He, too, hiked his butt up onto the tailgate and dug in to the lunch. "You're a good worker, but you must have other things to do. Why did you volunteer to help me?"
She finished off the apple half. "You remember Bart Wilbanks?"
He had shoved most Hatlow citizens so far out of his mind, there was no recalling them. Chewing, he shook his head. "Can't say that I do."
"You must know him. He's an old-timer. His place is out on the canyon."
A vague smattering of memory passed through Dalton's mind. "Yeah? So?"
"Back in the summer, he was working on his fence all by himself and he got so tangled in new barbed wire he couldn't get loose. He panicked trying to get free and cut himself all to pieces on the barbs,"
"Whoa. How the hell did he do that?"
"You know how it is when you stretch out a strand of new barbed wire off a roll? How it wants to roll itself back up? Somehow he got caught in it. It wrapped all the way around him and trapped him. He laid out in the sun all tied up with barbed wire and bleeding almost all day before his wife found him. They had to put him in the hospital."
Dalton chuckled, munching on his chunk of bread and savoring the yeasty taste. "You made that up, right?" He washed the bread down with a long swig of water.
Joanna tilted her head back and chugalugged a long drink, rivulets of water running from the corners of her mouth down onto her breasts. Dalton couldn't keep from staring. She had good breasts. He had sneaked enough glances at them to determine they weren't phony. She lowered the bottle and wiped her mouth and chin on her shirtsleeve. "True story."
"And did you say Bart's a little on the dim side?"
"I don't know about that. Evidently, he's smart enough not to go out working on a barbed-wire fence all by himself anymore. That's why I said I'd help you. I didn't want to have to drive out here later and rescue you." She popped her last bite of cheese into her mouth.
He paused, his water bottle poised in the air. He thought he saw a hint of a smirk on her lips as she chewed. She was pulling his leg again. He was sure of it. "Babe, the day will never come when you have to rescue me. Now, it might go the other way around, though. I might have to rescue you. You might get attacked by some damn horny rooster that just can't stand the thought of all those virgin hens all in one place."
Her mouth flatlined. "I'm not worried. But if you think there's a danger, maybe I should keep my shotgun handy. It'd make short work of an aggressive rooster."
His eyes widened. A shotgun-wielding woman wasn't his idea of a good time. He had been around any number of armed and well-trained females in the military. He hadn't been all that comfortable with that, either. "You've got a shotgun?"
"I certainly do. It's a twelve-gauge."
Good God. A twelve-gauge shotgun was an elephant gun, with a kick like a mule. "The hell you say. A twelve-gauge. And you can shoot it and remain standing?"
Her chin lifted as if he had insulted her. "I shoot at the chicken hawks if they come flying over."
A visual came into his mind and he suppressed a laugh. "You ever hit any?"
"As a matter of fact, I do."
He could no longer keep from laughing. "And where is this cannon?"
"I keep it beside the sink in the egg-washing room."
"At least I've been warned."
"When my dad was alive, he went bird hunting. Sometimes he took my sister and me with him. He taught both of us to shoot."
"Darlin', I don't know what kind of birds your dad hunted, but a twelve-gauge shotgun would blow the small birds that live around here to smithereens. You'd be lucky to find a feather, much less end up with meat for the table. Most people use a twelve-gauge to hunt geese or something big."
A frown formed between her brows. "Oh. Well, maybe it isn't a twelve-gauge." She flopped her wrist in dismissal. "Well, whatever it is, it works."
"Don't you ever buy shells for it? You have to know the gauge to buy shells."
"No. I got all of my dad's after he passed on. My mom and sister didn't want his gun or the shells, either."
"Your dad's gone, huh?"
"He died, oh, ten years ago. He had cancer. He was too young to die."
"How old was too young?"
"Fifty-five. It was hard on all of us, especially my mom."
