Changes of Heart (12 page)

“I’m glad you told me about Maria, Ian—told me about everything.”

“I am too, Maggie.”

A crow cawed raucously out by the barn and was answered by another from farther away. Ian took a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice was completely different from what it’d been a moment ago, as if he were trying to push away the sadness and longing that had permeated the room. The beginning of the grin on his face wasn’t a 100 percent natural, but it was close enough.

He held his cup out to Maggie. “I wonder if I could have some more of this brown, rather bland liquid, Maggie?” Maggie sat straight in her chair. “Brown liquid? Bland?
I make the best coffee in Montana—and this is a mix of Starbucks and Eight O’Clock Dark Roast. It’s...”

Ian shook his head sadly. “You poor thing,” he murmured. “But I guess we all kid ourselves in one way or another. Look,” he said, “I buy a pound of Blue Mountain African coffee each month. It takes most of my salary, but I’m willing to make that sacrifice for good, strong coffee.” He paused for a perfectly measured beat. “’Course, I hide the Blue Mountain when company comes. Even my mom has never found it.”

Maggie laughed. “You must do that a lot, Ian—use humor to kind of defuse situations. Yesterday I was ready to chew barbed wire and spit nails because of that moldy hay, but once I got to laughing... it got better.”

“I’ll tell you a secret. No, actually, it’s two secrets. Maria and I used to sneak into Chicago and go to those do-it-yourself comedy clubs, and I used to perform. My stuff was as amateurish as everyone’s, but I always got a few yuks. And I loved doing it. It was kind of unministerial, so we didn’t tell much of anyone about it. Then, after Maria was killed, I was seeing a therapist—a grief counselor, actually. He did lots of work with the survivors of cancer and AIDS patients.”

The memory of that time, Maggie noticed, brought pain to Ian’s eyes. After a moment, he continued. “He told me I should start working humor into my life wherever I could—not sitcom junk or joke book stories, but the silly type of humor that’s generated by our own lives or those of
the people around us. I thought he was crazy, but I gave it a try. It works. Life is funny stuff, Maggie. It really is.”

“Laughter’s the best medicine?” Maggie asked, grinning.

“Cheaper than Valium or Paxil.”

The drumming of hooves caught their attention. Maggie stood and went to the kitchen window. “Come here, Ian—look at this.”

Tessa and Danny were loping along the fence line of the pasture in which Dancer now spent his days after being weaned from Dusty. The colt moved as smoothly as a line of good poetry, his tail flowing behind him like a banner, his hooves seeming not to strike the ground but to flow over it with a balletlike effortlessness. Maggie noticed that Dancer was slightly ahead of the two horses on the other side of the fence, and that Tessa’s mount was fighting her for some rein to put himself ahead of the young upstart who was taunting him.

“Is the little guy teasing Tessa’s horse?” Ian asked.

“You bet he is—he knows exactly what he’s doing. What arrogance!”

Dancer slowed as the fence at the end of his pasture drew near. Turnip, shaking his head and still arguing with Tessa, laid his ears back and showed his teeth as he passed the youngster. Danny and Tessa both laughed at the power play—and so did Maggie and Ian at the kitchen window.

Maggie was suddenly aware of how close she and the minister were standing together—she noticed the scent of his light aftershave and the freshly ironed smell of his shirt. She moved back to the table perhaps a little too abruptly.
Ian waited a moment and then followed Maggie and sat again.

“The young horse is going to be a barrel racer, correct?” he asked.

Maggie poured more coffee. “Right. I think he’ll be a great one. There’s not much I can do with him until he’s two years old in terms of training, but I handle him a lot, pick up his feet, put a blanket on his back every so often.”

“I saw some barrel racing on the tube a couple of weeks ago. It’s exciting—I liked it. I’ve never seen the sport live, though.”

“It’s a lot of fun for the riders, and the horses too. It’s a good, clean, fast sport. You ought to—hey!” The words tumbled out before Maggie was completely aware she was saying them. “Tessa’s going to run Turnip next Saturday at the October Festival at the fairgrounds. Why don’t you come along? It’s their first time out together, and Turnip needs the exposure to the arena, the crowd, the noise—all that. Danny’s coming too. We’ll make a day of it.”

