Dorothy Garlock - [Route 66] (17 page)

“Mr. White made Aunt Lee mad, too. She put the bakin powder can down hard on the counter and we went out.”

“JoBeth!” Leona moaned.

“She tells everything. Aunt Lee said not to tell you that. You'd worry.” Ruth Ann's voice was heavy with disgust.

“I want to hear everything. What happened at the store, Leona?”

“Nothing much. You know how nosy Mr. White can be. He said something that struck me the wrong way. I don't even remember what it was. Everyone asks about you, Andy: the postman, the ice man and many of your gas customers. Deke said to tell you hello.”

“Here comes Mr. Yates.” JoBeth climbed out of the porch swing and went to the steps. “Can we go on the picnic now? Huh? Can we?”

Yates grasped the hands she held up to him and swung her around. “If your daddy and Leona are ready.”

“I'll be ready as soon as I get off this peg,” Andy said. “I welcome the crutches for a change.”

The afternoon was so pleasant that Leona hated for it to end. After they ate, she and the girls went to the playground where there were swings and a slide. They walked around a fountain that shot water ten feet into the air.

Andy noticed Yates watching Leona and the girls sitting on the ledge around the fountain.

“She's a damn good woman, Yates. And because of me, folks treat her like she was trash.”

“Why didn't you marry her?”

“I asked her but she turned me down. She's smart enough to know that we don't love each other like married folks ought to, like I loved Irene. Leona is like a sister to me. I worry that life is passing her by while she takes care of my girls.”

“It's her choice.”

“No. She's stuck in a rut. She won't leave us to flounder about by ourselves. But if she did, she'd have to leave Sayre. Where could she go where she could make a living for herself?”

“Hasn't anyone come calling on her?”

Andy snorted. “No one decent. Virgil has seen to that.”

“How about Deke?”

“Deke? Can you honestly see them together?”

“No. But he thinks the world of her.”

“Yeah, he does, but he knows that her friendship is all he'll ever have.” Andy looked intently at the man sprawled beside him. “I'll never be able to repay you for staying and looking after my family.”

“You already have.”

Andy shrugged. “I did what had to be done at the time.”

“There were a dozen men there, and
you
were the only one who cared if I lived or died. I like to think that my life began anew that day.”

“Lord, you can't know how grateful I am that you came along when you did. When I think of Virgil stealing the girls, my heart almost stops. He's got connections. Don't trust Deputy Ham. Wayne is one of the fanatics who hangs around with Virgil.”

“What about the sheriff?”

“He's fairly decent, but he's out running up and down the highway looking for bootleggers.”

“Don't worry about it. Virgil won't get close to the girls or Leona while I'm there. I almost wish he would. It would give me an excuse to tear into him.”

Yates watched Leona and the girls coming toward them. She was neat and trim and the sun made the lights in her hair shimmer. As they neared, he could see that she was laughing and talking excitedly. She appeared to be as happy as a kid on Christmas morning. How could Andy not be in love with her? Leona, with her sweet body and pretty face, was a woman any man would cherish.

Now where in hell had that thought come from?

“Do we have to go?” JoBeth ran to stand in front of Yates.

“In a little while. Calvin will think you've run off to the city and are not coming back.”

“No, he won't. I told him we were comin to see Daddy.”

“She got her dress wet,” Ruth Ann announced.

“Not enough to matter,” Leona hastened to say.

They took Andy back to the rooming house. The girls clung to him and Ruth Ann cried when they told him goodbye.

“I'll be home soon, honey. Yates and Leona will take good care of you until I get there.”

“What if Uncle Virgil comes?” Ruth Ann was dragging out the goodbye as long as possible.

“Yates will take care of him,” Andy said patiently.

“Yeah,” JoBeth said. “Mr. Yates will hurt him.”

“Oh, what do you know?” Ruth Ann spoke irritably to her sister and got in the car.

“If you're still here a couple weeks from now and Deke will stay at the garage, I'll bring them back.” Yates murmured to Andy, then closed the car door and went around to get under the wheel. They drove away leaving Andy, looking sad and alone, standing on the sidewalk leaning on his crutches.

