Hearth Song

by Lois Greiman

  “What happened?”

  “No one knows. Not even Joe, I think. He stopped by while Jacquie was gone. Ruby was thirteen, alone, and never very … not quite like other kids. They went to the reservoir, just to swim maybe. But he had brought beer and … hell …”

  He laughed. It sounded awful, like something from a horror flick. “By the time I was that age, I could drink a six-pack before noon. She was found dead the next morning. Drowned.” His throat hurt; his eyes burned. He turned them toward the hills, seeking solace.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  He knew that. Of course he knew that, and yet he did not, making him long for absolution. The kindness of her words scoured his heart. He raised his gaze to hers, as blue as the far-seeing sky.

  “You couldn’t have known,” she said and, reaching out, settled a hand over the arm he had draped on top of his door. Her fingers were warm, igniting a small fire in his soul.

  He steeled himself against that kindness. “Not when I was three sheets to the wind.” He forced a smile. It felt painful in its gritty intensity, and for a moment they were frozen, locked in each other’s gaze.

  “Okay.” She drew her hand away and forced a laugh. “Point taken; I’m not the only one with regrets.”

  He filled his lungs and shrugged, hoping to look casual, perhaps almost achieving just that. “My father once said that where there is no regret, there is no life.”

  “Your dad sounds like a wise man.”

  “One of them was.”

  She raised her brows a little, and though Tonk warned himself against wandering deeper into the quagmire of truth, he spoke again.

  “There are few who would call my birth father wise.”

  He had put more emphasis into that single statement than he had intended, but she pulled her gaze away and glanced toward the overgrown meadow nearby. Hidden in the age-old grasses, a pheasant called for a mate, ever hopeful.

  “I guess I’m lucky,” she said.

  “This I knew when I first met your Lily.”

  Her eyes softened at the mention of her daughter.

  “It was but confirmed when I met your father,” he said.

  “My life wasn’t perfect, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  She scrunched her face a little, as if searching for something with which to challenge the sadness of the story he should not have shared. “He used to tickle me until I’d pee in my pants.”

  The image of her as a child did something unwanted to his insides. “The man should be horsewhipped,” he said, and she laughed, more naturally now.

  “Gamps scolded me once for picking a crocus, said …” She paused, sighed. “There’s too little wild left, and it should be revered, not plucked like a weed from the earth.”

  “There is great wisdom in your family, too,” he said. “I am sorry he is sick.”

  “He’ll be all right.” She flickered her eyes to him and away. “I think he’ll be all right. But maybe … Mrs. Washburn thought he should move into a nursing home.”

  “Difficult for a man who reveres the wild places.”

  “What else can we do?”

  “Perhaps quality of life is more important to him than number of days.”

  “So what? You think he should just be allowed to drop dead in his vegetable garden? Keel over in his herb patch?”

  He opened his mouth to state his opinion, but there had been those few moments of peace, so fragile they quivered.

  “I think he is blessed to have a granddaughter who loves him with such fierce devotion.”

  “I … You …” She huffed a sigh, let her shoulders drop. “Maybe we could be friends,” she said finally.

  When she stood there with her soul as bare as her lilac toes? He doubted it, but he could hardly say as much. “Perhaps stranger things have happened.”

  She breathed a laugh, gaze drawn to the pastures again. “It might be nice to see horses grazing there.”

  He watched her, because he could, because he had little choice. Despite everything he had told himself, she drew him like that damned proverbial moth.

  “You said you’d fix the fences, right?” she asked, and pinned him with her eyes. Again the moth.

  “Ai.”

  “And you’ll pay me.”

  This was a mistake, he thought, but could not seem to stop the words. “I will pay you.”

  She nodded, thinking. “You’ve got a deal then,” she said, and turned away. But in a second she had stopped. Her eyes looked impish and ageless over the curve of her shoulder. Dark hair framed her face like a disheveled halo, and dimples flashed, as mesmerizing as fire in the darkness. “Am I going to regret this?”

  “Almost definitely,” he said, and she laughed as she headed toward the house.

