Here I Am: the Abraham Legacy: A Novel About Letting Go

By Betty Pack

Military novels tend to focus more closely on the soldier’s experience than those of the family and friends left at home. In this contemplative book, Pack sheds light on those often-forgotten stories, writing about several people who are parents and relatives of young men at war. Set in a Texas-Mexico border town at the beginning of the Gulf War, book will hit home for any military family member.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481727969

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Here I Am:

the Abraham Legacy

A NOVEL ABOUT LETTING GO

Betty Pack

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© 2013 Betty Pack. All rights reserved.

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 8/7/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-2794-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-2795-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-2796-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013904783

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

The Legacy of Abraham

The Characters: Who’s Who in

Here I Am: the Abraham Legacy

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Two

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Part Three

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Meet the Author

IN DEEPEST APPRECIATION and eternal thanks to

William Crook, my husband, for his many hours, and years,

of patience and support while I wrote HERE I AM.

Many thanks to my daughter, Erin Robinson, to my

sons Patrick Marshall and LTC Jeep Marshall, U.S.

Army (RET) and to Lori Griffin, artist and friend.

Also, muchas gracias to Lily Zapata Brinkmann,

my word-guide into the Spanish language.

The Legacy of Abraham

"… God tested Abraham, and said to him: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am.

He said to him: Take thy only begotten son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and go into the land of vision: and there thou shalt offer him for a holocaust upon one of the mountains which I will shew thee.

… And they came to the place which God had shewn him, where he built an altar, and laid the wood in order upon it: and when he had bound Isaac his son, he laid him on the altar upon the pile of wood.

And he put forth his hand and took the sword, to sacrifice his son.

And behold an angel of the Lord from heaven called to him, saying: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am.

And he said to him: Lay not thy hand upon the boy, neither do any thing to him: now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy only begotton son…"

And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, saying: By my own self have I sworn, saith the Lord: because thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake: I will bless thee, and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is by the sea shore: thy seed shall possess the gates of their enemies. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice…

Genesis 22: 1-2; Genesis 22: 9-12; Genesis 22: 15-18

The Douay Bible translation of the Latin Vulgate, New York, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1914

The Characters: Who’s Who in

Here I Am: the Abraham Legacy

The Drahomirs—Grace Faith Missy Drahomir Hernandez, 40, social worker for Catholic Charities’ Padilla House in Saverne, Texas, and mother of Kevin; Grace’s father Joe Drahomir, brother Jerry, his pregnant wife Janet, their daughter Margaret, 15, twin 12-year-old sons Peter and Paul—Rip and Snort—and Grace’s now deceased mother Margie Scodopole Drahomir; young Margaret’s friend from school Lexi Habden-Aqueel

The Hernandezes—Gloria Hernandez, her now deceased grandson—and Grace’s late husband—Lt. H.E. Hernandez, Gloria’s great grandson—and Grace’s son—Lt. Kevin Drahomir Hernandez; Gloria’s brother-in-law George "weird Uncle Jorge" Gutierrez; Alec Hernandez, a cousin

Halvard Dahl—Grace’s fiancé, Viet Nam vet, retired police officer, a biker

Katie Hand—homeless former city librarian, her daughter Marylil, Katie’s son/grandson Major LeVon Hand, Air Force pilot, LeVon’s girlfriend Dani and her parents Patrick and Alice Tangineme, filmmakers and humanities professors from Cameroon

Padilla House workers—Charlie Kolak, director, Lucha Costello, secretary, Pete Gionotti, secretary; social workers Marynail Tollette, Renee Hillcross, Pat Maskill, Golden Annie Wilcox

Margarito Macias Garcia—OIC of Los Aztecas, former employee at Padilla House, Grace’s first child client 17 years ago; semi-faithful admirer of Charlie Kolak, and Grace Hernandez

Kristan Vargas—gang girl, 15, victim of rape and sexual abuse by Mexican gang members, accuser of a local priest, Grace’s client at Padilla House; Kristan’s mother Trini Segura, Kristan’s boyfriend Angel Luis the Cutter Flores

The Caisleys—Dr. Chap Caisley and his unpopular socialite wife Wendy Caisley, their sons Robson and Godford, combat medic, and a Young Blonde Woman, Godford’s ex-girlfriend

Linda Middletown—longtime counselor at Saverne High School

The Escobars—Ruben Junie Escobar, Jr., Viet Nam vet, his parents, his son Matthew Escobar, Air Force reservist; and Matt’s mother—Junie’s first ex-wife—Bernadette Benavides Hastings

The Martinezes (cousins to the Hernandezes)—Roland Martinez, Hal Dahl’s friend since Viet Nan, assistant elementary principal, his wife BeBe, their 15-year-old daughter Elvie, a ranchera singer

Sheriff John Mimms—Mimosa County’s elderly crime fighter, organizer of a volunteer posse of escorts to protect Grace Hernandez, 24-hours-a-day, after Kristan Vargas delivers threats on Grace’s life by unknown local gangs and by mafia men from across the Mexican border

The Roadrunners—a team of four men working in Kuwait, including Hal Dahl, held hostage in Baghdad in late 1990: Ken the great I am Gogelis, Ollie Lake and Ed-Bob Trahan. Their three Iraqi guards: Muggsy, Buggsy and Cheeseburger-Cheeseburger Hareem (John B.) Farran

Red Clay—well-known hubba-hubba rancher and landowner, one of Grace’s posse escorts, father of a Marine involved in Operation Desert Shield; Emma Kramer, his secretary, cook, housekeeper

The clergy—Father Mario Di Paulo, pastor of Christ the King, retired Father Pat—Father Spittuie—Rhumsley, mustachioed Bishop Salvador Uretthera, former military chaplain Father Frank Flanders, and Rev. Taddy McDaniels of Zorn Street Baptist Church

The Reynas—Dr. Tony Reyna, and Letty, parents to Heather, 14, who accuses Casey Von Ravensberg of sexual assault, boasts to classmates of an older boyfriend from Mexico

The Von Ravensbergs—Casey, construction manager and volunteer youth choir director and Bitsy, his pregnant wife, high school teacher harassed by male student from Mexico

Tanya Cruz—in Georgia, the wife of Rico Cruz, 1st Sgt to Lt. Kevin Hernandez, Grace’s son

Here I Am:

The Abraham Legacy

Part One

Chapter One

…when my ride on Earth is done, I’ll take my chance with the Holy One…

Old Texas, the Cowman’s Lament, lyrics by unknown author, 1850s

Saverne, Texas

January 1950

The woman screamed, her voice ripping through the maternity ward, barreling through glass windows, where it hovered over the newborn nursery, sinking into tiny hearts, tiny ears, "You better name it Grace or I’m not taking the damn thing home with me, ever."

