The Loves of Ruby Dee (26 page)

But it was his now, and he’d fix it.

Outside again, looking over the rolling hills that stretched away to the high plain of Texas, he felt a rush of excitement, and then a great disappointment that there was no one to share it with. He would have liked to show Ruby Dee...
and Lonnie...and the old man, crazy as that was, because he could just hear the old man ragging him about the how poor the house was and how he wouldn’t do much with a quarter section.

Slowly Will went to his pickup and climbed in. Pulling a cigarette from his pocket, he lit it and then headed home, with the windows down and the hot summer air blowing away the cigarette smoke. The air had grown heavy, and white cottony clouds were coming from the west. He anticipated rain, if not tonight, then soon. Finally. Out in this country, rain always came like that...just when a person was certain it was never going to rain again. It seemed a lot like his life.

He was making a beginning, he thought. When the bank loan went through, he would have a house—almost one, anyway—a well, a cement storm cellar, a couple of barns, and in spring, stands of purple irises. He would also have a mortgage, which he would be hard-pressed at first to make by ranching on his own.

Few new ranchers made it. That was a fact. The ranching operations that remained today were those that had been started by the previous generation, like his family’s. And for many of those, like the Starrs, oil leases had brought them to where they were, as much as any of them hated to admit it. A lot of the younger men today had a regular job with a regular paycheck and ranched on the side. Will would have to do that once he left the old man’s employ.

Leaving the old man was another big step that weighed heavily on him. It appeared the old man was settled into that wheelchair. Will didn’t like that, but he wasn’t going to let the old man use it to stop him. He still worried, though, about him and the old man getting into a fight that ended up with the old man having a big stroke. This fear was one of the things holding him back.

Ruby Dee. He thought of her brown eyes, which could hold such sadness one minute and the next light with sunshine...and that could make Will feel things he had not known he could.

But he wasn’t the only one to get pleasure from Ruby Dee’s eyes. After all these lonely years, the old man had finally found a woman to bring him some joy. And Lonnie had finally found a woman who made a real home for him. Will just couldn’t get past any of that. Things were rocky enough between all three of them, without Will upsetting the goodness that had come into their lives. Without Will going after a woman they all claimed.

It would be like the old man, he thought, to have a stroke on purpose, just to get back at him.

* * * *

Will drove right to the bank in Elk City, to speak with Garland Snyder about a loan. He could have phoned Garland, told him a deal had been struck, but Will wanted to tell him in person and talk a little about his plans with someone. He wasn’t quite ready to tell them back home. Garland took him to lunch as a sort of celebration.

It was late afternoon before Will got back to the house. He saw the old ranch pickup parked near the barn, and Lonnie’s pickup was there, too. Wildcat’s truck was gone.

Will knew Lonnie would be inside, with Ruby Dee.

Jumping out of his own truck, Will slammed the door, hard, and strode into the house. And there the three of them were—Lonnie, just as Will had known he would be, slouched in a chair at the kitchen table, a glass of ice tea in hand, Hardy across from him, in his wheelchair, and Ruby Dee near the counter, gazing happily at an object in the middle of the kitchen floor.

It was a porch swing.

Lonnie had bought it down in Harney at the Lumber and Feed, and he was quite pleased with himself.

“What about the alfalfa?” Will asked, breathing fire.

“Oh...baler broke down,” Lonnie said, acting unconcerned, knowing full well he was provoking Will. “Wildcat had to go all the way to Woodward for a part, so I told him just to knock off after he got it. It’s too dang hot to be balin’ or anything else out there, anyway. And you know, Wildcat’s gettin’ on,” he added piously.

“You
aren’t gettin’ on, Lonnie,” Will said, pointedly.

Lonnie just gave him a bland look.

Will said, “You’ll wish you’d sweated a little bit, when winter comes and you don’t have anythin’ to feed your fancy horses.”

Will always liked to have the last word.

Chapter 20

August was turning
into September, the time of final haying and equipment overheating and breakdowns, fences needing to be repaired, plans made for returning the bulls to the lots, and the weaning of cows and calves, and the selling of steers.

