Cold Tea on a Hot Day (5 page)

She hugged him close again.

“I was not lost,” he said, again pushing away to look at her with his dear blue eyes blinking behind his glasses. “I was com-ing home.”

“Oh, honey…” She caressed his dear, unruly hair, so glad for the feel of it. “It is a long way from school. You shouldn’t come home all by yourself.”

“I was not all by my-self. I had Mun-ro with me.”

For an instant of confusion, Marilee thought he meant the man, but then he was reaching to bring forward a dog. A shaggy, spotted small type of shepherd.

“Mun-ro,” Willie Lee introduced happily.

The man was Tate Holloway, which was a little surprising, but not so much, because Marilee had recognized his deep Southern drawl. He explained that he had been looking around his cousin’s house and had discovered Willie Lee sleeping on the wicker settee on the porch, with the dog and a big orange cat that had, as Mr. Holloway put it, “skeddaddled faster than a hog skatin’ on ice.”

Tate Holloway’s voice was as it had been when Marilee had spoken to him on the phone, all deep and smoky, and he drew his words out like he purely enjoyed each one on his tongue.

“Bub-ba,” Willie Lee said, turning concerned eyes up to her. “I was going to feed Bub-ba, but his food is all gone, and he ran away from us.”

Understanding dawned as to what had brought Willie
Lee home by way of the back gate. “We’ve been going through the gate each night to feed Bubba on the back step,” Marilee explained. “Bubba is—or
was
—Ms. Porter’s cat. We’ve been feeding him until you came. She said you got the cat with the house.”

Willie Lee said, “Bub-ba needs food.”

“We’ll let Mr. Holloway take Bubba some of this chicken,” Marilee told him.

They all sat around the big oak table in Marilee’s kitchen, eating the meal friends had brought earlier. It was very much like a party. Marilee kept Willie Lee sitting on her lap, where she could repeatedly touch him. On one side, within touching distance whether she wished it or not, sat Corrine, who seemed to grin an awfully lot for her, and on the other side, with his arm often on the back of Marilee’s chair, sat Parker. Aunt Vella hovered, a good hostess attending everyone. Marilee soaked up this time of contentment, of safety after threat.

“I was going to call you,” Tate Holloway said, having gone over the story a second time and embellishing with how
Miss
Charlotte had taken him to task for coming before his scheduled Saturday arrival and how surprised he had been to see a boy on his settee.

“I had your telephone number, but Willie Lee here—” he winked and pointed at Willie Lee with a chicken leg “—said he would show me the way over. I sure wondered where he was goin’ when he led me into those cedar trees, but by golly, there was the gate right in the midst of those ramblin’ roses, just like he said.”

Marilee, putting warm chicken meat in her mouth with
her fingers, watched the man and her son grin at each other. Tate Holloway had a charming grin.

“I knew the way. I was not lost,” Willie Lee said. Then he looked at Marilee, squinting with one eye behind his thick glasses. “Well, oncet I was lost, but Mun-ro led me home.”

Taking a roll from his and Marilee’s plate, he slipped from her lap and went to feed it to the dog lying on the spiral rug in front of the sink, as was the right of a dog who had protected her son.

Marilee, approving of how gently the dog ate from her son’s hand, felt a sinking feeling. “Honey, Munro may belong to someone. He has a collar.”

Willie Lee said, “No…he was look-ing for me, to come live here. I told God I want-ed him. Re-mem-ber?”

Marilee glanced at Parker.

“I don’t think I’ve seen that dog before,” Parker said. “But not everybody ‘round here brings me their pets. Most, but not everyone. And he doesn’t have any tags…may not have had a rabies shot,” he added as caution.

Everyone looked at the dog, who blinked his kind eyes.

Tate Holloway said, “You just can’t separate a boy and a dog, oncet they’ve chosen each other,” and winked at Willie Lee. “Plain secret of life is a good dog.”

Now Marilee knew where Willie Lee had picked up saying “oncet.”

“How come you to name him Munro, Willie Lee?” Aunt Vella asked.

“That is his name.”

At this good sense, all of them chuckled, except Corrine, who had begun to help Aunt Vella clear the table and who informed them, “It says Munro on his collar.”

