Lesbian Cowboys (15 page)

He huffed. “
I'm
makin' love to you, not my shirt.”

“I just don't understand it. Most times Henry would be naked before he reached the foot of the stairs.”

“I ain't Henry,” he growled. “And I'm sick of talkin' about Henry and lookin' at his picture. I'm me, Lucille, ain't that enough?”

“Of course it's enough, Del.”

Seized by curiosity, she even surprised herself when she grabbed between his legs. Nothing was there, at least nothing she could feel. Del scrambled to his feet but in the dark lost track of the firm rubber appendage hiding at his side.

Lucille found it and shrieked like a banshee.

Del switched on the light, his hands trembling. “Lucille, I'm sorry. Stop screamin'.”

“What the hell is this?” she yelled and threw it to the floor.

“Lucille, let me try to explain.”

She pulled the covers up to her chest. “Please, Del, please explain to me what the heck is going on.”

He paused, rummaging for words. “Do you know what my name is?”

“It's Del Mather. Now what kind of game are you playing with me?”

“I'm not playing any game. My legal name is Della Marie Mather.”

“What?” she asked, hearing Del perfectly. “What are you saying to me?” she insisted, holding back a torrent of emotion.

“I'm…uh, I'm not a man, Lucille. I'm a…”

“You're a girl,” she screeched. She leapt out of bed, dragging the linens with her like a protective shield while running for her own bedroom. “Oh, good Lord, how could you do this to me? How could you trick me like this?”

He followed, close on her naked heels. “I never aimed to trick you, Lucille. This is who I am, and I just happened to fall in love with you.”

“Oh, dear God.” She collapsed onto the bed in a fetal position and bawled.

“Lucille, don't cry. Please believe me. I didn't mean to trick you. I just didn't know how to explain myself to you.” Del gently touched her side.

“Don't touch me. Leave me alone.”

Lucille lay twisted in the sheets, sick with confusion, hoping the tears pouring onto her pillow would wash away everything she loved about Del Mather. She listened as Del gathered his jingly boots and floated down the staircase like a ghost. How could this have happened? How could the first drop of happiness she had tasted since Henry received his marching orders nineteen months ago end like this?

The sound of Del's boots clopping out onto the front porch
impelled her. She hurried down the stairs and stood, pulling on her robe at the open door. “I don't understand, Del,” she said with quiet dignity.

Del shrugged. “I'm a girl and a cowboy. It's just never been my dream to have a husband and kids.”

“But girls aren't supposed to love other girls that way.”

“I know…only boys get to.” Del looked down at her masculine outfit. “Sometimes I think I'd like to wear somethin' pretty, but I'd rather have a pretty girl. So I made my choice.” She spread her arms apart like an eagle's wings and then let them drop by her side.

Lucille searched Del's face, desperate for something to hate, but her feelings for this girl cowboy were as strong as they had been before the revelation. She sighed bravely. “Take care of yourself, Del.”

“I intend to.”

 

At the bus depot the next morning, Lucille scanned the counter for a felted wool Stetson and a plaid cowboy shirt, listening for the jingle of spurs across the wooden floor. Her heart was racing and her feet felt too fat for her shoes in the sweltering station. What she was doing there, she didn't know. She just knew she had to look into Del's eyes once more.

“Del,” she shouted as she caught her coming out of the men's restroom.

Startled, Del dropped her satchel and bus ticket by her feet. As she bent to pick them up, Lucille hurried over to her.

“Hello, Lucille,” Del said humbly.

“Where are you going?”

“New York City. Ain't my first choice, but I reckon it's where I got the best chance.”

She studied Del's delicate features, aware of her natural
beauty for the first time. “Del, I still don't know what to say to you.”

“I know. Don't know if I would if I was in your shoes neither. Lucille, these past eight months have been the happiest of my life. Even though I'm a cowboy at heart, I enjoyed tendin' your dairy farm.” She looked down at her worn boots and muttered, “I hope you don't hate me too much.”

