One Morning Came Brightly

One Morning Came Brightly

by Allen A Glick

Copyright 1987 AAGlick

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

The heavy pistol felt as malignant in his grip as the handshake of a sinister stranger. Favor was no stranger to weapons, but like a long since spurned lover, he had forgotten the passion of first touch.

Abruptly, he set the pistol down on the bureau.

The pawnshop owner had assured him that there were few finer revolvers... Colt Trooper, three fifty seven, and the man had droned on familiarly with the tiresome litany all gun lovers can deliver. But Favor tuned him out. He knew ballistics in a very personal sense—not from cardboard targets—but from the bloody physics of rice paddles and jungle mountain slopes. Favor could not debate the muzzle velocity of a round fired from an M-16. But a part of him winced each time he recalled how the bullet tore a man apart.

Still, he had purchased the pistol, not clearly knowing why. Fifteen years had passed since he had owned a gun.

That November morning in the motel room in Fort Worth, when he set the pistol abruptly on the bureau, the knock of metal on wood made his daughter stir in bed—as delicate and innocent a gesture as human can make—and his heart swelled as it always did when he dwelled on his child.

Like a thief, though, he quickly hid the pistol in a drawer; and the squeak and clatter of cheap furniture woke her.

Good morning, big girl.

Morning, papa, her blue eyes fluttered softly, still wanting sleep, and she yawned and stretched and Favor could see in the cast of muscle and bone what a beauty she would someday be. Like her mother had been.

You can’t go back to sleep, honey. I have a busy day today.

Am I going to Aunt Kay’s? she asked hopefully, sitting up.

Favor smiled in a tight-lipped way and stepped to the bed. He sat down to stroke Laurel’s hair. I didn’t tell Jack and Kay that we were coming to the city.

He watched as the news seemed to digest on her brow, as though a reel of film was passing behind her face, her eyes the lens that projected her opinion of whatever confronted her. Part of growing up, Favor suddenly realized, was the inexorable blanketing of that wonderfully honest lens.

Am I going with you, papa?

I’m sorry, Laurel, but you can’t. He saw the concern in her sleepy face. There’s a very nice day care just down the street, he went on quickly. It’s like Teacher Mary’s.

But I won’t know any of the kids! Laurel thrust out her lip and furrowed her brow.

Favor did not answer, only touched her silky sorrel hair and ran the back of his hand along the peachy jaw that was beginning to set in protest. Laurel was not yet five. In the year since her mother had died, he thought she had blossomed into a much older child, less prone to argue but with a more determined set of mind.

Where are you going, papa?

Favor glanced away, seemed to be staring deeply into the bare motel wall. It’s business, honey. Just business. I promise I won’t be very long.

Then can we go to the zoo? Please?

If the rain stops, yes we can. But I don’t think this rain is going to stop. Now let’s get up and dress and we’ll eat a good breakfast. Okay?

He marveled sometimes at how compliant she could be. Were four-year-olds supposed to be so agreeable? Favor had no basis for judgment. He had bulled through life with hardly a glance back until the day he watched awestruck as his beautiful wife wrestled this child to birth; and, once accomplished, once he saw mother and daughter together, as if sharing some great preordained secret, he had asked few questions at all. He simply basked.

So was Laurel like other four-year-olds? He did not know. She was simply Laurel, as he and Molly had so passionately made her.

He paced the small room restlessly while Laurel went about her morning toilet, peeked open the drawer to glance at the pistol, and then shut the drawer sheepishly. This was crazy. He could trust Harry. Couldn’t he trust Harry?

But no echo came back to him. Fifty thousand untraceable dollars was a lot of cash.

Nervously, he switched on the TV to see the bright bulk of Big Bird grinning at him blankly. Well, fifty thou isn’t birdseed, that’s for sure. Then he could not help but grimace, half in humor. Bird seed was hemp seed. But he’d grown none of that. Not a seed in the lot. Sin semilla, as the Mexicans say: without seed; and he had wrapped it all up prettily and given most of it to Harry Sykes. And that’s why Favor was so nervous.

Because he meant for it to buy them a new life.

Hey, I know! Laurel announced with her own perfect logic, while she dressed and watched the tube. We can go to Sesame Place in the rain, and it doesn’t matter! Her voice sometimes was like a song.

Favor’s face brightened, wrenched from worry to Laurel’s own playful reality. That’s a good idea, he told her. And we’ll do that if they’re open. If, Laurel, if they’re open. After all, it’s winter time. Big Bird might go south, like the geese.