Nurses came running. The woman’s husband, clutching her shoulders, begged in a low growl, Margie, Margie, calm down. It’s just a name. We can call the baby Grace. I only mentioned Faith ‘cause one time you said you liked it. Faith? Grace? It’s not a big deal. But to the pale blonde only daughter of U.S. District Judge Anton Skocdople, he being a popular speaker and landowner in this particular Tri-County area of South Texas, it was a big deal. It was colossal. She had to have this, the name she wanted, proof that her husband stood with her. Ooo, she wished she had a sharp weapon to flail, to show them all how much they had hurt her. She had to endure so much stuff she absolutely hated. Being pregnant all the time, having a second baby while the first one still refused to use the potty chair. Having to agree to let her mother-in-law live with her.

Gracias a Dios—and thanks to a hypodermic dripping with soothing drugs—Margie was able to sleep and when she woke, softened, her husband, Joe Drahomir, one of Saverne’s favorite good guys, had a plan he thought she might like. Hey, they could call the baby Grace Faith or Faith Grace. The new dad, son of a Bohemian cotton farmer, had been a Marine—almost ten years ago now—on Guadalcanal, then had attended Tulane on the GI Bill. A worker, Joe built, largely by hand, a two-story ranch house for his little family and he had an expanding cattle business—on land belonging to his wife. Tough, muscular, enormous in build, he felt like bustin’ into a tap-dance when Margie accepted his idea. Their daughter would have two first names. As Margie observed, half the people in Saverne have two first names: Bishop Bobby Dan Padilla, Jo Lynn Urban, De Ann Garcia, Wayne John Delgado, that stupid flirt Golden Annie Wilcox, Bobby Warren (BW) Dalton and his Dalton Automotive Repair, and of course Doctor Chastity Renee Dalton, BW’s bratty daughter, a pediatric dentist, whatever that meant, as well as several of the town’s gamblers, prostitutes, drug dealers, crooks and jailbirds. Whatever. She no longer gave a hoot.

They baptized her Grace Faith Drahomir, but even before they carted the ten-day-old to the door of Christ the King Catholic church to be anointed with holy chrism and washed free of the sin of Adam and Eve, Margie, wounded by various relational disloyalties and all the hoop-la over Grace Faith, changed her mind. She said they should call it, the baby, her daughter, Missy, just plain Missy. It can be her house name, her home name.

At home, at the house, a battle brewed. Margie, tired and grumpy, feeling fat in that first month post-partum, needing a haircut—but who cared about her needs?—insisted that her son Jerry, age three, help feed the baby. All he had to do was keep the baby’s bottle propped at the appropriate angle wherever Margie stashed her. Anita Drahomir, Joe’s mother, the mother-in-law who lived with them until she died when Grace Faith was six, watched and plotted an inoffensive offer to help. Margie declined, "No. I know what’s best. Jerry is big enough. I can’t trust you. You can’t even remember her name. You keep callin’ her Mickey. It’s Missy, and besides, I don’t like how you’re always tryin’ to nuzzle her."

"Nuzzle her? Anita unfolded her arthritic body, stood at almost her original six foot one-half inch height, looking down at her petite daughter-in-law. From this day, as long as I’m alive, I—and I alone—will feed, bathe, dress and nuzzle this baby and you best stay out of my way or I will knock you a-windin’ and I hope you understand that, Margaret Skocdople."

"Not Scok-dople, Margie hissed. It’s Sco. Dope. Oh-lee. She felt weak, ready to cry. But OK." And so Anita became baby Grace’s guardian angel, toddler Grace’s avenging protector, three-year-old Grace’s first teacher and companion-at-play. When Grace was four and Margie became pregnant again, Anita persuaded her son Joe to hire someone to help with the housework. Joe brought home a young Mexican girl, Lucy, who spoke little English—but soon had the kids chattering in baby talk Spanish. She was sturdy, a serious girl who shared a special talent with Margie: yard work, turning the soil, growing vegetables, and flowers for the table, watering fruit trees. Sunny days, while the mother-to-be and Lucy labored side-by-side digging and planting, grandma Anita, a Depression Era farmwife, now loving to wear nail polish and her Mother’s Day rings, camped on the porch or stayed inside near the window fan, keeping an eye on her grandchildren, braiding Missy’s hair, playing trucks with Jerry, reading them their Little Golden Books, Pat the Bunny, and Cat in the Hat, and Hop on Pop.

When their new sibling, tiny Pauline, died suddenly and Lucy left soon after, five-year-old Grace became her grandmother’s comadre, co-parenting Jerry and sometimes even Margie, who, lacking control, remained in need of constant encouragement. Like stage directors, Anita and Grace arranged entrances and exits and worked openly to isolate Margie in both her sudden rages and nightly tirades against Joe. A year later, wilting externally from interior cancer, Anita lived her final weeks at home cared for by off-duty nurses and, yes, by Margie, who sat, waiting with her mother-in-law for the daily return of Missy, their first-grader. Margie, tears streaming down her face, would lead them in the rosary, at times allowing Missy to snooze on the bed next to her dying grandma. Other times, Missy pulled her own tiny rocking chair close to her mom because, at six, she was too big to sit on her lap.

