saw Granddad avert his eyes to toy with his stick and pocketknife as she climbed the steps, purse in hand.
“What’s wrong?” she asked the old man, placing an affectionate hand on his shoulder.
He shrugged, his balding silvery head bent. He was a tall man, very thin and stooped since his heart attack, and brown from years of outside work. He had age marks on the backs of his long-fingered hands and wrinkles in his face that looked like road ruts in the rain. He was sixty-six now, but he looked much older. His life had been a hard one. He and Becky’s grandmother had lost two children in a flood and one to pneumonia. Only Becky’s father, Scott, of all their four children, had survived to adulthood, and Scott had been a source of constant trouble to everybody. Including his wife. It said on the death certificate that Becky, Mack, and Clay’s mother, Henrietta, had died of pneumonia. But Becky was sure that she had simply given up. The responsibility for three children and a sick father, added to her own poor health and Scott’s ceaseless gambling and womanizing, had broken her spirit.
“Clay’s gone off with those Harris kids,” her grandfather said finally.
“Son and Bubba?” she sighed. They had given names, but like many Southern boys, they had nicknames that had little to do with their Christian appelations. The name Bubba was common, like Son and Buster and Billy-Bob and Tub. Becky didn’t even know their given names, because nobody used them. The Harris boys were in their late teens and they both had drivers’ licenses. In their case, it was more like a license to kill. Both brothers were drug users and she’d heard rumors that Son was a pusher. He drove a big blue Corvette and always had money. He’d quit school at sixteen. Becky didn’t like either one of the boys and she’d told Clay as much. But apparently he wasn’t taking any advice from his big sister if he was out with the scalawags.
“I don’t know what to do,” Granger Cullen said quietly. “I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. He told me he was old enough to make his own decisions, and that you and I had no rights over him. He cussed me. Imagine that, a seventeen-year-old boy cussing his own grandfather?”
“That doesn’t sound like Clay,” she replied. “It’s only since Christmas that he’s been so unruly. Since he started hanging around with the Harris boys, really.”
“He didn’t go to school today,” her grandfather added. “He hasn’t gone for two days. The school called and wanted to know where he was. His teacher called, too. She says his grades are low enough to fail him. He won’t graduate if he can’t pull them up. Then where’ll he be? Just like Scott,” he said heavily. “Another Cullen gone bad.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Rebecca sat down heavily on the porch steps, letting the wind brush her cheeks. She closed her eyes. From bad to worse, didn’t the saying go?
Clay had always been a good boy, trying to help with the chores and look out for Mack, his younger brother. But in the past few months, he’d begun to change. His grades had dropped. He had become moody and withdrawn. He stayed out late and sometimes couldn’t get up to go to school at all. His eyes were bloodshot and he’d come in once giggling like a little girl over nothing at all—symptoms, Becky was to learn, of cocaine use. She’d never seen Clay actually use drugs, but she was certain that he was smoking pot, because she’d smelled it on his clothes and in his room. He’d denied it and she could never find any evidence. He was too careful.
Lately, he’d begun to resent her interference in his life more and more. She was only his sister, he’d said just two nights ago. She had no real authority over him, and she wasn’t going to tell him what to do anymore. He was tired of living like a poor kid and never having money to spend, like the Harris boys. He was going to make himself a place in the world, and she could go to hell.
Becky hadn’t told Granddad. It was hard enough trying to excuse Clay’s bad behavior and frequent absences. She could only hope that he wasn’t headed toward addiction. There were places that treated that kind of thing, but they were for rich people. The best she could hope for, for her brother, would be some sort of state-supported rehabilitation center, and Granddad wouldn’t agree to that even if Clay would. Granddad wanted nothing that even looked like charity. He was too proud.
So here they were, Becky thought, staring out over the land that had been in her family for over a hundred years, hopelessly in debt, and with Clay headed for trouble. They said that even an alcoholic couldn’t be helped unless he realized he had a problem. Clay didn’t. It was not the best ending to what had started off as a perfectly terrible day anyway.
Chapter Two
Becky changed into jeans and a red pullover sweater and gathered her long hair into a ponytail to cook supper. While she fried chicken to go with the mashed potatoes and home-canned green beans, she baked biscuits in the old oven. Maybe she could straighten Clay out, but she didn’t have a clue as to how. Talking wasn’t going to do the job. She’d tried that herself. Clay either walked away and refused to listen, or flew off the handle and started cursing. And to make matters worse, lately she’d noticed bills missing from the jar containing her egg money. She was almost certain that Clay was taking them, but how could she ask her own brother if he was stealing from her?
In the end, she’d taken the remaining money out of the jar and put it in the bank. She hadn’t left anything around that could be sold or pawned for easy cash. Becky felt like a criminal, which added to her guilt about resenting her responsibility for her family.
There was no one she could talk to about her problems except Maggie, and she hated to bother the older woman with her woes. All her longtime girlfriends were married or out on their own in other cities. It would have helped if she’d only had that. She couldn’t talk to Granddad. His health was precarious enough already, without taking on Clay. So she’d told Granddad that she’d handle it. Maybe she could talk to Mr. Malcolm at work and have him advise her. He was the only person outside her family who might do that.
She put the food on the table and called Mack and her grandfather. He said grace and they ate as they listened to Mack’s complaints about math and teachers and school in general.
“I won’t learn math,” Mack promised her, staring at her with hazel eyes just a shade lighter than her own. His hair was much lighter, almost blond. He was tall for a ten-year-old, and getting taller by the day.
“Yes, you will,” Becky told him. “You’ll have to help keep the books one of these days. I won’t last forever.”
“Here, you stop talking like that,” Granddad said sharply. “You’re too young to talk that way. Although,” he sighed, staring down at his mashed potatoes, “I reckon you feel like running away from time to time. What with all of us to look after...”
“You stop that,” Becky muttered, glaring at him. “I love you or I wouldn’t stay. Eat your mashed potatoes. I made a cherry pie for dessert.”
“Wow! My favorite!” Mack grinned.
“And you can have all you want. After you do your math and I check it,” she added with an equally wide grin.
Mack made a terrible face and propped his chin in his hands. “I shoulda gone with Clay. He said I could.”
“If you ever go with Clay, I’ll take away your basketball and hoop,” she threatened, using the only weapon she had.
He actually paled. Basketball was his life. “Come on, Becky, I was just kidding!”
“I hope so,” she said. “Clay is keeping
