Billy Bob Walker Got Married (35 page)

"I like a night breeze," he said into the silence.

"Thanks, Billy." Her eyes were luminous as she latched her arm inside his, laying her head on his shoulder. "So you did have plans to stay with me."

"Like you said, this is as close to a honeymoon as we're going to get. I wish things could be different, but—"

She put her hand across his mouth. "No complaining from you, mister. Not after I gave it all I had out at that lake. Come to bed, Billy. You're about to drop from exhaustion."

Her fingers lifted to trace the tired planes under his eyes, across his cheeks.

"I don't know why I'm tired." He sighed as he sank down on the quilt. "Out until near dawn with you Wednesday, and no man's gonna sleep much on his wedding night, and trying to keep you happy tonight. Honey," he murmured, already half asleep as he fell back on the snowy pillow, "you're about to wear me out. But that ain't complaining. No, ma'am."

She must have taken his clothes off of him, he thought now, the next morning, as he came awake; he didn't remember doing it. By the time he'd pulled his pants back on, he was alert with a rushing exhilaration, a crystalline sense of well-being. When he opened the door to step barefoot onto the back porch, he found Willie already there, standing at the far end, smoking his early morning pipe, its rich pungence mingling with the clear air.

Billy avoided his grandfather's know-it-all stare as he shut the door on the sleeping girl behind him, yawning and stretching, trying to work the kinks out of his back. Then he ran his hands through his hair and over his bare chest.

"Pretty morning," he offered at last to Willie, looking out over the dewy, green yard. It echoed the purity of his own emotions.

"Yep," his grandpa agreed complacently, chewing the pipe stem. "Best one I've seen in a long time."

Alone in the glittering brightness of the room when she awoke, Shiloh lay for a few minutes letting the sensations of this strange land wash over her.

She remembered the night before, too, lying awake long after Billy lay asleep beside her, her hand locked in his.

More than anything else, the window fan had reminded her of just how different his world was from hers.

She'd never slept under a fan before. Its blades seemed to blow in the entire universe: scents and sounds that were raw and exotic. She was out in it, unprotected. Listening to the fan, she had a flashing memory of how Billy handled the earth out in Sam's garden on that first morning, as if he knew it and liked it. In the middle of it, right down in the heart of life. It was the same way she had seen him reach out and grasp animals, sure and caring, but with an iron command in his hands. No escaping Billy Walker.

She'd raised his hand to the moonlight that streamed across the bed. Long-fingered, big-knuckled, rough.

A hand that could set a woman on fire, and then soothe her while she burned.

Immediate, earthy, free—that was Billy. He loved, he fought, he hurt and cried with an ardent intensity. A part of the real life Sam had removed himself from, by way of his money. Her father's house was cool and climate controlled, a comfort zone where the sound of the central heating and cooling system blocked out all others, where doors remained sealed and windows shut. Even his garden had been formal, strictly for looks—and Billy had created even that, not Sam.

No sweat, no heat, no weather in Sam's house.

It was a little frightening to be here with every window open, with only a flimsy screen between her and the night, Shiloh thought, even with Billy beside her. But it was exciting, too, and as if to echo her thoughts, a whippoorwill called suddenly, so close to the house that it was shrill and loud, not gentle as distance sometimes made it sound.

Shiloh listened to it as it sang even over the sound of the fan, caught between a longing for father and home and the lure of life red-blooded, the way Billy lived it, where whippoorwills were closer—but not so mistily sweet.

"I was wondering if I could help you."

Shiloh's words startled the woman at the sink; she jumped a little before she turned to face the tall girl behind her.

"Why, I don't know. I was gettin' ready to cook breakfast," Ellen answered, looking down at the big tomatoes she was slicing, her hands nervous. The smell of coffee permeated every corner of the sunny room.

"I'm not too great a cook," Shiloh offered, turning toward the table. "Laura taught me a few things, but mostly, she wanted to do it herself. And she said—" Too late, Shiloh remembered exactly what Laura had said: "You'll have somebody to do your cooking for you, honey, so why waste your time?"

