Summer Winds (20 page)

“She’s spoiled,” I said, contributing to her condition.

“I’ve never had a puppy. My apartment doesn’t allow pets.”

Cash came around the counter to stroke the furry little creature’s head as I held her. I didn’t ask Cash what she planned to do about the apartment rule, or how the puppy would go home with her, or if she intended to leave the tiny creature here. I swallowed at the emotional tide of sadness that suddenly washed over me. She would obviously be leaving in the not-too-distant future, and the puppy represented that moment.

“Do you like where you live?” I asked, looking up at her, driven no doubt by the idea of losing her.

“Not any more.” She wrapped her hands around the puppy and in so doing around my own—our fingers entwined, her hands enveloping mine. She leaned over, as I whispered no, and gently put her mouth to mine. An innocent touching of lips that held beneath their pulsing softness a promise of passion if only unleashed. For a moment, we breathed each other’s breath, unable to separate, and finally she spoke, barely parting from me. “I want you, Maggie Tanner, like I have never wanted anyone or anything in my life.”

“You don’t know what you want, Cash,” I whispered, at the same time thinking, neither do I.

Her lips close to mine silenced me. “Don’t, please. Just think about us. That’s all I’m asking. Just think about us together.” The puppy squirmed, probably from all the fingers enclosing her. “I think she’s too hot.” Cash pried the puppy out of my hands and put her in the sleep cage.

“We’re all too hot,” I said under my breath and headed out to the front porch, where the wind rippled over my body and created a chill. Moments later, the screen door clicked and Cash was on the porch behind me. She put her arms around me just under my breasts, resting her chin on my shoulder and holding me.

“You have to stop this. I’m so confused. I can’t function in this state. I can’t get anything done.” All the while I nestled against her, a warmth running through me that could heat an entire city, and she put her lips to my neck. I bent my head to one side to allow her better access, all the while protesting…as if my mind and my body were no longer communicating with one another.

“It’s your ranch, your life. Who are you hurting by making love?”

“I don’t know about women together and I don’t want to get used to it.” Her kisses on my neck were melting me into an incoherent pool of desire. “You’re not solid like the land, you’re like the seasons that come and go.”

He was on us before we heard a sound, booming out, “Anything you need from town, Ms. Tanner? I’m headed in.” Bo stood off the south end of the porch and talked loudly to be heard as Cash’s arms casually slid away from me. It was hard to tell what he saw or what he might think he saw, and I tried to remain unflustered.

“Thanks for checking, but I think we’ve got everything we need.”

He ambled off, looking back over his shoulder once as if trying to decide what he’d witnessed. I hurried into the house and Cash followed.

“Maggie…” she called out to me, but I was already in my room feeling like a teenager caught necking by her parents. She lightly tapped on my door. “Maggie, let me in, please. Let me just talk to you.”

Taking the coward’s way out, I said nothing but merely flipped the dead-bolt lock, the only thing I could rely on to keep us apart.

❖

I couldn’t sleep and got up before sunrise. The diary Cash had left on the kitchen table was now gone without my ever having confided that I’d read it. In its place was a note saying Moses had been fed early so she should sleep all morning. By ten o’clock the pup seemed as restless and unfocused as I was. Cash wasn’t in her room and I realized she must have written the note on her way out.

Taking the puppy out on the lawn, I let her relieve her little bladder and walk around. She stumbled on chubby legs as she sniffed the grass, and I inspected all her body parts, trying to figure out her lineage. She looked like the love child of a Boston terrier and a bluetick hound. “If that’s true,” I said to the pup, “then your parents had their own romantic challenges.”

Looking left at the sound of birds chirping, I noticed Cash’s Jeep was gone. The morning dew was still on the grass, and lack of tire tracks headed toward the front gate indicated Cash hadn’t left the ranch. In fact the damp grass showed distinct tire tracks down toward the pasture. I put Moses up and went back outside, deciding a morning walk would do me good, then followed the fresh trail to see where it led and what Cash and Perry were up to. And if I were honest, just to see Cash.