Remembering that Earl Cherry had been fifty-four at his death, also ten years ago, an unexpected guilt nagged at Dalton. He hadn't returned to Hatlow for the burial. Out of the Marine Corps only a couple of years, he had just started his freelance photography business in LA. He couldn't recall thinking that Cherry's death might have been hard on anybody. Hell, he had been glad to see the fucker go.
"You said you were in a jungle in Thailand," Joanna said, disrupting his trip through the halls of his memory. "Were you taking pictures?"
He nodded. "Flowers. Rare orchids that grow wild. I was helping this scientist. He wanted good pictures to show how they look in their natural habitat. He thought it was important to have a pictorial record because smuggling is about to wipe some of them out."
"Really? People smuggle flowers?"
"Yep."
"Huh. I guess there's someone somewhere who'll steal anything." She sat there, her ankles crossed, swinging her feet. "I've never seen a real orchid more than once or twice in my whole life. Why would people smuggle them? If they want them so bad, why don't they just grow them?"
"I'm no flower expert, but according to this guy who was, the domestically-raised flowers don't have the same aura and mystery as the wild ones. Now, me? I thought they all looked alike."
He screwed the lid onto his empty bottle and dropped it into the grocery sack. "This guy said avid collectors think growing them is too expensive and time-consuming. Some of the damned things take ten years to bloom. Ergo, smuggling."
She finished off her water, too, and handed him the bottle. "You have to know a lot about a lot of different things to do what you do, don't you?"
"Not especially. But if I have time, I usually study up on what I'm gonna shoot. It makes the job a little easier if I'm not totally stupid. Now, combat. I don't have to study that. It's elemental."
"You're working on a new book now?"
"Yep. My last trip to the Middle East."
"It's a book of pictures?"
"Small amount of narrative. I'm not a great writer. But, babe, I'm a damn fantastic photographer. People tell me I’ve got an instinct for the dramatic. In my head, I see exactly how a scene or a subject will look frozen on a piece of paper."
"Where'd you learn how to take pictures like that?"
"The Marine Corps. The Marine Corps taught me everything. About everything."
"Clova has all of your books. I've only looked at the one about the mountains. I've always wanted to go to the mountains. Those skiing pictures are so good."
"Hey, thanks. Some of those are from a piece I did for National Geographic…On extreme skiing." Thinking back on that adventure, he snorted. "I damn near killed myself on that shoot. I don't ski and I don't understand those who do. Especially that wild shit on those steep slopes. It's dangerous as hell. I had to do some of those shots hanging out of a helicopter, which, in itself is a little hair-raising."
"It looks to me like you've done a lot of things more dangerous than skiing."
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "Matter of perspective, babe. Matter of perspective." He slid off the tailgate and gathered up their lunch leavings. "How about it? You ready to go at it again?"
"Sure am."
She hopped off the tailgate a little too enthusiastically. He suspected she was faking. He also suspected she'd had enough, but unless she cried uncle, he couldn't afford to give her a reprieve. He had to get this fence job finished. Besides getting to the bank, he had get his mom healed up and see a man about an oil well. And now he had to look into the situation with his little brother's bastard child. He couldn't return to LA with a clear conscience without accomplishing all of that.
Beyond that, he didn't k
now why, but he liked having Joanna Walsh for a work companion. She wasn’t a drama queen and she had common sense about what to do. Her help was making the fence building job go faster.
Late afternoon came and the orange sun hung in the west, turning the landscape to a red-gold haze. After he stretched and secured the last wire, he declared the fence-building job finished.
“Should we do a cheer?” she asked.
“Babe, I don’t have the energy left to do a cheer. And I suspect you don’t either.”
On the way back to the ranch house, they bumped along at a snail’s pace in the work truck in silence until she said, "I heard you were in Iraq. There's three people from Hatlow in Iraq. Roy Elkins and Truman Johnson's boys and Bill Morgan's daughter. She's a nurse."
