Love Drunk Cowboy (17 page)

Four rings later the answering machine picked up. “Rye, this is Kent. Don’t know where you are but I’m about a mile from your house. Two of your rodeo bulls are out of the fence and on the road. I tried your cell phone but it went to voice mail and I left a message. I’ll be there in five minutes, so if you’re in the shower, get your britches on. We’ve got to get those bulls in before they get into Miz Verline’s garden. Her granddaughter will kill you graveyard dead, man, if those bulls tear up her vegetables.”

Rye groaned and rolled off the sofa. “Damn it!”

“Estefan would kill you if the garden was ruined. Verline’s granddaughter would rather kill the bulls.” Austin buttoned her shirt, retied it, and stepped out onto the deck cussing the whole way. Damn it all! Verline probably came back as a ghost and spooked those damned bulls so bad they broke through the barbed wire fence and were swimming across the Red River into Texas. Why would she do that? Bring her to Terral, let her find the wine, and then spook the bulls so she couldn’t have Rye?

Rye switched on a lamp and headed down the hall to the bathroom. He didn’t even know that she’d unsnapped his shirt until he noticed it in the mirror as he washed his face with icy water. He quickly fastened it back and was in the living room when Kent knocked on the door and popped his head inside.

“Anybody home?” he yelled.

Austin poked her head in the sliding doors. “What shall I do with the leftover salad? Oh, hello, you are Kent, right?”

“Sorry to interrupt your dinner but there’s bulls out of the fence,” Kent said.

“I’m sorry, Austin. Just leave it all.” Damn, the woman was good. Anyone would think that they’d been on the deck the whole time and he’d come in for a bathroom break.

Austin tried to put an innocent look on her face. “Are you sure? You cooked. I don’t mind cleanup. Can I help get in the bulls?”

“Naw, we’ll take care of it, ma’am.” Kent blushed.

“Okay, then I’m going home. Thanks for supper. Good night,” Austin said.

“Good night. I’ll see you tomorrow then?” Rye winked.

“I’ll be in the fields all day,” she said.

“And we’ll be fixing fence for sure,” Rye said.

Austin kicked her flip-flops off at the door, slid down the back of it, and sighed. Was it the kisses that made her dizzy or the wine or the combination of the two? Whatever had done it, it sure enough had the whole room rolling like one of those little airplanes that takes tourists up for a ride.

Two bulls would be hamburger meat if she had her way right then. “Maybe it was an omen,” she whispered into the dark room. “Another five minutes and his house would have been one big bonfire. Kent could have used it to barbecue those two rodeo bulls.”

She forced her still-weak knees to carry her to the bathroom where she peeled off her clothes and giggled. If Verline knew what she’d been doing in that shirt and capris she would pass little green crab apples. She turned on the shower above the old claw-footed tub and pulled the curtain around on the oval rod. She took an icy shower and wrapped herself snuggly in her grandmother’s terry robe that hung on the back of the door.

She bent down, picked up the shirt she’d worn, shut her eyes, and inhaled deeply. Steaks, wine, and his shaving lotion. She held it to her bare breast and carried it to the bedroom where she found a Blake Shelton CD from her case and slid it into her laptop computer. She punched the buttons until she came to number seven and waltzed around the floor, eyes shut again, the shirt held close to her chest.

Blake sang about a little house made of nails and wood, a place that he called home. He said it was a place where the world couldn’t touch him anymore. She two-stepped to the bathroom and listened to the song again. She sashayed back to the bedroom where she fell back on the bed and curled up with the shirt beside her head on the pillow.

She fell asleep and dreamed of Rye.

It was past midnight when Kent and Rye got the two rangy old rodeo bulls herded into the pasture and the break in the fence repaired. Kent fanned his face with his sweat-stained cowboy hat. Rye leaned against the side of the pickup truck and wiped sweat from his forehead with the tail of his shirt. He caught a whiff of her perfume; something sensually floral that conjured up a vision of a field of white daisies.

“So now that we got them devils where they belong, tell me about your date tonight. Leave it to a bunch of bulls to ruin it for you,” Kent said.

“Nothing to tell,” Rye said.

