Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

(So, here is a taste of the next Luna City book – and, yes, there will be several more, as the creative urge takes us.)

It was part of Richard’s gradual acceptance into the community of Luna City – as a pillar of the same in his office as manager/cook of the Luna Café and Coffee – that he do a turn in the old home economics classroom of Luna City’s secondary school teaching a necessary adult survival skills to twenty or so sixteen and seventeen year old students. The high school was named for Hernando “Nando” Gonzales, the legendary jet fighter ace of the Korean War and native son of Luna City; the adult survival skills course had been the mind-blowing stroke of genius on the part of Nando’s second cousin once removed, Geronimo “Jerry” Gonzales while serving as Luna City Superintendent of Schools. A series of adult experts offered an educational smorgasbord; household budgeting and basic income-tax return preparation, simple auto and household trouble-shooting, repairs and maintenance, First Aid … and Richard had been tapped for a week of cooking classes. The class met in a room which had been set up to facilitate cooking lessons, back in the decades when that meant cooking and sewing instruction for girls; five fully-equipped kitchenettes and a central instruction area with an overhead mirror over the prep-area and cooktop. Richard felt oddly at home on the very first day, although it was jarring to be addressed as ‘sir’ or Mr. Astor-Hall. And he felt terribly old, when he made a reference to Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet, on the very first day, and had to explain it to a roomful of baffled teenagers.
“I could do a two-week segment, next semester,” he remarked to Jess Abernathy, at mid-week, when they had their regular management consult. “They’re a very promising lot. I had a brilliant inspiration, regarding roast chicken; you know, start with preparing a basic whole roast chicken with basic herbs and lemon on the first day, then move through several different recipes incorporating the leftover cooked chicken … simple dishes, exploring various cuisines … and then finish up with using the bones to make a stew, with dumplings. Tasty, economical, simple; what do you think?”
“The kids will eat it up,” Jess said, and Richard replied,
“Well, of course – that’s the whole point. D’you think I could offer an internship over the summer to one or two of the most promising?”
“You’d have to pay them at least as much as they would earn, bussing tables at Mills Farm,” Jess warned him. “We’ll look at the finances at the end of this year, see if it can be done. I’m glad you like doing a part of the class, Rich – I was afraid you’d regret it as a waste of time.”
“Teaching someone to cook for themselves is never a waste of time,” Richard answered with adamantine conviction. “Every creature on earth eats – but cooking your food and cooking it well is the foundation building-block of civilization.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Jess laughed. “Hey, if you happen to see Romeo this afternoon – remind him about the costume rehearsal tomorrow at the Pryor’s. Kate is going to come and take pictures of the main characters for the newspaper and website, so it’s absolutely important that everyone be there.”
“So he did get convinced to be the groom?” Richard had almost forgotten about the Luna City Players’ benefit event to rebuild the church parish hall, free of the twin scourges of black mold and asbestos; an event which involved staging a terribly dramatic mock-wedding with all the required and traditional trimmings.
“Of course,” Jess giggled. “Patricia is terribly persuasive, and Romeo has always been putty in the hands of strong-minded women who don’t want to sleep with him.”
“He’s also putty in the hands of those who do,” Rich said – for yes, the velvet-black Merc had made occasional appearances, discretely parking on the far side of Romeo’s Fifth-wheel, and the gossip that he couldn’t help overhearing in the Café of a morning, had it that Susannah and Romeo spent many an evening and into the wee hours, honky-tonking in various bars and dance halls in Beeville, Karnesville and even as far afield as Victoria. To his relief, Susannah appeared to make every effort to avoid being seen, especially by Richard, although Romeo had jovially thanked him for the semi-introduction, and leered when he advised, “If the trailer is a-rocking, then don’t come knocking!”
“Point taken,” Jess looked amused. Yes, she must also have heard the Café gossip, although since she and Joe Vaughn were an established couple, this intelligence may have come to her via pillow talk. “Yes, if you want to teach a two-week session next semester, I’m sure Jerry will approve.”
“They’re nice kids,” Richard admitted, feeling somewhat foolish that he had never had much to do with the sub-adult specimens of his species since he ceased being one of them. “I’d like to see them off to a good start in life.”
“So do we all.” Jess gathered up her spreadsheets and receipts. “So do we all – since they’re the ones who will be managing our assisted-living residences.”

