The Loves of Ruby Dee (10 page)

“He ate well, and that helped get his body back on even keel—helped him tolerate that whiskey he was sipping. He had some pain, but he finally let me rub a tonic on his ankle and that bad knee of his and bind them up. He was snoring his head off when I came down this mornin’."

Will was surprised that the old man had let her do anything. He didn’t like to be touched. “You still think his ankle is just sprained?”

“I believe so, although I could just as well be wrong. But even if it is a fracture or a torn ligament, racin’ right down to the doctor and puttin’ up with all they’d do to him can wait. Let him have a few days to rest up, eat well and settle down.”

Will slowly put on his hat. “That all makes good sense to me, ma’am, but I’d advise you not to hold your breath, waitin’ for my father to settle down.”

Their gazes held again for brief seconds...her eyes so dark and steaming and staring right back at him. Then he gestured at the horse—”I need to put him to pasture”—and started walking off.

She called after him, “Your daddy might not need to see a doctor, but you do. You need to have that cut stitched. I can do it, if you’d rather not drive in to the doctor, but I don’t have anything to numb it.”

He stopped, gingerly fingering the wound. The tenderest touch made him wince, but he said, “Thanks just the same, but I’ll just clean it and leave it be.”

She frowned. “It’s gonna scar.”

“I never did make a livin’ with my face.”

She gazed at him for a moment with those dark eyes. Then she climbed down from the fence, a flash of bare leg showing clear to her thigh.

“I’ll be fryin’ up that bit of ham I saw in your refrigerator and makin’ biscuits and eggs.” She scooped his empty coffee mug off the fence rail, turned and headed back up the slope and across the drive. Her stride was long and free; her hair and the hem of her dress swung easy. The collie came running up to her, and she bent to pet it, before swinging on in that breezy manner.

Will, his body stiff as a corpse, crossed the pen and let the horse out into the adjoining, high-fenced pasture. The horse loped away, head high, mane and tail flowing. Will stood there a moment, watching. The roan, so scruffy and poor-looking a moment before, had become a grand sight, with all his muscles moving in powerful rhythm. That was because a horse was designed to run, Will thought, giving brief consideration to what man was designed to do. He couldn’t come up with anything in particular.

He gazed out at the pastures and the land rolling away. The sun hadn’t shone yet, but the sky was bright yellow to the east. Days started so beautifully, he thought, but ended up just hot and sweaty. That was his life, one hot and sweaty day coming after another. The thought made him depressed.

He looked up at the house and thought he saw Ruby Dee D’Angelo’s shadow at the window.

He shut the gate, turned back and hauled his saddle out of the pen and rested it atop the hitching rail. He headed to the house by way of his pickup, where he took four cigarettes, stuck them in his shirt pocket and stood there to smoke one. His movements were easier now, and he suddenly anticipated a good breakfast. He wasn’t going to speak to the old man before he had it, either, because he didn’t want his enjoyment of breakfast spoiled.

He was crossing the gravel driveway when Wildcat Burns’s faded blue pickup came rattling up the drive. Will’s stomach tightened. If he had had a gun, he would have shot at Wildcat and sent him right back down the drive.

“Mornin’, boss.” Wildcat unfolded himself out of his truck. “Got visitors?” He nodded his head in the direction of the convertible and camper, which Lonnie had pulled up near the tractor barn.

“Sort of,” Will said and left it at that.

Wildcat hurried to catch up to him. “You look like you already got throwed this mornin’. The sun ain’t even full up.” He frowned, apparently giving great thought to these two facts.

“No, it ain’t,” Will said. “Why are you here so early?”

“Oh, Charlene stayed up all night watchin’ some romantic movies, and she got to pesterin’ me this mornin’.” He had the nerve to look forlorn about it. “I just wadn’t up to anything like she saw in those movies. She got put out with me, and wouldn’t make any coffee. I figured I might as well come out here and have coffee with y’all.”

Will had always wondered if Wildcat made up these stories about Charlene’s abundant sexual desires. But the stories had to be believed, simply because Wildcat was incapable of making up lies of any sort. And whenever Charlene was with Wildcat, she had a kind of hot gleam in her eye and kept putting her pudgy hands all over him. It was amazing. Charlene was hitting fifty, was plain and round as a paper plate, and Wildcat was ahead of fifty, lean and leathery as mule hide.

