Between Heaven and Texas (16 page)

C
HAPTER 29

M
ary Dell turned the key in the ignition, laid her arm over the back of the seat, looked out the rearview mirror, and shifted the car into reverse.

“Well, Howard, I guess we'll try Lubbock next. Graydon gave me a list of Donny's old friends and hangouts. Maybe we'll get lucky.”

She backed the car up to turn it around and was getting ready to pull out when somebody started banging on the trunk.

“Mary Dell! Wait a minute!”

Mary Dell let out a little yelp and clasped her hand to her chest.

“Graydon! You about scared me out of my skin!”

Graydon opened the back passenger-side door and tossed an army-green duffel bag into the backseat, next to Howard.

“Sorry. I was afraid you'd drive off. Hang on a minute, will you? There's something I've got to do. I'll be right back.”

Without waiting for her response, Graydon ran toward the back door of the Spreewells' house, letting the screen bang closed behind him. True to his word, he was back about a minute later. He jumped into the front seat and slammed the car door.

“All right. Let's go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“To Too Much.”

Mary Dell stared at him. “You want to go to Too Much? With us? Why?”

“Because you need some help and I need a job,” he replied. “I just quit mine.”

 

It was near noon when they left the farm, so they stopped at a diner in Liberal to eat and discuss the possibility of Graydon's employment at the F-Bar-T in greater detail. The waitress showed them to a booth in the back that was big enough to hold Howard's car seat and then took their order: a bowl of chili with a side of cornbread for Graydon and a chef's salad with extra Thousand Island dressing for Mary Dell.

“Four hundred dollars a month!” Mary Dell exclaimed after hearing his proposal. “I can't pay you four hundred dollars a month.”

Graydon took another bite of chili and shrugged. “All right, two hundred. You sure drive a hard bargain.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant,” he said. “But I'm not doing this for the money. Donny left you in a lurch, and I want to help you out. Howard's the only nephew I've got.”

“You're sweet, Graydon. You really are. But none of this is your fault. I can't let you leave a perfectly good job and turn your whole life upside down just on my account.”

Graydon leaned across the table and looked her in the eye. “First off, that job was a long way from good, and we both know it. Second, maybe it's time my life
was
turned upside down.

“Do you know that you're the first person, aside from the Spreewells, who'd been in my room since I've started working there? When you came through the door, I suddenly saw my life the way it must look to you—bitter bachelor cowboy, living in one dirty room, no friends, no future, nothing to look forward to. Just counting off the days, wasting my life, waiting for it all to be over.”

Mary Dell gave him a pitying look and started to say something, but Graydon lifted his hand to stop her.

“Don't, Mary Dell. It's nobody's fault but mine. When things got too hard, I ran off and hid in a hole. Just like Donny's doing now. Just like our daddy did when we were kids. When I was little, I always swore I wouldn't turn out like him, but . . .”

He picked up the cream pitcher, poured a little into his coffee cup, and stirred it thoughtfully.

“Funny that I never saw it until now. Maybe that's what Bebee men do,” he mused.

“The Fatal Flaw,” Mary Dell said quietly.

“What?”

“Nothing. Listen, Graydon, I can't deny we could use your help, but . . . are you
sure
you want to do this?”

“I've got no love for Too Much, you know that. Once your lambs are born, your cattle go to market, and we can find somebody reliable to take over, then I'll head on down the road. But I'd like to help you get through this rough patch, help you get off to a fresh start now that you're on your own. Who knows? Maybe it'll be a fresh start for me too.”

Mary Dell thought about this. She couldn't deny that their meeting seemed to be timed by Providence and that his proposal was an answer to her prayers. And he would doubtless be better off working at the F-Bar-T than he was living in that nasty shed and working for that cranky Mr. Spreewell. But she didn't think it was fair that Graydon should be trying to make up for Donny's mistake. Especially at a price of four hundred a month. That might be reasonable pay, or close to it, for a regular old hired man, but what Graydon was proposing was to really manage the ranch. Mary Dell had no doubt that he was up to the job.

