Colorado High

by Joyce C. Ware

  “Like a bit of solitary boozing, you mean? This is for Pop, Garland. I stick pretty much to beer before dinner. Care to join us?”

  “Yeah . . . beer for me, too.”

  A moment later, in obedience to an internal clock Jed often wished was more fallible, Walter Bradburn rolled in. Seeing Garland, his usual querulous expression gave way to a playful smile and lovable-old-codger-type comments about her pretty face making him wishing he were young again. Garland, too sensible and nice to take offense, told him he still had more ginger than most of the young guys she knew.

  The old man preened, hoisted himself higher in his chair, tossed off the shot of whiskey Jed had handed him and held out his glass for more.

  “Pop, I really think-- “

  “You think too damn much, Jed. This is still my house, ain’t it?”

  Jed’s lips tightened and thinned; Garland, embarrassed for him, studied the foam-speckled surface of the beer in her mug.

  Jed opened his mouth to refuse, then thought better of it. He went to the kitchen, splashed a token thimbleful into his father’s glass, and grabbed another can of beer for himself from the fridge, tearing back the tab so fiercely he slashed his finger on the jagged edge.

  “Shit!”

  He stared out the window above the steel sink as he sucked at the cut. The view wasn’t as spectacular as it was from Tessa’s kitchen—the Bradburns had elected to build down in a cottonwood-fringed hollow, protected from the winter blast of winds spiraling down from the high peaks.

  The house did indeed still belong to his father. So did the barn, the sheds, the land, and the cattle grazing on it. Forget the fact that it was his training and knowledge and hard work that made the Bradburn ranch a model admired and emulated, not only in Ouray county, but beyond. Not that anyone put it in just those terms, but the awards won and the invitations to speak to cattlemen’s groups amounted to the same thing.

  And what did he have to show for it?

  Hardly more than your common or garden saddle bum: one horse, a set of worn leather tack, and a beat-up truck.

  Granted, the horse, bred by Tessa, was a damn fine one, and the saddle and bridle were silver mounted, won bareback bronc-riding the next-to-last time he competed. That was the glory year; the year after, as Pop never tired of reminding him, had been a disaster. Why, Jed had yet to figure.

  As for the truck . . . what was it Joe Higgins said when the left fender rusted out? “Well, boss, it still runs pretty good.”

  Garland’s laughter drifted in from the living room. It was good for Pop, seeing her, Jed thought. Helped the old man forget for a little while how much he had lost. Which was why, of course, he clung so hard to the things he had left. Including himself.

  Jed bowed his head over the steel sink. It wasn’t right, a grown man living this way.

  He guessed he would someday inherit everything, but that really wasn’t the point. He closed his eyes, trying to remember the name of the Dickens novel assigned in high school. Everyone had seen the movie on television at one point or another; yet they found, via the dismal grades on their returned papers, that it wasn’t quite the same as the original.

  Great Expectations, that was it, and he was an overage Pip.

  “Hey, Jed! You brewing that whiskey out there?”

  “Distilling, Pop,” Jed muttered under his breath. “Only beer and ale are brewed.” He walked into the living room and handed him his glass.

  “You sure you didn’t pour too much in?” his father asked sourly, eyeing the minuscule portion.

  Jed winked at Garland and raised his second can of beer to her. “I thought I’d have another, too, seeing as how this is a special occasion.”

  Walter Bradburn grunted in recognition of his son’s oblique warning. Try this tomorrow night and see how far you get.

  * * * *

  Jed walked Garland the few steps out to the truck. It was very still. They could hear peepers shrilling down in the stand of cottonwoods.

  “The sound of spring,” she said softly.

  “Yep. Before long it’ll be too dry for ‘em there.” He opened the cab door for her. “Thanks for coming, Garland. There’s not much that makes him smile these days.”

  “Glad to be of help, Uncle Jed.” She sighed. “I wish I could say it’s because he’s a dear old thing, but ...” She hopped up into the cab, avoiding his eyes.

  Jed leaned against the doorframe. “Honey, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

  “Well, damn it, why do you put up with it? I mean, ranch boss all day, nursemaid at night . . . it’s not fair!”