Growing up in Saverne, a dusty tree-shaded Texas town nor far from the border with Mexico, Grace knew the story behind her name—one parent wanted Grace, the other wanted Faith—but from an early age, she had an inkling there was more to it. For one thing, adults outside her blood family, slow-speakers in a big hurry, didn’t call her Missy, or Honey, Gal or Sweetheart as they would other children, but would pause, taking time to greet her as if she were a county official, carefully, deliberately, enunciating both her names. If they intended it as a blow against mean mothers in general—or poor Margie in particular—no one in Saverne was cruel enough to hint to Grace about the name-the-baby scene at the hospital, yet most denizens remain available—to this day, after more than 40 years—to dissect, over a cup of coffee, the mother who threatened to abandon her baby over a name.

In high school, after reading a goodly portion of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Grace Faith joked, "Hey, y’all, my name is my albatross. Hanging around my neck? No one laughed but heads turned toward her. She blushed with shame. They knew something. Sara Marie Hartz, the smartest girl in class, blurted out, Psychological guilt." Philosophical, free-floating guilt, fake guilt, real guilt, sorrowful and suffering, beautifully absolved in the sacrament of penance—the girls at St. Maria Goretti’s knew about guilt. Their high school was named for a presumably guilt-free eleven-year-old martyr of the church, a saint who died of bloody wounds rather than submit to an attacker’s sexual advances and attempt at rape. Grace’s friends and classmates, unsure if their own degree of purity would ever equal that of Maria Goretti, recognized virginity as a valuable asset, moral scrupulosity as an acceptable affliction, and episodic tragedy, past and future, as an inevitable element of being alive.

When Grace’s alter ego and second-cousin Patty Hill and her social advisor, the high-spirited glittery flamenco dancer, Rochelle Chiquita Banana Rojas, in a palsy-walsy attempt to refine Grace’s image, as girls are wont to do for one another, waged a campaign at Maria Goretti’s to nickname her Gee Fay, the all-girl student body seemed to smile faintly in unison. No chance. Why waste a cute name like Gee Fay on that little freshman nut Grace Faith Drahomir? Bad timing. The Gee Fay campaign began in the exact same November week that the all-female singing group Rumblesilk’s recording of Dreamy One hit number one on the pop chart. The apparently tragic tune fell dominant on the minds and lips of young people, especially Mademoiselles in dusty small towns on the Texas border. So obsessed were the damsels at SMGHS with the pathos of the fictitious My friend and her stunning loss of Ronnie, the erstwhile dreamy one, that etiquette, the practice of charity, and the power of habit faded. For days, in hallways during change of classes when talking was not allowed, the girls—ignoring exasperated hall monitors who silently pleaded silence—broke out in song, some chanting the high-pitched plaint of the piece, others reciting lines from across, and down, the hall:

"…my friend says Ronnie is a dreamy guy

went down put-up his hand at th’ recruiting pla-ce

and told those men count me-in; an’ he said, I will

I will I will I will I will I will I will I will I wi-ll

Ronnie took her to their speci-al place

she promised: write send-pictures; he said I will

One day that letter came, came from her dreamy guy

it said Ronnie was leaving for a foreign place

that he was needed in Japan

JAPAN JAPAN JAPAN JAPAN JAPAN

My friend says Ronnie was a dreamy guy

he saw Mount Fuji and wrote, and drew, but then—

Out on the firing range there was an acci-dent

Now she wears her party dress and holds her Ronnie’s face

My friend says Mother and Daddy can you come here?

Tonight is prom and will you take our photogr-aph?

Mother hides her tears an’ Daddy says, you know: I will

They forgot Gee Fay, but that was fine with Grace. She remained Missy at home and Grace Faith at school where the nuns sometimes chatted with her about entering the convent, spending life as a teacher, an idea not unpleasant to Grace. She liked the nuns. She loved their school.

Sadly, at seventeen, Grace was not a candidate for the sisterhood, but a stunned, reluctant, teary-faced bride. Withdrawn from St. Maria Goretti’s, wearing the white sailor dress she had planned to wear under her graduation gown—the sailor dress still mercifully loose a bit at the waist—she exchanged on her May wedding day not golden rings of true love but surnames, her South Texas Moravian-Slavic unutterable Drahomir (but simply said as Dra-Ho-Mir) for Espana’s equivalent of Jones, via Mexico: She became Grace Faith Hernandez.

Those Spanish people are pissed up to their gills, Margie Drahomir warned her daughter the afternoon of the morning Grace became yet another of Eve’s numberless daughters to forever be known as Mrs. Hernandez. You better be careful. Don’t get too thick with them. And—don’t think you’re going to stay here. The words fell, meaningless sounds on Grace’s ears because, over the years of her children’s youth, as Margie honed her madness, the youngsters learned a thing or two about how to shield themselves from her rants, her attacks of bitterness: Grace and Jerry laughed at her, mimicked her. Directed by Jerry, acted out by Missy, they ridiculed her, finally developing a risky duck-and-run routine for when Margie might stop yelling, go silent, and take out after one of them with her fists that worked like this: Mom, Mom, Mom, one child would shout, a car’s pullin’ up out front. Somebody’s at the door. The other child then would began knocking, giggling, scared to death, calling out, Come in, come on in. They added a variation bound to distract her in case their mother was choking someone or twisting arms: M-m-mom, a fence is down—cows are in your flower beds.

Screeching on Missy’s wedding day that her daughter had chosen to blacken her soul, had gotten herself pregnant out-of-wedlock, Margie took a breath and told her, "You’ll see, a little wedding doesn’t make much difference. Everyone will look at you from now on and blame no one but you. And that Mexican boy, your husband? He doesn’t want you tagging along. He’s already on the road back to college, then he’s off to the military—all this summer in North Carolina. By himself. And, she announced again, you’re not staying here, Miss Priss."

