"Don"t worry, Daddy," she said. "I"m always gonna need you. I"m sure some boy or other is gonna break my heart soon enough-"
"Well, it has been at least a couple of weeks."
Savannah smacked his leg. "-and I"m gonna need a shoulder to cry on."
"Well, I"m good for that much, at least."
"Always," she promised.
Savannah turned the music back up and Zeke smiled and sat up straighter behind the wheel, a sly smile on his lips. His daughter was growing up to be one h.e.l.l of a young woman.
He studied the road ahead, enjoying the rattle of the ancient Ford and the thrum of the wheel in his hands. His day-to-day truck was less than a year old, a red beauty he used both on the ranch and on longer drives. But on a lovely fall night when the temperature had fallen to the midsixties and they could have the window open to let in a breeze that was actually chilly for once, he hadn"t been able to resist the F1. He"d done most of the restoration himself, including repairing a sizable dent in the clunky metal grille, which he"d painted white to match the whitewall tires. The rest of the truck was a crayon-box blue that had just seemed right. Bright enough to satisfy the little boy in him, who had thrilled at the idea of restoring his grandfather"s old pickup when he"d rescued it from the crumbling ruin of the ranch"s original barn, and yet manly enough not to draw ridicule from his friends, who"d been envious as h.e.l.l once all his hard work had paid off.
"Daddy?" Savannah ventured.
Zeke glanced at her. "Bud?"
"I just want you to know that I"m okay," she said. "I wish Momma had been here for all of this. But even if she had, I"d be saying the same things to her now. I"m almost fourteen. I know about s.e.x and I know boys are pretty much like puppies who"ll p.i.s.s everywhere and hump your leg unless they"re properly housebroken."
A wonderful pride swelled Zeke Prater"s heart, and yet it was also melancholy. An end-of-an-era sort of pride.
"You"ve got that right," he said.
His little girl smiled and reached over to take his right hand off of the steering wheel. He squeezed her hand and she held on tight for a minute, and then they were approaching the turn onto Hidalgo County Road and he wanted both hands on the wheel.
He slowed at the corner, waited for two cars to pa.s.s-high traffic for the area-and then turned right, traveling parallel to the new fence Bill Ca.s.saday had put up along the eastern edges of his ranch. A couple of horses grazed in a pasture and Zeke frowned at the foolishness of leaving the animals out this far from the barn after dark. They were two miles from the Rio Grande here-two miles from the Mexican border-and while old-time horse thievery was a thing of the past, there was never any telling what might happen to people, property, or livestock. That was the whole reason the Texas Border Volunteers had been formed-Zeke and Ca.s.saday and Alan Vickers and a bunch of others taking it upon themselves to improve the policing of the border, at least in Hidalgo County. They"d installed lights and hidden cameras and had been reporting drug- and human-trafficking activities to the government for half a year, leading to a flurry of deportations and drug seizures. Just five nights ago, they"d caught a trio of hikers coming through the well-trodden paths at the back of Vickers"s acreage, each carrying a hundred pounds of cocaine from the Matamoros cartel. They"d come across the river on a raft and would have been long gone if the Volunteers hadn"t picked them up on video and reported them. The border patrol had caught them before they"d made it to the highway.
It was hard on the younger folks, living out here.Their elders all knew it, and over the past few years had been dreaming up one program after another to give them alternatives to sneaking off into the fields to drink beers or have s.e.x. Dances and clubs and outdoor movies projected on the back of the Praters" barn. Tonight was the best of all, the first annual Lansdale Music Festival. People had laughed at first, mocking the idea that a town as tiny as Lansdale,Texas, could draw enough people to warrant such an event, but every roadhouse in the state had a band or two dreaming of bigger things, and right there in Lansdale they had Annie Rojas and Jesse McCaffrey, both of whom were gifted musicians and had lovely voices.
