LITMIR.BIZ

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And he knew it would be ruined the moment everyone started showing up and they all found out that Bowie Bravo was back in town.

       “Bowie?” Glory called from above.

       “It’s all right. I’m getting it.” And then he turned and went and pulled open the door.

       His brother Brett and his sister-in-law Angie, each wearing heavy coats and snow boots, mufflers, wool hats and gloves, and each with a black medical-looking bag, stood on the other side.

       Angie blinked her big brown eyes. “Bowie. Wow. Mina said you were here.…”

       “Hey, Ange.” He faced his brother. “Brett.” And he knew, just from the wary look in Brett’s hazel eyes, exactly what his brother was thinking, Not again. As a matter of fact, he’d seen the same look in Angie’s eyes. He didn’t blame them. How could he? After all, they were both there the day that Johnny was born, when he’d been drunk as a skunk and nothing but trouble. “Look,” he said levelly, “I’m stone sober and I’m only here to help.”

       Brett and his wife exchanged a look. And then Brett said, “Good enough.”

       Bowie stepped back and let them in. They set down their black bags and started taking off the layers of outerwear.

       Brett said, “Sorry it took us so long. The phone was out at Redonda’s all morning. We didn’t have a clue Glory was in labor until we got back to the clinic twenty minutes ago.”

       “Who is it?” Glory shouted from upstairs.

       Angie answered, “It’s me and Brett. We’re on our way up.” She grabbed her bag and raced up the stairs.

       Brett hung back. He asked Bowie quietly, “How’s she doing?”

       “She did great,” Bowie answered. “She’s a damn champion.”

       Brett looked puzzled. “Did?”

       And then Angie called down from the second floor. “Brett, you won’t believe this. You’d better get up here.…”

       Ten minutes later, Brett had cut the umbilical cord and checked over both mother and child. He’d said what Bowie pretty much already knew. That Glory and Sera were doing fine.

       Brett looked at him with real respect, which Bowie couldn’t help but find gratifying. It was a much better reaction than he’d expected.

       “Little brother,” Brett said, “you did an excellent job here.”

       Even Glory gave him a tired smile. “Yeah, you did. Thanks.”

       He looked in her big brown eyes and dared to think that maybe coming back hadn’t been such a dumbass idea after all.

       The placenta arrived. Bowie was very grateful that it had waited to make its appearance until Brett and Angie were there to deal with it. Angie packed it up in a cooler to take to some woman who made vitamins out of it for the new mother—or something like that. Bowie didn’t really care to get the particulars on the subject.

       He checked the phone again a few minutes later and got a dial tone. “Phone’s back on,” he said, in case anyone needed to know.

       It rang the second he hung it up. He stepped aside and let Angie get it. It was Rose Dellazola, Glory and Angie’s mom, known around town as Mamma Rose. Angie told Rose that Rose’s new grandbaby had arrived safely and everything was fine. When she hung up, she reported that Rose and the others had headed for Grass Valley at the crack of dawn that morning. It had been rough going, getting back in the storm. But they’d made it safely and Rose was coming over right now to meet her new grandchild.

       Bowie and Brett’s mom called next. Angie repeated the happy news and then passed the phone to Bowie. “Your mom wants to talk to you.”

       He took it. “Hey, Ma.”

       “Bowie, it’s so good to hear your voice.” He could tell that she was smiling, just by her tone. And maybe getting a little misty-eyed, too. He’d kept in touch with her in the time he’d been away, even started calling her now and then in recent years. Twice in the past two years she’d visited him up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She said, “You come on down the street and see me.”

       He wasn’t going anywhere until Johnny got home. “I will, Mom. In a few hours.”

       “Shall I fix up a room for you?”

       “I don’t know yet.”

       “Think about it.”

       “I will.”

       He’d barely hung up when Glory’s mom and dad—and her aunt Stella, too—arrived. He and Brett went downstairs to let them in. Brett answered the door and they all three looked like they were seeing a ghost when they caught sight of Bowie.

       “Bowie!” Glory’s dad, whom everyone called Little Tony, clapped him on the back. “Good to see you, man!” He actually seemed to mean it.

       Mamma Rose and Stella were friendly enough, too. They’d always been civil to him. Back when Johnny was born and Bowie had hounded Glory for months on end to marry him, the older generation of Dellazolas were all on his side. They were good Catholics. They believed that a man ought to be allowed to do the right thing and marry the mother of his child.

       Bowie did see the irony. He’d been so worried about everyone’s reaction to his showing up. But Stella was more upset about Glory’s phone message than she was about seeing Bowie Bravo back in town again. She clutched her rosary to her chest. “I am hurt. Terribly hurt. Glory said she didn’t want me here. Why wouldn’t she want me here?” And then she started quoting scripture. “‘And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me.’” She turned her dark eyes on Bowie then. Probably because he was the biggest sinner in the front hall at that moment. “Jeremiah, thirty-three,” she declared in a noble tone, “verse eight.”

       Mamma Rose, who was taller, thinner and prettier than her sister, patted Stella’s shoulder. “Now, Stell, you can’t go taking it personally. You know how Glory is.”

       Stella pursed up her lips and fingered her rosary. “Yes, I do, sadly enough.”

       Rose put an arm around her and gave her a quick squeeze. “You know what they say? This, too, shall pass away.”

       Stella’s reply to that was an injured, “Hmmph.”

       A minute later, the two women went upstairs and Glory’s dad joined Brett and Bowie in the kitchen. Brett and Little Tony seemed right at home in Glory’s house. Brett got a fresh pot of coffee brewing and Little Tony went through the cupboards and the fridge looking for snacks, coming up with some packaged cookies and a box of mini chocolate doughnuts.

       They sat for half an hour or so, drinking coffee, eating the doughnuts and talking about the weather and the New Bethlehem Flat High School basketball team. Nobody seemed to want to get around to the big, fat elephant in the room—which was what was Bowie doing there and where the hell had he been for all this time?

       And then Mamma Rose appeared. She loaded some food and juice on a tray and took it back upstairs.

       Once she was gone, Little Tony finally broached the delicate subject. “So, tell me, Bowie, how you been for all these years?”

       Bowie said he was doing okay, that he lived in Santa Cruz, up in the mountains.

       “You find work?”

       “I did. I’m a carpenter now.”

       “As in construction?”

       “I build mostly furniture.”

       “Any money in that?”

       “I make a living.”

       “Good. Good. And it’s great to see

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