“Which means you ain’t goin’ to kiss and tell.” Kent laughed.

Rye shrugged.

“You trying to use your good looks to get at that land or did you fall for that girl the first time you saw her in that booth?” Kent asked.

“You’re as bad as my sisters,” Rye said with a tired chuckle.

“You ain’t goin’ to answer me so I’m going home to get a shower. I feel like it’s already July. Them critters can give a man a workout, can’t they? And leave your phone turned on. If Tom Walters had been able to get a hold of you, he wouldn’t have called me.”

Rye swiped at his face one more time and inhaled Austin’s scent on his shirtsleeve. He crawled up in the passenger’s seat of Kent’s bright red Dodge truck and almost fell asleep before they made it two miles to his house.

“See you in the morning. Evidently we’d best do some more fence repair,” Kent said.

“Hey, thanks for taking the call and for the help. Why don’t you take tomorrow morning off and we’ll start at noon? That’ll make up for the hours you spent here tonight,” Rye said.

Kent shook his head. “No thanks. I’ll use the hours another time. Maybe when Momma needs one of her therapy things down at the hospital or a treatment. I’d rather get that fence taken care of proper as have to put in another night like this. Besides, it’s cooler in the morning time.”

“Okay, then I’ll see you about eight.” Rye opened the door and headed for the house with an over-the-shoulder wave.

He stripped in the bathroom, throwing his dirty jeans and socks in the hamper. If she’d been there when he returned they’d be showering together. Imagining her in the tight little shower with him caused a physical desire that made him realize he had to rein in his wild thoughts or it would be a long, aching night.

“I’m too tired for more than one cold shower,” he mumbled as he washed his hair.

He turned the water off when he finished bathing and wrapped a towel around his waist. He padded barefoot to the kitchen, poured a tall glass of cold milk, downed it all before he came up for air, and then remembered the dishes on the patio.

“I’m too tired to deal with that now,” he said. “Damned old bulls, anyway. If they’d minded their business she would be curled up in my arms and we’d be making love after a long, long bout of lovemaking.”

He tossed the towel into the hamper on his way to his bedroom and fell into the bed. When he shut his eyes he envisioned her moving slowly around the porch as they danced to the old tunes. He dreamed of the two of them lying on a soft blanket in a field of daisies where there were no phones or bulls to get out of the pasture.

She was expecting to plant watermelons on Monday morning so she was surprised on Saturday when Felix knocked on the door as she was having her morning coffee. The sun was barely up and she’d slept poorly, but at six o’clock she’d gotten up and made coffee and eaten a piece of toast.

“Miz Austin, it’s time,” Felix said.

“For what?”

“The weather is good. The fields are ready and we’ve wasted five days. We should start planting today even though it’s not Monday. The tractors and the seeders are ready but Miz Verline always planted the first seed in each row by hand for good luck. You need to come with us this morning,” Felix answered.

“Go ahead, Felix. I’ve got a ton of work to do in here.”

He shook his head. “It’s for good luck and a good crop.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll get dressed.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ll wait on the porch.”

“How long is this going to take?” she asked.

“All day.”

She bit back a moan.

“All day every day this week and next,” he said.

“But I’ve got all this packing to do.”

His narrow shoulders drew upward in a shrug. “We usually quit at dark so you would have the evenings, yes?”

“What time do you start?”

“Six thirty.”

“So I’d have a little while every evening.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She nodded. “Give me ten minutes to get dressed.”

She tossed her pajamas on the metal footboard of the bed, donned her grandmother’s button-up chambray shirt and overalls, and wished she had a pair of work boots. Her running shoes would have to do since she couldn’t wear flip-flops or spike heels to the fields.

She didn’t even bother with a brush but finger combed her hair into a ponytail and secured it with a rubber band. She did take time to apply sunscreen to her face and bare arms. Plant the first seed? What exactly did that mean? And what the hell was a seeder?

“You can ride in the front seat with me.” Felix led the way to the old work truck where five men sat in the back.