Lansdale had been founded in 1912 and only then because of the five huge, sprawling ranches that surrounded it-thousands and thousands of acres. The ranch families had wanted a post office closer than the one in Hidalgo and then it had seemed only natural to have a grocery and a hardware store and a gas station, and soon enough Jesse McCaffrey"s grandmother had opened a dress shop and the saddlery had been replaced by an auto mechanic"s shop and someone had the bright idea to open a bookshop. Decades had pa.s.sed, and there still wasn"t much more to Lansdale than that.They"d never had a movie theater or anything as precious as a florist; the grocery had rented videos when such things were still of interest, and the hardware store had a garden center these days. Not long before the twentieth century gave up the ghost, a medical equipment company with its factory in Hidalgo had moved its home office to Lansdale, bringing an influx of out-of-towners. Half a dozen border patrol officers called it home, as well. There were only a few hundred houses, but the ranch owners and workers and their families were all a part of the Lansdale community, swelling its ranks.
When Zeke was growing up, it had been a nice little town.
Now it lay squarely in the path of drug smugglers and the coyotes who guided illegal immigrants across the border, and Zeke Prater wore a gun belt that made him feel like an idiot, as if he were some kid playing cowboys. Tonight he had left the gun belt and his Smith & Wesson 1911 back at the ranch . . . but he had a high-powered rifle in the backseat of the rattling old pickup, just in case.
Around his daughter, Zeke wore a mask of confidence, doing everything he could to cast an illusion, but he kept vigilant at all times in order to a.s.sure her safety and the safety of all of the people who worked on his ranch.
He glanced over at Savannah just as she pushed her hair away from her eyes, and the gesture caused his heart to stumble. G.o.d, she"s so beautiful, he thought. Too beautiful. He knew that all fathers must have similar fears, but he worried about his daughter not only because she was pretty, but because she looked older than her age. She often drew the attention of older boys and even young men who misjudged her years, and like most girls, she relished the attention. Young girls were apt to be persuaded to do almost anything to maintain a constant stream of such affections.
Not Savannah, he told himself. You"ve always been blunt with her, always open and fair. She"s too smart.
But Zeke figured lots of fathers told themselves the same things about their daughters and ended up being dead wrong.
"I a.s.sume Ben Trevino"s going to be there," he said, keeping his eyes on the road. He had attempted to keep his tone neutral and hoped that he"d succeeded. Savannah was in the eighth grade, but she liked the older boys just as much as they liked her; the Trevino boy was a soph.o.m.ore at the high school in Hidalgo.
"I a.s.sume Skyler"s going to be there," Savannah said.
Zeke shook his head. "Touche, kid. Touche." He"d been on half a dozen dates with a waitress at a diner in Lansdale called the Magic Wagon, and Savannah knew that he"d fallen hard for her.
Rounding a corner, they came in view of the lights of Lansdale and Savannah sat up straighter. Zeke smiled as he took in the multicolored bulbs that had been strung from lamppost to lamppost, like Christmas had come early. With the windows open, they could hear the discordant jangle of instruments tuning up.
"Wow, this is going to be loud," Zeke said.
"You really are getting old," Savannah replied.
He couldn"t argue. Forty-one didn"t feel old, but if his first reaction to the volume of the speakers set up for the music festival was something other than excitement, maybe he truly had gotten ancient before his time.
They found a parking s.p.a.ce behind the post office and Zeke locked up the pickup, hoping he wouldn"t regret having brought the antique to town. He patted his pockets to make sure he had his wallet and phone and keys, and then they set off, walking out to the main street and joining the flow of people moving toward the park in front of the town hall, where a stage had been erected just for the event. Zeke glanced around, admiring the size of the gathering even as he searched the crowd for Skyler, who"d told him that she"d be wearing a yellow hat.
Beside him, Savannah b.u.mped into a thirtyish woman Zeke didn"t recognize, and he realized that she"d been looking down at her phone, texting someone.
"Hey, bud, pay attention," he said, gently pushing her arm down. "Why not put the phone away?"
"Terri just texted me. She"s here. I"m just trying to figure out where."