The adult-skills class was the final regular class of the day, which ended at 3 PM. Richard rather liked it, since it let him put full-time at the Café, and added an extra fillip to complete his working day. The final bell dismissed the class – and he was unexpectedly touched to see that most of the kids departed rather reluctantly, rather than jetting out the premises at full speed, a handful of them lingering to ask very specific food-preparation questions which suggested they were going to go right home and attempt them there that every evening.
Which he thought was all to the good – given his fake biography which involved fixing meals for a mythical starving and neglected family of younger brothers and sisters, and his real-life experience, in cooking for his parents – all pleased and appreciative they were, although some of his early experiments with fusion cuisine were not all that successful. Although his parents were, if anything, sporting about it, since they ate the results with a becoming show of pleasure. He went out the back of the school to where he had left his bicycle leaning against a handy rack, thinking again of how much he owed his parents.
He was mildly surprised, therefore, to observe two Luna City Police department vehicles (about half the force, until there is sufficient funding to purchase a fifth SUV) parked around in back of the school, in a sweep of gravel by the auto hobby shop enclosure, the gymnasium and the field house which served as an overflow parking lot when the Moths played home games. And he noted, with a rising feeling of disquiet, that the Walcott’s blinged-out Humvee with all the extra add-on features was also parked next to a battered panel van with the logo of the popular local conjunto band, Los Maldonados, stenciled on the sides.
As he took up his bike from the rack where he had left it – for no one locked their bicycles any more than they locked their doors in Luna City – he heard Sook Walcott’s steam-whistle shriek of outrage, emanating from the direction of the double doors to the gymnasium, followed very shortly by the pint-size domestic terror herself, dragging her teenage daughter Belle by the arm in one hand and flailing blows in the direction of a dark-haired teenaged boy with the other, while two civilians – Coach “Music Man” Garrett and an older Hispanic man that Richard didn’t recognize, but who was in the customary performance garb of Los Maldonados, as was the boy and Belle Walcott – and Joe Vaughn with three of his officers attempting to reason with the infuriated Sook.
“You no canoodle with crummy musician!” Sook shrieked at top decibels and her distraught daughter wailed in response, “Mom! Javi wasn’t doing anything!”
“Mrs. Walcott!” That was Coach Garrett, mild, middle-aged musician and football coach for the Luna City Mighty Fighting Moths, who hadn’t won a game against any of their division opponents in three decades, although the Moths Marching Band, under his exacting tutelage were state and national champions in the marching band sweepstakes several times over. “Mrs. Walcott, please – calm down and listen to me – there was no impropriety here, we were finishing up Belle’s audition tape for ….”
“My daughter not be crummy musician!” Sook screamed, unappeased. “She go to proper college, perfect SAT! No canoodle with stupid musician boy!”
“Mom! You’re embarrassing me!” Belle pleaded, sobbing. “Javi – Coach – I’m sorry, I didn’t know Mom would carry on like this!” While Coach Garrett begged for reason and decorum and the older Maldonado attempted to pull the teenaged boy out of her reach, the four officers hovered uncertainly – although Rich could see that one officer – whose name badge read “Gonzalez” was already exchanging heated remarks in Spanish with the older Maldonado. Finally, Joe Vaughn shrugged, obviously giving up on reasoned diplomacy and settling for sheer lung-power.
“Enough!” he roared, in a parade-ground bellow which likely could have been heard in downtown Luna City and possibly as far as Karnesville. “Miz Walcott, lay a hand on Javier Maldonado again, I’ll have you in handcuffs on charges of assault and battery. Now – everyone, just calm the hell down. Milo, Jim-Bob, you two see Ignacio an’ Javi to their vehicle un-assaulted. Coach, what in the blue blazes is this all about?” he added in slightly lower, but no less aggravated tones, as Sook Walcott shoved her weeping daughter into the Humvee. “Oh, hi, Rich. You got anything to add to this?”
“Not really,” Rich ventured. “But I’ve been told that crime waits for no man.”
“Not now, wise-ass,” Joe said, as Sook Walcott spun the SUV out of the area in a spray of gravel. Coach Garrett sighed very deeply. “Chief, I just don’t know what gets into that woman, sometimes – but it was all my doing.”
“She seemed pretty upset, regardless.” Joe said, with remarkable patience, considering. “She must have had something to get fired up about, minor as it usually is. What were you doing here, with Javi and Ignacio and Belle, all dressed up?”
“It was an audition tape,” Coach Garrett explained. “For Belle to send with her application to Julliard.”
“Julliard – the school for musicians, the one in New York City? That Julliard?”
“My alma mater,” Coach Garrett answered, with an air of modest pride. “We were putting together her pre-screening DVD – she’s got the Ravel, Rossini and Mozart pieces down pat – but for the solo of her choice, she wanted to go with jazz; Mangione – and Javi and Ignacio were just here to help. She’s … wound pretty tight about all this, as you can imagine. Mrs. Walcott, she has it in her mind that Belle is going to one of those serious colleges, study medicine or law, or something heavy-duty like that.”
Remarkably, that seemed to make sense to Joe, who nodded, very slowly. “Their oldest boy – Jerry, is it? He bailed out of all that, broke his parent’s hearts like enough, when he went off to study nursing. At a public college, in San Antonio, no less. Don’t see why they got all bent out of shape, though – it’s a skilled calling, but …” he shrugged. “Kids, they have their own minds. I know that I did, when I was that age.”
“So, Sook and Clovis now have all their ambitions invested in Belle,” Richard mused. He had been just long enough in Luna City to have had business dealings with both Walcotts, seen Belle playing the trumpet with the Moths Marching band, and with the Maldonados at various local fetes. She was a pretty, but nervous-looking girl with bitten fingernails – as who wouldn’t be in her position, given her mother’s towering and ear-splitting social and parental ambitions.
“That’s it,” Coach Garrett nodded, an expression of deep concern on his middle-aged and otherwise bland countenance. “That’s it, exactly.” He looked at Richard and Joe. “And that’s the trouble – because she is really, really good. All my band kids are good, or at least fair enough by the time I’m done working with them. But she could be world-class … is almost world-class as just as she is. She needs a place like Julliard … just to have the space to stretch her wings and really learn. She needs music like normal people need air and water. I … just don’t know how to deal with her mother.”
“Join the club, pal,” Joe tilted his white Stetson a little farther back on his head. They watched the Maldonado’s van pull away, and Coach Garrett sighed again.
“At least we got the videotaping done,” he said, with a determined air of good cheer. “I can tweak the final bits when Mrs. Walcott came busting in. It’s only a prelim screening, anyway. If they accept her, they’ll schedule a live audition, in New York.”
“Do you think she has a chance of acceptance, Coach?” Joe asked, and Coach Garrett nodded. “Oh, yeah – depend on it. She is that good.”

