Long, Hot Texas Summer

by Brown, Carolyn

  “Experience has taught me that a woman needs to be able to make her own way. Life isn’t all roses. You need something to fall back on when you fall in a pile of cow shit. An almost degree won’t get the jobs that a finished one will,” Loretta said.

  Nona stood up and went to the window. “Let me make my own way and make my own mistakes, Mama. You can’t understand how I feel when I’m here on the ranch. It’s like my soul is at home. I’m going to marry Travis Calhoun and even if I didn’t, I’d still want to be a rancher. The heart will have what it wants, Mama. It doesn’t change its mind once it’s set on something.”

  “But the heart can change its wants,” Loretta said.

  Nona shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. It might learn to live with a change, but it’s never really happy.”

  “You’ll get tired of hay in your hair and underpants and the smell of cow shit everywhere. Just tell me when it happens and we’ll be out of here so fast that there won’t be anything but a memory of us left behind.” Loretta left the bed and joined Nona at the window. “Let’s go make a sandwich. I’m starving and this conversation is too deep for the end of my first day here.”

  Nona grabbed her mother’s hand and held it to her cheek. “Mama, I’ve made up my mind about going back to college. I happen to like the smell of hay in my hair. And I heard Daddy open his bedroom door and head toward the kitchen just now. He hates eating alone. I’ll meet you downstairs in a minute. I want to see that chimney-looking formation change as the sun sets. Wait, there it is. If you squint, you can see a coyote howling at the moon.” Nona pointed.

  “I know, darlin’. I’ve seen it a couple of times,” Loretta whispered.

  “So you played this game, too?”

  “A few times, and it will still be changing when we’re both old women, so let’s go slice some leftover roast beef for a sandwich. Mustard or mayo?”

  “Mama!” Nona rolled her eyes. “You know I hate mayo.”

  Sundays were pure old unadulterated hell. Rosie went to her house after dinner. The house was too quiet. And Jackson always—every single week—remembered what he’d lost on a Sunday evening.

  “Hey, Daddy, don’t put the food away,” Nona called out from the foyer.

  Jackson didn’t have to turn around or even glance over his shoulder to know that Loretta was with her. The back of his neck itched, his hands were clammy, and his mouth went as dry as if he’d been sucking on an alum lollipop.

  “You can get it all out again. I didn’t know y’all were going to join me, but I’m glad you did.” He smiled.

  God, it was good to have Nona at the ranch, even better to think about her staying and never having to tell her good-bye again. It wasn’t easy to think of her all grown-up and twenty-one years old. Where had the time gone? Just yesterday she was a toddler and dragging around that stuffed bull his father had given her the day she was born. And Loretta? Well, things were never boring when she was around.

  Nona dropped a kiss on the top of Jackson’s head. “Did you take your walk to the creek?”

  Jackson downed half a glass of sweet tea before he answered. “I did. Saw Waylon there. I guess he’s buying that ranch and leaving us. He’s good help. I hate to lose him. I was afraid he’d offer Travis a job as his foreman or make him a partner.”

  Nona opened the refrigerator and handed a platter of roast to Loretta. “Travis is happy here, Daddy. So am I.”

  Loretta still filled out a pair of jeans perfectly and, Jesus, what she did to a knit shirt would make any man’s eyes refuse to blink. Jackson’s mouth went dry and he had to clear his throat before he could say a word.

  “Still love the old tub?” He immediately wanted to kick himself for asking such a stupid question when a visual of her appeared in his head: stretched out full-length, the water only slightly distorting her near perfect body, her hair pinned up on the top of her head.

  Loretta set the roast on the bar separating the breakfast nook from the kitchen and headed for the pantry to get a loaf of bread. “You know I do. Want to sell it?”

  “No, ma’am. It’s part of the ranch. Nona used to call it her swimming pool,” he said hoarsely.

  “It makes a great kid’s pool. And Rosie let me take my Barbie doll swimming. Remember how horrible her hair was at the end of that summer?”

