I'll Sing for my Dinner (2 page)

“Why don’t you loan her your hat, Mel?” I asked him with a grin.

“Hell, Jake, she probably wouldn’t want to touch the money after it sat in my sweat all night,” he said, grinning back at me. I had to admit, the battered lump of felt sitting on his head had seen better days.

I went back to the kitchen and got a bowl. When I handed it to him, he dropped a dollar in it, then walked back to his table. His friends also dropped money in the bowl, and he took it up and set it on the stage in front of her.

She smiled at him without missing a note. A thousand-watt smile that made him blush.

She played almost solid for over an hour, transitioning from folk to country, to gospel, to blues, even including a Billy Holiday song and a couple from Barbra Streisand. Her vocal range was incredible as she moved effortlessly from soprano to contralto. I don’t know how many people in a cowboy honky-tonk bar would recognize a classically-trained voice, but I did.

When she finished, I handed her fifty dollars and said, “If you want to come back, I’ll pay you a hundred dollars a night to play and sing between six and eight. Five nights a week, Wednesday through Sunday.”

“Seriously?”

“As serious as a heart attack,” I said. “Do you know where you’re going to spend the night? There’s a motel just a block down. It’s not fancy, but it’s clean.”

Looking at the money in her hand, she said, “I can’t afford a motel. I have a sleeping bag. I’ll find a place to crash.” She glanced over her shoulder at the cowboys who started her tip collection. From what I’d seen, she did pretty well on tips. “Maybe someone will offer me a bed.”

That did it. I had seen women in Afghanistan who had fallen so far that they were willing to sell their body for a scrap to eat or a warm place to sleep. Every protective instinct I had leaped up and opened my mouth.

“You can stay at my place,” I said.

She looked at the tattoo on my forearm, then back up to my face. A smile crooked the corners of her mouth, but it didn’t change the sad look in her eyes. “I’ve never slept with a jarhead before.”

Shaking my head, I said, “That’s not what I’m offering. You can stay in my spare room. It has its own bath. And you can do some laundry.”

Looking down at herself, she murmured, “That would be nice.” Raising her eyes to my face, she seemed to study me. “Mr. McGarrity, you’re too nice for your own good. How do you know I’m not a drug addict that will cut your throat and clean you out before morning?”

“I don’t sleep that heavy,” I said. “I’ll take the chance. As for being too nice, I’m not. No one has ever taken advantage of me twice.”

I asked Kathy to cover the bar until I got back. Grabbing her backpack, I said, “Come on, I’ll take you over there.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“I’ll drop you off and come back.”

We went out to my pickup and I dumped her pack in the back. She brought the guitar inside with her, settling it on the floor and holding the neck of the case between her legs.

“That’s a nice guitar,” I said.

“It was my twelfth birthday present.”

“It’s a D45, isn’t it? Rosewood?” I asked, referring to the guitar’s body.

“Yes.”

The last time I’d seen an older D45 on sale of the quality she was playing, the shop was asking twelve thousand dollars. Someone had loved her to give that to a twelve year old.

“Do you play?” she asked. “You seem to know a lot about guitars.”

“Yes, but I’m light years away from your class. I have a D35 at home. My brother’s band is our standard house band. They’ll be playing tomorrow night.”

“Do you play with them?”

“Sometimes. He and I started the band in high school, and he kept it going when I joined the Marines.”

