A Rich Man for Dry Creek / a Hero for Dry Creek

by Janet Tronstad

  “But it’s cold outside,” Laurel wailed.

  “That’s what kills the germs,” Robert responded matter-of-factly as he unloaded the plates from last night onto the counter. “Talking about germs—these old plates are a hotbed of activity.”

  Laurel moved back from the plastic tubs Robert was using to carry the dishes around. There was a tub for silverware, another for coffee mugs and another for punch cups. Half of the cups had lipstick stains on them and the other had spots of something or another.

  “It’s perfectly safe in here,” Jenny said. The sudsy water felt good on her hands, but she was still glad for the long johns she had on under her sweatpants. “Restaurants have health inspectors that come around and check out things like that.”

  “They do?” Linda said with a gulp. The younger woman paused in the act of pulling a platter down from the cupboard. The eyebrow with the silver ring in it rose in panic.

  “You mean you haven’t?”

  Linda shook her head. “Jazz—that’s Duane—never said anything about health inspectors. Maybe he’s done something about them. He takes care of all the business details. I’d better go ask him.”

  Jenny could hear Duane in the dining area of the restaurant putting salt and pepper shakers on the tables and getting the place ready to open. Linda walked out there and the mumbled sound of their voices reached back into the kitchen.

  “I hope they don’t get a fine or anything,” Jenny worried aloud. She was automatically washing glasses as she worked. She set the glasses in a large tub so that they could be rinsed with scalding water before they were set to dry. She couldn’t recall ever being in a restaurant that didn’t have a machine that washed dishes. “I wonder if you need things like a sterilizing dishwasher machine to pass all the rules.”

  “I doubt they can afford to buy any equipment yet,” Robert added. He doubted they had insurance, either. He’d have to remember to ask if they needed a small business loan. They’d never have collateral on their own to get one, but from what he’d seen they had a good shot at making a sound business.

  “I’m surprised no health inspector has shown up already. They can just come unannounced. Maybe they do it different when you’re not in a city.” Jenny moved one of the tubs so she could start on the silverware.

  “Maybe.” Robert shrugged as he wrapped one dish towel around his hand and offered another towel to Laurel.

  “For me?” Laurel’s voice came out in a surprised squeak. She backed farther away from Robert. “But I can’t—I’ve never even—not even at home. Why, I have a housekeeper.”

  By the time Laurel finished talking, she was at the doorway between the café’s kitchen and its main dining room.

  “I need to go to the house for something.” Laurel managed to smile as she stepped into the other room.

  “I thought that’d scare her off,” Robert said as he picked up a bowl from the rack of dishes to be dried. He rubbed the towel around its edges. “She’s not used to doing dishes.”

  “And you are?” Jenny looked at him skeptically. She still couldn’t believe how competently and willingly he was working. She couldn’t have paid anyone to work harder than this rich man was doing.

  Robert was standing in front of the counter where the dried dishes were setting. He had modified his tuxedo when he came over to the café. He’d taken off the black jacket and was wearing a yellow sweatshirt that had been hanging on a nail by the kitchen door. It had paint splatters on it. Jazz had said he’d used it when he painted the café and had not gotten around to throwing it away yet. Jenny noted that the shirt had a tear under the armhole and a burn spot where Jazz had leaned too close to the stove.

  Robert no longer looked like a rich man. His hair was mussed where he’d wrapped one of Mrs. Hargrove’s wool scarves around his head because he was walking between the barn and the café bringing over the dirty dishes. The weather outside was frigid. The cold air made his cheeks blotchy.

  It was more than that, however, Jenny thought. It was the look on his face that had changed. He no longer looked like a rich man because he no longer looked stressed. He smiled like he didn’t have a dime in the world.

  “Me? As a matter of fact, I’ve done a few dishes in my time,” Robert answered, and then plunged into his story. “Not so long ago, in fact, when I was visiting a friend of mine outside of Tucson.”