The names meant nothing to Dalton. "Not a fun place to be. But most of our folks over there believe in what they're doing. They're more worried about getting screwed over by the politicians over here than about getting killed over there. I’ve shot pictures of heroics I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I want to honor them with my book."
"How many wars have you taken pictures of?"
"More than I care to recall. There's a war going on somewhere in the world all the time. Being an objective witness to just how fu—how savage human beings can be is an onerous task for one small man."
He was proud of himself for catching himself on the F word. He didn't want to see her ears bleed.
"I can't imagine the kind of life you have," she said, "going all over the world to take pictures. I couldn't even get along living in Lubbock. That's why I'm here."
"I've never regretted the path I took. I'm never bored."
"Then I guess that makes you one of the lucky ones."
Once he had thought that. Lately, he wondered. After his last trip, he felt weary, worn and not excited to return to another hellhole. He had seen his own mortality. He had begun to wonder if the next bullet or bomb had his name on it. "Do you have regrets about your chosen path?"
"No. I'm happy where I am. But I know a lot of people who aren't."
They reached the ranch and he brought the work truck to a stop behind the dually.
"Are you going to see your mom?" she asked.
"After I get cleaned up and get something to eat." He slid out of the truck with every joint and muscle protesting. Back in LA, besides swimming every day, he sometimes worked out in a health club, but he couldn't remember the last time he had done so much strenuous work for a sustained period. Just one more reminder that he was getting old and he hadn't taken very good care of himself. Just one more fact that made him wonder if it was time to change directions.
He limped around the front end of the truck and opened the door for Joanna to climb out, but she just sat there. "I don't think I can move," she said.
He offered her his hand. "Come on, Red. You're not gonna quit on me now, are you?"
"Red? Oh, my gosh. Am I that sunburned?"
He found the energy to chuckle. "I was talking about your hair."
She looked at him with a thousand-watt smile. He smiled back and took a few seconds and let his eyes feast on her face. She was hot and sweaty and sunburned indeed, and her makeup, whatever she had worn, was gone. She didn't seem to care and it was just as well. She was pretty without it.
"No one's ever called me Red," she said, then laughed. "Is that better than babe?"
Damn, he liked her.
Chapter 13
Dalton stood with his hand extended. She took it and climbed out slowly, letting out a groan when her feet hit the ground. "I've got to gather the eggs.”
She looked spent, but her face held an expression of resolve as she clapped her cap on her head.
"I'll help you," he said. "It won't take long with the two of us." After she had worked so hard helping him, he could stoop to help her gather eggs one more time.
She nodded. "Thanks. I never turn down help. I'll go get the baskets."
She came out of her little room and led the way to the chicken yard and let them through the gate. They approached the first coop together. "Look," she said, "let's do this like we did this morning. I'll take these on the left and you—"
An ominous sizzle and hiss stopped them.
An adrenaline burst shot through his gut. Fuck!
She stopped dead still. "Oh, my God," she whimpered and swung a wild-eyed look at him.
There was no mistaking the sound. He scanned a 180 degrees but saw nothing. "Be still." He kept his voice low, not wanting to excite her any more. "I can't see it. Can you?"
"No. I—I think it's on my left. Maybe behind the coop." Her voice held a quaver.
Fuck! He had no weapon of any kind. There was a good chance the varmint would slither away if left alone and unthreatened. Then again, to be hissing and rattling, it already felt threatened. It had probably come for eggs. And if it found food successfully, it would return.
He didn't like the idea of either Joanna or his mother facing a rattlesnake. His eyes darted everywhere until he spotted a three-foot-long piece of two-by-four securing the coop's door flap. "That two-by-four on top of the chicken house. Is it nailed down?"
"N-no."
"Don't move a muscle." He stepped gingerly to the right and lifted the two-by-four from the roof. He eased around the back of the coop, coming up on the opposite side. There he saw the snake coiled like a rope at the corner of the shack, its triangular head risen to strike. The damn thing was thick, and it had to be four feet long. He knew two things: It could strike quicker than the blink of an eye and he had to move fast.
