A Match Made in Dry Creek (7 page)

Doris June saw her mother and Charley exchange glances. No one even noticed that Lucy had come back with their slices of pie and was setting the plates in front of everyone.

“We were hoping to get the tourism board all excited about the pansies we're growing for Mother's Day,”
Mrs. Hargrove finally said. “We thought they might like that better than the old stop sign.”

“Maybe we could find a field of Montana wildflowers, too,” Doris June said. “People always love flowers. Look at Holland and their tulips.”

“Someone should take the sign down,” Curt said. “It's a nuisance. Should have been brought down years ago.”

“It's state property,” Charley cautioned.

“I'm willing to pay whatever fine there is for removing it,” Curt said. “Besides, no one stops at that intersection anyway. Dry Creek doesn't need the sign.”

“We need it for our concert,” Ben said quietly.

Everyone was silent.

“You're not talking about
that
sign, are you?” Lucy said as she put the last slice of pie on the table. She looked aghast. “That sign's a landmark.”

“What do you mean you need it for your concert?” Curt asked.

“That's where we're holding the concert,” Lucy explained. “We're doing old love ballads at the broken-heart sign. It's our theme. We've got the Web site and we've already made flyers. We might even get extra credit for the concert at school if Mr. Jenkins will okay it.”

Lucy pointed to the bulletin board just inside the café and, sure enough, Doris June saw a yellow flyer there with a drawing that resembled the old stop sign.

“Wouldn't it be better to hold your concert in the
church?” Mrs. Hargrove suggested. “It's so much more comfortable there. There would be enough pews for a lot of people.”

“We don't need pews. We plan to sit on the grass,” Lucy said. “You can't have an outdoor concert inside a church.”

“Besides, we need the sign for our theme,” Ben added as he looked at his father. “It's all about love and broken hearts and—”

Curt sighed. Doris June knew Curt was going to give in even before he cleared his throat. “When are you planning to hold this concert?”

“This Saturday night.”

“The night before Mother's Day?” Mrs. Hargrove asked.

Ben nodded. “Lucy and I don't have to worry about Mother's Day.”

Doris June knew that if Curt didn't fold on that remark, she would fold on his behalf. Lucy's mother had died years ago and Ben's might as well have. “I don't think it would hurt to wait until after Mother's Day to do something about the sign.”

“So we can have our concert?” Lucy asked.

Curt looked at Doris June and she looked right back at him. She wondered if he was remembering what it felt like to be fifteen. They both looked up at the two teenagers and nodded.

“You won't regret it,” Lucy promised.

“See that we don't,” Curt said. “I'm sure you've
planned to have some adults at the concert to see there's no alcohol or drugs.”

Lucy and Ben stared at him blankly.

“Well, you have four adults now,” Curt said as he looked around the table. “Make sure kids know when you invite them that it'll be supervised. No alcohol. No drugs. If we see anyone with something, we call the police.”

“You won't walk around or anything, will you?” Ben asked anxiously.

“Not if everything goes by the rules,” Curt agreed. “We'll watch from the corners.”

“Okay.” Ben nodded and then asked, “Maybe you could sit in the old pickup during the performance.”

Curt looked at his son. “What old pickup?”

“Ben said you still have the old pickup out in one of the barns at your place,” Lucy finally said. “You know, the one that hit the sign. We thought it would make a great stage.”

“We need a place for the performers,” Ben added. “Those old pickups are big in the back.”

“I doubt the old thing even runs anymore,” Curt said.

“We could pull it into town with Grandpa's tractor,” Ben suggested. “Please.”

Curt nodded in defeat. “But when the concert's over, that sign's coming down.”

Doris June wondered if the man from the tourism board would accept the fact that the sign he was inter
ested in was still standing but that it wouldn't be standing long enough to make it a tourist attraction.

“You're sure you're okay with all this concert business?” Curt turned to Doris June and asked.

She nodded. She couldn't say no to the looks on the faces of Ben and Lucy.

“Well, it's only a sign,” Curt finally agreed. “One stubborn piece of metal sticking out of the ground.”

“I'm sure the highway department will agree to let us take it down eventually anyway. It's a menace leaving the thing up,” Doris June said. “Maybe the guy from the state will pass word along to the highway department that someone needs to do something about the sign.”

Doris June decided her mother was finally looking like her old self again.

