Summer Winds (6 page)

Out of the darkness, the tall lean figure approached, shirt askew, hair rumpled and blowing slightly in the wind. She stopped at seeing me. “Hi. Could I join you?”

“You live here too,” I said.

“That sounds nice.” Her voice was soft. She moved to the porch steps and sat down on the top one, slouching against the newel post.

As she watched the sunset, I feasted on her profile. She looked as if an invisible photographer had asked her to pose for a Ralph Lauren ad. No matter how disheveled, she always looked great. An elegant masculinity.

“Sounded like you were having a good time.” I spoke kindly, mellowed by the moment.

“Catch and release. Only every time we’d catch one, it would release itself.”

I actually enjoyed her mountains of energy for mundane activities. I made an effort to conserve mine, or at least monitor it, and make sure I had enough to spread across the entire day.

Her fingers moved lightly across the wooden step with their dried plank ridges, once smooth and painted, now appearing like inland driftwood, porous and weathered.

“How old is this place?” she asked.

“Older than dirt. Settled in the late 1800s, farmed by three generations of Blakes, the third my husband, John.”

She looked up when I said his name. “It’s so magical out here.

I can see why you didn’t leave.” Her remark made me wonder how much Buck had told her about my having decided to stay on after John died. Buck knew Johnny because we were all in college together. In fact, he’d encouraged me to date him. I often wondered if he hadn’t, where I would be and with whom. And now here I was looking into the eyes of Buck’s daughter, the wheel of time having taken a strange turn.

“You have this great ranch, you can cook, you’re goodlooking…how come you never remarried?”

I was glad to have the darkness cover my embarrassment. “I guess I never fell in love.”

“Were you in love the first time?”

“That’s kind of a personal question, don’t you think, Ms. Tate?”

I tried to sound more mature in my response than she had been in her question.

“Yes.” The word and her gaze were unabashedly direct.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” I quickly reversed the questioning to put her on the spot.

“We broke up.”

“So you’re here to heal a broken heart.” I was feeling more in control now, on the offensive.

“I don’t know. But I’m glad I’m here. Or I wouldn’t have met you.”

Before I could respond, Perry approached, carrying the hibachi, and stopped at the porch rail to announce, “Didn’t catch anything.”

“Couldn’t land anything, you mean.” She stood up and dusted off her pants and dashed inside, waving a playful good night to him.

“Need to teach that girl not to rat me out. Tomorrow we’ll get to it. Just needed a break,” he said, referring to the ranch work that was always on my mind. He wandered off to the bunkhouse. “You might think about taking a break, yourself.” He tossed the words over his shoulder like spilt salt. The only failing for which he ever admonished me, and lately he’d been doing it more often.

“I’m fine.” I gave my standard reply. But the truth was, I wasn’t. Even I had come to that realization. Most of the time I felt so hollow the wind could blow right through me. I tried to fill the hole inside me with activity, things that didn’t matter, but the wind still whistled as if trying desperately to get my attention. I sat for a moment, thinking about what Perry had said and then about Cash, who complimented me whenever she got the chance, and I felt a little guilty for having told Donnetta she was incompetent.
But she
is
incompetent.
My inner voice refused to let me go soft on her.

“But
charmingly
incompetent,” I said into the darkness to no one but myself
.

By the first of June coyotes nesting down by the pond had babies big enough to venture out. This morning a large, skinny, slope-shouldered adult slinked across the pasture and came too near the house long after sunrise. Left unchecked, he might be joined by his mate and gang up on one of the barn cats, so I headed out in my XUV to ward off trouble. Cash spotted me and ran alongside, grabbed the ceiling handle, and swung her long body in.

“Very cushy ride. Tell me again why you get the XUV?”

“Cuz I’m the ranch owner and you’re the ranch
hand
.” I raised an eyebrow in her direction, only half kidding.

“So where are we going, ranch owner?” she asked as cheerily as if she’d been invited.

“Lean down,” I ordered, as I reached behind her for the shotgun hooked on the metal mesh divider. I stopped abruptly, throwing her forward and giving myself room to load two shells, and pumped the first one into the chamber.