Dusk had settled over the city, and it was quiet inside the car as they drove away from the rooming house. Yates glanced at Leona from time to time. She sat looking straight ahead with her hands folded in her lap.

“Deke insisted on giving me money to take you out for chili and hot tamales.”

“I couldn't eat a bite. We'd better go on home. It'll be late when we get there as it is.”

“I know a place out on the edge of town where they sell tamales wrapped in corn shucks. I'll get some to take with us. We don't want to disappoint Deke.”

While Yates was in the small cafe, he looked out the window to see that JoBeth had crawled over the back of the seat to sit beside Leona, forcing her to move to the middle. The pleasure of being responsible for her and Andy's girls was a feeling he hadn't expected.

For the past seven years he'd been moving, drifting. This was the first in all that time that he had been responsible for anyone but himself. Unbidden, an image of home flashed in his mind. Not the Texas ranch house occupied by his adopted father and his wife, but a cozy place with clean sheets, good meals, quiet laughter and a soft, sweet woman with loving arms waiting for him. He'd had lots of places to hang his hat during the past seven years, but there had been no place that he'd missed when he left it.

These were precisely the types of thoughts floating through his mind as he left the cafe and returned to the car.

“Is the little one wanting to go to sleep?” he asked as soon as he opened the door.

“She's tired out.” Leona settled JoBeth across her lap.

“Move over a little more and give her room to put her feet on the seat.”

“I don't want to crowd you.”

“Maybe I like it when you sit close to me.”

Leona's head swiveled around. “And maybe you're just being polite.”

“Being polite isn't my long suit.” Before he started the car he took off his hat and, leaning over her knees, placed it on the floor. “Not that my mother didn't teach me manners,” he said when they were on the way. “She and my grandmother were sticklers for them.”

It was almost dark by the time they left the lights of the city behind. On the western horizon was a rapidly fading ribbon of crimson, all that was left of the sinking sun. Inside the car the silence was comfortable. Yates glanced at the woman beside him then returned his attention to his driving.

Leona, lost in thought, was remembering how forlorn Andy had looked when they left. She could still see him standing on the walk, leaning on his crutches. The question that had haunted her for the past few years suddenly sprang into her mind. Should she marry him, settle for a sheltered life as his wife, denying both of them the chance of finding a deep and abiding love such as he'd had with Irene? She cared for him, he cared for her, and they both loved the girls.

When she thought of going to bed with Andy, a shudder passed through her. She would always see, in her mind's eye, Andy holding Irene in his arms, tears of grief streaming down his face.

“Are you going to sleep?”

The sound of Yates's voice jarred her back to the present. It was dark now, the car's headlights marking the path on the newly paved ribbon of highway.

“No. I was daydreaming.”

“Worrying about Andy? He seems to be doing all right.”

“He's doing the best he can. He's never been away from the girls before. I know that troubles him.”

“We can come back next Sunday if Deke can take care of the garage.”

“I meant to tell you to take the money for gasoline out of the garage money.”

“Now you've told me.” He smiled at her. She was looking at him and it seemed only natural that his fingers searched for her hand where it lay on her thigh. She didn't pull her hand away, but welcomed the warmth and the strength of his. For a brief moment they were the only two people in the world.

Wanting to keep him talking, she dared to ask, “How did you know Andy? I've known him for a long time and he never mentioned you.”

“I knew him for only a day or two, but they were the mos important days of my life.” When she made no comment, h continued. “He saved my life and lost his foot in the process.'

Leona waited, afraid that he would stop talking. She said “He never said anything to me about saving someone's life.”

After a minute or two, he said, “I'd like to tell you abou it so you'll know why I feel about Andy like I do.” She tight ened her hand on his and he began.

The dawn was drab and gray, the air cool and damp. The crew, waiting to go to work, stood on the ramp leading to the span section of the bridge. The foreman was assessing the damage done to the understructure by two days of continuous rain.