  Jackson smiled. “I remember you cut it all off and we found little pieces of it for months after you went back to Oklahoma.”

  Nona opened the refrigerator and brought out the roast. “I’m starving. I’d started to think Waylon and Travis were going to talk to Mr. Watson until midnight. Men talk everything to death before you do a blessed thing about it. I swear, Daddy, y’all will talk until the fall cattle sale about whether to castrate a calf or save him for breeding stock.”

  “Men! That’s what women do,” Jackson argued.

  Nona pulled out lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers. “Not us. If that was me, I’d already have my check written for escrow and asked Mr. Watson when he could be out of the house so I could move into it. It’s a cute little house, Daddy. Travis and I should build one about that size out on that back forty acres.”

  “You will be living in this house, young lady, until you get married. You will not be living with your boyfriend, even if I do think he’s a good man. Is that understood?” Jackson said sternly.

  Nona clicked her boot heels together and saluted sharply. “Sir, yes, sir. I wasn’t talking about next week. I was talking about in the future. He hasn’t proposed yet, Daddy.”

  “Evidently he’s got to talk about it some more,” Jackson said. “Your mayo is in the pantry, Loretta.”

  There was always a jar of her favorite brand of mayonnaise in the pantry and when the date on the lid expired, he tossed it and bought a new one. Just in case she ever came home.

  “You remembered,” she whispered.

  “Daddy! Menfolks don’t talk about feelings and things of the heart. Maybe if they did, they wouldn’t have to talk everything else to death,” Nona said.

  “You ever been shopping with your mama?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  Any minute now Loretta would lick the mayo knife before she put it in the dishwasher and he didn’t want to miss it. Their eyes caught and locked as her tongue reached out to touch the knife. His heart did one of those flips that according to his daughter, menfolks never talked about. He blinked and looked across the table at Nona.

  “And you two waltzed right into the western-wear store, bought the first pair of boots you tried on, paid for them and walked out, right?”

  Nona shook her head. “No, but that’s because I never went into a western-wear store with Mama. But if you want to discuss any other store, I understand what you are saying. We do talk things to death, but that’s because what we are talking about is very important.”

  “Buying a ranch isn’t important?” Jackson asked.

  “You might as well hush,” Loretta said. “He’s got age and experience on you.”

  “And I lived with that redhead long enough to know how to debate,” Jackson said.

  Nona exhaled deeply. “Speaking of which, I want to know what happened.”

  “I jogged to the creek, jogged back, took a bath, and now I’m having dinner. I mean, supper,” Loretta said quickly.

  “Mama! I’m talking about what happened to split you two up, not what happened today,” Nona said.

  Jackson almost choked before he could swallow. It took several long gulps of sweet tea before he could speak. “Well, that certainly came out of nowhere. Ask your mother. She’s the one who left.”

  The way Nona’s body stiffened left no doubt that she was about to explode. “You caused all this, Mama? Was it another man? Is that why you jerked me away from the ranch when I was a little girl? My very first memory is of you crying and cussing and then we were at Gr
andma Sullivan’s in Oklahoma,” Nona said. “Were you seeing someone else?”

  “Was there someone else?” Jackson asked.

  Loretta jerked her head up and locked gazes with him. “You know better than to even ask a stupid question like that and frankly, I think it’s your story to tell, not mine. There was no other man. Jackson, do you remember what your dad used to say about letting sleeping dogs alone? He was right. Dragging up old fights and wounds won’t change a damn thing.”

  Nona looked from Jackson to Loretta and back again. “Okay, if you’re both going to go all awkward and be stubborn, we’ll wait until another time to have this talk. I’ll change the subject now so you can both relax and we won’t have to get out the butcher knife to cut through the tension. What do you think, Daddy? Is it going to be a real hot summer like last year?” Nona sat down beside him.

  “Get your mama to tell you about the summer we got married.” He grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Mama?” Nona asked.

