by Fran Baker
“More eating and less talking, if you please.” She knew he meant well, but it didn’t make her feel any better. It only made her sick to realize how much time and energy she’d wasted feeling responsible for Larry’s taking the coward’s way out when, in reality, he’d chosen to go that route.
Grandpa ate another bite of egg, then set his spoon down with an apologetic smile. “I’m really not very hungry, darlin’.”
Joni kissed the top of his grizzled head, then picked up the tray. “You rest till Dr. Rayburn gets here.”
She scraped his leftovers into the dog’s dish and straightened up the kitchen, but she did everything automatically. Her mind was back in her bedroom with Chance. She was still arguing with him over his marriage proposal, still experiencing that painfully revealing moment when he’d found Larry’s clothes hanging in her closet.
As long as she was coming to grips with the truth, she asked herself how she would have felt if the shoe had been on the other foot. If, for instance, he’d demanded that she give up her farm and go with him. Or worse yet, if she’d discovered another woman’s belongings in his bedroom.
The pounding of the drill bit drew Joni out onto the porch. She turned remorseful eyes toward the rig, seeking but not finding Chance, remembering the bleak expression in his eyes just before he’d left her last night. He’d offered her the best of himself—the laughter and the loving, his support in moments of crisis and his memory in times of absence—and she’d given him nothing but grief in return.
Wasn’t Chance McCoy half the time better than Chance McCoy none of the time? Could he find it in his heart to forgive her for behaving as selfishly in her way as Larry had in his?
Those questions and others rode the red wind across the porch. Something in the air stung her nostrils, burned her eyes, but she was too busy planning her next move to pay much attention to the discomfort.
When Dr. Rayburn got here, she’d go over to the drilling site and lay her cards on the table. She’d tell Chance that she loved him enough to let him go, that she’d be waiting here to welcome him—
A diabolical tremor suddenly shook the earth and a sinister hiss from the rig drowned out all other sounds, even the rhythmic hammering of the drill bit.
Joni looked in that direction, her stunned expression hardening to horror when she saw the derrick rocking back and forth … back and forth … like a huge erector set about to topple.
Not again! she screamed silently, watching the roughnecks leaping willy-nilly off the swaying rig and thinking that if anything happened to Chance, they’d have to open another grave for her.
The bottom dropped out of her stomach when she didn’t see Chance’s muscular figure among the men running for cover. Without regard for her own safety, she dashed down the porch steps and raced pell-mell toward the cornfield.
In the excitement she hadn’t heard Grandpa start coughing in the dining room. Nor did she notice Dr. Rayburn’s car now coming to a stop in the driveway. All her energies were concentrated on getting to Chance.
“Blowout!” someone shouted over a growling rumble and the hissing of a thousand snakes.
“Beat it!” Someone else waved her back as the ground around the rig humped like an angry cat.
“Please God,” she prayed over and over again, her nose and throat and lungs burning with every breath of the noxious air. “Don’t let him die.”
Her prayers were answered when she collided with six feet of solid muscle at the edge of the site.
Chance, moving full speed in her direction, knocked her backward to the hot, heaving earth and slammed his weight, hard and warm, atop her.
Joni, landing spread-eagle, wrapped her arms around his neck and wreathed his lean thighs with her legs just as all hell broke loose.
A roar of a hundred cannon ruptured the air. The ground trembled at the shock of the blast. Sand and mud burst from the hole; casing pipe shot out as straight as it went in.
Chance hugged the ground like a man under shell fire, crushing the breath from her lungs. Joni clung to him for dear love, smothering her screams against his chest. Rocks and flying debris flailed the backs of her hands, as if trying to break her grip. He held her fast, absorbing her terror, until the blowout spent itself with a final shudder and a rude spew of …
Sulfur water.
Neither of them even noticed they hadn’t struck oil. They had eyes only for each other.
“You little idiot!” Chance levered up and screamed down at her. “What’d you mean by running to the site like that? You scared me half to death.”
“I thought …” Joni traced the chiseled planes of his face with trembling hands, whispering prayers of thanks that came straight from the heart.
“Didn’t you see me waving you back?”
She nodded, touching his eyes, his nose, his mouth with feather-light fingertips.
“You could’ve been killed, for God’s sake!”
“So could …”
His fierce green eyes still mirrored the elemental fury of the moments they’d shared and survived. She lay beneath him, her heart windmilling from the force of it and her love for him. Their combined body heat seemed to fuse them together.
“Joni …”
“Chance …”
Roughnecks rushed back to the rig.
His mouth ground down on hers. She answered him with a hungry little moan. His tongue speared between her lips; hers welcomed him home.
The odor of sulfur singed the air.
Salt mingled in their kiss and sweat heightened the male smell of him, so musky and alive that she forgot everything—even the gravel grinding into her back.
A dinner bell clanging frantically in the distance finally broke them apart. Dr. Rayburn stood on the porch, ringing it for all he was worth.
“Grandpa!” Joni knew immediately that something was wrong.
Chance jumped to his feet, then hauled her up and clasped her hand tightly in his. “Let’s go!”
