The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) (28 page)

A moment later, Katie fumbled the receiver to her ear. "Hello?"

She didn't know it was him. "Katie," he said, talking fast, "just give me a minute. Did you get my card?"

The line pulsed with a long, tense silence.

"Yes," she said, at last.

"I shouldn't have talked to you like I did. I didn't mean it." He paused. "Except the last part."

He stared at the cheap laminate top of the desk while the bass from someone's stereo in the parking lot vibrated the window of his room. A door slammed. Someone swore in an angry shout, but Katie remained silent. Was she getting ready to hang up? His palms started to sweat.

"Did you?" he asked.

Shrill and angry, a woman's rapid-fire Spanish penetrated the orange door of his room and the unhappy silence on the phone line.

"Did I what?" Katie asked, finally.

"Call him off."

"Is that any of your business?"

"What'd'you think?" he exclaimed. "Last I knew, we were gettin' married."

She didn't say anything.

"There's a bar down the street from this dump of a motel," he said desperately. "Would it be any of your business if I went and got me some company tonight?"

The woman outside screamed. He translated. 'Son of a pig! I kill you,
¿si?
" Glass shattered. A motor gunned. Tires squealed on the pavement. He dropped his forehead to his arm on the chair back. Katie sniffed quietly. Was she crying?

"Would it?" he asked again.

"No," she whispered.

He jerked up his head. "Yes, it would, Katie! You know it would. Why're you doin' this? What'd I do? I feel like I've been hit by a train."

"Maybe that's how all your girlfriends felt," she flared suddenly. "What's the matter? Not so much fun now?"

He stared blankly into the mirror over the desk.

The letter. He'd been right.

"That's what this is about?"

The kid began to scream in the background. 

"No, but it wouldn't really matter what a liar said, would it?" she said bitterly.

The kid's cries became more insistent then shrieked directly into his ear.

"I have to go," she said.

"Katie, no. Don't hang—"

The receiver clicked in his ear. He shot to his feet. The chair crashed to the floor.

"Oh…C
'mon
!" he roared.

So unsatisfactory…he shouldn't have stopped cussing.

He yanked the phone from its jack and flung it across the room. It fell to the floor with a protesting jingle, tangled in cords. Breathing hard, he stood clutching his head and glaring at the phone. Rushing footsteps sounded on the balcony outside. They stopped somewhere near his door.

"
Lo siento,
Anna," a male voice said, coaxing. "C'mon, baby…"

Anna burst into tears. "
Te quiero,
Esteban…" Her sobs abruptly ended. A long silence followed.

He crossed to the window and opened the orange patterned curtains a crack then stepped hastily away—they were right there nearly swallowing each other.

Crazy woman. A few minutes ago she had been going to murder the son of a pig, now she loved him.

He cautiously parted the curtains again. Still locked in the passionate kiss, Anna and Esteban stumbled along the balcony to a room two doors south. They disappeared.

He shook his head. Women. They were all crazy as drunk monkeys—

Suddenly motionless, he stared at the curtains with Anna's irrational behavior giving him a sliver of hope.

Katie might not have
te quiero'd
him, but she had given him fifteen minutes before she cut him off that time.

***

The next morning, he loaded Black Angus heifers bound for Colorado then called his mother. That evening, she and his father met him at a truckstop off the interstate south of Sun Valley. He jumped down from the running board of his truck into a brisk wind stirring the dust and bits of trash in the parking lot.

His mother rushed to him with her dimples flashing, unruly curls flying, and her hippy skirt swirling about her petite frame. She seized him in an embrace rivaling Sister Helen's. He grinned widely, lifting her from her feet to whirl her around until she shrieked in protest.

Laughing, he set her back on her feet then turned to where his father, thin to the point of emaciation, slouched against a white, new model, ranch truck. Roy pushed back his black Stetson, straightening his lanky frame. Dark circles shadowed his father's eyes, but they glinted clear and full of humor at his and his mother's playful reunion.

Grinning, his father extended his hand. "How'y'doin', Son?"

"Good." Shocked by his father's appearance and the lack of animosity in his gaze, he shook Roy's hand. "You?"

"Good."

