Bulls Island by Dorothea Benton Frank Read Free Book Online Page B

son.”
    “It’s okay, Dad. You’re right.” Then J.D. turned to me. “You want something?”
    Yeah, to run away, just for a while, I thought.
    “No, I’m fine. Thanks. I’ll get it if I change my mind.”
    “Fine. Well then…let’s sit together for a moment.”
    I took a place on the corner of the brown corduroy sofa next to J.D. and Big Jim sat in a club chair, upholstered in a fabric printed with men on horseback dressed for a race to the hounds that I wouldn’t buy in a thousand years, but somehow it looked right in that environment. I had a lot to learn about things like decorating, I told myself.
    “Son? Betts? Mother did not show well tonight.”
    Was Louisa Langley a show dog? No, but she was a prize bitch, I thought.
    “Boy, you can say that again,” J.D. said, in a rare moment of candor. “She was really difficult.”
    I was silent until Big Jim looked at me.
    “We all have bad days,” I said. I mean, what was I supposed to say?
    “Well, I apologize for that,” he said. “She said quite a few things that I thought were unnecessary. Entirely unnecessary.”
    “Well…,” I said, and waited for him to continue, which he promptly did.
    “Louisa has certain silly ideas in her head and she always has had them. Now, me? I’m much more pragmatic about life. What’s in the past is in the past, and believe me, Betts, I know Louisa’s heart.”
    Oh? She has one? I wanted to ask, but did not.
    “She’ll come around,” Big Jim said, continuing. “She’s just used to having her own way all the time and I guess she might not have realized that her baby is a grown man who’s ready to settle down.”
    “Probably not,” I said, being generous.
    Big Jim harrumphed, knowing that his attempt at an explanation had been insufficient and that all present knew Louisa was going to be a nightmare for me. Forever.
    “There are other things that concern me, however. Other things.”
    “Like what?” J.D. asked. “Dad, Betts and I have been dating since we were practically children! You all expected this, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, well, I did anyway. Any fool can see the love between you all, and I’ll tell you, it’s a marvelous thing to witness. Y’all light up the room with all that passion…well, would you listen to me going on like passion is a thing of my past? Hell, I’m still a virile—”
    “Dad!” J.D. said, looking at him and then me in mock horror.
    Big Jim’s virility was about the last thing on earth I wanted to hear about. He was in his cups, and anyway, the entire Western world knew he had a fondness for, well, girls with a generous nature.
    “Yes, well, anyway…where was I? Right! What about graduate school? I mean, what if a baby comes along? They do that, you know…come along. Babies, that is.”
    “Well, we’ve talked about that and J.D. is going to Carolina Law School and I know I’m still going to business school there…I mean, there’s no reason why we can’t do that, right?”
    “Of course not!” J.D. said. “There are no plans to start a family this year. I think we can manage, Dad.”
    “Both of you at Carolina?”
    “Yeah, I mean, we’re both accepted for the fall semester and there’s no reason why we can’t go, right?”
    “Hmmph,” Big Jim said. “How are you two going to plan a wedding and go to school at the same time?”
    “Well, J.D. and I haven’t talked about that yet, but I think my mother has been planning this since the day I was born,” I said.
    “That’s fine with me,” J.D. said. “That’s her privilege, isn’t it?”
    “I wouldn’t take it away from her,” I replied, implying that, if necessary, I would defend my mother’s territory.
    “Somehow I can’t envision you all living in married students’ housing and eating hot dogs. Think you’re gonna live on love, do you?”
    “Why not?” J.D. said.
    “We can work, too,” I said. “In fact, I’ve been offered a part-time job in the business school correcting statistics