The Jeep was parked under a grove of trees on the north side of the property down where the cattle stood in the shade. Shadows prevented my seeing inside the front seat, and it appeared she had parked it there and taken a walk. I picked up my pace and fifty feet from the vehicle heard moaning, then movement as if someone was making love. I paused, then decided to see what in hell she was doing. Maybe meeting Verta and, if so, once and for all, I wanted to see it with my own eyes. Get her out of my system. Convince myself she was exactly who I wanted to believe she was, a woman who would screw anything.

The body on top was too large to be Verta and the person beneath was struggling. Without further thought, I yanked open the passenger-side door and was greeted by Bo’s half-naked butt. He had Cash down on the driver’s seat, her cries muffled amid the struggle.

A fury took over my body, an anger I hadn’t felt in years. If I’d had a gun, I would have been the headline in one of those news stories about a woman who shot someone fifty times when twice would do.

I grabbed the waistband of Bo’s pants and jerked back so hard he reared up enough for Cash to get her arm between them and slam his head up against the Jeep’s ceiling. Off balance after another violent yank from me, he fell backward out onto the ground, moaning as he hit the hard tree roots of the grove. I glanced at Cash, whose shirt was torn, clothing askew, and her lip bleeding.

“What in hell’s going on?” I shouted at her.

“What the hell do you think? He jumped me,” she shouted back, her face hurt and angry.

All my sexual frustration and anger blew out of me and into my right foot, which could not stop kicking Bo. I planted my boot in his head, then his shoulder, then his back as he tried to protect himself from the blows. “You sorry, fucking jackass, get off my land. If I had a shotgun I’d blow your brains out and feed you to the snakes.

What makes you think you can come in here and take my money and attack my guests.”

He managed to scramble up on his hands and knees. “Quit it now. Stop it. She asked for it!” He was on his feet. “You both asked for it. Dykes is what we call it.”

Cash swooped up a broken tree limb about the diameter of her arm and swung it like a bat, catching Bo across the chest and throwing him over backward. She pointed the end of the stick to his chest, pinning him to the ground. “Apologize.” He looked at her and she glared back. His mouth opened as if to say something but she cut him off. “To
her
.”

He turned his eyes to me. “I apologize.”

“Get off my ranch.”

“I need to get my stuff.”

“Perry will bring it. Just get off,” I said, weary now with disappointment in human nature. He started walking back across a hundred acres to the front gate. I signaled Cash to get in the Jeep and drive behind him until he was gone, then pulled out my cell phone and rang the bunkhouse. Perry answered and I told him to pack Bo’s clothes and catch up with him down the road and drive him the hell away from here.

“Aw, no, what happened?” Perry whimpered.

“Just get him off the ranch.” My voice rose and I hung up.

Shaking involuntarily, I strode back to the ranch house, unnerved by what had just happened and terrified over the timing.
What if I
hadn’t been there?

Twenty minutes later, from the window I could see Bo staggering out through the front gates, Perry headed his way in the truck. Cash pulled up by the house, parked, and bounded up the steps.

“You okay?” I asked, upset. She nodded that she was. “How’d it happen that you two were in the Jeep together?” Nothing like this ever occurred here until Cash arrived: friendly charismatic, sexual.

Unlike the rest of us, she was high-voltage wire plugged into a town with low wattage, causing everyone to blow their circuit, starting with me and ending with Bo Nightengale.

“I couldn’t sleep and took a drive this morning to think things over. He was out early and flagged me down, asking if he could catch a ride down to the cattle guard. When we got there, he said he could tell from watching me on the porch last night that I needed his services. I’m strong but he caught me off guard. If you hadn’t shown up, it wouldn’t have been good.”

“You see now, don’t you, how men out here think about two women together? They can’t stop until they get things back the way they think nature intended.”

“It’s natural to nearly be raped because some guy thinks I should be lusting after him instead of after you?”

Something caught in my chest at the thought of her lusting after me, but I held steady in my gaze and revealed nothing of what my pounding heart signaled. “It’s not how it
should
be, it’s how it is.” I went to the fridge and pulled out an icepack, wrapped it in a kitchen towel, and handed it to her. “Put this on your lip.”

“Maybe you’ve lived in the country too long. Where I come from, it’s
not
how it is. You don’t escort guys off the ranch. You call the cops and escort them to jail.”