Grace, understanding now, turned to her dad. Joe seldom showed much emotion, yet this day he faced his daughter, red-eyed. Daddy, where will I go? No answer. Grace was losing her voice. She tried again—W-where will I go?—her mother telling her: "You will live with the Mexicans, with Mrs. Hernandez. The only one’ll take you."

"Daddy, no, she screamed, not her. She’ll kill me."

Don’t act stupid, Margie said as she left the room. "Are you coming, Joe? I want to lie down. Joe?"

Without a word, he walked out of the house, slamming the door so hard that pictures on the wall slid sideways and Grace knew she was alone. She and her baby were alone.

On that same Saturday afternoon, on the other side of Saverne, Gloria Hernandez, the groom’s ebullient abuela—the grandmother of Grace’s equally reluctant, angry-eyed husband—was preparing her house, with the help of her 62-year-old twin Rebecca, making room, cooking a slow pot of frijoles, and embarrassed to tears to have to explain to the woman she had shared secrets with all her life.

Sure, Becca, I know you heard me say bad things about that girl, but not no more. When they said they were throwing her, I said OK, she’s coming here. Those people, Mamma, make me feel ashame to even be Catholic. I tell you, I don’t understand those white people. How can they throw their girl like old paper in the trash? Mexicans would never do that. Thanks to my good God.

Before bedtime on her wedding day, Grace, silent, watchful, was tucked away in Gloria’s asbestos-sided house, dropped off by Joe, who would spend that summer sleeping in a hot, airless outbuilding next to the barn on property left to him by his own father. His wife Margie seldom, if ever again, leaving her bedroom.

Shortly after Grace’s eighteenth birthday, she was at home with Gloria—kissing and tickling the baby toes of Kevin, her infant son, singing, "…Mommy’s gonna get this little baby toe, yes I yam, yes I yam…"—when two men in identical green jackets came to the door. Grace, holding her squirming baby, and Gloria, inviting the men inside, offering coffee, dusting off a place for them to sit, already knowing, heard the men tell them Lieutenant H.E. Hernandez had been killed in an accident near Cam Ranh Bay in Viet Nam. Despite herself, Gloria Hernandez slid to the floor, beginning a period of grief that would last until the day of her own death. Grace, an instant widow, yet with some government benefits, grieved, but only for days. Still, she lived with the shock. War. The Tet Offensive, horrible images on the news. Refusing to give in to her parents’ request that she, free now of her marriage, return home, Grace chose Gloria, Gloria’s house, Gloria’s wild laugher and fuzzy logic. She and young Kevin lived on with her, like volunteer greens in a garden plot, like weeds, yet perennially welcomed—treasured, nurtured—by Gloria, each one blossoming, undeterred by the sorrow and loss underfoot, a trifecta of growth—seedling, thicket, forest.

January 1990

Gracie zigzagged between two cultures, two families, her own and Gloria’s: Hispanic, Mexican, warm, fun-loving, Spanish-speaking. She avoided opportunities to chitchat in Spanish and, after more than two decades of wearing a Hispanic name, still could find herself wide-eyed and gape-jawed at what was permitted by her Mexican family, and what was not. Her culture, her Czech, her Bohemian, family was predictable by contrast, understated. It she were to assign colors, the Mexican-American banner would be orange-red; the Czech, blue gray. She knew which stirred her soul, her imagination. The color she longed for from the very depths of her soul was not orange-red. Still, the two cultures shared common veins, the sturdiest one being la fe, duvera, the faith: Catholicism.

A social worker for Catholic Charities, she held the corner office upstairs at the Bishop Bobby Dan Padilla House, the old Phalsbourg mansion, a turn-of-the-century monstrosity donated hook-line-and-sinker in 1957 to the diocese of Mimosa, Hollister and Kelly Creek Counties. Slipping out of the ornate, two-ton double doors of the Padi House that January day, 1990, Grace stood, half-frozen, waiting for a re-hash of what had just happened. Had she been fired, or merely threatened? The day had been unfolding nicely, nicely enough, until Charlie Kolak, her whilom mentor and rather inept bossman, got his mitts on her. Now, in the shade of the building where she earned her living, she frowned, digging in her bag. She had forgotten her sunglasses, left the little bastards on her desk.

A sudden headache pounding her forehead didn’t keep her from seeing: Charlie hadn’t fired her. She hadn’t been let go, not exactly. He had begun their talk with the usual garbage about responsibility. Setting the right example. Consider your record. People look up to you, he said and began the litany of her public and her private misdeeds, his soliloquy ending when he told her to leave, go home, clean her house and end it with the one man she truly loved.

Grace glanced down the street. The sign atop Saverne’s Jeanne d’Arc Hotel—people called it the John Dark—blinked 01-08-90 and then 2:20 PM / 88 degrees. In winter. Yet she shivered in the outdoor temp of almost ninety degrees. Padilla House depended on window air-conditioning, desert units that clattered and hissed like nests of pubescent diamondbacks with two settings: freezing, and not working. Today was freezing. Today, after the bloodletting in Charlie’s office, the sympathetic reptile eyes of her female co-workers had followed her as she scurried past the reception desk, avoiding Cindynail Tollette, who held out immense swaying arms, shouting, "Grace Faith, do you need a hug?"

No time, right now. Grace was headed for the street.

The sunshine on her shoulders felt good. Thirty feet over her head Mexican fan trees rustled their noisy fronds and the Padi House flagpole, flying the flags of America, Texas, and Mexico, clanked in the warm breeze from the gulf. The flagpole sounded like an empty sailboat waiting somewhere in a deserted marina. The breeze, Grace estimated, coming in at 20 mph, was from the south-southeast. Brought up by Joe Drahomir to read signs of weather and sky, she routinely noted the condition of leaves and grasses, analyzed tracks in the sand—of bird, man, or man’s vehicle tires. She lived on the outlook: sky, clouds, Doppler radar. She roved her eyes at windmills and windsocks, and wiggled her nose for sniffs of rain. When rain came, she watched for flash floods, half the year alert to the possibility of hurricanes and the potential for tornadoes. She loved nature, loved knowing what to expect.