Ian’s smile was that of a little boy finding his first bicycle under the Christmas tree. “I’d love to. I know as much about horses as I do about brain surgery, and I’m going to have to learn if I want to live here. Sounds great—I’ll look forward to it.”

“Good,” Maggie said. “You can meet us there at about noon on Saturday. I’ll be hauling Turnip in my trailer, and Tessa will ride with me. Barring emergency calls, Danny’ll be there around noon too.” When she looked at the minister,
she thought she saw worry on his face. “What? What’s the matter?”

Ian squirmed a bit in his chair. “Can Tessa... do it OK? She has only one arm, and... well...”

Maggie smiled. “It’s not a strength contest, Ian. Barrel racing is all about skill and balance and speed—and a willing horse that’s well trained. The kid is a natural on a horse, regardless of the number of arms she has. It’s sweet of you to be concerned for her, but she’ll do fine.”

Ian’s grin returned. “Will she win anything? Turnip looks fast.”

“He is fast, and he knows the pattern. But he tends to get silly, and Tessa’s going to be nervous. I imagine they’ll take down some barrels, but it’ll be a good experience for both of them. Next summer she’ll do some winning.”

The day couldn’t have been finer. Fall was obvious in the bite of the chilled air, but the sun was big and benign and the sky was that particularly profound blue that occurs outside of nature only in the perfectly crafted stained glass of cathedrals and churches.

Maggie sat on the fender of her two-horse trailer with her hands around a milkshake-sized Styrofoam container of coffee, the flavor and color of which brought Ian’s “brown, rather bland liquid” to mind. She smiled and turned her attention to the arena.

The Coldwater Fairgrounds, built shortly after the end of WWII, was designed specifically for rodeo: four gated
chutes for saddle bronc, bareback bronc, and bull-riding contests, a chute on wheels that was pushed into the arena for calf roping, team roping, and steer wrestling, and, of course, a football field–sized expanse of a precise mixture of light sand and good soil that offered excellent footing and traction for horses at speed. Bleacher-type seating surrounded the arena, and tall metal posts with banks of lights on them stood at attention around the huge rectangle for night contests.

All the construction money had gone to the arena, seating, and necessary equipment; the fan parking lot was a vast, rutted, and dusty wasteland that turned to a souplike quagmire when rain came. The contestant parking—another unpaved four acres of poorly leveled ground—was located fifty yards or so from the action end of the arena.

The snack truck had set up in the contestants’ parking area early, and although it was only 10:00 a.m., the picnic-like aroma of charring hots drifted about on the sporadic breeze. Perhaps fifty other truck and trailer combinations were parked in a haphazard cluster, and others were banging their way over the potholes and ruts in a steady stream. This was a big day for barrel racers—no other rodeo events were scheduled, and the competition carried National Barrel Racing Association points and prize money.

Some of the trailers were gargantuan four- and six-horse affairs that had bunk space and a small dressing room at the front and air conditioning for both equines and humans. Most were doubles, like Maggie’s, but there were
more than a few relatively inexpensive singles and several homemades.

Maggie drew in a deep breath. Even over the scents emanating from the snack truck, the rich aroma of shampooed horses, good leather, and the acrid petroleum smell of hoof dressing encompassed the gathering.

Girls and women loped their horses in figure eights in the open acres adjacent to the trailers and trucks, the
thud
of steel shoes against dirt and grass a constant muted drumroll. The riders wore twelve-inch square cardboard numbers safety-pinned to the back of their shirts. Maggie grinned as she spotted the neophytes to the sport; many of the younger girls were almost constantly reaching back to make certain that their numbers were still in place or to adjust them slightly. Those who’d been in more competitions than they could remember were no more conscious of the numbers on their backs than they were of the socks they wore inside their boots.

“Hey, Maggie! Good to see you,” a tall redhead called out, swinging down from a flashy steel gray quarter horse. She dropped her reins, told her horse to stand, and rushed forward to Maggie.

