Helene enjoyed the rhythm of stooping, piling her arms high, then walking into the small shed and stacking it in long rows. She carefully selected certain pieces to form the cribbed ends. It wouldn't do to have the whole thing fall before she finished. Outside she could hear Phillip continuing to split logs. The axe stopped, and she heard Curly's voice. "I got to admit, you done better'n I expected. I never figured you'd split that whole pile."
"Lord save me. Was that a compliment?" The amazement was obvious in Phillip's voice.
"Wal, take it how you will," Curly retorted. "I just say what I see."
Helene stepped out of the shed. "Hi, Curly," she said as she bent to pick up more split logs.
"So, you got a helper." Curly grinned. "I'll get back down to the barn. Can see the two of you don't need me."
When he had gone, Phillip pulled off his gloves and shrugged into his shirt. "I'll help stack." He buttoned his shirt, unfortunately covering the bare chest she'd gotten quite fond of seeing displayed.
"You don't need to do that," Helene said, repeating his earlier statement. "You must be tired after splitting it all. I made lemonade, and there are still some of those chocolate chip cookies.
Phillip grinned at the offer. "Tempting, but nope," he said, "I'll bet your Aunt Rochelle had a proverb for this too. Something like eat when the work's done." He pulled back on the leather gloves.
Helene smiled up at him. "She did at that."
"She was your father's sister, right?"
"Yes."
They both bent to picking up wood and carrying it into the shed.
"Wasn't it hard for her to leave behind so much luxury to make her life on a working ranch?" Phillip asked as they walked back into the sunlight and bent again to the stack of wood.
"She said it was the best thing ever happened to her. She loved this country even before she met Uncle Amos. She used to say she married him so she could wake up every day of her life, look out the windows, and see the Absarokas."
"I've seen it written. How come you say it--Ab-soar-kee?"
"Well, there is some dispute over how to say it. Some say Ab-soar-kah, but the one way you know a dude around these parts is when he says Ab-sore-oh-kas."
Phillip laughed. "I can understand your aunt loving them, however, you pronounce the words, but... didn't your uncle mind her saying she'd only married him for the view?"
Helene laughed, thinking a view, one way or another, was often the basis for a marriage. "Actually," she said, "if you'd seen them together, you'd have known why he didn't mind. She looked at him as though he was the sun, moon and everything in between. He treated her like a queen. I suppose that much love makes you secure enough that you can joke about it."
"Different from her brother’s marriage."
Helene snorted. "As night from day. If I hadn't seen Uncle Amos and Aunt Rochelle together, I'd have never believed in marriage at all."
"Now you want one like theirs," he guessed.
"I wouldn't expect that much, but I definitely don't want one like my parents. The emotional divorce for them happened before I was born. It's only now being recognized."
"I guess I understand a little more why you did what you did with us."
She heard the hurt and resignation in his voice and didn't like it. "I don't know what happened, exactly, with us, except that I panicked." The image of her father in bed with another woman flitted into her mind, but she didn’t need to tell Phillip about that. It wasn’t fear that he’d do that to her. She wasn’t sure still all it had been.
"I am truly sorry." She levelly met his gaze. "I really didn’t expect it would matter that much to you. I can never make up to you what I did by marrying you that day."
He grinned then, a flash of white teeth and a glint in his blue eyes. "Oh, you never know. Helping me stack this load of wood's a start."
#
Friday morning, peeling carrots for her uncle’s dinner, Helene realized half her mind was mulling over various angles for the article Doctor Albertson agreed to let her write and half was listening for the sound of Phillip's boots on the porch. Did he really intend to go to dinner with her and Wes? It didn't seem like something she would have expected Phillip to do, but then nothing about Phillip was fitting her expectations.
"Got any coffee on, girl?" her uncle asked as he came in from the small den. His morning had been spent paying bills, and he looked more drained than if he'd been out tossing bales of hay, which was where Phillip was.
She poured the coffee. "Are you having problems?" she asked, taking in the worried expression on her uncle's face.
"Subtracting, adding. You name it," he grumbled as he sipped the brew left over from their early breakfast.
Before she could ask more questions, she heard the tractor engine shut off by the back porch. The door opened, and Hobo ran through followed by Phillip and Curly. The kitchen was filled with the clean fresh smell of the outdoors as the men took off frosty coats and hung them on hooks near the woodstove to dry out.
"How you boys making out today?" Amos asked as Helene poured two more cups of coffee.
Curly snorted derisively. "He's making it more work than it oughta be. Usin' pure muscle instead of leverin' and throwin' a bale like I keep tellin' him." He glared at Phillip as the younger man grinned and sipped his coffee.
"I've never been a quick study," Phillip admitted when he saw the tirade was going to go on until he produced proper level of penance
.
"This is all new to you," Amos said defensively, taking one of the cookies Helene set in front of them. "You'll get the hang of it."
"If he don't break his back first," Curly muttered.