"I guess she figured Sam Pennington's daughter wouldn't ever need to cook," Ellen said shrewdly, watching her new daughter-in-law's face.

Shiloh flushed. "Something like that. But she was wrong, wasn't she?"

Ellen made no answer as she turned back to her task.

"Thanks for the room, too. I wasn't expecting it. It was beautiful. It made me happy."

Ellen went still at the sink. Then she turned around, wiping her hands on her apron, her green eyes determined.

"That's all I'm askin' from you, too," she said quietly. "You keep my Will happy."

Shiloh braced herself with a hand on a chair back. "I'm going to try, Mrs. Walker. But that's not a promise that we won't fight." She laughed a little. "He's got a stubborn streak—"

"Will's touchy about some things, you mean," Ellen interrupted. "If you know what he is, then you know why. And you're bound to know. You've spent time with Robert Sewell." The woman across the kitchen looked stiff as a poker, as if she'd braced herself against the hard winds of disapproval.

"I know that Billy is Judge Sewell's son, and that you were never married to him," Shiloh answered at last, unsure of what to say.

"And you'll be happy with him just the way he is? He's not his brother."

So Ellen Walker had already heard about that.

"I loved Billy when I was eighteen, but I was too young to know what to do. We fought and
—
I'll tell you the truth—my father was dead set against it."

"That's not changed, from what I hear."

"No, but I have. I was engaged to Michael because I thought I couldn't have Billy. Then I discovered I couldn't live with a substitute."

"The question is, can you live with my boy?"

"I'm going to try. I love him."

She didn't know what else to say. Maybe if she could have explained about the fan, and the whippoorwill, but they seemed silly and inconsequential here, in this practical farm kitchen with its row of tomatoes ripening in the window above the sink and the white enamel wash pan full of green beans waiting to be snapped that sat on the beige Formica kitchen cabinet.

So she said nothing, and the serious quality of the silence pleased Ellen, who searched Shiloh's face for a minute, then leaned back against the sink, relaxing a little.

"And I reckon he loves you," she admitted with a half smile. "He acts like it. He says he does. And he sure never said that about that Blake girl."

Shiloh winced.

Ellen moved uncomfortably. "Reckon I shouldn't have said that. Well, here, I was about to fix some fried tomatoes. Daddy loves them. We all work outside the house today, Daddy at the stand, and me in the garden, and Will in the field or at the greenhouse. I fix lunch early, while I'm gettin' breakfast, so we can eat it when we get ready. Think you'd—would you want to help with that?"

"If you'll show me what to do."

"I'm not much used to having another woman around," Ellen offered at last. "Maybe you could tell me if I don't quite, you know, handle things right. I mean for us to get along if we can." She smiled tremulously at her daughter-in-law.

"We both love him, Mrs. Walker. I want to get along, too."

"My name's Ellen. I reckon I would rather have you call me that."

"Ellen." Shiloh smiled at Billy's green-eyed mother. "You already know me. I'm Shiloh."

She spent the day with Billy, beginning in the barn. Two dogs jumped around him, following every step he made.

But it was the horse who caught her attention.

"Is this the colt you talked about that summer?" she asked in amazement. "The one that got caught in a barbed-wire fence?"

Billy grinned up at the big horse, reaching out to stroke his velvety nose. "This is the one. Some looker these days, aren't you, boy?"

"But I thought that horse had damaged himself so much they wanted to destroy him." It was hard to believe that the stupendous horse dancing after Billy in hopes of a touch or his attention—whose summer coat burned like a sleek red flame, whose muscles moved with an oiled precision, rippling under the skin—was the same one Billy Bob had described to her four years ago, when he first got him.

This animal, even to Shiloh's inexperienced eye, was pure delight.

He looked as good as his master, she thought wryly.

"He fooled them all," Billy told her with a glint of pride. "It makes Harold Bell sick. Chase was his colt, see. But Bell can't stand to see a horse ruined or hurt, so when he thought he was going to have to put this one down— when I asked him to give him to me—Bell agreed. That way he didn't have to watch him die."

