Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) (12 page)

He said, “Do you know your Uncle Doyle has thirty years on me and I had to hustle to keep up with him? And he knows the names of all sorts of birds and grasses and bugs.”

“He’s been doin’ it all his life. I think you could say you know the names of some bugs—cold and virus bugs.”

She went into the kitchen and brought back a wet hand towel. Easing down, she sat beside him and began to wipe his face. He peeked an eye at her and then closed it again. She boldly wiped gently at his eyes, over his long silky lashes, his cheeks and up on his forehead and down to his ears and on down to his neck, and then she traced his lips.

His hand, strong, bleeding in a couple of places, came up and caught her wrist, and he gazed up at her. She did not look away.

He let go of her wrist and caught the back of her head.

“Something else I thought about while I was out there,” he said, his voice husky and his eyes seductive. “A lot.” He tugged her down to his parting lips.

She went willingly, eagerly, and he kissed her hard, with passion that lit her up and made her moan. Kissed her until she could not breathe.

Shaking, she pressed a hand to his chest and raised her head. She looked at him a long moment. Felt her cheeks burning, felt her body wanting much more.

Then she got up and went inside the house, letting the screen door bang.

Harry fell asleep on the porch. She saw him through the screen door, and then she tiptoed away, as if that was necessary not to wake him. Every time she passed the door, she would look out at him.

She felt as if his kiss was permanently on her lips. How was she going to act toward him now? She was no doubt making a big deal out of nothing.

He awoke some twenty minutes later and came inside. He stood there looking at her, until she looked at him.

“Would it be all right if I used Doyle’s phone to make some calls? I’ll use my card.”

She’d thought he might have been going to say something other than that. She was a little annoyed that he hadn’t.

“I’m sure Uncle Doyle wouldn’t mind either way,” she said. “I heard the water stop in the pipes a little bit ago. He’s probably out of the bathroom now.”

He rubbed his hand over his head and nodded. He went into the living room, and when she came into the dining room to start setting the table for the evening, she heard his voice. She moved quietly as she spread the lace tablecloth, not wanting to disturb him. And listening. Oh, it was only the insurance agent he talked to. Sounded like they were friends. She couldn’t hear a lot of words, but his tone sounded friendly. She heard him say thanks and goodbye.

She got the good dishes out of the china cabinet; they clinked. Then she put them around on the table. Harry was speaking again. His tone had changed. It sounded strained. She stilled, holding one of the desert rose china plates.

“Dad, I’m sorry to disappoint you. But this is something I have to do, and I’m the one who has to make the decision.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

Silence again.

Tiptoing to the entry, she looked beyond the narrow stairway. She saw him sitting there, his hand lying on the receiver he’d replaced, his shoulders slumped. She wanted to go to him, but she worried that might not be the thing to do. Sometimes when you know you’ve disappointed another person, you don’t want anyone to see you.

And maybe she wasn’t the one who should be comforting him. They were just getting into all sorts of complications here.

She went quietly back into the kitchen, got the plate of scraps she had saved for the puppy and took them out on the porch. He wagged his tail at her and sat down, waiting.

“Well, you have manners,” she said, setting the plate on the porch floor.

Lifting her eyes from the dog, she looked out across the field of alfalfa and the rolling land of mesquite, in the direction of her home. She thought of her father. Winston Valentine. It took a lot more than conceiving a child to be a father. Suddenly she was so very grateful to him. She wondered why she could not settle the questions in her mind with that one answer: he had been a father to her.

Buck had shaved. His hair was still shaggy, but he had it combed neatly back. For an instant, with Uncle Doyle looking at him, Rainey thought Buck might back out the door, but then Uncle Doyle nodded at him through a wreath of cigarette smoke.

Rainey whispered to Harry to get the old radio he’d fixed and face it into the dining room, and to turn it low on the blues station. “Maybe it’ll soothe their tempers.”

She served supper on the long table covered with her aunt’s lace cloth. Candles flickered on the old oak sideboard.

“Oh, Rainey, I haven’t seen the table like this since Mama,” Neva said. “It is just lovely. Isn’t it lovely, Buck?”

“Yeah.”

“And everything smells so good. Let me help you get things.” Neva followed Rainey into the kitchen.

“Get back in there with the men,” Rainey whispered. “Harry can’t do it all alone.”

Uncle Doyle asked the blessing with five chopped words. Things looked awfully strained, until the food started being dished up, sending steam and aromas rising.

“Oh, Rainey, this is delicious.” Neva grabbed hold of something to say. “Isn’t it delicious, Buck?”

