by Leslee Green
Once the old woman was comfortable inside the can, tucked down inside out of sight, an excited smile appeared on her face. “I brought you something.”
“How do you know where I live? Did you go through my mail?”
“Just look at what I brought you!”
For part of a split second, Linda entertained a brief hope that the woman would have something exciting to offer her, but it was quickly lost. The old woman slowly raised a plastic bag filled with something that was probably aluminum cans and held it out to her, very proud of what she was offering.
“I don’t need those, thanks.”
“You don’t even know what’s in it.”
“I’m pretty sure I know.”
“Just open it.”
Reluctantly, Linda took the bag and opened it. It was full of aluminum cans.
“Oh... good.”
“They’re not yours, they’re from your neighbors.”
"Even better," Linda said with dry, disappointed sarcasm, wondering if she herself had lost her mind.
“The one with the cinders.”
“The cinders?” Linda asked, and just then noticed a particular smell coming from inside the bag. She saw, on the rim of one of the beer cans, a small trail of black ash. Setting the other cans on the ground, she removed the can with the ash and shook it. A crushed cigarette butt popped out and she caught it in her hand and held it up in the porch light to see it better.
Quickly, she hid the butt in her hand and turned to make sure no one had seen it.
“This is perfect! How did you have any idea I need this? Why did you come here?”
“Haven’t I answered that? Why don’t you just go inside and finish getting ready.”
Linda didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have a lot of time however, and decided to just go with it.
“Okay but...” She still had the bag of trash from the house she was supposed to take out, “I need to put this in there.”
“Yeah,” the woman said as if that was a given. She held her arms out to receive the bag of garbage.
Linda reluctantly handed it to her, confused, but somehow still compliant as usual with the strange woman.
“Okay, go,” the old woman said as she shrank down into the can, holding the garbage.
"Are you...?" She watched as the old woman struggled to close the lid on herself, and then did. "Okay," Linda said.
When Linda re-entered the house, she behaved as if nothing was out of the ordinary. After a few minutes, a truck pulled up out front and Blake, like a gentleman, got out and walked up to the door and knocked.
As Linda approached the door to answer it, Emily and Caroline looked desperately to their mother to put a stop to it. She motioned to them to stay out of it.
"Linda," her stepmother said firmly, "do not open that door." Linda turned around with her hand on the handle. "Did you forget something?" her stepmother asked, her two sisters smiling delightfully.
"No, I don't think so," Linda said innocently.
“Let me remind you then. Before you leave, I still need you to find that cigarette butt on the front lawn.”
“Oh, I did. I put it in the dish outside your door just like you said.”
Furious, her stepmother kept her cool and responded. "You didn't mention it."
“Oh. I must have forgotten.”
Linda turned the knob and opened the door, hiding a cheeky smile from her stepfamily.
“LINDA!” her stepmother shrieked, shaking the house again and starling Blake half to death, who was standing on the other side of the open door.
Linda turned around to see what she had to say. Seeing Blake, her stepmother’s demeanor became very pleasant again. “Be home before midnight. I would hate to stay up all night worrying about you,” she said insincerely, and then disappeared down the hall.
At the door stood Blake, wearing nice boots and a clean hat and holding a handful of wildflowers, smiling. He saw the two fuming stepsisters in the hall.
“Everything alright?” he asked.
“Let’s go,” she said and walked past him, leaving him smiling at her two sisters.
“Wow, how old are you? Like thirty?” Emily asked.
Blake, offended, answered, "I'm twenty-seven."
Caroline looked at the makeshift bouquet in his hand. “Did you get those off the ground or something?” she asked.
“Where else would I get wildflowers?” Blake responded and turned to follow Linda up the driveway.
Furious, Caroline slammed the front door.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Linda and Blake drove along the country lane with the headlights bouncing on the raised springs of the truck. Linda was nervous, realizing that this was actually happening, but also excited.
There was a lot she wanted to tell him, but she felt like she needed to wait for the perfect moment.
“Do you want to go get a drink?” he asked.
“No.”
Blake, not expecting that answer, continued, “Do you want to just go to a bar and play pool?”
“Umm, no.”
Blake didn’t understand.
“Are you... not old enough to drink?”
Linda sucked through her teeth, pulling her lower lip back, pretending the situation was really bad.
“This isn’t... illegal or anything...?” Blake asked.
“For two fully clothed people to be riding in a truck together in their own personal space, making no physical contact whatsoever? No, that’s not illegal Blake.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, really? What did you mean?”
Blake turned bright red.
“I’m kidding,” Linda said, “I know what you meant and, don’t worry, you’re fine.”
“You’re not going to tell me how old you are?”
“Age is just a number, baby,” she said, putting out one hand to rub his shoulder and trying to sound creepy, and succeeding.
