thomas teased one of the girls, “Toya remember he’s your cousin,” and the room erupted.