Ah jeez.
Whatever. After the day I’ve had, why the fuck wouldn’t I be on board with a little fun?
“Alrighta,” I say, rubbing my hands together. “Let’s go to the fountain, bay-bee.”
7
BOONE
Ducking under the long,unfurling branch of my favorite oak, I tug the slim case out of my zippered thigh pocket and pluck out a single, hand-rolled cigarette. Holding it to my lips, I take out my mom’s old lighter and fire it up, drawing in a deep breath until the fragrant cherry brightens the darkness. I extend the inhale, getting as much of that sweet tobacco as possible into my lungs before letting out a slow exhale, watching the smoke swirl and expand before disappearing into the night air.
Puffing like a dragon in the shadows, I reminisce about how I ended up here in the first place. I hadn’t planned on attending the university in Austin. Hell, my first year of college was spent in the same town where I’d grown up all my life, and where I figured I’d go into law enforcement and eventually retire, just like my old man.
Mom likes to say, though, that life has a way of sending you off in oddball directions.
You have no idea how right you are, Mom.
I chuckle, thinking about the stories they repeated a million times throughout my childhood. The roads taken and not. My favorite is the one about the day they found out Mom waspregnant. I might roll my eyes, but I never miss a chance to hear them tell it again.
Closing my eyes, I can almost hear their voices.
“I’d come home from my big New York adventure, tail tucked between my legs.”
“She was trying to avoid me,” Dad tacks on, always in that low, warm voice of his, a barely there smile on his lips. “But I wasn’t having it.”
“So here I am, waitressing at Maude’s diner, hating everything about my life, and in saunters my old high school boyfriend, wearing that police uniform, looking like something out of a Hollywood movie.”
“Helluva lotta good that did me,” he jokes. “When she came up to take my order, she puked all over the table.”
Mom always wells up telling that part of the story. She ran out of the diner, mortified, and he ran right after her, not caring one whit about the vomit. A smart man, by the time he got my mother to turn around and talk to him, he’d already worked out that she was in a heap of trouble.
He’d never stopped loving her, though, and a little thing like being pregnant with someone else’s baby wasn’t about to get in the way of what they could have together.
That’s the part that always tightens my throat. Loyal Hitchens isn’t my biological father, and we don’t always understand one another, but he’s been my dad since before I was born.
“It took some convincing…” Dad starts.
“…but he was persistent,” Mom finishes, always with an adoring look into his light-green eyes.
I press my forehead into my palms, no clue how I got so lucky in the dad department, while little girls like Sara get the shit end of the stick.
Dad hated the possibility that I’d be made fun of for not looking like him or much like my mom. He took me aside and explained that I took after my birth father, someone from a New YorkItalianfamily.
“Mafia,” Mom would later say in hushed tones.
Family lore, I assumed, to explain my darker, sharper features and slimmer, shorter build that stuck out in West Texas like a smudge on a picture.
By the time talk turned to what I wanted to be when I grew up, there was never any question for me. I wanted to be a cop, just like my dad. He’d have supported me regardless of the path I took, but the small upturn of his lips when I first talked about joining the force let me know he was proud of my choice.
I’m never gonna be as physically imposing as he is, but I can make him proud by being strong. By studying to wear the badge, just like him.
I return my attention to the sculptures, reminded of the fact that Mom has always been light on the specifics in the retelling of her “big New York adventure.” I brought it up once to my father, who told me to let my mother keep the details to herself.
While I’ve respected his wishes, given what I now know about my birth father, I have more questions than ever before.
I refocus once again on the green turf and the ethereal brass figures. They’re made from melted-down Confederate statues that used to flank the Littlefield Fountain, which have now been shaped into flowing abstracts that lend an atmospheric feel to the lush mall.
Despite their fragile appearance, each figure weighs thousands of pounds and represents the spirits of those who gave their lives to protect the vulnerable. They’re anchored by rough-hewn iconic Texas pink granite and stand guard over the students like sentinels, often taking on a ghostly visage in the misty morning fog.
