Down the Dirt Road (11 page)

   In his place, a brill
iant rainbow filled the sky, it
s colors bright and luminous against the bluest sky she had ever seen.

   Her father’s promise that everything would be all right.

   “I love you too, Daddy.”  She whispered completely certain he could hear her wherever he was. 

9.

     Momma’s bedroom door was shut tight when Jennie finally returned to the house.  She had sat in the pasture with Bessie until the flies had begun to gather.  No matter the circumstance, no matter the depth of the emotions she felt, nature had a pattern and a path to follow.  Dead cattle had to be dealt with, no matter how much a part of the family Bessie was, before the real scavengers started moving in.
All she needed was a pasture full of coyotes and wildcats.
She would have to call for help;
she didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with a two thousand pound dead cow.

   
It was obvious Momma wasn’t going to be of any help in the matter
either
.

    It was probably for the best, though.  Jennie wasn’t entirely sure she could talk to Momma just then without telling what she had seen.  It’s not like Momma would believe her anyhow.  She, herself, wasn’t even one hundred percent certain it had actually happened.  It could have been a dream.  Stress, distress, a bleeding head injury- any of those things could have caused her to hallucinate. 

   Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling of warmth, the comfort of the peace her father had brought with him.  It settled around her like a warm blanket in winter, calming her, assuring her that everything would, indeed, be all right.

  
Of course, things would never really be all right without her father there but for the first time since his death, she felt like she might just survive.

   Catching sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror she gasped.  Blood and streaks of mud painted her face and arms.  A few twigs stuck in her crazy mop of curls, adorning the wild mass like the snakes on Medusa’s head. Clumps of Bessie’s hair clung to her wet tee shirt.  She was a mess.  The last time Daddy would ever see her and she looked like she had been mud wrestling with a coyote.

   “Yuck,” she mumbled as she adjusted the taps on the old iron, claw foot tub.  One of Daddy’s proudest projects had been the restoration of that bathtub.
  He spent hours in the barn sanding it down, sealing it, applying the porcelain overlay.  It was deep enough to soak in and Jennie was desperately in need of
a
hot soak in a bubble bath.

   As the room filled with steam and the essence of lavender, Jennie heard the phone ring.  Knowing Momma would never answer it, she turned the taps to the off position and ran for the kitchen.

    Grabbing up the receiver, she practically yelled “hello” into the receiver.  A voice, eerily similar to her beloved father greeted her.

     “Jennie?  That you?”  
   

     “Hi Uncle Tommy.  Yeah, it’s me.  Momma…. Momma doesn’t answer the phone much these days.”

    “No, I don’t reckon she does, baby girl.  You and your Momma do OK with that crazy storm this afternoon?  You need anything?”

    Uncle Tommy hadn’t called since Daddy passed.  Why today of all days?  How did he know she needed help?

    Daddy.

    He always promised he would
take care of them.

    “Actually, Uncle Tommy, there is something.  I just don’t know what to do.  Old Bessie is dead.  Lightening got her before I could get her into the barn.  I don’t….”

    “Oh good Lord, child!  Are you OK?!”

    “Yes, yes.  I am fine.  It’s Bessie.  She’s dead and the flies started coming and I don’t know what to do with her.  If I leave her the coyotes will be here…”

    “It’s all good, Jennie- girl.  I’ll get Tom junior and some o’ the boys to help me move her.  Be there in an hour or two.  We’ll get her moved before nightfall.”

    “Uncle Tommy?”

     “Yes, Jennie?”

      “What are you going to do with her?”

      There was unmistakable sadness in her voice at the thought of the many terrible fates a dead cow could come to.  Bessie had been a part of her family for as long as she could remember.  Of course,
nothing could be worse than putting her in a box and burying her in the ground for all of eternity.

  “Well…”  He hesitated, as if afraid to tell her.  “If you really want to know…”

    “I need to know.  I run this place now, Uncle Tommy.  Best if I know everything.  What if it happens again and you aren’t here to help me?”

   “Gonna take her down to Greg Jeffries…for… for processin’.”

   “The butcher?  You’re gonna
eat
Bessie?”

     “Um, no… she’s gonna be processed for use of…of… her parts…”

     “Ohhh…..”  A mass of visuals flooded her brain before she quickly forced the images away.  “All right then, Uncle Tommy, see you in a little bit.”

     “See you soon, baby girl.  Tell your Momma I called.  Maybe she will come out for a bit of a hello later on.”

      “OK, I’ll tell her but I wouldn’t get your hopes up Uncle Tommy.  She hasn’t seen too many people since Daddy…since the funeral.”

     Jennie had always believed that Uncle Tommy was secretly in love with Momma.  Uncle Tommy’s wife died in childbirth when Tom junior was born, five years before
Jennie ever came to be.  Even as a child Jennie could see that there was always a bit of longing in Uncle Tommy’s eyes whenever he watched Momma and Daddy together.
  It might just be the idea of having a wife, someone to share your days with that Uncle Tommy longed for but Jenny didn’t think so.  Uncle Tommy was Daddy’s older brother, they were as
close as brothers could ever be and Jennie knew he would never have done anything to hurt Daddy but now, now that Daddy was gone…  Well, she would just have to keep an eye on things.

    Suddenly remember
ing
the bubble bath waiting for her, Jenny bid her uncle goodbye and replaced the receiver on the wall mount.  The water was lukewarm at best when she returned but a few seconds of hot water running into the tub took care of that.