“Yes, it is.” The napkin tucked into his collar bobbed as he cast Rainey an appreciative grin.

“There’s no doubt that Rain-gal can bring a person back to life with her chicken pot pie,” Uncle Doyle drawled, his tone slipping into warmth. “I imagine her cookin’ could be a prescription for sick folks, wouldn’t you say, Doc?”

Harry nodded. “I’ll bet it could stop wars,” he said and very deliberately forked a piece of chicken into his mouth, while his eyes remained on hers.

Rainey felt a funny response in her chest and thought of how he had kissed her. But he had not said a thing about going to Amarillo with her. Besides, their kiss wasn’t anything. Though it had been quite a kiss, she supposed.

“Rainey could give me her recipe, and I’ll give it a try, Daddy,” Neva said.

“It’s Mama’s recipe,” Rainey said. “She always made it for family gatherings.”

What her mother had told her was to always rely on the pie’s cream gravy to put everyone into a mellow stupor.

An uneasy silence fell over the table again, and Harry broke it by asking Buck about his experiences in Desert Storm. It turned out that Buck had been in the army—which Harry had no doubt learned in chatting with him the previous night—and this brought out Uncle Doyle, who had himself been in the army for a number of years early in his life.

It seemed that every time conversation lagged, Harry had a way of getting it going again.

Back Out on the Road

W
hen Harry slipped upstairs, and Uncle Doyle and Buck were engaged in after-supper smokes and a discussion of how Buck could weld the broken spring on Uncle Doyle’s hay wagon, Rainey left Neva finishing the dishes, got her bags, which she’d already set by the back door, and carried them out to her horse trailer.

She didn’t want Harry to seea her taking her things. She had become increasingly agitated about the prospect of saying goodbye.

For one thing, there were too many questions. Should she offer her address and phone number? What for? Was she going to hold out her hand for a shake, or was she going to hug him? Was she going to go for one magnificent goodbye kiss?

She felt she might cry, which was plain silly. The urge to simply slip away became stronger and stronger.

The puppy padded along with her to the trailer, beside and then in front, casting back looks at her and causing her to about stumble over him.

“You are gonna break my leg, dog,” Rainey said in a tone
that caused the puppy to skitter out of the way, although not far. He knew in the manner that animals know things that she was leaving, and he didn’t want to be left behind. Sorry for her short temper, Rainey touched his head.

The sun had slipped away, leaving a thin band of gold on the horizon and deepening turquoise sky above. The handle to the trailer’s dressing room was cool. She threw her bags inside. They landed with echoing thuds.

Grabbing a halter and a Twinkie cake she had bought for the purpose, she went to get Lulu. While she was putting the halter on the mare, Harry came to the gate and held it open for her. She felt his eyes on her. She didn’t look him in the face, but she saw he had on the Levi’s jacket. The air was getting nippy.

Stuffing his hands in his front pockets, he fell in step beside her as she led Lulu to the trailer. Her heart did this crazy thing of pounding hard. She told herself to stop being silly.

“Looks like you got them together,” he said, inclining his head toward the house, where the windows were yellow squares in the growing dimness.

“I guess we did our part—I really appreciate your help through supper. I don’t think those two would be talkin’ yet, if it hadn’t been for you.”

He shrugged.

They reached the back of the trailer, and Harry jumped ahead to open the door. Rainey loaded Lulu, who entered as slowly and deliberately as an elephant, her hooves going
thump-thump
on the rubber mat. Giving the horse a pat, Rainey closed the divider, came out of the trailer and closed the door.

Still without looking at Harry, she walked to the truck and threw the lead rope in the back. That was when she saw the maroon nylon bag, sitting there behind the rear window.

She turned her head so quickly around to him that she about broke her neck.

His eyes met hers, and he came toward her. “Doyle gave me the bag. I forgot to buy one the other day.”

“Oh. Well, that was good he had one.”

They gazed at each other, her golden-green eyes searching his brown ones. She saw suddenly that the sadness was gone from his eyes. And then she heard very clearly, before he spoke,
I’m going with you, if you still want me to
, and she answered,
Yes
.

His lips quirked into a small grin. “I thought I’d go on to Amarillo with you, if the offer’s still open.”

She could not help smiling. “You’re welcome to come.”

For another moment they stood grinning at each other, and then she turned and slipped behind the wheel. She stuck the key in the ignition to start the diesel engine so it would warm.

Then, with her hand on the key, all manner of fearful doubts took hold of her.

