On Her Way Home (24 page)

Just as Leif went into his wind up, Jo widened her stance and shifted her feet parallel to the bag. Choking up on the bat with a loose easy grip, she zeroed in on the ball, raising her back elbow and loading for her swing as if she’d done it a thousand times. The fast ball whizzed across the plate, and Jo swung the bat smoothly, following through with her hips, as a loud crack split the air and the ball soared over Leif’s head and deep into the grassy field. Leif had to turn around completely to watch it, and finally it landed and rolled almost as far as any ball that he and Mac had hit. Astonished, he whipped back around to her.

Nonchalantly using the bat as a cane, Jo rested on it with her legs crossed in front of her and a devious smile splitting across her face. “I thought you were going to pitch it, not toss it over the plate like a schoolgirl,” she taunted, using his own words to heckle him.

Leif raised his glove, pointing
it accusingly at her. “You lied,” he gasped incredulously. He was appalled that she had smacked his best pitch out into the field.

Mattie, Charlie, Sam, and even Kirby hooted and clapped from the grass as Leif stared at Jo in bewilderment. “I want another pitch,” he demanded.

“Fine,” Jo obliged, “pitcher has to get the ball though.” She gestured into the field with the bat, sporting a cocky smirk.

As Leif turned and jogged out into the field, a crowd gathered in the grass, interested in the antics of the town’s most eligible bachelor and the overdressed girl standing like a man at the plate.

Leif returned with the ball in his hand and held it up to her, shaking his head. “That was a lucky hit.”

Jo merely shrugged and hefted the bat over her shoulder. With her burgundy heel digging into the ground, Jo took two loose practice swings before resuming her easy, athletic stance. Quietly, with little movement, just a gentle sway of the bat, she stared at Leif, alert and focused. As the ball came slicing straight down the middle, Jo loaded and swung with force, swiveling her hips, her burgundy heel digging into the ground. Once again the crack of the bat against the ball rocked the air, and the ball flew high over the dirt infield and out into left field, landing at a greater distance than her first hit. With a disgusted shake of his head, Leif watched it land.

From the sidelines Mac didn’t even crack a smile or cheer like the rest of the crowd. He just watched Jo steadily, with a fixed and unreadable countenance.

Good-naturedly, Jo walked to the pitcher’s mound and patted Leif on the back. “I’m sorry, Leif,” she laughed. “You were just so smug, I couldn’t help myself.”

“Where on earth did you learn to play baseball?”

“I have three older brothers, and I was a bit of a tom boy as a kid,” Jo explained.

“I’ll say,” Leif agreed, eyeing Sam as he ran to retrieve the ball she’d hit. Jo and Leif walked over to Kirby, Mattie, Charlie, and Mac.

“Remind me never to play cards with you!” Kirby chortled to Jo, not even trying to hide his pleasure at the setting down she’d just delivered to Leif.

Mattie squeezed Jo’s shoulders while she addressed Leif with merry eyes. “Jo sure knocked the starch out of you, son.”

Leif narrowed his eyes, accusing Jo, “I guess when you said you weren’t hiding anymore talents, baseball skipped your mind…eh?”

Jo stepped up to Leif, motioning for him to lean down as if she was conveying a secret, “Shirley likes her ears scratched before you milk her.”

“Har, har,” Leif quipped sourly at Jo’s witty gloating.

Mac slapped him peaceably on the back. “If it helps at all, Leif, both those pitches were strikes.”

Shaking off his embarrassing defeat, Leif boasted, “Straight down the middle, just like I said.”

Mac chuckled, “Man, she sure hooked you good.”

“Oh and she didn’t you? Admit it,” Leif challenged, “you were as stunned as I was.” Mac said nothing in response, pretending as if he’d had perfect confidence in Jo from the beginning.

Gradually, the sun started its decent in the sky, and the band music began filtering over from the square, ushering in the evening activities, including the dance. “You know, just so there are no hard feelings, how about that first dance?” Jo offered, extending her hand to Leif in a friendly truce.

Leif smiled charmingly at her. “You bet,” he accepted, all competiveness leaving his body. Well, almost all. He did shoot one more triumphant smirk at Mac as he strode away with Jo’s hand wrapped around his arm.

