Coming Home to Texas

by Allie Pleiter

  Nash had to agree. “Hard to date on a bicycle. And your dad?”

  “Dad likes cars, but since he’s been out of work he don’t pay much attention to anyone. I think he and Mom are splitting soon. They think I can’t tell, but come on. I’d have to be blind. Marny’s folks split up right after her dad lost his job. We’re just hoping her mom doesn’t make her move to Waco once school’s out.”

  That was a lot for a boy his age to be handling on top of school. “Waco’s not that far.”

  Mick groaned. “It is without a car.”

  Nash took another long drink. He thought about what it had been like to zoom down the road with Ellie beside him, her hair flying every which way. And then he thought about how it would feel to be denied the freedom of the open road. His heart pinched in on itself, and he had to tell his hand not to reach for the pair of twenty-dollar bills sitting in his wallet. “When you finish those shifts, give me a call. I’ll come over and help get you up and running.”

  He saw it then. That startled look kids got when they realized someone actually gave a hoot about how life felt for them. Lots of teens expected the world to love them, practically walked around demanding it. But some kids? They seemed to forget anyone even ought to notice.

  “Yeah,” Mick said, the hint of a smile crossing his usually sour face. “Okay, I will.”

  Chapter Ten

  On the third week of the after-school program, as they drove to the Blue Thorn Ranch, Jose leaned his head out the window of the church van like a dog and said, “This is dumb.”

  Nash was amazed they’d gotten to the Blue Thorn entrance before one of the boys made a crack like that. The wave of derisive eye rolling that had met his announcement last week could have knocked a lesser man flat.

  “It’s not dumb,” he replied, glad Ellie couldn’t hear Jose. “And keep thoughts like that to yourself once we get on the ranch. The Blue Thorn means a lot to the Buckton family, and they and the girls need our help. You’re going to learn a bit about what they’re doing, and then you’re going to teach the girls how to change a spark plug. A cultural exchange of sorts.”

  “I’d like to exchange a few things with Caroline Ivers, that’s for sure,” Billy said as he nudged Jose’s shoulder.

  “You keep that to yourself, too. And your hands, your words, probably even your eyes.” Most of the girls in Ellie’s class were a quiet kind of pretty—not the popular, decked-out kind of pretty, but sweet and clean even if rough around the edges. If only these boys could learn now that what made a girl stand out in high school could easily lose its charm out in the adult world. Still, he couldn’t complain. He’d used the chance to hang out with the girls as leverage to get the boys to agree to this little adventure Ellie had dreamed up, anyway. “There they are—they beat us here.”

  Ellie stood next to Gunner’s minivan with the girls from her class. He was glad to see that both the boys and the girls had followed directions and worn boots and long pants. Even though it was a warm April day, Ellie had explained to him that those things were necessary out in the pastures where they were going.

  The boys piled out of the church van to stand in a posturing clump opposite the girls.

  “Hello, boys,” Ellie said cheerfully.

  “Hi,” Leon murmured.

  Nash cleared his throat loudly and glared at the boys.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Ellie,” they said in reluctant unison.

  Ellie raised an eyebrow at Nash, clearly surprised and not a little impressed. Nash felt a pleasant pang in his stomach that his first goal for the day had just been met. The stereotype of the well-mannered Southern boy evidently hadn’t caught on with his current students. Not yet, anyway, but he was out to change that if he could.

  “Miss Ellie,” Nash began, “why don’t you explain to everyone what it is we’re doing today.” Ellie had explained it to him, but he still found the whole thing odd and rather amusing.

  “Sure,” Ellie replied. “Everyone come over here and I’ll show you.”

  She walked them over to the side of the barn. Leaning up against it was something that looked like a telephone pole with a set of giant street brooms attached lengthwise—as if someone had taken the roller brush out of a vacuum cleaner attachment and blown it up to twenty times its normal size.

  “It’s springtime, and the bison want to get rid of their winter undercoat. That’s a good thing, because that downy undercoat is exactly what we want. It’ll shed off naturally eventually, but it’s much better for us—and for them—if they brush it off themselves.”

