Cowboy Sing Me Home (22 page)

            “Now this is more like it.”  He took the
blue denim shoes with baseballs stitched into the sides.  “Now these are manly
shoes.”

            His grin froze when he heard another
engine and looked up to see Dusty pulling into the space beside them.  She gave
them a solemn nod as she killed the motor, then climbed out of her pickup and
pulled her guitar out behind her.

            The baby shoes in his hand suddenly felt
like lead weights.  He wanted to say something to stop her.  To tell her it
wasn’t what it looked like; that he wasn’t celebrating the impending birth of
his child.  And that thought froze him, because there was no reason to stand here
feeling guilty.  He’d done nothing wrong.  He hadn’t been caught in any
transgression, no matter how he felt when she looked at him with that
closed-face look.

            So he kept his mouth shut.  He nodded and
didn’t say anything, because nothing he could say made any sense at all. 

            “I’m going to set up,” she said as she
walked past, looking at the items piled on the trunk lid.

            “Be there in a minute.”  He watched her
long legs carry her away, watched her straight back and bright golden head as
she worked her way through the gathering crowd.  He watched until she was no
longer in sight, then watched for her to come back into view.

            When she didn’t, he turned back to his
mother, who was looking at him just as intently.  She put her hand on his arm
and opened her mouth to say something.

            “Don’t, Ma,” he said softly.  “I’ve been
all through it.  There’s no point.”

            She gave him a sad smile and patted his
arm.  “Well…”

            She began packing the things back into the
box, and a snapshot fell out.

            He bent to pick up the black and white
picture of him sitting on the hood of an old car, a hand propping him up from
the side.

            “This is me, right?  Man, was I a chubs. 
What did you feed me, entire sides of beef?”

            “You did like your groceries,” Helen said,
looking over his shoulder. She took the picture from him with a smile.

            “What’s this?”  He reached for the picture
again.  “There’s another one stuck to the back.”  He peeled it carefully away. 
“Who are these people?”

            “That’s me and your father, silly.  We
haven’t aged that much.”

            He stared at the picture of the young
couple locked in an embrace, their cheeks pressed together and wide grins on
their faces, mugging for the camera.  She was right; obviously this was his mom
and dad.  And yet he couldn’t believe the two people he knew had ever allowed
themselves to be this close.

            “That’s the day we bought that car.  It’s
the same one you’re sitting on in the other picture.”  She shook her head as
she looked at the earlier version of herself.  “We were so goofy.  You’d have
thought we were the first people to ever buy a new car.”  She laughed and shook
her head at the memory.  “I remember we wanted to go out to dinner after we
bought it, but we were out of money, after the down payment.  So I made
sandwiches and we ate them in the front seat, parked in the driveway.”

            “You look so… happy together.”

            Helen shrugged and began again packing the
box.  “We were happy.”

            “You’re touching.”

            She cocked her head at him.  “Of course we
were touching.  It’s okay.  We were married, you know.”

            “I know, I just never…”

            “Luke.”  She stopped her packing.  “How do
you think you got here?  Freak accident?  Divine intervention?”

            “I’m just surprised to see you two looking
so happy together.  You’ve always been so mad at each other, as long as I can
remember.”

            She took the picture from him again and
studied it.  “I’m not mad at anyone.” 

            “What happened?  I asked Dad and he said
it was none of my business.  But I’d like to know what happened to make you two
hate each other.”

            “We don’t hate each other.”

            The words were automatic and not exactly
heartfelt, Luke thought. 

She narrowed her eyes, then studied the
photo a little closer.  “We really
were
happy.”  Her features softened
and her voice held a hint of wonder at the notion.

“What happened, then?”

“I don’t …”

Claude appeared at their side.  “What are
you doing, dragging out all this stuff?  He doesn’t want all this old junk.”

Instead of her automatic retort, Helen
looked up at him, then at the picture, then back at him.

“What?”

Helen frowned, shook her head, and turned
back to the box, dropping the photos inside.  Without a word she turned and
walked away.

“What’s with her?” Claude asked as he
watched her go. 

“You two are like a couple of kids, you
know that.”  Luke shook his head in disgust.  “Do you even
know
what
you’re fighting about?”

“We’re not fighting.  Hell, she wouldn’t
even say boo to me.  Hard to fight when you’re not talking.”

“This is not a marriage.”  He waved a hand
at his dad, then in the direction his mom had left.  “Two people constantly at
each other’s throats.”  He picked up the picture out of the box.  “
This
is a marriage.  These people are happy.”

Claude looked at the picture and made a
face.  “Of course we were happy.  The young and ignorant are always happy. 
They have no idea what’s in store for them.”

“So?  What was in store for you?  What did
she do that was so awful you can’t forgive her?”

            “She didn’t do anything.  She’s just
impossible to live with, that’s all.”

            Luke turned away, disgusted with them
both.  He put the box in the floorboard of his pickup, then turned back to
Claude.  “You fight because you like to fight, don’t you?  This probably
started over something as simple as burnt toast.  And it’s been going on for
thirty-five years!”

            “What’s it to you?”

            “What’s it to me?”  Luke threw his hands
in the air.  “What’s it to me?  You two juveniles are my example of marriage,
that’s what it is to me.”

            He grabbed his guitar and stalked off.

            “Well, tell me which one you like better? 
The white swans or the clear swans?  Or angels instead of swans?”

            “Let me see.”  Luke held the fat catalogue
and pretended to study it, pretended to actually give a damn about swans or
angels.  “Whatever you think” hadn’t gotten him out of choosing invitations,
napkins, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to get him out of picking out table
decorations, either.

