Chapter Twenty-Two

Lyle didn’t hear much in the moments after Maricruz whispered to him across the kitchen table—her eyes swollen and her cheeks drenched with tears— that Rick was Benny’s father.  It was as though his body had to shut down his hearing in order to conserve energy to fuel the betrayal, rage, and hurt that flooded through every vein in his body.  He could see Maricruz talking and then sobbing, then saying something to Benny when he heard her and came out to check on her with a frightened expression on his face, and finally he saw Benny walking back into his room and closing the door, but all he could hear was the ringing in his ears.  He couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by an incredible impulse to pull his boots back on, to put on his coat, and without saying a single word trudge through the snow down to Rusty’s Tavern to guzzle down a jack-and-coke or two or three until he didn’t care who Benny’s father was.  He could almost feel the cracked vinyl of the bar stool beneath the pockets of his Wranglers, almost hear his favorite song playing on the jukebox, selection C-14, “Midnight Run” by The Allman Brothers maybe followed up by M-9, Merle Haggard singing, “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink.”

Lyle pushed his chair back from the kitchen table so hard that it crashed to the floor when he stood, causing Amanda to startle awake in the living room and seeming to awake his own hearing as well.  “Please don’t go,” he heard Maricruz begging in a whisper as he looked over at Amanda and saw the sense of terror on her face.  Surely she knew the look of a man who has been overcome by the animal within.  Maricruz placed her hand on Lyle’s and he yanked it away.  “Oh Baby, please just listen to me,” Maricruz begged again.  All he could do was purse his lips, blow his cheeks full of air, and shake his head at her.  Even though the wound in whatever part of him that she’d just stabbed was pouring and pulsing he still didn’t want to say anything he’d never be able to take back so he didn’t say anything at all.  He simply walked past her, but instead storming out the front door and walking down to Rusty’s, he walked the other direction, to the back of the apartment and locked himself in Maricruz’s bedroom where he pounded his fist into the mattress until he finally collapsed onto the bed, trying to grab a hold of something that could pass as clarity.

As Lyle's mind raced, his thoughts finally rested on one realization, that what hurt the most was that Lyle wanted so badly to be Benny’s father.  He secretly hoped that someday Benny would accidentally call him Dad instead of Lyle and then never go back to Lyle, that he’d convince Benny to give up the Nintendo and books every now and then so he could teach Benny to rope and ride out at the Crazy Snake Ranch, that when Benny graduated someday from high school that Lyle would be there, giving him a big hug and saying, “I’m proud of you, son.”  Also, while Lyle had been in the shower earlier, he’d even decided to pull Father Carl aside later to ask him if he’d be allowed to officiate a wedding for Lyle and Maricruz even though Lyle wasn’t Catholic and didn’t plan on ever converting.  Then Lyle planned to stand up in the restaurant in front of Maricruz’s family and the closest thing to family Lyle had in his life, which was Rick, and ask Maricruz to marry him.  Lyle got up and paced, trying to figure out what to do next. 

After Lyle had been in the bedroom for twenty minutes or so, he heard three muffled voices out in the living room, which he presumed to be Maricruz, Benny, and Amanda.  Eventually he heard the apartment door open and close before there was a soft knock on the bedroom door.

“Lyle, we really need to talk about this,” Maricruz said from the other side of the door.  “I sent Benny and Amanda down to the restaurant so Benny could show her around and maybe they could help out a bit.”  She paused for a moment, probably hoping he would open the door now that he knew they were alone.  Eventually, when he didn’t open it, she said, “Please, Baby.  Either let me in or come out here.”

“I just need to be alone for a while longer,” he responded, doing his best to stall until he figured out how he was actually going to respond now that he no longer had access to what had been for years his immediate response to everything, good or bad.

“You’ve been alone for three months, Lyle, and so have I,” Maricruz argued.  “What we need now is to be together.”  Lyle could tell she was leaning against the door now.

He continued to pace the bedroom floor, rubbing the back of his neck with the palm of his right hand.  “Damn it, Mari, don’t you think you should have told me this before?  How could you keep this from me?  Does Benny even know?”

“No, Benny has no idea,” she said, her voice beginning to shake.