No he doesn’t, silly. And besides, we are south! She spun around then for inspection and praise, which he lavished on how pretty she looked in her new blouse and corduroy jumper and her new saddle oxfords which she tied all by herself.

I’m hungry, papa.

"Then put on your coat and we’ll go.

It was overcast and windy outside and a cold rain fell steadily. While Laurel stood in the threshold of the open door, the wind pinking her cheeks, Favor stepped quickly to the bureau. As he turned to block her view, he lifted the magnum from the drawer and tucked it in his belt, beneath the heavy coat, hoping he would not need it, not even knowing what the hell he would do if he did.

The gun was simply there. The man had invented his own necessity.

Grimly, guiltily faking a smile, he hurried out the door with his daughter.

After the war, Favor Rousseau lived most of his life in the woods and scrub brush of Texas, drifting between jobs that always came easily because he was strong and good with tools. His pals were mostly veterans, or old girlfriends who no longer loved him quite enough to tumble again. Favor could shrug and let go, so some of those ladies remained close to him.

He wanted little of life until he met Molly. In her easy going and lively fashion, she began to open Favor’s eyes to the significance of the rest of the world. It was no easy task. He had been a bright, romantic kid turned inward upon himself by the carnage of Vietnam. Coming home, he kept a very focused existence, content to study what passed beneath his nose and ignoring all else.

When Molly hove into view, though, Favor lifted his eyes to the horizon. Her friends became his friends: people lacking his fatalism, and without his brutal images to wake then from sleep. Favor began to think that the world was a normal place. And after Laurel was born, he figured that life was really quite fine.

The drunk who veered into Molly’s car had walked away without a scratch, while Molly had lingered for two terrible days. Favor’s first urge was to teach that drunk about horrible pain, to reduce him to raw nerve ends before he killed him, as once they had reduced that Vietnamese scout who led them into ambush, one violent day down South in the Nam.

Favor nearly went over the brink again—a brink he had been fleeing in disgust all those days of his solitude.

But there was Laurel, the only restraint to hold him in such angry grief. So he swallowed his hate, though it nearly choked him; and he struggled doggedly to become all things to his child.

They owned some land deep in the East Texas woods, where they had planned to build a dream house. In the meantime, they rented a comfortable cottage. Favor stayed on there after Molly died. For weeks, he rocked Laurel to sleep at night while she clutched him in fear that he would suddenly leave. For months, she woke crying at night and Favor went bleary-eyed to work, to worry about Laurel all the day through.

Molly had kept a modest life insurance policy, which Favor banked and was loathe to touch. But after distressing months of Laurel’s emotional trauma, he quit his steady carpenter’s job to risk contracting on his own—and Laurel began to go to work with him. He packed their lunches, she took her dolls and playhouse, and after a week or so, the child learned to keep from underfoot. Those days when she could not go, Laurel stayed with Teacher Mary, a big loving black woman who adored her.

It became a manageable routine, but Favor was not satisfied with the seemingly transient life his daughter led. For the first time he began to think of big money, and what it might do for them.

In his plans, the first marijuana crop was to be a modest one: enough to augment his income and leave him more time with Laurel. More importantly, that first crop was to widen markets for his next crop, which he wanted to be a whopper. But during that first season, in the rich sandy loam of the piney woods, those forty or so female plants had grown to towering heights and—quite amazed—Favor harvested over seventy pounds, when he had planned on only twenty.

That rainy winter morning as Favor drove the old turnpike, to Dallas—having sadly left his daughter among strangers—he was beginning to question his trust in Harry Sykes.

They’d been high school pals in Fort Worth. Sykes had done such bigger deals than the fifty-five pounds for fifty thousand dollars that Favor had offered him. That was why he had not hesitated when Harry first made his proposition. Growing marijuana, Favor had found, was easy as could be. Hiding it was harder. Selling it for big money was hardest of all, and greatly increased the chances of being caught.

So let Harry sell the bulk of it, he’d reasoned. Hell, Favor could trust him.

But when he drove to the quiet Dallas suburb, where his old chum lived—one day ahead of schedule—he noticed right away the small U-Haul truck that meant Harry Sykes was moving.

A low groan churned deep in Favor’s throat as, still a block from the house, he pulled his Blazer to the curb to stop. The cold gray rain had slacked to a drizzle that seemed to sluice down the gutters of Favor’s gullet to turn to slush in his gut.

He shut off the Blazer and reached under the seat for the magnum, to then stare at it as if he barely understood what the pistol was for. Angrily, he jammed it in his belt and zipped his leather coat, and clambered from the cab. He knew in his heart—if he was about to be ripped off—that the worst he could probably do was beat the hell out of Harry. A voice seemed to shout that he put the gun away, but Favor paid his conscience no mind.

