My Give a Damn's Busted (7 page)

Larissa looked up at her with a question on her face.

“Even that expression is like her. What do you think, Henry?” Oma asked.

“She’s a ringer in some ways but I think she looks more like Jessi Colter back in her younger days,” Henry answered.

“Me too,” Hank said from the doorway. He crossed the floor in a few easy strides and sat down beside Larissa.

“Can I have your recipes for both of these? I’m teaching myself to cook,” Larissa changed the subject.

Oma smiled. “I’ll write them down. Come on around and I’ll teach you what I know.”

“Better plan on staying forty or fifty years if you plan on learning all Oma knows,” Henry said.

“It would take longer than that for Oma to teach her everything she knows,” Hank added.

Henry nodded in agreement. “You got that right, son. Now tell me what happens on the nights when you don’t have the old jukebox plugged in? Did you go to live music like they got on up the road at Trio’s?”

Larissa took a sip of iced tea and said, “Hell, no! We don’t have live music. Who needs that stuff when we got all the old stars and the new ones at the touch of a fingertip? When Ruby Lee was killed she left the Honky Tonk to Daisy O’Dell. Daisy had worked there seven years and she was kind of like a daughter to Ruby. I understand they only fought once and that was when Daisy wanted to put in a new jukebox so the customers could listen to the new country music. They made an agreement that they’d only use it on weekends but it slowly worked its way into other days. Seems like nowadays the customers rather have the old stuff as the new. It’s making a big comeback. They call it vintage music these days.”

Shut up, Larissa! You are doing it again. Talking too much and too fast because you are nervous. So slow down and hush. Push food into your mouth. It’s impolite to talk with a mouth full so that will take care of it.

“So you never did know Ruby Lee?” Henry asked.

She shook her head.

“That woman was full of spit and vinegar and wouldn’t have backed down from a grizzly with a toothache. I swear she could tell a person to go to hell on a silver poker and he’d not only go out and buy the poker but he’d look forward to the damn trip. She was a lot like you. She would have made a deal with a man to haul hay just to get him to paint a house like you’ve done. No wonder you remind Oma of her. I understand that my boy has to help you paint your house in Mingus in order for you to help us in the hay field. Sounds like he’s gettin’ the easy part of the deal,” Henry said.

“It needs scraping. I don’t think it’s seen a coat of paint since the original was put on in the thirties. It looks like warmed over sin on Sunday morning right now, so he’s not getting off one bit easy,” she said.

Hank groaned.

Larissa spun around and pointed a long slim index finger at him. “You saw the place so don’t you go backin’ out of our deal. Besides, you’re the one who brought up the idea of me helping haul hay so put on your big boy undershorts and suck it up. ”

“I didn’t say a word,” he protested.

“I heard that groan and so did Henry and Oma. I expect you know how to scrape a house or am I going to have to teach you how to use a scraper?”

“Never done it before but I got a feelin’ I’m about to learn. So tell me, Miss Sassy Drawers, do you have any idea how to haul hay?” he asked.

“I could outdo you any day of the week,” she smarted off.

It started as a chuckle and built up into a full-fledged guffaw that had Henry dabbing at his eyes with the dinner napkin. “I want pictures of him scraping and painting your house, Miss Larissa. You take ’em and I’ll pay double for them. Only time I ever knew him to paint anything was when he had to paint a barn one summer.”

“And why did he have to paint a barn?” Larissa asked.

“Decided to go to town in one of my vehicles without asking me if it was all right. Then he didn’t come home until almost daylight and he had beer on his breath,” Henry said.

“How old was he?”

“Fourteen and he didn’t even have a permit much less a driver’s license,” Henry answered.

“Damn! Don’t go dragging out all those old stories,” Hank protested.

“I had to haul hay all day and half the night for sassing,” Larissa said.

“Tell me more,” Hank said.

“Tit for tat. You tell me something and I’ll return the favor, maybe,” Larissa said. “I’ll get you those pictures, Henry, and they won’t cost you a dime. I’ll even blow them up and frame them so you can put them on the mantle above the fireplace. You do have a fireplace, don’t you?”

Henry continued to laugh. “I do back in the den but if I didn’t, I’d have one put in just to put a picture of my son painting a house in Mingus.”