She nodded. We rode in silence for a while, then abruptly she said, “Mr. McGarrity, if anyone ever tells me that chivalry is dead, I’m going to send them to the Roadhouse Bar and Grill. It’s been a long time since anyone was this nice to me.”

~~~

Chapter 2

Cecily

McGarrity drove out into the country, away from town. If this was a ride I took out on the highway, I would be reaching for the knife hanging in a sheath between my breasts. I figured that I had offered to sleep with him, and he’d turned me down, at least for the moment. I didn’t blame him for that. The way I smelled was probably a pretty good rape deterrent. The guy who picked me up in Fort Morgan and dropped me off at McGarrity’s place couldn’t wait to get me out of his truck. Probably took it to a carwash to disinfect it the moment he left. Still, no man ever was nice to me without wanting something and lately it seemed what they wanted was between my legs.

Jake McGarrity. I studied him in the soft light of the sun going down behind us. If you looked in the dictionary, his picture might be there right next to the entry for ‘ruggedly handsome.’ Dark hair cut really short, but longer I’m sure than when he’d been in the service. About six feet tall, well built and athletic looking, but not muscle-bound. He was dressed like all the other men in this part of the country. Pearl snaps on his cowboy shirt, boot-cut blue jeans, and cowboy boots. He’d put on a cowboy hat when we left the bar.

I hadn’t known there were cowboy angels, but you learn something new every day. Hell, what would a city girl from the East Coast really know about cowboys? I knew I’d never met an angel before. He didn’t look at all like the pictures in Sunday school. I wondered if he lived on a ranch. We definitely had left the city behind.

He seemed kind of young to own a bar. I figured he was around thirty, maybe even a little younger. The Roadhouse was fairly big, located on the corner of two highways with a large parking lot surrounding it. The dance floor would probably accommodate about fifty couples, and I counted seating, including at the bar, for more than three hundred people. A forty-foot-high lighted sign that you could put messages on stood out in front. At the moment, it said, ‘Prairie Lightning – Thurs’, ‘Bluegrass Revolution – Fri & Sat’, and at the bottom, ‘Steak Special - $19.99 40 oz T-bone.’

I could eat for a week on a forty-ounce steak.

I expected some sign of disapproval from the waitress at the bar, who told me her name was Kathy. Especially when he said that he was taking me home. Up until that point, I had seen pity and sympathy in her face when she looked at me. But she didn’t tell him he was crazy, or look at me like I was trash. She just got an amused expression on her face, kind of like a mother looking at a child with a wild but harmless idea. Like it was the kind of thing she expected of him.

I looked around at the pickup. It seemed pretty fancy. It certainly was big. There were three rifles hanging on a rack in the back window. I wondered what he hunted.

We turned off the paved road onto a dirt road. A sign on a fence said, ‘Top Hat Ranch’, with a pictogram below it that I thought might be a brand. Did they still brand cattle? It looked a bit like a top hat. Another mile along, and we pulled into a large open circle surrounded by buildings. A two-story house with a big white porch sat directly in front of us. A large barn sat to our left, and what looked like another barn, one story high and much longer than it was wide, was on our right. Two or three smaller buildings seemed to be scattered randomly around.

The house was almost as large as my parents’ house, the one where I grew up, but as different from theirs as Connecticut was from Colorado. Two dogs waited for us, wagging their tails. One was large and yellow, barking like crazy. The other one was smaller, white and black, and it was spinning around in circles and leaping up in the air.

Jake got out of the truck and was assaulted by the dogs. He petted them and then told them to go lie down. They both ran toward the lower barn and disappeared.

“The big one’s Barney,” McGarrity said. “The little one is Mari. She’s a maniac. Barney’s bark is worse than his bite. I’ll formally introduce you to them in the morning.”

Hauling my pack out of the back of his truck, he led me into the house. A parlor, quaintly decorated, sat to our right as we entered. A dining room and beyond that a kitchen were to the left. We passed through the foyer into a large living room.

Pointing beyond to a narrow hallway leading to the back of the house, he said, “Laundry room is back there.”

He headed up the stairs, still carrying my pack as if it weighed nothing. At the top, he pointed to the end of the hall and said, “My room is there.” Turning around, he pointed to the other end of the hall. “You’ll be staying there.”

“Do you live alone?” I asked. He wasn’t wearing any rings.

“Just me and my brother, but he usually stays at a girlfriend’s place,” he answered.

He opened the door, flipped on the light and set my pack in the corner near the foot of the bed. Queen sized, with a heavy dark wood headboard and footboard, it was covered in a lovely crocheted bedspread.

“Bathroom is here,” he said, opening a door on our left and switching on the light. “If you take a shower, be sure the curtain is tucked inside. Otherwise, water will be all over the floor and I’ll be repairing the ceiling in the kitchen.”

He opened another door, and I was surprised to see women’s clothing hanging in the closet. “I expect these will be too big for you,” he said, “but maybe some of the tops will be okay. At least you’ll have something to wear around the house while you wash your clothes.” He looked me up and down. “Maybe some of the jeans in the very back will fit, though they’ll be too long. You can roll them up. Mary never threw out anything, so stuff from when she was a kid is probably still there.” He looked toward a large dresser. “There are more clothes there. Don’t be shy about taking what you need.”

“Who is Mary?” I asked, suddenly uncomfortable with him putting me in someone else’s room.

“She was my sister,” he said. “She died three years ago. There is food in the kitchen. I have to get back to work. Do you think you’ll be all right here? I’ll be home about three o’clock. You don’t have to wait up for me.”

“I’ll be fine.” My heart felt like it was about to burst. The whirlwind that gathered me up when I walked into the bar had my head spinning. If you had asked me that morning where I would end up that night, I would have guessed dead in a ditch before I imagined this. “Mr. McGarrity, I don’t know what to say. Do you always bring home strays like this?”

He laughed. “I have that tendency, but it’s usually limited to dogs, cats, horses, that sort of thing. You’re the first girl I’ve dragged home with me.”

I stepped up beside him, and standing on my tiptoes, kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you. You must be the sweetest man God ever made.”

He blushed deep red. “Well, I need to get back. Get out of those clothes and throw them and anything you have in your pack in the laundry, then take a bath. Or a shower if you wish.” Plucking a bathrobe from the closet, he handed it to me, then turned to leave.

“Okay,” I said. “I promise I’ll smell better when you get back.”

He blushed again. I listened to him going down the stairs, then out the door. “I’ve locked the door,” he shouted. “Don’t open it for anyone but me or a man named Jared. And if he comes by, make sure you have some clothes on before you let him in.”

I smiled and yelled back, “Dangerous, is he?”

“He’s only dangerous if you’re susceptible to his blarney,” he shouted back. “At least if you have clothes on, it will slow him down.”

I heard his pickup start and drive away. Immediately, I stripped to the skin. I didn’t even want to touch the bathrobe before I washed. Since I was alone in the house, no one would care if I were naked. Digging through my backpack, I gathered everything that possibly could be washed, and took the clothes downstairs. I followed the hallway he’d pointed out and found myself in a room with the back door. A dog door was cut in it. To my left were a modern washer and dryer sitting under shelves with detergent, fabric softener, and anything else I might need.

Looking around the room, I saw more shelves that held stacks of canned goods, cleaning supplies, and a couple of very large stew pots. A large bowl of water sat on the floor with two smaller empty bowls. I assumed they were for the dogs. Two smaller bowls, one with water and one with dry pet food, sat on a shelf.

The washer was turned to cold water. The health department would probably order most of my clothes burned, but they were all I had. I cranked the temperature switch to hot, measured out detergent, and dumped my clothes in. Separating colors was a joke. Anything I had that used to be white was now gray.