What happened to your face?” Wildcat asked.

“I ran into a wall,” Will said and then clamped his mouth shut. He saw no good in conversing with Wildcat at this point.

Wildcat didn’t need others to make conversation. He gave his opinion that the wound was nasty and recommended putting Bag Balm on it.

The warm aroma of coffee came out of the house even before they’d reached it, and when Will entered the porch, he found the back door open. Ruby Dee D’Angelo stood at the kitchen counter, humming and swishing her slim backside to a country tune he recognized but couldn’t place. Hearing footsteps, she swung around. She had wrapped a red scarf over her hair and put on a bright yellow checked apron. Those feather earrings dangled from her ears. Will figured it safe to say that she was not a sight he had ever imagined seeing in his kitchen.

Then Wildcat’s breath whooshed at his shoulder.

Will stepped forward and pulled off his hat. “Miss D’Angelo... Ruby Dee, this is Wildcat Burns. He’s our top hand. Wildcat, this is Miss D’Angelo, our new housekeeper.”

She bestowed her fleeting, warm-as-sunshine smile upon them both and stuck her hand out to Wildcat, then jerked it back. “I’m sorry, my hands are all full of biscuits,” she said, her voice vibrating with husky laughter.

Wildcat’s eyes were just about bugging out. He bobbed his head at her and said something about his hands being too rough for shaking. He did think to snatch his hat from his head.

Will tossed his hat on a chair and went straight for the coffee. He caught a sweet scent as he passed Ruby Dee. A woman scent.

He poured two mugs of coffee and gave one to Wildcat, saying, “You can go on and get started feedin’ the stock.”

Being dense as a fence post, Wildcat said, “I ain’t had no breakfast yet...
I’d sure like a couple biscuits, if you’re gonna have enough, ma'am."

She said there would be plenty, and Wildcat slid himself into a chair at the table. After a minute, the little television on the table drew his attention. He reached over and turned it on, tuning in the early morning farm and ranch report. They were giving the weather. Wildcat was an avid weather-news watcher.

With a deep sigh, Will leaned his backside against the counter and sipped his coffee. The woman made the best coffee he had ever tasted. He looked at the coffee maker, wondering if it was the same one he used every morning. It was, and that seemed awfully strange. There was a woman in the kitchen, and it seemed everything had changed.

His gaze reached her and stopped. He watched her arranging the plump biscuit dough in two oiled iron skillets. He watched the way her flour-coated fingers moved, lightly and nimbly. He wondered what their touch would feel like.

She opened the oven door, bent to slip the skillets inside. Will found himself looking at her neatly curved bottom, covered by the thin fabric of her dress...and maybe panties, but he wouldn’t bet on it. He had the urge to reach out and cup her bottom.

He averted his gaze, and saw the little dog looking up at him with an accusing eye, just like it knew what Will had been thinking.

“You sure you won’t let me tend to that cut now?” Ruby Dee asked, startling him. She was rinsing her hands. “It’s tryin’ to get infected.”

“It’s not so bad...I’ve had worse.” The idea of her getting close enough to touch him made him a little panicky. He set his empty cup on the counter. “I’m gonna get a shower. I’ll take two of those eggs, hard-cooked, when I come back.”

He strode through the house. He didn’t so much as look in the old man’s room but took the stairs two at a time.

At the top, he chanced to glance into Ruby Dee’s room, and that glance caused him to stop. He felt like a peeping tom, but he peered in anyway. Then he stepped inside and looked around.

A nightgown hung over the footboard of the bed...
white, with lace at the bottom. Pillows were piled at the head of the bed, covered with cases of lilac and pink, with lace edges. A red-fringed scarf was thrown over the shade of the bedside lamp, and scarves hung from either side of the window shade. They didn’t match. On the dresser top were squeezed a portable radio, a couple of books, some framed photographs, and a gray-and-gold vase of some kind. An odd-looking thing.

He moved closer and peered at the photographs—one of a man and woman, looked like it was on their wedding day; another smaller one of an old lady with a gardenia pinned on her dress.

Then there was a piece of paper lying on the books, pasted up with a bunch of cut-out magazine pictures, not cut in squares but right around the outline of the figures.