She had not expected old Charlie, Boss Kolak, king of interpersonal skills at Padilla House, to freak out today, appearing in the doorway of her office with his drab, cardboard face, twisting out the words, Grace. Faith? We need to, ah, talk, in my office. She had smiled, aglow with love, and possibilities, waving him off, Charlie, pretty busy here. Maybe later. Charlie, old worrywart. So needy. She had turned her attention back to plumb, pretty Renee Hillcross, another social worker. They had been chortling over Grace’s most recent letter from Prank. Prank de la Cort, Grace’s nemesis, admirer, stalker, possibly her very own Sancho Panza. She had met him a couple of years earlier, during the time of the Iran-Contra doo-da, at a Catholic Charities conference in Philadelphia.

Prank, a small-boned man, jittery, had stared with large smarmy eyes at the name badge on Grace’s chest—G.F. Hernandez, Saverne, Texas—greatly annoying Grace, who was close to telling him, "Quit lookin’ at me, freak. At last, he said, Saverne," giving it a twist not recently heard in Mimosa County, not since French settlers in the 1840s—vintners and glass blowers from Alsace-Lorraine turned new-world truck farmers—named a spot along Juanita’s Creek for their village back home in the Vosges Mountains. Saverne. Saverne. Saverne.

Nice name, Saverne, he said, twisting the name again. I know Dallas and Houston. Where exactly is your—he indicated her name tag—"little town of Saverne located?"

Well, Grace drawled, distant, not unkindly, her arms folded snug across her bosom, in itty-bitty little Saverne—it rhymes with Laverne, you know—we always say we’re pretty much smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

Yip, yip, Prank, a Chihuahua-man, barked, that is fitting since we all know Texas is a real nowhere place.

My goodness, sir, Grace answered in the flowing tempo one uses in South Texas to mollify such bursts of unnecessary hatefulness. You don’t know the half of it.

She studied his nametag. Prank, surely a typo. Frank, she said. True, he had tried to bite her head off, but careful, be careful. At the time, she had been reading a small book on the sayings of Desmond Tutu, had it in her handbag. Des had written, Utter only words we won’t regret, great advice since Grace—then as now—had to work on not being smart-mouthed, on keeping silence. She had read somewhere that one of the desert fathers had carried a stone in his mouth for three years until he learned to be silent.

Noticing Prank’s spanking new Wal-Mart-white sneakers, big as shoeboxes, his sports jacket missing a button, a loose thread hanging, green grunge on his eyeglass hinges, Grace went mum. Poor man. Let go and let God. She liked that saying, if you can do it. Be nice.

"Prank, he corrected her. Not Frank. Is that agreeable with you, Miss Laverne Saverne?"

The following days, watching her, nosing around, intent on discovering Saverne’s exact location, he was underfoot, on the trail, sniffing out Grace’s footprints in deep hotel carpet, staring at her from around dark wood and glass partitions. The final night, running out of time, braving the tinkling beckoning of a Irish pub, Prank stood yowling at Grace and her roommate, a younger woman from Dallas, "Hey-hey, there you all are, yip-yip-yip, there she is—tell me, I say, where exactly is Saverne, Laverne?"

Bye-bye, Tutu. Grace, swallowing the stone of silence, shouted at him, in front of everyone, It’s no damn where. Off the map. Invisible, forget-about-it. But Prank, taking her rejection of him and his attempts at friendship as simply normal female demeanor, got his paws on her address at Padilla House, and at times sent cards and letters from a northeastern city, the letters filled with biting comments about mankind’s unkindness to man.

In today’s missive, he’d upped the ante, Tell me where Saverne is and I’ll pick the toe jam from between your toes and wear it like a crown around my head, leaving Grace and Renee, two women inclined to judge all men by the straight-talking actions of Texan men, to wonder: Was this Prank’s weirdo attempt at romance or was he just being mean and implying unattractive things about Grace’s feet?

Charlie Kolak still stood in the doorway.

He’s gettin’ desperate, Renee said. Gesturing to Charlie, she said, I mean Prank. Prank-letter, Mr. Kolak.

Charlie, Grace cooed, wanta see what Prank wrote?

Grace. Faith? Come to my office? We need to talk.

OK. You go on ahead. I’ll be there in a jiff, Grace said to Charlie, her thoughts on Prank, always pestering her. Had she ever bothered to answer his notes and letters, she could have told him that with Saverne it’s not so much a case of where but of how and what. True, a person needs a certain connection with the past; the future is knowable but unknown. She could have told him, for instance, that city parks and streets, the main ones, are named for state governors, benefactors, or their offspring, making even a spotty knowledge of Texas history and politics beneficial. And, if one knows history and politics, and is alert to the present—just as a person should keep an eye on the weather—then the future shouldn’t arrive like an ogre in the night. As Joe Drahomir would say, Be attentive.

Grace felt protective of Saverne. She liked to imagine herself pointing out to Prank, or any visitor, Saverne’s row of tidy bed-and-breakfasts—including one called Bunk and Biscuits. She would show off the city’s glamorous red-walled ballroom inside the century-old Jeanne d’Arc Hotel and she would feed her guests, Prank included, at one of Saverne’s two Alsatian-style restaurants and begin a discussion on how le Cardon bleu and der Schnitzel must be grand ancestors to Texas’ now famous chicken-fried steak with Tom McCreless gravy. Loving music herself, she would neither encourage nor discourage her guests from taking a gratuitous two-step lesson offered nightly at any of three dance halls, the Red Stallion, the Cattlemen’s Stepdaughter, or Belinda’s. It’s not everybody’s cup. Grace would be quick to admit that to practice the two-step you generally need a partner, but it works out. Enter the hanger-on, sitting alone at the bar. In Saverne, most hours of the day, a visitor of either gender is only moments away from an invitation—thanks to the hanger-on of either gender sitting at the bar. They may then slide happily around the floor to the belly-rubbin’ sounds of Randy Travis, Reba, Tanya Tucker, or George Strait—if one is not too particular about with whom he or she rubs bellies.