“Harry?”

“Yes?” He stepped closer, propping an arm on top of the open door.

She wet her lips. “Look, I don’t want you to have the wrong idea…about me…about me askin’ you along. I’m not lookin’ for a hot weekend or anything. I’ve been married twice, and I think that’s enough foolishness for any woman. I’m not looking for a quick weekend affair.”

Only when she’d finished did she lift her eyes to look at him.

His brown eyes were intense on her. “I didn’t think of it like that,” he said, his voice sharp. “If you thought I thought that, then I’m the one who is sorry.”

She had hurt his honor, she saw. She certainly didn’t know what to say now.

He lowered himself into a crouch and looked up at her for
long seconds. He said, “Rainey, as I see it, two things are going on here. One is that for the first time in my life I’m stepping out in my own direction. I’m daring to find some things out, and it feels more right than anything ever has before. I need this time to understand what I really want, and I know I’m doing right in that regard.”

His lips quirked in that crooked grin. “The second thing that’s going on is what I never in my life imagined, and that is a lovely woman has come into my life. A woman who fascinates me, who I’m feeling something for that I never felt for another woman. I don’t think I’m wrong to believe that there is something going on between us.”

There was no other answer but to shake her head. “No. You’re not wrong.”

“We get along well. I like being with you, and somehow you are helping me figure things out. Amarillo is as good a place as any for me to spend the next few days, is what I thought—” he paused and breathed deeply “—and also that I can’t just let you go out of my life without seeing where this may go.”

“Oh, Harry, I don’t know.” His boldness put her off balance. With him being so straightforward, she could not pretend to herself. She felt more for him than she had for any other man in a long time. But that scared her pants off.

“No promises and no strings,” he said in a calming tone, then added, “In case you haven’t noticed, Rainey, you are a woman traveling alone. Maybe you will need me.”

She felt a dawning surprise. “I’ve been travelin’ alone for a long time. I know how to take care of myself. I have Daddy’s gun.”

“And I know that any man who hassles you would have a hard time of it, too, but there are some men out there equal to you,” he said with thick sarcasm.

He gazed at her, waiting.

“I would like your company,” she said.

There was a lot more she might want to say, such as: I may be falling in love with you, and are you falling in love with me? How can you do that when I don’t even know who I am? I have nothing to give you…but I feel like I do need you.

Those things could not be said, however, at least aloud, although she wondered if he could hear her thinking.

With this disconcerting thought, she turned back into the truck and started the engine.

Rainey turned on the headlights and waited while Harry put the puppy in the truck bed. He slipped his lanky body into his seat and slammed the door securely.

“Enjoyed the visit, Uncle Doyle. See you next go-round!”

“I sure appreciate the hospitality, Doyle. Very glad to have met you.”

“Well, you folks know where we are. You come on any time.”

Neva peered at them from next to her father. “Good luck in Amarillo, Rainey! Thanks for the recipes.”

“Just remember what I told you about the cream gravy. Bye!”

“Goodbye!”

Rainey and Harry waved at the three people on the porch, who waved back, and then the truck was heading down the drive. Slowly, mindful of Lulu, she turned the truck north along the blacktop highway. The light was fading away in the west and the moon rising in the east. She caught sight of the puppy in the side-view mirror, pressing his face into the wind. She glanced over at Harry, who was easing his long legs.

With a vague feeling of déjà vu, she returned her eyes to the road and paid sharp attention, in case something or someone should unexpectedly appear at the ragged edges of her vision.

On the way to Amarillo, Harry told her how he had come to be out on a country road far from Houston. He had gone to visit a dying friend, Thurman Oaks, who had lived in Cool Springcreek, one of those small towns a person missed if they blinked while going through.

“Thurman was a patient in the hospital during my residency,” he explained, going on to talk about a man who stood six-two, his age of eighty-five having brought him down from six-four, and who had been a farmer, a cowboy, a wildcatter, a newspaperman and now a preacher of “The Word.” “That’s how Thurman describes himself,” he said. “And he sure went around talking it to everyone.”

She couldn’t clearly see Harry’s eyes, but she felt his passion and his caring for the elderly man.

“What did he look like?” she asked, wanting to picture the man.

“Look like? Well…he was big, like I said, and what hair he had left was white and sort of shaggy down on his collar. He wore a mustache and a thin beard along his jawline.”

“Sounds like Santa Claus.”

Harry grinned. “Yes, I guess he did look like Santa Claus. He was jolly like that.” He went on to explain that Thurman had had cancer, and that the doctor in charge of his case had more or less dismissed him as being a lost cause.