  Chapter 13

  “There’s something wrong.” Mrs. Washburn, old as dirt and as opinionated as a cactus, stood in the center of her newly remodeled kitchen. Her arms were akimbo, her face screwed up with disapproval. Scowl as dark as an encroaching thunderstorm, she scrutinized the work Vura and her crew had sweat blood over for forty days and forty nights.

  Behind the dissatisfied home owner, Maynard Grayson dropped his head in abject misery while Glen Eastman stifled an involuntary groan. Emil Johnston, better known as Hip for reasons long ago forgotten, looked as if he might very well burst into bloodcurdling curses; they had replaced the counter twice, moved the stationary chrome-backed stools repeatedly, and smoothed the flooring so not a single seam could be seen from any vantage point.

  Of course, that didn’t mean the room wasn’t still as ugly as an open wound … at least to Vura’s eye. Apparently, modern wasn’t her thing. She wouldn’t have guessed it would be Mrs. Washburn’s, either, since she had been born during the dirty thirties when the harsh northwesterly winds were trying to blow South Dakota’s top soil into Mexico. But, according to Mary Keterling, Mrs. Washburn’s on-again, off-again best friend, Mrs. Washburn’s youngest sister had called her sibling old-fashioned, thus fostering endless backbreaking labor and this festering eyesore.

  Vura stifled a wince as she glanced around the room. Everything that wasn’t white was red. And not a soft, inviting, “sit down and have a cup of coffee” red, but a blistering, angry red, a red that glared from the cabinets, dripped like blood from the hanging, overhead lights.

  Vura had tried to coax her client into a more forgiving direction, but Mrs. Washburn, ever true to her convictions, no matter how misguided they might be, had stood firm. And really, it wasn’t as if Vura was an expert on interior design. One glance at her sheep-infested bedroom would prove that. So she had acquiesced. Hence this … She refrained from shaking her head at the catastrophe Sawhorse, Inc. had wrought.

  “But, Mrs. Washburn …” Vura tried to keep from whining, did her best to remain upbeat. Attitude was contagious, and she hated to see grown construction workers cry. Especially when they were of the caliber of her employees, talented men with golden hands who would work for Quinton Murrell’s daughter out of nothing but a fierce sense of loyalty. “We did everything you asked.”

  “Hmmm …” The old woman shook her head and rambled forward to run a gnarled hand over the flawless countertop and pet the ruby-red refrigerator. Opening it experimentally, she glanced inside.

  “Is it the hardware?” Vura asked, and refused to share a frantic glance with her coworkers, who stood in a mute semicircle around her. The cupboard handles were as offensive as anything in the room. Made of glaring stainless steel, they were bookended with stylized roses and adorned every cabinet and drawer. Weird as they were, they matched the kill-me-now style to startling perfection, but she was desperately trying to think of something they could change that wouldn’t require an additional hundred man-hours. Hip was beginning to pull at his hair like a fretful two-year-old, and truth be told, he didn’t have that much to begin with. “Or maybe the—”

  But suddenly Mrs. Washburn gasped. Pulling a wooden bowl of fruit out of the fridge, she
turned with the decisiveness of a major general and thumped the thing atop the alabaster center island. She scowled, tilted her head, adjusted the bowl’s angle, and … smiled. “There,” she said, and clasped her hands together in girlish glee. “Perfect.”

  Vura blinked. Glen stiffened. Maynard was, quite obviously, holding his breath. And Hip, even older than their most opinionated client, wiped the back of his hand across his lips as if he was ready to do battle.

  “Yes,” Vura agreed tentatively, not entirely certain whether the elderly lady was being facetious. “Yes, you’re right.” Nobody blinked. “You’re absolutely right. That made all the difference.”

  The kitchen was as silent as a tomb.

  “Don’t you agree?” Vura asked, and turned expectantly toward her men.

  It took them a moment to snap out of their respective trances.

  “Yeah!” Glen chirped.

  “Definitely!” Maynard agreed.

  “Kill me!” Hip rasped.

  Vura gritted her teeth in the old man’s direction, causing him to snarl an obliging smile. “You’ve always had good taste, Colley,” he said, but the words were something of a growl.