As Billy turned to open the barn door, to lead Chase into the sunshine, the horse nudged him roughly, playfully in the back with his nose.

"He likes you," Shiloh told Billy.

"Yep. I like him, too. He's a friendly sort. Here, buddy, meet Shiloh." Billy pulled the well-shaped nose down toward her, his big hand spread across it. "Let him get your scent. Put your hand up close to his nose, but not too close to his teeth, and keep your palm flat and your fingers together so he can't bite a finger. He thinks it's real funny sometimes to nip strangers. He'll just have to catch on that you belong here now."

Every touch Billy gave the horse, no matter how it directed or commanded, wound up being a stroke or a caress. It was mixed up together, the mastery and the affection.

"I wish I had more time for him," Billy Bob said wistfully, as Chase pranced out the barn door into the open field for the day.

"He looks happy to me."

"Yeah. But he's from show stock, a good line of it. He was born to be shown, or to work a fancy rodeo. But as long as nobody tells him that, I guess he'll be okay."

Shiloh watched the horse dance across the field, his tail high, his spirits the same—a tongue of fire flame on the green grass.

"You picked a winner, Billy."

He turned back to her, the sun hot over his shoulder on his hair, lighting it to gold.

"I've got a knack for doing it," he said teasingly, touching his finger to her nose.

From there, they went to the wet humidity of the greenhouse.

A high-school kid named Jimmy who apparently worked for Billy kept wandering in and out, ogling Shiloh, until Billy finally got firm and sent him out to spray the orchard once and for all.

"That kid's got a leg fixation," he muttered. "And I'd hate to have to fire him just because he keeps looking at yours. He's a good worker."

She glanced up at him inquiringly, a streak of dirt across one cheek, her hair a wild tangle of curls that she'd tried to knot back from her face.

"I thought he was just curious," she said mildly. "It's not every day that the great William Robert Walker gets married."

"What you mean is, it's not every day that a princess comes to work in the greenhouse." "I'm no princess."

"Yes, you are. Sam Pennington's little glass doll. He'd have a fit if he could see you now." Billy looked over her slender shape encased in one of his huge T-shirts and a pair of black cotton, boxy, beguiling shorts she'd apparently picked up yesterday on her shopping spree.

"Well, he can't," Shiloh retorted, and before the thought could linger in his head, she asked curiously, "Why does your mother call you 'Will'?"

His long fingers kneaded through the soil in front of him for a minute, cradling the heavy begonias he was transplanting carefully, handling them with confidence and ease. Shiloh watched as he settled one definitely in its place.

Then he spoke, keeping his eyes on what he was doing.

"I was six. Joshua Davidson—this kid in the third grade—called me a bastard at school. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was bad. So I came home from my first day crying. Mama told me what he meant. And what hurt the most was, it hurt her, too. The next day I took a slingshot to school and nearly cracked his head open with it. Boy, did I get a whipping. That principal nearly wore me out."

Billy's hands stopped a minute, as if remembering, before he finished working the soil down around the plant's roots.

"Lost my slingshot and got a reputation for meanness, the very first week of school. I never told them why I did it. But Joshua knew. He kept his mouth shut after that, at least around me."

With his dirty hand, he lifted a plastic container, a blue mix of water and fertilizer with which he soaked the soil around the plant.

"Mama knew why I did it, too. She said she understood, but that I couldn't go around beating up everybody who pointed out the—the facts of my birth. That a real man controlled his temper until he
had
to lose it. And since she knew I was going to be a real man from then on, she wasn't going to call me by a kid name anymore. She was going to call me Will to remind me. She's been doing it ever since."

He set the finished basket off to the side, leaned over the work table, and rubbed one dirt)' finger down her left cheek.

"Now you match. A streak of dirt on both sides," he teased. "Well, aren't you gonna tell me how her plan didn't work? How I never really grew up?"