Summer Winds (5 page)

I stopped talking to myself when the 2-K appeared on my left, and I realized I’d driven all the way to town without knowing it.

How had I managed to avoid being hit on the highway? I’m as goofy
as she is.

I pushed open the café’s heavy glass door and Donnetta greeted me with a whoop. She poured two cups of coffee and joined me in the booth, beaming.

“So how’s the new worker doing?” she said, without preliminaries, and I was reminded again of the verbal incestuousness of this small town. Perry must have gone in to get diesel for the tractor and mentioned Cash to Sven Olan, the gas-station attendant, and that’s all it took to have the entire town informed in a few hours.

“Not good?” Her tone mirrored my dejected expression. “She’ll catch on. Remember when you first came out here.”

“She got in the way of the sprayer and was doused in chemicals, she left the gates open and let the cows out, she goes to get the horses and forgets their halters. I’m afraid she’ll fall in the damned pond and drown. She doesn’t know up from down.”

“I seem to remember a story about you trying to can apples and the pressure cooker exploded and applesauce covered the ceiling.”

“That was twenty years ago.” I smiled, thinking about how many decades I’d been telling Donnetta my troubles.

“Can she work cattle or horses?”

“She doesn’t know their ass from their eyeballs. She’s been trying to catch my mare for eighteen straight hours.”

Donnetta laughed and I joined in. “You’re just not used to women workers. You hire good ole boys and throw them out there with Perry and never have to think about ’em. Don’t sell women short.”

“What are you, the local chapter of NOW?”

“My group’s the National Organization of Weirdos.”

She whirled on the skinny guy bussing tables as if he was the organization’s poster boy. “Wash that rag before you use it on the counter.” He scurried off into the back room. “Wipes something off the floor and then uses it on the tables.”

“So long as he doesn’t wipe out the coffee pot with it,” I said under my breath.

“Can’t guarantee it.”

A short, hefty man with close-cropped facial hair and wearing jeans and a striped shirt, the buttons straining from holding in his bulk, broadsided me with his hip, playfully shoving me over in the booth.

“Buddy, don’t squash her,” Donnetta yelped at her considerably shorter and wider husband.

A big hairy arm encircled my shoulder. “She likes being squashed by a hunk, a hunk a burning love.” Buddy gave me a big lip smack on the cheek and squeezed me. “How ya doin’, baby?”

“Let go of her, Buddy.” Donnetta slapped at his arm from across the table. “She’s got trouble with the new ranch hand and we’re talking, so you don’t need to be interrupting.”

“What’s city girl doing?” he asked, letting me know Cash’s city status had obviously made it from the gas station to the café.

“What city girls do,” Donnetta interjected. “Trying to learn how to get along in the country, only she’s got Ms. Stanwyck here doing the teaching, and Miss Barbara’s not the most patient woman on the planet.”

“Why can’t Perry teach her?” Buddy asked Donnetta, the two of them leaving me out of the conversation.

“Perry’s got less patience than she does, and who needs to pay a worker to teach another worker. You end up with fifty percent of the former and zero percent of the latter,” Donnetta replied. “She hired the gal because she needed more help, not less.”

“When you two get this thoroughly discussed, let me know the solution. I’ve got to get back to the ranch before she sets the place on fire.”

I tried to get out of the booth but Buddy wouldn’t let me, pestering being his modus operandi with women. I couldn’t count the number of times Buddy had trapped me in a damned booth at the 2-K, and if he hadn’t been Donnetta’s husband, I would have straightened him out on how tired I was of being played with like a Barbie Doll.

I flicked a teaspoon onto the floor when he wasn’t looking, and he bent to pick it up. I pushed his behind with my foot, catching him off balance and sending him to his knees and out onto the floor.

“Hey, I’m being a gentleman,” he barked, picking himself up.

“Flattened by prairie-boy politeness.”

As I escaped the booth and headed for the door, they were still discussing Cash. My dilemma would keep them occupied for a few days and give Jonas Wiley, my neighbor to the south, a break. He’d been the topic of conversation for a week because his kid got himself trapped in a sewer drain at school and the volunteer fire department had to fish him out.

