From Here to There (31 page)

 "I would've reckoned you'd be glad to see the last of him," Amos observed. "You didn't think much of him when he got here."

 "Man can be wrong," Clem admitted defensively, stirring his coffee vigorously. "He's done better'n I figured. Lasted longer too."

 The kitchen door swung open, and Phillip came through followed closely by Dale Cranston. Cranston was almost a head shorter than Phillip. Although only in his mid-thirties, his brown hair was thinning rapidly, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses to complete the look of a bookish, scholarly man.

 "Dale would like to spend the night," Phillip said, looking at the three expectant faces staring at him from the table. "Think that is possible?"

 "If he does, he just might spend a lot more than a night," Curly said, gesturing toward the window. "It's going to be snowing to beat the band out there in another half hour. Figure we'll have a foot or two by morning. Reckon the wind'll be such you won't be able to see your own hand in front of your face. Be buryin' the highway."

 "And it's getting deeper all the time," Amos said, grinning at Curly's enthusiastic description of the fierceness of the storm facing them.

 Dale looked with concern toward the window. "I wonder if the planes can fly out of Bozeman."

 "Times I seen it when they didn't go nowhere for a week at a time," Curly said with malicious satisfaction. “Can't fly or drive in a white-out."

 Dale peered out the window, then seemed to become aware of Helene for the first time. "How are you, Ms. Lamont?" he asked politely.

 "That's Mrs. Drummond," Phillip corrected him a little sharply.

 Helene was surprised, unsure from the way he'd been acting that he wanted to even remember their marriage.

 "I didn't know if she'd taken your name or kept her own," Dale said defensively. "These days, a lot of women don't like to change their names--for business reasons that is."

 Another truck pulled into the yard. Within moments, Emile was at the door, stomping away snow and throwing his heavy wool-lined coat over a chair in front of the stove.

 "What is this, a convention?" Curly asked as Emile poured himself coffee before sitting at the table.

 "I was making a quick trip to town to pick up supplies. Figured I’d stop and see if there’s anything you folks needed." Emile's eyes moved around the table from one to another. "I heard there's going to be a big blow tonight. Maybe tomorrow. You need any help here like with the hay?"

 "We'll be okay," Amos said.

 Emile looked then at Phillip. "I haven't talked to you since--"

 Phillip smiled faintly.

 "I was in a daze that day. I should've at least said thank you, but I bet I didn't."

 "I understood."

 "Maybe, but it wasn't right. I got to admit I was wrong about you... and about the worth of city folks." He grinned sheepishly. "I don't like admitting when I'm...” He grinned more broadly. “Less right, but you helped my wife when she needed it. You were there for her when I wasn't. I won't ever forget that."

"Does that mean I'm not the outsider anymore?" Phillip said with an answering smile.

 "That and more." He put out his hand. "Put 'er there, cous'."

 The two men shook hands, Emile slapping Phillip on the shoulder with a gusty thrust that had him bracing his legs.

 "What's going on here?" Dale asked sarcastically. "Is this some kind of primitive male bonding ritual or something? I knew I was in the mountains, but I didn't expect to be seeing one of the rites of Native American blood brothers."

 Phillip's eyes turned to ice as he glared at Dale, but he said nothing. He looked at Helene. "I need to talk to you, and I don't think I'm going to get much privacy around here to do it. How about us going for a walk?"

 She looked at him as though he'd lost his mind. "Have you looked outside? There's a snowstorm out there, and you want to go for a walk!"

 He gave her trim, gray suit and fashionable, leather boots an appreciative appraisal. "Go change. I'll wait."

 Helene looked at him for a moment before she nodded and ran out of the room.

 "We've got a lot to work out, Phillip," Dale stated imperiously. "I don't see how you can--"

 Phillip wheeled. His expression hardened even further, and the cold look he gave Dale put whatever else he'd intended to add out of his mind. "We'll talk later. Right now, Helene and I have to discuss a few things. Get lost, Dale. If you don't want to drive back to Bozeman in this storm, I suggest you make yourself useful. There are no free boarders on a working ranch."

 "Useful?" Dale asked and looked uncertainly from one rugged face to another. Curly only snorted as Amos grinned.

 Emile shrugged his own broad shoulders. "I don't have any use for him. How about you, Pop?"

 "I reckon, we could do with some more firewood in the house. Carry it up from the woodshed. Maybe split some kindling."

 Dale looked at him as though he was speaking a foreign language. "Firewood?"

 Phillip laughed. "Wood. You know what that is. It's out in that shed just beyond the garage. If the pieces aren't split small enough, split some with the axe. Pick up what you can carry, bring it into the house, stack it by the woodstove and the fireplace, then go back for more until Amos says there's enough."

 "You are kidding. Right?" Dale asked, looking around uneasily.

 Phillip shook his head, picking up his own heavy coat from a hook where it had been drying. "It was your idea to come. You're here now. So get to work."

 "But... I'm used to working with a computer. I don't..."

 Phillip's smile was tight. "You can turn around and head for Livingston if you want to try to get a motel there. That's your only choice. Quit beefing about it."

 "Beefing about it?" Dale looked as though Phillip was speaking a foreign language.

