Summer Lightning (22 page)

His steps led him to the Red-Eye. On the plate glass window in the front some traveling artist had painted a representation of the name—a wide-open eye, jagged veins darting out in all directions from u bilious green iris. Whether the artist had intended it or not—perhaps he’d had too much of Lashy’s whiskey—the eye had a menacing, even evil, expression.

“Hey, Lashy,” he said, walking in.

The bartender-owner gave him a yellow gap-toothed grin. “Hey there, Mr. Dane. Haven’t seen you in here in a while.”

“I’ve been in St. Louis. I’ll take a beer.”

“Sure, sure. Have a seat.”

The other customers looked up as Jeff took a seat at one of the sticky tables marked with white rings. He recognized some of the faces, the ne’er-do-wells and drifters that even a decent small town collected.

The saloon itself wasn’t much, a few tables, an out-of-tune piano, and a grubby bar. Yet it was nowhere near as serious a sink of degradation as Richey could show. Jeff imagined that Edith, however, would think it was just that.

There’d been an attempt or two to clean up Lashy’s, mostly promoted by the Armstrongs. The bar had survived even the Women’s Christian Temperance Union that had every woman and child in Richey wearing white sashes for two weeks last summer.

Jeff crossed his legs, sitting back. He remembered how Louise had held out against the pressure to pledge that she would never touch alcohol, though Mrs. Armstrong herself had tried to persuade her to sign. Jeff hadn’t interfered, leaving the matter to Louise’s conscience and good sense.

Her only reply to Mrs. Armstrong’s pretty description of the Lord and his angels waiting for her to sign the pledge was, “My daddy goes to Lashy’s. How bad can it be?”

His daughter’s simple faith had kept him out of the saloon ever since. Sam sometimes stopped in for beer and gossip. As long as Sam brought home the gossip, Jeff felt he wasn’t missing much.

Lashy brought a mug of beer over. “St. Louis, huh? Mighty nice city. Got a brother-in-law there, don’tcha?”

“Yes, that’s right.” He sipped the amber beverage. “Say, has Sullivan been in here tonight?”

“Sullivan?” Lashy, with a straggling gray beard and a habit of blinking rapidly, wiped his hands on the once white apron that hung under his low-slung belly. “Sullivan? Don’t know him.”

“Sure you do. He’s new in town. Engaged to marry the preacher’s daughter. Quick worker.”

“Yeah, quick worker.” Lashy chuckled, but his eyes blinked faster still. “Look, Mr. D. Don’t tell him it was me told you he was here, okay?”

Jeff lifted the mug to his mouth and spoke swiftly before he drank. “Why not? Is there a problem?”

“Uh, no, no problem exactly. And I don’t want there to be none. He just asked me to keep quiet if anybody comes around asking questions.”

“Sounds kind of shifty to me.”

Lashy looked uncomfortable. “Uh, I don’t ask no questions but I figure he don’t want Preacher to know he comes in here.”

“Which one is he?”

“Over there, by the pianny.”

Jeff glanced over. A young man sat at a table, repeatedly shuffling a deck of cards. He had fast, clean hands. His shiny nails, catching a gleam from the lamplight, matched the gloss on his shoe-black hair. As though aware of Jeff’s scrutiny, Sullivan looked up. His eyes darted around, checking the faces.

Catching Jeff staring, Sullivan raised his hand in half-greeting. Moving leisurely, he stood up, tapping his cards together. He put them in his pocket and sauntered over.

“Evening. You got a problem, friend?”

Jeff didn’t like him. Put all together—the fancy weskit, the shiny nails, the nasal voice—Victor Sullivan impressed him as a nasty piece of work. And this was Dulcie’s fiancé?

Jeff interrupted Lashy’s fast apologies by standing up. Toe to toe, the stranger came off second best in height and musculature. “No problem at all. I’m Jefferson Dane.”

At once, an ingratiating smile spread over Sullivan’s face and he held out his hand to be shaken. “Ah, yes. Dulcie’s told me so much about you, I’ve been jealous. Let me introduce myself. I’m Victor Sullivan, her fiancé.”

Jeff looked Sullivan up and down, purposely insulting. The other man just grinned. Jeff longed to haul off and wipe that smile off with his fist, but he had no right to. His reaction startled him for he had never been of a violent bent. Could Edith’s “intuition” be correct? He dismissed the notion. Every right-thinking male would feel the same longing faced with a smooth-talking scoundrel like this.

