Free Loser's Town by Daniel Depp Page A

nervous all morning, waiting for you.’
    ‘Are you supposed to be telling me this?’
    ‘I don’t know what in hell is wrong with you two. You act like all this is some sort of game. I never could understand why you got divorced in the first place. You still love each other. Neither one of you is ever going to get over it, or wants to, for that matter.’
    ‘It’s a complicated world.’
    ‘No, it’s not,’ she declared flatly. ‘It ain’t now, and it never has been. It’s the goddamned intellectuals like you two who screw things up by pretending it is. The world goes around just fine. All you got to do is learn how to hang on,’ she said. ‘Just like horses.’
    ‘Is this some kind of comment on my recent showing up at Salinas?’
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I heard it was less than brilliant. Let me see that thumb.’
    Spandau showed it to her. She laughed. ‘You always didhave a tendency to get that thing in the way. Beau said you were going to snatch it off one day. Looks like you damn near did the job this time.’
    She sat down across from Spandau and looked at him. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you,’ she said, ‘that I’m going to die one of these days?’
    ‘You got mortality on the mind, do you?’
    ‘They’re going to chop this ranch up into little gibbety-bites and sell it to people who watch Oprah Winfrey,’ she said.
    ‘I wouldn’t die, then, if I were you.’
    ‘The boys don’t care anything for it, and Dee won’t run it by herself. She could, I guess, but she won’t.’
    ‘This doesn’t have a thing to do with me, Mary,’ he said. ‘Lord, you wouldn’t be picking on me this way if Dee was in the room.’
    ‘She’s bullheaded. Maybe you’ve got some sense left.’
    ‘Dee’s the one who left me,’ he said.
    ‘You let her go.’
    ‘Since when could anybody ever stop Dee from doing what she wanted.’
    ‘Hell,’ she said. ‘Let her teach. You could be running this ranch.’
    ‘Don’t you think your sons might have something to say about that?’
    ‘All this is to them is a patch of dry land in the middle of nowhere. It don’t mean a thing to them. I got money and I can make them a good settlement. Not that they need it.
    The ranch can pass on to Dee, if she wants it. They won’t squeak about it.’
    ‘You’d better talk to Dee.’
    ‘I’m talking to you, mister. You better get your head on straight about what you want. There might not be much time.’
    ‘You’re as fit as a fiddle, unless there’s something you’re not saying.’
    ‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’
    She got up and started to wash dishes in the sink that had already been washed.
    ‘What are you saying?’
    ‘I’m not saying a word,’ she said. ‘It’s not any of my business what you two do with your private lives.’
    ‘Are you trying to tell me she’s seeing somebody?’
    ‘It’s not my place to say. You ought to talk to her.’
    ‘Goddamn it, Mary,’ Spandau said.
    ‘All I can say is you two better work it out. I won’t be around forever.’
    ‘Work out what?’ asked Dee from the screen door.
    ‘Work out what it is you two want for dinner,’ Mary said. ‘I don’t mind cooking but I can’t be bothered with menus. People have to tell me what they want.’
    Delia McCauley was tall like her father. She’d inherited his family’s auburn hair, which she wore long and was now twisted and curled, pinned up on the back of her head. Spandau had seen her many nights standing above him at the side of the bed, pulling the pins loose and letting thehair cascade down in a breathtaking autumn flow. From her mother she had a fineness of bone and features, an almost regal elegance. She was long and slim and beautiful and Spandau desired her as much now as he ever had.
    She came in the screen door and let it close with a sharp thwack, done mainly to irritate her mother. She crossed to Spandau and kissed him lightly on the cheek, laying her hand on his upper arm. Spandau smelled