  “It was hot,” Loretta said.

  “Three words don’t tell me much.”

  “I’ll tell you,” Jackson said. “We were both eighteen and your mama was pregnant with you. My mother had always been snappy, but by then she had a brain tumor that made her even meaner than a snake, and Loretta couldn’t walk in her sickroom without takin’ a cussin’. My dad had had his first heart attack and we were barely holding on to the ranch with the medical bills and all. But Loretta took the bull by the horns. She ignored my mother’s sharp tongue and worked like a field hand all summer right beside me in the miserable heat. And, honey, we went through about forty days and nights that it didn’t drop down below a hundred degrees.”

  Loretta sat down at the far end of the small table. “I said it was hot.”

  “Without her help we’d have never pulled back into a profitable ranch. She had a sixth sense about cattle and we did better at the fall sale than we’d done in a decade. The next year she did it again, only that time she did it all with you on her hip. She refused to pay a sitter and drove a tractor with you in one of those bucket things beside her. If you learn half as much as she already knows about ranchin’, you’ll be all right, young lady,” Jackson said.

  He wanted to reach across the table and lay his hand on Loretta’s, but it was way too early for that.

  “She’s a damn fine real estate agent too, Daddy,” Nona said.

  “And all the butterin’ up in the whole state of Texas won’t make me change my mind. If you still want to live here when you finish college next year, I won’t stand in your way. But you need that education.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it could mean a big difference in your life. This love shit dims after awhile, believe me,” Loretta said.

  Jackson talked to Nona, but looked right into Loretta’s green eyes. “It don’t always dim, honey. I was there with Oliver Watson when Dora took her last breath. Even though she was in a coma, he held her hand and told her that she’d been a fine woman to ride the river with.”

  “Ridin’ the river is one thing. Living in the Palo Duro is another altogether,” Loretta said.

  Chapter Six

  NEITHER THE RAPID MOVEMENT OF A PAPER FAN on a stick nor the steady motion of the rocking chair provided enough wind to cool Loretta. The other five rockers sat as still as the leaves on the scrub oak trees. The first week in June meant that you could not buy, borrow, or steal a breeze in the canyon. Not until the end of the summer, and then it would come sweeping down over the edge and blow red dirt in your eyes until the next June.

  The twenty-third psalm was written on one side of the fan. On the other was a picture of Jesus with a little lamb and a child, but it was moving so fast that both were a blur. It was a sin to be almost a hundred degrees at ten o’clock in the morning and a worse sin to have a whole damn day stretching out before her with not one thing to keep her from dying of boredom. She was fast sinking into one of her Jesus moods, as her mother called it, saying that when she got in a grand funk even Jesus couldn’t live with her.

  “Shit!” she exclaimed under her breath as thoughts of Jesus twisted around to Sunday and probably having to stay another week on the ranch. Rosie wouldn’t let her help in the house and she’d wither up and die with nothing to do but sit on the porch and think.

  The ringtone on her phone was so welcome that she didn’t even care if it was Emmy Lou telling her again that she was a big disappointment to the whole family. But she did check the ID and smiled when she saw Clark Sullivan’s name.

  “Hello, Daddy. Everything under control at the agency?”

  “Yes, honey. We closed out on the Wilson house this morning. You’d left everything in perfect order. Your mama hasn’t forgotten how to sell real estate, so don’t worry about the job. How are you?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You don’t sound fine. Your voice says you’re aggravated.”

  “Bored is more like it.”

  “You need to come home. Nona is old enough to make her own decisions and to live with them. All you are going to do is push her into a fight and she’ll set her heels when that happens just to show you that she’s grown-up.”

  “My heart says I need to be here to try, Daddy,” she said.

  “But is it talking about Nona or you and Jackson? You never did settle that business.”

  “That all happened a long time ago.”