During these weeks, Will took what time he could away from the ranch to start fixing up his new old house and the corrals for his horses and bull. Ambrose had said to consider the place his right from their handshake, so Will wasn’t wasting time waiting for papers to be signed.

Many nights he worked himself into exhaustion, which kept him from lying in his bed and thinking about all the confusion inside himself. And about Ruby Dee, just five strides down the hall.

He ached to tell them all about the place. He felt like a child, wanting to say: see what I’ve done. He doubted he’d receive approval from the old man.

The best thing was not to say anything until he was ready to move in, which he figured would be as soon as he got hot and cold water running. All the renovation could be made while he lived in it. It only then occurred to him that he had no furniture to call his own, no dishes, sheets or towels. He was going to have to buy all of it.

Once, while he was making plans for the house, he realized he was measuring everything by questions: what would Ruby Dee think? Would she like the place? Would she want to live there with him? Did he even want to carry it that far with her?

He guessed he still had that to find out.

He snatched what time alone he could with Ruby Dee. Each morning, he made a point of being the first to the kitchen, where he waited for her, instead of going outside to do chores. Usually he had twenty or thirty minutes alone with her, before Lonnie and the old man came in.

During this time, they sat together out on the back step, with their coffee, and watched the land wake up. Will felt shy, and he could tell Ruby Dee did, too, but he could also tell she welcomed having him around.

Their talk was just about everyday things, what she planned for supper, the condition of baseball, that Will kept the old ranch truck because the newer ones were all electronic and harder to repair. But from these things he learned that she loved garden tomatoes and would only eat them during the season, and that she knew nothing about baseball but enjoyed rodeo and performance horse events and that she knew a lot about the workings of an engine.

And from comments she made he learned that she wanted children and a house of her own in the country.

“What about a husband?” he found himself asking.

She said seriously, “I don’t know if I want one of those.”

Will decided he didn’t want to pursue the reasons behind that. And he figured whether they talked about tomatoes or life plans didn’t matter, because the whole time he was sitting there, talking or listening, his mind wasn’t on any of it. What he was thinking about was how just looking at her made him feel, and even more, how her looking at him made him feel. How her skin would feel against his palm and beneath his lips, and how she would move and moan beneath him when he went into her.

And instinct told him she would be willing.

But he wasn’t ready to go down that road yet. No, sir. Will had the distinct sense that if he made love to Ruby Dee, he’d be completely lost, that there would be no going back, because he would belong to her body and soul. So he didn’t dare so much as touch her, because he figured he wouldn’t be able to stop.

By the end of the week, though, the old man started getting up earlier, coming into the kitchen on Ruby Dee’s heels. And he told Will with just one look that he was doing it on purpose.

Ruby Dee herself proved a big problem, too, when it came to getting her away from the old man. She always wanted to make certain he didn’t feel left out of anything. She was as protective of him as a she-bear, and many times Will had to remind himself that he had hired her to see to the old man. He himself had directed that her prime responsibility was to see to the old man’s welfare.

About the only time Will could be certain to get Ruby Dee away from the old man was in the evenings, for horseback riding. Since Ruby Dee’s mare had proved calm and reliable, they went riding further afield, which left the old man behind, although Ruby Dee never would stay out and leave him alone for too long. Also, Lonnie was always along. Lonnie was sort of like the proverbial bad penny that wouldn’t go away.

One night, while Will saddled Ruby Dee’s horse, he said to Lonnie, “Why don’t you go on down to Harney?”

Lonnie just laughed. “The old man himself told me to get my mess out here and ride with you.”

That was the old man’s way of making certain neither of them was alone with Ruby Dee.

One evening the three of them rode along the ridge above the spring creek—Lonnie on his favorite black-and-white paint, Ruby Dee on Lady Gray, as she had named her, and Will on the mustang, which Ruby Dee had christened Taco. They let the horses pick their way down the side of the ridge to the soft ground of the creek bed. It felt as if it were air-conditioned, and it smelled of damp earth and sweet green growing things.