"Is he holding up his end of the work?" Amos asked.
Reluctantly Curly nodded. "Fed all the stock this morning, while I drove tractor."
"Then what's your problem?" Amos asked.
Obviously to avoid answering, Curly took a large gulp of the hot coffee, burned his tongue, then nearly strangled on swallowing back the curse. Helene stifled her own smile. She found it amusing and endearing, Curly's belief that a man didn't swear in front of a lady. She wondered how Curly reconciled his sweet, old-fashioned protectionism with the foul mouthed ladies he must have occasionally run into, but then were they ladies? She wasn't sure, with the world the way it was, exactly what made a lady.
"I'm not really ignoring what you're telling me, Curly," Phillip said. "I'm just having a time finding the rhythm the way you say I should. When I do it my way, the job goes faster. Long term I know I have to get the proper swing--and I will."
Helene stared at him in amazement. The arrogant and smooth Phillip Drummond, in trying to make peace with Curly, had humbled himself. Not that as the week had gone on, he was looking much like the smooth Phillip Drummond anyway. The plaid shirt he wore was unbuttoned half way down his chest. His hat had been thrown on a hook, leaving his blond hair disheveled. It didn't look as though he'd shaved that morning, giving him a dangerous look, a look only enhanced when his eyes met hers, and she saw the glitter in them, a glitter she would have thought meant raw, masculine desire in anyone but Phillip.
For a moment, their eyes locked, and her body began to put out a treacherous set of demands of its own. Something was beginning to happen to her every time Phillip came near, and she didn't like it. She felt a throbbing, as though her body was resonating to a beat she couldn't and didn't want to hear.
She would have given a great deal to know what Phillip was feeling, to know if the look in his eyes was desire for her. Did he just want her because she had turned him down and his competitive nature didn’t like that? Phillip didn’t like losing. That much she did know. Naturally, there was no answer as he turned away and said something to Curly.
"We can't fix that blamed thing," Curly objected with a grimace of distaste.
"We can take a look at it."
"What you two got in mind?" Amos asked with wary interest.
"Nothing that involves you," Curly said. "You know you got to do the books, and you ain't gonna talk us into doing them for you."
"Blast," Amos said good naturedly. "Well then, what are you two planning?"
"Danged if Phil here don't think we can fix the ol' truck down by the barn; so’s we’d have it for a backup and a second one to use here when we gotta do repairs in the field." He grimaced painfully. "Don't know but what if it come to fixing a truck or doin' the books, I might not rather sit at the desk myself. Don't know nothing about engines and at my age, don't want to know nothing."
"I didn't say we can fix it," Phillip demurred. "I said we should take a look at it. Where's the manual?"
"You mean like a how-to-fix-it book?" Curly asked with a chary look in his eyes.
"That's exactly what I mean. I don't know a lot more than you about engines, but I do know how to read a manual."
"Might be in the glove compartment or in the tool box... or might be we ain’t got one," Curly said, rubbing his neck as he considered the possible locations.
Amos got a peculiarly pained look on his face. "For the first time, I'm glad I'm doing the books. Give Curly or me a horse and we're okay. Maybe we were born too early to take to working on motors and such."
Curly again tried to wiggle out of the job to no avail. Helene could hear the old man cursing and griping with each step they took away from the house. She sucked in a breath as reluctantly she realized that the time had come, with no excuses, for her to look at her aunt’s journal. She needed to know if there was something there to help her. Silly to even imagine it. She walked upstairs and sat on her bed, the leather bound book in her hands as she felt nervousness at opening it. Silly what could it say to hurt or help?
When she opened the first page, she again saw her name but this time read the inscription. “For my beloved niece with the hope that someday you will need to know these things. I kept a journal all my life but burned the rest. This one though, this one I could not destroy because somehow I felt the day would come when the lessons I learned would be needed by you. If not, well burn it also, please. I love you. Aunt Rochelle.”
She opened the next page and saw the date went back many years, long before she was born. It was actually before Aunt Rochelle would have married Uncle Amos. Her handwriting was lovely and small, tidily filling the pages with information that had been important to the young woman she had been.
June 4, 1968.
Wow, here I am and now what? I have a college degree in the arts but Livingston doesn’t need a professional... er uh what was I a professional at with that degree? Maybe I could teach but not soon enough to eat. No, gotta find a job and I will. The only opening in the paper though appears to be a waitress at the Shed diner. Okay, I could do that... I think.
June 7
Finished my first day on the job and I know one thing. I need new shoes. My feet are dying, absolutely dying. This is one of the hardest jobs I can imagine. It’s a challenge for me that I didn’t expect. ‘Who can’t do a waitressing job?’ Let them try it is all I can say. It is hard work, on my feet all day and dealing with some picky people. I am meeting a lot of the locals this way though. I divided them into two categories—good tippers or bad tippers. Of course, I can’t blame the bad tippers too much given my talents. I will improve though and next time won’t dribble coffee on anybody!!