Creation Ranch 22

Hap runs into his mother in a bar in Ghalb.

Chapter 22: Fancy Surprise

Lois was tired, very tired. She fell asleep atop the bed without finishing her supper Briana brought them knowing they would be hungry after the long foot journey.

Hap lay on the bed watching her sleep wishing there was something he could do to entertain himself. He found a pencil in Lois’ belongings while putting her clothes in the closet to allow them to air out from her musty carpet bag. He found paper, a bunch of loose pages in there too; the kind one is supposed to draw on, but oh, well. He took out the first sheet and he wrote an, I, on the center of the page.

“What you doing, Hap?” Lois asked and smiled to see her husband with a pencil in his hand instead of a deck of cards, and then she rolled over and persisted in sleep.

“Writing,” he said and placed the page on the bed next to his wife where he could see it. Then he wrote, ‘I wrote, “I,” on a blank sheet of paper. What do you make of it?’ Then he thought. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if no one ever did that before?’

Then he heard a familiar giggle. It took him back to his past when his dad and mom used to come home late to some hotel room. They did seem to enjoy each other; strange how that is not the same as loving each other, though they got along as well in bed it seemed as in the hotel room, town after town, neither one of them desiring so he thought to settle down up until his mother and him moved to Dacica.

He was amazed how very similar some people sounded who had never even met, but there it was that same identical giggle exactly on cue. He had to see whether this woman looked at all like his mother, thinking she probably even resembled her; people being far more similar to each other.

He put down the paper and the pencil, letting them lay on the bed beside his wife. He rose and went to the door and quietly slipped down the stairs and once at the bottom he peered into the bar area. There was an elderly man in prominent dress, cigar and all, with white hair and a flowing black business suit coat. Hey was bending over backwards to make sure the man’s drink was always full it was plain to see, and the woman with the man was gray also, but when she turned around it was clear she had lived a hard life by her puffy face and . . . ‘My God!’ he thought. ‘It’s Ma!’

“Well, I’ll be the Deag’s right hand man if it ain’t Homer Brewsteiner!” he shouted as he rushed into the barroom. Then he stopped as if he hadn’t noticed his own mother with the man and said, “And his lovely wife?”

“Fancy (Hapner) Brewsteiner?” she griped against the all too familiar way she was greeted. “It’s not like I was an extension of his arm or something,” she was complaining as she turned and immediately recognized Hap.

“My! God,” she gasped and became misty eyed at the same time. “It is you . . .”

Hap ignored the surprised Homer and moved closer to his mother, who was heartsick to say the least as she wrapped her arms around Hap’s neck forcing his face into her sagging breasts almost coated with a mixture of expensive perfume and way too much makeup. Then he used the cigar he borrowed from Homer unbeknownst to him as an excuse to back off some.

“How are you, Ma?” he asked.

“What are you doing here?” she said her voice hoarse with too much whiskey over too many years.

“Hustling still, but now I do it for the Deag!” he said.

“You?” she pushed him away with her wrinkled hand, “My son; a preacher?”

“Not exactly, Ma? But his way is a better way, you know?” Hap said. “I’ve changed. I’ve heard the Deag’s voice. I know what it is all about. Once you get to know him it’s easy to read between the lines. Before that you don’t have a chance in hell of knowing what he’s talking about. What do you suppose he’s saying having us meet here in this crummy, stinking, old, bar, not even a day after me and Lois got reconciled?”

She turned away from him put off by what he was saying.

He reached out and took her shoulder slowly and gently, turning her aging face toward his and said, “We are finally a couple, Ma,” as his voice broke, “Ma, she loves me now. I love her and we love being loved by each other and want everybody to love everybody else.”

“I know you, Hap,” she said coldly, “What is the ruse?”

Hap was surprised at how much those words hurt him.

His mother watched his reaction and seeing what she saw as genuine remorse, she was amazed, and Hap knew it.

“I am part of Creation Ranch now,” he said as if apologizing for something; wondering what it was himself.

“You?” she laughed as if he had told her the moon fell in his backyard last night. “Creation Ranch!” she repeated still unable to believe it, but faced with his straight face, a face she had always been able to read no matter what the con, what was she supposed to think? “How the hell did that happen? Deag change your birthright?”

“Lois as it turns out was Zola Havoll’s daughter?”

“Really,” Fancy said, “How could that be? I can just see Mr. Havoll and that dirty tramp for a mother she has?”

“He must have come to her house, Ma. He was all broken up the last year or so because he hadn’t counted Lois among his kids.”

“That’s hogwash! How could he know it was hers? She used to have a dozen a day or more! The woman has no morals?” Fancy scoffed the idea.

“Deag verified their suspicions.”

“Oh, well, hell then, it has to be true, but who the hell had the guts to come up with that one?” then she put down her drink and looked with shock at Hap. “Hap! You didn’t? Tell me you didn’t,” she laughed in his face.

“I didn’t,” he said.

“You didn’t?” she said both surprised and confused.

“Deag appeared to Zola and told him, he would take care of her all of her days because of it. Then he even appeared to Lois and told her, because Zola’s heart gave out and . . .” He stopped in mid-sentence because of Fancy’s reaction. “What is the matter now, Mama?” he asked.

“Son,” she said, “There is nothing worse than a con artist that believes his own ruse! Don’t do this to yourself, Hap! Give it up! You’re too good a con artist to be fooled by his own imagination!”

Hap was caught off his guard.

“You are not some weird assed Zola and you certainly ain’t a Ewodo! Get ahold of me when you’re back to your senses.”

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