Cowboy Sing Me Home (20 page)

            After feeding the dogs, Luke noticed a
couple of fence pickets that were leaning in, so he grabbed a hammer and some
nails from the tool shed.  His dad came out to the porch and watched.

            “Gonna have to get that fence replaced one
of these days.  It’s gonna cost almost as much as the house did, though.”

            Luke sat on the step by his father’s
feet.  Even the concrete was hot, and he rested his hands between his knees. 
The Jubilee started in thirty minutes, but he didn’t really care today if he
was late or not.  

            His dad sighed and sat beside him.  Luke
knew he was mad at him, disappointed in him.  Luke figured he had a right. 
Claude probably thought he was passed the age when he had to worry about
shotgun weddings.  Since he wasn’t exactly pleased with himself, Luke welcomed,
in a way, whatever his dad was about to throw at him.

            Luke kept his face forward, but cut his
eyes to his dad to study his profile.

            People had always told him he looked just
like Claude.  Until today, Luke had been unable to see it.  His face felt numb
and his mind detached as he slowly studied his father’s face and realized he
felt as old as the man beside him.  It sounded like someone else’s voice,
telling Claude now that he and Melinda would be getting married within the
month, that there was going to be a baby.  His entire life flashed before his
eyes, and he had to keep reminding himself that this was him he was talking
about, not someone else. 

            Claude listened and nodded, in that
silent, stoic way of his.  “I guess I ought to be offering some kind of
fatherly advice right about now.  But you’re a grown man.  You know what’s
what, and have for a long time.  I suppose you made this bed, and now it’s time
to lie in it.”

            Luke swallowed and nodded.  For the past
day he’d alternated between feeling sorry for himself, and being ashamed for
feeling sorry.  He kept telling himself to think about Melinda.  She hadn’t
planned this, either.  He’d promised her that he’d taken all the precautions,
and he had.  Now she was going through an unplanned pregnancy, but she had
accepted it and was ready to deal with it. 

            He studied his hands, feeling the sweat on
his scalp running down to collect at his collar, and told himself that was all
over.  The feeling sorry, and ashamed, and putting up any resistance.  This was
the way things were, and he was going to make the best of it.

            He opened his mouth to ask a question he
wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to.  “Is that what happened with you and Ma? 
You made your bed, and you had to lie in it?”

            Claude turned to him with narrowed eyes. 
“What do you mean?”

            “Is that why you got married?  She was
pregnant?”

            “Don’t you ever say that about your mother
again.  She was a nice girl.”

            Luke bit his tongue and didn’t point out
that even nice girls made mistakes.  “Dad, it’s obvious that you two don’t love
each other and don’t want to be together.  I just want to know why.”  He needed
to know, he realized.  Now, more than ever, he needed to know what had gone
wrong between them.  He needed to know what to do, or what not to do.  “What
happened to make you two hate each other so much?”

            “We don’t hate each other.”

            “You argue about everything from the color
of the car to how hot it is.  You haven’t gotten along as long as I can
remember.  Something had to happen to cause this kind of rift between you.”

            Another thought occurred to him, and his
mind almost shied away from it, but he had to know. 

            “Was there someone else?  Did you love
someone else, but had to marry Ma?”

            Claude stared at him for a long time. 
Luke had only seen his jaw muscle twitch like that a few times before, and knew
his father was as angry as he ever got.

            “I don’t hate your mother.  I have never
loved anyone the way I love her.”

            “Then what happened?”

            His father stood.  “That’s none of your
business.”  The screen door slammed behind him.

            Luke sat with his elbows on his knees and
stared at his hands, feeling the sweat run down his back, the sun on his
cheek.  His dad was wrong.  It was more his business than it was anyone else’s.

            Heaving a great sigh, he stood and left
for the Jubilee.

            It didn’t matter, he told himself as he
drove back into town from his parents’ farm.  Whatever hard and stubborn
feelings that lived between them were their problem.  He couldn’t do anything
about it.  He’d learned that a long time ago, when he was a kid and tried to
coerce them into being affectionate to each other, the way Toby’s parents
were.  They were both too bull-headed to make the first move.

            He frowned and adjusted the visor to cut
down on the glare from the blacktop.  It was so hot the tar looked like a wet,
black river.  He couldn’t do anything about his parents, but he could do
something about himself.  He would treat Melinda with respect and kindness.  He
would never belittle her, call her names, walk away while she was talking to
him.  He would take whatever kind feeling he had toward her and nurse it, build
on it.  And eventually, what they had would be good, and real.  Dusty would be
long gone, relegated to a fond place in his memory.

            He almost had himself convinced.  Until he
got to the square and heard her voice.  His ears instantly picked up on that
voice, Dusty’s voice, low and throaty and strong through the noise of the
gathering crowd, through the heat, to settle into a place inside him he hadn’t
known existed until she touched it.  It was a place of home, and destiny, and
self.  His soul, he thought.  She spoke, and it touched his soul with a
belonging that was immediate and right, as if she’d been there all along.   He
knew then that his child would be grown and gone and having a child of its own,
and he would still feel this desire to hear that voice again.

            He stood beside his pickup and braced his
hand against the bed, the heat of it warming his hand.  Though he wasn’t close
enough to make out the words she spoke, he listened to the rhythm and tone,
remembering the way that same tone had vibrated through him when they’d danced
together, and the first time he’d heard her sing, clear and strong and sultry. 

He was late, and hanging back like a
coward.

He made himself walk across the brown
grass, nodding to friends and acquaintances.  Dusty stopped and cast a look at
him, then turned back to talk to Stevie who stared at her, enraptured.  Luke
heard whispers behind and around him, and felt tension in the crowd rise as he
made his way through.

