High Plains Hearts

by Janet Spaeth

  “Three weeks ought to be plenty.”

  He shook his head. “I think you need to back up on this. You haven’t even seen the house except for the living room and the kitchen. For all you know, the rest of it could be a wreck.”

  “But it isn’t, is it?” she asked stubbornly. She did not want to let go of this dream.

  “I’m just saying—” He clapped his hand on his forehead and walked off.

  “Honey,” Jeannie said, her voice low enough that only Livvy could hear it, “this is a lot of money to invest. You need to be careful.”

  Livvy let her fingers trail across Leonard’s ears and was rewarded with him rubbing his snout against her new black jersey slacks. She was sure that she now sported a line of dog goo across the fabric but she didn’t care.

  “I can trust them, can’t I?” she asked, holding on as tightly as she could to the new life that Sunshine offered.

  “Of course you can. But Gramps is old, and Hayden is a math teacher. Neither one is a carpenter or an electrician or a roofer. All they can do is chase after problems. You probably want to start over, tear out the plumbing, look at the wiring, investigate the heating system.”

  “I can do that.”

  “You can?” Jeannie’s surprise was clear.

  “Sure.” Livvy watched Hayden pacing by the clothesline pole, clearly conflicted about something, and felt her resolution ebbing as totally as if someone had pulled the plug on it. Maybe hours of watching renovation shows on television hadn’t prepared her after all. Her precious book, The Complete Guide to Home Construction and Repair, would help, but she knew it wasn’t as complete as it proclaimed itself to be.

  He pulled his Cooter’s Hardware cap off, ran his fingers through his hair, and jammed the hat back on. And then he stalked over to Livvy and Jeannie.

  “I never represented Sunshine as anything but an old run-down resort that has seen its time come and go, did I?”

  “No,” Livvy said in a little voice.

  “And I never said it was in good shape, did I?”

  “Well,” she said, “you’re living there with your grandfather, so I assumed it was livable.”

  “How are you going to get back and forth between Sunshine and Obsidian?”

  “Trevor said—”

  “Trevor wants an iPod more than anything. Keep that in mind whenever he’s offering you a deal. That truck is held together with duct tape, putty, bubble gum, and a hot glue gun. Not to mention a whole lot of prayer—on the driver’s part.”

  “I left my car at a lot to be sold before I left, but I can buy another one.”

  Jeannie coughed beside her as Hayden tore off his cap, ruffled his hair, and pulled it on again, this time with more vigor.

  “When are you planning to do that?”

  “Soon, I guess.” She knew how bad this sounded, how unprepared she came across, but it was the truth.

  “I don’t know if I’d wait. That truck isn’t going to make the trip between Sunshine and Obsidian too many more times before it becomes a permanent resident of the junkyard. That’s where Trevor got the parts for it, I’m sure, so it’ll be a homecoming of sorts.”

  She knew it was true. The truck made some pretty dire clacks and bangs, and she didn’t even want to find out what shape the tires were in. She didn’t have to wait—Hayden told her.

  “And those tires—they’re no better than balloons at this stage. Unsafe.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Gramps has an old pickup out at Sunshine. It’s not pretty but it’s got four-wheel drive and it’s a sight safer than Trevor’s bucket of bolts. Let me make sure it’s got good plates and registration. I think he kept it up but I want to be sure. If it’s still good, we’ll throw it in as part of the deal. I know Gramps doesn’t drive it anymore, and I sure don’t need it.”

  Four-wheel drive. She hadn’t given much thought to the fact that she would probably be driving in winter.

  As if reading her mind, Hayden continued, “You usually don’t need four-wheel drive, but when you do, you’re mighty glad you have it.”

  Jeannie nodded in agreement. “It’s going to be a good idea, Livvy, especially if you plan to winter out there. That’s a long, lonely road from Sunshine into Obsidian, and sometimes it drifts over pretty badly.”

  Livvy swallowed. Hard. This was more than she’d thought about.