His eyes roamed the room and returned to this paper, and he thought: in just a few hours, the woman had infused the room. It was jarring. He wasn’t certain he liked it. It made him wonder who she was, what she was about. What could happen to all of them, with her there?

He wanted her there, powerfully. He liked the way she made him feel...potent feelings that reminded him that he was a man, and made to mate with a woman...feelings he’d begun to believe had died. She fascinated him and she scared him, the same as a meteor landing in the pasture would.

Turning from the room and the confusion tugging at him, Will strode down the landing to Lonnie’s room. His bedroom door was open, but he was still asleep on the bed, burrowed face down and still fully dressed. Lonnie hated mornings; if he had his way, he wouldn’t get out of bed until noon.

“Get up, Lon.” Will nudged the bed. Lonnie opened his eyes and blinked groggily. “Get up, Lon...There’s a woman in the kitchen.”

That brought Lonnie straight up and grinning.

Will turned and went on into the bathroom, shucking his shirt as he walked. The first thing he noticed was the pink bottle of lotion on the shelf beside the sink. He stared at that, and then he was looking at his reflection in the mirror.

He peered closer, touched his fingertips to the wound just below his eye. Damn! Touching it set it to throbbing. It was an ugly thing, all swollen, purple and scabbed over, and he darn near had a black eye.

He saw something else unsettling in that mirror, too.

Will stared at himself. The man looking back at him was a man he didn’t recognize at all. And so was the man he was seeing inside.
He didn’t know who he was at all.

Then he was only seeing Lonnie’s foolish face, as his brother came bursting in and demanding to use the sink to shave before going downstairs. Lonnie didn’t realize how close he came to Will drowning him.

* * * *

As Will came down the stairs, he considered how he could slip past the old man’s room without being seen. There wasn’t any way, of course. He had never been a man who slipped around on tiptoe, and he wasn’t about to start. And he might as well speak to the old man, because he was going to have to do it sooner or later. He would rather it be later, after he’d had a good breakfast. The smell of it coming from the kitchen had his stomach ready. He hoped the old man would still be asleep; he slept later and later these days.

That hope was squashed when the old man called to him. There wasn’t anything else to do but go in and see him.

“I got somethin’ to say to you, and I want to do it standin’,” the old man said, struggling to get himself up on Lonnie’s crutches.

Will didn’t want to, but he helped the old man straighten up. It hurt him that his dad was such a pitiful sight...tobacco stains on his shirt, pants leg rolled up, showing his bandaged joints and white leg. There was stale whiskey on his breath.

Then the two looked at each other. Will wondered if the old man would say he was sorry about the cut on Will’s cheek.

He looked at it for a second, but what he said was, “We’ll do it your way. I’ll have the gal here, ‘cause I don’t have no choice. The only old-folks home I’m ever goin’ to is the Starr plot over in White Rose cemetery. I always figured you knew that.”

Will, pressed on by anger, replied, “And I always figured you knew that I wasn’t after takin’ this place from you. I don’t want anything but what’s my due.” That wasn’t really the way it was, but he didn’t think he could explain it all to the old man. He didn’t
want
to explain.

“You get a damn good salary, and the Starr to run. That would be enough for ‘most any man.”

“I guess I’m not just any man,” Will said, clenching his fists. “I’m a rancher, same as you.”

Maybe a part of Will expected the old man to say that this place was Will’s, too. That he had earned his share of it and that the old man was proud to be partners with him.

The old man said, “You still aimin’ to leave here?”

 “Yes, sir,” Will answered. “And I figure half the stock that come out of Big Bubba as mine, since I bought that bull with my own money. Do you have a problem with that?”

The old man jutted his chin. “I don’t guess it would matter one way or the other if I did.”

Will wanted him to have a problem with it. He wanted to go at it with the old man, because he wanted a different ending to this tune. Frustration had him by the throat. It was damned unsettling to realize he was thinking of socking the old man, who wasn’t only his father but a stove-up old coot.

Clamping his jaw shut and keeping his hands at his side, Will strode from the room.

He’d said it now, straight out, he thought. He was leaving. There wasn’t any taking it back.

And now his whole breakfast had been ruined.