“Don’t you think the boy ought to know who his own father is?” Lyle asked.

“Rick’s never going to be Benny’s father, Lyle,” she answered.  “You are.  That’s what I want and that’s what Benny wants.  Isn’t that what you want?”

“I’m not even a father to my own daughter,” he admitted, painfully.  “How can I be the father to somebody else’s kid?”

“Is that how you see Benny?” Maricruz asked, her voice growing louder.  “As somebody else’s kid?  Is that all he is to you?”

Of course Lyle didn’t see him that way, but he chose to change the subject anyway.  “I thought Rick was my friend, my only friend in the whole damn world.  I mean, the guy dragged me up out of the mud and helped me get cleaned up.  He’s helped me more than anybody.  If not for him I’d be… I’d be dead, Mari.  I’d be buried under six feet of dirt somewhere.”

“And that’s why I didn’t tell you about it once you got to know Rick.  I saw how good he was for you.  I didn’t want to ruin that, but the guilt must have got the most of him while he was waiting to see if you survived the night, and I wanted you to hear it from me instead of from him and to give you time to calm down before he shows up.”

Lyle contemplated whether or not he really wanted to know the story behind it but he decided that he’d rather know the truth then rather than to let it seep out a little at a time over the years.  “I want to know what happened and when.  Don’t leave anything out.”

It was then that she told him the whole story through the door as if she’d rehearsed it before, holding it in until the spotlight finally landed on her and the time came for her to give the performance.  Her audience of one had calmed himself and sat down on the bedroom floor, resting his back against the door, listening to every word she said. 

Finally, when Maricruz was finished, Lyle asked her, “What about Rick’s wife, his kids?”

“That’s another reason why we never told anyone.  We both decided that because we were just a fling that happened when he was separated from his wife that there was no reason to ruin his whole life over it.”

“What about your life?” Lyle asked.

“My life wasn’t ruined at all, Lyle.  It was pretty stressful there for a while but out of all that I ended up with Abenico.  I can’t imagine life without my Benny.”

“Does Rick send you money?”

“Every month without fail he sends a couple hundred bucks cash.  But he’s never ever been a part of our life, I promise.”

“Then why’d you bring him back into your life now?” Lyle wanted to know.

“One reason and one reason only, Lyle: you!  I didn’t know who else to call who could help you.  Believe me; I had to swallow my pride big time to make that phone call.  But you needed to be saved and there was only one person I knew who could do it.  It hasn’t been easy for me being around him, and to see him together with Benny has been so strange.  We’d agreed to have a clean break, but Lyle it was you, all for you.  You were the only thing important enough to me in life to make me willing to make that phone call.”

“So what am I supposed to say when he shows up here in a couple hours?” Lyle asked, not rhetorically, but genuinely looking for advice.

“Be honest with him,” she counseled him.  “But don’t talk to him in a way that will push him away.  You need him too much to blow up on him.”

“And what about Benny?” Lyle wondered.  “When does he find out?”

“We’ll talk about that when Rick gets here.”  She jiggled the doorknob.  “Now will you please let me in?”

Lyle rose to his feet and unlocked and opened the door partially, staring into Maricruz’s puffy and bloodshot eyes.  He knew that his heart had already forgiven her, not for being with Rick all those years ago—that wasn’t something that needed to be forgiven, at least not by Lyle—but for keeping it from him for so long. 

“I never meant to hurt you, Lyle,” Maricruz said, her chocolate brown eyes welled up with tears.

“I know Mari,” he said.  “I know.”

He used his fingers to tuck her hair behind her ears and then kissed her deeply on the lips.  In between kisses she whispered, “I love you so much, Lyle.  I would have given up on you a long time ago if I didn’t.”

Lyle said nothing, but instead responded by pulling her into the bedroom and locking the door behind them.  They stumbled over to the bed where they made love to one another with the breathless passion that had been boiling up within them both for ninety days.  There was no question in Lyle’s mind that that moment was worth everything he’d been through--the time in the hospital, the alcohol withdrawal, all the meetings, the night in the blizzard, all those miles he walked.  It was all worth it.