It was a momentary local drama; Richard pedaled away home, arriving with a sense of relief that no fresh drama awaited him there. Even Romeo Gonzales, the potential provider of that was gone – doubtless tom-catting on his own, around the various clubs and bars dedicated to providing entertainment and alcohol to the single man, and those women looking to bag one. But the matter came roaring back, Friday morning at the Café, just as the morning rush slowed to a crawl, and he had the time to answer a phone call from a harassed Clovis Walcott.

Yes, from the next Luna City Chronicle – an excerpt introducing Araceli and Berto’s cousin Romeo, who works in the oilfields and … well, things happen when he is around. Things involving broken hearts and occasionally smoking rubble…

Romeo

When Richard woke the next morning – having slept the sleep of the righteous in Superman sheets – he was alone in the Gonzales children’s bedroom, where mid-morning summer sunlight leaked around the edges of the roller blind that covered the single window. The bed opposite, neatly made with Disney princess sheets, was empty and Kate Heisel was gone; Richard was unsure if he was regretful over that, or not. In telling him bluntly that he was very much a celebrity back number and that no one in his old life seemed inclined to seek him out for any purpose; that was a comfort in one way, but a definite kick in the crotch to his ego in another.
His clothing from the night before was neatly folded and stacked at the foot of the bed where Kate had slept, his shoes next to them. Really, Araceli thought of everything. Richard dressed – his native good manners belatedly kicking into overdrive – and took his borrowed pajamas with him.
The smell of bacon frying greeted him out in the small kitchen, where a sleepy-eyed Patrick was scrambling eggs at the stove.
“Hi, Rich,” Patrick yawned. “’Celi said you were sleeping like a rock – and not to bother you until you woke up. She’s gone to work, the kids are at school – me, I’ll hit the sack myself in another twenty minutes.”
“What time is it?” Richard asked. “Thanks for the loan of the PJs. I was … not in good shape last night, but I am much better, now – thanks to yours’ and Araceli’s hospitality.”
“Half past nine,” Patrick answered. “Glad to hear it … ‘Celi said it was quite a ruckus last night. I’m sorry to have missed the excitement. But on the other hand – I might not have been near as polite as Joe was. Just put those in the laundry basket in the bathroom, and siddown for a bit of breakfast. You want some hot sauce on your eggs?”
“No, I’m pretty much a traditionalist when it comes to my morning eggs,” Richard replied, repressing a small shudder,
“You’re missing a thrill,” Patrick shrugged. “Everything goes better with a bit of siracha sauce.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Richard replied. They ate breakfast in companionable silence, Patrick stifling the occasional yawn. Richard, still feeling a little at odds through not having another day at work, decided that he would ride the bicycle home to the Airstream and spend a leisurely afternoon reading Larousse. The weather being temperate – cool autumn being welcomed after the searing blast of summer – he might even sit outside.