“I've got to pay you more than you're asking for,” Mary Dell said as she cut a chunk of tomato into bite-sized pieces. “I won't let you do it for four hundred.”

“How about this?” Graydon countered. “You pay me the four hundred. If you have a good year, if the lambing goes good and the beef sells at a decent price, you give me three percent of the profits.”

“Eight,” Mary Dell countered.

“Five,” Graydon said.

“Done.”

“Done.”

Graydon nodded and resumed eating.

“Just one thing,” Mary Dell said. “Where are we going to put you? I'd let you stay with us, but we just have the two bedrooms. You could sleep up at the big house, it's closer to the barns anyway, but since Lydia Dale moved in with the children, they're pretty short on beds too.”

“I don't want to stay in the house.”

The way he said it made Mary Dell think what he really meant was he didn't want to stay anywhere Lydia Dale was. She understood his feelings, but they were bound to run into each other. And, anyway, that was all ancient history now. It was time he got over it. Time Lydia Dale got over it too.

Too bad there
weren't
any extra bedrooms at the big house. Now that Lydia Dale was finally free from Jack Benny and with Graydon still single . . . well, she could think of worse ideas than throwing the two of them together. Damn, but he was handsome! But those Bebee brothers always had been.

“You got a tack room?”

Mary Dell jerked a bit, startled by the sound of his voice. “Beg pardon?”

“Do you have a tack room in the barn? If you've got a cot and some blankets, maybe a chair and table, I can bed down there.”

“In the barn?” Mary Dell frowned. “That wouldn't be very comfortable. There's no bathroom out there. No kitchen either.”

“I've been sleeping in a converted shed with no facilities for years. A tack room won't be much different. And I can't cook anyway. Well, I can scramble an egg and heat up soup, but that's about it. If your folks wouldn't mind me coming in the big house to use the facilities and if your momma would make me a plate of whatever she's cooking, that'd be fine with me. I hope Taffy's a better cook than Grace Spreewell.” He winked and scooped up another bite of chili.

“Momma's a very good cook. One of the best in the county,” Mary Dell said truthfully. “And Grandma Silky can bake a pie that'll bring tears to your eyes. But you'd better be careful about giving either of them too many compliments on their food. They'll have you fattened up like a Christmas turkey if you're not careful.”

Graydon smiled, but barely. “Well, I plan to be on my way before Christmas, so I ought to be safe. That work for you?”

“It does. I feel lucky to have you for as long as you want to stay. Thank you.”

Graydon touched his forefinger to his brow in a silent salute and then extended his hand. “So, we've got a deal, then?”

“We do,” Mary Dell replied as she shook his hand to seal the bargain. “We sure do.”

C
HAPTER 30

“H
ere?”

Taffy's eyebrows lifted as if she wasn't sure she'd heard her daughter correctly. She wiped the blade of the paring knife she'd been using to slice apples on the hem of her apron and frowned.

“Why does he have to stay here? Why can't he stay at your place?”

Mary Dell mentally counted to three.

“Because,” she replied in a deliberately even tone, “I've got no extra beds. And it'll be a lot more convenient for him to stay up here, close to the barns and paddocks. He's staying in the barn. Not the house. He won't be in the way.”

Taffy put the knife on the counter and folded her arms across her chest. “Won't he? He's going to use our bathroom, which, I'll remind you, is already being shared by six people.
And
you expect me to cook for him. Probably do his laundry too. Like I don't already have enough on my plate. Don't you stand there looking down your nose at me, missy!” Taffy snapped, though Mary Dell hadn't changed her expression at all.

“You've barely spoken to me for weeks, but boy howdy! The second you want something you sure run home to Momma quick enough, don't you?”

Taffy pulled a pastry cutter out of a drawer and started using it to mix cold butter into a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, and flour, stabbing at the cobbler topping as if she were trying to inflict bodily harm.