  “I know, sugar, but you never talked about what happened. Maybe it’s time you did. I figured Jackson cheated on you. If he had abused you, he’d be a dead man. You would never have put up with that kind of thing. Am I right?”

  “No need in dragging up past history. What about the Thomas house?”

  “Loretta, don’t try to change the subject. Talk to someone about it. Jackson. Rosie. A therapist. Someone or it won’t ever go away. Here comes your mama with my midmorning coffee. I hope to hell she remembered that I drink decaf. I miss you, sugar,” he said.

  “Me too, Daddy,” Loretta said.

  She flipped the phone shut and as if on cue, the door out to the porch swung open. Rosie brought out two glasses of sweet tea and set them on a small round table. “Thought you might be getting thirsty. I’ve got ten minutes before it’s time to make the hot rolls for dinner. Want to talk?”

  “About what?”

  “Why you left? Why you didn’t come back?”

  “I figured Jackson would have told you.” Mercy, but the cold sweet tea tasted good.

  “He didn’t. So you can.”

  “Rosie, you know how Eva was. She told me on her deathbed that I’d robbed him of his youth and there would come a day when he went lookin’ for it. She was right,” Loretta said.

  “No, she was a case from the time Sam married her and brought her here. It was her high-dollar ways that put the ranch in the bind it was in. The best was barely good enough for Eva. She hated the ranch, you know. I asked her once before she got crazy with the tumor why she married Sam. She told me flat out that he was the richest one of her boyfriends and she figured she could talk him into selling Lonesome Canyon. It wasn’t until they married that she found out he wouldn’t sell it. It’s always gone from oldest child to oldest child,” Rosie said.

  “And a divorce?”

  “Eva didn’t want a divorce. She knew that she had it good here. Sam never denied her one thing. If he needed a new tractor and she wanted a new Caddy, she got the new car and he made do.”

  They rocked in comfortable silence for a few minutes and then Loretta asked, “With that kind of attitude, why did she have a child?”

  Rosie slowly shook her head. “Accidents happen. Oh, man, did she pitch a fit over being pregnant. It was miserable around here for nine months and the night Jackson was born was anything but a happy occasion. She’d hired a nanny—I don’t remember her ever holding tha
t child or rocking him. Only time she paid much attention to him was when her friends came, and then she played the mommy part for a little while then. She couldn’t help it, Loretta. She had the temperament of a Doberman bitch. You shouldn’t have paid any attention to what she said, much less let it drive you away after you’d already put down roots here.”

  “She planted the seed. Jackson watered it,” Loretta whispered. “I’ve never talked about it to anyone. I was sure he’d call and we’d fight it out or that he’d come to get me, but he didn’t do either one.”

  “I reckon it’s past time to talk, ain’t it?” Rosie said.

  “You’d already gone to your house that Sunday.” Loretta went on to tell the story in a voice that sounded hollow and unfamiliar in her ears.

  Rosie slapped the arms of the chair. “That bitch.”

  “Wasn’t all her fault. His hands were all over her too.”

  “You should have come and got me. We would have straightened this out right then,” Rosie said.

  Loretta shrugged. “I figured Eva was right. I’d ruined his youth, so I gave back what was left of it. I figured he still had a lot of years to chase women and not be tied down to a wife and a child.”

  A cloud of dust followed Jackson’s truck, barely having time to settle in his wake when he came to a stop right outside the yard fence. He crawled out and shook the legs of his jeans down over the tops of his boots.

  Rosie pushed out of the rocking chair and glared at him. “Some men ain’t got a lick of sense. Wouldn’t know a good thing if it bit them square on the ass.”

  He sat down in the rocking chair beside Loretta. “What are you talking about, Rosie?”

  “Nothing you’d understand,” she smarted off and stormed into the house.

  “What kind of bee is in her bonnet?” he asked.

  Loretta raised one shoulder. “Go ask her.”

  He reached across the foot of space separating them and touched Loretta’s arm. “Are you going to sit out in this heat all day long and fan yourself with that church fan?”