  She tried to dismiss it. Winter driving didn’t faze her. She’d managed Boston traffic in snow, and she could certainly make her way just fine on these uncrowded streets during winter. It wouldn’t be that bad, would it?

  “You could drive Gramps’s pickup for a while. Whether or not you want to keep what you have, well, that’s up to you and how safe you feel,” Hayden said.

  Her car was cute, a bright yellow little import that zipped through the city and was easy on gasoline. She loved it—in Boston. And now it sat at Buster’s AutoWorld on the edge of the city, unless it had been sold to someone else. She’d miss it, but it wasn’t what she needed here.

  The fact of the matter was that Hayden was right. She had to do something about transportation, and Trevor’s truck wasn’t the answer.

  “Thanks for the offer. Honestly, I’m delighted to return Trevor’s truck to him. At least he’s somewhat closer to his iPod, even if I don’t keep the truck any longer.”

  “Good. I’ll check into it. Well, we’d better get on with our errands if we’re going to get a fishing pole in your hands this afternoon,” he said.

  “You’re going fishing? That’s lovely,” Jeannie said. “The sun’s burning off most of the rain, and it’ll be pleasant. Use sunscreen, dear,” she added in an aside to Livvy. “You’ll burn worse than one of Alvin’s pizzas if you don’t.”

  “Alvin’s pizzas?” she asked blankly.

  “Alvin Johannsen owns Pizza World. His pizzas are legendary—for being crispy,” Hayden explained.

  She nodded.

  The day was heating up, now that the drizzle had stopped. Overhead a lone cloud, wispy and thin, was stalled over the Badlands. Nothing else interrupted the space between the sky and the earth, save for the tops of the elms that brushed the endless blue. The sun touched everything, chasing away the shadows and warming roofs and sidewalks.

  Cooter’s Hardware. Alvin’s Pizza. Clara’s Café. It was a different world, and she was loving every light-drenched moment of it.

  Hayden caught the door of the real estate office just before it slammed shut. Tom Clark, the agent, had assured him that the sale of Sunshine would be accomplished quite easily, and he’d draw up the papers that afternoon.

  His stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a nest of wasps, buzzing and stinging inside him. This was probably the most important decision he’d ever made, encouraging Gramps to sell Sunshine.

  It was for the best. He knew that. Gramps wasn’t able to maintain it, and Sunshine deserved a better fate than falling into ruin.

  He glanced at Livvy. Sunlight filtered through the leaves of the trees outside the agency, casting dappled pieces of sunlight across her dark hair.

  She was so tiny.

  He stopped himself. She wasn’t tiny at all. She was sized just right. The top of her head came to his nose, which would put her lips—

  He ended the thought before it went any further. Obviously he’d been out in the country too long, if that’s where his mind was going.

  She was buying Sunshine and that was it.

  And, he reminded himself, once the papers were signed, it was hers. Totally hers. The only thing he and Gramps would own would be some of the glasses etched with the Sunshine name … and their memories.

  He’d be off to teach, Gramps would be settled in a retire-ment home, and their lives, now intersecting with Livvy’s, would head off in three different directions.

  His mood began to disintegrate.

  “You look sad,” she said, her hand on his forearm, and her forehead wrinkled with concern. “This is rough, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, not trusting hims
elf to speak for a moment. And then he gathered his emotions together and summoned a smile. “There’s one sure way to chase away the blues,” he said.

  “Whistle?” She grinned.

  “Actually I was thinking we could go fishing, but we can whistle on the way.”

  She looped her arm through his and the two of them began to walk to his car, trying to whistle and not laugh, and failing.

  They spent the time traveling to Sunshine in the car, sharing songs they especially liked and those they absolutely hated.

  “Some country,” Hayden offered, “especially the old songs from the early days.”

  “Yes, Patsy Cline, for sure.”

  “A lot of classical, especially Bach.”

  “Bach’s music is big—it takes over the room.”

  “Exactly! And Debussy is sweet.”

  “Sweet?” She tilted her head, questioning.