  “I can’t believe any of your friends would ask you to help with the dishes.”

  “The dishes were the fun part. The warm water felt good on the calluses I got on my hands from chopping wood. Took me a while to get the hang of it all. Long steady strokes worked best. You build up a rhythm that way.”

  Jenny stopped washing dishes and turned her full attention to Robert.

  There was only one explanation that came to mind. “You can’t possibly have lost all your money!” He must gamble or something. “Is that why you need to be on that list at my sister’s paper?”

  “Lost it? I didn’t lose any money. Fact is, the Buckwalter Foundation has made money this past year. How I don’t know, at the rate we’re giving it away. But, no, I didn’t lose my money. And—let me say this again—I don’t want to be on any list. I’m doing my best to get off of it.”

  Jenny heard the words, but she couldn’t make sense of what he was saying.

  “Well, if you’re trying to get off that list, why did you kiss me?” Jenny held up a frying pan that she was cleaning and frowned at it fiercely. It was a solid cast-iron pan usually used for frying bacon. “You must have known I’d tell my sister.”

  Jenny brought the pan down to the counter and attacked it again with a wet dishrag. Cast iron couldn’t be washed with the rest of the dishes. “Kissing me like that—how was that supposed to get you off the list? I thought you did it because you wanted to get on that list.”

  Robert watched Jenny scowl at the bottom of the cast-iron pan. Her jaw was set, but a thin sheen of pink spread over her cheeks. She was flustered.

  “You liked the kiss,” Robert said.

  Jenny looked up from her scouring and frowned at him. “I never said that.”

  “I’m going on faith.” Robert felt like whistling. “If you hadn’t liked it, you would have told your sister it was awful and you wouldn’t even think that would help me get on that list.”

  Jenny kept the frown and added a full-blown blush. “I don’t think—”

  Robert put his fingers on her lips. “You don’t need to think when it comes to kisses. Not then. Not now.”

  Robert bent his head and kissed Jenny. This time there were no cameras. No flashes. No audience. Just the two of them. And more steam than either one of them had ever seen before.

  “The hot water’s still running,” Robert finally said as he pulled away. The frying pan was pressing against the hot water handle and a steady stream of scalding hot water was filling the air with clouds of moist steam. The steam made Jenny’s cheeks pinker and her lips soft. “But hot water is good.”

  Robert bent to kiss Jenny again.

  Jenny wondered what was wrong with her. Every time this man kissed her she got warmer and warmer. Last time it was the lights that had confused her and made her think she was near a crackling fire. This time it was the heat. How did it get so hot in this kitchen when it was ten below zero outside?

  “Tropical,” Jenny whispered. She was trying to grab hold of her sanity and keep it. She felt as if she were under a spell that stopped time and created puffs of white steam. “It’s tropical in here.”

  “Perfect. It’s perfect in here,” Robert said as he pulled away.

  The moisture in the air made Jenny’s hair curve toward her face. Robert knew that somewhere in the chef apron pocket lurked a hairnet that would squash her hair even further. Jenny wore no makeup. The pink in her cheeks was from the heat and not from any brush.

  “You’re perfect.”

  Jenny started. The spell was broken. “No one’s perfect.”

  No one except Laurel, Jen
ny thought to herself. She could hardly believe Robert Buckwalter III was happy to help with the dishes. But there was no way she’d ever believe he would prefer the hired help to someone like Laurel. Laurel might be overdressed and she might be a snob, but she still was his kind. They belonged to the same social set. It was clear.

  “Why are you helping with the dishes?”

  Robert looked up.

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” she said. “Your mother is paying me to do the dishes and then you’re helping me anyway.”

  Robert shrugged. “I want to.”

  Jenny didn’t have an answer to that one. But she knew for sure something was off center. Who wanted to do dishes?

  There were twenty bins of dirty dishes. Jenny thought Robert would lose interest before the second bin was emptied. The novelty of doing dishes wore off fast, even to people who hadn’t done many in their life.