“I don't know why we fretted so much about telling you about the tourism board wanting to use that sign,” Mrs. Hargrove said.

“The two of you always have a mature view of things,” Charley added. “We should have taken that into account.”

Doris June didn't answer that remark. No one had thought they were mature twenty-five years ago.

“Maybe if we tear down the sign, we can let bygones be bygones and be friends again,” Curt said, looking directly at Doris June. “I know I'm sorry for the way things turned out.”

Doris June wasn't quite ready for that yet. She had heard Curt earlier when he mumbled something about
being sorry for what he had done, but she hadn't expected him to apologize again so openly in front of everyone like this. “I'm sorry, too.”

If Curt noticed that she hadn't directly accepted his apology, he didn't give any indication of it. He just nodded his head at her as if her words settled everything. She wished they could settle it. It made her feel small that she couldn't forgive someone for hurting her twenty-five years ago.

Maybe if she prayed about it, she could release some of her bitterness toward Curt. After all, it wasn't all his fault that she'd never married and had children. She certainly could have married someone else. She had known after he got married that there was no point in waiting for him. She'd put him out of her mind as best as she could. It was just that she had never met a man who compared to the Curt of her youth.

Doris June looked over at Curt now as he ate his cherry pie. He didn't look all that different from other men. It must have just been that she knew him so well. He had been her childhood friend. What other man could compete with that? He had been her best friend.

T
he sun was beginning to rise the next morning when Doris June woke up with a headache. Before she had gone to bed last night, her mother had shown her the forms that needed to be filled out for the tourism board. The letter that accompanied the forms said a Mr. Aaron White was very pleased to include Dry Creek in their tourism publication this year. He said they expected to distribute fifty thousand copies of the guide and that it was being put together as a special project by students in high schools throughout the Billings area.

When Doris June read about the high school students who were designing the tourism guide, she knew why it would have been impossible for her mother to simply decline the offer to be part of the guide. Her mother always supported education for children and teenagers.

Her mother probably hadn't even thought past the
education aspect to what it would mean for Dry Creek to be included in the tourism guide, but Doris June saw the benefits immediately. Even if two percent of the people who received the guide came to Dry Creek, that would be one thousand new visitors. That should probably translate to an additional one thousand cheeseburger platters sold in Linda's café. That alone could mean a college fund for Lucy, especially if the visitors ordered pie with their cheeseburgers.

And then, after eating their cheeseburgers, those same people would likely wander over to the hardware store and some of them might buy one of the paintings Glory Becker had for sale. Glory had been saving for a trip to England. A few paintings might make a difference in her going.

And, then, if any of the visitors came late in the day, they might even want to rent the room over the garage that her mother had fixed up like a hotel room for the stray traveler who wanted to stay overnight in Dry Creek. Her mother could use the extra income that would bring.

Doris June had never translated her resentments into cold, hard cash before but she had to wonder if her embarrassment at seeing a picture of the old stop sign on a travel guide was worth all of the money others would lose if they weren't included in the guide.

If they could not find something else to tempt the tourism board, Doris June knew she had to force herself
to be okay with the proposed stop-sign angle. If that old piece of metal could ring up some dollars on the cash registers around town, then she would just have to make her peace with it. She was a grown woman and she could do it.

Doris June could smell the coffee brewing as she went down the steps to the kitchen. She expected to see her mother in her bathrobe at this hour, but Mrs. Hargrove had on a gingham housedress and a sweater. The light over the kitchen sink was on and her mother was packing the wicker picnic basket they had used in the summers on the farm.

“Oh, good, you're up,” her mother said as she looked up from the basket. “Are you feeling okay this morning? I'm sorry about last night and all the fuss about the sign.”

“It's barely six o'clock. What are you doing up at this hour?”

“I couldn't sleep,” Mrs. Hargrove said.

“You shouldn't worry about that guide.” Doris June walked over and gave her mother a hug. “However things turn out with that old sign, they will be okay. Really, it's just an old piece of metal and if people want to come here to see it, we'll let them.”

Doris June felt her mother quiver.

“It's more than the sign. I've blamed myself for years for not handling things better all those years ago,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she put the lid down on the wicker basket. “I did tell you how many times Curt asked for
your address, didn't I? And how your father and I decided not to give it to him? We didn't mean we'd never give it to him. It was just supposed to be until you finished high school. None of us thought he'd go sign up for the army and leave town.”