When they all looked at her, she added, “It’s printed in white. M-U-N-R-O.”

Parker took a look, pulling the collar out of the dog’s hair. “Yep. Munro.” He petted the dog.

“Who told you his name?” Marilee asked.

“Mun-ro told me,” Willie Lee said practically, stroking the dog.

“Did he tell you if he has had his shots?” Parker wanted to know, giving Marilee a wink.

Willie Lee looked at the dog and then said, “He does not want shots.”

They all chuckled. Marilee looked closer at the dog, who smiled happily back at her. She had to admit the name fit him perfectly.

The sheriff and friends and neighbors and Marilee’s mother had been alerted that the crisis was over, and Willie Lee had been returned home safe and sound. Vella, who had made a majority of the telephone calls, left to go to her Rose Club organizational meeting. Now that all was safe and sound, she was in a hurry, backing her Crown Victoria with racing speed.

Tate Holloway decided he would walk home on the sidewalk. “Think I’ll see a bit more of the neighborhood,” he said.

Parker went with Marilee to see their new neighbor out the front door. It occurred to Marilee that in all the years she had worked for Ms. Porter and lived just beyond the
rose-lined fence from the big Porter home, the woman had never even once visited her home. Here, in the first hours of his arrival, Tate Holloway had not only visited, he had returned her beloved son and eaten a celebration meal with them.

Streetlights were on now, sending their silvery glow up and down the street and casting shadows into yards.

“Thank you for the delightful meal,” Tate Holloway said, stopping at the foot of the steps and turning to look upward at Marilee and Parker on the edge of the porch. “And for this fine fare for Bubba,” he added, lifting the plastic bag containing the leftover chicken pieces.

Marilee said, “Thank
you,
Mr. Holloway, for returning Willie Lee.”

Tate Holloway grinned. “Well, now, I think it would be more accurate to say that Willie Lee led me over here.”

He gazed at her with that grin.

“And I’d prefer it, Miss Marilee, if you would call me Tate,” he said in his deep, slow East Texas drawl.

His eyes that seemed to twinkle, even at this distance, rested on her. There was a contagious inner delight in Tate Holloway.

“All right. Tate. I’m glad to meet you.”

“I’m glad to know you, Marilee James, and your family. I won’t be a stranger…you can count on that.”

Marilee gazed down at the tall man who grinned up at her, until Parker slipped his arm around her and said, “We are sure grateful for you bringing Willie Lee home, Tate.”

Tate’s eyes shifted to Parker. “Ah…yes, well, sir…I’m just glad things turned out so fine. Good night.” With
another glance at Marilee and a wave of the little bag of chicken, he was off down the walkway.

Marilee’s eyes followed, seeing that his fine, white-blond hair caught the light and shone like sun-warmed silk, and that his shoulders were strong, his torso lean, and his strides long, in the way of a man who is all muscle and purpose.

Then Parker was turning her from the sight. They walked back into the house with his arm around her shoulders. Just inside the closed door, in the dimness, he drew her to him and kissed her.

“Your Willie Lee came home safe and sound, just like I said,” he reminded her.

“Thank you for being here, Parker.” She was very grateful.

He pulled her against him and kissed her neck. She felt him wanting a lot more, but she could not give any thought to it right now. She was too busy clutching to her what she had feared she had lost. There was no energy left at this moment to consider her relationship with Parker.

She tucked Corrine and Willie Lee into bed.

“Honey, we will have to run an announcement in the paper about finding Munro,” she told Willie Lee, taking off his glasses and setting them on the night table.

“He is my dog now.” He put his hand on the dog, who lay beside him.

“He has a collar with his name on it. That means someone bought it for him. Someone who cares for him. What if you had lost him? Wouldn’t you want whoever found him to do their best to get him back to you?”

Willie Lee frowned, and his lower lip quivered. “Munro found me. I did not find-ed him.”

“We will run an ad in the paper for two weeks. That is the right thing to do, the most we can do.”

Willie Lee turned on his side and clutched the dog to him.

Marilee kissed him and considered not running the ad. Maybe just the Sunday paper.