  But Robert stayed. He washed dishes and talked about his months in the desert. He explained about Bob and how good it felt to be free of the life of a rich man. Then he talked about his childhood and how much he still missed his father. He was curious about her brothers and sisters. She told him. He wanted to know how she felt about her parents. She told him.

  All the while, he washed and dried dishes. The stack of damp dish towels grew, but he didn’t complain.

  The phone call came when they were almost done with the dishes. It was ten-thirty and Linda and Jazz had started their famous spaghetti sauce simmering.

  “Oh, hi.” The phone was on the counter closest to Jenny and she clicked on it first. It was her sister.

  Jenny was still standing in front of the sink, but she moved back a little and used one hand to untie the apron strings wrapped around her waist.

  “I’m calling to talk to Robert Buckwalter. Is he around?” her sister asked.

  “Yes.” Jenny smiled over at Robert. “He’s right here.”

  “With you?” Jenny’s sister dropped to a cautious whisper. “Are you saying he’s with you?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “You two aren’t dancing or kissing or anything? I always seem to have this bad timing and catch you just when things are getting good.”

  “We’re washing dishes.”

  “Dishes! You’ve got to be kidding. I thought you’d at least be sitting down and talking or something.”

  “We have been talking. Just standing up and doing the dishes at the same time.”

  Robert almost winced. He hadn’t realized until just now how far from the mark his romancing was when viewed objectively. Women were independent these days, but they liked to know a man wasn’t totally without manners. He looked around. He didn’t even have a chair to offer her.

  He’d already called his pilot friend and made an arrangement to have him fly over and make a supply drop near Robert’s plane early tomorrow morning. Robert had even made plans to have his plane moved so it would be out in the open and make a good drop site.

  But Robert suddenly realized he had a lot riding on that plane drop. The more he talked with Jenny, the more he cared what she thought of him. A few boxes of food—most of it for other people, and hungry teenagers at that—might not be enough of a gift to say he cared about her.

  “Hey.” Robert walked over and tapped Jazz on the shoulder. The younger man was standing at a side counter, chopping onions to the beat of the music coming out of the headphones he wore.

  “Yeah.” The younger man pushed an earphone away from his ear so he could hear. He put a hand up and brushed away some tears from his eyes. “Man, them onions’ll get you. Ever chop an onion?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Oh, you’d remember all right.”

  Robert didn’t have time to talk about onions. Jenny would only talk to her sister for so long before the sister would want to talk business with him. “You don’t happen to have carnations, do you?”

  The younger man looked up. “Do they make the tears stop? I’ve heard there’s ways to chop onions without the tears. Never heard of carnations. Do you eat them, or what?”

  “I don’t know anything about onions and you shouldn’t eat carnations for any reason. I’m just asking about carnations. A lot of restaurants put cut flowers on the table. I thought you might have carnations you use.”

  “We have red candles.”

  Robert had never heard of a bouquet of red candles, but he was pretty sure it wouldn’t work.

  “People like them,” the younger man said. “They’re kind of romantic.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any vine-ripened tomatoes, do you?”

  Jazz shook his head. “We’ve got them in cans. Sauce or paste.”

  A can of tomato sauce wouldn’t make it, either.

  “What do you give your girlfriend when you want to get her something nice?”

  “I’ve had Earl put aside a set of tires.”

  Robert wondered if he was talking to the right guy. “Tires?”

  Jazz ducked and then offered hesitantly, “They’re snow tires. You need them around here this time of year and hers are thin. Besides, I was also going to give her a nose ring, too. She’s been wanting one.”

  The door to the café opened and the FBI agent and Francis Elkton, the rancher’s sister, came inside. They were talking quietly to each other and Robert noticed they had snowflakes on their hair.

  “Gotta go,” Jazz said as he went back into the front part of the café. “Customers, you know.”