  “Fairness has nothing to do with it, Garland. Besides, what’s my alternative? Pa tolerates nurses only in a crisis, and the last time, when one of them was dumb enough to tell him her hourly rate, they could hear him clear out in the bunkhouse.”

  “Well, it seems to me . . .” She faltered and cleared her throat. “Seems to me you’re a pretty nice-looking guy with, you know, good prospects.” This time the words tumbled out.

  Amused by Garland’s earnestness, Jed watched her pick at a frayed spot on the edge of the beaded belt he’d given her for Christmas the year her father died. He bought it in New Mexico, at Gallup’s Intertribal Indian Ceremonial. Nell Lewis had helped him select it. Bad mistake, taking Nell . . .

  “You keep doing that,” he warned, “and we’re going to have us a bead shower. I really don’t want to spend the rest of the night here on my hands and knees.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes tender with concern. “Oh, Uncle Jed.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, Garland, but I think maybe I was destined to be a bachelor.”

  “Nonsense! Why, you’re— “

  “It’s not for want of thinking about it,” he broke in. “Or even trying to do something about it,” he admitted, “but somehow it just never worked out. There was this one girl—this was years ago, mind you, when a man could still get away with calling a woman a girl--pretty and smart, nice as could be ... we got along really well. Then I brought her home to meet Pop, and, well, it kind of reminded me of Red Riding Hood and the wolf. Have to give her credit though, she told me straight out a package deal like that wasn’t what she had in mind.”

  Garland huffed indignantly. “If you ask me, you were well rid of her . . . probably would have made a lousy mother.”

  “Now, Garland.”

  “Okay, okay ... so was she the only one?”

  “There were others; none I thought seriously about.” He smiled wryly. “A couple, of ‘em figured if they chased hard enough they’d eventually wear me down, but I got pretty good at spotting dollar signs in a woman’s eyes. I’d just tell them the truth of the matter, that until Pop died, he owned everything worth having around here.“

  “Except you, Uncle Jed.”

  He pulled thoughtfully at his long nose. “Well, according to some, even that’s a matter of opinion. Anyway, that pretty well stopped them in their tracks. Except for one, who’d been twice widowed and left pretty well fixed. Her idea of fun was a weekend in Vegas, so I allowed as how gambling was against my religion ... I saw no need to tell her it was a religion of my own devising.” They grinned at each other. “I heard later there’d been some question about the naturalness of the death of both her husbands.”

  “Yikes!”

  “Yeah.” He shook his head. “Good looker, though.”

  “Speaking of good lookers . . . you and Mom were pretty close once, weren’t you?”

  “Still are, Garland.”

  “I don’t mean as friends.”

  “Look, honey, your mom and I ... the time when we might have been more than friends . . . well, it’s long past.”

  “But she’s so lonely!”

  Jed dropped his hand from the door. “That’s not a good enough reason. Garland. Not for anybody. Your mother is a very . . . complicated person.”

  “Mom?” She sounded astonished.

  “She’s more than just your
mom, you know. And one thing she’s sure not doing is waiting around for me to sweep her up on a big white horse and gallop off into the sunset. For one thing, she’s got better horses of her own at home.”

  “No she doesn’t! She’s always bitching about the deal she gave you on Bolt. Strange name, I always thought.”

  Jed laughed. “You can blame that on your mom. He’s by Thor out of Zig-zag, and his full name is Thunderbolt . . . made me feel I ought to say something like ‘Hi-yo!’ whenever I got on him.”

  “Zig-zag! Gosh, remember the way she tilted when she rounded the barrels? I swear that mare defied gravity!”

  “Passed the ability on to a lot of her offspring, too.”

  Garland laughed. “Are you suggesting there’s such a thing as a gene for tilting, Uncle Jed?”

  “Well, all kinds of things can be inherited-some good, some not. Could have been a spontaneous mutation originating with Zig-zag.”

  “Hey, maybe that explains Gavin’s and my hazel eyes,” Garland said in a light tone Jed knew was forced. “Spontaneous genetic mutation . . . yeah, sounds real scientific. I’ll have to try that one on Mom.”