“Does your daddy want a picture of you haulin’ hay? Where do I send it? I bet he’d get a big kick out of seeing his little girl all sweaty in the hay field,” Hank asked Larissa.

“Don’t think he would, but Mother might think it was a hoot. Take your camera with you and I’ll send her one over the net. I told her I was learning new things. She won’t believe a picture though. She’ll say I fixed it on the computer just to shock the hell out of her.”

“Where does she live?” Hank pried.

“Which day of the week? Last week she was in Rome, this week in Paris, and next week in London. I’d have to check her schedule to be sure,” Larissa said.

“Sure she is,” Hank muttered.

She flared up at him. “You doubt my word?”

Maybe they couldn’t be friends after all. Friends believed friends even when they weren’t telling the whole truth or when they were beating around the bush.

“You even got a temper like Ruby Lee. Must be the Honky Tonk that makes its women so sassy but I like you, Larissa Morley. You can sit up to my table any day you want to drop by the ranch,” Henry said.

“Thank you, Henry. You can sit up to my bar and I’ll even give you the first beer of the evening free any night you want to come by the Tonk. Did anyone ever tell you that your son can be exasperating?” Larissa said.

Oma pulled up a chair and joined them. “You don’t have to tell me and Henry that. We already know it.”

Hank threw up his palms defensively. “I’m sitting right here and I didn’t doubt you. I suppose it’s possible that your mother has been to Rome and Paris since there is a Rome, Georgia, and a Paris, Texas. You were just kidding, right?”

“Would you believe that she goes into town once a month and they’ve got a computer at the library where she checks out books and checks for emails from me? And that I grew up in a double-wide trailer with eight brothers all older than me who work in the coal mines?” she asked.

“And where would that be—in Rome or Paris?” Hank asked.

Larissa giggled. “In Hickory Holler, Tennessee, right next to Loretta Lynn’s old home place. Momma works at her dude ranch.”

“What’s your momma’s name?”

“Why are you so interested and why would you believe that rather my original story?” That itchy crawly feeling on her neck was back.

Hank chuckled. “Hey, we’re just joshing and I’m just making conversation.”

“You going to look my mother up or something?”

“Is she as beautiful as you? I might look her up myself. I ain’t never been to Hickory Holler, Tennessee.”

“Mother is absolutely stunning. Why, when she puts on her best jeans and western shirt, she’s the belle of any barn dance,” Larissa teased. If Hank wanted to joke around he’d met his match.

“I bet she is, darlin’,” Henry said. “She got a feller? I might be interested in going to one of them barn dances and talkin’ her into a two-step or two.”

“Mother always has a feller,” Larissa said honestly.

Hank clamped his mouth shut. Her mother sounded like a hooker. Even with a name, he’d never find her in the backwoods hills of Tennessee. That story sounded much more probable than a mother who jet-setted around the world.

***

Larissa drove the hay truck on the first trip. Sweat flowed from her forehead to her neck and on down into her bra. What in the hell was she thinking when she agreed to this deal? If she drank on the job, she’d bet that Hank had drugged her drink before he started talking about hay.

When she had a full load backed into the barn she grabbed a set of hooks and began to stack it as Hank threw it off. It was twice as hot inside the barn as it had been out in the field. What little breeze blew out there was shut off in the barn. The hooks felt like they’d been wiped down with Vaseline by the time she’d hauled four bales off the truck.

“Here, you might need these.” Hank threw her a pair of brown cotton work gloves.

“Thanks. I should’ve remembered to bring gloves.” She put them on and kept working.

When they finished unloading, she swiped the moisture from her forehead with the back of her hand and hopped up on the back of the truck and waited.

He wiped sweat from his brow. “What are you doing?”

“It’s my turn to load and yours to drive. I’m not a pansy. I’ve hauled hay before,” she said.

“For sassing in Tennessee, right? Did you live on a farm?”

“You think coal can’t grow under the ground and hay on the top? We didn’t call it a farm or a ranch or a plantation. It was just home.”

Hank shook his head. “I can’t let you load and me do nothing but drive the truck. It just flat out ain’t right even if it is the fair thing. You drive and then help me unload. Dad would scalp me with a butter knife if I sat in a truck and let you sling bales.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You still have to help me scrape the house. I’m not as nice as you. I won’t give you the easy job just because you let me off the hook.”