  “Can’t you just cut it off, like my mom does to our sheepdog every summer?” the tallest of the girls asked with a giggle.

  “You can’t, Lucy. Or, more precisely, you shouldn’t.” Ellie looked at the boys. “Would any of you want the job of shearing one ton of angry-to-be-cooped-up bison?”

  “No, ma’am,” Leon piped up immediately. Skinny as he was, Nash guessed Leon would be snapped like a twig by even the smallest of the bison. Good. It might help his law-enforcement work if the boys were to realize just how dangerous bison were, and why it was such a bad idea for anybody to be taking potshots at the herd. They still hadn’t solved the mystery of who was agitating the Blue Thorn herd, but Nash held to his conviction that the boys probably knew whoever was in on the stunt. Raising their awareness to the dangers of messing with the animals was the other reason he’d agreed to today’s field trip.

  “Exactly. Both you and the bison would end up hurt. And, trust me, you’d get the worst of it,” Ellie said. “So instead of us shearing them, we give them the tools to do it themselves.”

  “You mean...?” Marny pointed to the brush.

  “Yes,” Ellie finished for her. “You’re looking at a bison hairbrush. There are six of them stationed around the pastures, and we’re going to go out and collect the down and hair off them.”

  “Eww. I bet it smells.” One girl wrinkled her nose.

  “It’s a lot less messy than some of the other jobs around here, Ina Jean. And no, bison hair doesn’t smell at all. Here.” Ellie produced a patch of matted brown hair she had sitting on the fencepost. “It smells sweet, actually.”

  No one believed that, not even Nash, until Davey grabbed it and took a big dramatic sniff. His eyes popped. “She’s right. My dog smells worse than this.”

  “I know you smell worse than that,” Jose shot back.

  “I’m still not as bad as you,” Davey retorted, causing Nash to step between them.

  “Okay, okay, let’s cut the chatter and get to work. Miss Ellie, exactly how do we get the hair off the brushes?”

  “With these.” Ellie hoisted a bucket of what looked like garden rakes with short handles. “You’ll need to pair up, one holding the sack while the other combs the hair off the brush.” Working in boy-girl pairs had been Ellie’s idea, and it was a good one. Well, the boys clearly thought it was a stellar concept. The girls didn’t look quite so sure. To be fair, Nash’s band of “car guys” wasn’t especially smooth from a social standpoint. The idea here was for the task to be educational on a couple levels—agricultural and social.

  “Like this.” Nash didn’t know much about the process, but Ellie had at least told him all the boys had to do was hold the bags. He took a bag from one of the sets of buckets and walked up to one side of the pole of brushes. Ellie proceeded to pull great hunks of brown fur—some long and hairy, some short and downy, just like the names she’d mentioned—from the massive bristles. Nash turned to the boys. “You guys can handle something this easy, right?”

  “Sure.” The guys huffed as if sack-holding were beneath their awesome skill sets.

  “We’ll leave the raking to the girls.” Ellie’s voice took on a teasing, almost flirtatious quality. “It requires a certain touch not to damage the fibers.” Ellie winked at Nash,
and the light little flutter of her eyelashes seemed to tickle the bottom of his stomach.

  “Naturally,” another of the girls said. “Guys never know what to do with hair.”

  Nash had the rebellious thought that he’d know exactly the right touch to handle Ellie’s honey-colored waves. Ellie, in those faded jeans that hugged her curves, those long legs that ended in scuffed boots and those tawny cheeks that didn’t need makeup, was real. Real in a way he’d never have expected to attract him. The fact that she wasn’t even trying made it all the more powerful. Maybe the boy-girl pairing wasn’t the smartest idea for this. If the adults were having a bit of trouble with distraction, how would the raging hormonal teenagers keep their focus?

  As if to prove his point, Billy crowed as he stepped toward Ina Jean, “Oh, I know what to do with a girl’s hair, baby. Let me show you.”

