Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) (7 page)

Naked to the Eye

W
hen they stopped at the station to pick up Rainey’s repaired tire, Harry made several calls from a pay phone. She saw him walking toward the phone as the attendant was putting her tire in the back of the truck. The sun shone on his new hat and his shoulders. He had nice, square shoulders.

She got into the truck and sat there, watching him. He had a card in his hand—a calling card, she guessed. He bent his head close to the phone. She watched the intense set of his shoulders and head movement.

After a minute, she started the truck and drove over to him, stopping a few feet away. It seemed the polite thing to do. She did not stop close enough to be eavesdropping, but close enough to have a better look at him…and to possibly catch a few words.

She could hear no more, however, than murmuring. He turned, and she saw him give a small smile, nod and say what she thought must be, “Thanks,” just before hanging up.

To her surprise, he dialed again. He waited, and in her imagination
she heard the ringing across the line. His shoulders looked tensed, and for whatever reason, she felt tension, too, and chewed her own lip. Spying a fingernail file lying on the dash, she snatched it up and began filing her nails while repeatedly glancing up at him in a way she recognized as a little silly, but she could not stop, either.

He had reached someone, pressed the receiver close to his mouth.

He looked skyward, then back down, shaking his head. She caught, “No!” quite loudly.

Then he seemed to listen long, said something and hung up, hard, his hand remaining for a full minute on the receiver, and his shoulders sagging as if he had been shot in the back.

She wondered wildly if she should get out and run to him.

Then, sweeping off his hat and rubbing his arm over his head, he looked around at her. She realized she was staring at him. She quickly looked down and filed like crazy.
Who was he talking to? What was it all about? Well, she didn’t like whoever they were. They had hurt him
.

With dismay, she realized she had gotten carried away and filed one nail at a ridiculously crooked angle.

Glancing up, she saw Harry dialing one more time. He paced with this one. It seemed to take him quite a while. She wondered what could be going on, and she was growing hot.

She was debating about getting out and standing on the shady side of the truck, when he called over to her, “Do you have your uncle’s phone number?”

“Oh…oh, yes. Just a minute.”

She got her little address book from her purse and hurried toward him, holding open the page and pointing.

He repeated the number into the phone. Then, looking intently at her and motioning, he loudly repeated the name Farris
Wrecker Service and a phone number, which she repeated to herself until she found a pen and a scrap of paper in her purse to write the number on. She handed him the paper when he hung up.

He looked at it and then squinted at her. “No one had found the car.” He spoke as if he was both mystified and disappointed.

“Oh.”

They got back into the truck, and Rainey headed it down the highway. She wanted to ask him a dozen questions about who he had talked to, but a reluctance to pry kept her silent. In any case, he did not invite conversation. A mood thick and dark had come over him. He gazed out the window, looking as sad as anyone she had ever seen.

Finally she said, “I’m makin’ fried chicken for supper.” Good food generally could lift the darkest heart.

He grinned at her, and she was satisfied at her attempt.

Daring Souls

H
arry didn’t want to hold Lulu for her. He said, “I don’t trust any animal whose head reaches above mine.”

“Your head appears even with hers,” she said, surprised to see him standing rooted to a spot several safe feet away.

“Not even enough…she has at least nine hundred pounds on me.”

“She’s as gentle as the pup,” she told him and held the lead rope toward him.

With a distrustful eye on Lulu, he stepped forward. “I wasn’t too certain about that pup at first, but I figure I have about a 130 pounds on him easy and can hold my own,” he said in the manner of a thinking man.

Chuckling, she put the lead into his hand. “Here…put your nose next to hers.”

He arched an eyebrow.

“See…put your nose to hers, like she does…she’s learnin’
about me by sniffing.” She blew softly into Lulu’s nose and kissed the soft tip.

She left him standing there with the mare while she opened the trailer and cleaned it out. She had not had a spare minute to see to that chore since arriving. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Harry and the mare eyeing each other, Lulu obviously wondering nervously what there was to be afraid of.

