Cowboy Sing Me Home (8 page)

“Louise,” Helen cajoled.

“Helen, if the good Lord had meant for her to sing, he would have given
her a little bit of talent.”

“Louise!” Helen hissed.  “Not in front of the
Methodists
!”

“Oh, so what if the durned Methodists hear us?  They understand.  They
have black sheep of their own to deal with.  Look at those ridiculous choir
robes Norma Buchanan made and expects us to wear.  You don’t think some phone
calls got made about that?”

“What’s wrong with my choir robes?”

Dusty deduced that the burly-looking woman who shoved her way to the
front of the group was Norma.

“Nothing, except when we stand together we look like a bunch of grapes
grown near a nuclear reactor, that’s all. 
Purple and green
, Norma?”

“Purple
happens
to be the color of
royalty
, Louise Mayella
Buchanan Sanderson.  And green stands for the color we
hope
to be seeing
soon, once the rains come and get everything started
growing again
.  I
explained all of this during the steering committee meeting. If you had
bothered to show up…”

“I had an
appointment
!”

“You had a
tryst
, and everyone in town knows it!”

Louise gasped. 

The room went silent. 

Dusty backed slowly away.

Then the group erupted again, in a commotion of shouted accusations and
outraged recriminations.   Half the women whirled with noses in the air, and
the other half followed, either apologizing or getting in one last insult.  The
pandemonium wound its way past the pews and out the foyer door, which closed
behind them all with a bang.  Dusty breathed a sigh of relief and thanked a God
she didn’t necessarily believe in for the silence.  What a bunch of hot heads.

Helen came back a few moments later, hurrying down the aisle.  “I am so
sorry you had to see that.  We’re not normally like that, arguing amongst
ourselves.  Tempers are so short these days, with everyone worrying about the
drought.  I do hope you’ll come to the Jubilee and see how we can really be.”

Dusty doubted she’d be anywhere near it, but she kept that to herself.

“I hope we even
have
the Jubilee, now.  Mavis looked very upset,
bless her heart.”

“She’ll get over it.”

“Mavis has never really excelled at
getting over
things. Once she
gets…”

“Bent out of shape?”

“Yes, bent out of shape, she doesn’t get bent back in very quick.  And we
don’t have a lot of time.  I hope Brother Mark can appease her.”

“You’ve got four churches here. Surely you can get by without her.”

Helen frowned.  “I don’t know.  She’s our leader.  Everyone pretty much
waits for Mavis to say boo before they jump.  It’s just always been that way. 
Of course, we all know she can’t sing very well.  But she thinks she can, and
it’s really the only thing she has.  She can’t sew, she doesn’t quilt very
well.  She can’t cook worth a flip, bless her heart.  You should see her
cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving.  Has so much sage it’s
green
.”

Helen peered at Dusty.  “I can not believe my manners.  Here I am
unloading our town’s secrets and I haven’t even told you my name.  Helen
Tanner.”  She stuck a large hand out at Dusty, a hand worn soft and comfortable
by time and work.

“Dusty Rhodes.”

Helen gasped again, but this time with a delighted smile on her face. 
“You’re the angel Luke told us about.”

“Angel?” Dusty snorted.  “Whoever said I was an angel had me mixed up
with someone else.”

“My son, Luke Tanner, said you had the voice of an angel.”  She grinned
at Dusty.  “He’s one of the deputies here, and plays in the house band at
Tumbleweeds.”

“Yes, we’ve met.”  Dusty felt her cheeks get hot, thinking about the
conversation she’d had with Helen’s son just last night.

“Are you going to stay in here and work your trap all day while I’m
waitin’ out in the heat?”   Dusty and Helen looked up to see a man about
Helen’s age standing in the doorway, holding a worn cowboy hat, his hand on his
hip.

“Oh, shut up.  Like a little heat is going to kill you.” 

Dusty drew back her head and stared at Helen, not believing this angry
voice had come from the same sweet woman who beamed when she talked about her
insane son.

Helen put her hand on Dusty’s arm and smiled at her.  “It was nice to
meet you.  I’m glad you’re here for the Rain Fest.”

Dusty nodded, not quite sure what to say to these nutballs.  “Glad to be
here.”

Helen waddled down the aisle toward the man.  “Did you get the tires
rotated like I told you to?” she snapped.