I walked down the sidewalk to the hardware store the Benegan family had owned for forty years and, as far as I could tell, their slogan was accurate: America’s last great collection of necessary items under one roof. Sewing machines, raccoon traps, moccasins, roofing nails, hand cream, taxidermy services, and prom dresses.

Walmart of the Woods.

I entered and headed for the section of the store with all the hunting and fishing equipment and directly to a rack with soft deerskin gloves in bright yellow. Picking out a women’s large, I held it up, then placed it against my own hand for sizing. As the soft animal hide brushed my palm, I recalled how Cash’s hand felt that day I first shook it and a tingling sensation crossed my body.

I put the gloves back, as if that particular pair had caused it, and quickly picked up a men’s medium. Laying my hand against it, I closed my eyes and again felt the sensation, as if I were excited about something.
What, a dead deer?
I mocked myself.

“Maggie, can I help you with anything?” I jumped. Bea Benegan was a friendly, middle-aged woman who wore heavy black shoes built to compensate for one shorter leg, which gave her walk an odd swing. Her flowered polyester dress fit tight across her large bosom, and her braided gray hair sat coiled atop her head as if waiting to break loose and strike.

“No, no. Just, uh…I have a new worker and need to buy them some gloves.”

“Well, you can get cheaper ones than this for a worker.”

“It’s the daughter of a friend who’s out for the summer.”

“The Tate girl, of course,” Bea said assuredly, proving she was still tapped into the Little Liberty party line. “You think those will fit her? Does she have big hands?”

“Larger than mine by probably an inch or so.”

Bea wiggled as if titillated by the fact that I knew the size of Cash’s hands, information that provided her with a thread of gossip that could be woven into several stories—can’t run a ranch, treats workers like guests, spends money like water.

Bea interrupted my thoughts. “Well, these gloves are the nicest ones in the store. And if they don’t fit, you know you can bring them back.”

“I’ll take them.” I was anxious to pay and leave and felt self-conscious for no reason. She rang up the purchase and chatted about everything under the sun before I finally escaped, the gloves tucked safely away in their sack. Regaining my composure, I put my thoughts back onto the errands at hand and drove over to the gas station.

Sven Olan, a tall skinny Swede ran the station, its logo so chipped and worn the
S
could no longer be discerned, making people believe their gas came from hell, a higher octane for sure.

Sven hurried over as if he’d been sitting at the window waiting for me to arrive. Grabbing the pump handle and inserting the nozzle into my truck’s gas tank, he happily controlled the flow of fuel so he could get his fill of conversation.

His sister, Verta, a tall blond gal with huge breasts and tight leather pants, stood twenty feet behind him and waved at me. Not a duo that made me very comfortable, both of them always kind of eyed me as if they wanted to talk about something they couldn’t quite get around to—her in particular. “Heard you got some help out there now,” he shouted into the wind.

“You heard right,” I replied, intentionally keeping information to a minimum.

He rubbed his oily fingers on a gasoline rag and tucked it into the back pocket of his rust-orange bib overalls. “She’s tall, I hear.”

His tone encouraged me to fill in the blanks for him.

“Didn’t measure her.” I grinned, thinking height was an odd place to start, but both Verta and Sven were tall Nordic types in a community of somewhat squat folk so maybe her height really interested them.

“Perry seems to like her.”

“Seems to.”

“How long she staying?” He’d finally found a phrase that required I submit new information.

“Long as she likes it, I guess.”

“She like it, you guess?” This was the point in a Kansas conversation where I could always feel my hackles rising.

“Have to ask her the next time you see her.”

“Ain’t never seen her or I’d a known she was tall without asking.” The final statement let me know his feelings were hurt.

“I’m sure she’ll come into town one of these days and you can see for yourself.” I thanked him for the service, cranked up the engine, and headed back to the ranch, wishing I’d learned to be more social and invite people out when they were angling for an invitation, but I couldn’t find it in me. And conversations for the sake of hearing yourself talk just annoyed me.

It was dusk when I pulled into the main gates and under the metal arch that welcomed me home. Cash was carrying something toward her Jeep, and for a panicked moment I thought maybe someone had told her I wasn’t happy with her and she’d decided to leave. My heartbeat increased as I stopped the truck and got out and walked toward her.

“What are you doing?” I asked, a bit breathless.

