Summer Winds (9 page)

And suddenly the puzzle pieces began flying in: a kid growing up without a mother, no role model for relationships, and probably always in the way or an afterthought, which explained the way she looked at me so plaintively and wanted to be close to me.
She needs
a constant female figure in her life.
Understanding that made me more comfortable and I breathed deeper.

“Let’s just go have a good time tonight and forget about everybody else.” I smiled at her and Cash’s face lit up.
Donnetta
was right, get to know her.

We pulled into a worn spot of ground amid rows of cars and trucks, flagged to a stop by a young boy who wanted to make sure we obeyed his parking instructions. He growled and signaled his unhappiness at my not driving all the way up to the white paint mark on the grass where he pointed his baton.

Cash hung her head out the window. “Hey, parking Nazi. If I give you five bucks will you smile at us instead of shouting?” Cash gave the big-bodied boy a cheesy grin.

“Just pull into the right spot, okay?” he said loudly.

“His name’s Bubba,” I said, and stretched across Cash’s lap and waved so the boy could see me through the passenger window.

“It is not,” she murmured, in amused dismay.

He immediately apologized. “Didn’t know it was you, Ms. Tanner. No sweat. Enjoy.”

“Thanks, Bubba,” I said loudly, for Cash’s further enjoyment, then said under my breath, “Bubba is derived from the word Bubber, the infantile pronunciation of brother. Bubba also has a very large Mubba.” I dead-panned and she laughed. For a second I remained there, across her chest, concealed by battered trucks on either side of us. I finally used her leg to push myself back onto my side of the car.

“Sorry,” I said, and quickly climbed out of the truck and locked it.

“I used to work out before I became your ranch slave,” she said smugly, as if she knew I was thinking about her legs.

“Does that chase the demons away?” I made eye contact.

She paused and dropped the bravado. “No.”

“Maybe then it’s time for something deeper and more meaningful.”

“I’m in favor of deeper,” she said.

Must be the air that makes everybody horny, I thought. “Be in favor of more meaningful,” I took charge, putting the pressure back on her. Maybe she’d learn some things about life she could take home with her. We trudged toward the colorful tents pitched among the big trees along the distant bank. The music became louder as we got closer, and the smell of hotdogs and brisket filled the air.

“What are you hungry for?” I asked.

“Anything you want.”

“How about fish tacos with mayonnaise?” She drew back and wrinkled her face. “Better learn to ask for what you want or you never know what you’ll get.” I pushed her playfully for no reason.

“I’ll remember that,” she said. “Make it roast beef.”

I stood in line at the Beef Station, a red-and-white tent with overly warm women wearing white aprons and hairnets carving up large sides of beef along a back shelf.

“Our meat is hand-rubbed?” Cash whispered, reading the sign above the Beef Station as she doubled over with laughter.

“With spices.” I completed the rest of the sentence as two plates with beef sandwiches covered in barbecue sauce and our drinks slid onto the counter in front of us.

“Like that makes the sign any better?” She continued to giggle as I paid the cashier. Someone on a microphone beckoned revelers to sign up for the river-ropes contest and not to forget the band would be playing in a few minutes.

Cash tried to intervene and offered up a ten-dollar bill, but I ordered her aside and told her to take the food over to a nearby table.

“You’re very bossy,” she said in between bites as I joined her on the hard benches. “Just an observation. But could be why men are afraid of you.” Her eyes twinkled.

I ignored that remark and turned it back on her. “Donnetta said
you’re
afraid of me.”

“You’re a woman who has it figured out. Scares people who don’t.” She bit into her sandwich. “This is really good.”

Bea Benegan passed our table and patted me on the back, shouting hello, then asked Cash how she liked her new deerskin gloves.

“So soft I sleep in them,” Cash said, and Bea stiffened. I knew immediately from living out here for decades that Cash had three strikes against her with Bea: she was younger, a hired hand, and new in town. Bea probably believed Cash should be more respectful and less flippant. As if to punctuate that thought, Bea cleared her throat and said archly, “Guess you’re learning that it takes more than gloves to make a hand.” Then she sailed off in the wind.

Cash shrugged off the remark as Bea disappeared into the crowd. “I’ll probably have to kiss her to win her over.”

