Outlaw Hearts(220)

Lloyd put a hand to his eyes. “I’m sorry, Pa, about your hand, about deserting you like I did.”

Jake rose and put the cigarette into an ashtray. He leaned over the boy, grasping the head rail of the bed with one hand. “I’m not telling you these things to make you feel sorry for me or to try to force you to love me, Lloyd. I’m telling you so you understand what you mean to me. You could torture me, verbally abuse me the rest of your life, whatever. It wouldn’t change how I feel about my son. It wouldn’t keep me from turning right around and helping you the minute you asked for it. I’ll always be here for you, Lloyd, any time you need me. I understand all the hurt, all the pain. You have advantages I never had, and you have a family’s love. Don’t turn away from all of that, Lloyd. Don’t let my sorry life destroy your own good one. That was always my biggest fear.”

Lloyd opened his fist to look at the cross. He handed it to his father then. “Ma told me this belonged to your mother.”

Jake sat down on the edge of the bed, taking the cross from him and studying it a moment. “For a long time this was my only link to goodness in life, till I met your mother. The woman is nothing short of a saint for the things she’s had to put up with being married to me.” He sighed deeply. “I just hope to hell I’m the one who dies first, because I couldn’t go on without her.”

Lloyd touched his arm. “Yes, you could, Pa. You’d have me and Evie and your grandchildren.”

Jake looked at the hand on his arm, met the boy’s eyes. “Does that mean you’re coming home with us?”

“Yes, sir, I’d like to. I’d also like you to sit down there and tell me the truth about everything—your past, how you met Ma, what happened in California, all of it.”

Jake sighed, keeping the cross in his hand and moving to sit in the chair again. “Some of it isn’t easy to talk about.”

“I know. Hell, I’ve got all day, more than that. It’s going to be a while yet before I can get out of this bed. We’ve got lots of time to talk.”

Jake smiled, rubbing at the cross with his thumb. “Yeah, I guess we do, don’t we?”

“I love you, Pa. I’m not ashamed, all right? I’m not ashamed.”

Jake closed his eyes and nodded, suddenly unable to speak. He rose and walked to a window, clearing his throat and taking a moment to find his voice again without breaking down. I’m not ashamed. The boy really had no conception of what that meant to him. He quickly wiped at his eyes with the back of his wrist.

“Are you, uh, you really good with those guns?” he asked, needing to change the subject for the moment. Lloyd glanced at his father’s old guns. They hung over the back of a chair. Jake turned to him, followed his gaze. “We found them hanging in the shed,” he explained.

Lloyd met his eyes and grinned almost bashfully. “I’m pretty good, but not as good as Jake Harkner, I’d bet on that.” He could see his father was struggling with emotion, sensed that for the moment he couldn’t go on talking about the past.

Jake smiled sadly. “Good enough to use your guns on the side of the law?”

Lloyd frowned. “What do you mean?”

Jake sat back down in the chair. “I mean that if you come home with us, you’ll have to move to Oklahoma. Part of my resentencing was to assign me to duty as a Deputy U.S. Marshal there.”

Lloyd brightened. “I’ll be damned! You’ll be a marshal? Hell, that’s great, Pa!”

Jake shrugged. “I guess with opening up the land to new settlers, plus some trouble between Indians and ranchers, there’s a need. Besides, a lot of that country is inhabited by wanted men. Who better than somebody like me to search them out? Lord knows I hid out there plenty of times myself.”

“You think they’d deputize me too? We could ride together again, like when we worked on the ranch.”

Jake nodded. “I’d like that.” He walked over to the guns, picked them up. “You couldn’t use these old single-action revolvers, though. Double-action forty-fives, that’s what you want, and no more lever-action rifles. I’ve got a Colt Lightning magazine rifle—a lot faster action.” He stared at the guns, turned to Lloyd. “I figured after prison I’d just give up my guns and say to hell with it. But the fact remains I’m damn good with the things, and Randy says that if I have a chance now to use them for good, why not do it?” He grinned then. “’Course that judge back in St. Louis isn’t giving me a hell of a lot of choice in the matter.”