Then she took the mare and loaded her into the trailer and they were off. As they passed her uncle sitting slouched in a rocker on the porch, a thick research book in his lap, Rainey slowed and called out the window, “Come on over after a while, Uncle Doyle.” But he shook his head.

With a sigh, she headed on down the drive. Glancing over, she saw Harry once more placing his hat on his head, dipping it low over his brow, as they were heading into the sun.

His gaze caught hers. They smiled at each other. She thought how lovely his brown eyes were, and quickly returned her gaze to the view beyond the windshield.

“Go girl!”

“Get his shoulder up!”

“Head for home!”

The horse knocked the rider’s leg into the barrel, and Rainey winced. Then horse and rider were racing lickety-split down the dusty arena to the encouraging shouts ringing upward to the wide pale sky.

There were seven barrel racers taking turns using the arena for practice and a number of other riders out for the relaxing fun of riding. Men and women sat around on the tailgates of pickups and fence rails, drinking RCs and Coors, and kids ran around chasing each other and playing in the dirt. No trees for miles, the wide sky above the color of turquoise, and the evening
golden sunlight lingering. It was an open and free atmosphere that encouraged spirits to laugh and soar.

Squinting beneath the shade of her wide-brimmed hat, Rainey rode Lulu toward the arena gate. A sense of anticipation rose in her like bubbles out of an uncorked bottle of champagne. There was a part of her that said “Ah” when she mounted a horse and found her seat, and Lulu, having already done a few slow turns around the barrels, was primed.

The mare’s ears cocked back and her tail swished high. Heading Lulu toward the gate of an arena was like switching on an engine, and when Rainey tapped her heels, Lulu went into instant turbo drive, not what anyone would expect from a mare so fat. Rainey usually was a little surprised to remain on the horse’s back and not be left back in the dirt by the force of gravity.

The mare’s mane flying, and Rainey’s hair beneath her hat doing likewise, they streaked into the arena and around the first barrel to the familiar encouraging shouts, and to some odd fellow boldly bawling instructions. Rainey barely heard the shouts, though, as she reveled in the power of the horse between her legs and the wind in her face. Tempering her exuberance for the sake of safety, she pulled gently on the reins, and Lulu settled into a flowing pace, rounding each barrel pretty as you please, turning for home at the third barrel and running for the gate. Then, riding right in front of Harry, Rainey let her spirit and the mare fly. She wanted him to see them in all their majesty.

The man with the stopwatch called out to her as she passed, “Twenty even.” She nodded at him and headed Lulu off to walk around the outside of the arena and catch her breath.

Neva rode up on her brown gelding. “You hold her back around the barrels.”

“I don’t see any need to risk an injury in practice. All she
needs is to go over the pattern, anyway,” she said, stroking Lulu’s neck. “She always seems to know when it’s practice and when it’s the real thing.”

“That J.T. annoys the hell out of me,” her cousin said. “Sitting up there on his big paint and calling out instructions and criticisms like we’re all his private students. Like anyone asked him.”

Rainey chuckled. For her part, she had barely heard the man. She had tuned him out. She could do that with anyone, having learned how when her brother Freddy got on his own high horse.

Neva said, “He’s Shirley’s husband, and everyone puts up with him because of that. I can’t for the life of me understand what she sees in him. Shirley is a professor with tenure at the junior college, and she owns the ranch. J.T. really can’t do anything, but he likes to act like he knows and does everything. Shirley has to come around behind him and do the job over—basically what he does is give her double work and scare off her friends. Who needs that?”

“Oh, who knows what any woman sees in a man?” Rainey said, her gaze finding her cousin’s current boyfriend sitting on the tailgate of his flashy red pickup truck.

She herself had been wondering: What in the world does Neva see in that man? Buck was handsome enough to put your eyes out, she supposed. Or he probably was to some women, although he struck her as someone in need of a shave and a haircut, or at least body-building shampoo. And a bit of gumption, too, if that could be had at the barbershop.