  Robert nodded. He wondered if that FBI agent had any ideas about how to get a romantic gift in the middle of Montana with no stores in sight. There weren’t even wildflowers to gather. It was just snow and rocks outside.

  Linda picked up a pot of coffee and followed Jazz out of the kitchen.

  At least, Robert thought, he was now alone with Jenny. That was something. He could see the happiness in her face while she talked with her sister. He’d seen the affection on her face earlier when she spoke of her sisters and brothers.

  Now Jenny was someone who knew what it meant to love other people. He wondered if she had gotten any of that knowledge from reading the Bible like he’d done last night. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had.

  “My sister needs to know what story you’re offering,” Jenny called over to Robert. “She said the senior editors have been asking her.”

  Jenny could hardly believe that Robert didn’t want to be on that list. But her sister was adamant. She wasn’t sure she could help him get off, but she was going to try.

  Jenny gave the phone to Robert.

  “Have they said they’d trade stories?” Robert asked in the phone.

  “They said it needs to be something big—bigger than the bachelor story.”

  “I could tell them what I’ve been up to for the past five months—about being in the desert.”

  “Let me see.” The sister covered the mouthpiece on the phone and was obviously talking to someone. Finally she came back. “They said not unless it involves you eating wild locusts and taking religious vows to be a monk—a bed of nails would help.”

  Robert snorted. “Help who?”

  He thought further. “I did have a persecutor in the desert. A farmyard rooster. A cranky bird. Bit me once.”

  Robert heard the muffled sounds of talking at the other end again. “They asked if the bird has been certified by a priest as being possessed or if it’s been abducted by space aliens.”

  “What would space aliens want with Charlie?”

  “Maybe they’d want to study him.”

  “He’s just a farm rooster.” Robert was defeated. He was half tempted to say that he was in the midst of a religious makeover, but he didn’t want to joke around with that. The tabloids never knew when to stop. They knew what they wanted and it had to be sensational. “I could offer a Buckwalter Grant to space aliens. Broadcast it on radio frequencies. Ask them to come pick up a million-dollar check. Get some of those groups involved who scan the airwaves for messages.”

&nbs
p; “Hmmm, not bad.” He heard more muffled sounds as the sister conferred with her editors. “Not believable enough.”

  “Not believable! You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Well, we need our readers to trust us,” the sister said a little louder than normal. “We don’t fool around about money.” Her voice dipped and she whispered. “I think they’re holding out for the story of your engagement to Laurel what’s-her-name. That’s what they really want.”

  “I’m not engaged.”

  “Their sources tell them otherwise.”

  “Laurel is their source.”

  “I can’t confirm that.”

  “You don’t need to. I know what’s going on.”

  “Do you?”

  Robert wasn’t sure when they’d stopped talking about the story and had started talking about him. The sister didn’t even try to hide her resentment.

  “I can’t control what Laurel is saying.” Robert knew he was talking to both sisters. “I never proposed to Laurel. Cross my heart and hope to die—on a bed of nails if necessary. I’m telling the truth. I haven’t even seen Laurel for months. I think we went out on two dates in high school. That’s it. I’m not even her type and she’s certainly not mine. She’s a publicity hound. She’ll drop the idea of marrying me quick enough once I’m off that cursed list.”

  “Hmmm.”

  Robert thought the sister was softening.

  “Still, you could use the story,” the sister offered kindly. “Even a solid lead of an engagement—like ‘sources close to’—that kind of a thing. And a couple of photos of you kissing. Really, even the photos themselves would do. It would be enough to keep the editors happy.”

  “How much time do I have to come up with something else?”

  “We can give you until tomorrow at noon. If we absolutely need to we could go another day, but that’s pushing back our press time.”

  “I’ll call before then.”

  Robert handed the phone back to Jenny. He knew he couldn’t use a fake engagement story. It would ruin any chance he had with Jenny. But he had a day to think of something else.