It was a neighborhood of short streets and stunted trees, and all the houses seemed dark and cloistered against the cold. The door to Sykes’s was unlocked and Favor stepped into a drab and dingy cottage, totally bare but for the few boxes that remained.

Harry’s eyes bugged and his jaw dropped, and in those first moments of his stammering grope for composure, Favor recognized what had always lain just beneath the skin: Sykes’s utter disregard for anyone but himself.

I’ve come for my money, Harry.

A story began to spill forth, a staccato burst of words that had no meaning for Favor, though some bit of coherence emerged —ripped off, Favor, I swear! I was going to call, man, after I split. I knew you’d want to kill me. It wasn’t my fault, man! They burned me bad!

He was talking when Favor hit him. Sykes was about the same size, but he did not swing a hammer all day like Favor did, and he was no match. When he came off the floor, his nose dripping blood, Favor knocked him down again.

You’re lying, Harry. I want my money! The voice and the countenance were blistering hard. His pose was all malice. But inside Favor Rousseau squirmed a small boy who had never liked to hit—or be struck—and the man’s threatening pose was a learned facade. He‘d never thought of himself as a tough guy. It was as if, in training for the war, he’d learned to briefly fill another man’s suit.

You’re lying! he accused again, reaching to lift Sykes by his shirt, his ears filled with yammering protest. The screech and whine, prevented him from hearing as the door slid open behind him, and creeping feet stepped inside.

Favor was clouted suddenly aside the head, and he tumbled in a daze into the wall. The lights flicked out, flicked on, seemed to flutter. Through a fog he heard hard-edged laughter and saw the blur of two huge figures, then the blur of a booted foot swinging into his ribs.

Favor’s throat closed in pain as he was lifted free of the floor, a bile-gagged throat, hard-lumped valve, that let air neither in nor out. Choking, crashing on the floor again, he spat the bile and fought to gulp air that burned like acid in his lungs.

The laughter was shards in his eardrums.

Who’s the punk, Sykes? a graveled voice growled.

It’s him, man! The dude who grew the pot.

Well now. He must be pissed at you, Harry.

Did you bring my money?

Favor’s eyes were regaining focus. Dimly, he saw a fat yellow envelope dropped on the rug where Sykes still sat, bloody-faced.

Remember, weasel, we’re paying you off because you promised us some more action. It was the other voice, not as graveled but heavier with threat. You come through for us, Harry, or you’re hamburger.

When Favor managed to turn his head, still sucking air, he glimpsed two very large man, rock featured and coarsely haired, as wide as a doorway. They were too much alike not to be brothers. Favor struggled to lift his head from the floor, but only gagged from the effort.

Grab your gear and get out, one of them said to Harry. I’ll be sure to leave your buddy with the right impression.

Favor had lain once on the perimeter of a firebase, stunned from concussion, the bunker blown apart and his rifle just beyond reach. He could not move—could not will his hands toward the rifle—until he saw the little brown soldiers creeping across the sand. And then his hands had moved of their own will, just as they seemed to move that day in Dallas when Favor saw the sap come out of the big man’s pocket.

His hands clawed beneath his coat for the magnum, yanked it out desperately as the man stepped toward him. There was an explosion and the man screamed as the bullet took him in the shoulder and spun him around. Blood seemed to mist on the air as a crimson-bearded hole was punched through a sheet-rocked wall. The pungency of gunpowder was like cold water on Favor’ face, and he scrambled painfully to his feet while Harry Sykes turned ghostly white and the other big man went sallow and wide-eyed as be carefully raised his hands.

Everything seemed frozen, that appropriately balanced moment when the rest of creation seemed only a pivot, only a fragile stage, for the act of fear you have contrived.

Favor’s mind began to rush. He had to get out. When he moved, that moment of balance was lost. As he stepped to Sykes to fetch the envelope, his eyes lost focus and the big man saw it. He started to leap. The magnum boomed. A bullet shaved the man’s ear and he yelped. He brought away blood-dabbed fingers.

I meant that for your ugly face, Favor wheezed. Get on your belly! Now, goddamnit!

The man dropped, cursing him, while his partner groaned and bled on the carpet.

We’ll get you! You shot my brother you sonuvabitch and now you can’t run far enough!

Favor snatched the heavy envelope and began to crawfish toward the door. Harry Sykes had his face on the floor, his arms clutched over his head, and he was trembling like a sick pup. The other man’s face was dark and mean, and he glared hatred.