She kissed Corrine and turned out the light, then went to the kitchen to prepare the coffeemaker for the morning. She thought it a wise course to tone down the strength of the brew that Corrine made. Maybe lessening her caffeine intake would help her nerves, which seemed so on edge these days.

At the moment of stretching her hand to the light switch, her eye came to rest on Willie Lee’s picture book lying on the edge of the table. The book he’d had that morning, when he had been trying to show her the picture of the dog.

She took it up and thumbed through the pages, until she came to the one with the dog picture that jumped right out at her.

She scanned the print below, which was a description of the dog. An Australian Shepherd, it said, bred for herding sheep. The dog in the picture had his tail bobbed. Marilee had seen similar dogs in the rural areas.

Taking the book, she went to the open door of the children’s room, where the dog lay on the rug beside Willie Lee’s bed. The dog opened his eyes and looked at her. His tail thumped.

In the dim light cast from the bathroom, Marilee consulted the book, then looked again at the dog.

She would check again in the clear light of day, she thought. So many wild things could occur to a person in the night and be cleared up in the light of day.

When the morning came, Marilee found that Munro did look remarkably like the dog in the picture book, although, he
was
darker.

Her eyes followed the dog and her son walking through the kitchen. No matter the dog’s appearance, she thought, her son had asked for a dog and been given one. She wondered what she would ask for…and wished she could believe it would be given.

The Beauty of the World

I
t was bare first light of his first full day in his new town when Tate, dressed in brand-new, grey sweatpants, brand-new, bright-white T-shirt with the words
Just Do It
emblazoned on the front, and brand-new top-of-the-line jogging shoes, came out on his very own front porch.

Tate had jogged intermittently off and on for years, and had profited from it, too, but now he wanted to really make it routine. He was in the prime of his life and wanted to honor that by making the most of himself physically and mentally. That was the spirit!

Stretching his arms wide, he sucked in a deep breath. Ahh! The brisk morning, quite different from the heavily humid air of Houston.

He jogged down the steps and out to the sidewalk of the quiet street. As he turned along Porter Street, in the direction of Marilee James’s house, the yellow cat, Bubba, streaked out from beneath a lilac bush and joined
him, bouncing along behind Tate, looking like an orange basketball with a tail.

Tate wanted to see Marilee’s house clearly in the light of day. He wondered if she was an early riser.

He had a sudden fantasy of her being on the porch and seeing him, jogging along manfully, her waving and him waving back. He smiled at his fanciful notion, although he did experience a little bit of disappointment when his gaze found her front porch, white gingerbread trim, and empty.

Not only was all quiet at the James house, but along most of the street. At the house on the corner, a young man wearing a UPS uniform was chinning himself with bulging arms on a beam across the middle of his porch ceiling. He dropped to his feet, headed for his car at the curb, casting Tate a wave as he came. Friendly fellow! Tate waved back.

Turning up First Street, heading for the commerce area of Main, Tate slowed. He had begun to breathe quite hard. He sure didn’t want to have a heart attack on his first day in town. He glanced back and saw that Bubba had deserted him.

Tate continued on, a sort of jog, meeting two ladies who were race walking, pumping arms, talking at the same rate they were walking. They exchanged swift hellos with Tate.

On Main Street, a woman was unlocking the door of her shop—Sweetie Cakes Bakery painted across the window. She nodded and slipped in the door. Further down the street, he looked across at
The Valentine Voice
building. By golly, it was his!

He was walking now.

Just then Charlotte came through the front doors of the
Voice,
surprising him somewhat, and put up the flag, setting it quickly and returning inside before Tate got close enough to holler a good morning.

He was perhaps breathing a little too hard to offer a hearty good morning.

For the past two weeks his attention and time had been taken up with his move to Valentine; that he had not been routinely jogging was telling on him now.

At the corner of the police station, from where he thought he smelled coffee brewing, he turned up Church Street, heading for home. The golden rays of the sun now streaked the horizon.

Funny how he had not realized that the street went up a hill.

Ah, there was another jogger coming toward him. Tate felt the need to push himself into a jog. Didn’t want to be out jogging and not doing it.

A minute later he was sure glad he was jogging, because the young man coming toward him turned out to be not quite so young, and to be Parker Lindsey. By golly, he looked all youthful male in a sleeveless shirt and jogging shorts that showed tanned hard thighs.

