The Lost Husband (12 page)

I liked the veins in his forearms, and the way he rolled his shirtsleeves up past his elbows, even though it was cold. I looked at the way his jeans stretched over his kneecaps, and how worn the fabric was there. I wondered how long he’d had those jeans. I
guessed he’d bought them new at the feed store years before—dark blue, not prefaded—and then worn them and worn them until they were as soft as suede. I wanted to reach out to touch the fabric, but I didn’t.

At the end of the song, O’Connor turned the music down.

“The farmers’ market’s easy,” he said. “I’m not sure why Jean waited so long.”

“Maybe she wanted me to settle in first.”

“I’m sure she did.” Then he sized me up. “Are you settled in?”

I nodded. “Yes. Very.”

“She’s glad to have you here.”

“I’m glad to be here.”

“Think you’ll stay for a while?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “not forever. I’ll need to get a job at some point. A real job,” I added, not considering that my not-real job was his job, too. “What I mean,” I went on, “is that I probably ought to make more money. To save for college, if nothing else.”

“Nah,” O’Connor said. “College is unnecessary.”

I glanced over. “People have to go to college.”

“Why?” he asked.

“So they can get jobs and live a good life.”

“I take it you went to college,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And how much did you pay for all those years of drinking and sex?” he asked. “Fifty thousand dollars?”

“More,” I admitted.

“And now here you are,” he said. “Milking goats.”

“Okay,” I said. “But my life didn’t turn out like it was supposed to.”

“That’s true for everybody.”

“Not everybody,” I said. “Some people are lucky.”

He just glanced over and said, “Nobody is lucky all the time.”

“But I learned things in college!” I said. “I read Shakespeare. I studied Marx. I went on an archaeological dig!”

“You can read Shakespeare for free,” he said. “You can dig right here in the yard.”

“So you’re against school?”

“I’m against paying for it,” he said, looking over. “It’s a racket.”

“You can’t
not
send your kids to college.”

“None of that stuff’s going to be any use, anyway,” he went on. “The world’s going to fall apart pretty soon, anyhow.”

Either he was messing with me or he was crazy. Or both. “Fall apart?”

“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “We can’t keep going like this. Financial systems will collapse. Technology will run its course. Global warming, mass extinction. The whole shebang.”

“Okay,” I said, turning my attention back to the road. Time to shut it down.

“What you should teach your kids,” he said, “is hunting. And fishing. And how to hotwire a car. Things that will actually help them in the charred dystopian hellscape we’re headed toward.”

I cracked the window a little bit. “You don’t really think that.”

“Sure I do.”

“So,” I said, looking him up and down, “you’re like a crazy survivalist?”

“Survival’s never crazy,” he said.

I eyed his profile. “And a reader of way too much science fiction.”

“Is there such a thing as too much?”

“And you’re definitely not an optimist.”

“I’m just owning up to who we are,” he said. “Can you honestly see any other future for the human race?”

“I can see lots of other futures for the human race,” I said.

“Do you believe in any of them?”

“Yes! I believe in all of them!” Then I added, “Potentially.”

He tilted his head a little, as if toying with seeing things differently. Then he grinned. “Nah,” he said. “We’re doomed. Nature will take back over. We’ll scuttle like rats through the ruins of strip malls, shooting at each other and eating cockroaches to survive.”

“Awesome,” I said.

“But your kids’ll be okay,” he said. “That Tank’s a crafty one. And I’m already teaching Abby self-defense.”

I turned back to meet his eyes. “You’re teaching Abby self-defense?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

He shrugged. “One day I was telling the kids how I could kill a person just by looking, and she asked me to show her how.”

So that’s what they’d been practicing in the yard. “Why would she want to learn that?” I asked.

“All kids want to know that stuff,” O’Connor said. He frowned, amazed I didn’t know that already. “They like to feel powerful.”

It seemed like a strange new interest for Abby. Tank? Sure. He could turn a Scrabble board into a battlefield. But Abby?