We’ll get you, sucker! You’re dead meat! You hear me! YOU’RE A DEAD MOTHERFUCKER!

Favor turned and ran out the door, his ribs throbbing, the screaming threats rebounding in his skull. It was pouring rain. He gasped as he ran, glanced back but saw no one come from the house. His head was soaked when he reached the Blazer and he wretched and spat bile and breakfast, then clambered is the cab. Shivering but wide awake, alert enough finally to be afraid, he dug for his keys and began to panic, his glance darting down the street as his he fumbled the keys to the ignition.

The Blazer rumbled reassuringly.

Oh Molly! Molly! What have I done!

The panic was building in him. He had to get Laurel and get the hell away!

Wild-eyed, Favor put the Blazer in gear and turned a vicious u-turn, tires-squealing as he sped down the rain-slicked street.

They were the Kiley brothers, Lyle and Leroy, and they were a definite social hazard. The one who took the slug, Leroy the older, had killed two men, one with a knife, the other with a sap. But the one time he went to prison was for a burglary he’d bungled. Lyle the younger was the one who shouted the threats, and had his ear singed by the bullet. He had never killed a man, but he had beaten a few almost to death and he was eager to equal his brother.

They were accustomed to blood and pain. That rainy day, after Lyle put more lumps on Harry Sykes’s head, the Kileys looked up a medic they knew, one who patched holes in criminal bodies. Within hours, Leroy was patched and taped and doped and disinfected, while the pain brought the glass-edged meanness out.

Where the hell is that? Leroy growled, wincing as the four-eyed medic eased a sling around his left arm. Who the hell ever heard of a place called that!

It ain’t on the map, Leroy. But I know it’s somewhere in East Texas.

Eleeshun Fields, for chrissake!

The medic blinked, owl-eyed, and snapped his fingers. The Elysian Fields! Greek mythology!

Sounds like friggin’ fairyland! Leroy spat.

I passed it going to the races in Shreveport, the medic told them. "Just off the highway, I think.

Lyle nodded with a twisted, crooked toothed smile. We got him now, Leroy.

You’re a dickhead, Lyle! If you’d packed a piece like I told you, we’d have the scumbag right now! You hear! He’d be right there at my feet and I’d be stomping his puss! Like I ought to stomp on you! Next time I tell you to pack, you’d goddamned well better pack!

Sure, Leroy. Okay. Lyle curled a little on himself, in submission, just the slightest slouch of his shoulders but the medic noticed and grinned while he worked.

What else did you learn from that weasel, Sykes?

About what?

You dickhead! About that favor flavor saver whatever his goddamned name is!

He’s got a little girl. He’s raising her by hisself.

She’s an orphan! You hear me! The kid is a goddamned orphan! Lyle nodded intensely, his brow furrowed as one ham-like fist slammed the flat of a hand. Let me take him for you, Leroy.

You’ll hold my fucking hat, and that’s all! You understand?

Sure, Leroy. But I can hurt the punk before you take him out,

Leroy looked levelly at his kid brother, his expression softening to something akin to fondness. Yeah, maybe I’ll let you. I’m sorry I called you a dickhead, Lyle. My shoulder hurts bad.

That’s okay, man. When we catch the punk what shot you, you’ll feel a lot better.

Leroy only nodded and closed his eyes, the sweet vision of that mayhem already flooding his mind.

Nobody messed with the Kiley brothers.

Favor drove, first to the motel, his eyes in the rearview mirror more than on the road. Fort Worth was a fast forty minute drive, and he had calmed some by the time he arrived.

He hurriedly threw their clothes into suitcases, wincing as the sudden motions nagged his sore ribs. Favor knew the heavy flyer’s jacket had saved the ribs from breaking, but the knowing didn’t ease the pain. His pistol lay, reloaded, on the bed beside the envelope. Not until the suitcases were packed did Favor count the money.

There was ten thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills, and Harry was supposed to find them another sucker. Favor smirked bitterly in the motel mirror, as if staring through himself. Harry wouldn’t have been paid off a second time. He was just too ripe a plum.

He thought furiously as he paced. Who the hell are those apes? And what do they know about me? Damn you, Harry Sykes! You’ll tell them everything you know!

Later, as he raced and wove through traffic, to get to Laurel, his mind leap-frogged among his options—rejecting one, then another until enough had fallen into place to form a plan. At least, the beginning of a plan.

He doubted that the man he shot would be immobilized for very long. He looked far too strong. The bullet might not have struck bone and, besides, it was not a magnum round but a soft-nosed .38. And Favor remembered that, as he was retreating out the door, the wounded man had sat up with a painful, moaning curse... Jesus, what pair! Redneck Neanderthals. And they know where I live. They know where Laurel lives!