  “ ‘Clair de Lune.’ I have to confess though, that’s the only Debussy melody I know. I took piano lessons when I was in grade school, and Miss Henrietta, my teacher, gave me ‘Clair de Lune’ to learn. I thought I’d never heard such a beautiful song.” He smiled at the memory of sitting at the piano in his house, leaning over the keys, trying to find exactly the right phrasing for the song.

  “ ‘Clair de Lune.’ I haven’t thought of that for ages! It’s so pretty!”

  “I played it so often that if my parents heard it on a store’s audio, or on the radio, they clapped their hands over their ears. I suspect I didn’t play it all that well, to be honest. I wasn’t exactly a piano prodigy. I lasted through third grade, and then baseball called my name.”

  “I can see you playing baseball,” she said. “You’re a Red Sox fan, I hope.”

  “Sorry.” He chuckled. “Around here pretty much it’s the Twins all the way. Almost everybody supports the Minnesota teams, since North Dakota doesn’t have major league sports. So it’s the Twins for baseball, the Vikings for football, and the Wild for hockey—or the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, of course—although hockey’s so big here that local hockey is more important for most.”

  “I like hockey, but of course in Boston it’s the Bruins that everybody roots for.”

  “It probably won’t matter. You’ll be a huge fan soon of the ObsMarWin team.”

  “ObsMarWin?” she asked.

  “Obsidian-Martinville-Winston Consolidated School District, home of the Landers, which is short for Badlanders. It used to be the Badlanders but some kids got the bright idea to call them the Baddies, which wouldn’t do at all, of course, so they became the Landers.”

  “The Landers. I like that!”

  “They rarely get to the final rounds of any sports, but they play with all their hearts, and you’ve got to give them credit for that. You’ll see folks around here sporting the green and gold as soon as the first puck flies.”

  “Green and gold being the Landers’s colors, right?”

  “Right. The school is here in Obsidian. It’s that big prairie-style building we drove past on our way out of town. Sort of a sentinel here in the Badlands. I’ll point it out on the way back.”

  The turn to Sunshine was still noted by a sign that had faded almost to the point of not being legible. How long had it been there? He didn’t know. Since he was a boy, it had pointed the way to Sunshine. It had weathered everything from deep snows and blizzards to hot summer winds and blistering heat.

  The sign, shaped like a smiling sun with once-rosy cheeks, was tilted to one side. Someone had probably taken the turn too sharply and clipped it.

  He pulled over to the side of the road and tugged the sign back into place, shoring it up with one of the large stone chunks around the sign, there for that very purpose.

  Livvy called through the open truck door, “That’s a really cool sign. I’m surprised it’s still here.”

  “I think Gramps just never got around to replacing it,” he said as he put one foot on the running board and heaved himself onto the seat. “It’s a bit out of the way for him, and I suppose other things were more important.”

  “I think it’s charming,” she said. “I meant though that I’m surprised someone hasn’t taken it.”

  “Why would they?”

  “It’s old and it’s retro. It would probably sell for a lot of money. Don’t you ever watch those antique shows on television?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve heard of them but never watched them. We don’t have cable at Sunshine.”

  “Oh, they’re my favorites.” Her face took on a dreamy, faraway look. “Those, and the home remodeling ones, and the travel programs. One day I’m going to go to Alaska and touch a glacier with my bare hands, and then I’ll go to China and see the Great Wall and try to take in how big it is, and Egypt to look at the pyramids where I’ll imagine what it must have been like during the days of the pharaohs.”

  “You like to travel?” He put the truck into gear and edged back onto the road, now headed toward Sunshine.

  “I think I would.”

  He shot her a startled glance. “You haven’t traveled?”

  “This is as exotic as it gets for me.”

  He hooted. “North Dakota? Exotic?”

  “It is, for someone who’s spent her entire life in Massachusetts.”

  “You never left Massachusetts? I don’t believe it.” He avoided a rabbit that darted in front of the truck.

  “Oh, I visited other New England states, but I never got much farther west than a ways into New York. But I’ve always wanted to see more of the world. Have you traveled much?”

  “Not a lot. Minnesota, of course. Everybody goes to the Cities at some point.”

