Just a Cowboy and His Baby (Spikes & Spurs)

by Carolyn Brown

  “One vote for Agnes,” Violet said aloud.

  Beulah marked that down on the minutes and waited.

  Violet enjoyed her role as president of the club and took her own sweet time with each ballot. Too bad she hadn’t dropped dead or at least moved to California so Cathy could be president. Marty would bet her sister would get those votes counted a hell of a lot faster.

  There was one piece of paper in the candy dish when Beulah held up a hand. “We’ve got six each for Agnes, Trixie, Anna Ruth, and two for Gloria. Unless this last vote is for Agnes, Trixie, or Anna Ruth, we have a tie, and we’ll have to have a run-off election.”

  “Shit!” Marty mumbled.

  Cathy shot her a dirty look.

  “Anna Ruth,” Violet said and let out a whoosh of air.

  A smile tickled the corner of Marty’s mouth.

  Saved, by damn!

  Agnes was saved from prison.

  Violet was saved from attending her own funeral.

  The speeding ticket was worth every penny.

  ***

  Trixie poked the black button beside the nursing home door and kicked yellow and orange leaves of fall away as she reached for the handle. She heard the familiar click as the lock let go and then heard someone yell her name.

  “Hey, Trixie. Don’t shut it. We are here,” Cathy called out.

  Trixie waved at her two best friends: Cathy and Marty Andrews. Attitude and hair color kept them from being identical. They were five feet ten inches tall and slim built, but Cathy kept blond highlights in her brown hair and Marty’s was natural. In attitude, they were as different as vanilla and chocolate. Cathy was the sweet twin who loved everyone and had trouble speaking her mind. Marty was the extrovert who called the shots like she saw them. Cathy was engaged, and Marty said there were too many cowboys she hadn’t taken to bed to get herself tied down to one man.

  Marty threw an arm around Trixie’s shoulder as they marched down the wide hall. Trixie’s mother, Janie Matthews, had checked herself into the nursing home four years before when her Alzheimer’s had gotten so bad that she didn’t know Trixie one day. Trixie had tried to talk her mother into living with her, but Janie was lucid enough to declare that she couldn’t live alone and her daughter had to work.

  “Congratulations, darlin’, you did not make it into club tonight. Your life has been spared until someone dies or moves away and Cathy nominates you again,” Marty said.

  “Well, praise the Lord,” Trixie said.

  “I know. Let’s string Cathy up by her toenails and force-feed her fried potatoes until her wedding dress won’t fit for even putting your name in the pot.” Marty laughed.

  “Trixie would be a wonderful addition to the club. She wouldn’t let Violet run her around like a windup toy. That’s why I keep nominating her every chance I get,” Cathy said. “Anna Ruth is going to be a brand new puppet in Violet’s hands. Every bit as bad as Gloria would have been.”

  Trixie stopped so fast that Marty’s hand slipped off her shoulder. “Anna Ruth?”

  “Sorry.” Cathy shrugged. “I’m surprised that she won and she only did by one vote.”

  Trixie did a head wiggle. “Don’t the world turn around? My momma wasn’t fit for the club because she had me out of wedlock. And now Anna Ruth is living with my husband without a marriage certificate and she gets inducted. If she has a baby before they marry, do they have a big divorce ceremony and kick her out?”

  “I never thought she’d get it,” Cathy said. “I don’t know how in the world I’m going to put up with her in club, knowing that she’s the one that broke up your marriage.”

  Trixie paled. “Who’s going to tell Agnes that she didn’t get it again? Lord, she’s going to be an old bear all week.”

  “That’s Beulah’s job. She nominated her. I’m just damn glad I have a class tonight. Maybe the storm will be over before I get home,” Marty said.

  Cathy smiled weakly. “And I’ve got dinner with Ethan back at Violet’s in an hour.”

  “I’m not even turning on the lights when I get home. Maybe she’ll think I’ve died.” Trixie started walking again.

  “You okay with the Anna Ruth thing?” Marty asked.

  Trixie nodded. “Can’t think of a better thing to happen to y’all’s club.”