            “Sorry I’m late.”  He slipped his guitar
strap over his head. 

She just shrugged and went back to her
conversation with Stevie, her fingers moving like fine birds as she spoke.  She
was three feet away, her hair pulled up in a loose ponytail, fine soft strands
escaping to lie against the column of her neck. 

Not even a breeze stirred the warm heavy
air, and Luke felt suddenly so tired he didn’t know if he was going to make it
through the Jubilee and the gig at Tumbleweeds afterward. 

If Dusty felt even a little of the anguish
Luke did, she didn’t show it.  Her performances at the Jubilee and at
Tumbleweeds afterwards were flawless.  Several times during the night Luke got
caught up in the energy of the moment, watching Dusty with the memory of her
touch on his hands, her lips against his.

Then he looked out into the crowd to see Melinda
there, her eyes worshipping him, beaming as people came up to congratulate her
on her engagement.  And reality crashed back down.

Either Dusty was a very good actress, he
decided, or he was a bigger fool than he thought for believing there was something
special between them.  She’d accused him of having an enormous ego, and he
figured she must be right, because as the night wore on and it became painfully
clear he was the only one pining away for this lost relationship, he decided he
had to talk to her alone, just one more time, to see if she was as okay as she
appeared. 

He was perfectly aware that he was playing
with fire.  He practically had to force Melinda to leave without him at the end
of the night, citing a very real concern for the baby’s health with Melinda
staying up late.  She kept looking between Luke and Dusty with suspicion in her
eyes and it took Luke many reassurances and promises before she finally got in
her car and drove away. 

            He stalled as the rest of the band packed
up and left for the night.  Dusty was in the back room, and he could hear her
rummaging around.  He should leave. He also knew that there would be hell to
pay if Melinda found out he had hung around after practice to talk to Dusty. 
He should leave, now, before she came out of the office.

            But he stayed.  He packed up his stuff,
set it by the door, and thought about putting some quarters in the jukebox. 
But he was enjoying the quiet, and in his mind he could still hear her song,
“Outside Looking In.”  Through the open door, the night had finally cooled off
slightly, enough to make it bearable. 

When she came out of Rodney’s office and
saw him still standing there, she stopped.  She looked at him for a moment,
then went about the business of gathering her things.  He stood in the doorway,
hands in his pockets, and watched.  He thought about offering to help, but knew
she would push him away so he just watched, taking in her long slim legs, the
white blonde hair she’d let down from its ponytail, the curve of her cheek and
line of her jaw.  The green eyes she turned on him, finally, as if ready now to
deal with him.

            “You have something you want to say?”

            He had a lot he wanted to say, he
realized.  But not much he could.

            “I just… I guess I wanted to check and
make sure you’re okay.  Last night was kind of… ugly, and I didn’t get to talk
to you afterward.”

            She cocked her head.  “Do you want me to
tell you I went home and threw myself on my bed and cried myself to sleep,
Cowboy?  That I’m heartbroken and don’t know when I’ll ever get over it?”

            He leaned against the door jam.  “I
wouldn’t believe you if you did.  You wouldn’t stand for your heart to be
broken.”  He twisted his keys in his hand, lined them up neatly in a stack,
fanned them out, lined them up again.  “I wish things hadn’t turned out like
this.  I mean – “

            “I know what you mean.”   She hefted her
case and moved toward the door, toward him.  “If she’d just waited a few more
days...”  She set her jaw and tried to walk past him.

            He put out a hand to stop her.  “Wait a
minute.  What do you mean, ‘if she’d just waited a few more days’?”

            “If she’d stayed away for a few more days,
we could have been together.  And then you could go on with your life with
her.  She has impeccable timing, this fiancé of yours.”  Her eyes flashed
green, her jaw tight as she talked.

            “Is that what you think I’m saying?  That
I’m upset we didn’t get to have sex last night?”

            “Aren’t you?”

            “Of course I am.  But it was more than
that.  You know it was.”  His heart pounded as he took her guitar from her and
set it on the floor.  “It was going to be more than that.”

            Her eyes stayed steady on his, but she
didn’t speak.

            He sighed and shook his head.  “It doesn’t
matter now, anyway.” 

            “No, it doesn’t.”  Her voice was soft, and
he felt for some reason that he’d betrayed her, broken a promise he hadn’t
made.  He put his hands on her shoulders, soft but firm, and led her outside.

            “What are we doing?”

            “I want to dance with you.”  He had told
himself not to touch her, that he couldn’t put his hands on her and then walk
away.  But his hands were on her now, his arms around her, and she wasn’t
pushing him away.

            “This is not a good idea.”

            “This is all I’m going to have of you,
Dusty.”  He was on the verge of begging, but it didn’t matter.  He would worry
about wounded pride later.  “This is it.  Just let me have this.”

            She stepped close into his arms.  “There’s
no music.” 

            “That’s funny, I can hear music just
fine.”  He tucked her head to his shoulder, memorizing the feel of her, the
weight of her palm against his own, the gentle pressure of her leg against
his.  He took it all in desperately, storing it up, imprinting it on his mind
to take out and savor later. Decades later, when there was enough distance
between them that he safely could.

            They swayed together in the dark, their
feet scraping against the dirt and gravel as they moved slowly in a small
circle.  The sky was studded with stars.  He held his palm flat against her
back, the warmth of her skin penetrating through her thin shirt.  He felt the
solid bone of her spine, the steady thud of her heart, the gentle rise and fall
of her chest as she breathed.  He pulled his head back and looked down at her. 
Her eyes were closed, and when they rotated into the light from the open door
he saw a faint sheen of moisture on her forehead, her upper lip.  He’d never
seen anything as fine and delicate as the curve of her lashes, the bridge of
her nose, the soft bow of her lips.