Tears pooled and began spilling down Lucille's cheeks. “I don't,” she whispered.

“Well, I guess I better get to boardin' my bus.”

“Don't,” she said as Del was about to leave.

“Whudja say?”

She sniffled, took a deep breath and spoke softly. “I said don't, Del. Don't leave.”

“But I'm gonna miss my bus.”

Lucille chuckled through her tears. “That's the point.” She gazed into Del's glassy, bloodshot eyes. “I don't want you to go to New York City.”

Del looked around the station. “Lucille, I swear I love you more than I ever loved anybody in my life. And if I had my way, I'd spend my life with you on your dairy farm, eatin' your stews and makin' love to you till you can't breathe. But I gotta be who I am. If it means I gotta be on the move for the rest of my life, leavin' people I love, then so be it, but I can't stay nowhere I can't be myself.”

Lucille smiled, drawing circles on the dusty floor with the tip of her shoe. “You wouldn't be the person I fell in love with if you did.”

Del took Lucille's hand, and, as they left the station, placed her bus ticket on a hobo curled up on a bench by the door.

 

 

 

 

 

T
he abducted dog had thrown up on the front seat a hundred miles to the north, which was why the windows on the pickup were rolled all the way down. The smell lingered despite Luce's best efforts with tepid bottled water and paper towels. Now Bongo, his border collie eyes looking apologetic, was whining softly in a tone that meant a visit to the side of the road was needed.

After two years, Luce and Bongo understood one another. Even though the dog technically belonged to Janice, whose ownership of him predated their relationship, Luce was sure, given the choice, that Bongo would have chosen her. She had not given him that choice, just packed him into the truck with the rest of her belongings at two in the morning. Let Janice get another dog. If Luce couldn't retrieve her heart, she would at least have Bongo. Possession was nine-tenths of the law.

She checked the mirrors and slowed down gradually, mindful of the beat-up horse trailer behind. There were no other vehicles
visible in the several miles that she could see in each direction. No signs of life at all. The two lanes of alligator-cracked asphalt were as straight as if the builder had been guided by a string stretched taut from Nebraska south to the Oklahoma state line. Luce's destination was a ranch outside of Santa Fe, but in traveling from job to job she had always kept to back roads, avoiding the quicker and somehow lonelier Interstates, places where the world revealed itself as bad-tempered and in a hurry to get nowhere as fast as possible.

Luce McCallister, Bongo, and her Appaloosa cutting horse, Eleanor Roosevelt, were about two-thirds of the way down that string, heading south, when they pulled over so that Bongo could pee. It was mid-September and the prairie was dry, with an electric smell to the air as if the memory of rain hadn't yet disappeared entirely. Luce breathed deeply and brought the truck to a halt where there was a graveled area in front of a gate set into the taut barbed wire and steel fenceposts that paralleled the west side of the highway. A variety of beer cans and potato chip bags littered the nearby weeds where they had been propelled by the wind, giving evidence that others had parked there. To stretch their legs before Oklahoma; to let their kidnapped dogs pee; to take their old horse out of the trailer for a few minutes; to wonder if breaking off a love affair by fleeing in the dead of night wasn't a cowardly act?

Luce realized that her own bladder was pressing at her, so while Bongo selected just the right clump of rabbit brush to relieve himself on, she lowered her jeans and squatted alongside the horse trailer, putting it between herself and the empty road. She felt a little silly since she could have done it in the middle of the highway in perfect privacy, but she was a shy person even when she was alone. The shadow of the trailer and the snuffling of Eleanor inside comforted her. She relaxed and watched
a small dust devil, a micro-tornado all of six or eight feet high, weave around out in the dry grass a couple of hundred yards away.

A skinny jackrabbit emerged from the brush and froze into place staring straight at an oblivious Bongo. There was a black spot on the horizon—squarish—a house out there? Beyond the gate, twin tracks wove thorough the grass and sage in the direction of the structure. Might be an old abandoned homestead built back before the early settlers had understood that this landscape was entirely alien from Ohio or Illinois.

