The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) (21 page)

He had never seen her interact with other people much—their brief meetings had never given him opportunity—and he watched with interest as she began to make order from the jumble of opinions and joking laughter in the room.

Finally, she glanced at Lance on the far end of the sofa. "What are you doing this year?"

He shoved up his glasses with a big-knuckled forefinger. "I thought I'd sit this one out."

"No, you won't, Lance," she said sharply.

"Katie—"

"You'll do your Elvis singing 'White Christmas' just like you've done since you were ten. There's no reason for you not to."

"I don't want—"

"You'll disappoint everybody. I'm putting you down for it."

Lance's good natured face turned brick-red then white. He jerked to his feet with his loose-jointed movement. "Just put me down for doin' my stupid Elvis impersonation of 'I'll Have a Blue Christmas Without You'."

His naked expression of love and pain silenced the room. Katie gaped up at him while a deep flush started at the neck of her sweater and spread over her cheeks. Lance pulled on his coat and stumbled out the door. A moment later a motor started outside.

"Hey, did you guys know Elvis had a pet chimpanzee?" Tim asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

The boisterous gathering resumed, but Katie's pencil didn't move and her gaze remained fixed on the paper on her lap.

At last, she gave a slight start and looked up. "Okay. Lance on Elvis impersonation." A chill entered her voice as she turned to her brother, sitting with one of his booted feet on his knee. "Karl, what are you doing?"

He eyed her with the same measure of chilly disgust. "Same thing I usually do."

"Well, then—" she scowled at him—"I'll put you down for your excellent impersonation of an idiot."

She finished writing down the Christmas acts and closed the notebook. One of the visiting girls his grandfather had spoken of earlier approached his chair. In her early twenties, curvy, and with shining caramel colored hair and a tight sweater, she smiled.

"Hi. I'm Tracy." She swung her hair back from her face and raised an eyebrow. "If you had a pen, I could sign your cast."

He turned to Katie. "There's an ear-tag marker in the pocket of my coat. Everybody can sign my cast if they want to."

Katie fetched the marking pen from his coat hanging on a hook by the door, but instead of handing it to Tracy, she stood behind his chair and leaned over his shoulder. He breathed deeply of warm perfume and touched his bruised face against the fabric of her sweater as she wrote on his cast.

A moment later, she straightened, handing the pen to Tracy with a gleam in her eyes.

He lifted his arm. The words,
Gil, I Love You, Katie,
sprawled across his bicep inside the large outline of a heart. An unaccustomed flush heated his face, but he grinned like a kid who'd got his first hickey just above his collar…and was worried his mom would see it.

A few minutes later, an array of signatures littered his cast, with Karl's business-like,
Karl C,
filling the last spot. A general stir began as everyone shrugged into coats and shuffled toward the door. Katie returned for her coat.

He opened his hand enough for her to see the note from her pocket then nodded toward his cast. "You got me wearin' your brand now?"

She flushed. Glancing around the room—only his grandfather remained and he stood at the door calling after his departing guests—she leaned over him. Her hair brushed his face.

"Maybe." She touched her lips softly to his.

"I like it," he murmured against her. "You can do the other arm, too."

"Do I need to?"

He grinned. "No."

The old man turned from the door. She quickly straightened, and with a regretful glance, followed the others outside.

A few minutes later, he sat on the edge of his grandfather's bed with her note opened.

Mom's been working on Dad. I overheard them arguing last night. She told him you weren't your dad (whatever that means) and he needs to give you a chance. She doesn't want me with you either, because of the church mostly, but she's a lot easier to deal with than Dad is, maybe because she doesn't feel like arguing. I wish this baby would get here. I hope it's a girl. I've got plenty of brothers. All everybody thinks about is the baby, now. Except me. I think about you. I think about you every minute of the day. I pray for you, too. Your poor face. I miss you. I miss the notes in the tree. Get better soon so you can come see me. You can, now!! I wish you hadn't given Dad your word we wouldn't sneak around anymore, though. Did you not want to kiss me again until I'm eighteen, or thirty-five, or what? If I could see you in the barn tonight, I'd make you wish you hadn't made that promise...