He grinned.

Her pulse did a fast two-step.

He put his hands on her waist to help her from the back of the flatbed truck and she gave a little hop. When she was firmly on the ground he didn’t move his hands. She looked up to see his eyes go soft. They were even sexier with that bedroom look. Then his lips found hers and the whole hay barn heated up to seven times hell’s temperature, which wasn’t supposed to be possible.

The sheer passion in the lingering kiss made her knees go weak and her blood pressure shoot out the tin roof toward the wispy white clouds in the summer blue sky. When Cathy and Travis got married they danced their first dance to “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis. The tune ran through her mind as Hank broke the kiss and started another.

Larissa refused to fall in love with anyone, especially Hank Wells, a man she knew next to nothing about. But her feet wouldn’t move in that direction and her body kept leaning in as the next kiss deepened.

Elvis’ voice in her head said that only fools rush in. Larissa was not a fool. She finally pulled back only to have him hug her tightly.

“What was that?” she asked.

“A damn fine little making out session. Now let’s go finish bringing in the hay. It’ll take at least a week to get it all in so I reckon I’m going to owe you a week of painting,” he whispered into her hair.

Good God, a week to work with him on this and another of painting. My nerves will be a quivering bowl of jelly by the time we get both jobs done if he kisses me every day.

***

When the Honky Tonk opened that evening Larissa’s fanny was dragging so bad it was a wonder it didn’t get splinters from the wood dance floor. Hopefully her body would adjust to the hard work and each day would be less tiring. If not, she fully well intended to make Hank pay up when they started working on her house.

Linda, Janice, and Betty were among the first in the joint and ordered a bucket of beers to take to their table. Their husbands, J. C, Elmer, and Frank, had claimed both pool tables. Elmer and Frank were cueing up for a game on the back one and J. C. had Merle cornered at the front one.

“So how did the hay business go?” Betty asked. She wore creased jeans, boots, and a red sleeveless western shirt that evening. Her gray hair had been brushed back and held with a bright red headband.

“We’ll be hauling hay every day for a week, which means he owes me seven days of painting. He’s going to scrape and paint until his little fingers bleed when it’s my turn because I’m so tired I could fall down in a heap and sleep for a week,” she said.

“What’s he look like? He must be hotter’n one of them guys on the front of Betty’s romance books to make you go to the hay field two days in a row, much less a whole week,” Janice said.

Hank sat down at the end of the bar. “Whose fingers are going to bleed and who’s on the front of a romance book? Please set me up with a quart of Coors tonight. Not the light stuff either.”

“Hank, meet my friends Janice, Betty, and Linda,” Larissa made introductions.

“Pleased to meet you, ladies. Y’all from here in Mingus?” He knew all of them, had pictures of them in the files along with where they lived and how much money they made on last year’s tax return.

“Yes, we are. You interested in painting more than one house?” Linda winked.

“No, ma’am. If Larissa hadn’t been such good help today I wouldn’t even be painting hers. But she sure knows her way around a hay barn. Truth is I didn’t believe her when she said she had hauled hay but she handled those hooks like a pro. Y’all ever been to her house in Tennessee?”

Linda shook her head. “You from Tennessee, girl? We all thought you was from up north.”

A smile turned up one side of Larissa’s mouth. “I’m from lots of places but one of them had hay in the field and it’s like riding a bicycle. Once you’ve worked in it all day, you are a pro.”

“Come on, girls; we got to keep beer in our men’s hands or they’ll be whinin’ to go home before midnight,” Janice said.

Betty waved a hand over her face when she was far enough away that Hank couldn’t see her. Linda rolled her eyes and Janice pretended to wilt. Larissa’s half-smile turned into a full-fledged grin. They’d only seen the outside of the package. Once they saw how sweet and kind Hank was, they’d be trying to marry her off to the man.

Larissa put the Mason jar of beer in front of Hank and made change for his five dollar bill.

“So are they friends of your mother’s?” Hank asked.

“Hell no! My mother has never met those three but she might when she comes to visit me next fall,” Larissa said.