  “Better than some.” She sniffed, then pulled her gaze from Hip to turn her attention back toward their masterpiece. “Bravura Lambert, you and your boys did a fine job.”

  “Thank you,” Vura said.

  “Although it took you long enough,” she added.

  Hip opened his mouth to retaliate, but Vura sent him a frantic look, begging for patience. He slid grouchily back into silence.

  “We’re sorry we couldn’t get it done sooner,” Vura said, and tried not to remember the fact that they had been forced to reorder the linoleum multiple times when their client had opted for a slightly different shade of pallid.

  “Well …” Mrs. Washburn clapped twice, then glanced around with a critical eye. “I’ll still have time to get things cleaned up before Mother’s Day.” If there was so much as a dust mote in the place, Vura had yet to find it. Mrs. Washburn’s late husband had been known to hide in his toolshed after work so his wife wouldn’t throw his clothes in the washing machine before he had stripped them off.

  “Plenty of time,” Maynard agreed.

  “I wish my place was half so clean,” Glen volleyed.

  Mrs. Washburn smiled. “Well, I suppose you would like to get paid.”

  Please, Lord, Vura thought. “If it’s not too much trouble,” she said.

  The old lady nodded as she pulled a handbag from an ugly nearby cupboard. The leather satchel was the approximate size of a pachyderm.

  By the time they exited the house, Vura felt a little light-headed.

  “Let me see it,” Glen said.

  Vura tilted the check toward her men.

  “She actually paid us extra.” Maynard’s tone was awed, his ginger eyebrows arched in disbelief as he leaned close.

  “I thought you said she was cheap,” Glen said, and tapped an elbow into old Hip’s arm.

  “What was that?” Hip asked, and snapped his rheumy gaze toward the road that led to Main Street and Custer City’s very own Drop On Inn.

  “What?” Vura asked, terrified that some minor mishap would tilt them back into another fifty hours of labor.

  “Oh …” The old man exhaled, noisily relieved. “Guess it’s nothing. I thought I saw four horsemen coming down the drive. Couple of ’em had scythes.”

  It took a moment for Vura to laugh, longer for the others to groan. But in a moment they had forgotten the possibility of the apocalypse and were tossing their tools into metal boxes, then creaking open the doors of their respective vehicles.

  “Hey!” Glen said, and set one foot inside his trusty Subaru. “Who’s up for a beer?”

  “Count me in,” Maynard said.

  Hip nodded.

  “How about you, Vura?”

  The question punched something low in her gut. It wasn’t that she ever felt really out of place with the men. She’d known them all since before she could lift a screwdriver. But it hadn’t been exactly seamless going from under-their-feet pest to over-their-head boss. Friendship she had always had. Respect was more difficult to come by. Maybe it was the twenty-first century, but out here in the far reaches of South Dakota, women were still encouraged to keep their houses clean and their mouths shut.

  “You think I want to spend my time with a bunch of men who smell like sweat and sawdust?” she asked.

  “Don’t know why else you’d be in the business,” Maynard quipped.

  Vura laughed. “Meet you at Windy’s?”

  “Last one there’s the designated driver,” Maynard said and, winking, slipped behind the wheel of his amped-up Impala.

  An hour later Vura had her steel-toed loggers propped up on the bar stool beside her.

  “Them Carhartts?” Glen asked, and motioned to her clay-colored overalls with the rim of his beer bottle.

  “Yeah.” Vura took a sip of her Budweiser. “Want to borrow them?”

  The other men chuckled with good-natured camaraderie. Glen was often ribbed about his diminutive size. If he hadn’t had the capability to bench-press the lot of them, he might have taken offense.

  As it was, he gave her a crafty look from the corner of his eye before shifting into a faraway stare. “Remember when she decided to wear her daddy’s pants, Hip?”

  The old man roused himself from some shadowy half dream he’d been visiting. “The ones he’d left in the bathroom of the Graffs’ new house?”

  “It was about a hundred degrees in the shade,” Glen said.

  “And she decided her old man’s overalls would be nice and roomy.”