Her gaze slid as if drawn by a magnet to Harry, sitting right beside him.

Neva said impishly, “I imagine there’s one thing J.T. can do, just like my Buck…and your Harry.”

Rainey glanced over to see Neva gazing at the two men. It was plain to see that she thought Buck had hung the moon and stars.

Returning her eyes to Buck, Rainey tried to see what Neva saw, but again her gaze shifted, and she noticed how the golden evening sun glinted on Harry’s thick brown hair.

So far, since getting his hat, he would put it on and take it off five minutes later, as someone not used to wearing a hat often did.

“He isn’t
my
Harry.”

Harry had obviously liked Buck immediately, in the way that some men who seem totally opposite often gravitate to each other. Looking easy in his denim, sitting there beside Buck, he swung his booted feet slightly, a bottle of beer in one hand, and his other draped atop the puppy, who had displayed a tendency to nip at horses’ heels and therefore was confined to the truck.

Rainey was one to let a horse teach the pup with a good swift kick, but others there did not feel so inclined. She had been close to tearing into a guy who had hauled off and kicked the pup with his very pointed boot. Harry had stepped in with a calming hand and taken the pup off to the truck with him.

“He’s okay, Rainey,” he had said, feeling the pup’s side where the sharp boot had struck. The pup licked his hand nervously, as if fearful something else might be going to happen to him. “You’re okay, aren’t you, buddy?”

“Are you sure? You don’t think he could have a broken rib…maybe one cracked?” She felt for herself, as Harry reassured her again, telling her that the man hadn’t kicked the puppy nearly as hard as a horse would have.

“Well, a horse’s hoof isn’t pointed…and it knows how to hit. A horse will usually give a warning blow first, hard but not deadly. And besides, that’s one animal dealin’ with another,” she added indignantly. She was still half contemplating going over and giving the sharp-booted guy a swift kick of her own.

Neva was saying, “You said you picked him up off the highway. I’d say that in some way he
is
your Harry.”

“We are not lovers,” Rainey said. She wished she had not said anything about how she had come to meet him. It sounded a little foolish.

“I didn’t say you were…and there’s a lot to being lovers that has nothin’ to do with anything goin’ on between the covers.”

“I’ve been married twice. I’m tired of being disappointed by men.”

“We women of the Valentine blood are a bold bunch, aren’t we?” Neva said with a chuckle.

Rainey stared at her cousin, feeling sudden emotion at the term
Valentine blood
.

“I picked Buck up, too,” Neva said in a way that made Rainey’s ears prick; she knew there was more to come, a confession of some sort.

Neva gazed down at her saddle horn, and then she raised her eyes, speaking in a soft voice. “I know what I’m into with Buck. Daddy thinks I don’t, but I do. It’s just that what I’m lookin’ for isn’t the same as what Daddy thinks I should look for. I can earn myself a living, make my own decisions, take my own car to the mechanic—I don’t need a man for any of that.

“I need a man to love me,” she said, simply and profoundly.

“I know Buck doesn’t have an ounce of ambition—not like the world counts ambition, anyway. He isn’t much interested in money, as long as he has his truck and his bull-ridin’ riggin’. When he gets broke, he goes to work for a while, builds up a nest egg, then slacks off again. He doesn’t worry about tomorrow. I know it may sound silly, but that is what I admire about him. He puts the joys of living life today above money. He strives for joy, rather than money. He’s there for me, rather than for makin’ money.”

Rainey saw with some surprise that Neva’s brown eyes were beautiful, passionate. She knew that this was what Buck saw
in her plain cousin. It struck her that love truly did make a person bloom.

“All day long I see people scramblin’ for the almighty dollar,” Neva said. “Some runnin’ right over their husbands or wives or mothers or fathers to get it. Always sayin’ to themselves, ‘Got to have money to live, there’s time for lovin’ and enjoyin’ later, after the money is made, the future all secure.’ Eugene kept sayin’ that to me. We’d get married after he made school principal and was secure. He was thirty-four, for heavensake, and talkin’ all the time about retirement. He wanted us to have our house all paid for the day we married.