Chapter 14

Jeff didn’t stay long at Lashy’s after meeting Sullivan. There was nothing he wanted to say to the son of a bachelor, not now anyway. He had to think about whether it was right to meddle at all. He had no real duty to Dulcie, who had many friends and a family to look out for her. And now she had Edith too.

Walking along the road, he tried to talk himself out of his half-belief, growing all the time, in Edith’s intuition. After all, she hadn’t even met Sullivan, only Dulcie. It didn’t make sense that she could know anything about one person by meeting another, however closely they were involved.

The wind picked up, driving before it the smell of rain. A low rumble sounded, less loud than a heartbeat yet capable of dominating the air. The rustling leaves showed pale undersides as though in surrender to the coming storm. Jeff began to jog in his boots, for he had livestock to get safe under cover.

He liked to run, to shut his mind of everything but the pounding of his feet and the hurrying of his heart. Figuring he had about half a mile to go, he kept his pace easy for he didn’t want to be too beat to work when he got home.

From behind him a voice called, “Hey, son!”

Jeff stopped and looked around, his hand on his rapidly expanding and collapsing ribs. His father halted the horse, so Jeff could climb up into the wagon.

When he got his wind back, he said, “You’re getting in late, Dad. Not that it’s any of my business.”

“It’s on your behalf that I’m late. I stopped in to see Miss Albans. Seems she’s got a little problem with her sink. I told her you’d be out to fix it before the end of the week.”

“Is it a big job?”

Sam shook his head.

“Why didn’t you do it then?”

“Don’t know. I reckon it’s better if you do it. Give her a good reason to be grateful . . . well, more grateful. A woman likes a man who can be handy ‘round the house.”

“You’re handier than I am. Remember, I’m the fellow who stepped through the bedroom ceiling while flooring the attic. Scared Mother half out of her wits.”

“Well, anyway, it’ll give you two a chance to be alone. She’d make a choice armful, if you’re still thinking that way.”

“Yeah,” Another shiver of thunder in the sky. “Looks like it’ll be a good rain.”

“We can sure use it. Been hotter than the hinges of hell. Everybody’s complaining about the crops.” Sam squinted up at the sky. A few clouds hid the moon, only to be blown around like the veil of a beautiful woman. “Are you still thinking that way?”

“Sure. What other way could I be thinking?”

The rumble drowned Sam next words but the lantern light showed his mouth moving in the syllables of “Edith Parker.”

“What about her?” Jeff asked.

“Come on, son. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out . . . not after Maribel comes running into the kitchen to holler the news that you’re kissing Cousin Edith.”

Jeff groaned, covering his eyes. “She saw us?”

“They saw you. Maribel wanted to know if it meant she’d have a baby brother tomorrow. Don’t worry—Louise set her straight. Where that child comes by her information . . .”

“Look, Dad, about Edith and me . . .”

“You don’t have to explain to me. I’m not her father.”

“No, but you’re mine.”

“So your mother said. . . .”

“So listen. I’m not denying that Edith had an effect on me. A mighty powerful effect. But how could it be serious . . . matrimony-type serious?” He looked at his father but saw neither approval nor censure.

“She’s a nice girl,” Sam said levelly.

“But she can’t do the things I need a wife to do. Can she cook for a passel of ranch hands? Birth a calf? Mother the girls? She’s city-bred and more . . . she’s a natural-born spinster. I’ll take my dying oath no man ever laid a hand on her before.”

“Before you, you mean.”

“That’s right. Nobody before me.” All his masculinity called out, “and damn well no man after me either,” but Jeff fought the need to say the words out loud. Only Edith should hear that, preferably in the long afterglow of lovemaking.

The horse pulled them along faster and faster as he scented the rain blowing in. This time Jeff saw the flash, a brief flare on the horizon, showing the clouds greenish pale like the belly of a vast fish. He counted until the dull roll of thunder echoed.

“We’ve got a little time before it hits.”

“Yep,” his father said, pitching his voice above the gusty wind. “I agree with what you say about Edith, Jeff. But I don’t think it’s her fault she’s so ... so ...”

“Innocent? I know. That blasted aunt of hers. I never heard of the woman until a few days ago, but I’d like to . . .” He made an impotent fist. “She ruined that girl for any kind of life outside of politeness and prayers.”