“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?”
“Absolutely not," she said and pulled her hand away.
"Alright, I have an idea," Blake said and made a turn.
Linda trusted him and didn't question him about where they were going. There was so much to tell him in due time, but first, she had an absolutely burning question to get to the bottom of.
“Blake, how did you find out who I was after the dance?”
“I didn’t.”
Linda felt disappointment and even a little embarrassment, suddenly realizing the possibility that maybe, like her sisters, she had assumed incorrectly that he had come to the stables to find her.
“So you didn’t come to The Stagecoach looking for me?”
“I did! I followed a trail of clues to track you down.”
“What clues?”
“At the dance, you were wearing one earring, so I figured you had dropped the other. I found it where you flew off the bull.”
“That’s very sleuth-like of you but that’s not a very strong clue.”
“You’re right, but it’s a small town and there’d only be one place to buy a pair of glass earrings, so I drove down Main Street looking around. I didn’t know where to start, but then I saw the dress you were wearing in a shop window.”
“Must be a popular dress.”
“No, it was the exact dress. When I walked into the store, I saw a flake of sawdust on the hem.”
Linda thought about the implications of what this meant concerning her “fairy godmother.”
“Did you wear the dress once and then return it?” Blake asked.
“Technically, yes.”
“That’s very frugal of you.”
“Yes, I’m very poor.”
“Anyway, I looked around the shop and, sure enough, there was a rack of earrings with the very same ones hanging on them!”
“That still doesn’t explain how you figured out where I was, or who I was.”
“I still don’t know who you are. But at the time, I asked the s
hopkeeper if she knew someone that looked like you.”
“How did you describe me?”
“It was very flattering, don’t worry.”
Linda smiled.
Blake continued, “But the shopkeeper hadn’t seen a single person come around that liked doing cartwheels through the air and falling on her face.”
Linda chuckled. “Then what?”
“Well, I just about gave up!”
“But then...?”
“But then, I walked out of the shop, and there was a really old woman standing there.”
Goosebumps stood the small hairs on Linda’s arm up, and she listened in disbelief.
“She told me,” Blake went on, “that I could find what I was looking for down at the Stagecoach Stables.”
“And then?”
“Then she disappeared.”
“She disappeared!!?”
“I mean, not literally! She just went into an alley with a bunch of trash cans.”
"Oh," Linda said, exhaling. She still didn't know how to make sense of her fairy godmother.
"I guess she was a friend of yours because she was right. After that, I came down to the stable and saw you and your student down in the arena, and then you acted weird and I left. By the way, that little girl touched my butt a lot. Like a lot a lot.”
“You’re fine. Why did you want to come and find me so badly in the first place?” She took her eyes off the road ahead and looked at him, wanting to gauge his answer accurately.
Blake slowed the car down to a stop, pulled the parking brake, and looked back into her eyes.
“We’re here.”
They were in the parking lot of Stagecoach Stables.
Linda said sarcastically, “Great. My work.”
“Let’s go for a ride.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, come on, it’s been a long time since I’ve been on a trail ride.”
Linda shrugged and got out of the truck. Only a thin sliver was left of the moon and there wasn’t much light to see by as they made their way to the stable building, but once they were there Linda unlocked it and let them in and turned on some light so they could see.
Blake walked around the stable, looking at horses, but now and then he would come close to her and the idea that they were alone together somewhere they were not supposed to be gave her a thrill she did not recognize. Something from deep within her body was encouraging her to seize an opportunity, but she didn’t understand what the hurry was or the goal and tried to calm her fluttering nerves.
She opened two large tack boxes and one of them had a saddle rack in it with some saddles.
“Do you know how to saddle a horse?” she asked.
"I know a thing or two," Blake said.
“Take Mary,” she said, motioning towards Mary’s stall. “She’s very well broke, and you’re probably tired of getting bucked.”
Blake approached Mary and touched the side of her head with his palm. "Hello, Mary," he said and opened the gate on her stall.
Carl, waking up from his sleep, stuck his head over his gate to see what the fuss was about.
"Not tonight, Carl," Linda said to him and opened a different gate, releasing another horse.
Blake noticed Carl’s curiosity and approached him.
“What about this little guy?”
“This is Carl. He’s a mule.”
“He looks small. Was his mother the donkey?”
“Yes.”
“Then technically he’s a hinny. You should call him a hinny now.”
“I will... not do that.”
“Why not?”
“Mule is easier.”
“How is mule any easier?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
They walked the two horses they were going to ride over to the saddle rack.
“These aren’t your horses, right?” Blake asked.
“Nope.”
“Will we get in trouble?”
“Only if we get caught.”
Blake automatically loved anything that involved a risk and found a saddle blanket for Mary. They saddled their horses.