  “It’s not my club,” Marty said. “I’m just there so Cathy can be in it. I’m not sure Violet would let her precious son marry a woman who wasn’t in the al-damn-mighty Blue-Ribbon Jalapeño Society. I still can’t believe that Violet is okay with her precious son marrying one of the Andrews’ twins.”

  Cathy pointed a long slender finger at her sister. “Don’t you start with me! And I’m not the feisty twin. You are. I can’t see Violet letting Ethan marry you for sure.”

  “Touchy, are we? Well, darlin’ sister, I wouldn’t have that man, mostly because I’d have to put up with Violet.” Marty giggled.

  “Shhh, no fighting. It’ll upset Momma.” Trixie rapped gently on the frame of the open door and poked her head inside a room. “Anyone at home?”

  Janie Matthews clapped her hands and her eyes lit up. She and Trixie were mirror images of each other—short, slim built, light brown hair, milk chocolate-colored eyes, and delicate features. Trixie wore her hair in a chin-length bob, and Janie’s was long, braided, and wrapped around her head in a crown. Other than that and a few wrinkles around Janie’s eyes, they looked more like sisters than mother and daughter.

  “Why, Clawdy Burton, you’ve come to visit. Sit down, darlin’, and let’s talk. You aren’t still mad at me, are you?”

  Marty crossed the room and sat down beside Janie on the bed, leaving the two chairs in the room for Cathy and Trixie. It wasn’t the first time Janie had mistaken her for Claudia, the twins’ mother, or the first time that she’d remembered Claudia by her maiden name, either.

  “I brought some friends,” Marty said.

  “Any friend of Clawdy’s is a friend of mine. Come right in here. You look familiar. Did you go to school with me and Clawdy?” Janie looked right at her daughter.

  “I did,” Trixie said.

  Janie’s brow furrowed. “I can’t put a name with your face.”

  “I’m Trixie.”

  Janie shook her head. “Sorry, honey, I don’t remember you. And you?” She looked into Cathy’s eyes.

  “She’s my sister, Cathy, remember?” Marty asked.

  “Well, ain’t that funny. I never knew Clawdy to have a sister. You must be older than we are, but I can see the resemblance.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I didn’t know you as well as…” Cathy paused and said, “…my little sister did, but I remember coming to your house.”

  “Did Momma make fried chicken for you?”

  “Oh, honey, I’ve eaten fried chicken more than once at your house,” Cathy said.

  “Good. Momma makes the best fried chicken in the whole world. She and Clawdy’s momma know how to do it just right. Now, Clawdy, tell me you aren’t mad at me. I made a mistake runnin’ off with Rusty like that, but we can be friends now, can’t we?”

  Marty patted her on the arm. “You know I could never stay mad at you.”

  “I’m just so glad you got my letter and came to visit.” Janie looked at Trixie and drew her eyes down. “You look just like a girl I used to know. It’s right there on the edge of my mind, but I’ve got this remembering disease. That’s why I’m in here so they can help me.” She turned her attention back to Marty. “You really aren’t mad at me anymore?”

  “Of course not. You were in love with Rusty or you wouldn’t have run off with him,” Marty said. They had this conversation often so she knew exactly what to say.

  “I did love him, but he found someone new, so I had to bring my baby girl and come on back home. How are your girls?” She jumped at least five years from thinking she and Claudia were in school to the time when they were new mothers.

  “They’re fine. Let’s talk about you,” Marty said.

  Janie yawned
. “Clawdy, darlin’, I’m so sorry, but I can’t keep my eyes open anymore.”

  It was always the same. On Wednesday nights Trixie visited with Janie. Sometimes, when they had time between closing the café and their other Wednesday evening plans, Marty and Cathy went with her. And always after fifteen or twenty minutes, on a good night, she was sleepy.

  “That’s okay, Janie. We’ll come see you again soon,” Marty said.

  Trixie stopped at the doorway and waved.

  Janie frowned. “I’m sorry I can’t remember you. You remind me of someone I knew a long time ago, but I can’t recall your name. Were you the Jalapeño Jubilee queen this year? Maybe that’s where I saw you.”

  “No, ma’am. They don’t crown queens anymore. But it’s okay. I remember you real well,” Trixie said.