  “You’ll do no such thing, Garland.”

  “You know Daddy never accepted— “

  “There were a lot of things your daddy never accepted. Growing up was chief among them.” Jed reached out and took Garland’s hands in his. “Look, honey, what happened . . . the kind of man he became ... it wasn’t all his fault. Sometimes I think God played a dirty trick on him.”

  Garland’s eyes widened. “But you’re the one always telling Gavin and me about what a golden boy he was.”

  “He was! Good health, high spirits, looks . . . it sounds funny to say it about a man, but he was beautiful. If you’d seen him sailing down the football field—swear his feet didn’t seem to touch the ground. Lighter than air. Same on the cinder track at school and riding the bulls . . .”

  His eyes drifted beyond her, blinking as the present caught up with him.

  “It was all just handed to him on a golden platter, Garland. He never reckoned on the years slowing him down, and later, when he saw others passing him by— “

  “Are you implying Mom was one of those

  ‘others’? “

  Jed shifted uncomfortably. “You know, I really think she’s the one you ought to be talking to about this.”

  “I can talk with her about most things, Uncle Jed, but not Daddy. Never could. I was only kidding about trying out that genetic mutation thing on her.”

  “Well, you know that Barry and I ... we sort of shepherded your mom through her early barrel-racing days.”

  “Slave-drove, according to her.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” he protested. “Although I have to admit . . . you know about your mom’s rivalry with Jeannie Disbrow?”

  “Oh, sure, they laugh about it a lot.”

  “Yeah? Well, it wasn’t always a laughing matter. Jeannie was good. Not quite in Tessa’s class, but what really held her back was her horse. Your mom fretted about it; she couldn’t help wondering what would happen if Jeannie had a horse as good as hers. Well, it so happened that Jeannie’s horse went lame just before a rodeo they had both entered. Your mother insisted on lending Jeannie one of hers, and Barry just about went into orbit— accused Tessa of betraying him.”

  “Betraying him? I don’t get it ... seems to me Mom was just being incredibly generous to Jeannie. How could Daddy— “

  “Don’t you see?” Jed broke in. “He’d invested himself in her: his time, his energy— “

  “But so did you!”

  Jed shook his head. “Not to the same degree, Garland. Barry was strictly an all-out kind of guy. If she won, he won. No compromises; no second thoughts.”

  “Like yours?”

  Jed’s smile was rueful. “Yeah, like mine. But I seem to have strayed from the point I was trying to make. In fact, I don’t even remember what it was.”

  “Something about genetics, Uncle Jed. Genetics and hazel eyes.”

  “Was that it?” He looked as if he wished it weren’t. “Okay, let’s go back to that. You see, the trouble with the science we had in high school was that we didn’t get enough of it. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, there just wasn’t enough time. But even if you paid close attention, oversimplifications were inevitable. I doubt if we spent more than two days on Mendel’s law.”

  “Mendel . . . Mendel . . . Isn’t he the guy who grew all those peas? God! Imagine spending your entire life messing around with pea plants!”

  “He was a monk, Garland; I expect he had a lot of time on his hands. Anyway, the example our science teacher gave us had to do with eye color— I guess he thought we’d relate to that better’n tallness and shortness in peas. So, okay, brown is dominant, blue is recessive. That’s a given. But, he added, since eye color is determined by a pair of genes inherited from each parent, the variance from brown to blue can be considerable, unless both parents’ genes are exclusively of the recessive blue type. In that case, he told us, if the kids have brown eyes, you better check out the milkman.”

  Garland grinned.

  “Yeah, it was a pretty funny line,” Jed agreed, “and everybody laughed, but unfortunately, it was the only part of the whole damn lesson that stuck with your dad.”

  “Mom’s are blue,” Garland mused, “and so were Daddy’s. Except his were gray-blue . . . sagebrush blue, Mom called them.” She searched Jed’s brown eyes. “Gavin’s and mine are hazel. Are you saying Daddy thought that Mom and you— “

  “He was wrong,” Jed said flatly. “About her and me—about her and anyone else for that matter. Your mom’s the type who lies in the bed she makes, no matter what.”