(Horrifying thought: dancing with Prank.)

No. She’d have a rule: Tour guides don’t dance, but to prove Saverne’s sophistication—if you dream it, dream it right—she saw herself driving some kind of sporty, bright-colored tour bus. Everybody would meet at Sondra’s Travel Agency, best known (but bewilderingly so to some) for its Cactus Land & Famous Wildflower Jeep Tour which includes a helicopter ride. Right now she had to go talk to Charlie, but if she had a tour bus, or a just a van, she would—first thing—point out the necessary distinctions among the city’s four high schools—over here, ya got your Saverne High, over there, ya got your new East Saverne High, then you have St. Maria Goretti’s, and over there is Evergreen, the Christian school. Now, a big surprise! Who would guess that little Saverne has—just look: the Herman Sons’ Dance Academy, the Fred Temple School of Music and next door to it—the Genesian Theatre Group, an acting company for performers ages seven to seventy-seven?

For all the time Grace spent thinking up ways to prove (and yet never share) something about Saverne to Prank de la Cort, it was just a private little obsession. Once, she had wanted to write, It’s a dreary town with 45 Mexican restaurants. She had counted them in the phone book. There were more, no doubt, without a phone, but 45 Mexican restaurants in a place the size of Saverne had several different levels of meaning, depending on what floor the elevator stopped and let you off. We party, we party a lot, too much, we can’t stop, and then we go back and do it again the next day. But for her happy-go-lucky guests, 45 Mexican restaurants means that after twelve o’clock in the morning, the adult resident, teenagers with beards, tourists, and problem drinkers would have to travel no more than 600 yards in any direction to get their hands on a margarita, frozen or rocks. Other cities might claim it, but in Saverne it was true, more than true, for every establishment in town with the right license sold margaritas. Even without a license. But not for long. The Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission moved uncommonly fast. Not like the lackadaisical Gang Units.

Gangs are the root of all evil in Saverne. She often thought about describing the city’s gang problems to Prank, but he’d just gloat, and Charlie was waiting. Folding Prank’s toe-jam letter, putting it away, she started down the hallway towards Charlie’s small office for the talk.

Charlie was standing in his doorway, looking haggard. Grace, walking toward their encounter, was thinking someday she’d write Prank, Saverne’s citizens of all ages count on fun things and fun times, such as this week’s 1990 Tri-county Rodeo, Fat Stock Show and Country Dance.

Charlie was saying, Come in, Grace. Faith? Have a seat. She was still composing: "They are hard-charging, physical workers, who live football, the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Aggies—or University of Texas Longhorns. They also support athletic and extracurricular events at the high school level, and enjoy hunting seasons and regular fishing trips to the gulf coast." It was badly worded. Awkward. She’d have to re-think it later on.

So. Charlie. What’s up? she asked.

An hour later, on the street, in the sunshine, she relived the day: one minute, joshing with Renee, next minute, walking into Charlie’s office, hoping he didn’t want to talk about cutbacks or hard times—or endlessly discuss plans for the arrival of Saverne’s new bishop, coming from Bogota, Colombia. Instead, he told her she was in danger of losing her job, her soul, maybe her mind. Out in the sunshine, she tried to think of something spiteful to say to people always worrying about her soul, but no, over and over, Charlie’s words came: Go home, clean up your life.

Her heart ached. Tears sprang to her eyes. Her throat was dry. She really needed her sunglasses. Charlie could fire her. This time he just might do it, and then what? Would the Baptists hire her? Maybe the city? No, the Baptists were such prudes. She could talk with Taddy McDaniels at Zorn Street Baptist. Poor kid. He almost got the axe when they found out his wife was divorcing him. Grace remembered sitting with him at the picnic table at Sonic, praying. Forget the Baptists, and the city paid peanuts. She’d have to start a new career, a new life. Until then, she was in trouble, trouble much worse than the time she had used the office computer to send an msg to her buddy Barbara Founer in payroll, calling Charlie Kolak Charlie Lack-lak, but sent the memo to Charlie instead.

Too late. Too bad. Now she was wrestling with Charlie’s opinion, Charlie’s goodwill, once again. Turning her face and her closed eyes toward the heavens, she thought about the power of the sun. In Saverne—she ought to tell Prank—people get edgy and depressed if they have two cloudy days in a row. The sun—so much sun—it seemed, should be healing. But too bad, too late. The damage of the sun, like un-love, went deep to delicate, needing places like around your eyes and into your memory. Well, it was past time to worry about sun damage when your bones are breaking and you’re about to lose your job, your life, the love of your life. People were always saying, Stay out of the sun. Tomorrow she’d protect her bones, use sunscreen. Tomorrow is another day. Today’s trouble is sufficient, she said.

Grace smirked. Right now, today, she was in trouble at home, trouble at work. Trouble in my soul, she said and thought briefly about something that made everybody in Saverne feel rotten today: A 15-year-old Hispanic girl had gone to the principal at Saverne High School, accusing a popular male coach of having a sexual relationship with her, even of cutting and burning certain parts of her body. It was ugly. Senseless. Don’t tell that to Prank.

She soldiered on, to the end of the first block of once-fine old homes. Some of the old buildings, wood fences sagging, sported puffy graffiti comments—"Yolie es puta"—Yolie’s name crossed out, Mari’s name given—"Mari es puta"—Mari painted over. Much give-and-take in Saverne over the exact embodiment of puta—of course, one man’s puta is another man’s little sister. Miserable, perspiring, pondering the possibility of pulling up stakes, shaking the dust of this place off her feet, she told herself, "Maybe, just may be, I will go to where the cold winds blow and ice forms on the window sill."