The two approached the intersection.

“Good mornin’.” Tate raised his voice and refused to sound breathless.

“’Mornin’,” Lindsey returned, cruising along at a good clip. He even wore a sweatband around his forehead, like a marathon runner.

Tate put some strength into his jog. He might have a
few years on Lindsey, and a lot of grey in his hair, but where there was snow on the mountaintop, there was a fire in the furnace. He thought of the old saw as he continued on across the intersection toward his driveway, intent on at least jogging around to the back of the house, out of view.

Just then he saw, coming along down the hill, a shapely blond young woman in a skimpy exercise outfit, jogging and smiling at him. He might have stopped to talk to her, but the young woman’s attention was captured by Tate’s older neighbor on the opposite corner, who came from her house in walking shorts and shoes, waving and calling the blond woman by name.

The town was a haven for health enthusiasts!

He continued up his driveway, which had much more of an incline than he had before noted, and around to the back steps, where Bubba now lay, sunning himself. The cat gave Tate a yawn.

“I feed you…no comments.”

Tate dragged himself in the door and sank down upon the floor, going totally prostrate on the cool linoleum.

Marilee sat holding her coffee cup in both hands and thinking that she should have made it stronger. She had gotten used to Corrine’s brew and seemed not to be able to function well on a weaker variety.

Across from her, Corrine, looking for all the world like she was about to be shot, played with her food. Willie Lee, who ate slowly, asked if Munro could go to school with him.

“He will be lone-ly with-out me,” he said.

Marilee, watching Corrine play the fork over her egg, thought, there are only three weeks left to the school year.

“I think we can have the ending of our school year today,” she said, suddenly getting up and taking her plate to the sink. “You two do not need to go back this year.”

She looked over her shoulder to see their reactions.

Willie Lee’s eyebrows went up. “I do not have to go to schoo-ool to-day?”

“No, not today, and no more until fall. We’ll see about it then.”

Corrine was looking at Marilee with a mixture of high hope and sharp distrust on her delicate features.

“I’ll call Principal Blankenship and see what we can do about you finishing your work at home,” Marilee told her.

The relief that swept the girl’s face struck Marilee so hard that she had to turn away and hide her own expression in her coffee cup. She thought of her sister, Anita. Corrine’s mother. She had the urge to toss the coffee cup right through the window.

Then Willie Lee was at her side and tapping her thigh. “Mun-ro needs breakfast.”

Looking into his sweet face, Marilee smiled. “He does, doesn’t he.”

“I can give him my egg,” Corrine said.

“Please, make him toast, too, Ma-ma.”

“Yes, darlin’…I’ll make toast for Munro.” She looked at the dog, now eating the egg very gently from Corrine’s plate.

Marilee’s reasoning mind told her to force the children to go to school and face what they would have to face
sooner or later, a regimen and self-control, and those few cruel and mean and inept people one will come across on many an occasion. Life was a tough row of responsibility to hoe, and the sooner the children, even Willie Lee, learned this, the better.

She all but took out a gun and shot her reasoning mind. It wisely shut up.

Thinking of both the principal and her new boss, who she would now ask to let her work at home, she got herself dressed nicely in a slim knit skirt and top in soft blue, accented with a genuine silver concho belt from her more prosperous days of no children and a husband who earned quite good money as a world-renowned photojournalist. She managed to talk herself into doing a thorough makeup job and brushed her hair until it shone.

Then she sat at her cherry-wood desk to telephone Principal Blankenship and secure from the woman the promise that Corrine would be kept with her grade. The principal was surprisingly agreeable, even eager, at the idea of releasing the child, whom she all but labeled troubled straight out.

“Corrine has perfect straight A’s,” the principal said. “Her grades are not a question. She is a very bright girl. That is not at all her problem in class. I’m sure we can accommodate you in order to help Corrine have the rest she needs.” Then she tacked on, “Ah…I have the name of a child therapist you might want to consider.”

For Willie Lee, the principal promised to consult his teacher about work that might possibly help him. Marilee, who had from her teenage years been unable to shake her faith in her own mental capacity, told the principal not to
bother Mrs. Reeves. “I’m going to pick out a curriculum for Willie Lee.”