Neither one of them ever remembered the particulars of their frenzied journey, which probably took all of two minutes. Their breaths beat fast and stitches knifed their sides. She stumbled once in the middle of the cornfield. His strong arms kept her from falling. But in their minds, it forever remained a blur of wind and fear.
Dr. Rayburn opened the screen door for them.
“Grandpa?” Joni shook so badly that Chance could feel his own body being jerked by hers.
The physician’s shoulders drooped like his mustache as he ushered them into the dining room. “He’s dying, Joni.”
“If you want to take him to the hospital, I’ll drive.” Chance offered, wanting to do everything in his power to help.
Joni bowed her head, battling the temptation to break her promise, but keeping it in the end. “He wants to die at home.”
Grandpa lay on the sleeper sofa, his eyes closed. He looked to be at peace, though his lungs fought valiantly against the enemy’s grasp.
Scalding tears blurred Joni’s vision as she sank to her knees and covered his knobby old hands with her own. “Grandpa?”
“Joni?” His eyelids flew open, but he appeared to have difficulty focusing on her. “Where’s … Chance?”
“Right here.” Chance crouched beside Joni, his reassuring hands forming the final link in a chain of love.
“Did we … strike oil?” Grandpa’s voice was so faint, they had to lean closer to catch the words.
Chance weighed the evil of lying against the greater good of easing the old man’s passing. No contest there. “We hit a gusher.”
His bloodless lips curved in a smile; his eyelids drifted closed. “A gushhh …”
Joni gave a strangled cry when she felt his hands go limp beneath hers and realized he’d just left his emotional and physical pain behind him forever.
She wanted to call him back; instead, she placed her lips to his incognizant ear and let him go gently. “I love you, Grandpa.”
Chance tried to say something, but found h
is throat too clogged for words. He looked at Grandpa, whose strength of spirit lived on in the woman he loved, and bid a silent good-bye to one hell of a man.
They remained bedside, heads bowed and hands joined, while Dr. Rayburn notified the funeral home by telephone. When the attendants arrived, Chance helped Joni lay out Grandpa’s blue serge suit, clean white shirt, and striped necktie.
Word spread like wildfire in the close-knit county. People came in droves all day long, bearing casserole dishes and condolences. By nightfall the kitchen bore a strong resemblance to an emergency relief center.
Apple cake and peach cobbler shared counter space with carrot pudding and blueberry pie. Platters of barbecued brisket, sugar-cured ham, and crispy fried chicken covered the table. A pot of fresh green beans flavored with bacon bubbled on the stove.
Even after the roughnecks had eaten their fill, there was food to spare.
Joni pressed a platterful on Dr. Rayburn, who’d left before the onslaught and come back after completing his hospital rounds. “If you run out, there’s more where that came from.”
“This ought to do me for a while,” the physician said with a sad smile for the circumstances that had prompted his windfall.
Chance saw him to the door, then returned to the kitchen to find that Joni had disappeared. Some sixth sense guided him into the dining room.
She stood beside the sleeper sofa, staring down at Sooner. The bluetick hound raised soulful eyes to the two human faces, but refused to budge from its master’s bed.
“Dogs grieve too,” she whispered brokenly, and in that instant her three-year drought came to an end.
Joni cried for her grandparents, reunited at long last. She cried for her parents, whom she barely remembered. And she even cried for Larry, who’d betrayed her trust.
Chance picked her up and carried her into the living room. Then he lowered himself into the overstuffed club chair and comforted her. And when she was all cried out, he carried her upstairs to his bedroom and made love to a woman who was finally free of her past.
Ten
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me …
Redemption County turned out in full voice to reunite Bat Dillon with his beloved Ruthann. The mourners clustered about the family and the flower-bedecked casket sang their hearts out. No one needed a hymnal, for these were words long committed to memory.
Come home. Come home.
Ye who are weary, come home.
Grandpa, as almost everyone but Dr. Rayburn had called him, was free now of the pain and the sorrow that had pockmarked his long and very productive life, but he’d left behind a legacy that nothing could mar.
Chance stood at Joni’s side on that rolling green hill in the Redemption cemetery, his hand at her elbow and his heart in his eyes.
He’d put Tex in charge of plugging the well and shutting down the site. It occurred to him now that the trustworthy roughneck was long overdue for a promotion to supervisor. Not only would it reward a good employee for a job well done, but it would give Chance more time to spend with Joni—an important consideration for a man who was making honeymoon plans for the end of next month.
“Let us pray,” the minister intoned when the final notes of Grandpa’s favorite old hymn had been swallowed by the wind.
Joni brushed her auburn hair back off her face and bowed her head. She felt Chance put his arm around her waist and leaned closer to him, giving silent thanks for his constant presence since the blowout.
She’d been wearing her hair loose night and day, as much to symbolize her own personal victory over the past as to please the man who’d freed her from it. But she knew she’d yet to pass the true test of her newfound love—the letting go—so she sent a couple of extra prayers winging heavenward, asking for the courage she’d need when the time came.
“Amen,” the minister said, bringing the simple graveside service to a conclusion.