  “Show me you can get the job done.” Nash stepped between them and thrust a bucket and sack into Billy’s hands. “There’s pizza and Grannie Buckton’s world-famous brownies in it for you afterward.” Adele Buckton had offered to feed the teens dinner so that the whole outing turned into a small party. Again, Nash felt it was good to get the kids meeting the Buckton family. If the person taking shots at the bison was among his teens, or friends of his teens, seeing the Bucktons as real people might make it harder to commit a mindless crime against their property.

  Ellie pointed toward the pickup parked on the far side of the barn. “The herd has been moved to the north pasture out of our way while we work. You don’t just wander around with the herd nearby. Bison aren’t people-friendly.”

  “What about that one?” Doug asked. There was one bison in a smaller pen right up near the barn and house.

  “That’s Daisy. She was orphaned and bottle-fed as a calf, so she was raised around humans. I can let you meet her later on, but even Daisy has to be approached with care. One thousand pounds of animal is nothing to trifle with.”

  And nothing to shoot at, Nash thought as he motioned the teens toward the back of the truck. “I’ll call off your pairs as we go.”

  “Wait, we don’t get to pick our own partners?” Davey moaned.

  “What kind of fool do you take me for?” Nash said as he tipped Davey’s hat off his head, catching it with his other hand before handing it back to the boy.

  Don’t be a fool for Ellie, Nash warned himself as he watched the way she sauntered toward the truck. She’s dangerous in her own right.

  * * *

  “I wasn’t sure that was going to work,” Ellie said as she poured Nash another glass of lemonade. “But it worked fabulously. We got all the brushes cleaned in a third of the time it would take Gunner and I.” She looked over at the collection of hair-and down-filled sacks now sitting in the back of the truck. “I reckon we’ve got more than five pounds there.”

  Nash laughed, clearly unimpressed at the low weight. They’d worked for four hours. “Five pounds? That’s a bag of sugar.”

  He really didn’t get how this worked. “That’s five pounds of light, fluffy stuff, remember. Once we clean it up and process it, that’s enough to make seven skeins of yarn. The whole herd will produce about twenty pounds in a season.”

  Again, he looked nonplussed. “Seems like a lot of work for seven hanks.”

  Ellie handed him the lemonade. “Until you remember that each hank goes for seventy dollars. Some can go for up to ninety.”

  Nash’s head shook. “Ninety dollars. For yarn. I can’t believe it.”

  She pulled herself up to her full height, but even at her considerable five-nine she had to crane up to meet his eyes. “Ninety dollars for high-quality knitting fiber, yes. Don’t tell me you don’t understand the concept of paying for quality.”

  “I do, but, Ellie, you’re gonna give it to kids.”

  “I’m gonna invest it in those young knitters, yes. And in the future of Blue Thorn Fibers.” When he gave her a sideways look, she pointed at him. “And I’m sure you put some of your own money into what you’re doing with those boys. To teach them how to do good work, you need to give them good materials. You didn’t start them off with shoddy tools. Now, why would I?”

  “My tools are a bit more practical than yours.”

  She glared at him. There was no way Nash hadn’t sunk some of his own funds into the program just as she had. “Fess up, Natsuhito. You’ve dug into your own pockets just like I have.”

  “Okay, Theo’s budget wasn’t enough to do what I wanted with the boys. So, yeah, I kicked a little in.”

  He’d kicked in more than a little if her intuition was right. It wasn’t as if these kids had funds to spare. Blue Thorn Ranch had seen hard times but kept afloat thanks to Gunner’s commitment and ingenuity. By contrast, many families in Martins Gap had been scraping by for years. Half the kids in the program had one or even both parents out of work. It was why Blue Thorn’s refusal to sell land to an Austin real estate developer had caused such a stir; the developer had convinced the local folks that the Ramble Acres development would bring in lots of jobs.