Stopping at the corner, studying the graffiti, she allowed herself to escape, to drift away, considering for a moment boys who join gangs. There’d been gangs in Saverne forever. Charlie—expert on most matters—said that at present three major ones operated out of the city. Grace grimaced again. She could name five: Saverne’s Westside Killers, the Killies, as in "He’s gonna killie ’im." The LAz, Los Azectas, with ties to prison gangs, known as Saverne’s so-called lazy men, usually working after-hours delivery: Pit Bulls, auto parts, copper tubing, large and small home appliances, pharmaceuticals. The Knights, wearing purple, kept their mouths shut. The Coke City Cutters, cutting lines, cutting drugs, cutting people, cutting rugs; don’t ask. And Los Hot Boyz, dark-haired egotistical strutters who bleached their spiked hair, wore gobs of imitation gold jewelry, carried real weapons. Gangs, what a waste of time, energy, and humanity. And tagging—this idiotic urge to spray paint property belonging to someone else. Can anyone honestly think a little paint grants secure ownership, territory? Could it be genetic? Did these gangs or bands or tribes of boys, these artisans of graffiti, have ancestral root in the designs of the old Indian rock art carvings on the canyon walls out west of town? I’m not being racist, she exclaimed, feeling quite deeply the truism she tried to practice, Everybody is my brother and my sister. Besides, other kids do it. Copycat kids.

One day she’d had a client in her office, a skinny boy of about ten with curling white-blond hair, icy blue eyes. After excusing herself to take a quick call, she turned back to see he had tagged the top of her table, the clay flower pot, and stood poised, marking pen in hand, ready to work on her beige faux-leather bag.

Stop, she hissed. What do you think you’re doing?

I don’t know.

Grace considered three points: Was he a poser, was he fulfilling a gang initiation, could he write in English?

She asked, Is there something you would like to talk about? Something you would like to tell Ms. Hernandez?

I don’t know.

You know, she began, sometime we feel—

—my dad child-abused me. The boy glared at her.

Man’s inhumanity to man is enough to break angels’ hearts. Man’s inhumanity to a child was a case for Sheriff Mimms—a case for the sheriff, and for el jefe, Charlie Kolak, who insisted he be first to interview any youngster or anyone claiming abuse or sexual harm. It became his ironclad case. She told the blue-eyed boy, You know, I wish you could stay—maybe we’d get some cleaning fluid. And then we could go get us a hamburger and a coke, but this is serious and we have this rule: Serious cases go to our top boss, Mr. Kolak, who is a really nice person.

He was watching her. She tapped the table with her fingernails and made a silly grin, Everybody has a boss. But maybe you can come back, you know, later on. At least wave at me. Let’s call him. We can walk there together.

I want somebody to do something about my dad, he said, raising one pale eyebrow. He child-abused me.

For a long time Grace wondered about the boy. Had his father abused him? To a ten-year-old, abuse might mean anything from a pinch on the shoulder for failing to clean up the dog’s calling card in the backyard, to outright torture, to attempted murder. Was this revenge? Part of a gang ritual? At any rate, after he left, they found he had tagged the water fountain in the hall.

Finished with the long second block of her hike to her car, hitting her stride, she heard something coming. Ah. Now what’s that? Why, here it is. The increasing blast of a wildly exuberant Tejano dance tune—accordions, lots of accordions, guitars, and trumpets whining in surround sound, inescapably lifting her spirits. It was polka music—Czech or German in origin. My song, Grace had called it when she was four years old, wearing her lacy little Bohemian dress with flowers and ribbons in her hair, but now—converted to Spanish—it was called Conjunto, still good for a polka, very good for dancing the cumbia. Or just standing on a street corner, swaying to the beat.

A low-riding car with the red letters MADE IN TEXAS stenciled on a blinding yellow paint job and with several tail pipes bundled together with baling wire putted to a stop. The car sat, pulsating with Romani Tex-Mex beer hall oomph-pas, its rocket-fuel engine growling, waiting. On the curb, she waved the car, filled with Hispanic teen boys, to go ahead. The driver gestured no, no. Go, lady, you go.

Help me, Jesus, somebody left the gate open, she muttered and then remembered today, Monday, the eighth of January, kids were still on Christmas vacation; teachers were working. Kids were free. She had doubts about these guys’ motivation because in South Texas certain males—Mestizo sons of all ages, descendants of the Coahuilteco, Caddo, Karankawa, Apache, Comanche, Kickapoo, Kiowa, their milder temperaments emblazoned with the DNA of Spanish Conquistadors, their minds besotted with the adoration of madres and abuelas, little sisters and aunties: tias—thought it their mission. Exploiting an instinct for perpetual courtship, they roll their soft brown eyes, tease, and flirt with any female alive. Grace knew. She was the mother of one, wasn’t she? She had married one, hadn’t she? Poor dead unwilling soul.

She crossed in front of the car, waiting for what she expected: faint sounds of kisses, louder hisses, whistles, Machismo whisperings. None came. Instead, the car, ticking and cranking its internal parts, began to rise in place, higher, higher, as if to ascend right on up, into the heavens. She couldn’t resist a half-smile, a quick glance at the driver. His eyes averted, as if he were bringing in a Lear Jet for landing, his face boasted, Pretty cool, huh, Miss?

It was cool. She marveled, managing to free two hands for a round of applause. How did they do that? What skills. What talent. This was 1990, a new decade. Ten years until the millennium, or eleven, as some radio people argued. Ten or eleven, these were kids educated—and tested—in Texas in the eighties under Dallas millionaire Ross Perot’s much-discussed school reform plan: no pass, no play. Learn things. Computers, business, math, grammar. Pass every subject or you’re off the team, no football for you, Mister. These kids were the bright hope of Texas. Its shining stars. This was definitely fodder for Prank de la Cort. She could tell him about Ross Perot, his big ego, his giant house and multiple garages in Plano. Didn’t he live on the same block as Mary Kay, monarch of pink cosmetics, bestower of pink Cadillacs? Whatever, Ross Perot had done what others could not. Let him be governor, be the president. Grace wanted to swirl congratulations to him, to the boys, to waltz on the sidewalk. But nothing lasts forever. With a reverse clank, the car fell to earth. Show over, the yellow car chugged on, the boys’ clatter offensive only to Grouchy Ears who don’t favor jazzed engines or blaring tape decks.