Even though the mourners would be gathering at the farmhouse shortly, they filed past Joni and Chance, offering private words of condolence before going to their cars.
Dr. Rayburn was first in line, and Joni couldn’t thank him enough for all he’d done for Grandpa.
“Bat was lucky to have you,” the physician said.
“No luckier than I was to have him when my parents were killed,” she pointed out.
Dr. Rayburn shook hands with Chance then. “He sure thought the world of you.”
“The feeling was mutual.”
“Give me a call when you get back. We’ll play some cards and pitch some bull.”
Chance nodded. “Will do.”
Tex and Skinny and the other roughnecks were next. They wore their Sunday best, which was quite a departure from their everyday clothes. Each one of them had put his share of quarters in Grandpa’s pocket. And as they walked away smiling, Joni realized that each one of them was a good loser.
Neighboring farmers, the mayor, even Jesse James—dressed in banker’s gray, of course—had a funny story to tell, a favorite memory to relate.
Finally, Loretta West and Simp Creed stepped up to pay their respects. Joni couldn’t get over the change in her friend’s appearance. Loretta wore a conservative black dress that perfectly complimented Simp’s “early undertaker” suit, and her normally tousled platinum hair was pinned back in a sleek chignon. Even her makeup had been toned down, though her eyelashes were as long and lacy as ever.
The men made small talk; the women played catch-up.
“When did this come about?”
“Ladies’ choice at the crossroads.”
Joni snapped her fingers, remembering then. “That’s who was sitting on your blanket at the Fourth of July picnic.”
Loretta’s eyes shone like the prairie moon as she displayed her quarter-carat engagement ring.
Joni and Chance remained behind as the newly engaged couple started down the hill. They wanted to make their final good-bye together. And they wanted to make it alone.
The wind whipped the streamers on the wreaths piled high around Grandpa’s casket. Joni plucked a red rose from the arrangement, draping it to place in the cedar chest, while Chance sprinkled the red dirt he’d brought from the drilling site over the top of it. The simple ceremony completed, they stood a moment in silent remembrance.
Chance drew her into his arms then and bent his head low over hers. “He loved you so much.”
“He loved you too.” Joni heaved a sob and buried her face in his starched white shirtfront.
Rocking her back and forth, his voice and hands replete with tenderness, Chance felt the loss as deeply as Joni did. And if he shed a tear or two himself … well, it was something that was long overdue.
“Better?” he asked softly when she raised her head.
Sniffing, she nodded.
“Let’s go home.”
“I have one more stop to make.”
Chance searched her tear-streaked face, stared gravely into her eyes. “Do you want me to go with you?”
Joni looked up entreatingly and shook her head. “I have to do this alone.”
The relentless wind plastered her black skirt to those endless legs as she crossed to Larry’s headstone. Kneeling in the sweet-scented grass, she removed the plain gold band from the third finger of her right hand and set it at the base of the stone. It was time for her to let him rest in peace. And as she stood and turned her back on the guilt and the anger, she knew it was past time she got on with her life.
Arms linked, Joni and Chance started down the gentle green hill. They hadn’t found black gold. But thanks to his grandfather and hers, they’d found something far more precious than the oil they were originally seeking. They’d found love.
Two cans of sweetened condensed milk, two tablespoons of vanilla, one quart of whole milk, one pint of half-and-half, and one pint of whipping cream—
“What’re you doing?”
“Making ice cream.”
Chance lazed bac
k against the kitchen counter and let his eyes have free rein with those long, freckled legs and that scantily clad bottom. He should have left a week ago, but he kept finding excuses to stay. “I thought you had to cook it first.”
“Not this recipe.” Joni stirred the rich mixture with a wooden spoon until it was thoroughly blended, then poured it into the four-quart freezer can. That done, she set the whole kit and kaboodle in the refrigerator to chill before churning.
“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just go buy a gallon of ice cream at the grocery store?” He wondered what she was wearing under her pink flowered short shorts. The bikini panties that barely covered her titian curls or the French-cut teddy that sent his pulse into overdrive?
“Easier, yes.” She rinsed her hands at the sink and dried them on a towel, then got a metal hammer from the tool drawer and a glass measuring cup out of the cupboard. “Better, no.”
Bikini panties and no bra, he decided when she turned around to face him. Raising both hands, he lightly raked the backs of his fingers over her small, firm breasts. Her nipples hardened against the soft cloth of her fuzzy pink tank top, and he felt a corresponding stiffness in his jeans.
Joni almost lost her grasp on the utensils she was holding as lightning splintered along her nerve endings, striking deep at the molten core of her. Day or night, it never failed. All he had to do was touch her and her control went flying out the window.
“Here,” she said, breaking the charged atmosphere by handing him the hammer before she dropped it. “Make yourself useful as well as distracting.” Turning then, she led him toward the back door.
Chance kept his eyes on her trim bottom as he followed her from the kitchen to the enclosed back porch. Funny, how his taste in women had changed. He used to prefer candy-box curves. But recent and frequent experience had convinced him that the meat was always sweetest close to the bone.