“Damn.” She laughed as I stepped on the gas, snapping her head back intentionally as I barreled toward the high growth around the pond. Suddenly two coyotes sprang into action and I fired a shot just behind them as they skittered off into the field ahead and down into the trees on Hiram’s land.

“You missed.” Cash whooped.

“I intended to miss.”

“Now that’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard.” Her devilish expression tempted me into sparring with her.

“I don’t like to kill things when scaring them will do.”

“I’ve never
seen
such a wild shot!”

“Then you don’t get out much.” I swerved left suddenly, pitching her right and nearly out of the vehicle as she shrieked. Seconds later, I slammed on the brakes as we arrived at the house.

“I’m kidding, don’t kill me,” she said, as she tumbled out of the vehicle and then managed to get her feet under her.

I pulled away and headed down to the pasture. By myself again, I could physically relax.
Completely inappropriate. She’s my ranch
hand, not my friend, for God’s sake. Maybe she’s just having trouble
finding her center
.
After all, sounds like she kind of got shipped
out here as a favor. I was probably a smart-ass myself when I first
arrived, using jaded humor to cover up for plenty of times when
I wanted to kill people for their cruelty or cry from loneliness or
simply run away.
The prairie had grounded me and held me to the earth, and the wind whipped me back into shape, reminding me that if small, helpless creatures could survive on the prairie alone, I should be ashamed to do anything but thrive. Maybe with time Cash would even out. Perhaps that’s why Buck sent her—thinking I could possibly help her.

Restless, I made a U-turn, parked the XUV, hopped out, and got into my truck, the destination unimportant, moving rather than thinking, perhaps “driving myself out of my mind.”

Exiting the front gates, I drove two miles south of the ranch, then west down a dirt road to a twenty- by thirty-foot white metal building with a hand-drawn sign nailed to a post saying Feed Store.

The makeshift store was run by a young couple, Jock and Sara Goodie, who’d just moved to the area. She was a petite blonde who often worked behind the new plywood counter, and her stocky, buffed husband was nowhere in sight, by his own admission on the road every Thursday night to satisfy his rodeo habit.

Like a lot of local boys, he welded pipe and plowed fields during the week to earn entry fees and gas money for weekend bronc riding. Farming and ranching were high-risk businesses that after twenty years could often end in broken equipment, bones, and marriages, but the rodeo circuit seemed to deliver the same pain in record time. And I wondered if Sara and Jock Goodie would be married in five years, much less in business.

I hopped out of the truck and walked past a pickup with a bumper sticker proclaiming BEHIND EVERY SUCCESSFUL RANCHER IS A WIFE WHO WORKS IN TOWN.

Sara brightened on seeing me, greeting me with a smile and a strong handshake, as if I was the only customer she’d had today.

She quickly went about locating the fifty-pound sack of sweet feed, another of rolled oats, and an equally large sack of dog food.

I dropped the tailgate and she slung them into the truck bed with ease.

“You like this old baby blue bomber?” She patted the faded truck fender as if it were an animal, and I told her I liked it when it ran. “We’re looking at a really cute Ford truck for me. If Jock gets into the money on his next ride, I think we’ll buy it.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” I said, as a gust of wind blew loose dirt and hay up from the adjoining field and slapped it into my face. I turned and sputtered, trying to get it out of my mouth.

“Been blowing like this for weeks. Don’t know if it’ll ever stop.”

“You doing okay out here?” I asked somewhat obliquely, looking out over the prairie as if I might be asking about her chosen location and not her sales figures.

“I think business will pick up once people know we’re here.”

Her doubt was evident behind the cheerfulness. I wanted to tell her that folks knew she was here but hadn’t decided if they wanted to let her in. A hazing period seemed to follow the warm welcome a person got when they moved to Little Liberty. Just because town folks welcomed you didn’t mean they were encouraging you to stay.

They waited to see if the grit in your teeth would make its way to your resolve. No need to start liking somebody only to feel sorry for them and be downhearted when they left.

I thanked Sara and wished her well as I climbed into the truck cab. Dust kicked up on the driveway ahead of me, and Stretch Adams’s shiny fifth wheel approached head-on and pulled up alongside me so he could hang out his truck window and greet me eye to eye two feet from my left elbow.

