Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) (19 page)

She breathed deeply and spoke to Lulu, telling her that they had to settle themselves and think about the ride. Get prepared.

Just then, as she was trying to concentrate on preparedness, Leanne appeared, thrusting her reins at Rainey and requesting her to hold her horse while she ran to the rest room.

“Ever since I got pregnant, I have to pee about every half hour,” she said in a very aggravated tone and hurried away.

Pregnant?
Rainey was shocked.

But then she thought her shock was quite foolish. Pregnancy was a very natural thing and did tend to happen when a woman
had a relationship with a man. As the shock faded, jealousy inched over her. She was going to be thirty-five and had let her opportunities for a child pass right by her, along with her failed marriages. She would gladly have put up with having to pee every half hour, she thought, if she could have a child.

She told herself to let that go and get ready to ride. She didn’t want herself and Lulu to embarrass themselves. And then, as life would have it, right when the announcer was calling the first barrel racer, her gaze lit on Herb Longstreet. He was near the arena door, looking in. She thought to go over and speak to him, but there she stood holding Leanne’s horse and trying to get herself prepared.

She was fifth to go. Things were looking good; only one woman ahead of her had made any time at all. Of course, Leanne hadn’t yet run.

Screwing her hat on her head, she headed Lulu toward the entry. The mare was a growing ball of eager energy between Rainey’s legs, swishing her tail and champing at the bit. Rainey watched the girl ahead of her run around the barrels; she knocked one with her knee, but it didn’t fall over.

The girl came racing out of the arena, and Rainey danced Lulu up to the entry. Watching an official, she took three deep cleansing breaths and offered it all up. Then she tapped Lulu’s sides, and they were off.

Bursting out into the bright lights, heading for the first barrel, Rainey urged Lulu, who reached for ground. Scooting neatly around the first barrel, digging earth, and across to the second barrel. Hooves and hearts pounding. She and Lulu seemed to take wings and fly.

Look at me, Mama!

Around the third barrel and heading for home like a flow of
wind, everything a blur to her eyes and the roar of the crowd in her ears and Lulu a grand power bearing her along, and as she came bursting out of the arena, blowing right past the next rider with her determined brows, laughter bubbled up and out, as it always did, and she knew with the certain knowing that the reason she did this was for the incredible exhilaration of it.

Whew! It hovered there, that glorious feeling, like a glow swirling around herself and Lulu. She set the mare walking in a circle. Several people smiled at her, and she knew she wore that grin that causes people to smile in return. Then she saw Harry heading toward them across the sandy ground.

She flung herself right off Lulu and into his arms.

One-Way Rider

S
he was amazed when it finally got through to her that she had scored a time of seventeen seconds. This was the fastest time she had ever achieved on Lulu, and it put her tied for second with a girl named Martha Reed.

“Maybe it’s because I held Leanne’s horse for her while she went to the rest room,” she told Harry. “He and Lulu exchanged breaths, and maybe he gave her some hints in the process.”

Harry chuckled at this, but she was halfway serious. Something had happened. Maybe it was the clear high-plains air. Or perhaps it was as simple as all the practice finally coming together. Rainey got so caught up in the excitement of the achievement, and in praising Lulu as she walked her to cool her down, that she forgot all about the rest of the barrel racing and missed seeing Leanne’s performance. No doubt after Leanne raced, she and Martha Reed would be tied for third, which was still really good, in her estimation.

Returning to the arena after settling Lulu in her stall with
some alfalfa, they came upon Leanne outside the back door, leaning against the wall. She had the reins of her gelding in one hand and her other hand pressed across her stomach.

“Leanne…are you all right?”

Her cousin gave a little weak nod. “I think so. I just felt faint. I think it is probably the hard ridin’.”

“Leanne’s pregnant,” she said to Harry, as she automatically felt into her jacket pocket for a napkin, in case it should be needed. “Why are you holdin’ your stomach? Are you hurting?”

“No…I didn’t know I was.” She dropped her arm.

“Why don’t you sit down,” Harry said, but it wasn’t a question. As he spoke, he took her arm and led her over to a stack of hay bales nearby, jerking one off the top and plopping it down for her. Easily, probably from all the practice he’d recently gotten with Uncle Doyle.

Leanne sank down on the hay, while she held on to her horse’s reins. She removed her hat, without any regard as to how her hair would look, which was a definite worrisome sign to Rainey.