 "Work makes a man feel good," Curly drawled. "Ain't nothing better than a good sweat--unless, of course, it's a slug of first rate bourbon or a… Never mind."

 "Work we do up here's part of surviving, Dale," Amos offered conversationally. "If we get a real storm, there'll be wind with it, the power lines'll likely go down. We heat this house with one of them modern electric heat pumps. Put it in two years ago. Had to rewire the whole house for it, but the dang thing ain't worth a hill of beans if the power goes out. Without the woodstoves, and fireplaces, we'd all likely freeze to death."

 "You are kidding?" Dale again scanned their faces and evidently decided they weren't, but he wasn’t ready to give up just yet. "I didn't bring work clothes."

 The four men shook their heads with less than amused smiles. Emile reached for his coat. "I got to get back to Nancy and the baby. You folks take care up here. I'm not far away if you need anything."

 "We'll be fine," Amos assured him. To Dale, he said, "I got some clothes that oughta fit you. You ain't a big guy like Phil here, so I reckon I can outfit you."

 Helene returned, bundled in long underwear, ski clothes and heavy boots. As Phillip headed for the door, she stopped.  "Are you sure about going out in this?"

 "We won't go far. I'm not taking any chances with these Montana blizzards where you can't see your own hand in front of your face." Phillip sent a teasing grin in Curly's direction.

 Outside, Helene wrapped the muffler around her nose and mouth, leaving only the shape of her large eyes visible to him through the bundle of coats and scarves.

 As they walked down toward the barn, she was surprised to see there were already three or four inches of snow on the ground. The tracks of where she'd driven into the yard were already covered up. Large flakes, falling like feathers all around, surrounded them in a pristine world of white. So far, the promised gale hadn't developed into more than a light wind, but the air was cold, probably not much above zero, if that.

 "What did we need to talk about that was so important it couldn't wait," Helene asked through the muffling layers of clothing, snow crunching under their boots.

 "Maybe
it
could have waited," Phillip said smiling faintly at her, "but I didn’t want to wait." He lifted the scarf away from her nose and mouth and bent, gently claiming her lips. The kiss was sweet and gentle, demanding nothing. She opened her mouth, teasing his lips with the tip of her tongue. She felt his arms come around her. Even through the bundling layers of clothing and coats, she could feel the steel of his embrace as she clung to him. When he finally broke the embrace, he wrapped her back up in the protective scarf a crooked grin on his own face.

 "You should use a scarf," she said, reaching up with a mittened hand to stroke his rough cheek. Another thing she had not known until Phillip had come west—how quickly his beard grew.

 "I would, but we won't be out here that long. I can see you're already shivering.

 She smiled. "Are you sure it's from the cold?"

 He laughed, then looked off toward the snowy hills, his eyes thoughtful. "Dale needs me to go back to the city with him."

 "I gathered that." She waited for him to say something more. When he didn't, she asked, "What do you need?"

 "If I only knew. I want to be with you. At the same time, you scare the hell out of me. I have obligations back East but I don't really want to go back to them.  I've spent my whole life doing what I should do or what I had to do. It's hard to stop now and try to not only figure out what I want but whether I'm being fair to claim it--assuming I could."

 The smoldering look he threw her told her more than his words how divided his feeling were. That he desired her, she didn't doubt, not any more. That he was afraid of that desire, she knew was also true. Even with the frustration he felt and that which it brought her, she rejoiced that he was actually discussing his options so frankly. It was the most open he'd ever let himself be with her.

 She couldn't help but smile at his quandary about what he should do versus what he wanted to do. It sounded so familiar. Perhaps they were more alike than she'd realized. Until the wedding, she too had always done what she ought. She well understood the difficulty of getting past that to the inner self, the inner desires. Having read more of her aunt’s journal, she understood that her confidence and strong demeanor hadn’t always been there. It had been developed and maybe revealing that to Helene had been part of her aunt’s purpose in wanting her to have the journal.

 "If there were no company to go back to," she asked after a moment, "nobody who counted on you for money, what would you do then?"

 "But there is."

 "I know, but just pretend. Don't you know how to do that, Phillip?"

 He stopped and looked at her, his eyes that piercing blue that seemed to see deep into the inner part of her. He shook his head.

 "Didn't you play pretend as a child? You know make up fantasy worlds to go conquer, princesses to win?"

 "If I did, I don’t remember." He had pulled the brim of his hat down to protect his face from the cold; so that all she could see was his expressive mouth. A bitter twist to it told her more than any words could have done about the nature of his growing up years. It was obvious any more mention of childhood would lead to an ending of the conversation.

 "Okay. Well, for reliable decision making, there's always the tried and true daisy method," she suggested, blinking a snowflake from her lashes.

 "Daisy method?" His bitterness turned to bemusement.

 "You know--as a way of telling what to do. First, you have to get a daisy. Then you tear off one petal at a time. All the time you do it, you say, 'He loves me. He loves me not—or whatever you are trying to decide, of course.' Her voice grew soft and husky as she thought of what she was saying. Trying to recover, she added briskly, "One answer for each petal. Whatever petal is left at the end gives you your answer."