Honky Tonk Christmas (10 page)

“You’re not a little girl anymore, Sharlene. You’ve been to Iraq and you can drive a jeep to the barracks in a hellacious sand storm,” he said.

“That’s a lie.” She blushed.

“Oh?”

“I was just making that up but I have no doubt I could’ve done it,” she said.

“What else did you make up? Did you really go to Iraq?”

She nodded slowly. “I really did go. Two tours. One for a year, came home and got sent right back a couple of weeks later. So it was more like one tour with a two-week break.”

“What’d you do over there?”

“I’d rather talk about my family,” she quickly changed the subject. “Momma is Molly and she will try to win you into the family with her cooking. I can’t help that. She’d feed a homeless serial killer to find me a husband. Don’t encourage her or she’ll have you talking to a preacher before we leave on Monday afternoon. Oh, no! I wasn’t thinking about Judd and Waylon missing school on Monday.”

“Statewide teacher’s meeting on Monday. I’d been meanin’ to tell you but I only got the note in their backpacks yesterday,” he said.

“Good. Oklahoma has a teacher’s meeting that day too, so my nieces and nephews will be out,” she said.

“Go on. Tell me about your dad,” Holt said.

“Daddy is Claud and basically he’s pretty quiet. He has to be because Momma is like me. She talks all the time. His ears probably scarred over years ago and he could be deaf by now. They’ve built on to the house so there’s enough room. They’ve got two spare bedrooms and a big family room. Momma says Monday is going to be with friends invited and Sunday is family only but both days will be out in the yard. The house isn’t big enough for that many to sit down to dinner. I have four brothers; Jeff, Matthew, Bart, and Miles, and four sisters-in-law and a dozen nieces and nephews.”

“What kind of clothes do I need to pack?” he asked.

“Play clothes for the children. Casual for you but tuck in a set of work clothes in case the men folks decide to do something.”

Holt cut his eyes around at her. “Like what?”

“Don’t get that deer in the headlights look, Holt. Corn is out in the middle of nowhere but it’s not
Deliverance
. They don’t wear their starched and ironed jeans out to feed the cows or to harvest watermelons for the party,” she said.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “I’m not going to have to ride a horse or wrestle a bull to the ground, am I?”

She laughed. “No, maybe toss some feed out to the livestock or… you haven’t ever ridden a horse?”

Judd came running up to them. “What horse? Is there a horse back in those woods? Can I ride it? I want to ride a horse so bad.”

Sharlene patted her shoulder. “I thought you wanted to ride in a carriage like Cinderella in a fancy dress with your hair all fancy.”

“And glass slippers too. But after the party at the castle, I want to ride one of them big old white horses,” she said.

Sharlene hugged her tightly, not even minding the sweaty smell of a child who’d been running and playing in the hot Texas afternoon. “Someday a prince will ride up on a big white horse and he’ll reach down his hand and…”

“And help me up on his horse and we’ll ride off to live happy never after,” she said wistfully and then ran off to tell Waylon about her prince.

“On that note, I’m taking them home. You’ve still got a busy night ahead of you and I’ve got laundry to do. See you at seven o’clock on Sunday morning. I’ll pick you up so you don’t have to get your car out.”

“Don’t want my pink car sitting in front of your Bahamas island house? And you didn’t answer me. Are you a city boy who’s never been on a horse?” she asked.

“I have been on a horse a few times. And your pink car wouldn’t even show up in the driveway of that house. It’d be like wearing camouflage into battle. Don’t oversleep, and get ready for the ride of your life. Five hours in the pickup with those two will have you pulling out all that pretty red hair,” he teased.

She sat there for a long time after he and the children left with three words playing on a loop through her mind—
pretty red hair.

***

It was one of “those” nights. Luther shooed everyone out of the Tonk at closing time. Tessa wiped down the bar one more time. They sat down at a table and talked about the new addition for ten minutes while they had their after-hours beer and then she was alone.

She tried a hot shower but it didn’t work. Neither did hot chocolate. Finally she put a pair of rubber flip-flops on her feet and headed for the orange rocking chair on Holt’s porch. She’d be extra quiet so that she didn’t wake him. He’d had a long week of hard work in the hot sun. He needed his sleep.