“If you kiss Bea Benegan and live to tell it, I’ll pay you fifty bucks,” I said nonchalantly.

“She wants to mother me, I can see it. Won’t be able to resist my charismatic aura.”

“Is that what you call it, charismatic?” I knew she was only partly kidding.

“You don’t find me charismatic?”

“Out here, charismatics speak in tongues.”

“I have no problem with tongues,” she said. At my look she added, “Hey, you brought me to a place where they hand rub their meat.”

I laughed. Cash’s sense of humor was one of her most delightful attributes.

Suddenly Sven Olan and his sister Verta stood alongside us. I let my eyes travel up her tight pants to her rhinestone belt buckle and Lycra T-shirt under a biker-bar leather vest. Seemed like everyone in town had found their way to the river and they were all drunk, or about to be.

“See you got your gal in town with you,” he said, referring to her in the third person as if she weren’t present and speaking in that singsong way Scandinavians talk.

“This is Cash Tate, who’s working the ranch this summer.”

Cash wiped off one barbecue-covered spot on her hand and offered a handshake to Sven. Slightly rising from the bench, she unknowingly answered Sven’s query about her height. Verta offered her hand as well.

“I’m Verta, it means truth.” She seemed to be purring the words, and for just a second I thought I saw a hint of recognition, as if she and Cash knew each other but were pretending they didn’t.

“I’m Cash, it means no credit,” Cash said, and I chuckled at her joke.

“How long you in town for?” Verta’s lips curled into an appreciative smile and her eyes traveled down the full length of Cash’s torso. Then Verta twisted her upper body thirty degrees west, thrust her pelvic bone forward, and tossed her head back as if Madonna had shouted, “Strike a pose.”

“Just tonight.” Cash seemed a bit flustered now.

“I mean how long are you staying out at the ranch? Maybe you’ll come in one night and I’ll show you some of the hot spots… well, lukewarm spots, because this is Little Liberty, after all.”

“I’ll see how things go,” Cash said, her voice void of inflection.

I got to my feet and gathered up the dirty plates, tossing them into a nearby trash can. “You two enjoy the evening,” I said brightly, as if we had a lot to see and not much time left to see it. Herding Cash away from Verta Olan, I was reminded that the slinky Swede wasn’t one of my favorite people, for reasons I couldn’t name, and particularly not tonight.

“She acted like she knew you,” I said.

“Never saw her before. Why?”

“The expression on your face.”

“That was barbecue sauce.”

My irritation seemed to please Cash, which only annoyed me more. I forced myself to brighten up as Sara Goodie and husband Jock appeared, Sara gushing over his having made it to the Kansas City bronc-riding finals.

“So you’ll be getting that new truck,” I said.

“We’re going to get some other things we need first—some rodeo gear and a better saddle, I think. Then talk about the truck.”

She said it as if the purchase priorities were hers. He had his arm around her and looked happy. I introduced Cash and then we all parted, promising to chat more the next time we visited their feed store.

“Yeah, she’ll love driving that new pair of chaps.” Cash snorted.

“Women first only in lifeboats, darling,” I said, and the endearment came out before I could analyze why. Cash turned quickly toward me, obviously savoring the verbal caress. Embarrassed, I ignored her, pointing out more people I knew up ahead and warning they were bearing down on us. All the while I was reminding myself to be more careful about the language I used with her.

“Can we sit over here and listen to the concert?” Cash indicated a grassy spot below an embankment slightly out of sight of the main thoroughfare and up against a wide oak tree. I was delighted to climb down the small knoll, plop down on the ground, and let the rough bark of the ancient tree support my back. Cash sank down beside me, and the wind picked up and fluttered across the silence between us as we let the ground stabilize us and the breeze and the music ripple over us. A cowboy band played a song about a young man’s plaintive recollection of love among the wheat fields and how an older woman changed his life forever.

Something about the music created a tension between us, and we remained motionless until the song ended and people around us began to applaud. Cash broke the silence by suddenly repositioning her body and joking that she was sitting on a tree root, which was more intimacy than she could take from an oak.

When she moved over and settled down again, her shoulder was touching mine and I froze, feeling an electrical current, a tingling between us. I sank back into the tree, quiet and breathing.