  “So she kicked off her jeans.”

  Hip grinned.

  Vura felt her cheeks heat up. This was exactly the kind of problem caused by knowing men since you were sporting Pampers and pabulum.

  “Right there in the Graffs’ unfinished bathroom.”

  Maynard, the only one who hadn’t been present at that embarrassing moment, was listening with interest.

  “Wasn’t a bad idea,” Hip said.

  Glen nodded. “Until that Nettlebee kid …” He narrowed his eyes in thought, searching his memory banks. “What was his name?”

  “Jim.”

  “That’s right. She thought it was a swell idea until he decided to grab a smoke in that very same bathroom.”

  “You could have told him I was in there,” Vura murmured.

  “I could have,” Glen agreed. His grin was wicked.

  “So what you’re telling me is you guys has always been jerk-offs,” Maynard said, and settled his beer on his only slightly rounded belly, bisecting the words, HOME IS WHERE THE PANTS AIN’T. Spring, summer, fall, and winter, he sported a short-sleeved T-shirt guaranteed to elicit chuckles or groans.

  “Always,” Vura agreed.

  “Sweet Martha, I thought the whole damned house was going to come down with the ruckus that caused. You never heard such screeching.”

  Maynard shrugged. “Girls has been known to shriek some when you catch ’em in their skivvies.”

  “Girls …” Glen said, and shook his head. “It was Jimbo who raised the roof.”

  Vura gritted her teeth. Maynard chuckled. “Caught him unawares, I suppose.”

  “And in the left eye.”

  Maynard raised a brow.

  “Hit him square in the eyeball. Poor kid couldn’t see straight for a week.”

  “Same could happen to you,” Vura muttered and took a delicate sip of her beer.

  Glen laughed out loud. “I’m just sayin’ …”

  “Too much,” Vura warned, though the warmth of their camaraderie had washed away the last vestige of her tension. “Unless you want me to regale our fellow workers here with tales about you and that nanny goat at Van Dake’s.”

  Glen blushed bright magenta, and the stories began to fly in earnest.

  “I’m not saying you ain’t tough,” Maynard said, directing the lip of his fo
urth brewski at Glen. “I’m just sayin’ I don’t think you can take ol’ Hip there.”

  “Hip?” Glen asked, and glanced at the old man who was half-snoozing in his chair.

  “I mean, I know he’s older than sin, but even Mrs. Washburn didn’t kill him.”

  “I thought she showed remarkable restraint,” Vura admitted. The two eighty-somethings had shared more than a few heated “conversations” during the last few weeks.

  “While we was remodeling?” Maynard asked. “Well, hell yeah, but I meant when they was an item.”

  Vura sat straight up. “What?” She grinned at the old man, who gave her a half-asleep glower. “You and Mrs. Washburn dated?”

  “Them two was hotter than a biscuit back in the day.”

  “Was that day in the eighteen hundreds?” Glen asked.

  Hip shifted his sleepy glance in the diminutive man’s direction. “She was a pinup girl.”

  “A what?”

  “What?” Vura echoed Maynard’s surprise.

  “During the war,” Hip said. “They sent out pictures to inspire the boys on the front.”

  “No way!”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “She still inspires me … until she opens her mouth,” Hip said, and almost brought the roof down.

  By the time Vura finally thumped her second empty bottle onto the table a dozen half-true stories had been told and denied. “Well …” She pushed herself to her feet. “I gotta go.”

  “That’s right.” Maynard waggled his brows at her. “The boss’s husband’s back.”

  “Guess you better hurry then,” Glen said. “So you can meet your boyfriend before your old man finds out.”

  She waved, left the bar on a waft of good karma, and drove to Rapid City. She had only had one beer for every three of her men’s, but she was just as aware of her size as she was of her mortality and drove carefully to Regional Hospital.

  Guilt settled in a little, displacing a fraction of the bonhomie caused by time with her employees. But despite his illness, Gamps would be the first to espouse the value of good work relationships. He had been employed full-time as a master plumber until his eightieth birthday. In fact, he still helped out if there was a need.