She sighed deeply. “Jake, what should I do with you? You are not your father. There is no chance you would ever get carried away and hurt him.” She leaned back and looked up at him. “Part of being a father is teaching your son the right way to go, that the wrong way can hurt him. If you never discipline him at all, he’ll grow up to be a wild young man who no one likes and who goes out and gets himself in trouble. Is that what you want?”
Jake looked over at the boy, who sat playing with the plate, still sniffling. “I just want him to love me.”
Miranda leaned up and kissed his cheek. “Jake, you’re a kind, gentle, attentive father. He does love you. Nothing is going to change that.”
Lloyd looked over at them and got to his feet, toddling over to grasp at his mother’s skirt. Miranda smiled and stooped down to pick him up. He hugged her around the neck and she patted his back. “It’s all right, baby,” she said softly. “The stove is a no-no. You know that.” She looked at Jake. “Does it look like he is afraid of me now or doesn’t love me? He’s only two and a half, Jake, but he knows what I did was out of love.”
Jake pulled both of them into his arms, and Lloyd turned, putting his chubby arms around his father’s neck. Jake took him into his arms, thinking how much he would have loved to have had the same affection and reassurance shown to him when he was small. “I’m taking him back out to the barn with me for a while.”
“Fine. But if he goes toddling up behind a horse, you’d better make sure he understands it’s dangerous. And do it in a way that makes him think twice about doing it again.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He walked toward the door.
“Jake.”
He turned, keeping the boy in his arms and patting his bottom.
“I mean it. I need your help in this. Jake, I think I’m going to have another baby. I can’t take care of a newborn and be running after a two-year-old who won’t obey me.”
He watched her lovingly, slowly setting Lloyd back down to the varnished hardwood floor Miranda kept dusted daily. “You’re making me do this twice?” he teased. “Hell, I’m not sure I can do it right one time around.”
“You’re doing just fine. Just go tend to your chores.”
He gave her a rather tentative smile, his emotions mixed. The responsibilities were growing. There would be a second child depending on him, another mouth to feed, another baby to love and to look up to him as a father. He walked closer to Miranda, bending down and kissing her cheek. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“What if it’s like the last time, maybe worse? I can’t lose you, Randy. I can’t do any of this without you.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me. I’m sure Mrs. Grant and some of the other neighbor women will help when the time comes, which won’t be until at least next March. Now get going.”
He kissed her once more, then left her, picking up Lloyd on the way out. Miranda walked to the door to watch them head for the barn, Lloyd riding on his father’s shoulders again and laughing. She thought what a sweet and peaceful sight it was. Lloyd had been like a healing ointment to his father’s tortured soul. Already they were so close. She prayed nothing would ever happen to destroy that.
***
Bill Kennedy put a fat cigar in his teeth and settled into the tub of hot water, making a growling sound of pleasure as he let the warm water come up to his neck. “You can scrub my back and anything else you want to rub after I soak a few minutes,” he told the young Mexican woman whose job it was to keep adding buckets of hot water as the tub water cooled. The woman stared at Kennedy dully, a mixture of hatred and resignation in her dark eyes. It was obvious she hated her job, and that pleased Kennedy, made him feel powerful. She worked here, therefore she had to do what he asked. He gave her a wink and she turned away.
Three other Mexican women kept clean towels coming, provided soap and were required to scrub down any man who asked. Kennedy and his men had been told this was the most luxurious bathhouse in San Diego, and they had all converged on it after a hot, dusty trip back from Mexico. The others laughed and splashed and made lewd remarks to the Mexican women. Juan stood up and gestured with his penis, and the men laughed more, Clarence asking the women if any of them would please get in the tub with him and let him give them a soap massage of their own. He reached up and felt the breast of one older woman when she bent over to give him a towel, and she slapped his hand.
Clarence made kissing sounds at her and picked up his own cigar from a nearby ashtray. He thought how good it felt to be here after over a year of running. He watched Jeb Donner use his right arm to support himself as he knelt into his own tub. Jeb had lost almost all use of his left arm after the shoot-out with Wells Fargo detectives up near San Francisco over a year ago. Jeb had been slammed with two bullets that day, one in his left shoulder and another that smashed his left elbow. The trap the lawmen had laid had come close to killing all of them. Brad and Luke, Buffalo and Frank were dead. Juan still limped from a bullet to his right thigh that had broken a bone. Joe had taken a bullet in his side, but he’d lived.