Inside the restaurant, a teenaged waitress took the order at a corner booth. The pretty blonde reminded him of Katie when she glanced at him from under her lashes.

"What would you like to drink with that?" she asked. Her voice was soft like Katie's, too.

"Large milk."

"Give me one, too," his father said.

He stared across the table.

His father shrugged. "Just got out of rehab. Haven't had a drink since before Christmas."

He continued to stare. His father hadn't gone that long without drinking since his and Dee's childhoods, and rehab…?

His father held his gaze. "I'm gonna make it this time."

"Good," he said. He'd heard that before. "That's good. Rehab, huh?"

His father grinned wryly. "I'm an alcoholic."

He leaned back to allow the waitress to set his glass of milk on the table. "I thought you might be."

His father nodded at the glass. "You cleaned up, too?"

"Yeah. I was baptized in December."

"Gil, that's wonderful," his mother cried.

"Yeah." He grinned, glancing uneasily at Roy, but his father didn't say anything. "Instead of joinin' up with the Marines, I joined up with the army of the Lord."

"Much better benefits there," she said.

"I'm glad I did it."

With her head tilted to the side like a little bird with a pretty face and freckles, she searched his gaze. Giving a satisfied nod, she sipped a steaming cup of tea. "How's Katie?"

He shrugged. "None of them are doin' all that great since her mom died."

An odd flinch crossed his father's eyes, reminding him of the shadow in Jon Campbell's—

It couldn't be.

It had to be.

Becky. Katie's mom…and his dad.

Why had he never made the connection? Becky Campbell was the Becky of a thousand fights and a lifetime of misery between his parents.

An avalanche of puzzle pieces snapped together. The discontent and anger always driving his father. The drinking. The string of blonde, blue eyed women through the years. His mother's strange attitude when he'd told her about Katie. Why she hadn't known how to tell his father Becky had died…

But his mother moved closer to Roy on the booth, the strain that had filled her eyes for years completely gone.

His father reached for her hand with an oddly gentle touch then cleared his throat. "How's…Jon holdin' up?"

He tried to adjust his expression. "He's not. Wanders around like an old man who can't remember how to live."

The blonde girl brought their plates. His mother changed the subject. Dee had eloped and gone to live with Marty on his family's farm in Alberta. She seemed happy…Marty was crazy about her. In June, some Saudi prince and his wives planned to visit the ranch. The rich movie-star kid knew how much his father hated babysitting dudes, so the kid had given him a raise. A big one. The prince's security detail had already been poking around the place.

She chatted about the royal visit for a while then left to pay the check. He and his father rose to head outside.

His father looked like he had swallowed a lemon. "I hope I'm either dead or got a different job by the time his Royal Pain-in-the-butt gets here. Babysittin' dudes is like herdin' chickens. Your mama's pretty good at it. She can talk to a stump, but I'd just as soon go shoot myself."

In the parking lot, the pungent odor of manure from the cattle pot filled the air.

His father breathed deeply, grinning. "Smells like money."

He chuckled. "And a lot of it."

His father followed him around the trailer as he checked the heifers—all of them stood unperturbed, chewing their cuds. He started the old Peterbilt then jumped down from the cab.

His father nodded toward the abnormal amount of black smoke belching from the stacks. "You're gonna have to hit that ol' boy up to buy you a new truck one of these days."

"He'll cry like a baby. He's tight."

His father chuckled. "You ever know a rancher that ain't?"

He grinned. "No."

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. He should apologize to his father for hitting him, but did he really want to open that can of worms? Maybe better to let sleeping dogs lie. He shifted, searching over Roy's shoulder for his mother.

She hurried across the parking lot toward them. Relieved, he shook his father's hand then removed his hat to lean down for his mother's tight embrace. She didn't turn loose, silently comforting his pain. He buried his face in her soft shoulder, breathing deeply of her familiar herbal scent.

"Katie's so young," she murmured against his ear. "You'll have to give her some time, honey."

He nodded, holding her tighter. "Love you, Mama," he mumbled around a lump in his throat.

She stroked his hair. "I'm so proud of the man you've become," she whispered, her voice choked with tears.

It made up for a lot.