            “I like this one.”  She pointed to one
design with a chocolate-brown tipped nail.  “The only problem is, I don’t think
it will go with the purple pansies.  So if we go with it, we’ll have to go back
and review our color choices and our floral choices.”

            Which they were
not
going to do,
Luke decided.  He was already on the third level of hell, and going back to the
fifth – otherwise known as ‘choosing colors for you wedding’ was not an option.

            He studied the page for something that
came in ‘their’ color, and jabbed a finger at it.  “Personally, I really,
really like this one.”

            She cocked her head and smiled.  “Really?”

            “Oh, Good Lord, yes.”  He prayed silently
for some mild form of natural disaster that would get him out of here.  “It
says everything I want to say in a matchbook.”

            She studied the catalogue, then turned
that dimpled grin at him, the one he’d used to think was so cute.  “Luke, that
is so sweet.  You don’t know how much it means to me that you’re getting
involved in all this.  It proves to me you really do care.”

            He felt guilty then, and tried to remind
himself that this was what he’d intended: to go through the motions and say all
the right things, and eventually they would become real, and he wouldn’t have
to pretend anymore. 

            But not tonight.  Tonight it was all he
could do to put his arm around her shoulder when she snuggled up next to him. 
That was as close as he’d been able to bring himself to her, since she’d broken
the news of her pregnancy to him.  Their few attempts at a kiss had ended
clumsily and awkwardly when he realized she made his skin crawl.  He’d been
able to bow out of anything more intimate by citing concern for the baby,
although she assured him the doctor said it was perfectly safe, and tried to
entice him with stories of pregnant women’s enhanced libido.

            She filled in her order sheet and then
consulted her list.  “Okay, all that’s left are the table arrangements and the
music.”

            Thinking of music, of course, made him
think of Dusty, and he decided he couldn’t take any more tonight.  “Sounds
great.  Let me just run to the bathroom, and we’ll get started on that.”

            In his bedroom, he picked up the extension
and called the sheriff’s office.  Joanne, the dispatcher, answered. “I sent him
home,” Joanne told him when he asked for Toby.  “Nothing going on here, so I
told him I’d watch the prisoner while he went home and had dinner with his
wife.”

            Luke started to ask her to what he had
planned to ask Toby, but decided that, since she was a woman, she might not
have much sympathy for him.  Instead, he thanked her, pressed the receiver, and
then dialed Toby’s house.  “You have to get me out of here, man.  Call me in a
minute and say you need me for some emergency.”

            “Had enough wedding plans for one night,
have you?” Toby laughed.

            “I’m telling you, another fifteen minutes
of this and I’m going to shoot somebody.  Maybe her, maybe myself, I don’t
know.  But somebody.”

            “What should I say when I call?”

            “I don’t care what you make up, as long as
it’s something bad enough that I have to leave immediately.  And if you could
think up something that would require me to leave the country for a few years,
that would be good, too.”

            He could still hear Toby laughing when he
hung up.  And when Toby called back – twenty minutes later, the stinking rat –
he was still laughing.

            “How’s this?  We’ve got a car chase out
west of town and we need your help.”

            “Uh-oh.  No, you’re right, that’s not
good.  Not good at all.” Luke turned and offered an apologetic grimace to
Melinda, keeping the phone tight to his ear so she couldn’t hear Toby
cackling.  “Well, we’re right in the middle of selecting place cards, but if
you need me…”

            He hung up and did a frown and head-tilt
number to Melinda.  “I’m sorry.  Something’s come up and I have to go.  We’ll
have to finish up later.”

            “That’s okay.  I suppose I’m going to have
to get used to this, if I’m going to be married to a law man.”

            Yeah, get used to it, Luke thought
grimly.  Because after we’re married I plan on working a lot of overtime.

            He drove around and gave Melinda enough
time to get home.  He was in no mood to go back home, so he drove down by Rain
Fest.  The booths were closed, for the most part, just a few vendors closing up
shop for the night.  He wandered the streets until he realized that what he
really wanted to do was head his pickup north, for Trailortopia.

            He sat at the stop sign at Highway 9 and
Main for five full minutes, letting the pickup idle and his mind wander.  He
wasn’t doing very well so far in his decision to put Dusty out of his mind and
accept his future with Melinda.  In fact, every minute in Melinda’s presence
only made him think of Dusty more.  He could imagine right now how it would be,
walking up to Dusty’s door, her opening it and smiling down at him, that sultry
smile, the light behind her casting her hair with a golden halo.  He imagined
stepping up and inside, taking her slim body in his arms, backing her up
against her table and kissing her until she was limp and draped back over it. 
He would love her there, pushing aside her papers, pushing into her until she
cried out his name.  He imagined waking up next to her, curved around her body,
hearing that smoky laugh in the dark, sharing the events of their day.  He
thought about Dusty in his house, in his life, on a daily basis.  In short, he
realized with a shock as he sat at the stop sign, so stiff and hard he hurt, he
thought about forever.  Forever.  A concept he’d avoided like a man with a phobia. 

            The irony of the situation was not lost on
him.  The joke was on him, now.  He’d finally met the woman who made him think
about forever, at the one time in his life when he was not free to pursue it.

            Too tired to even sigh, Luke turned south
and drove to the office.  Joanne had sent Toby home so he could be with his
family; he might as well let her go home to hers.  His mind was still on Dusty
and Melinda and their unborn child, who was now no bigger than the matchbooks
he and Melinda had just picked out.  So when he first pulled up to the station
he didn’t notice the car bumper that peeked out from the edge of the building,
and he almost didn’t see it.