33 The Return of Bowie Bravo

by Christine Rimmer

  That day, the shipment of reclaimed red oak Bowie had been waiting for arrived. He got started on the table for the customer in Oregon. At lunchtime, he walked over to Main Street and ate at the diner.

  On his way back to the barn, he stopped in at Rossi’s Hardware Emporium, next door to the St. Thomas Bar, just to see how things were getting along there. He’d always liked the Rossi store. It was one big room, packed to the knotty-pine rafters with gardening tools and supplies, general household equipment and anything you might need for a home improvement project. One whole wall was dedicated to every nut, bolt, washer and screw of every size ever invented. As a kid, he’d loved going in that store. Matteo’s dad always treated him like a regular person, not like some wild fool who might steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. And Matteo took after his dad, a good man who didn’t judge others. Five years ahead of Bowie in school, Matteo always greeted him with warmth and courtesy when they met on the street or in the store.

  Bowie went in and saw that Glory was there at the counter, behind the ancient National cash register. She waved when she saw him come in, but she didn’t smile.

  She seemed kind of preoccupied.

  Or maybe it was something to do with that moment at breakfast, when he’d offered to go get Sera for her and her warm, open expression had suddenly closed tight against him. Maybe she’d decided she’d been acting too friendly with him.

  Scratch the maybe. He knew that keep-your-distance expression when he saw it.

  He went to the counter anyway. After all, as he kept reminding her, he was there to help. He saw that she had Sera, asleep in the stroller, back there with her. “Just checking in,” he said. “Seeing if there’s anything I can do around here.…”

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “No. Del’s in the back if I need him.” Del Paxton was about a hundred years old and her only employee. “I’ve got it handled, thanks.” She smiled. But it was a flat sort of smile, all tight and strictly business.

  “Anything you need from the grocery store?”

  “Nope, I’m good.”

  He was dismissed. He got that. So he gave her a nod and he left.

  At dinner that night, it was pretty much the same. She treated him with cool politeness. Johnny babbled away about his day at school. It was snowing by then. Johnny said he hoped it would “Snow and snow and never stop.” He wanted to build a snowman after school the next day.

  Once they’d eaten, Bowie helped clear the table. Glory put the dishes in the dishwasher and wiped down the counters without saying a word to him, avoiding eye contact the whole time.

  He gave up and went out to the barn as soon as the kitchen was in order. If she didn’t want him around her, fine. He could take a hint.

  Johnny came out to say good-night. He brought a book with him so that he could read Bowie a story. That was kind of fun. Johnny in the rocker and Bowie whittling in his easy chair, the fire keeping the workshop nice and toasty, Johnny reading a story about a spoon. There were lots of illustrations. Johnny would read the one or two sentences on the page and then hold up the book so Bowie could see the pictures.

  It didn’t take long for him to read the whole thing. “Bowie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Tomorrow night, I will bring a book that a grown-up reads to a kid. And you can read it to me.”

  He was definitely making progress with Johnny. He told himself to be grateful for that. “Fair enough.”

  After Johnny left, Bowie finished the train car he was whittling and then he went outside, where the snow was still falling, soft and thick and silent, covering everything like a fluffy frozen blanket. He tipped his face up to the sky and felt the snowflakes on his cheeks, his mouth, against his eyelashes. There were maybe a couple of inches on the ground by then.

  Johnny just might get lucky and be able to build himself a snowman the next afternoon.

  The snow kept on until past noon the next day. And then the sun came out.

  Johnny arrived home from school with one of his older cousins, one of Glory’s sister Trista’s kids. Glory wrapped his bandaged hand in plastic to keep the moisture out and then gave him a big snow mitten to wear on top of that. Then he and his cousin built their snowman in the front yard. Later the two of them came knocking on the workshop door. Bowie was sanding the table he’d built. They had a lot of questions—about his tools and about why he used “old wood.” He answered them as best he could.

  That night, he read Johnny four chapters of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Before Johnny slogged back through the snow to the house, he got Bowie’s promise that he would read the book to him every night until they reached the end.

  Friday was more of the same. Glory avoided eye contact with him when he saw her in the morning at breakfast and that night at dinner. She said maybe two sentences to him all that day. He told himself he was fine with that. He was slowly forging a relationship with his son.

  And that was all that mattered.

  That night, he read to Johnny some more. It was great, sitting there in his easy chair, reading the story out loud. Johnny ended up pulling the rocker over closer, so he could peer over Bowie’s shoulder at the illustrations. He asked a lot of questions and Bowie would stop reading so they could discuss the answers. They read a lot more than four chapters.

  And it was after nine when Johnny finally put his jacket back on and returned to the house.

  Saturday morning, Glory was up and waiting for him when he came in to get the breakfast started. She had her mug of tea and she was sitting at the table in a bulky brown sweater, her shoulders all hunched up. He knew just from her body language that she was pissed off about something and he was about to catch hell for whatever it was.

  “I need a word with you before Johnny comes in here.” She spoke low and intensely, like she was playing a spy in some espionage movie or something.

  “Sure.” He tried to stay upbeat.

  She accused, “He came in at nine-fifteen last night.”

