from
this
Tara. It wasn’t even greed. Didn’t she have everything she could possibly want up in Washington?
Well,
not exactly. But as soon as Jazz gets his divorce from Kitsy, I will!
What brought her back, she remembers, was Sissy, the colored woman who’s ruled the Hightower roost forever, and her pleading request to “come home, settle your daddy’s affairs, and keep Kyle from walking off with everything whole hog.”
A fairs!
Lila snorts, recalling the Judge’s surprise assignation of fifteen thousand dollars apiece to three mystery women who, coincidentally, lived in each of the three surrounding counties.
The old bastard!
And Kyle.
She relished the fact that her simple presence had been enough to deliberately, summarily thwart Kyle DeLuth’s smug ascension to Daddy’s property and preeminence as the most powerful S.O.B. in the county. Not that they didn’t deserve each other. Truth was, Daddy and Kyle were cut from the same lean and hungry cloth. She’d seen it years ago, when she and Louis would complain about their father’s heavy-handedness, his apparent disregard for anything that smacked of sentiment, his ruthless dispatch of one character-building high-school coach for another more in tune to the team’s win-loss record. At every turn, with every issue, even then, ol’ Kiss Ass had taken the Judge’s side. And—like Cassius to Brutus— hung around for a bite of Louis’s leftovers.
Louis.
Her twin brother was the only fine and true thing the Judge ever produced. And the old man spent the boy’s lifetime attempting to remake Louis’s perfection after his own power-grubbing image.
But Louis . . . well, Louis wasn’t capable of becoming Daddy’s kind of man. But he certainly died trying, didn’t he?
“Jesus H. Christ,” Lila mutters as she opens the official proclamation from the State Legislature rechristening the county’s main thoroughfare the Judge Howard Hightower Memorial Highway. There’d been talk of it at the funeral. The state’s big men openly envied the way Judge How-High had bullwhipped this county out of its malarial malaise into a marvel of citrus, cattle, and tourist-industry production.
That was Lila’s most persistent memory of the old man— Hav-A-Tampa cigar in full, jaw-clenched flare, his left thumb hooked casually in his belt loop while his right hand flicked the rattlesnake bullwhip with pinpoint accuracy at the hind end of a reluctant steer, the back of a thieving Negro or, in Louis’s case, the legs of a soft-hearted, daydreaming boy.
The
bastard.
Lila hears the Westminster chime of the front door, checks her watch, and listens as Sissy hobbles to the entryway and admits her guest. As steps echo across the hardwood hall, Lila sweeps the rest of the envelopes into a pile beside the phone and, at Sissy’s knock on the study door, rises to greet Fred Sykes.
“Miss Hightower, it’s a real pleasure to meet you,” Sykes says, shaking her hand a bit too heartily. “You got a real nice place here.” As he drops into a leather guest chair, his eyes skim the room with the deft economy of one accustomed to evaluating property. Lila watches him take in the deep mahogany shelves flanking the windows with floor-to-ceiling leather-bound books, the wall of dark paneling behind her with its certificates, awards, and proclamations, including the framed headline: “Hightower and DeLuth Named All-Americans.” This revelation, just over her left shoulder, brings his eyes suddenly back to her. “Though I have to admit I’m surprised to be here.”
“Why’s that, Mr. Sykes?” Lila asks, smiling. The man is about her age, with the sort of firm-chinned, nicely combed, not-from-around-here good looks that she might, under other circumstances, find attractive. He smelled good, too, freshly showered with a discreetly spiced aftershave.
“Well, like that headline says, the names Hightower and DeLuth are fairly tight around here. And I’m obviously not a fan of the
this
Tara. It wasn’t even greed. Didn’t she have everything she could possibly want up in Washington?
Well,
not exactly. But as soon as Jazz gets his divorce from Kitsy, I will!
What brought her back, she remembers, was Sissy, the colored woman who’s ruled the Hightower roost forever, and her pleading request to “come home, settle your daddy’s affairs, and keep Kyle from walking off with everything whole hog.”
A fairs!
Lila snorts, recalling the Judge’s surprise assignation of fifteen thousand dollars apiece to three mystery women who, coincidentally, lived in each of the three surrounding counties.
The old bastard!
And Kyle.
She relished the fact that her simple presence had been enough to deliberately, summarily thwart Kyle DeLuth’s smug ascension to Daddy’s property and preeminence as the most powerful S.O.B. in the county. Not that they didn’t deserve each other. Truth was, Daddy and Kyle were cut from the same lean and hungry cloth. She’d seen it years ago, when she and Louis would complain about their father’s heavy-handedness, his apparent disregard for anything that smacked of sentiment, his ruthless dispatch of one character-building high-school coach for another more in tune to the team’s win-loss record. At every turn, with every issue, even then, ol’ Kiss Ass had taken the Judge’s side. And—like Cassius to Brutus— hung around for a bite of Louis’s leftovers.
Louis.
Her twin brother was the only fine and true thing the Judge ever produced. And the old man spent the boy’s lifetime attempting to remake Louis’s perfection after his own power-grubbing image.
But Louis . . . well, Louis wasn’t capable of becoming Daddy’s kind of man. But he certainly died trying, didn’t he?
“Jesus H. Christ,” Lila mutters as she opens the official proclamation from the State Legislature rechristening the county’s main thoroughfare the Judge Howard Hightower Memorial Highway. There’d been talk of it at the funeral. The state’s big men openly envied the way Judge How-High had bullwhipped this county out of its malarial malaise into a marvel of citrus, cattle, and tourist-industry production.
That was Lila’s most persistent memory of the old man— Hav-A-Tampa cigar in full, jaw-clenched flare, his left thumb hooked casually in his belt loop while his right hand flicked the rattlesnake bullwhip with pinpoint accuracy at the hind end of a reluctant steer, the back of a thieving Negro or, in Louis’s case, the legs of a soft-hearted, daydreaming boy.
The
bastard.
Lila hears the Westminster chime of the front door, checks her watch, and listens as Sissy hobbles to the entryway and admits her guest. As steps echo across the hardwood hall, Lila sweeps the rest of the envelopes into a pile beside the phone and, at Sissy’s knock on the study door, rises to greet Fred Sykes.
“Miss Hightower, it’s a real pleasure to meet you,” Sykes says, shaking her hand a bit too heartily. “You got a real nice place here.” As he drops into a leather guest chair, his eyes skim the room with the deft economy of one accustomed to evaluating property. Lila watches him take in the deep mahogany shelves flanking the windows with floor-to-ceiling leather-bound books, the wall of dark paneling behind her with its certificates, awards, and proclamations, including the framed headline: “Hightower and DeLuth Named All-Americans.” This revelation, just over her left shoulder, brings his eyes suddenly back to her. “Though I have to admit I’m surprised to be here.”
“Why’s that, Mr. Sykes?” Lila asks, smiling. The man is about her age, with the sort of firm-chinned, nicely combed, not-from-around-here good looks that she might, under other circumstances, find attractive. He smelled good, too, freshly showered with a discreetly spiced aftershave.
“Well, like that headline says, the names Hightower and DeLuth are fairly tight around here. And I’m obviously not a fan of the
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