  Garland grimaced. “They didn’t share the same room, let alone bed!”

  “I didn’t know that,” he muttered. “But I know your Mom,” he added fiercely. “She’s the most loyal person I’ve ever known . . . out of sheer stubbornness if nothing else.”

  “Oh, Mom’s stubborn all right, but she’s also human. All those years! I can’t imagine— “

  Garland stopped short. She bit her lip and ducked her head in a futile effort to hide the flush suffusing her cheeks. Seeing it, Jed was made suddenly, uncomfortably, aware of her budding sexuality.

  Budding, hell! It’s already bloomed.

  “You know, Garland, I used to think that if maybe . . . maybe if there hadn’t been twin pairs of hazel eyes ...” He paused to collect his thoughts, wondering if he should continue.

  She’s not a kid anymore, he thought. Besides, she asked me. “Along about your first birthday, I suggested to Barry that it might be a good idea if he took a good long look at the portrait of your great-grandmother hanging on the dining-room wall in your grandparents’ house.”

  She frowned. “I don’t remember seeing anything like that last time I visited them in Texas— ‘course they don’t have a regular dining room in their condo there . . . more like a dining alcove.”

  “Maybe they stored it away. You ask ‘em about it next time you go. Anyway, she had hazel eyes, midway between brown and green, just like yours and Gavin’s.”

  Garland gave him a funny look. “How come you noticed and Daddy didn’t?”

  Jed shrugged. “I’ve always noticed things like that, family resemblances in the way people look and move . . . maybe it’s because of my being adopted. Not having any blood kin of my own, I feel as if something’s missing, so I keep looking.” His smile dispelled any sense of self-pity. “You know that way Gavin has of hitching himself up when he doesn’t agree with you?” Garland nodded. “Pure Barry Wagner!”

  “So what did Daddy say?” she persisted.

  Jed’s eyes dropped. “Oh, just that his great-grandma’s eyes didn’t have those little gold speckles like yours and Gavin’s. I told him the artist could’ve forgotten to put them in—the point being, they were hazel. But he said—you know, hitching himself up—maybe the artist forgot the color, too; maybe he should�
��ve painted ‘em blue.”

  “And maybe, if you’re right about what you said before,” Garland murmured, “it gave him another way to justify his resentment of her . . . and you. Pairing you up would fit right in.”

  Jed raised troubled eyes to hers. “Not me, Garland.” He shook his head. “Barry knew better. Those ten years after they got married and before you guys were born . . . me and Tessa, well, except for our business dealings on Hayden’s Bald, things were kind of strained between us.”

  “Who, then, Uncle Jed?”

  “Trust me, Garland, he had no reason!”

  “Who?”

  Oh God. Reason or not, once she started working up in Telluride those old rumors’d find her out. His eyes even had those damn speckles.

  He sighed. “Shelby, Garland. Scott Shelby.”

  Chapter Five

  Tessa was standing at the sink peeling potatoes when she saw the swirl of dust heralding the approach of a vehicle. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Four-thirty. Too early for Garland.

  Tessa wiped her hands on the dish towel and went out on the long, wide veranda. She squinted against the long slanting rays of the sun, trying to identify the pickup nosing like a well-trained cow pony into the post-and-rail fence separating the narrow grassed yard from the sage-tufted land beyond. The bulky figure that stepped out of the cab was all too familiar.

  “Hey there, Lloyd,” she called. The man nodded and started towards her.

  A second figure scrambled out of the other side of the cab and trotted up beside him. “Been a while, Tessa.”

  “Sure has, Pauline. Good to see you guys,” she added insincerely. “Come on in!”

  Tessa waved her brother-in-law and his wife into the house, wondering what had brought them unannounced to her door. She knew better than to think it was simple sociability.

  “If I’d known you were coming I would have-- “

  “I told Lloyd he should have called first,” Pauline broke in, flustered as usual.

  Pauline was Lloyd’s second wife. She meant well, Tessa reflected. Not a mean bone in her curvy little body . . . and not a thought in her pretty little head.