  “Sorry. We were reading and I lost track of the time.”

  “I want him in bed by eight. Eight-thirty at the very latest. Please send him back to the house absolutely no later than eight-fifteen. And don’t make eight-fifteen a habit. Really, for all intents and purposes, his bedtime is eight o’clock.” She had her mouth all pinched up again.

  “If you don’t watch out, Glory, your mouth might stick that way.” The words were out before he remembered that he wasn’t going to cop any attitudes, that he had a lot to make up for and he had no right to get all up in her face about anything.

  She pinched up her mouth even tighter. “What my mouth does is no concern of yours.”

  He felt his temper rise. And he told it to back the hell down. “Yeah, well, no problem. I got that. Loud and clear.”

  She took a moment, sipped her tea, set the mug down with care. “Will you please have him back here on time at night?”

  “Yeah, I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Thanks.” And she grabbed her tea, got up and left the room.

  He told himself that if she wanted to be a bitch, well, that was her problem. His job right now was to fix the breakfast. He put the bacon on the griddle and assembled what he needed to make French toast.

  Johnny came in still wearing his pajamas. “It’s Saturday,” he announced. “I love Saturday! Bacon. I love bacon. Can I help? I want to help.…”

  Bowie had him set the table and then allowed him to dredge the bread in the cinnamon-flavored egg mixture. Because Johnny had only one usable hand, that got a little iffy. But they worked it out.

  When the food was ready, Johnny said, “I’ll get Mom.” He took off and returned alone. “She says she’s busy and she’ll eat later.”

  “Good enough,” Bowie said, laying on the fa
ke cheer.

  After breakfast, Johnny wanted to get his sled out of the barn and use it in the big, sloping field behind the house. “Will you ride my sled with me, Bowie?”

  Bowie looked down into Johnny’s hopeful, happy face and he felt about ten feet tall. He felt so good that he almost didn’t care that Glory was seriously pissed at him for no real reason he could understand—and had barely spoken to him for the past three days. “Yes, I’ll ride your sled with you. But ask your mom first,” he added. “Make sure she doesn’t have something else planned.” Why get her any angrier at him than she already was?

  Johnny raced off to ask her.

  Glory gave her permission. Bowie wrapped Johnny’s stitched hand in plastic and put on the big mitten for him and they played on the hillside until around noon, when Glory called Johnny in for lunch.

  She didn’t invite Bowie. He tried not to be resentful that she failed to include him. After all, they more or less had an understanding that he made breakfast and was welcome at dinner, but for lunchtime, he was on his own.

  He went to the diner. Charlene wasn’t there. The waitress said Brand’s wife usually stayed home Saturday except late in the afternoon, when she came in to close up. Bowie missed her. Charlene always took time to chat with him while he ate.

  After the meal, he stopped by to see his mom. But the girl she had helping her out with the cleaning said she’d gone to Grass Valley to buy groceries.

  Back at Glory’s, he went inside to use the bathroom. The house was silent. Nobody home.

  Feeling glum and lonely, he retreated to the workshop, where he started on the chairs that went with the table. Working helped lift his spirits, helped him to get his mind off Glory, whom he shouldn’t be stewing over anyway.

  That evening, he’d been invited to Charlene and Brand’s. He knew Glory and the kids were going, too. But he didn’t ask her if she wanted to ride over there together. He had a feeling she’d find some excuse not to ride with him—and the last thing he needed was more rejection from her.

  Hadn’t he had enough of that already?

  He went and picked up his mom and they rode over together.

  All in all, it was a good family evening, he thought. He got to hang out with his brothers and the food was great. After dinner, the older kids—Brett’s two boys, Charlene’s niece Mia, and Johnny—went into the living room to watch a movie.

  Charlene got him aside in the kitchen when he helped her clear the table and asked him if he would consider making a crib for the baby she was having in a few months. He told her he’d be happy to, although it would be several weeks before he could have it finished.

  “I’m due in mid-April,” she said. “Do you think you could have it done by the first week of that month?”

  “Tell you what. How about the end of February—March first at the latest?”

  She beamed. “That would be great. Stay right there. I’ll just get my checkbook and take care of the price right up front.”

  He stopped her. “Forget the checkbook. I’ve been trying to figure out what to get for my new niece or nephew, and now I know.”

  “Bowie, no.” She frowned. “I can’t take advantage of you that way. Brand showed me pictures of some of the work you’ve done. It’s just beautiful. And we looked you up on the Dunn Woodworkers website. I mean, you’re famous. You’re listed as one of the top ten woodworkers in America.”

  He laughed—but he was thinking about Glory again. He’d bet his best table saw that she’d never checked out his website. “I would say that ‘famous’ is a little over the top. Buck is famous.” His oldest brother was a well-known author and adventurer. He lived in New York City, with his wife B.J. and their two kids.

  Charlene kept after him. “I only mean, well, it just feels like I’d be taking advantage of you to ask you to build us a crib for free.”

  “You didn’t ask, Charlene. I offered.”

  “But I—”

  He cut her off. “It’s a baby gift. Stop arguing.”