Doris June nodded. “I know. It was just one of those things.”

Mrs. Hargrove's voice was shaky. “I never meant to make you unhappy.”

“It was a long time ago,” Doris June said as she gave her mother's shoulders a final squeeze. “I made my choices, too. It's okay.”

Her mother gave Doris June a hug in return. “I worry about you way up there in Alaska.”

“Well, I worry about you, too.”

“Me?” Her mother looked up in surprise. “Why would you worry about me? I'm here at home.”

That was the difference, Doris June thought to herself. Dry Creek would always be home for both of them. It had not seemed like a big enough place for Doris June to live her life when she was young, but now that she'd been other places, she thought she could come back home and be content to stay. She didn't want to say anything to her mother, however, until she had time to pray about it and see if it was a direction God was opening up for her.

She knew if she was going to live here, she needed to make her peace with more than the stop sign. She
needed to be able to sit next to Curt in church and have no feelings for him whatsoever, except possibly the same sort of mild affection she had for his father or for any of the other old men who always seemed to hang around the hardware store in Dry Creek.

Doris June straightened her shoulders. She didn't need to make the whole thing seem harder than it was. For all she knew, once she got over the awkwardness of how she and Curt had parted, maybe all that would be left was that sort of mild affection. She needed to remember that she hadn't spent any time with Curt for years. Most likely the intense feelings she used to have for him were so dried out that they would crumble the first time they had any kind of a disagreement.

In the meantime, Doris June didn't plan to sit around and waste the day worrying about Curt.

“After breakfast, we should drive out to see your pansies,” Doris June said. “The man from the tourism board won't be here until later today.”

“I was thinking that, as long as we're up so early and we're going out to the farm anyway, we could take breakfast to Ben,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “I heard the poor boy has never had homemade French toast. They just get that frozen kind that you pop up in a toaster. Whoever heard of pop-up French toast?”

Doris June smiled. Her mother never could resist a hungry child, especially a motherless one. Now that
Doris June had made her decision to get past her awkward feelings with Curt, she decided she might as well start now. “If you think they're up, we should take breakfast for everyone.”

“Oh, they're up all right. They keep farm hours. They have to eat breakfast early so Ben can do his chores and catch the school bus.” Mrs. Hargrove tucked a cloth napkin in the wicker basket and beamed. “Besides, it's a beautiful day.”

The air was cool when Doris June and her mother stepped out of the car at the Nelson farm. It was around six-thirty in the morning and the sky was still rosy from the sunrise. The car had run fitfully all the way out to the farm and Doris June was grateful she was wearing her jeans and an old flannel shirt her mother kept around for gardening. She kept expecting she would have to walk the final miles to the Nelson farm, but her mother's car kept moving slowly along.

The air always smelled better when the ground had been plowed recently, Doris June thought as she stepped out of the car and looked at a stretch of farmland that Curt was getting ready to plant. She could almost smell the damp earth.

The Nelson farmhouse was in a slight hollow that formed a windbreak from the winter blizzards. There were a couple of pine trees that Curt's mother had planted years ago near the house. Doris June could see the black electrical wires that trailed through the
branches, waiting for December to arrive so the outdoor Christmas lights could be plugged in once again.

Doris June and her mother had barely stepped from the car when Charley came out of the house.

“I was getting worried,” Charley said as he walked over to them. He had wool mufflers over his ears but no coat on his back. “After you called to say you were coming, I got to thinking about your car not doing so well. It's low enough in back it could scrape on those deep ruts we've got now when you came up the hill. Our road got all messed up in the last big rain and nobody's come out from the county to fix it yet. I need to call them again.”

“You know nobody's going to come grade the road until all of the spring rains are over,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she opened the car trunk and started to lift out the basket. “Here, help me carry this.”

“I'll get the basket,” Doris June said as she reached over and helped her mother pull it out of the trunk. “Neither one of you should be carrying heavy things around at your age.”

“We're not that old,” Charley protested.

Mrs. Hargrove cleared her throat.

“Although we do still need help with those pansy baskets.” Mrs. Hargrove said quickly as she gave Charley a look. To make her words even more convincing, Mrs. Hargrove took a moment to lean against the car.