Luce wondered what Janice had been thinking a few hours before at the ranch at Jackson Hole, awakening to find the bed and rambling house empty of life, woman and dog gone. What had she thought as she read the three-sentence note on the table in the kitchen? In her kitchen that cost more to build than Luce had made in the previous four years. Luce imagined beautiful, blonde Janice going out to the horse barn and the covered arena that Luce had designed, looking for her. Hoping that she had misread the note.

You don't own me. I own me. Bongo will be happier too
. Luce hadn't signed it. She had written the note a half dozen times, tearing up each one. They had all included the word “love.”
I love you more than… I love you but…
Love had to be taken out of the formula for leaving. As if it could be.

Luce had gotten Eleanor out of the trailer and was walking her up the narrow shoulder of the road when she heard the faint sound of a motor. Nothing was visible on the highway, but after a while she realized that the sound was coming from the west. She carefully got astride the smooth back of the horse to gain a little elevation, Eleanor patiently allowing her to use her mane for a handhold.

It was a four-wheeler, its small two-stroke motorcycle engine
growing louder as it approached. The single rider was wearing a white, billed cap. Bongo, his urgent business finished, finally noticed and barked once, looking over at Luce for direction.

“I see him,” Luce said, and Bongo sat down to wait.

As the little ATV grew closer, a plume of dust drifting away behind it, she saw that the rider was a woman, a conclusion not based on clothing, jeans and shirt, but on something ineffable. An attitude. A carriage of the body. The figure waved a gloved hand, and Luce waved back and slid off of Eleanor.

The ATV pulled up behind the gate, and a tall, narrow woman got off. Her dark brown hair, with a sparkle of silver strands, was woven into a single braid that descended halfway down her back. She undid a padlock, dragged the wire and steel stays back, stepped through, closed the gate, and relocked it, leaving the vehicle on the inside. That seemed a little odd.

“Hey,” the woman said, removing her cap. Slapping it against one thigh resulted in a little puff of dust. Even her voice sounded dusty. “How ya doing?” Her forehead was slightly pale compared to the lower areas of her face.

“Good,” Luce said. Bongo walked over and sniffed at the woman's pant leg.

“Nice-looking horse you got there.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt's pretty old,” Luce said.

“Not so young myself.” The woman grinned, and it was like someone had turned the sun up a notch. “Sometimes older can be an improvement. Me, for example. I'm not as stupid as I used to be.” Her eyes showed amusement; her face showed long hours outdoors and a history of laughter. As for age, it was hard to judge; Luce guessed that she might be in her mid-forties.

“There are compensations.” Luce took Eleanor's halter and began to lead her back to the trailer.

“That there are.”

The woman stood still and quiet while Luce got the horse back into the trailer, checked the hay bag, and gave her a couple of scoops of grain. When Luce was latching the trailer, she saw that the woman was squatting and rubbing Bongo, who leaned contentedly into her.

“Real nice dog,” she said. “Bet he's good around the cattle.”

“Yeah, Bongo's not too bad.” Luce found a pack of gum in her front pocket and offered the woman a stick. She took it. Luce unwrapped one, popped it into her mouth, and began to chew. She waited.

“The thing is, I was wondering if you could give me a ride into town,” the woman finally said. Luce looked pointedly at the ATV. “It's forty miles. My ass'd be dead in twenty on that. My truck's in Mazurton getting fixed.”

“I'm Luce McCallister, coming from Wyoming. Going to New Mexico.” Luce held out a hand. “Happy to give you a lift.”

“Happy to get one. And hello Luce McCallister, my name's Eileen Starling. I take care of some cows my brother owns.”

Luce explained her job of training horses and designing and building equine set-ups for yuppie New Westers.

“Sounds real interesting except for the people,” Eileen commented.

“They can be an issue. The horses never are,” Luce said, thinking of Janice, who couldn't move past her money and sense of entitlement.
Thinking of Janice naked and laughing in the loft with a view of the snowy Tetons.