She drove to the house, parked, and shut the car door as quietly as possible. She was halfway across the yard when her right foot sunk into a gopher hole in the yard and she went down on one knee.

“Well, shit!” she whispered.

“If you keep sayin’ those words you’ll have to stand in the corner at school,” Holt said.

Thinking she’d imagined his Texas drawl, she jerked her head around in the direction from where she thought she’d heard it. Sure enough there was Holt stretched out on his back on an old quilt in the middle of the front yard.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I might ask you the same thing. Did you stump your toe?”

“No, I think it’s a gopher hole but I’m all right. I was stealing time on your porch. I couldn’t sleep.” She retrieved her flip-flop from the shallow hole and stood up. When she took a step, her knee didn’t hurt so evidently she was fine.

“Need some hot chocolate?”

“Already had some. It didn’t work.”

“I’ll share my blanket. Forget the rocker and join me. I couldn’t sleep either. I let the kids stay up late and watch movies since it’s Friday night. They’ll have to go to bed early tomorrow night so we can go to Corn on Sunday.”

She sat down on the edge of the patchwork quilt. “Why are you out here again?”

“When I can’t sleep this old quilt and the yard is my orange rocking chair. I watch the stars or the moon or even the clouds and think through my problems,” he said.

“What are your problems tonight?”

“Sometimes I worry that I’m not enough for the kids; that they need more. Maybe we should settle down in one spot since they’ve started to school. Up around their dad’s people so they’d at least have family around them. Lay down here beside me.” He moved to one side and patted the quilt.

She stretched out and folded her arms over her chest. “You are doing fine, Holt. There’s lots of single parents in today’s world.”

“I know that but I want them to grow up happy and well adjusted. I want Judd to go to school with her hair all fancy and I can’t fix it like she likes. Everything is overwhelming when I think about them growing up and I’m all they have. What if something were to happen to me, Sharlene?”

She patted his arm. “Stop worrying. Momma says worrying about tomorrow robs us of any joy we might have today.”

“Thank you,” he said around the lump in his throat.

“Hey, look at that cloud. Does it remind you of anything?”

He smiled. “Which one?”

“The one just shifting over the moon. That one.” She picked up her hand and pointed toward the sky with both their hands.

“A marshmallow,” he said.

“No, it’s a big fat elephant with his trunk hunting for peanuts. The stars are the peanuts,” she laughed.

“I can see the trunk now.” He laced his fingers through hers.

His touch set a tingling up her arm, down her chest, and all the way to her toes. She definitely felt like a seventh grader who finally held hands with her pimple-faced boyfriend the first time.

Hell, no! I didn’t feel like this when Jason first grabbed my hand after church that Sunday night,
she thought.

“Sharlene, is it Iraq?”

“In the clouds?”

“No, is it what happened over there that keeps you awake at night?”

She nodded.

“Want to talk about it?”

“I don’t think it would help. It’s something I have to work out for myself.”

“Okay, but I’m here anytime you need to talk. You listened to my worries. I’ll be glad to listen to yours.”

“Thank you, Holt.”

He rolled over and propped up on an elbow. “Did you see a lot of soldiers in the hospital who’d been wounded?”

She nodded again. “The helicopters brought them in.”

Her drunk rambling made more sense to him. He scooted over closer to her and wrapped her up in his arms. “Nine-eleven sure blew the bottom out of our peace, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did,” she said.

But not as much as you do when you touch me. How can that be possible? The very thing that sets me on fire is the thing that made me rest without dreams. It’s a physical oxymoron. Right along with the idea that of all the men in the world, Holt Jackson is the very one I shouldn’t want. He needs a role model for those kids who isn’t a bartender.

She stayed awake longer than he did, watching the clouds take their place on center stage over the moon and then leave by stage left for the next set of animals to have their time in the spotlight. Then her eyes grew heavy and she decided it was time to go home, only she didn’t want to wake him. She promised herself that she’d only shut her eyes for a minute.

The sun was the tip of a big orange ball when they awoke at the same time.

She set up with a start. “I’ve got to go home. Good lord, what if the kids saw us sleeping on the front lawn?”