While Harry took Leanne’s wrist to check her pulse and asked her if she was having cramps, Rainey went to find a faucet to wet the two napkins she’d found in her pocket. When she came back out, Harry was telling Leanne that she probably should have something to eat and put her feet up.

Rainey gave her the damp napkins, and Leanne pressed them to her temple.

Harry said, “I think it was the hard riding—got her out of breath. But it wouldn’t hurt her to lie down.”

“I’ll just sit here,” Leanne said. “I’m feelin’ a lot better, but I’ll just sit here for a few minutes.”

Rainey suggested tying Leanne’s horse to a nearby post, but Leanne said he wasn’t one to stand tying and might jerk away
and get hurt. Rainey thought it was a good sign that her cousin was strong enough to remain protective of her prized horse. And he wasn’t any trouble, anyway; occupied with snatching alfalfa out of the bales, he wasn’t likely to wander, even if Leanne let him go.

“I’ll miss Clay’s ride,” Leanne said. “Would you go watch, Rainey, and tell me what happens?”

“Maybe I should go get him.”

“No,” she said with some alarm. “I’ll be fine in a minute, and Clay will be disappointed that I missed his ride. If you’ll go watch and tell me, I can tell him that I saw.”

Rainey closed her mouth against the comment that Leanne’s pregnant state was a little more important than Clay’s bull ride. “Harry will go watch and come back and tell us,” she said.

Harry was willing, as he always was. He went off, and Rainey sat down beside Leanne.

“What is he—a doctor?” Leanne asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, for heavensake,” Leanne said, blinking in surprise. Then, looking away, “He’s awfully nice, Rainey. The kind you just want to hug all the time. You’re lucky.”

“Yes…” Then she added, “We’re just spendin’ the weekend together. Friends.”

“Awfully friendly,” Leanne said with amusement.

Rainey’s self-consciousness was quickly overcome by worry about Leanne, whose amusement, which had not been all that much anyway, had faded. For once Leanne didn’t seem to be sucking Rainey’s energy. She appeared too weak for that.

“Feeling any better?” Rainey asked, wanting reassurance.

“A bit, yes,” Leanne said, again pressing the damp napkins to her temple.

Rainey thought maybe her cousin’s body was better, but her spirit was low.

“What was your time?” she asked, thinking it would boost Leanne to talk about how quickly she’d run around the barrels.

“Sixteen-three,” Leanne answered, absently, not seeming to care.

“Well, that puts you in first place, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. I knew I would be…I didn’t have to work at it.”

Rainey supposed Leanne’s comment was more fact than cockiness.

The sounds of cheering reached them. Rainey said whoever was riding was doing good. She wondered about Leanne needing to lie to Clay about seeing him ride. Rainey did not think her cousin’s relationship with Clay was at all on stable ground, but she thought she should restrain herself from comment.

Just then Leanne said, “Clay’s real sensitive. He always wants me to see him do well.”

Rainey was a little startled that Leanne should pick up on her thoughts. She said, “Oh…well,” which was the best she could do, and that with great restraint.

“Clay wants me to have an abortion,” Leanne said.

“Oh…well,” she said again, all manner of emotion rolling up inside of her. She rather thought Clay did a lot of wanting. “What do
you
want, Leanne? It is a baby in
your
body.”

Leanne sighed deeply. “I don’t know,” she said wistfully, then added, “Clay’ll hate me havin’ this baby. It’ll tie us down, and he doesn’t want that. And I don’t want to lose him.”

Rainey’s first question was, why not? She bit the words back for fear of sounding critical, but her feelings rather came out anyway, when she said, “You don’t want to lose a man who wants you to abort his child?”

“Don’t go gettin’ righteous on me, Rainey. Your closets are pretty dusty, too.”

“I’m not being righteous,” she said. “I know I’ve made plenty of mistakes in regard to men—in regard to my entire life, really—but I don’t think that precludes me from asking a practical question.”

“Pre-
cludes?
Only you would talk like that. I don’t even know what it means,” Leanne said in a sarcastic manner.

After a moment, Rainey said, “I’m not being righteous. I think because I’ve made so many mistakes, maybe I can pass to you something I’ve learned. You don’t seem all that hot to have an abortion, and it seems to me you need to think a lot more about your choices.”

Leanne played with the end of her horse’s reins, and Rainey sat next to her, thinking her cousin was being stupid, and also that she shouldn’t be judging. For his part, Leanne’s horse caused a lot of rustling, having loosened a bale of hay enough to get big, full bites.