His bicycle was where he had left it the afternoon before, leaning against the stairs leading to the screened back porch. As he left by the front, where a low chain-link fence enclosed the front garden, he did note a single lonely news microphone covered with an enormous furry windscreen muff lying abandoned by the gate. It looked at first glance like a very large, very road-killed raccoon. A Basset hound with lugubriously drooping ears waddled over from across the road, cocked a leg and peed luxuriously on it, and looked at Richard as if seeking approval.
“Good boy!” Richard said. Gunnison Penn and his friends must have retrieved the rest of their jettisoned video gear under cover of darkness. He wheeled out his bicycle and set off, feeling as if he were on a bit of a holiday.
Coming up to the dirt road turn-off for the Age of Aquarius, he heard a truck behind him – slowing to make the turn. He took the prudent step of pulling entirely off the road and letting the truck pass him; a slightly battered but otherwise well-kept extended cab pick-up truck of the sort that half the working men around Luna City drove. There was a weathered twenty-foot Fifth-Wheel travel trailer hitched to the back of the truck – one of the plain bare-bones models without any of the bump-outs that increased the living space when parked. Trailer and truck alike were layered in dust, and alike bore North Dakota license plates. Richard let the dust settle, before he followed after; it looked like Romeo Gonzales had not followed the advice of his friends to just keep going.
Well, thought Richard – a social gain for him, in having company at the Age of Aquarius, besides the over-friendly goats and the annoying Canadian treasure hunter, Gunnison Penn. By the time he got to the campground field proper, the driver of the truck had deftly backed the Fifth-wheel into a parking place at the other end of the field from the Airstream. Well – since the place was all but empty for much of the year, they might as well give each other space. As far as Richard was concerned, Gunnison Penn could give them all the space of the entire county.
“I wonder how much longer he’ll be staying anyway,” Richard wondered aloud. He really hoped that Romeo would be a more congenial neighbor, in spite of Sefton Grant’s worrisome aside about Romeo’s propensity for attracting strange energies, and Araceli’s tale of how he was a particularly disaster-prone Jonah in the oil fields. So, good that his Fifth-wheel and pick-up were parked the length of the campground away. Richard propped his bicycle against one of the posts that held a metal awning over the Airstream and opened the door; he had adjusted so much to the ambiance of Luna City that he never locked door any more, either. He felt again the contentment of coming home, a feeling unknown to him since his school-days. When Romeo the walking disaster-area was done with settling his trailer in, he might walk over and introduce himself.
Some fifteen minutes later, a small yellow Jeep Wrangler appeared in the rutted and unpaved lane leading to the campground. Richard closed Larousse Gastronomique; Jess Abernathy; thirtyish CPA and championship barrel-racer, daughter of Martin the acting mayor, an Abernathy of the hardware store Abernathys, who as things went in Luna City were nearly one of the establishing old families. The Jeep bumped across the lumpy field and parked next to the Airstream, and Jess emerged from the driver’s seat.
“Hi, Rich,” she said, with an expression of relief. “Doc said that I should check on you today, although Araceli says you seemed to be OK this morning.”
“I’m fine,” Rich answered. “You needn’t have gone to the trouble.”
“No trouble,” Jess grinned, mischievously. “And I was coming out here anyway. When Doc heard about last night, he was pretty pissed-off. He considers you one of his personal projects, which is terribly patriarchal of him, but hey – consider him a product of his age and upbringing. He had his personal lawyer get ahold of the district judge and write up an injunction. Mr. Gunnison Penn is hereby instructed on pain of arrest to not approach within thirty feet of your person, your place of residence, the Café, or any private or public place where you happen to be.” Jess flashed a large manila envelope. “And the same with regard to Araceli and Patrick and their kids. I was charged with delivering copies of the injunction to Mr. Penn, since Doc was too angry to wait on the availability of a bailiff. Not an errand, but simply one of life’s little pleasures.”
“Ah – it seems this Monday morning has much to recommend it,” Richard was feeling better and better. “And your friend Romeo has arrived safely – is that him?”