His smile was lazy and slow as he brushed a sweet kiss across her eyelids. “Good morning, Miz Sharlene. Don’t worry about the kids. I expect they’d want to join us. They’d think it was a party.”

“Well, I’m going home. Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“Sharing your quilt.” She smiled.

“You are very welcome.”

She rushed to the car and was back to the Honky Tonk before she remembered that she had not dreamed. Not about Iraq or about kids. She’d slept peacefully and completely snuggled up against Holt’s chest.

She touched her eyelids where his lips had been and moaned.

***

Kent grabbed the first available barstool the next night and asked Tessa, “Seen Loralou?”

“Not yet,” Tessa said on the run.

“I heard you and Holt are taking a weekend trip together.” He pointed to a pint of beer Sharlene was holding. “One of them.”

She finished the order she was working on and filled a jar for him. By the time she set it in front of him, Merle was sitting beside him. “Where’s your brother?”

“He goes home every weekend to see his girlfriend,” Kent said.

“And Holt?”

“He’s at home with the kids, I suppose. Got to get a good night’s sleep so he can drive to Corn tomorrow.” Kent talked to Merle but looked at Sharlene.

“Why would he go to Corn?” Merle asked.

“Ask Sharlene,” Kent said.

She threw up both hands, one with a bar rag and the other with an empty beer bottle. “Because I asked him and the kids to go home with me for the weekend. Don’t worry, the Tonk will open on Monday night as usual. If I’m not back right on the minute then Tessa is opening for me and she can go home early and I’ll close up.”

“Why?” Merle asked.

“Because Momma is bugging me to bring someone home or else she’s going to start combing the wheat fields again for me to find a husband. She even threatened to come to Dallas.”

“Dallas?”

“Momma has no idea that I’m in Mingus or that I own the Tonk or the house. She doesn’t know about my book either. And she threatened to have Daddy drive her down here to see me,” Sharlene said.

Merle shivered. “Go home, kiddo. That could be disastrous.”

Sharlene nodded rapidly. “I know. It’s easier this way. I told her that Holt was my friend but she’s already thinking about three-tiered cakes. It’s not such a big deal. The men congregate in one place. The kids go wild. The women sit around the kitchen table and catch up on gossip. We won’t even see each other except at meal times and then there’s so many of us, it’s served buffet and sit-where-you-find-a-place.”

Merle fluffed at her freshly done hair. “You trying to convince me or you? Come on, boy, you’ll have to do tonight since your brother has to go chase his woman.”

“When Loralou gets in here holler at me,” Kent said.

“Y’all been seein’ a lot of each other,” Tessa commented.

“It’s not a big deal.” He grinned.

Sharlene cocked her head to one side. “Don’t look at me. I told you about the curse of the Honky Tonk. You want to take your bachelorhood in your hands, that’s your decision.”

“I’m not superstitious,” he declared.

Tessa pushed her black-rimmed glasses up on her sweaty nose. “Well, good for you.”

“What are you doing for the holiday?” Sharlene turned around with her back to the bar and asked Tessa.

“Luther and I are going up to Ardmore to see his parents. I’m nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I know how Holt must feel.”

Sharlene rolled her green eyes toward the ceiling. “You and Luther have been seeing each other a year. He’s in love with you. It’s a whole different situation. I asked them to go with me because Momma was pressuring me and besides, I wanted to take the kids up to the farm and let them play with all my nieces and nephews. I’m
not
taking Holt home to meet the family.”

“Did you sleep with him yet?” Tessa asked bluntly.

Sharlene went scarlet in a flash and stammered, “Why in the hell would you ask me that dumb question?”

“Because I wanted to know. Here comes a whole new bunch in the door. Get ready for a rush,” Tessa answered.

Thank the lord for thirsty, lusty women and dusty old cowboys who are tired after a week’s work,
Sharlene thought as she started getting clean Mason jars out of the dishwasher and setting them up six to a tray.

Loralou timed her entrance perfectly. Kent had lost his first game to Merle and there was a line of preppies itching to try to beat the pro they’d heard so much about. Kent bought her a martini and led her to the nearest table where they sat close together and talked until a slow song started. Then he led her out to the dance floor and they two-stepped to Alan Jackson, to a Blake Shelton song, and finally to a faster tune by the Zac Brown Band.