From Mac’s perspective, it was getting harder and harder to decipher whether Leif’s flirtations were in jest or if he was seriously growing fond of Jo. The possessive way he had wrapped Jo’s hand around his arm and dragged her off hadn’t gone unnoticed by him.

***

Benches and chairs rimmed the edges of a large wooden dance floor that had been erected in the Town Square next to the brick courthouse, and a band was perched on a wide stage in front of the dance floor. Leif ushered Jo onto the floor just as the remaining sliver of orange sun slipped under the horizon. Jo hadn’t danced with anyone since the night she had attended the grange hall with Will over a year ago. Hopefully, this experience wouldn’t end with Jo sobbing sloppy tears into her pillow.

Once again, her nerves scampered up into her throat as Leif pulled her into his arms, placing his hand against her back. “You were beautiful, you know?” he said sincerely, smiling down into her face. “Standing there in this fancy dress and swinging the bat. I think Mac’s eyes popped right out of his skull.” Jo, uncomfortable with the
praise, dismissed his flattery by looking away to the other dancers, but Leif wouldn’t let it drop. “I mean it, Jo…if he doesn’t grab you up,” he paused, peering at her intently, his eyes large and compelling, “I will.”

A heavy, awkward moment hung between them at Leif’s veiled disclosure. Feeling almost immediate attraction to Mac and having her thoughts wrapped up in him, she had never considered any sort of romantic interest in Leif. They flirted and teased one another, but Jo thought it was all in fun. Leif’s serious eyes gazing down at her with intensity flustered her.

She gulped and darted her eyes away again, troubled by his words. Most of the time, she tried not to think too much about the future, about Mac and his feelings for her. Deep inside, she knew there was a high probability that she would get hurt, that he wouldn’t return her affection, but still she couldn’t hold herself back from him. She kept the niggling doubts at bay by refusing to acknowledge them. When the thought of summer coming to a close flitted into her mind, she forced it out, deciding to take each moment as it came and let the future fend for itself.

Jo danced with Leif song after song, relaxing back into easy companionship once the uncomfortable topic had been dropped. The hum of the crowd flowed around them, and they chatted over other things, both of them enjoying the night air and some time away from the ranch.

***

From a bench he shared with Mattie and Kirby, Mac watched them sway to the music. Sam was growing heavy and listless in his arms from a day chock-full of games, excitement, and treats of every kind. He was fighting to keep his eyes open, but the dips of his head grew closer and closer together as he lost the battle with sleep. Mac shifted Sam’s face onto his broad shoulder, wrapping his knobby legs around his torso and lounging back on the bench. Jo had amazed him today. Every laugh, every word, every touch she delivered was full of sunshine and glow. He catalogued the image of her standing at the plate in her shimmering dress with the image of her playing tin soldiers on the kitchen floor with Sam.

After Tom died in the war, Mac committed himself to a life void of happiness, deciding that if he was the one to go on living, he would eek as little enjoyment out of it as possible as a way to balance the loss of life and happiness that had been stolen from Tom. Until now, his commitment to do so had been unchallenged, but Jo, with her stubborn ways, her shocking openness, and her loving spirit was crushing his resolve.

He watched her laughing in Leif’s arms, the starlit sky framing her face and radiant smile. Rising from his stoic position on the bench, he surprised Kirby by shuffling Sam’s limp body into his arms. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said pensively.

Watching Mac’s tall form make a beeline toward Jo, Kirby turned to Mattie and placed his calloused hand on top of hers, giving it a little squeeze. Mattie returned the sweet affection with one of her own while gazing in hopeful fervency after Mac. Mattie’s arms had been the gentle ones embracing him, her words the wise ones counseling him, and her heart the tender one loving him since the day his mother had slipped quietly from this world. Nightly, her aged knees kissed the floor and her work-wrinkled hands folded in prayer on Mac’s behalf, praying that God would restore to him the serenity of soul that his mortal journey had corroded. Watching him walk toward Jo, she saw a glimmer of hope that maybe God had answered her prayers.