Perhaps they would leave him alone. Favor grabbed at that notion. After all, he’d shown them that he could hurt them. He wasn’t a plum like Harry. And how much money had they already stolen? The motas—the flowering buds—that Favor had grown were thick as a man’s wrist, and they were cut and packaged in dazzling two foot lengths. They could easily sell for more than the thousand a pound that Favor thought was fair.

They might have made, sixty, seventy thou, Favor reasoned, not counting what they paid to Harry... Maybe they’ll be content with that.

But something within him denied it. Favor had seen their kind of fanaticism, and it scared him.

Right away, Laurel sensed that something was wrong—she had learned to read her father’s face—but Favor lied and faked responses, and then he told her they had to leave town.

She whined and pouted. At the daycare center a lady had told her that, indeed, Sesame Place was open. So Laurel accused him and, grumpy and in a stew for being left with strangers, she would not be content. Traffic was heavy and unusually fierce. He grew aggravated at the delays and, at the highpoint of Laurel’s complaint, he shouted at her and then felt like a worm.

Laurel sobbed and turned her face away.

Favor plowed on through the traffic.

He vaguely recalled that, as he had fled Harry’s, there was a big black pickup parked in the drive. It was brightly chromed and hog-tired and it looked fast. Favor kept searching for it and, going through Dallas again, heading east, Favor constantly glanced around. But beyond Fair Park the traffic slackened and he cruised at sixty with a good field of fire, thinking caustically, welcome back to the war, marine.

The brothers, or one of them, might be waiting anywhere along the road. The thought would not leave his mind. He cursed himself and bit his tongue.

The rain began again.

Laurel was fast asleep as a chill winter’s evening fell sighing into the pines, and Favor turned off the freeway toward home. In his state of mind, the off-ramp seamed a likely ambush zone, so he kept the pistol tucked gingerly beneath a leg. But there was no sign of a black pickup. A few lonely miles south, along the forest bordered road, Favor began to relax. These were deep woods criss-crossed by a score of nameless dirt lanes, and strangers would be slow to find him. They would be safe, at least through the night.

Laurel had learned to sleep with her seat belt fastened. Her torso twisted awkwardly as she leaned against the door, Favor’s coat for a pillow. He nudged her awake and talked to her sweetly. He was sorry he’d been a grump. He wouldn’t be a grump again for a whole week. She looked at him sleepily, in the dimness of the cab, and she smiled like Molly.

Do you promise, Papa?

Well, I promise to try very hard... It should be easy, because starting right now we’re going to have a whole lot of fun.

That news perked her up. She cocked her pretty head and her eyes widened, shining moistly in the glare of the dash light. What kind of fun?

Well, we’re going on a long vacation, honey. In fact, when we get home, you’ll have to help pack. You’re a big girl and you can pack your own things. And your dolls, too. We can’t leave your dolls if we’re going on vacation, now can we?

Nooo, she shook her head. I like going places with you, Papa. Maybe we can go someplace where the sun is shining, and there’s lots of things to do!

That’s right, Laurel. I know just the place. And girl, will you love it!

She giggled while she listened as her father made it sound like a fairytale adventure to a place where the winter was short and spring came soon, to a land of parks and swimming holes and picnics in the flowers. She did not know what the hill country meant, but it sounded swell because papa would stay with her all the time and they would have great fun.

And thinking desperately, Favor was sure they could find a quiet place for themselves, near a small town deep in the hills, where he could see someone coming for a long, long way. And they could hide. And Laurel would be safe.

CHAPTER TWO

Later that very same evening, far to the southwest, Homer Steadham snored and stirred in a creaky brass bed. What woke him finally was the rumble of thunder as the wind moaned round the corners of the old house. The wee morning sky flickered faintly. Homer felt the air change as the low pressure moved across the ridgeline, and it roused him. When he sat up the bed squeaked, as did many things in the house, and his tailbone barked at him. Thunder rumbled again deeper and nearer, and through the gap in a window Homer could smell the rain. Still more rain, and already many hill country rivers were swollen.

Sarah stirred beside him. Homer watched her thoughtfully as he dressed, the flickering lightning showing her softly obscure, old and then young again, the prettiest girl in Kerr County. He sighed and picked up his boots as he tip-toed from the room.

In the hallway, past the rooms that once were his children’s, there was a faint light on the landing at the head of the stairs. Homer sat on the top step to pull on his boots. When he stood, he was facing the displays framed on the wall. He looked at the square-jawed young man who stared at him from the picture, then