Then involuntarily my breath caught and fell in cadence with hers; our chests lifted and eased in rhythm, each inhalation causing our shoulders to press into one another. When I thought I might not breathe again, she slid her arm through mine, hooking it like two girlfriends might, and pulled me in tight.

“Thanks for everything, Maggie.” Her tone was sweet and sincere.

“For nothing,” I said softly, almost inaudibly, and closed my eyes as my head swirled. For a moment I couldn’t tell if I was standing or sitting or lying down, only tumbling and falling and floating, the music carrying me away. Like cattle in the fields standing shoulder to shoulder, staring off into space as if having left their collective body, floating out into the wind, removing themselves from any pain or discomfort, and ignoring what the future might hold, we stared ahead saying nothing, our shoulders tethered to one another, our breathing synchronized, our bodies in rhythm, and our souls suspended in the wind.

I didn’t hear the drink cart rumbling around the side of the tree, but the next thing I knew, Cash had her arms around me and was on top of me, rolling me over as I caught sight of the metal wheels careening past us out of control, two grown men trying to stop it. I sank back onto the ground and let the full weight of her crush me.

My face buried in her shoulder, the smell of her perfume permeated her shirt at the collar and the wind whipped across our skin, cooling my neck, while her essence created an internal heat I could not describe or explain. She didn’t offer to pull herself off me until a disembodied voice above us interrupted the air.

“You women all right? Here, let me give you a hand. Close call there.”

I tried to get my bearings as Cash nearly lifted me off the ground, and I dusted off my pants, trying not to look at her directly.

The voice kept rattling off sentences about our near-accident.

“Probably shouldn’t have been sitting here so near the cart path,” Stretch Adams, with his sloped shoulders and balding head, bent to tell me personally.

Cash got between him and me and took over the direction of our next move. “We’re fine, thanks. Come on, Maggie.”

“Hey, wait up!” Stretch called, but Cash was shouting over her shoulder that we were late for something. Moments later we were farther down the river slightly over a hill and she had pushed me up against the trunk of an old tree and was looking me up and down as if inspecting for dings and scratches. “Are you okay, really?”

“Yes, what are we late for?” I was monitoring my breathing.

“I don’t know. I just didn’t want him around you.”

I tried to joke. “One of three unmarried men for fifty miles and you—”

“You don’t need to be married.” Her tone was serious and her face near mine. She looked deep into my eyes as if searching for something she knew I had but wouldn’t give up. I felt as if the prairie winds had taken up residence in my chest and were battering my lungs and fluttering my heart.

“Maggie, have you ever wanted someone. Just to run your hands over their skin and kiss every part of their body?” Cash spoke with an intensity I didn’t know she had, and I marveled there could be so much wind swirling around us and yet none in my lungs. I was certain I would pass out. “If you don’t feel that with someone, then they’re not the one. No matter what. But if you do…if you do feel it, then nothing else matters.” She let go of me and I stayed pinned to the tree for support.

“Are you talking about Stretch?”

She suddenly paced up and down in front of me and held her head in her hands as if I gave her a headache. “He’s not for you. None of them are.”

As if sensing he was the subject of conversation, Stretch approached from the distance and Cash backed away from me. I pulled myself together and walked back toward the festival as Stretch fell into stride alongside me.

“There you are! Thought the near-collision scared you off. Hey, I’ve got something for you.” He fished around in his pocket.

Cash didn’t wait to see what he was offering, the mood of our time together broken. Before I could stop her, she disappeared up ahead in the crowd.

Stretch produced a cowboy key ring he said he’d just bought for me. I had to give the man points for persistence, even if he flunked good taste. The yellow plastic cowboy looked demented and his horse satanic. “It’s the festival logo,” he explained, and I suddenly recognized it. “Thought I might buy you a piece of pie,” he added as inducement for spending time with him.

When I refused, he offered up drinks, a drive, or maybe a date later in the week, but all I could think about was where Cash had disappeared and the look on her face when she left. Managing to remain vague and distant, I told Stretch I had a lot on my mind these days and would have to take a rain check. He scowled, but his disposition improved slightly when I thanked him for his gift just before rushing away.