Henry had turned his attention from Benita’s dark gaze to the big blue eyes of his wife, Ruth, who had stood beside him. He remembered the day Nick’s mother, Benita Allegrezza, had pounded on his front door, claiming Henry had fathered the black-haired baby in her arms. In fact, Nick made it damn hard to even like him. But he didn’t have time, and Nick didn’t make it easy. If Henry had more time, he was sure he and his son could have come to some sort of understanding. Just as he’d been a defiant unlovable boy. But Nick was a stubborn, unforgiving man. For several years now, he’d tried to make it up to his son. He would be the first to admit he’d wronged that boy.
He sat down in an old office chair and raised the bourbon to his lips. There was no one to carry his blood after he was gone. The Shaws were nearly extinct, and it ate a hole in his gut. The last in a long line of an old and respected family. He’d always planned to have a passel of grandchildren by now, but he didn’t have a one. Henry splashed linseed oil on some old cotton rags and set them in a cardboard box. Each time he’d tried to prove them wrong, but in the end he never had.
They poked and prodded until they found something wrong, and none of them had ever said a damn thing he’d wanted to hear. More than Henry hated God and disease and not being in control, he hated friggin‘ doctors. Sharp gray shadows sliced across the valley toward Lake Mary, named for Henry’s great-great-grandmother, Mary Shaw. The setting sun hung just above Shaw Mountain, named after Henry’s ancestors who’d settled the rich valley below.
He poured himself a bourbon and looked out the small window above his work bench. Henry hated anything that interfered with his plans. God and women and disease had a way of interfering. Then Johnny had found Jesus and June and his career had gone to hell in a hand basket. Before Johnny had found religion, he’d been one kick-ass carouser. He plugged an old eight-track cassette into its player, and the deep, whiskey-rough voice of Johnny Cash filled the small tack shed. The red glow from a space heater touched the creases and folds of Henry Shaw’s face, while the nicker of his beloved Appaloosas called to him on the warm spring breeze.
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