“I lost a baby,” Rainey said.

Leanne swiveled around to stare at her. Rainey turned her gaze to the shadowed ground.

“I married Monte because I was pregnant,” she said, “but I lost her at almost five months when I was in a car wreck. Wasn’t a big wreck, hardly anything…but enough, I guess. It was a little girl.” She looked at Leanne, at her pretty face gazing so intently back. “Yes, I lost her, didn’t have an abortion, but the results pretty much add up the same. I didn’t have her, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish for her, Leanne. You think I’m righteous? I guess maybe I am, because I do not have my daughter, and I may never have another child, and I get really annoyed at women who just wipe out their babies because it is inconvenient.”

Leanne looked away. “It isn’t because it’s inconvenient. It’s…oh, Rainey, I don’t even know how to be a mother. And Clay probably won’t stay around to be a father. I don’t know how I’ll support a child. How can I bring a baby into a life so uncertain and messed up?”

“Who does know how to be a mother? It’s like barrel racing—you read manuals, and you try until you find what fits. Only motherhood isn’t competition, Leanne. You don’t have to do it perfectly, you just do the best you can. And it’s up to Clay, if he doesn’t want the child, but you can’t overlook that it’s growing inside of you. You’re thirty-one. How many more chances do you think you are goin’ to get?”

Leanne looked down at her boot.

“You can put the baby up for adoption, Leanne,” Rainey said hesitantly, feeling she was overstepping all sorts of bounds. “If you really feel you can’t be a mother, that things aren’t right, you can put her up for adoption. There’s lots of people who want babies so badly.”

“And how am I goin’ to survive in the meantime? Go home to Mama? Not hardly. She’s goin’ to hate me over this. I never have been what Mama wanted. You know what she told me when I was last home? That I was a tramp. I guess this will prove it.”

“I don’t see why a child should prove it any more or less,” Raine said. This line of thinking had always provoked her. “Why put that much on a child, who is a blessing, not a condemnation?”

She realized she herself had always sort of considered Leanne rather trampy, and she was ashamed of this. Lord only knew Rainey had no room to be pointing a finger.

“I have no savings,” Leanne said. “Every bit I’ve earned these last years has gone into building my career and my horse business. Clay owns part of that, too. I just don’t have anywhere to go, Rainey.”

Leanne’s desperate voice went clear through Rainey. Casting around for some hopeful thing to say, she considered the point that perhaps Leanne had underestimated her mother, but on second thought, probably Leanne knew her mother full well. Aunt Vida could be hard as rock.

“Anything you want badly enough can be worked out,” she said at last. And then it hit her. “Daddy’s in that big house all by himself. You could stay there.”

Leanne’s head came round, her expression startled, but then it softened, as if maybe she was turning the possibility over in her mind.

“You know how Daddy is. He loves babies.”

Leanne shook her head. “Rainey, you live in a fantasy world. You think you can solve everything by finding me a place to live, but there’s so much more to this. I have a life.”

“I know. I know that,” Rainey said. She probably should have let it go, but more came out anyway. “Don’t let Clay bring you down, Leanne. Raise him up, if you can, and if he doesn’t come up with you, then you go on without him. Don’t let him be the reason you abort your baby. Think this over really good and decide for yourself.”

She guessed she was as bad as Mama and Charlene about controlling her opinions.

Leanne said with annoyance, “Don’t you think I am, Rainey? Don’t you think this is breakin’ my heart?”

“How you feel now is nothin’ to how you’re goin’ to feel if you get an abortion. I have seen plenty, working at Blaine’s pharmacy.”

“Just shut up, Rainey.”

She thought then that she did need to shut up, although she had a real struggle doing it. The wild idea to say, “I’ll take it. Give it to me,” came to her, and she might have blurted that
out, but just then a pickup truck pulled up, and a man got out and said they were sitting on his hay and he needed to load it up. He wasn’t happy when he noticed how much Leanne’s horse had eaten, but she told him that he shouldn’t have left the hay sitting there where anyone could have at it. She had apparently sufficiently recovered herself.

While the man was still loading up his hay, Harry came out and gave a report of Clay’s ride. He described what he had seen in great detail. Rainey imagined it was because of his profession as a doctor, trained to notice every little thing.

Leanne thanked him all over the place and took the opportunity to touch his arm a lot. Being pregnant didn’t stop her from coming on like gangbusters.