  “The Cities?” she asked. “Which cities?”

  “The Cities are what we call Minneapolis and St. Paul. They’re the Twin Cities, you know, so most people here simply call them the Cities. It’s even capitalized, so if you see a reference to ‘the Cities’ and the C is uppercased, that’s what it means.”

  “I see,” she said. “I think.”

  “And I have gone into Canada, but not recently. It seems like every free minute quickly becomes not-free.”

  He rubbed his hand over his forehead, trying to erase the frown lines that he knew had carved themselves there. The truth was that Gramps had needed him more and more, and as it became clearer that the old man was edging toward heaven, he’d in fact needed his grandfather more. Needed to be around him, needed to hear his voice, needed to see him as much as he could.

  Every August, when he’d had to start spending his days inside the big tan brick building preparing for school and then teaching, he’d hated being away from Gramps. And as the year slipped onward, from summer’s blazing glory to unpredictable autumn, when there might be a forty-degree variable from one day to the next, he began to dread winter’s arrival.

  One day last winter, driven from desperation and exhaustion, he’d sent out applications to schools along the far southeastern coast of Florida. He could see himself with Gramps on the beach, soaking up the sun and the warmth and escaping the cold and the snow and the relentless wind.

  But nothing had come of it, and he’d let it slip past, and here he was, heading into another school year, and he dreaded the deep winter that was coming.

  He couldn’t get out to see Gramps at night then—he often had school responsibilities that kept him in Obsidian—and the weekends were iffy at best. Usually the highway to the turnoff was clear, but after that, it was anybody’s guess how bad the drifting might be.

  Worry about his grandfather was never far from his mind.

  “You spend most of your time with him, don’t you?” she asked gently, startling him as if she had been reading his thoughts. “You don’t have to say it. It’s clear without the words. He’s why you stay here.”

  “No!” he objected, perhaps more strenuously than necessary, and he immediately modified the word. “Well, not entirely. My heart is in Obsidian. It’s in Sunshine, and it’s in Gramps.”
>
  He refused to consider the day when he would not have either of them.

  Fortunately he wasn’t able to continue that train of thought, for when he pulled into the yard at Sunshine, Gramps was waiting for him, a fishing pole in each hand.

  “Grub!” Gramps called, as he hobbled toward the truck. “I’m ready. Even dug up a nightcrawler or two.” He gestured toward a tomato soup can in the shade by the front porch.

  “You got us worms?” Hayden asked, taking the poles from his grandfather. “How did you do that?”

  “I took that shovel over there”—the old man gestured toward a small camp shovel with a pointed tip—“and dug.”

  “Well, that’s the way it’s usually done,” Hayden said. He walked over to the can where an earthworm was making its escape out the top of it. He dropped it back into the can, where three other worms were, and returned to the truck.

  “I told Livvy we’d take her fishing.”

  “So we shall. There’s an extra pole in the blue shed, and Grub, you’d better give her one of the canvas hats so she doesn’t get burned.”

  Within minutes, Livvy was outfitted with fishing gear and one of Gramps’s old hats that was so big it insisted on sliding down over her nose.

  “You can swim, right?” Hayden asked.

  “Swim?” She had a look of faint panic on her face. “We’re going swimming, too? I don’t have a suit.”

  Gramps cackled. “The goal is not to go swimming.”

  “Not to—? Oh!” She laughed. “I can swim. I’m no Olympic gold medalist but I can get from one side of the pool to the other.”

  “There aren’t sides to this pool. You need a life jacket,” Hayden said. “They’re in the boat. Let’s go on down there and get things set up. I’ll get the can of gasoline, and Livvy, why don’t you grab that soup can? Those are the worms.”

  “Worms,” she said faintly.

  He had to smile at her reaction. “Not a worm fan, I gather. I’ll put them on the hook for you.”

  She nodded. “I appreciate that.”

  Soon they were all at the boat, each one clad in a life jacket, smudged from being stored away, and thoroughly doused with bug spray. A blue and white cooler filled with root beer was tucked away next to the tackle box.