“Don’t worry,” O’Connor went on. “We’re not at a lethal level yet. We’re still working on maiming.”

“Maiming, huh?”

He nodded. “She’s really into it.”

“That’s so weird,” I said, wondering how it was possible for O’Connor to know something about Abby that I didn’t. “I had no idea.”

“She’s a hard worker,” he said. Then he added, “They’re good kids, Libby.”

I nodded and gave him a smile. “That’s true,” I said. Though I was surprised by how good it felt to hear someone say it. “They really are.”

Chapter 10
 

We made it to the market just after nine, and I was surprised to find us parking in my old neighborhood—just a few blocks away from the house I’d lived in with Danny. The market had started up since I’d moved away.

The white tents of the vendor booths were already there. O’Connor backed up to one of them and hopped out to let the truck bed down. We sold the cheese in half-pint containers with stickers on the lids that featured a black-and-white photograph of the goat that Jean insisted was the most photogenic (Eleanor Roosevelt) and Jean’s brand name, Lucky Lady Farm. We kept the tubs in coolers, stuffed down among refreezable ice packs. When we arrived, I pulled out one tub of each flavor—jalapeño, garlic, and cilantro—along with a red-and-white checked tablecloth and a box of crackers.

I set out our sign, too, which featured Rosie the Riveter—the goat, not the girl—wearing a red-and-white polka-dot kerchief.
Jean would never admit it, but Rosie was her favorite—and also the mascot for Jean’s super-secret-recipe chevre, We Can Do It.

O’Connor also set up a boom box that played old-time western swing. When he saw me watching him, he said, “Jean says it lulls the customers into buying more.”

Then he sat on the truck bed and swung his feet to the music as we waited for customers. The music caught me by surprise, and I found myself resisting the urge to sway back and forth.

“Good, right?” O’Connor asked, seeming to notice me not dancing.

“What?”

“The music,” he said.

“It’s very catchy.”

“You can dance around a little if you like.”

“No, thanks,” I said.

O’Connor assessed me. “But you want to.”

“Not as much as I don’t want to look like a goofball.”

“It’s our band, you know.”

“Whose band?”

“Ours. Mine and Jean’s. And some other people.”

“You have a band?”

“That’s me, playing the bones. Hear that smacking sound?”

“The bones?”

“The chicken bones.”

“I didn’t know you guys had a band.”

“It’s kind of an Ernest Tubb tribute band,” he said. “We’re on hiatus right now.”

I regarded him for a minute. “What does Jean play?” I asked.

“The jug.”

“The jug?”

He pointed at the boom box. “Hear the
oomp-oomp
? That’s Jean, blowing into a jug.”

I listened as people started to filter into the market. It was a chilly day. My legs were cold inside my jeans, but I had three layers on top and a scarf. The breeze had turned O’Connor’s nose a little pink, but he wasn’t fidgeting the way I was, and I wondered if the fur on his face functioned as an extra layer. He offered to get me some hot cider from two booths down, but I said no—even though, in fact, I really would have loved some.

We kept our eyes on the people strolling in and got quiet for a minute before starting up the conversation again.

“Did you and Jean always come here together?” I asked.

“Never,” he said. “She does Austin and I do Houston.”

“Who’s doing Austin today?”

“Nobody,” O’Connor said. “We’re taking a break from Austin until you’re trained.”

“And then I’ll do Austin?” I asked.

“No, then I’ll switch to Austin.”

“Why switch?” I asked.

“She figures it might be nice for you to come home.” He shrugged. “She wants to make sure you have fun.”

“I’m not sure it matters if I have fun,” I said.

“It matters to Jean.”

Before long, customers started collecting in lines, wandering past booths, stopping to chat in clumps. I saw a few dogs go by, and some strollers. It was just as picturesque as I would have thought, though I found myself feeling a tiny bit nervous about dealing with customers. What if they didn’t like the cheese? What if I gave somebody the wrong change?