They led the animals out of the stable and Linda turned the lights out. It was almost pitch black.
When they were both mounted, Blake asked. “Do you want to use a flashlight or anything?”
“No, it’ll just spook the horses.”
“But I can’t see anything.”
“You don’t need to see anything, the horse can.”
“I can’t even see the ground.”
“That’s okay, we know where the ground is.”
Blake was smiling then, but they couldn’t see each other in the dark.
They gave the horses a kick and they took them along on a trail stamped out through a neighboring field which opened up wide and flat when they were in the middle, revealing the stars in the big Montana sky.
The horse knew the way on her own and Blake leaned back and stared straight up into the sky as they walked along.
“I love Montana,” he said.
“Is it your favorite state?”
“What else would be my favorite state?”
“I don’t know, California?”
"I've never been to California," Blake said, and only when she felt a feeling of relief from this statement did Linda realize that her sisters had actually succeeded in making her feel jealous and bad about herself the other day.
“They don’t have rodeos in California?”
“There’s a lot of rodeos.”
“I love Montana too,” she said.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love touring. I love Australia. There’s nothing like being out on the rodeo circuit. But there’s nothing like being at home either.”
“I wish I could leave for a while too.”
“Where would you go?”
“On the rodeo circuit! I wanted to be a barrel rider.”
"Well, why don't you?"
“What do you mean? I don’t have a horse! I don’t have any money. I don’t even have any barrels. Plus, I’m too old to start now.”
"You're not too old. Twenty's not too old." Blake listened for her response and tried to see her in the dark. She didn't reply. "You're not a teenager, are you?" All he could see was her making the teeth sucking face again. "Yikes," he said and looked back up at the sky.
But trees came overhead and the horses cut to the right through a trail along the edge of a wood leading towards the road. The horses naturally moved single file onto the narrower path and Mary took the lead.
It was a little harder to talk to each other that way so they just enjoyed the trees and the noises and eventually came to the fence at the road and the horses turned back towards the stables, then Linda rode up beside Blake again as they walked.
“Want to race?” Linda asked.
“No, this is nice.”
“Darn. It was a trick, that horse is so old she’s practically about to keel over, she’d never win.”
Once he knew there was a challenge involved, Blake felt differently. “Now I kind of want to try to beat you, but I don’t want to kill the horse.”
“We’ll just walk. I’ll show you something.”
“Okay.”
They rode for a while and came upon an old stagecoach positioned at the edge of the driveway that led into the Stagecoach Stables. It was a legitimate antique, but obviously not worth enough to steal or it wouldn’t be there anymore, though it did seem entirely functional at first glance, and Linda believed that it was.
Linda said, "On a trail around here somewhere, an old stagecoach broke an axle and the wheel fell off and it was left on the road. The stagecoach became an obvious landmark to reference to when referring to this area, and so eventually the town that built up nearby was called Stagecoach."
“Is that really where it came from?”
“Doesn’t seem too farfetched to me.”
Blake, interested in the antique and seeing better in
the dark now that his eyes had adjusted, dismounted Mary and she stayed put and ate grass.
“Come on,” he said to Linda while climbing up onto the stagecoach. The old wood and metal creaked as he boarded it.
“You’re pretty brave,” she said to him.
He bounced up and down on the leaf springs holding up the driver’s seat, pretending to hold reins out in front of him. “It’s fine, come on.”
Linda dismounted and set her horse’s reins over the fence by the road and climbed up into the seat next to Blake. The small seat brought them very close together. He pretended to offer the reins to her.
“Are you driving or am I?”
“You go ahead,” she said, and as he pretended to smack the reins down, a smile and a contentment came to her that she didn’t know if she had felt before. She felt like she was taking her first breath of fresh air, and at the same time felt like it was hard to breathe. Sitting on the motionless stagecoach, she appreciated that they weren’t going anywhere and didn’t have to be.
She looped her arm into his, not knowing what he would think of it, and put her head on his shoulder. He had no idea the admiration she felt for him, and she imagined that to him, she was just another stranger in a sea of fans. But he was far more than that to her after watching him progress for all those years. All his successes and failures. And now he was flesh and bone and muscle that she could feel in his arm through his shirt.
“Is this the original stagecoach from the story?” Blake asked her.
“I don’t think so, the original one was broken. This one was my great grandfathers or something.”
“And now your mom inherited it?”
"She's my stepmom. And she stole it as far as I'm concerned."
Blake stopped pretending to drive.
"Your stepmom stole this stagecoach?"
She unhooked her arm from his.
“My family owned this thing and the stables for ninety something years since they were built, and it should have gone to me but my dad died and my mom is gone too and this woman my dad married inherited it.”
“Don’t you legally get at least half?”
“It’s a long story.”
“This wagon’s moving pretty slow, I think we have time.”