“He said Thurman was too old, and there wasn’t any use in doing anything for him. He just tossed him aside,” he said in a bitter tone. “I couldn’t cure Thurman,” he admitted. “In a man of his age, the treatment would have brought on death quicker than the cancer, but with the proper support, he could live several good years, not simply exist. One of the things is to manage the pain. If the pain is managed, the
human body can go on functioning for a lot longer. Too many doctors today just don’t count in the pain, both physical and mental.”

Harry would count in the pain, she knew, glancing at his intense face and remembering how he had been with the child, and before that the young man and his bloody nose. Remembering how he would get so very nauseous and yet continue.

“Were you able to do that for him? Manage the pain?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” Harry said with a slow nod, shifting himself in the seat and easing his long legs. “But I think it was mostly Thurman himself. He had such a strong state of mind. Despite his age and infirmity, he had a purpose in his life. He said God gave him life, and it was up to him to do the living as long as he was here.”

She glanced at him, saw his face illuminated by the dash lights, his brow furrowed.

“My mother used to say something like that. She used to say, ‘I’d best live today. Tomorrow I might be dead.’ Mama used to have all kinds of sayings.”

She experienced a sudden longing for her mother. She imagined running into the kitchen, where her mother might be sitting with coffee, and telling her mother all about Harry. But she couldn’t do that, would never be able to do that again.

“Thurman called for me, when he knew his time was near,” Harry said. “There I was, all messed up in my apartment, and I got his call. I was so messed up I barely wondered at him calling me, I just went running over there to see if I could do something for him, but you know what he wanted? He said he felt called to give me a blessing and a ten-dollar bill. He said it was the first ten dollars he’d made when he struck out wildcatting.”

She could picture it, the strangeness of it, and was thoroughly caught up in the story, gripping the wheel and listening for the why of it.

Harry said, “I looked at that ten-dollar bill, and I knew that I wanted to be a therapist to the elderly. I wanted to help them go wildcatting, like Thurman had done with life. You know, when people get old, they get forgotten, as if they and their problems don’t matter.”

She said to him then, in so many words: tell me about how you will do this. Tell me all. And he did, which got them a long ways down the road.

They stopped halfway to Amarillo at a small convenience store to get snacks and use the rest room. The store was old, one that had once been a chain, back when oil was high, but was now independently owned by a local person. Probably Iranian. It seemed that in the past few years Iranians were buying up half of West Texas. They came to study oil at southwestern universities and then stayed, probably because of both the headiness of freedom and the landscape, which no doubt resembled their own. The clerk was definitely a person of Middle East extraction, with a thick accent, perfect teeth and a beautiful, instant sort of smile that compelled one to smile back.

Rainey appreciated that, and she was also highly approving of the rest room facilities. To encourage such cleanliness, she made certain to compliment the man on the bathroom when she came out. Then she requested the last corn dog she saw beneath the warming light, a package of fig bars and a bottle of Lipton tea.

“Wouldn’t want to take a chance on you starving,” Harry
said, coming up behind her with his own purchases. He pushed aside her hand with money and paid.

“You know a man likes to pay sometimes,” he told her as they stepped out the door.

“Two things I have learned as a woman—that if I pay my own way and drive my own vehicle, I can pretty much lead my own life.”

He gazed thoughtfully down at her. “Is that what you want most? To lead your own life?”

She didn’t know exactly what he meant, and her mind turned his words over with some agitation.

Then, at that fateful moment, she saw the puppy fly out of the pickup bed, land on the ground for a split second and race off growling. She had forgotten to tie him in the truck.

“Oh, puppy!” She raced off after him into the adjacent dark field, gripping the paper sack with the corn dog. Beneath a distant pole lamp, she saw a cat streaking ahead, the puppy not far behind. “Come back here, puppy!”

He didn’t, of course.

He disappeared into the deep darkness. And she wished she had named him. She thought that somehow, if she had named him, he would come to the call.

“Well, he’s gone,” she said, coming to an abrupt stop.

Pivoting, blowing right past Harry, who had come behind her, she stalked back to the truck, understanding in that moment that she had been abandoned. It did not matter that she had been giving up the puppy since he had come to her. He had abandoned her, and that was different than her giving him up. But it did not matter, because he was gone, and once they left, they didn’t come back. That was how it was, and there wasn’t any need to cry over it. Being hurt never fixed anything.
Being hurt only hurt, and she simply could not stand being hurt.