He already did.

***

The next morning, the wind whistled through a crack in the living room window, forcing a thin dusting of snow onto the windowsill. Gil leaned on his crutch staring outside at his grandfather clambering through knee-deep drifts toward the barn, a shadowy shape in driving flurries of snow. The storm had energized old Chief, and he bounded wildly through the drifts like a puppy, biting the snow and barking.

He grinned at the dog's antics then turned to hobble through the gloomy rooms like a caged animal pacing, troubled by something he couldn't identify.

Maybe it was the thing with Lance the night before. He felt kind of bad for the guy, but really…a public meltdown? What a wimp. The guy should suck it up a little. Have some pride. Wearing his feelings on his sleeve like that was just pathetic.

He made his way to the cramped laundry room, once a closet with walls of bright green, now faded by age and layers of grime to the dingy color of bread mold. With an effort, he scooped an armload of dirty jeans from the floor.

He shouldn't have made that promise to Katie's dad. It could be a long time between now and…when? He wanted to marry her. He did. Soon. But there was the church thing, and he had to be able to take care of her. The church thing would solve itself with time. Probably. But the other…

He shut the gold colored lid and turned on the washing machine. Frowning, he hobbled into the kitchen.

And all those bills. That stupid wreck couldn't have come at a worse time. The bill to get his truck fixed wouldn't be cheap. He'd have to sell one of the horses.

None of them were ready, though, and he couldn't work them without both his arms. Maybe he could figure out how to drive Jim Harris' old Peterbilt with one arm. If he could, he'd go back to work as soon as his knee got better. 

He opened the refrigerator door and cautiously flipped up the lid on a bowl. A layer of black, bubbly spots coated the stuff inside. He wrinkled his nose at the smell and hastily replaced the lid.

If he could talk Katie into waiting to get married until she graduated from high school in the spring it'd give him some time to get his bills settled, get them a place to live, figure out how… 

He replaced the bowl in the refrigerator and shut the door. Standing on one leg at the window over the sink, he looked out into a wall of blowing snow.

He could see himself with Katie in his arms every night. He could see himself trying to bring home enough money to keep them going. After that, all he could see was his father. He rubbed a hand over the suddenly clammy skin of his unshaved face.

What if he couldn't bluff his way through it?  

His grandfather returned at noon, stomping snow from his rubber overboots.

Laying aside the newspaper from the day before, he heaved himself out of his chair.

"There just ain't a lick of sense in it bein' so cold," the old man grumbled, hanging his snow encrusted hat on its hook then his coat across a chair next to the stove. "How's the knee, Son?"

"Good. Thinkin' of signin' up for the bronc ridin' at Cheyenne next year."

His grandfather chuckled, unzipping his coveralls. "I'll bet you are."

In the kitchen, he filled a cup from the pot of coffee on the back of the stove and set a steaming bowl of soup in front of the old man. 

"Mm." His grandfather sniffed. "You didn't make this."

"I might have."

The old man grinned. "You didn't."

He chuckled. "Karl brought it by a while ago on his way to town." He lowered himself carefully onto his chair. "Katie made it."

"Mm. She's a good cook." His grandfather paused. "You wanna bless this?"

He eyed the old man in alarm. "I gotta pray as long as you do?"

His grandfather laughed. "Only if you need to."

He'd never offered an open prayer before, but he cleared his throat several times then mumbled a short blessing. Raising his head, he met tears in the old man's gaze. His grandfather fished the handkerchief from his back pocket, wiped his eyes, and then loudly blew his nose. An awkward silence followed the display of emotion, broken only by the chink of spoons against the bowls as they ate.

"What'd'you know about Chihuahuas, Gramps?" he asked, finally.

"Yappin' little lap dogs?" Taken aback, his grandfather stared across the table.

"I saw an ad in the paper. You think Katie'd like one?"

"Probably. She likes little critters like that."

"I thought I might get her one for Christmas since I ran over her other dog."