The principal definitely disapproved of this action, labeling it risky, but stopped short of pressing, no doubt fearful Marilee would change her mind and bring the children back to school.

Marilee thanked Principal Blankenship for all her help and hung up, sitting there for some minutes, her hand on the telephone, gazing at nothing, until she realized she was gazing at a pattern on the Tibetan rug that fronted the couch. She remembered, then, buying it in Calcutta, on one of hers and Stuart’s trips. Her gaze moved about the room, noting a painting on the wall that had been purchased in New Orleans, and a pottery vase picked up in the Smoky Mountains.

Her eyes moved to the small picture of her ex-husband that she kept, still, on her desk.

Stuart James grinned at her from the photo. She picked it up, remembering how handsome she had found him the first time she had laid eyes on him, remembering how wonderful he had made her feel when he touched her body. Stuart was a man who greatly enjoyed making love.

Into these deep thoughts came the sound of childish voices. She blinked and got up, following the sound to the back door.

Willie Lee and Corrine, with the dog between them, sat on the back stairs in the dappled morning sunlight that shone through the trees. They did not hear her footsteps, and she was able to watch them for some minutes through the screen door.

Corrine was talking to the dog, right along with Willie Lee. And she was actually smiling.

“Ma-ma…Mun-ro needs to come, too.” He spoke as if scolding her for not remembering the dog.

Marilee looked at her son and then the dog. “Okay, Munro…get in.”

As she backed the Jeep Cherokee from the drive, she gave thanks for the all-purpose vehicle. She supposed she might as well accept that the dog was destined to go everywhere with them. He could, in Valentine, America.

A new vehicle, a yellow convertible BMW, was parked in the block of spaces behind
The Valentine Voice
building. The top was down, and with a raised eyebrow, Marilee peered into the vehicle, noting the soft leather seats. Obviously, coming from Houston, Tate Holloway was unaware of how serious dust could be in this part of the country.

The two-story brick building that housed the newspaper had changed only marginally since it was first built in 1920. The back area of the first floor, which had once housed the printing press, had been converted into a garage and loading area. Printing was now done by a contract printer who did a number of small-town newspapers;
The Valentine Voice
was one of the last small-town dailies in the nation.

The front half of the first floor was pretty much as it had been built. The original bathroom had been enlarged and a small kitchen sink area added. Several offices had been made by adding glass partitions, one of which had
dark-green shades all around and a door with a dark-green shade. The name on the glass of the door read: Zona Porter, No Relation, Comptroller. Everyone respected that Zona preferred privacy. One could go in and speak to Zona in the office, but Zona rarely came out. Had a bathroom been installed off her office, Zona would not have come out at all. She had her own refrigerator, coffeemaker, cups, glasses, tissues. She did not care to touch things after other people.

E. G. Porter’s original office remained at the right, with tall windows that looked out onto the corner of Main and Church Streets.

Entering through the rear door, Marilee felt a little like she was leading a parade, with the children and the dog Munro trailing behind her.

Leo Pahdocony, Sr., a handsome dark-haired Choctaw Indian who wore turquoise bolas, shiny snakeskin boots and sharply creased Wranglers, was pecking away at the keyboard of his computer and talking on the telephone at the same time, with the receiver tucked in his neck. He gave her a wave and a palm-up to Willie Lee.

His wife, Reggie, a petite redhead who handled news in the schools, churches and most of the photography, popped out of her swivel chair and came to greet them with delight. Reggie, who had for the past five years been trying to conceive another child, extended her arms to capture the children in a big hug. Corrine managed to sidestep her way to Marilee’s chair and sat herself firmly, but Willie Lee, always loveable, let Reggie lift him up and kiss him.

“You gave us a scare, young man, running off,” Char
lotte told him, coming forward with messages for Marilee.

Willie Lee said, “I did not run off. I was coming home.”

“Uh-huh. Good thinking.” Charlotte turned her eyes on Marilee. “Tammy phoned. She’s got a horrible toothache.”

Marilee saw that Charlotte was thinking the same thing she was: that Tammy had a job interview elsewhere. Without Miss Porter’s money pouring in, no one expected the newspaper to continue much longer than a year, if that.