“Stopped over at your place and your gal said you were out. Didn’t expect to run into you, my lucky day.” Stretch showed his uneven front teeth and leered at me as if waiting for me to make the next move.

“What can I do you for?” I joked.

“You could do me for nothing.” He kind of snickered like he had something in mind he couldn’t discuss in broad daylight. “I was wondering if you wanted to go out for dinner Saturday night. Maybe drive into Maze City and go to a movie or something after.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Stretch, but I’ve got company now and more coming.” I mentally referenced Cash but threw Buck into the imaginary guest list rather than say straight out that I didn’t want to go on a date with him.

He looked a little put out. “Another time, then.” He yanked the truck’s gear into reverse, wheeled his vehicle around, and sprayed gravel into the air as he fishtailed onto the highway. Pipes, propane tanks, and other paraphernalia slid across the back of his truck bed and banged into each other in metallic displeasure.

Sara wandered over to my truck window. “You know Mr. Adams?” When I nodded, she said, “He ran up a bill when we first came out here and I think he’s forgotten to pay it. I was hoping to catch him.”

Stretch hadn’t forgotten, he’d just gotten by. “Sorry I ran him off. He works for Hiram Kendall at the lumber mill in town. Next time you’re in there, you might stop and ask.”

She nodded and I headed back to the ranch. Something about Stretch Adams gave me the creeps, especially the way he wasn’t embarrassed to look me over like he was sizing up a piece of meat. I chastised myself for being so critical. Stretch Adams had made two trips out to the ranch in an ice storm last winter to help me with an injured cow when Perry was so sick with the flu he couldn’t move a muscle.

Face it, down deep you always think men want to take you out to get a piece of your land or a piece of your ass, the little voice in my head said. “I do suspect people’s motives,” I answered firmly to the dashboard, as if something outside myself had framed the question.

A few minutes later I pulled into the ranch, got out, and started to unload the feed, but then thought better. Cash should do it. Being treated like any other worker was part of her ranch-hand experience.

I walked through the house and didn’t see her, so I went straight through the living room and out the back door, catching sight of her in the distance under the barn overhang where hay bales were stacked. As I approached, I saw she was bent over, snipping baling wire to break open square bales for the horses, and her jeans hung off her behind, showing an expanse of muscular lower back and a tight butt.
I swear she’s built like a boy
.

“What are you up to?”

She ducked her head and answered into the hay. “Just doing some work for Perry. That Stretch guy was out here asking where you were.”

“Yes, I ran into him.”

“I think he’s got the hots for you.” She held her palms together and winced slightly.

“What makes you think that?”

“Maybe it was the drool around the edge of his mouth. Or maybe that’s just him.” She grinned wickedly, apparently undeterred in her attempts to torment me, and I chuckled in spite of myself. Looking down, I noticed the way she was holding her hand.

“What’d you do?”

“Nothing. Told him where you were, that’s all.” She sounded defensive.

“To your hand. Let me see it.” I held out mine and she turned hers over, revealing a bloody slice across the left palm. “How the hell did you do that?”

“Wire snapped up and cut me like a razor.”

I glanced down at the baling wire that had rusted during the winter. “Come on.” I entered the barn and she followed me to the tack room, where I opened a small overhead cabinet.

“When you cut baling wire, keep your left hand—”

“I know how to do it. This was just a freak thing and the wire was really tight.”

“Wear gloves.” I reached for the hydrogen peroxide.

“No, not that, it’ll burn like hell!” she yelled as I poured it over her palm.

“Better put a Band-Aid on it if you’re going to mess around out here.” I reached up on the shelf and located the box. “When was your last tetanus shot?” I could tell from her look and the way she backed up a couple of feet that she was long overdue and didn’t want one.

“I’m running you up to Doc’s office.”

“No, it’s nothing.”

I ignored her on-going protests as we headed back up the path to the ranch and I dialed Doc Flanders on my cell phone. He was the town doctor and a squirrelly guy by any criteria. Not someone you wanted to sew up your face, but a tetanus shot was safe enough. I checked my watch; he shut his doors at four p.m. sharp on Fridays.