Mary Dell threw up her hands. “This isn't about me
wanting
something! I'm trying to figure out a way to get through the next few months without killing Daddy and losing half our livestock. Don't you see that? I'm trying to keep the farm and this family from falling apart, and I can't do it alone—”

“Your daddy—” Taffy interrupted.

Mary Dell interrupted her right back, determined to make her mother see sense.

“My daddy is about ready to collapse from overwork. He can't go on like he's been doing—but somebody has to! Now, out of the blue, here's Graydon, ready to work, asking for nothing in return but a pittance in pay and a place to lay his head. His coming here is an answer to our prayers, Momma. Don't you see that?”

“All I see is that after all I've already been through, losing my membership in the Women's Club, having to put up with all and sundry gossiping about how my daughters managed to lose two men in one year, you're trying to heap more humiliation on me by asking me to take in
boarders
.”

Taffy reached into the mixing bowl and angrily started throwing lumps of sticky dough on top of the sugared apples like she was throwing dirt clods at a stray dog, spilling a good third of it over the side of the cobbler pan in the process.

“Won't Marlena and her henchmen have a time with
that
when they find out?”

“Why do you care what that old peahen thinks?” Mary Dell asked. “It's none of her business. And even if it was, you're not taking in boarders. Graydon is family.”

Taffy scraped the spilled dough up off the counter with her hands and dumped it into the pan.

“Not anymore, he's not,” she mumbled. “I've had just about enough of those Bebee boys. Thought you would too, by now.”

“Don't blame Graydon for what Donny did!” Mary Dell snapped. “It's not fair. He came to help us out of the kindness of his heart, because he
is
family. He's Howard's uncle. We can trust him.”

“The way we trusted Donny?” Taffy remarked acidly. She brushed the leftover flour off her hands.

“Stop that,” Mary Dell hissed. “And lower your voice. He's out on the porch. He might hear you.”

“I don't care if he does. I don't want him staying with us!”

Lydia Dale walked into the kitchen, carrying an empty baby bottle and balancing Rob Lee on her hip. Mary Dell turned toward her, an expression of relief on her face.

“Sis, help me talk some sense into her. I drove up to Kansas, hoping to find Donny. Graydon hadn't seen him, but when he heard what happened, he decided to come with me and—”

Lydia Dale frowned. “Graydon? Graydon Bebee?”

“Of course,” Mary Dell said. “How many Graydons do we know? He's here to help with the ranch for a while. Through the lambing season for sure, but longer if I can talk him into it, at least until we can find a qualified manager. He's hardly charging me anything, but he needs a place to stay. I've got no room in the trailer, and all the bedrooms are full here, so he's going to sleep in the tack room.”

Lydia Dale's eyes went wide. “Our tack room? But where is he going to eat? And where is he going to—”

“He'll use the bathroom in here,” Mary Dell said, “and he can eat whatever it is the rest of the family is eating. All we have to do is make a little more of what we were fixing anyway.”

“Are you kidding?” Lydia Dale asked incredulously. “That's just crazy!”

“I know,” Mary Dell said. “The tack room isn't very comfortable, but that's the way he wants it. He doesn't want to be a bother to anybody.”

Lydia Dale shifted the baby on her hip, set the empty bottle down on the table, and screwed her eyes shut.

“No,” she said with a shake of her head, “I don't mean it's crazy that he'd sleep and eat in the barn. I mean it's just crazy! The whole idea is crazy. He can't stay here!”

Taffy, who had been following this exchange closely, crossed her arms over her chest and gave a smug little nod. “That's just what I said. This is our home, not a boardinghouse for stray cowpokes and former in-laws looking for a handout.”

“A handout! Graydon is not looking for a handout. He quit his job in Kansas just to come here and help us.” Mary Dell threw up her hands. “What is wrong with you two?”

Mary Dell looked at her mother, but Taffy just jerked her chin, picked up her cobbler, and slid it into the oven. Recognizing that immovable expression on her mother's face, Mary Dell turned to her sister.