***

The innate awareness Jo felt in the presence of Mac edged its way through jiving bodies and brassy music to alight on her senses. From the corner of her eye, she saw a dark granite wall, which could only be Mac striding purposefully toward her. Even if the silhouette of his form weren’t implanted on her mind, she would have recognized him in the dimming light by his clothing. Most of the men at the dance tonight were in slick suits, with their hair greased back, but Mac was casual as ever. Wearing a pair of clean well-made canvas pants and a crisp white shirt with the top button undone. The shirt was tucked in neatly, tapering at his lean middle, and the sleeves were rolled up to the elbow revealing long sinewy muscles of his forearms. The men around him looked like fussed-up boys in comparison to the strong, lithe, manly presence of Mac. Jo’s insides fluttered longingly as she watched him cut through the dancers, his crystal eyes piercing her.

“I think my ride is leaving,” Jo said to Leif, nodding toward Mac’s approaching figure.

Leif glanced over his shoulder to see Mac. He had purposefully swung Jo in a wide arc around the edges of the dance floor, hoping to attract Mac from his planted position on the bench, like casting a juicy fly out above the river to lure in a fat trout, and it had worked. Mac placed his hand on Leif’s shoulder, and Leif handed Jo over into his arms. Strangely, the exchange was natural, as if Jo belonged to Mac and it was completely normal for her to be shuffled into his embrace.

Jo was expecting Mac to notify her that they needed to leave, and so it surprised her, when without a word, his wide flat hand spread over the small arch of her back and he pulled her into the cave of his arms. The lively jazz number ended and a slow sugary melody saturated the summer night, weaving over the dancers and through the feathery pine trees of western Montana. Mac and Jo didn’t speak as they pressed together through the throng of people.

At the beginning of her life, Jo had been filed away into the pile of “sturdy” creatures, useful, practical, durable. That one small, conclusive word, “sturdy”, had shaped her image of herself since almost infancy, and it had eroded any possibility in her mind that she could be anything else. It mocked her at school dances when she was left hanging on the wall, the only girl not asked to dance. Naturally, it was because she was “sturdy.” When a boy she was partial to fell for another girl, inevitably who was to blame? Sturdy. When she had not been enough to assuage Will’s appetites, what did the voice in her head scream at her through the dark night of bitter, hot tears? “Sturdy,
sturdy
, STURDY.” All her life, that word had followed her around, had convinced her that she was unappealing to the opposite sex.

Sheltered in Macs’ strong, unyielding arms, with the warmth of his hand filtering through her dress, she felt genuinely wanted, like she was free to be the vulnerable, desirable woman she’d never given herself leave to be. The epiphany ascended on her like a triumphant wave of liberation. Everything around her, the music, the mountains, the night sky, and Mac melded into one beautiful moment in time where Jo connected with eternal truth. She wasn’t created to be classified, and catalogued by people. She was whomever she chose to be. Her heart swelled warmly within her, enriched and quickened by the discovery.

Jo adopted her new identity with boldness and did what she had been yearning to do since the music turned soft and lulling. Snuggling closer to Mac, she rested her cheek on the hard plane of his warm chest, breathing in the fresh linen scent of his shirt. Mac responded by wrapping his arm further around her waist, with the inside of his arm supporting her lower back and his fingertips gripping the curve of her waist, firmly. He dipped his chin so that it lay gently on the top of her silky head, which barely reached the base of his throat. With her ear to his chest, Jo could hear the steady beat of his heart and feel its throb against her cheek as she nestled in the warm sanctuary of his arms.

Time spun slowly around Jo, her thoughts quiet and her mind at rest while she swayed with Mac in the balmy night air. Her eyelashes fluttered lightly against his shirt, drooping from the late night of calving, followed by a long day of work, and now, the rhythmic motion of their bodies rocking her to sleep.

The gentle weight of Mac’s lips pressing a soft kiss on the top of her head roused her from the lovely trance as he whispered huskily into the top of her downy hair. “Jo, it’s late. We need to go home.”

Jo noticed a strained quality in his voice, as if he’d fought t
o get the words past his lips. She responded by pushing closer into his chest and rubbing her face against him like a cuddly kitten.