“Well, the ‘cops’ out here are two more guys pretty much like the one we escorted off the ranch and they never heard of a ‘significant other’ and ‘partner’ is always preceded by ‘howdy.’”

“Good reason, I guess, to just marry one of the bastards. They can promise to protect you along with their land and cattle and other possessions so long as they can fuck you when they want.” She whirled and left, muttering over her shoulder. “Not much difference between that and what Bo tried to do, seems to me.”

I was snapped back into my marriage and the argument in the bedroom, where it always began. I wouldn’t make love when he wanted. That’s where the trouble lay. I never desired sex with him.

Like a gay woman in hiding, I had lived an inauthentic life, hadn’t I? If my husband were here, he would no doubt agree with Bo that I was just another dyke.

Adaily weather check was routine for any rancher, but I’d lost track of time and, along with it, the wind and rain.

And so like a siren in the night, the storm swooped down on me, shredding decency and shattering silence, battering the windows of my bedroom, the roaring winds drowning the howling of my soul.

Lightning crashed around the house and I jumped up and put on sweatpants, grabbed a slicker, and drove down to the far pasture where the horses were huddled. I knew ranchers considered it stupid to worry about horses in a storm, but the tall, moisture-rich trees were natural conductors of electricity and the exact spot horses always chose for shelter. I shouted for them and they came running, wondering no doubt where in hell I’d been. I hopped out and opened the gates, and they knew the routine, rushing from the south pasture into the fenced field next to the barn gates and then into the small area around the barn, thundering like trained circus animals through the openings and careening up to the barn before I could get back to greet them.

When I caught up with them, all I had to do was open their stalls and they could stay dry inside or go outside in the attached run, and I could rest without seeing images of stiff, swollen horse bodies lying flat on their sides, electrocuted.

When I parked and slogged back into the house, lamplights were on and coffee was brewing. Cash was standing in her nightshirt holding a towel out for me in exchange for my dripping slicker.

“Was this a necessary trip, Ms. Stanwyck?”

“Lightning.”

“And that’s why you shouldn’t be driving a metal vehicle around in it and opening and shutting metal gates.”

“Listen to you,” I said, amused at her acting like the ranch woman. “Well, normally I’d know the storm was coming. This time I missed it.”

“Me too.” She reached over and gently helped me dry my hair before giving me a penetrating look that seemed to reference storms raging within that had caught us both unawares. No denying that there was something between us. Something so mysterious to me that it was frightening. How had it happened that this woman attached herself to my every thought and in certain moments made my heart actually ache with longing?

Without another word, I broke away and took the coffee she offered to my room, where I showered and dressed. The warm water took the chill off me and the coffee did the rest.

When I returned to the living room, Cash was there in sweatpants and a T-shirt, she too showered and smelling of some cologne I’d come to associate with sex, as the mere whiff of it made my mind go immediately to that topic.

“Where’s Moses?” I asked, trying to be congenial and diversionary.

“Sleeping in her crib. Are we going to pretend that we never kissed?” She interjected the subject I dreaded.

“We
didn’t
really kiss. Have you fed her something?” I felt my cheeks flush, and my hands trembled as I tried to get the conversation back on sensible ground.

“I fed her some Puppy Chow and I walked her.” She came up behind me. “It felt like kissing to me. What would you call it then?”

“Being caught off guard. Vulnerable. That’s all.” I moved away quickly. She groaned in desperation at my constantly fending her off. Then why don’t you send her away, the voice in my head inquired. Unless of course you want to re-enact some tired scene from
The Graduate.

“I’m not playing Mrs. Robinson to your Benjamin.” The words popped out without my having time to analyze them. “1967, Anne Bancroft.” I responded to the quizzical look with a miserable sigh.

“You weren’t even born yet.”

“Well, I’m here now, in the flesh, and I want to know what you’re doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re completely push-pull. Half the time you’re letting me know you want me to take you in my arms and hold you, and the other half you’re telling me to leave you alone.” Cash searched my eyes for an answer and, receiving none, said quietly, “You’re driving me crazy, Maggie. I don’t know how much longer I can take it.” She whirled and left the room.