  She had no doubt that Nash already knew all of this, and that the boys had told him. She admired how Nash talked—really talked—with those boys. He knew all about their lives and their challenges. He managed to see past the oversize bravado most of them displayed to see the doubting, searching young men underneath. Did he realize how totally committed he’d become to the program? Derek was totally committed to his work—but he did it for acclaim, for the praise and material rewards it brought. His dedication was self-serving and artistically indulgent. Nash’s intensity served a higher purpose.

  She was coming to admire a lot about him. Especially because she could see what it cost him to invest himself in these kids. Here she was still giving herself over to bitter pouting about Derek and men in general, personally and professionally stalled for who knew how long. But Nash? He’d been burned—badly—probably by someone just like Jose or Mick. Yet he was still putting himself out there.

  She touched his shoulder. “You haven’t lost it, you know.”

  “What?” He wiped a smudge of dirt off his shirt where Davey had mistakenly knocked him into a clump of weeds.

  “Your gift. Your ability to connect with those boys and see what they have to offer when everybody else has written them off.”

  Nash looked down at the smudge again, unable to meet her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “I do. I’m not sure I could do what you’ve done. I mean, look at me—I’m still a mess over Derek, a romantic disaster zone who had to bite her tongue to keep from telling those girls all men are jerks. You, you’re doing that ‘all in’ thing you said made the difference with kids who can’t be that much different than the one who put you in the hospital. And I can already see how it’s making a difference. Trust me, you haven’t lost your gift. In fact, I suspect it’s even stronger for how it’s been tested.”

  Nash shifted his weight uncomfortably and ran a hand across his chin. “Now you’re starting to sound like Pastor Theo.”

  “Yeah? What did he say to you?”

  Nash looked out over the picnic tables, smiling just as she was at the classic high school joking and flirting that was going on between what had come to be known as The Car Guys and The Yarn Gals.

  “Oh, I asked him if I should tell the boys the story of how I got here, and he gave me some high-sounding speech about why I should.”

  Ellie thought she would agree with the good pastor on that point. “What’d he say?”

  Nash’s face reddened just a bit. “Pastorly stuff.”

  Now he was hedging, and she wasn’t standing for it. She set down the pitcher of lemonade and moved to stand in front of him. “Pastorly stuff like what?”

  “He said.... Well, he said they ought to hear it because it would show them how a strong man of faith lets adversity ma
ke him stronger.”

  Ellie could tell the compliment both unnerved Nash and affected him deeply. “He’s right, Nash. These guys could learn a lot from you.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  Ellie waited until Nash’s gaze finally returned to her. “Well, I am. You’re a rare kind of man, Nash. There aren’t enough men like you in this world.”

  He held her gaze for a moment, then looked away over her shoulder at the kids. “You don’t have to tell me the world’s mostly full of Dereks. And what’s-her-names.”

  “Katies? Friends who’ll turn on you quick as you can blink?” Some days Ellie couldn’t decide which betrayal hurt worse—Derek’s betrayal of her heart or Katie’s betrayal of her friendship. “Katie made me feel as if anybody I let close could just turn on me.” She looked at Nash, stung by just what a walking wounded shell of a human she seemed to have become. “I don’t like who I am right now. I’m sour and brittle and pretty useless. I hate what Derek and Katie have made me into, but I’m not sure I can fix it just yet.”

  His eyes held no judgment. “You should have seen me during my weeks in the hospital and rehab. Sour and brittle? You betcha. Walking wounded? That was me, literally and figuratively. I don’t think Derek and Katie will win this one. You’ll fix it. It’ll just take time.”

  “Just time, huh?”

  “Well, time, faith, grace and, in my case, a lot of sushi. Guys eat their feelings, too, you know.”

  She laughed at that. “A sushi binge? Can’t quite picture that.”

  He wiggled his fingers. “It involves a lot of octopus and eel. And rice.”

  She laughed harder and made a face. “Eww. I’ll stick to Lolly’s blondies. And Gran’s brownies. And biscotti. And...well, you get the picture.”

  Nash cleared his throat. “Eel is vastly under-appreciated in the comfort-food market. You should look into it, professionally speaking.” His serious words were totally undercut by the laughter in his tone and his eyes.