In fact, I did fine. Everybody was nice. At first. Until a former
neighbor walked up to our booth that first day and tasted three different cheeses before she recognized me.

“Oh, my God,” she practically shouted, throwing her arms wide and giving me an airy hug across the table. “I haven’t seen you in ages! What are you doing here? Is this your cheese? Are you a cheese farmer now?” Then, shifting from what you might call “exaggerated delight” down to “memories of sad things past,” she said in a kind of stage whisper, “How are you?”

Her name was Jessica Boone, and she was married to one of Danny’s old college buddies, a guy who everybody called “Boone Dog.” We’d been part of the same broad social circle, but even though Jessica had lived only two blocks away, we’d never really become friends. In fact, as I stood there, I could not even remember Boone Dog’s first name. But I did remember this about Boone Dog: He was the nicest guy in the world. Which had always fascinated me, because his wife was the opposite.

“I’m fine,” I said, nodding as an underscore. “I’m good.”

“And”—she looked me over—
“making cheese?”

Her voice made it sound ridiculous. “Yes,” I said, trying to counter with a voice of my own that made it sound pastoral and awesome. “The kids and I are living in the country on a farm.”

“That’s adorable,” she said, with so much emphasis on
“adorable”
that she changed its meaning to the opposite.

Now I remembered the trouble with retail: You’re stuck with your customers. O’Connor, who had been rummaging in the glove box for his wallet, came back around and touched my arm.

I turned.

“You’re freezing,” he said. “I’m getting you some hot cider whether you like it or not.”

“I’m really fine.”

“Whatever you say.”

Jessica watched him walk out of the booth, and, once he was gone, she leaned into me with a twinkle.

“That guy is super hot,” she said.

“You think?” I asked, following him with my eyes.

His shaggy hair was back in a ponytail this morning, and he had a light blue T-shirt with a Superman
S
on it under his work shirt and jacket. Of course, even with his hair back, every part of his face save the forehead and eyes was covered by his beard. All I saw, really, when I looked at him was a big, furry animal.

“Everybody hates the beard,” she admitted. “But he’s famous around here.”

“Famous?”

“We all call him the Hot Farmer.”

“You do?”

“Sometimes he’s the only reason I come here. Just to get an ogle.”

I wondered what Boone Dog would think about this confession. But Jessica had a way, I was starting to remember, of sharing pseudo-intimate information about herself in hopes of getting you to do the same thing back. Then, once she had your secrets, she told them to every single person she saw until she lost interest.

I reminded myself not to share.

Jessica sized me up. “And the two of you,” she said then, “are
making cheese
together?”

She made it sound X-rated.

I wasn’t sure exactly what we were talking about now. A little warning light flashed somewhere in my brain.
Caution!
But some other, feistier part of me wanted to be way past worrying or caring about people like Jessica Boone. Who cared? Women like that didn’t scare me! And then, in a moment I’d wind up regretting, I met her eyes.

“Yes,” I said, my voice just a hint X-rated itself. “We are making a
lot
of cheese.”

At her next expression, it all came back to me—the way Jessica saw all conversation as competition. And it took her about one second to remind me why I was an amateur and she was a pro.

“That’s so interesting!” she said. “I’d have thought you might still be, you know, in mourning. Wasn’t Danny the sweetest guy ever?”

The mention of Danny. Of course. It had been a trap. I’d just opened a door for Jessica straight into the tenderest place in my heart. She’d won, I’d lost—and regret flooded every cell in my body. There was no upside to what I’d just said. I couldn’t possibly win. If I was still devoted to Danny, then she’d make sure I felt pathetic. If I’d moved on, she’d make sure I felt disloyal. Which I suddenly did—up, down, and sideways. No matter what, there would be consequences—not the least of which would be Jessica posting to Facebook the announcement that I was dating O’Connor before she’d even left the market.