***

The smoke from the Peterbilt's stacks had been a bad omen. Impatient to get home, Gil pushed the old truck until the head gasket blew just outside Vernal, Utah. Jim Harris sent another truck to get the heifers, but left him to wait on two Mormon mechanics to overhaul the motor.

While he did what he could to help with the repairs, he talked religion and team roping with the Mormons—enthusiastic participators in both venues. The three of them good-naturedly disagreed on religion, but agreed on team roping technique when he spent a couple evenings roping with them in a small jackpot competition.

He arrived home almost a week later with the fifty dollars he'd won as his share of the jackpot. In the bright, early March sun of the next morning, he took his grandfather's place on the hay trailer while the old man drove.

Molly seemed happy he'd returned. She bounced around underfoot, her pink sweater hanging in tatters. He broke open a bale on his knee and heaved it to the string of cows following the trailer.

"It's a lot easier to do this when you're home, Son," his grandfather called back to him with a grin, eyeing him in the rearview mirror. "Glad you're back."

"Karl'll probably be glad, too," he called.

The old man's face in the mirror sobered. "He ain't home."

"Where's he at?"

"He went to work for Harold Snow's construction outfit. Went to North Carolina."

He stared in disbelief then jumped off the trailer. His grandfather stopped the truck while he strode to the open window. "Why'd he do that?"

The old man shrugged. "He beat Tim up pretty bad the other day. I think somethin' else happened, too, maybe somethin' with Annie, but if anybody over there knows what it was, they ain't sayin'."

"Annie…?" he asked with a puzzled frown.

"Well, I could be wrong about that. Puttin' two and two together to make five. Coulda been anything. He's been like a powder keg waitin' to blow for a while."

He nodded, slowly. "Yeah, guess so. Who's helpin' his dad?"

The old man shrugged. "Seemed to jolt Jon a little. He's been takin' a better hold. Between Tim and Katie, and Dave drivin' a little, they're gettin' by.

That afternoon, he worked the kinks out of a deep-chested sorrel gelding then rode the horse to the cedar tree. A few sprigs of grass tried to poke through the packed earth trail leading from the road, but no fresh tracks marked it. The horse fidgeted while he reached from the saddle to count the notes in the tree. All there.

He slipped in a new one then undecidedly sat the restless horse, staring across the brown fields toward the Campbell place. Finally, he nudged the gelding into a lope. He had to see her.

He swung off the horse in the yard, empty of vehicles. The gelding blew out his breath in a long snort, rubbing its head on the back of his leather vest.

"Quit, knucklehead." He shoved away the horse's head with his elbow, squinting far down the hill.

Muted sounds of cattle bawling, dogs barking, and a yell drifted up on the warm breeze. A male figure sat on the old Massey tractor. Another figure stood on the hay trailer pitching hay onto the dun colored grass of the pasture for a long string of black cattle.

He grinned. Perfect. Maybe he'd find Katie alone. He tied the horse to the hitch rail then headed for the house. Nobody answered his knock.

He stuck his head inside. "Anybody home?" he yelled.

Nobody answered. The rich aroma of ham and beans simmering on the back of the old stove combined with the fresh baked smell of cookies. His mouth watered. He stepped inside, crossing to a mound of peanut-butter cookies cooling on the counter. Helping himself to a handful, he stared out the window while he ate.

Judging from Tim's words, Katie must've had some kind of reaction to his card. Had she kept it? Girls were supposed to keep junk like that if they had any feelings for the dumb cluck who'd sent it, weren't they?

He ate a second cookie, eyeing the refrigerator. It'd be nice if he had a glass of milk, too.

No, he'd better hurry. She might come back to find him going through her stuff. He narrowed his eyes and selected another cookie. So what if she did? Let her call Lone Tree's own Barney Fife on him. He popped the cookie in his mouth then his spurs rang on the wood floor as he walked quickly down the hall to her bedroom.

He opened the door and stopped as his mouth dropped open.

She must have stood in the middle of the room, hurling whatever came to hand, knocking the pictures off the walls, cracking the mirror over the dresser to the right, overturning the nightstand beside her bed on his left. A broken lamp lay beside it. A flowered bedspread made a tumbled heap on the floor, sparkling with broken glass.