“What do you have against Graydon? He's never done anything to you or to any of us. Don't tell me you're blaming him for Donny's mistakes too.”

“No.” Lydia Dale closed her eyes again, trying to sort out her thoughts. “It's not that. But it's only that I . . . well, I just don't want him staying here. I can't explain why exactly, but I don't! It would be so . . . awkward. And anyway, things aren't that bad. We can hire somebody else.”

“Nobody with one-tenth of his experience and who we can be sure has our best interests at heart. Nobody we
know.
” Mary Dell spread out her hands to underscore her point.

Taffy closed the door of the oven and went to stand next to Lydia Dale, slipping her arm around her waist. “Well, maybe we'd prefer somebody we don't know quite so well. Lydia Dale understands exactly what I'm talking about. I don't want him staying here. Nobody does, except you.”

“And me.”

The kitchen door opened, and Dutch came in from the porch. He didn't bother to wipe his boots on the mat like he usually did. Instead, he just strode into the middle of the room and looked at the three women with a stormy expression.

“I saw Graydon hanging out over near the paddock. Seems he heard what you said about him, Taffy, not that you were trying very hard to keep it a secret, and figured he'd take himself off away from the house until things were settled. Which they are,” Dutch declared, “as of right now. Graydon is staying.”

Taffy started to protest, but Dutch held up his hand to silence her.

“Nope, I'm not hearing any of it. Lydia Dale, I don't know what you've got against that young man, but get over it. Graydon's a good man to help us like this. And we need help. This operation has got beyond me now. I can't manage the hands, and they know it. One of 'em is stealing from us. I count six bags of feed missing. I can't prove who took them, but somebody did. Plus, I'm a cowman. Don't know a darned thing about sheep. Graydon does. We need him.”

Taffy made a little clucking sound. “It's not as bad as that.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” Dutch countered. “Don't you read the papers? We haven't had rain in months. Our pasture is poor and the price of feed is up. Meanwhile, beef prices are low and going lower. We'll be lucky to break even on our cattle. We need a good lambing season just to keep our heads above water, and that means we need Graydon. He's staying.”

Lydia Dale's gaze flickered away from her father's. She shifted her shoulders to indicate acquiescence. Taffy scowled and shuffled her feet as though her corns were bothering her. Her mouth opened, but once again, Dutch stayed her protests, this time by pointing his finger directly at the bridge of her nose.

“I mean it, Taffy. Don't test me on this. Graydon is staying and you are going to be nice to him. We're going to wash his shirts, and feed him from our table, and you're going to be hospitable to him. And if you're not,” Dutch said, staring at his wife with eyes as focused and bright as two headlights on high beam, “I'll be sleeping on the sofa, and you'll be sleeping alone. Tonight and every night after. Do I make myself clear?”

Taffy, with lips clamped tight, blew a long breath out through her nose, a defeated noise, like air leaking from an inner tube. She turned away, opened a drawer, and started rattling through the silverware, pulling out spoons, knives, and forks—enough for the family and a guest.

Dutch nodded and headed toward the living room, stopping to chuck Rob Lee on the chin.

“Give me this big old boy,” he said to Lydia Dale. “He wants to come into the TV room with me, don't you, Bubba? Honey, can you bring us something to drink? Rob Lee and Grandpa are going to see if we can catch the sports report before supper.”

“Sure, Daddy,” she said, passing the baby over to her father. “One bottle of apple juice and one bottle of beer, coming right up.”

Dutch walked out, cooing to his grandson. Lydia Dale filled the baby's bottle, cracked open a Lone Star, and followed. Taffy finished counting out the silverware, slammed the drawer shut, and glared at Mary Dell.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Well, are you just going to stand there with your teeth in your mouth, or are you going to get some bedding out of the linen closet and take it to the tack room? Dinner's almost ready.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Mary Dell ducked her head to hide her smile.

Taffy called after her, “And you be sure to tell that Graydon Bebee to wipe his boots before he comes into my kitchen!”