“Did you find a way to quit nagging like I told you to?”

When the sanctuary was once again quiet, Dusty sat down on the dais and
let out a breath.  The town got weirder by the second.  So it was no surprise
when she heard the door open again and looked up to see Luke Tanner walking
down the aisle.

“If you’re looking for your parents, you just missed them.”

“Shoot.  I was hoping to catch Mom before she left.”  He glanced at his
watch and frowned.  “Choir practice let out early.”

 “Yeah, there was a cat fight.”

“Oh no.  What was it this time?”

“Let’s see.  It started with Mavis and her high screechy voice, which was
my fault.  And the last I heard was something about choir robes, nuclear
reactors, and trysts.  Oh, and your parents didn’t seem to be too thrilled with
each other, either.”

Luke tossed that aside.  “They’re always arguing.  It’s the rest of the
town that usually gets along okay. 

“Hmmm.”  Dusty stood and began arranging microphones.  “You probably know
more about this than I do.  What do you think of this setup?  Do you know… why
are you looking like that?”

Luke rested his hand over his heart.  “I’m just dealing with the shock of
you saying I know more about this than you do.”

“I
meant
you know more about how the choir is going to be
arranged.  About everything else…”

“Gotcha.”  He came up on stage and stood beside her.  Very close beside
her, she noticed, crowding her.  She moved back.  He moved with her.

She gave an impatient sigh. “Look, quit trying to cop a feel.  First,
we’re in church, and second, I already said I’d sleep with you.”

“You’re right.  Completely inappropriate of me.  I have no idea how the
choir is going to be arranged, so I can’t help you with that.  But I can tell
you that the street carnival is almost set up, so we’d better get going.”

“Get going where?”

“To the carnival.  You know, cotton candy and guys in stilts and dart
games.  Today is kind of a dress rehearsal for all the volunteers and their
families.  Toby’s calling it the ‘sneak peek’.  Pretty corny, huh?”  He reached
for her hand.  “Come on, let’s go before it gets too hot.  I’ll win you a teddy
bear.”

  The church was only two blocks from Main Street, and Luke held her hand
during their short walk over.  Dusty slipped her hand out and put it on top,
just so he wouldn’t think he was calling all the shots, but really she kind of
liked how cozy and familiar it felt, walking hand in hand with a good-looking
deputy among the booths and milling carnival workers.  They dodged vendors
setting up booths and games as they moved slowly down the street, Luke looking
everything over with a critical eye.  Over the loudspeakers, static blared and
then squawked, then the Everly Brothers came on with “Listen to the Rhythm of
the Falling Rain.”  

Luke pointed toward the far end of the row.  “Would you look at that?”

A giant rainbow made from chicken wire and colored paper stuffed into the
holes towered above the booths.  As they got closer, they saw a rusty iron pot
at one foot of it.  Bowls of cotton billowed out.

“Charles, I want to know where you got all this cotton at this time of
year,” Luke asked with a grin, shaking the middle-aged man’s hand.  “Do you
have a trick you could let everyone else in on?”

Charles laughed and scratched his forehead, causing his cap to ride up so
that Dusty saw the line of white skin where his farmer’s tan stopped.  “Well,
I’ll tell you.  Some of it came after sweeping out the trailer.  And some of it
was piled up in the corner of the barn.  And some of it…” He pushed back the
cotton so that they could see blue plastic underneath.  “Most of it is wadded
up plastic bags from Walmart.   I knew those dadgummed things were going to
come in handy some day.”

They walked back down the row and Luke bought both of them an ear of corn
dripping with butter.  They sat on a bench and ate while the watched the
growing crowd.  Most of the booths weren’t officially open yet, and many
weren’t going to be until the next day, but something this exciting drew a
good-sized crowd who just wanted to watch. 

Dusty pointed to a couple of teenage girls in dark gray costumes that
looked like paper mache boulders.  “What in the world are they supposed to be?”

 Luke drew back his head.  “They’re rain clouds.  Don’t they look like
rain clouds?”

“Oh sure.  Of course.  At first I thought they were big rocks, but now
that I look a little closer…”

“If they were big rocks they would have some hard edges to them.”  He
motioned the girls over and made them twirl around.  “See how rounded and
billowy they are?  Like rain clouds.”