  ***

  Less than half an hour later, Trixie parked beside a big two-story house sitting on the corner of Main and Fourth in Cadillac, Texas. The sign outside the house said Miss Clawdy’s Café in fancy lettering. Above it were the words: Red Beans and Turnip Greens.

  Most folks in town just called it Clawdy’s.

  It had started as a joke after Cathy and Marty’s momma, Claudia, died and the three of them were going through her recipes. They’d actually been searching for “the secret,” but evidently Claudia took it to the grave with her.

  More than forty years ago Grayson County and Fannin County women were having a heated argument over who could grow the hottest jalapeños in North Texas. Idalou Thomas, over in Fannin County, had won the contest for her jalapeño corn bread and her jalapeño pepper jelly so many years that most people dropped plumb out of the running. But that year, Claudia’s momma decided to try a little something different, and she watered her pepper plants with the water she used to rinse out her unmentionables. And that was the very year that Fannin County lost their title in all of the jalapeño categories to Garvin County at the Texas State Fair. They brought home a blue ribbon in every category that had anything to do with growing or cooking with jalapeño peppers. And that’s the year that Violet Prescott and several other women formed the Blue-Ribbon Jalapeño Society. That next fall, they held their First Annual Blue-Ribbon Jalapeño Society Jubilee in Cadillac, Texas.

  The Jubilee got bigger and bigger with each passing year, and people started marking it on their calendar a year in advance. It was talked about all year, and folks planned their vacation time around the Jalapeño Jubilee. Idalou died right after the first Jubilee, and folks in Fannin County almost brought murder charges against Claudia’s momma for breaking poor old Idalou’s heart. Decades passed before Claudia figured out how her mother grew such red-hot peppers, and when her momma passed, she carried on the tradition.

  But she never did write down the secret for fear that one of the Fannin County women would find a way to steal it. The one thing she did was dry a good supply of seeds from the last crop of jalapeños just in case she died that year. It wasn’t likely that Fannin County would be getting the blue ribbon back as long as one of her daughters grew peppers from the original stock and saved seeds back each year.

  “If we had a lick of sense we’d all quit our jobs and put a café in this big old barn of a house,” Cathy had said.

  “Count me in,” Marty had agreed.

  Then they found the old LP albums in Claudia’s bedroom, and Cathy had picked up an Elvis record and put it on the turntable. When she set the needle down, “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy” had played.

  “Daddy called her that, remember? He’d come in from working all day and holler for Miss Clawdy to come give him a kiss,” Marty had said.

  Trixie had said, “That’s the name of y’all’s café—Miss Clawdy’s Café. It can be a place where you fix up this buffet bar of southern food for lunch. Like fried chicken, fried catfish, breaded and fried pork chops, and always have beans and greens on it seasoned up with lots of bacon drippings. You know, like your momma always cooked. Then you can serve her pecan cobbler, peach cobbler, and maybe her black forest cake for dessert.”

  “You are making me hungry right now just talkin’ about beans and greens. I can’t remember the last time I had that kind of food,” Marty had said.

  Trixie went on, “I bet there’s lots of folks around here who can’t remember when they had it either with the fast-food trend. Folks would come from miles and miles to get at a buffet where they could eat all they wanted of good old southern fried and seasoned food. And you can frame up a bunch of those old LP covers and use them to decorate the walls. And you could transfer the music from those records over to CDs and play that old music all day. You could serve breakfast from a menu and then a lunch buffet. It would make a mint, I swear it would.”

  That started the idea that blossomed into a café on the ground floor of the big two-story house. The front door opened into the foyer where they set up a counter with a cash register. To the left was the bigger dining area, which had been the living room. To the right was the smaller one, which had been the dining room. Down past the checkout station was another room to the left that seated sixteen people and was used for special lunch reservations. It had been their mother’s sitting room, and their dad’s office, right across the hallway, was now a storage pantry for supplies.

  Six months later and a week before Miss Clawdy’s Café had its grand opening, Trixie caught Andy cheating on her, and she quit her job at the bank to join the partnership. That was a year ago, and even though it was a lot of work, the café really was making money hand over fist.

  “Hey, good lookin’,” a deep voice said from the shadows when she stepped up on the back porch.

  “I didn’t know if you’d wait or not,” Trixie said.