Ruby Dee took off her boots and socks and rolled up the silk long underwear she’d taken to wearing under her dress when she rode. She only rolled the underwear legs to her knees, though, and she didn’t lift her dress any higher than that, either, while she went wading.

Will and Lonnie, holding the horses’ reins, sat on a rock and watched. She grinned at them and tried to splash them, but there wasn’t enough water in the creek, and they were sitting too far away. Then she spied a butterfly on the limb of a buckthorn bush. “Look!” Excited as if she had found gold, she went after that butterfly, chasing it all over.

“It’s a monarch,” Will told her, “probably goin’ south for the winter, and you’re gonna wear it out before it gets there.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her shiny swinging hair and her pale arms and legs dancing through the air.

Just then Lonnie said, “You know, she’s just like wonder wrapped in a body,” and his eyes were rapt upon her.

Watching her slip her hand carefully up beside the butterfly on a limb, Will had to agree. Then he cut his eyes to Lonnie, and they looked at each other for a second.

“There’s only two things to do with a woman like that,” Lonnie drawled in a low voice. “Either join in and be just as crazy...or else make love to her.” A hint of a challenge twinkled in his eyes.

Will jumped to his feet, and in long strides, tugging along his horse and Ruby Dee’s too, with Lonnie shouting after him, he reached Ruby Dee, looped his arm around her waist and hauled her clear off the ground. With her kicking and laughing, he held her against him for the space of three heartbeats, and then he swung her up into her saddle, easy as slinging a light sack of grain and feeling the sweet surge of recklessness while doing it.

Lonnie came running with her socks and boots, and together, Lon on one side and Will on the other and Ruby Dee laughing atop the nervous horse that was wondering what in the world was going on, they jammed socks and boots on her feet.

When Will swung himself into the saddle, he saw Lonnie looking at him, grinning with great enjoyment.

With Will leading, they rode through the trees and up again onto the ridge, where they dismounted and let the horses drag rein and graze, while the three of them sat side by side on the edge of the ridge and watched the red sun slip down behind the Texas plain.

Will looked over at Ruby Dee, sitting between himself and Lonnie. The breeze tugged at the stray, damp hairs around her face. She smiled at him and then turned her face to the coral sun.

Will’s gaze slid over and met Lonnie’s, and the connection between them burned away the rivalry. In that moment, he and Lonnie shared their caring for this one special woman.

The instant the red sun disappeared, Lonnie jumped up and went after his horse. Ruby Dee and Will were right behind him. All three of them were laughing and yelling like wild young things and trying to get on the backs of their startled horses. Lonnie went galloping toward home, and Ruby Dee raced off right after him. Will followed, giving his horse his head even while he was swinging into the saddle and riding hell-bent with an abandonment he’d long forgotten.

About halfway home, Will overtook Ruby Dee, and in unspoken agreement they hung back, walking their horses. They didn’t talk, but Will thought it said a lot that she chose to stay back with him. Lonnie was frowning when they finally rode into the horse barn. He got back at Will by reaching up and helping Ruby Dee out of the saddle. Rather than set her to the ground, he held her by the waist and whirled around, making her laugh. She had to hold on to him when he finally did set her down.

Standing there, holding her, Lonnie shot Will a satisfied look.

When they got back to the house, they found out that the old man had spent his time alone painting the porch swing for Ruby Dee. He had gotten several cans of partially used paint from the cupboards on the back porch and mixed them to a dusky blue, the color Ruby Dee had mentioned she wanted for the swing.

“Now, just how did you get your wheelchair around on the porch to get into that cupboard, Dad?” Will asked him.

“I roll down on that porch every time I have to go outside,” Hardy said.

“And what about the front doorjamb? You didn’t have any trouble gettin’ over that?”

“Son, this is a top-of-the-line wheelchair you boys bought me. I can go anywhere in it.”

Ruby Dee said, “Oh, Hardy, the color is just perfect. I can hardly wait to sit in it.”

She was so pleased that Will wasn’t about to push an argument with the old man. One thing Ruby Dee had done was bring happiness to the house, and none of them wanted to ruin that.