She smiled and cut across Alaniz Avenue, getting closer to the parking spot that cost her twenty-five dollars a month. It griped everyone at Padi House, the worker bees, to have to pay to park blocks away when a perfectly good backyard lot, reserved for clients’ cars, sat mostly empty.

But that’s how it is in this man’s church, she said aloud. The dig at the church pleased her. The so judgmental Catholic Church. But then her pleasure, like the boys’ low-rider, fell to earth. My fault. Admit it, she said. She had no one to blame, but herself. But so what? I’m OK.

Joy, sudden as a new smile, thrilled her: It’s my life.

Up ahead, in the middle of Ima Hogg Park—named for a Texas governor’s daughter who, despite the tediousness of would-be funny men, did not ever have a sister with the rudely unorthodox name of Ura Hogg—Grace spotted Katie Hand, once a librarian for the city, now homeless, a woman some people liked to avoid, one-on-one. Katie could be belligerent. She smelled, some claimed, sometimes of camp smoke, urine, bad digestion and neglected dental problems. The woman didn’t have to be homeless. She wasn’t penniless. Saverne’s band of gossips whispered it around that she had a quarter of a million dollars squirreled away in dead trees on Juanita’s Creek. Others reported she had a post office box, could be seen at the bank, cashing retirement checks, social security checks, government bonds. Although fact established her birth and childhood on a ranch in nearby Hollister County, the know-it-alls insisted that Katie Hand had come down to Texas from up north when she was young and was the one who had actually written that raunchy novel Peyton Place—and not Grace Metalious. This particular ruckus had sputtered to life, and death, because Mrs. Hand—in one of her first spats with public readers—refused to take the book off display and seemed to know just too much about the characters and their sins not to have written the thing herself. Simply put, Saverne’s band of gossips convinced the circle of grouches that no white woman would know about, much less write about, the deviltry of those people in Payton Place. Katie Hand must have written it. Grace remembered her mom talking about this, but shyly. (Margie had her own copy, hidden in the closet of her bedroom.) Opinions were mixed: Did Katie Hand go mad when she realized she had destroyed our social mores with her nasty novel or was it great she was apparently raking in—and hiding—plenty of dough-ray-me for her literary effort?

Another fact. Katie Hand held a master’s degree in library science from Prairie View A&M in Waller, Texas, near Houston and was the first Black lady appointed head librarian at the old main library a couple streets over. For the past decade the old library had been a museum exhibiting the dusty stuffings of Saverne history beginning with arrow heads, copies of Jim Bowie’s knife, and rusted weapons once used to keep steamed-up, testosterone-filled outsiders out and reluctant wives and lazy farm workers in. School pictures of children who would now be 100-plus, crumbling newspapers, government telegrams telling parents their boys were dead in France, and the entire antique doll collection of Mimosa County filled rooms that had once supported row-upon-row of mysteries, personal diaries, war histories, advice for mothers, medical journals, and manuals advising ordinary men on the rules of everyday etiquette. These days, just walking through the front door made most people sneeze, wheeze, and come down with a head cold said to last two weeks.

Some nights Katie Hand piled up at the museum’s door, her old library entrance, sleeping as if at the foot of the bed, waiting for some giant parent to notice and invite her to climb in: Get up off that ice floor, Katie, c’mon up in here and get warm. Becoming homeless, living on steps and stones, happened fast. Her daughter went away to college, to Harvard, they said, and never came back. A much younger son—likely the daughter’s child, the cruelty kings claimed—athletic, studious, polite, won an appointment to the Air Force Academy. He never came back.

Then Katie’s husband left. One day he and his car were just gone. The jokers joked that he might be buried in the backyard, the car burned or bequeathed to an out-of-town accomplice. Then Katie boarded up her house—it has long since been torn down—and started sleeping in the library, neglecting her appearance and upkeep, opening the library’s front door later each morning until one day she threw the security bolts shut and refused to open at all. Not for the mayor. Not for the scads of tiny schoolchildren peeping through the library windows, bitterly unhappy to have to get back on their buses and return empty-handed to their classrooms. Not for Bobby Dan Padilla, sweet-natured Catholic bishop still alive at the time. Not for all the reverends and county clerks and begging ladies, city engineers, not for the TV crews or cops, goofballs, drunks, or jesters from the entire county.

A day of her choosing she walked out, red-eyed and grim, a collection of books in her arms, born again—it seemed—to walking and reading, lying in the grass, watching red ants cross the sidewalk and making Saverne’s trees and blue-and-gray skies her rooftop. City drivers learned to watch out for Katie as she wandered across streets inside Saverne’s John and Nellie Connally Loop, nose in a book. Downtown secretaries, students, and hard-core readers making space for new books, over the years left Katie stacks of books on the steps of High Street Presbyterian Hotel for the Homeless.

The books—old paperbacks and romances, sometimes an algebra text, a prayer book, some out-grown self-help book, and novels missing from high school English departments such as Animal Farm, Intruder in the Dust, Silas Marner, A Tale of Two Cities, The Bell Jar—soon disappeared from the hotel’s steps. Katie herself was not tricked by the Presbyterians’ hope she would check into their place. If some worried about where she slept in cold weather, others complained it must be she, sleeping in deer blinds, knocking things around, who ate up hunters’ investment in deer corn, but that was unkind. Katie was a town girl, spurning all churches equally, ignoring do-gooders, and flatly refusing enforced shelter. If pushed, she punched people, cursing so bitterly in an unknown tongue that the shelters would only accept her on nights when a freeze was coming and some intern reporter might be out checking, looking to blame the shelters for leaving the homeless to fend for themselves in the cold and sleep in cardboard boxes behind somebody’s outbuilding.

Not much chance of that tonight. Not yet.

It was indeed Katie Hand up ahead in the park, holding a book, sunning herself—half on the grass, half on the walkway—on a pallet made from her winter coats. Grace fingered the itchy fabric of the jacket