He raised the board and struck. Thwack!
The rattler twisted and writhed on the ground, its neck broken. Dalton finished it off with the two-by-four and his boot heel.
He glanced in Joanna's direction. She had sunk to her knees, her face covered with her hands. He threw the two-by-four back onto the roof, went to her and squatted beside her. She was shaking all over. "You okay?"
She began to sob in great gulps. "N-no....I'm n-not okay."
He rubbed her back up and down with one hand. "I got him. He can't hurt you now. Everything's all right."
She braced a hand on his knee and stood up, wiping her nose with the heel of her hand. "I have to go home. Right now. I have to go home." She turned and stumbled toward the gate.
"Wait a minute...."
But she didn't stop. She fumbled the gate open, stumbled through but didn't close it. "When you go see your mom, don't tell her about the snake."
He got to his feet and followed her, pausing long enough to latch the gate. He sure didn't want to risk all those friggin' chickens getting out of their pen at sundown.
She was headed on a crooked path toward her truck. He quickstepped behind her. When he reached her she was trying to dig her keys from her jeans pocket, but the tail of his oversize shirt and her trembling prevented it.
"Here," he said, starting to be concerned about her, "let me do that." He pulled her against him, shoved his fingers into her jeans pocket and found her keys. He handed them to her. "You sure you're okay to drive?" She reached for the door, but he held it closed. "I'm not sure you should be driving—"
"I can drive," she snapped, yanking on the door latch.
"Okay." He lifted his hands in surrender, then pulled the door all the way open and held it for her. She climbed onto the driver's seat and fumbled the keys into the ignition with a shaking hand.
"Don't worry about the eggs," he said, stunned at hearing himself say it. "I'll get 'em for you."
"You don't have to. They can wait." She fired the engine, giving it too much gas. It came to life with a loud roar.
"I said I'll get 'em. And I will." He raised his voice to be heard over the engine noise. "I don't know how to wash 'em, but I'll put 'em in the refrigerator for you."
"Fine. Please. I have to go."
He closed the door and she drove away, leaving him to worry. About her.
* * *
What the hell was a snake doing slinking around in September? Weren't they all supposed to be asleep by now?
Joanna lay in a bathtub of warm bubbles up to her neck, waiting for the shakes to go away. Her stomach had roiled all the way home, and she had barely made it into the house before it rebelled and she hurled what little she had eaten all day. Her heart continued to pound, and she still felt a buzz all over her body.
She hadn't seen a snake in the chicken yard in a long while. So long, in fact, that she had become complacent about looking out for one. And she had never seen a rattlesnake there. In fact, in spite of living in the middle of a rattlesnake haven, she had never seen one up close and personal, ever. A rat snake or an ordinary old bullsnake that came to steal eggs didn't scare her. But a rattlesnake terrified her. Shit. Reimagining the rattle sent another shiver up her spine.
She couldn't make herself stop thinking about two years ago when Toby Patterson, a local teenager, had been bitten on the hand while picnicking. He didn't die from it, but he came close. Now, more than twenty surgeries in three major hospitals later, he had lost twenty percent of the use of his hand and arm. Gossip said his medical bills had come to a million dollars. Hatlow's churches and citizens still held bake sales, raising money to help his family pay them.
What would she have done if Dalton hadn't been there? No answer to that question came, but the thought of him as her knight in shining armor brought on new and different distress. How illogical was that? One was just as hard to put out of her mind as the other.
She willed her concentration to Alan Jackson's mellow voice crooning from the CD player in the bedroom and the haunting lyrics of "Red on a Rose." That endeavor turned out to be a mistake because the song was a ballad about a man's deep love for a woman, something Joanna had never known. How nice would it be to have someone who cared about her all the way to his soul, someone who was strong and would always look out for her, someone who would hold her and tell her she was safe?
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