Dusty looked at the sincere expression on his face and couldn’t help but
smile.  “This was your idea, wasn’t it?”

He started to shrug, but one of the girls nodded.  “He was all excited
about it.”

“Actually, the whole Rain Fest was my idea.”

“I wish you’d had some idea how to keep these things from getting so
hot,” the other rain cloud said.  She palmed the edge of her costume and
shifted it up and down, as if the small movement would generate a breeze.  “I’m
sweating so hard, when I take this thing off they’re gonna smell me clear to
Abilene.”

“He wanted us to carry little buckets of water and sprinkle people with
them, but we decided we couldn’t waste the water.”  The girl giggled and
pointed.  “Look at Andy.”

A skinny boy about their age approached.  He wore a black spandex suit
with a glittering silver lightening bolt painted from his shoulder to his toe. 
He stopped in the street, beamed at them, and stuck his scrawny chest out in a
superhero pose, which caused the girls to giggle harder.

“All right, we have rain clouds, we have lightening.  Pretty soon we’re
going to have big crowds of people.  Y’all get out there, be good hosts, and
make some rain.”  Luke shooed them back down the street.

Wynonna Judd came over the P.A. system singing “Rockin’ With The Rhythm
Of the Rain,” and Dusty studied Luke as he scanned the crowd.  When he turned
to her, wiped butter from her lower lip and then kissed her, she let him.  Not
that she was averse to kissing him; she was just usually the one who decided
when and where any contact was exchanged. 

A little voice niggled in the back of her mind that she was relaxing some
of her rules with Luke Tanner, and that was probably not a good thing.  But his
mood was infectious, and she decided she didn’t have to remain on her guard
every second.  She had laid the ground rules with him last night, and she was
sure he had no doubt which one of them had the upper hand.  So she could let
him lead her around like a sixteen-year-old with his steady, if that was what
floated his boat.  It didn’t mean anything if she didn’t let it.

He tossed both their corncobs in a trashcan and they set off again down
the street.  “I see a lot of familiar faces, so I think these are all
volunteers.  But let’s check the front gate to see if we’ve sold any tickets
yet, just in case.”

“What’s the town going to do with the money raised?” 

“Half of it’s going into an emergency fund for people in the county. 
Anyone who lives here can apply for a small grant, like if they electricity’s
about to be cut off, or there’s an unexpected doctor bill, stuff like that. 
Nothing big, but hopefully there will be enough to see anybody through a rough
spot.  And the other half is going toward next year’s Rain Fest.  We’re going
to keep it going, even after the drought is over, and it’ll get bigger and
better every year.”  He looked down at her, then started.  “Not that there’s any
way we can top this year’s musical guest.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t offended.”

He cocked his head.  “Really?  You usually are.  Offended by what I say,
I mean.”

She tucked her hand tighter in his.  “That’s true.  You have a way of
getting on my nerves.”

“And yet now you’re smiling at me like you’re charmed by me.  This must
mean you’re starting to like me.”

“It could.  It could also mean that this heat is getting to me.  If I
were you, I wouldn’t push my luck.”

They met Corinne and Toby near the front gate, and Luke and Toby
discussed crowd control and early ticket sales for the game and food vendors. 
Whatever they’d expected for the sneak peek, they both seemed pleased with the
way things were going.

Dusty tried to think of some small talk to make with Corinne while they
waited, but Corinne had all she could handle with trying to keep up with her
son.  He tried to launch himself at Dusty again, but she turned and pretended
not to notice.

An older woman and a man about Luke’s age came through the gate.  The man
was busy looking at the booths, but the woman saw their little group and moved
toward them.  “Wayne, look.  It’s Toby and Luke and Corinne.”

Wayne’s eyes grew wide when he saw them standing there.  He looked from
the badge on Luke’s chest to the star on Toby’s, then his eyes narrowed and his
lip curled up in a half smile.

“Wayne Schotts! I haven’t seen you since high school graduation.”  Toby
shook his hand.

“I can’t ever get him to come home long enough to see anyone.  He’s so
busy up in Seattle with his computer company, he only gets to come in once a
year if I’m lucky.”  Mrs. Schotts took a deep breath and smiled up at her son. 
“That’s why I was so thrilled when he showed up this morning, out of the blue.”