  Andy ran the back of his hand down her jawline. “It’s Wednesday, darlin’. Until it turns into Thursday, I would wait. Besides, it’s a pleasant night. Be a fine night for the high school football game on Friday.”

  Trixie was still pissed at Andy and still had dreams about strangling Anna Ruth, but sex was sex, and she was just paying Anna Ruth back. She opened the back door, and together they crossed the kitchen. He followed her up the stairs to the second floor, where there were three bedrooms and a single bathroom. She opened her bedroom door, and once he was inside, she slammed it shut and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “I miss you,” he said.

  She unbuttoned his shirt and walked him backward to the bed. “You should have thought about that.”

  “What if I break it off with Anna Ruth?”

  “We’ve had this conversation before.” Trixie flipped a couple of switches, and those fancy no-fire candles were suddenly burning beside the bed.

  He pulled her close and kissed her. “You are still beautiful.”

  She pushed him back on the bed. “You are still a lyin’, cheatin’ son-of-a-bitch.”

  He sat up and peeled out of his clothes. “Why do you go to bed with me if I’m that bad?”

  “Because I like sex.”

  “I wish you liked housework,” Andy mumbled.

  “If I had, we might not be divorced. If my messy room offends you, then put your britches back on and go home to Anna Ruth and her sterile house,” Trixie said.

  “Shut up and kiss me.” He grinned.

  She shucked out of her jeans and T-shirt and jumped on the bed with him. They’d barely gotten into the foreplay when a hard knock on the bedroom door stopped the process as quickly as if someone had thrown a pitcher of icy water into the bed with them. Trixie grabbed for the sheet and covered her naked body; Andy strategically put a pillow in his lap.

  “I thought they were all out like usual,” he whispered. “Marty will murder me if that’s her.”

  “I did too. Maybe they called off her class for tonight,” Trixie said.

  “Cadillac police. Open this door right now, or I’m coming in shooting.”

  Trixie groaned. “Agnes?”

  Andy groaned and fell back on the pillows. “Dear God!”

  And that’s when fl
ashing red, white, and blue lights and the mixed wails of police cars, sirens, and an ambulance all screeched to a halt in front of Miss Clawdy’s.

  Trixie grabbed her old blue chenille robe from the back of a rocking chair and belted it around her waist. “Agnes, is that you?”

  “It’s the Cadillac police, I tell you, and I’ll come in there shooting if that man who’s molesting you doesn’t let you go right this minute.” Agnes tried to deepen her voice, but there was just so much a seventy-eight-year-old woman could do. She sounded like a prepubescent boy with laryngitis.

  “I’m coming right out. Don’t shoot.”

  She eased out the door, and sure enough, there was Agnes, standing in the hallway with a sawed off shotgun trained on Trixie’s belly button.

  The old girl had donned her late husband’s pleated trousers and a white shirt and smelled like a mothball factory. Her dyed red hair, worn in a ratted hairdo reminiscent of the sixties, was crammed up under a fedora. Enough curls had escaped to float around the edges of the hat and remind Trixie of those giant statues of Ronald McDonald. The main difference was that she had a shotgun in her hands instead of a hamburger and fries.

  Trixie shut her bedroom door behind her and blocked it as best she could. “There’s no one in my bedroom, Agnes. Let’s go downstairs and have a late-night snack. I think there are hot rolls left and half of a peach cobbler.”

  “The hell there ain’t nobody in there! I saw the bastard. Stand to one side, and I’ll blow his ass to hell.” Agnes raised the shotgun.

  “You were seeing me do my exercises before I went to bed.”

  Agnes narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “He’s in there. I can smell him.” She sniffed the air. “Where is the sorry son-of-a-bitch? I could see him in there throwing you on the bed and having his way with you. Sorry bastard, he won’t get away. Woman ain’t safe in her own house.”

  Trixie moved closer to her. “Look at me, Agnes. I’m not hurt. It was just shadows, and what you smell is mothballs. Shit, woman, where’d you get that getup, anyway?”

  Agnes shook her head. “He told you to say that or he’d kill you. He don’t scare me.” She raised the barrel of the gun and pulled the trigger. The kickback knocked her square on her butt on the floor, and the gun went scooting down the hallway.