At one time it had been blue but nowadays very little color could be seen among the splotches of primer where Felix had sanded off the rust and sprayed it primer gray. The bench front seat was covered with a multi-colored striped serape and the directional letters on the floor gearshift had long since faded away. But when Felix turned the key the motor purred like a something new right off the showroom floor.

“You take care of this truck?” Austin asked.

“Yes, I do. Miz Verline trusted me with it when she bought it brand new the first year I came to work here in 1970. The engine is easy to take care of. The outside, though, it’s
hijo de puta
!”

“What?” she asked.

“Son of bitch.” He grinned.

She laughed. “I see.”

“Miz Verline bought a new one and now this is the old work truck. But the new one won’t ever see the years and miles this one has. It’s not built as well. We are here. We start on this end and work our way east toward the hog pens and the garden. A quarter of a mile down the road, a mile toward the river each day is what we like to get done.”

He stopped the truck and the rest of the crew bailed. Three men crawled up into the seats of the green John Deere tractors and fired them up. Austin stood at the end of the freshly plowed field that went toward the river. The furrows were straight as a ruler, mounded up into peaks, reminding her of tiny mountains and valleys.

Felix handed her a hoe handle that had been sharpened on one end. “You will poke a hole in this mound right here and drop a seed in it, then tap the dirt over it with your boot.”

That didn’t sound so hard. Any monkey could do that job and it wouldn’t even have to be trained. She drove the hoe handle down into the earth about six inches and looked up to see Felix shaking his head.

“A watermelon seed should only be planted twice the depth of the seed. That would be less than half an inch.” He kicked the hole full of dirt. “Look at the end of the stick. It has a mark on it. That’s how deep to make the hole.”

She held up the stick and sure enough there was a notch about half an inch up on the pointed end. She carefully poked it to the right depth and Felix handed her a small brown paper bag with watermelon seeds in it. She dropped one and missed, bent over, put it where it belonged, and covered it with a handful of dirt.

Felix smiled again. “You’ll get better. Miz Verline could drop that seed and the angels took it right in the hole, then she’d use her toe to cover it up. The seeds are top quality. She said that only the best seed could make the best melons. When we get to the land right behind the house, that’s where we use the best of the best. That land is for her wine melons and she told me once that she goes out at night and tells those melons stories.”

“I thought she put the wine melons up near the cow and hog lots,” she said, remembering her notes.

“For years she did then she decided to move them behind her house just last year. I think she did not have the energy to go that far to tell them the stories. I’ll take the next shift on the tractors, but I always walk with Miz Verline and we talk at the beginning of the first day of planting.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. I want to know all about watermelons. Making wine fascinates me.”

“You have to have good melons to make good wine, and that’s why the acre right behind her house is for the wine melons.”

“Only one acre?”

“One melon makes about a gallon of wine. Now think about a whole acre of melons and how much they would make. Sometimes she would cut open a melon, taste it, and throw it out because it wasn’t sweet enough.”

Austin sighed. “But I don’t know by taste what is sweet enough.”

“Rye does. He’s been over here when she was throwing them out. He can help you and you will learn fast.”

Why did he have to mention Rye’s name? It had taken her hours to cool down and even longer to go to sleep. Then she’d slept poorly, dreaming of Rye and waking up wanting to feel his hands on her body; to finish what had gotten started on his sofa.

Damn it, Granny! Did you really have something to do with that?

She finished the twelfth furrow and started for the next one when he raised a hand. “Not yet.”

“Why?”

“Because the tractors have not come back. When they get ready to plant another row, then you can do the next ones. That’s the way she did it for good luck. The tractors go down the land, two furrows at a time. Then they come back to us, the same: three tractors, two furrows each. Three men to drive. Two men to walk along and make sure the seeds are falling just right. Sometimes they have to stop and readjust or sometimes the chain doesn’t quite cover the seed and they have to do a little bit by hand. Most of the melon farmers don’t do that but Miz Verline said that she wasn’t paying for high dollar seed to let it become bird food.”

“And this is the way she did it every single year?” Austin asked.

Felix nodded.

“Some of the others are starting the seeds early in greenhouses. Miz Verline said that was crazy so we still do it the old way. Put the seed in the ground and hope for good rain,” Felix said.