The construction of the bridge across the North Fork of the Red River was behind schedule. The foreman for the contractor who had won the bid to put in the foundations had been working his crew twelve-hour days on the highway project that would later be known as Route 66.

“Dad-blasted rain caused us to lose two days work—”

“Hey. Don't cuss the rain. It's the first that's amounted to a hill of beans in six months.” The man who spoke was one of the men who drove a tractor pulling a slip-scoop. He was also a rancher who needed grass for his livestock.

“We been camped here two days.” This came from the man who worked the crane that lifted the heavy beams in place.

“Darn river is either runnin' full or dry as an old maid's twat,” another man grumbled.

“Fire up the steam engine,” the foreman yelled as he pulled himself up and onto the ramp deck. He looked at his watch, flipped a card from his pocket and wrote down the time.

The men cheered.

It was mid-morning when the foreman yelled, “Yates, shimmy down and fasten a line to the choker on that beam. The hook is coming down.”

Yates, tall and lanky, swung himself down off the ramp and dropped to the red clay bank beneath it. Sliding on the slick mud he began to make his way to the steel beam lying half-in and half-out of the water. He was looking up at the lowering hook he was to attach to the choker on the beam when the bank beneath the ramp trembled, then gave way with a loud swishing sound.

One second he was standing beside the piling. The next he was pinned to it by the red mud that reached to his hips. Overhead the ramp deck creaked, tilted and loose deck boards slid off and slammed onto the wet bank when a support post collapsed.

“Back off! Back off! The whole goddamn thing could go!”

Yates heard the yelling and swearing and the creaking of the timbers above him. Sure that he would die when the rest of the bridge collapsed and slid into the muddy red water, he was too scared to let out a sound. But he was not too scared to realize that not a person on the face of God's earth gave a damn if he lived or died. He closed his eyes and waited for the mud bank to cover him.

Mother, why did you ever let me be born?

“Goddammit, Andy. Get off that hook!”

Yates opened his eyes to see a small, blond man only a few years older than himself, riding down on the iron hook at the end of the steel cable. One of his booted feet was firmly anchored in the crook of the hook, the other swung free to push himself away from the piling. He had a coil of rope on his shoulder, one end of it fastened to the hook.

“Grab the rope,” he shouted and threw the coil.

Yates eagerly grabbed the rope and twisted it around his wrists. “Ready,” he shouted.

“Haul away.”

The rope tightened and inch by inch Yates, feeling as though his arms were being pulled from their sockets, was lifted out of the sucking mud. As soon as he was free of the mud, he was swung out over the river. Hanging onto the rope, he was slowly pulled upward. Then he felt a jar, a jerk and heard a scream of pain. Looking up, he saw that Andy had been slammed against a crossbeam. The foot he used to push himself out and away from the piling was caught and held by a slab of support-iron that had slid as the structure shifted.

“Hold on!” Yates shouted, then hand over hand he began to pull himself up the rope to the hook. Later he was to wonder where he had mustered the strength.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” Andy's face was twisted in agony. Yates feared that he would pass out and fall off the hook and dangle by the foot caught beneath the iron.

“Hold onto the cable. Don't let go!” Yates grabbed the crossbar, let go of the rope and levered himself up. With all the strength he could muster, he braced himself against the piling and lifted the iron slab enough to free Andy's crushed foot. “Take him up!”

Near fainting from the pain, the man who had saved Yates's life managed to hold on to the cable until hands pulled him up and onto the bridge deck where they lifted him and carefully made their way to solid ground.

Yates hugged the crossbar until his head stopped spinning. Then with his breath coming in gasps, he moved on his hands and knees along the steel girder until he could swing himself down to the muddy bank. He crawled up the slippery slope and sank down. Breathing heavily he huddled there and listened to the activity around him.

“That was plain, flat-out stupid.” The foreman was ranting at the man who lay writhing on the ground.

“Maybe so. I had to give it a try. Is the boy all right?”

“I told you to get off the damn hook. We'd a snaked him out from the side.”

“Shit, Mac! That bank was going. If you'd tried that, he'd have been buried alive and you know it.”