  She thanked him then, and let it go at last. They rejoined the others in the dining room, where the adults were having second cups of coffee after generous helpings of Charlene’s excellent apple pie with homemade vanilla ice cream.

  Glory’s chair was empty, which didn’t surprise Bowie. Sera had been fussy all evening. Glory had probably gone somewhere more private to try and feed her. He took his seat and said yes when Charlene came by with the coffeepot.

  Maybe twenty minutes later, Glory appeared looking flustered, her pinned-up hair coming loose around her flushed cheeks, a still-fussing Sera in her arms. “Charlene, dinner was wonderful, but Sera’s seriously colicky. I really think we’re going to have to head home.…”

  Bowie knew he should just let it go, but he couldn’t help responding to the look of misery on her face—and he hated to hear poor little Sera cry. “Here, let me have her.”

  Glory froze. Her mouth got that pinched look. But then Sera wailed again. And Glory gave in with a long, weary sigh. “Thanks,” she said, and seemed to mean it.

  He got up and took the baby. Sera kept wailing. He rubbed her little back, rocked her from side to side. “You fed her?”

  Glory nodded. “And changed her.…”

  “Sit down,” he said. “Have another cup of that awful herb tea you drink. I’ll walk her around a little.”

  She went to the table and joined the others. He left them all in peace and took the baby on a little tour of Brand and Charlene’s house—from the soaring slate entryway, up the stairs and along the upper landing that looked out over the living area below. He passed the master suite and a purple room stenciled with butterflies that he knew had to be Mia’s. The third bedroom looked like a guestroom. It was simply furnished with dark blue walls. He went in there, sat on the bed and laid Sera, tummy down, along his forearm, her head cradled on his hand.

  She quieted immediately. There was something about that position that seemed to soothe her.

  After maybe twenty minutes, when his arm started to get tired, he tried lifting her to his shoulder again. She settled against him without a peep, sound asleep.

  He considered going out to join the others again. But it was peaceful up there in the blue bedroom. And the noise and activity downstairs might just get her stirred up again. So he sat there on the bed for a while longer, listening to Sera’s shallow, even breathing as she slept.

  Another fifteen minutes passed. By then, he was thinking that she was sleeping soundly enough for him to chance getting up and going downstairs.

  Glory appeared in the doorway. She saw him. And she stopped there, her hand on the doorframe. For a long moment, she hesitated on the threshold, just staring at him.

  And he gazed back at her. He was way too aware of how the light from the hallway brought out the gold gleams in her dark brown hair, of how big and sad her eyes looked.

  She hadn’t had an easy life, and he needed to remember that. First she’d gotten pregnant by the mixed-up troublemaker he used to be. And then, when she finally found a good man, he’d rolled down a mountain and ended up dead—leaving her pregnant with a second child.

  It wasn’t his fault that she’d lost her husband. But it was his fault that he’d given in to her that first night she came up to his room at the Sierra Star. It was his fault that he’d taken her love when he had so little to give her in return. It was his fault that he’d left her and Johnny, that he’d waited so long to come back and make things right.

  He had a lot to make up for. He couldn’t give her back the husband she’d loved. But he could quit feeling sorry for himself when she gave him a hard time, when she closed her mind against him.

  It had taken him years to feel reasonably confident in his sobriety. How could he expect her to trust him and make nice with him when he�
�d barely been back in her life for two weeks?

  The answer was achingly clear: he couldn’t. It was going to take more than a few weeks to make it right with her.

  Maybe he never could. But to have a chance of healing the deep wounds between them, he would need to be a solid, continuing presence in her life. Just as he needed to be there for Johnny. Really be there. Day to day.

  Bowie realized that he wanted that chance. With both of them. He wanted it bad.

  In his arms, Sera wiggled a little, but she didn’t wake up. She yawned and nestled her head against him, nuzzling his shoulder. It came to him that he needed to be there for her, too, for Sera. And that meant it was time to start thinking about making his visit home permanent.

  He made his decision at that exact moment, with Sera snuggled against his shoulder and Glory watching him from the doorway through big, haunted eyes. He was going to buy his own place in New Bethlehem Flat and open a branch of Dunn Woodworkers right there in his hometown.

  Chapter Eight

  Glory left the doorway and came toward him.

  She held out her arms. He got up and gave her the sleeping baby.

  Sera didn’t even open her eyes. She made those cute little sucking motions with her tiny flower bud of a mouth and she laid her head right down on Glory’s shoulder.

  He whispered, “I don’t know what I did to make you mad this time, Glory.…”

  She shook her head. Her eyes were soft by then, but still much too sad. “You’ve been great. Really. It’s not you.”

  “Then what?”

  “It’s…hard, that’s all. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. I don’t want to get too friendly.”

  He got the message. Loud and clear. “You have some idea that I’m putting a move on you?”

  She blinked, sucked in a sharp breath. “No. No, really. Not at all.”

  “Good, because I wasn’t. I wouldn’t. I understand that it’s long over, with you and me. I get that. I’m fine with that.” Well, all right, it was a lie. He wasn’t fine with it in the least. But so what? She didn’t need to know what he really felt. What he felt was his problem, not hers.