    The lavender fragrance filled her head and instantly washed away the smell of dirt, sweat and blood.  The cut on her forehead stung some when she washed her hair but the bleeding had stopped long ago.  It was hard to believe, in retrospect, that a piece of ice fell from the sky and cut her like it had.  The storm had been so sudden, so nasty.

    Poor Bessie. Hopefully she hadn’t felt much pain.

   The water cooled much too quickly.  She longed to reheat the water but Uncle Tommy would be there soon with the men and there was little to no chance Momma would go out to meet them.

    Ten minutes later, dressed in cut off shorts and a black v-neck tee shirt, Jennie stood in front of the bathroom mirror.  The chunk of hail had left a pretty nasty lump on her forehead, bruising was already settling in around it.  Her brown hair, lightened by all the hours she had been spending in the sun actually had streaks of blonde running the length of the curls that now hung wet and loose around her shoulders.  It had been a while since Jennie actually looked at herself in a mirror.  It was a good thing they were getting many visitors these days.

    Tires crunched on the gravel drive outside the bathroom window.

  
Uncle Tommy must be here.  Should I let Momma know or just let her sleep?

  There was really no reason to wake her
mother.  That was why she
surprised
herself
when she rapped on her mother’s
door as she passed it on her way out of the house.  Would Momma make a showing for her husband’s brother?

    “Momma?  Uncle Tommy’s come to help us with Bessie.”  She chose the word
us
in an effort to coerce her mother into thinking she needed to take part in what was about to happen
.  Secretly Jennie just hoped to watch her uncle’s reaction to her mother.

     There was no response from the other side of the door but Jennie was pretty certain she heard movement and the rustle of fabric.  Was Momma actually going to come out of her room?  So as not to be caught eavesdropping, Jennie hurried away and out of the house to greet her uncle and her cousin.  Instead she ran full force into a solid mass of muscle on the back porch.  The impact nearly knocked her to the ground but a pair of strong, tanned arms grabbed her shoulders and steadied her.

    “Well, hullo there, miss.  You must be Jennie.  Your uncle…”

     Jennie looked up into the darkest brown eyes she had ever seen, dark like molten milk chocolate and deep like the river that ran along the edge of town.  The eyes
sparkled with humor.  Lines along either side of each eye crinkled slightly with the wide, slightly crooked smile that greeted her.

    “Who are you?”  She didn’t mean to sound so short, so demanding but those eyes unnerved her more than she wanted to admit.

    “Name’s Grayson Jennings.  Your uncle sent me up here to let you know he and Tommy are out back in the pasture surveyin’ the crime scene.”

  “There’s no crime scene- just my dead cow!  Lightning hit her!”

  Grayson Jennings chuckled at her indignation.  “Well, I think I know that miss.  I
was just… well I was just bein’
funny.”

   Jennie th
rew
her hands on her hips
in aggravation
.  “Well, it’s not funny!  Not funny at all!  That animal was like a part of our family!”  Her cheeks flamed with anger and maybe just the slightest hint of embarrassment.  Grayson Jennings had the most beautiful eyelashes she had ever seen on a boy
-
or a girl
for that matter-
and the way he
kept smiling at her with that sexy, cockeyed smile made her insides melt.

   
What’s the matter with you, girl?!  You just had hour heart broken and your Daddy is buried but a week!
 

   
Still, the young man in front of her flustered her.

      “I’m very sorry, miss.  I wasn’t meaning to offend.  I go to school nights at the community college, working on my criminal justice degree.  I want to be a cop but I ain’t old enough to carry a gun legally yet.  My sense of humor tends to be…off… and always shows itself at the most inappropriate times.  Please forgive me.”

    Jennie tried very hard to retain h
er indignation but it was
hard to when he was smiling at her the way that he was.

   “Well, I suppose you couldn’t know any better.  You are a man after all.”  She brushed past him leaving her matter of fact words dangling in the air where she had previously stood, almost as a dare to see what he would say in response.

   “I guess there’s no excuse for my sex but still, I hope you will forgive me.  I wasn’t meanin’ to offend.”  He followed
her across the open space between the house and the barn.  “I get nervous ‘round pretty women.”

    He thought she was pretty?  He had to be joking.  With her hair all wild- there had been no time to brush it out and knot it- there was no way any man could find her attractive.  He was one smooth talker that one.  Momma always warned her about the smooth talkers. 
Michael
was a smooth talker and look where that got her.

   “Yeah… well…”  She couldn’t come up with anything smart to say so she just picked up the pace and left the handsome Grayson Jennings in her wake.

    “Uncle Tommy!”  She called out through the open door to the pasture where her uncle and her cousin stood looking down on Bessie’s still form.

    “Jennie!  How are you, baby girl?”  It was eerie how much her uncle resembled her father.  It bothered her that she had never noticed before. 

    “How ya’ doin’ cousin?”  Tom junior tipped his hat to her, his eyes studying the ground at his feet.  Her cousin had always been painfully shy and it was obvious not much had changed now that he was in his twenties.

    “I guess I’m doin’ as wel
l as can be expected.  ‘Cept for
what happened to poor old Bessie here.”

   “It is a damned shame, for sure.  Does that gate over there open wide, Jennie?  Tom junior, here is gonna back the flatbed right in here and
I
don’t wanna have to take down any fence panels.”

  “It’ll open, Uncle Tommy.  I’ll get the latch for you.”

  “Thanks baby girl.  You tell your momma I was comin’ over?”