A knock rattled the door in the living room. His grandfather rose to answer, and a moment later, the young preacher, Will O'Neil, followed him into the kitchen. The old man crossed to the stove for coffee while Will shrugged out of his coat, draping it over a chair at the table. The quick movements of his short, wiry frame conveyed the compressed power of a tightly wound spring.

"How you gettin' on?" Will asked, grinning at him.

"Not bad."

"Good deal." Will removed his worn ball cap with the logo of a lumberyard on the front and tossed it to the floor beside the chair. Running his fingers through close-cut brown hair thinning on top, he sat down.

"Bowl of soup, Will?" the old man boomed, sitting a cup of coffee in front of him.

"Naw—" Will leaned forward to look in his grandfather's bowl. "Wait…is that Katie's Mexican stew?"

"Yep."

"Don't mind if I do, then. That's good stuff on a day like this."

While they ate, the three of them talked mostly about the weather and Will's work being slow in the winter, and how his small children were doing.

His grandfather finished his meal and scraped back his chair. "Don't mean to run off, Will, but I gotta finish feedin' the cows and I haven't got to Gil's horses yet."

"I'll give you a hand," Will said, half-rising.

"Naw." The old man gave him a searching look. "You stay in here and keep Gil company for a while."

A few minutes later, he hobbled to his living room chair and sat down, lifting his foot onto the upturned oil bucket.

"Haven't been here in a long time," Will said, making a quick circuit of the cluttered room. He stopped to examine a faded and dusty print of an English farmyard with a little girl herding geese.

"Doubt it's changed any since my gramma died. Have a chair."

"Your grandma was a nice lady." Will sat in the old man's chair. "Was her name really Missy, or did everybody just called her that?"

He paused. "Guess I don't know. She was just Gramma to me." He shrugged. "You probably knew her better than I did. I was only six or seven when we moved to Idaho. Never saw her after that."

"She was nice. Smelled like spice cake. And apples." Will lifted the dog-eared Bible from the table beside his grandfather's chair and thumbed through it. "Brother Gene knows more scripture than anybody I've ever known."

"He reads it a lot."

Will eyed him. "I hear you've read it."

"Yeah."

"Did you believe it?"

"Didn't understand all of it."

"I don't understand a lot of it, either—" Will laid the Bible on the table—"but I believe it."

An uncomfortable silence filled the room.

Will shifted in the chair then cleared his throat. "Maybe you know I'm married to Eric and Lance's sister. Linda."

He nodded warily.

"Me and Eric started our roofin' business right out of high school, and then when Lance got out of school he started with us."

"Neat."

"The Methodist church there in Lone Tree called and wanted a new roof."

"Big job."

Will nodded. "I went and checked on it. Lots of squares of shingles on that roof. Steep sucker, too. Ridgeline's probably three or four stories off the ground."

"Yep."

"If a guy's standin' on the west side at the ridgeline he can see all the way to the high school—" Will's gaze leveled on his—"to that grove of pines by the water tank."

The blood left his face, leaving it stiff. Did everybody know…?

He swallowed. "Lots of high school kids meet up there."

"But not many cowboys ridin' a spotted horse and kissin' a girl with hair like Katie's."

The clock on the wall ticked away seconds, loud in the silence.

His grandfather's muffled voice outside yelled, "Chief, get in the pickup! Let's go!"

In the other room, the refrigerator compressor kicked on.

"What of it?" he asked, finally.

"You gonna ruin her life?"

He clenched his hand on the arm of his chair. "I'm not, but everybody runnin' around flappin' their lips about her might."

"I haven't said anything about what I saw to anybody, not even my wife." Will winced. "Especially not my wife."

"We've already been busted, okay?"

"I'm not here to bust you."

"What're you here for?"

"The Lord sent me."

"Or maybe it was Lance," he said with a short laugh. "It don't take a ball of brains to see he's unhappy. He shouldn't have let her go if he didn't want her with somebody else."

"He let her go because he knew she was already gone, and this ain't about Lance. It's about Katie compromisin' her faith for you."

"I'm tryin' to be like you guys." He lifted his arm in its sling, frowning. "I wanna be. I had Gramps and Irvin pray for me and fix my arm, just like you would've done."