“Going to put this in the back of the Gator.” I glanced down at what she was carrying: thermos, blanket, wrapped foil package, and a few other indistinguishable items. “Perry and I are about to cook some hotdogs down by the pond and then go fishing.”

“How do you intend to cook by the pond?”

“Campfire.”

“In this wind, you’ll catch the whole place on fire.” My mind jumped to the random joke I’d made to Donnetta about Cash’s setting the ranch ablaze. Was I somehow prescient?
Perry knows
better than that, he’s acting like a schoolboy.

“He’s got some kind of contained hibachi thing and that’s why we’re doing it by the pond bank, to be safe. Want to come?”

“No.” I bit off the word to avoid saying how ridiculous I thought their plan was. “And look out for snakes.” Now she’d made Perry completely useless.
A cookout, for God’s sake.
I didn’t pay my ranch foreman to be a cruise director. Why in hell was he spending time entertaining her instead of training her?

“Sure? It’ll be fun.” Her smile coaxed me.

I shook my head only slightly, indicating my first response stood and that I didn’t need to repeat it. She started to say something more but probably felt she was pressing her luck.

I busied myself in the kitchen and the living room straightening and cleaning. Then I pulled a book on horse care off the shelf and tried to read it. Finally I went out the back door and walked down to the pasture.

Warm and sticky, the air blew around me as I walked briskly, intent on getting rid of the nervous energy that seemed to have taken over my skin, arriving with the impending summer heat and Cash Tate.

The horses were gathered under the same trees, and I longed for a life that simple. Sebastian, the black part-Percheron, ambled over to see me. He was kin to the old horse Johnny had taught to pull a plow after he decided he wanted to know how to do things the way his grandfather had done them. Sebastian didn’t pull his own weight, much less a plow, but I filled his days with hay and hugs and scratched his huge forehead. He briefly acknowledged me before deciding I had nothing interesting to add to his life and returned to the clumps of rich green grass I’d left uncut to accommodate late grazing in the grove.

I hung over the fence, my boot on the bottom rail, and just breathed. Knight, the bay gelding, strolled over and nuzzled me across the white vinyl slats of the paddock.

“Hey, you.” I greeted the sweet horse whose name bespoke his mannerly behavior and kissed him on the muzzle. “How’s the rest of the gang treating you?” I glanced at Mariah, the white mare who glared in our direction, ears flattened, jealous over the attention I was giving Knight. Mariah seemed to be warning him that he’d stepped out of line in the pecking order and hadn’t received permission from the higher-ranking horse to visit me.

“Stop it, Mariah.” I spoke sharply and her ears pricked up. She went back to grazing as if she’d decided neither of us was worth the effort. “Don’t take any crap from her, Knight,” I warned the bay.

“You come see me any time you want.” He blew air out through his nostrils in a large sigh, and I waited when he walked away, wanting to make sure Mariah wouldn’t attack him. “You could come see me yourself, you know,” I said to the arrogant white mare, who turned her butt to me in disdain. I pivoted and wandered back to the house, noting that she was already making her way to the fence, no doubt sorry she’d let me go.

For a moment I thought about Cash’s experience with the mare and how Cash had stayed for hours, trying to win her over, while I gave Mariah only a brief moment to make up her mind and then moved on to other things. Living out here had taught me that holding onto anything too tight in the prairie wind only enabled the forces of nature to shred it.

Near dusk, the setting sun cast an exquisite glow on the western horizon. I looked up at the sky in time to see streaks of orange and purple slowly reveal strange-shaped animals and landscapes that remained for only minutes, then morphed into something else before disappearing altogether.

As I approached the house, I heard laughter in the distance over by the pond and paused to listen. While I couldn’t make out the words, it was clear Perry and Cash were having a good time.

I stepped up on the porch, sat down in a rocker, and continued to watch the light drift below the horizon line, leaving only shadows to play out their last act before the curtain of darkness fell.

Duke ambled around the side of the house and took up residence beside my chair, and I scratched the mass of gray ticking around his neck. Like most herd dogs, he was smart and obedient and came when I called him. He nudged me with his pointed nose, inquiring about food. I took a Milk-Bone out of my pocket that I carried just for his late-evening snack. He crunched on it slowly, perhaps to make it last.