Doris June grinned at them as she picked up the
basket. She'd figured out by now, of course, that the two of them had wanted her to come home for reasons other than to lift some baskets around for Mother's Day, but it wouldn't hurt to use their lifting request to force them to take it a little easier. Even if they were both healthy, they really shouldn't be lifting heavy things.

Curt was in the barn when he heard the honking from the horn on his dad's car. The honking meant Mrs. Hargrove and Doris June were here and that he was invited to come to breakfast. He'd told his dad that if there was any hesitancy at all from either of the women, he would just skip breakfast and get to his plowing. He quickly finished throwing hay to the horses; he was glad he was being welcomed in for the meal.

Curt scraped his boots while he was on the porch. He could see through the open door that Ben was already deep in the midst of cooking with Mrs. Hargrove. She was instructing him on how to dip a bread slice into the egg mixture and the look of concentration on Ben's face told Curt his son was committing every step of the process to memory.

The water in the sink just off the porch always ran a little cool, but Curt liked to wash up there rather than in the main part of the house. He kept a bar of green farmer's soap there that would wash away everything from axle grease to pine pitch. Fortunately, it also smelled fresh. He lathered his hands and forearms with soap and then dried them on the towel on the nearby rack.

Curt was rolling down his shirt sleeves as he stepped into the kitchen. “Something smells good.”

“It's my French toast,” Ben said proudly. “Well, mine and Mrs. Hargrove's French toast.”

“You're doing all the work,” Mrs. Hargrove said with an encouraging nod. “Half of making good French toast is knowing when to turn it and you've got that down just right.”

“Grandpa's going to make some scrambled eggs,” Ben added.

“I already put them on, the minute I heard your dad's boots on the porch,” Charley said as he stood over a skillet.

Curt had to swallow for a moment. He'd forgotten what a difference it made to have a woman in the kitchen here. It was almost like his mother was still alive. He looked around. He had expected Doris June to be here, but she wasn't.

He almost asked where she was, but he figured he knew. She'd stayed back in Dry Creek. He could feel his appetite leave him. But he wouldn't let it ruin the breakfast for everyone else. He forced himself to smile. “It looks like a feast.”

“And we've got cinnamon to sprinkle on the French toast,” Ben said as he stepped over to the stove and scooped up the French toast that was on the skillet. He put it on the platter with the rest of the food. “And Mrs. Hargrove said we could sprinkle a little powdered sugar on it, too.”

“It's a regular party,” Curt said.

“That's what Doris June said,” Charley said as he walked toward the table with his scrambled eggs. “She's bringing in the potted plant from the living room to put in the middle of the table for a centerpiece.”

Curt couldn't remember the last time they'd worried about having a centerpiece—or a tablecloth, for that matter. The fact that they were having both for this meal cheered him up real fast though. “You know I've been forgetting to water that plant.”

“You can say that again,” Doris June said as she brought the plant into the kitchen and took it over to the sink. “I've decided it needs emergency watering more than it needs to be put on the table where people are eating. I'm going to let it soak. That thing could have died in there and no one would have even noticed.”

“I'm busy farming,” Curt defended himself with a grin. Now, this was the Doris June he remembered. She'd spent her life in jeans, half-scolding him for one thing or the other. He knew this Doris June better than the woman in a pressed suit that he'd picked up at the airport.

“What kind of a farmer is it that lets his houseplants die?” Doris said. “You wouldn't do that if it was a stalk of wheat.”

Curt just kept grinning.

Doris June sat down with everyone else at the table. She hadn't realized how much everyone was worried about her and Curt until she noticed how they all relaxed
when she and Curt started to tease each other. Doris June decided she could do this thing with Curt. She would just put a blanket over her feelings and treat him as if he were Ben. Yes, she could do that. If she was lucky, no one would even notice that she was forcing it.

Charley said a blessing on the food and then Ben started passing the platter of food around the table.

“Great French toast,” Doris June said to Ben as she finished her first bite.

“You don't think I waited too long to flip that one?” Ben asked her. “It's kind of brown.”

“Not a chance,” Doris June said. “It's just crispy. My favorite.”

Doris June told herself that it was an unusual event for her and her mother to come out and have breakfast with the Nelsons. If she moved back to Dry Creek, it wouldn't happen often. It was just because of the pansies and all. She didn't think she could pretend enough to do this sort of thing often, but she doubted she would need to do it more than once or twice a year. For one thing, her mother wouldn't be up all night worrying and would usually be sound asleep at this time still.