“You know why I think Daddy approved of Eugene? Because Eugene never was a threat to take my heart away, I’ll tell you that,” she said.

Rainey thought that Neva might have hit upon a truth. She vaguely recalled meeting Eugene once, but she could not recall what he looked like; perhaps this fact was telling in itself.

Neva said, “You know when I first saw Buck, what he did? It was in a Hardee’s over in Wichita, just before last Christmas, and a poor old deaf-mute man was going from table to table, giving out these little notes that asked for money and gave a blessing. I was with Eugene, and he turned up his nose and said the old man was a plague on society and needed to get a real job. I’m ashamed to say I was afraid of his criticism, if I gave the man money. But then, when Eugene had gone to the rest room, I saw Buck take out a ten-dollar bill—’bout all he had in his pocket, I imagine—and he put it right in the beggar’s hand. And there were tears in Buck’s eyes.”

Rainey saw her cousin’s eyes glisten, and her own heartbeat ran faster, picturing the scene.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Well, not anything, then. I watched him walk out to his
truck, and I wanted to run after him, but I was too afraid of being a crazy fool. And runnin’ out on Eugene while he was in the bathroom did not seem like the thing to do.

“But when we got out to his car, I told him that I could not marry him, and I told myself that there were a lot worse things than bein’ a fool—one of them is living with regrets. I promised myself that if I ever got a chance to meet a man like the one who had given the beggar money, I’d snatch him up.”

“And you did get the chance,” Rainey said, caught up in the story.

“Yes, at a club I went to with some girlfriends. It was four months later, and at first, when I saw him standin’ underneath a light, I thought I had to be imaginin’ things. I mean, it was like I heard angels singin’ hosannah and God sayin’,
’Well, here’s your chance, Neva. What are you gonna do now?’
I snatched my courage and went over and asked him to dance. Then I told him about seeing him in the Hardee’s and that I thought I might be in love with him.”

“You did?” Rainey said, amazed and awed.

Her cousin nodded, saying earnestly, “I know it sounds like I’d lost my mind, but I was desperate. I wanted to have love in my lifetime. Real carrying-away-love, like they write songs about.”

Rainey could not take her eyes off her cousin’s glowing face. Something inside her answered,
Oh, I know…I know!

“Buck came home with me, and we sat up all night talkin’…just talking,” she said with a chuckle, “and two days later he asked me to marry him.”

“Two days? You got married after knowin’ him two days?” Rainey glanced down at her cousin’s hand. There was a ring on her left hand, one with a turquoise stone. Rainey had thought it a birthstone ring.

“Well, no,” Neva said, lifting her hand and fingering the ring. “I got cold feet. It was one thing to be bold with him and another to risk my lifetime—I don’t believe in divorce, and frankly, I know Buck is sort of weak in that area. He doesn’t like unpleasantness or conflict at all and is apt to run off. You know how men can be.”

“Yes,” Rainey said, averting her eyes downward.

Neva said, “Right after Daddy was so rude to him—trying to drive him off—Buck did run off for a couple of days, sayin’ that he wasn’t the man for me. But he came back, and when he was still with me a month later and still askin’, I said yes, if he wanted children. He doesn’t really care about having kids, but he said it would be okay, if I did. He likes nothin’ better than pleasin’ me…or anyone, really.” She smiled tenderly, then jutted her chin. “But I won’t tell Daddy, because he told me not to bother comin’ around. He insulted Buck, and he insulted me, and it is up to him to apologize.”

“Oh, Neva, I can see your point, but you and your daddy are just goin’ round in circles with that kind of thinkin’. He misses you, and he needs you. He is a mess, not eatin’ right and growin’ mold in his refrigerator. What if he dropped dead tomorrow, like Mama?” She thought Uncle Doyle might do that from food poisoning in his own kitchen.