As they lay in bed afterward, holding onto one another, the practical situation in which they found themselves finally returned to the forefront of Lyle’s mind.  “We better get our clothes back on and make our phone calls,” he said.  “You call Father Carl and have him meet us at the restaurant so he can talk with us and Amanda.  Then depending on what Father Carl says I’ll give the police a call and we’ll see if we can talk them out of charging her and instead turn their efforts toward catching that bastard DB before he gets too far away, assuming he isn’t halfway to Houston by now.” 

“So what you’re saying,” Maricruz asked him, “is that you want me to put my underwear back on so I can call my priest?” Maricruz tried to keep a pious expression on her face as she said it but she couldn’t help but laugh. 

“Now that you put it that way,” Lyle laughed along, “you might want to put your pants and shirt on too.”

Maricruz got out of the bed, pulled her clothes on and then walked out to the kitchen to make the phone call, while Lyle lingered in bed for a moment.  When he finally got up and pulled up his boxer shorts, he heard the unmistakable combination of a growl and a hiss that comes from a semi-truck as it’s coming to a stop.  Lyle’s heart began to pound as he ran into the living room and looked out the window that faced Main Street to see a glossy metallic black tractor pulling a mud splattered trailer parking and parking it in the church parking lot across the street.  The driver must have just assumed no one would care if he took up their entire parking lot.  Some of the best men Lyle had ever known were truckers, but some of the biggest assholes in the world shared the same profession.  This must have been one of bad apples.  

Still in his boxer shorts and nothing else, Lyle ran to the hallway closet as Maricruz gave him a strange look while she filled Father Carl in on Amanda’s situation.  On the shelf at the top of the closet, Lyle found a pair of ancient binoculars that many decades earlier Maricruz’s Abuelita had used officially for bird watching but actually to spy on the neighbors across the street.  Lyle ran back to the window and focused the lenses on the big rig’s cab door.  “Holy shit!” he yelled out, receiving a dirty look from Maricruz who covered the microphone end of the phone so her parish priest wouldn’t hear Lyle’s foul mouth.  Lyle looked through the binoculars again, reading the cursive script decal on the truck one more time.  “Double Barrel Trucking,” it read.  Lyle ran back to the bedroom to grab the rest of his clothes.  When he came stumbling back into the living room, trying to walk and pull his worn Wranglers up at the same time, Maricruz had hung up the phone. 

“Father Carl said he’ll meet us there in—” Maricruz began, before Lyle cut her off.

“Mari, I need you to listen to me and not argue with me.  That filthy asshole that whored out Amanda just pulled up and is walking across Main Street and toward your family’s restaurant.  Right this damn instant, I need you to call down to the restaurant and tell them to keep Amanda out of sight and then tell Umberto it’s time to call his gym buddies and get their juiced-up asses down to Los Tres Hermanos, cause there’s going to be some major shit hitting the fan.”  Maricruz stood frozen for a moment.  “Just make the phone call, Mari!  And stay up here.  You don’t need to get involved in this."

"Why don't we call the police?"

"Because the police probably can't do shit without all kinds of evidence.  Please just make the phone call!"

Lyle finished getting dressed as quickly as he could and pulled on his boots, then opened up the hall closet and grabbed his spare gray felt Stetson hat that he’d seen when he found the binoculars.  He’d left it there months earlier and forgot where he’d put it but never could contact Maricruz during their ninety day break to ask her if it was there.  Man, he’d missed that hat.  Now fully dressed in Wranglers, an old green and black plaid flannel shirt, coat, and with his boots on bottom and his Stetson on top, he started to walk toward the door and then stopped once more, remembering there was one other thing might need, but hoped he wouldn’t.  While Maricruz was still on the other side of the room making her phone call, Lyle walked resolutely into the kitchen, grabbed the revolver off the top of the fridge, and stuffed it into his coat pocket before Maricruz could see him.  He threw the apartment door open and started down the same stairs that had almost taken his life ninety days earlier and then stopped halfway down.  He pulled the gun out from his pocket, opened the cylinder.  “One, two, three,” he counted the bullets, before praying to whoever was up there that he wouldn’t need any of them.  Something in his gut, however, told him that he would.