“Jackie, great to see you too.” The friends grinned for a moment and then stepped back, inspecting one another.

“You look terrific, Maggie,” the redhead said. “I’ve missed you. We’ve all missed you. Are you riding today?”

“No, I’m not. I hauled Tessa Morrison here. She bought my Turnip.”

“I met her. Nice kid. How’s Turnip behaving?”

“Real well, but this is their first competition together.”

“Big day, then.” Jackie smiled. Her horse, standing where he’d been instructed to, raised his muzzle, lips rolled back, nostrils widely dilated, and whinnied long and raucously.

“Twister find a lady friend?” Maggie asked.

Jackie shook her head. “Some bubblehead brought a mare in heat, and Twist is going nuts. If I hadn’t watched him be gelded I’d swear he’s an ol’ range stud. You got any Vicks? I came without mine.”

“Sure,” Maggie answered, walking to the tack compartment of her trailer. She opened the door, rummaged through miscellaneous gear, and tossed a small blue-green jar to her friend. Jackie caught the jar, unscrewed the cap, and walked to her horse. She used two fingers to dig thick blobs of Vicks from the container. Then she unceremoniously jammed the laden fingers into Twister’s nostrils. The horse, startled, reared a bit and then began shaking his head. After a moment he settled down.

“If he can’t smell that brazen hussy,” Jackie laughed, “he won’t pay any attention to her.”

“I think he was just looking for a friend—a platonic relationship,” Maggie said, straight faced.

“Yeah, like what Anthony wanted with Cleopatra.” Jackie rolled her eyes. “I gotta work some kinks out of Romeo here. See you later on, OK?” Jackie recapped the ointment, wiped her fingers on her jeans, and tossed the jar to Maggie. “Don’t be a stranger,” she said seriously.

Maggie watched her friend pick her way through the trucks and trailers. She put the Vicks back in her tack compartment
and began the walk to where contestants were exercising their horses, throwing away her empty coffee cup on her way.

The activity, the horses, the people, the creak of leather, even the patina of anticipatory, pre-event tension, wrapped around Maggie like an old and familiar winter coat on a very cold day. The difference was that Rich wasn’t there, grinning, gabbing with friends, sneaking bits of apples to horses.

She took a deep breath, trying to chase away her thoughts.

“Yo, Maggie. Good to see you,” a woman on a loud-colored Appaloosa said as she jogged by. Maggie smiled and waved, unsure who the rider was.

I shouldn’t be here. It’s not right. Even with Tessa and how important this is to her, I shouldn’t have come. How can I stay here all the hours I need to? A moment ago, it was all feeling good. Now, I’m as alone as I’d be if the fairgrounds were closed and the day over and everyone else long gone
.

Her mind replayed a scene from a couple of days ago, and the memory seemed to increase the weight she felt in her heart.

Danny had brought his check for Dakota’s board and a couple of protein supplements for Dusty to Maggie two days ago. They’d sat at the kitchen table.

“We haven’t talked much lately,” Danny said.

“Well... I’ve been very—”

“Busy.” Danny finished the excuse for her. “I know.” He sighed. “Sometimes I suppose it’s a good thing to keep your feelings a secret, but I’m not good at that. That day I
saw your truck start into the driveway and then leave in a big hurry told me something, Maggie. I’ve thought about it—about you driving off to avoid me—and I’m awfully sorry you had to do that. It’s not at all fair to you. Maybe I was being overbearing. I didn’t mean to be, but maybe I was.” He took a breath and held it for a moment. “I’m not much of an actor, Maggie. I have strong feelings for you. I guess maybe you know that.”

Maggie nodded her head slightly without speaking.

Danny cleared his throat. “I can find another place to board Dakota. I’ll leave you alone. What I’d like to do is to make your life better, rather than—”

Maggie’s hand reached out and covered Danny’s without a thought, without her direction. “No, Danny! I don’t want you to go away at all.”

Their eyes met for a long moment. Danny’s voice was heavy with emotion as he spoke. “Then I won’t, Maggie. I’ll be here for you. And I’ll hope and pray that when the time’s right, you’ll feel about me as I do about you.”