“Sounds like it.” Sam pulled back the reins while his son got down to open the barnyard gate. He leaned over to say, “I’m just wondering ... if that’s how you feel, why’d you kiss her?”

Before Jeff could do more than stare at him in surprised inspiration, Sam drove the wagon through to the barn. As a lightning flash sundered the sky, Jeff realized there wasn’t another moment to waste in talking. There was much to do, and the wind was urging the storm to violence.

The two hired men had rolled out of the bunkhouse to round up most of the cows and half-grown calves. The young bulls lowed at the gate, eager to get into their shed. Circling dogs kept them from panicking as the moist wind blew over their backs. Behind them, stately and slow like the dim-witted king he was, came Black Prince Edward, the founder of Jeff’s herd.

His deep chest and thick neck flowed seamlessly into his smooth, square sides. He’d sired a dozen prizewinners, though he’d been a scrub bull when Jeff had come back from the Trinity. Jeff found his prosperity on this animal’s procreative powers.

Now, swinging the door of his stall across, Jeff knew a moment’s jealousy. If only he could treat his affairs as casually as the bull did. If only Edith could be as content as a cow with as little thought for the future. But he wronged the beasts, he knew. At mating season, each cow was more beautiful than the last to the Black Prince, and each cow yearned for her master. No doubt they pledged eternal fidelity to each other, at least until the rutting instinct was satisfied.

Hard raindrops splattered Jeff’s shoulders and back as he ran the last few feet to the back door. His father had cared for the horses and chickens. He’d gone to bed some time ago, as had the hired men. But it was Jeff’s responsibility to see that everyone and everything was safe before he retired. Even to the cats in the barn, snuggled in the hay, sound asleep.

The next crash of thunder was so close and so sudden that Jeff grabbed for the banister to keep from falling down the stairs in surprise. The house shook. “Jesus!” he whispered.

A burst of lightning brightened the windows, followed after only a few seconds by another rolling explosion. Thinking the girls must be cowering under their bed by now, Jeff finished the stairs two at a time.

Their door stood open. Jeff peeked inside, not wanting to wake them if by some miracle they’d slept through the artillery barrage outside. The covers were rumpled but there were no feathery blond heads on the pillows. He bent to look under the bed. No little feet peeped out from under the coverlet.

Combing back his damp hair with his fingers, he looked around in the next lightning glare. Edith’s door stood open too. Following his curiosity as much as his inclinations, Jeff walked down the hall.

With a grin, he counted three heads on a pillow. As he might have guessed, Edith wore her rich dark hair pulled into a prim braid. He noticed that Maribel had tight hold of the end of the braid in one hand while with the other she clung to her new toy sheep. Louise was curled into a ball which reminded him of the cats asleep in the hay.

Despite the noise and the flashes which broke the sky with the intensity of day, his girls were sleeping like angels on a cloud. Jeff’s smile faded as he recalled that Gwen never let Louise crawl beside them when frightened in the night. It had been her firm rule that once the child was put to bed, she must stay there until morning. Often Jeff had crept up the stairs to comfort his crying daughter, knowing that Gwen was undoubtedly right but unable to bear the sound of his child’s sobbing.

Neither treatment had done any harm, he decided as he scooped Louise up to take her back to bed. She was a bright, self-sufficient little thing, despite his doubts about a future with no mother to guide her. Thinking of Edith’s aunt, he decided too much self-sufficiency was not good. Had she ever needed anyone? Had she ever loved anyone? She could not have taught Edith any of these things. How could she?

Edith had needed him once, he thought in triumph. Instantly, however, a doubt nagged at him. Would she have found some way to survive even after a devastating fire destroyed everything she had? Who had needed whom more?

He made a second trip for Maribel, though he had to pry open her fingers to get her to let go of Edith’s hair. Like a baby, Maribel rode limply against his shoulder and dropped bonelessly onto her mattress. He pressed a kiss onto each girl’s warm face and closed the door as he left.

The rain rattled like needles fired against the windows as Jeff made one last trip down the hall. He told himself his hands had been too full with Maribel to close Edith’s door behind him.

But when he got there, he stepped inside her room, to take a picture of her face on the pillow into sleep with him.

“What the . . .” Her bed was empty.

She stood by the window, the curtain caught back in her hand. Jeff looked at her and forgot to breathe. Her beauty of form showed clearly against the rain-silvered window. Her nightgown gathered over her breasts and flattened across her stomach, leaving much to his imagination but not nearly enough.