Apache Country by Frederick H. Christian Read Free Book Online Page A

meals at the appropriate time: eleven o’clock at night was
not one of them.
    “You work too hard,” she said. That was as
close as Grita would allow herself to come to saying ‘I forgive
you.’
    “Now you mention it, I could eat something,”
Easton told her. “I’ll just go up and look in on Jessye first.”
    She looked at him the way she always did when
he came in late and said that, like she might go stand in the
doorway and stop him. “Don’t you go waking her up, now,” she
warned. “She got school tomorrow.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
    No question, Grita was Easton’s rock and
foundation. For more than five years now his life had revolved
around her, his earth orbiting her sun. When his wife Susan had
died so suddenly, so unexpectedly, he had gone completely off the
rails. And stayed that way for a long, blank, empty time during
which everything slid away, like a curling stone on ice. Steeped in
self-pity, drinking too much, he forgot to shower or shave, hanging
around in dirty old sweats, staring out the window. There wasn’t
anywhere he wanted to go, nobody he wanted to see. People stopped
calling, invitations dried up. He didn’t care. Jack Daniels was the
only friend he needed.
    He was pretty nearly all the way down to the
bottom of the bottle when Ellen Casey just marched in to his house
and took over. Didn’t ask, didn’t apologize. Just sat him down and
read him the riot act. She wasn’t angry. It would have been easier
if she had been.
    “You’re a drunk, David,” she told him “Worse
still, you’re a slob. You keep carryin’ on like this and they’ll
kick you out of the Sheriff’s Office, and you can be damned sure if
that happens, someone from Child Protection is going to take your
daughter away from you – for good. Is that what you want?”
    “Aw, Ellen, it’s not that bad …”
    “Yes it is!” she snapped. “And whether you
like it or not, you are going to shape up. Starting now.”
    She attacked the unkept house as if it were
an enemy. He watched shamefacedly as she poured all the liquor down
the sink, threw out all the spoiled food, stacked greasy plates in
the dishwasher, crammed dirty shirts and soiled underwear into the
washing machine, then scrubbed and vacuumed the place till it
practically begged for mercy. There was a contained fury about the
way she worked, as if maybe she was exorcising a few demons of her
own.
    “Now you, you big ape,” she said, arms
akimbo. “Climb into that damned shower and don’t come out until
you’re squeaky clean.”
    Early every day, right on the button, she
would come by and check him over before shunting him off to work.
She cleaned the house, took care of the laundry, drove Jessye to
kindergarten, picked her up in the afternoon, cooked evening meals
for them, sometimes even stayed and watched TV.
    After a month or two when things more or less
got back on the rails she hired him a housekeeper. It was a Friday,
he remembered. Margarita Gutierrez was a large woman who weighed
maybe two hundred pounds. She had a nut brown, unlined face, and
big brown eyes that met his unafraid. She told him she was forty
eight years old and that she had definite opinions about certain
things, and if any of them bothered him, he better tell her right
now. She would not work for anyone who drank heavy or brought women
home. Or for anyone who smacked their children or for anyone kicked
their dog. He said that wasn’t a problem and she said very well.
The following Friday she moved in.
    Jessye had been just a baby then, and
couldn’t get her mouth around the name ‘Margarita’, so they settled
on calling her what she could say, ‘Grita.’ That had been nearly
five years ago, five years in which Grita had become his counselor
and confidante, support team and cheering section, guardian angel
and goad. As for Ellen Casey, even if he had known how, he had
never been able to find a way of thanking her, nor did she ever
present him with an