“It certainly is,” Jess shaded her eyes. The distant driver of the truck with North Dakota plates was now busying himself with setting the braces to balance the trailer, and unhitch it from the truck bed. She looked amused and exasperated. “But we really aren’t friends, as it were. He was … oh, three years ahead of me in high school and our social circles didn’t intersect. He was a total jock … Around here, there is a sort of social pecking order, based on your sport. Did you play sports at your school, Rich?”
“Nothing brutal like rugger – I was on the rowing team, and on the school sailboat.”
“La de-dah,” Jess snickered. “Then you wouldn’t have rated at all, when it came to date-bait. Neither did I, back then.”
“I presume that you were a total swot … what you Yanks call a bookworm?”
“Glasses and braces both,” Jess nodded. “Romeo was always perfectly charming … but just a sort of male butterfly, flitting from flower to blooming flower. He usually didn’t bother much with the barely-open buds.”
“I was going to wait a while before I introduced myself,” Richard ventured. At that moment, Sefton Grant appeared from the direction of the Grant’s untidy yurt-based home site farther up the hill. He was carrying something over his shoulder – several very long slender poles, some of them tipped with … Richard blinked. Some kind of green glass insulating knobs, of the old-fashioned sort that used to be used to insulate electrical wires, and a heavy sledge-hammer in the other. “What on earth …”
“We may as well go say howdy,” Jess said, firmly. “And see what fresh lunacy Sefton and Judy are going to inflict on their guests. Mostly it’s the fairly harmless kind, although the LCVFD safety officer did have to warn them sternly about that sweat-lodge they built at mid-summer…”
As they passed Gunnison Penn’s RV with the fading Treasure Hunter International logo painted across the side, Sefton Grant had paced off the corners of the space surrounding Romeo Gonzales’ Fifth-wheel. He was setting a pole in each corner, plunging the end deep into the ground – which had been mercifully soften by a series of recent rains – and then pounding it further in with blows from the sledge-hammer. Each blow clanged like a bell; once well-seated in the earth, the second, glass-tipped pole was set into it.
Jess muttered something under breath about New Age crapola, and demanded, “Sefton, what on earth is this?” as soon as they came close enough to speak without shouting. Sefton Grant, who looked like a younger, fitter and less-run-to-seed version of Willie Nelson, hefted the sledge-hammer, and picked up the last set of poles.
“Judy’s idea,” he explained, somewhat abashed. “Something to bleed off the excess psychic energies before they build up. I’d explained it already to Romeo … hey, Romeo, you remember Jess Abernathy, don’t you? And this is Richard – he runs the Café now, lives out in the old Airstream. He’s from England.”
Romeo, thus addressed, wiped grime off his hands with a somewhat less dirty bandanna, tilted his straw cowboy hat further back on his head, and stuck out his right hand.
“Howdy, folks,” he drawled. Richard was momentarily nonplussed. He had never, in his life, either before arriving in Texas or after, observed anyone tilting their hat and saying ‘howdy, folks.’ “Jess! Good to see you, girl! You don’t say – England, huh? Man, I feel like I’ve driven from there, these last few days, instead of all the way from Missoula, Montana. Good to meet you!” he pumped Richard’s hand with the strength which can only come from a man who has spent the last fifteen years wrangling heavy tools and machinery. “I guess we’re neighbors, then!” Romeo added, with a cheerful and wholly openhearted grin.
“I guess that we are,” Richard said, after searching his mind for something to say.
“I’ve heard about you,” he added. Which he had; but one of those things he had not heard was that Romeo Gonzales was so very blindingly the winner in the lottery of good looks in a clan whose appearance clustered around a norm of ‘average’ to ‘pleasant’ with an occasional outlier of younger Gonzalez/Gonzaleses in the direction of ‘cute.’ Physically, he was tall, lean-hipped wedge of a man, with chiseled facial features, and pale blue eyes which contrasted to devastating effect with black hair and a tan not acquired in a salon through artificial means.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of you, too – you’re that chef guy, ‘Celi’s boss,” Romeo exclaimed. “Say – when I get settled, we ought to go out honky-tonking together! It’ll be a blast…”
“That’s what we’re all afraid of,” Richard thought he heard Sefton say, in a discrete murmur, and to cover it, he replied, “Well … I have the Café, and they expect me to be there very early most mornings, so my evening social life is … for the moment, pretty constrained.”
“No problem,” Romeo favored him with another one of those blinding grins. “I’m gonna work driving the wrecker for Uncle Jesus at the garage, so I’ve gotta be careful myself about staying out of trouble, I reckon.”

(To be continued of course. Luna City 3.0 will be out this fall, in time for Christmas, hopefully!)