“Anything you spread will just slide off the bank and under the water. The only thing that might help is to carve the edges with the front loader from Seth’s tractor.”
“Someone else can do that, thank you.”
“What are you and Seth not telling me?”
“How would you like your very own flight cage for Orville?”
“What? Where?’
“Inside Seth’s old barn. Seth’s construction foreman met me there late this afternoon while you were messing about with the rear end of a cow. He says he and his crew can be finished before Thanksgiving.”
“Orville needs to try his wings in the next few weeks chasing live prey. When he can handle that, we can release him. Stephen, I can’t afford the cost of building a flight cage, even if I wanted one two miles from the clinic. This is the first bird I’ve ever had that needed this sort of rehabbing. Not cost-effective when there are other alternatives, even if I’m not fond of them.”
“My bird, my barn, my cage, my money. Seriously, Barbara, the area has to be cleaned out anyway. These guys are out of a job for the moment, so they are giving me a good price. I hoped to have it done by November fifth, but the foreman says that’s too little time.”
“Why November fifth?”
“That’s when I am burning the brush pile. Didn’t I mention that?”
Half an hour later, Seth came in to Stephen’s living room. He brought back a couple of beers from Stephen’s refrigerator with casual familiarity. He handed one to Stephen, sat in one of the wing chairs in front of Stephen’s open fire, popped the top off his bottle of beer and let his shoulders relax. He propped his stocking feet on the footstool in front of the chair and drank deeply. “This is turning into a tradition—my coming over after work for a beer.”
“I enjoy your company. Do you have any updates on my November-the-fifth bonfire permit?”
“Made a couple of calls this afternoon after the game. I have good news and bad news. You can have your burn permit, but only if you burn during daylight hours.”
Stephen sat up straight. “That’s ridiculous. What difference does it make? Even if I light it at noon, there’s enough wood there to keep it smoldering after dark.”
“Mostly ashes by then. Less possibility that it could get out of control.”
Stephen shoved his hand through his hair in exasperation. “A Guy Fawkes bonfire is traditionally held at night. I was planning to invite you, Emma and Barbara over for steaks while we watch. I’m sorry, Seth, that makes no sense at all.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger. The fire departments are becoming sticklers about any sort of open fire after the last couple of summers we’ve had. Frankly, if I were you, I’d forget the whole thing, bring in a construction Dumpster and let the crew you hire to clear the barn clear the brush, as well.”
“This is frustrating,” Stephen said. “I wanted to burn the brush piles to clear some land to build Barbara a flight cage. Orville needs room to exercise his wings before we release him. I don’t want to have to move him someplace else that has the right cage.”
Seth leaned back and finished his beer. “Don’t forget there is already a good-size cage right outside The Hovel. Adding on to Emma’s existing structure is a better option. Then you’d be able to watch Orville strengthen his wings from your living room window. Think about it, Stephen—you and Barbara could watch him together.”
“I assumed Emma would prefer to have such a large cage built away from The Hovel. It is, after all, rental property.”
“Which you are renting. Do you care if the flight cage is built beside your house?”
“Not at all.”
Seth raised his hands. “Then go for it. Get your crew to extend Emma’s cage. They can do it in a day. It’ll be cheaper, faster and let you watch Orville’s progress.”
Stephen hated to admit it, but Seth made sense. “I’ll call your contractor and see if he can do it right away at a reasonable price.” He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He’d had visions of what the old barn might look like not only with the flight cage, but also as space for the rehabilitators. Seth was right. He was thinking of it as a gift from Stephen to Barbara. He kept trying to impress her and falling flat.
So, no Guy Fawkes bonfire. At least not this year. To a history professor, Guy Fawkes was an excuse for a party. Every time Stephen thought he had this country life figured out, he ran into another way in which things were radically different. College professor meets Southern bureaucracy. Bureaucracy almost always won.
If he did extend Emma’s cage, he and Barbara could move Orville down from the clinic soon. Barbara could join him after work to check his progress. Together they’d watch Orville toughen up, prove that he was ready to be released. Sooner or later he would fly.
Having Orville with him meant Barbara would visit often. A definite positive.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“THIS IS A barbaric time of day to be up and about on a Friday morning,” Stephen grumbled as he climbed into Barbara’s van. The sun was inching above the horizon as if it wanted a few more minutes before it had to climb out of bed. “Here. Milk and two sweeteners, right?” He handed her a tall insulated plastic mug.
“Stephen, you angel,” Barbara said, then blew through the hole in the lid of the mug and sipped cautiously. “You can always go back to bed, you know. You volunteered to go to the fair with me this week. I warned you I need to be there by seven.”
“I get to spend the day with you. That’s worth getting up at the crack of dawn.”
“And a beautiful morning it looks to be. Cool enough for comfort. Last year it was close to a hundred and rainy most of the week.”
“More mud. After the tractor incident, I am off mud for the duration. So, what happens once we get to the fairgrounds?”
“I check in at the office in the big stock barn, pick up any requests for my services, take care of whatever animal problems have arisen since yesterday evening when my colleague left, then we can see the fair. Unless I am called about another animal in distress. The office has loudspeakers in all the barns to make announcements, so I’ll be able to hear a page even if we’re on the midway. Somewhere along the way, we have breakfast. As thoughtful as this coffee is, it won’t hold us until lunch.”
“What do I do while you are doctoring? I doubt I’ll be much help.”
“You may be surprised. Check out the animals, watch the livestock judging in the arena, talk to the farmers and the 4-H kids who are showing. I am especially fond of pigs and the people who raise them.”
“Wake me when we get there,” Stephen said, then crossed his arms and promptly fell asleep. Barbara glanced over at him. She had already grown fond of him, more than fond. Ridiculous. She hadn’t been interested in a man since John died. She’d tried dating a couple of times, but the encounters had always ended in disaster or boredom. They were always annoyed when they tried to kiss her good-night and she turned away.
She felt differently about Stephen’s kisses. They made her long for more.
She wanted to feel his arms around her, to be held until she fell asleep with her head on his shoulder and wake up to his smile.
How long would he be content to spend time with her? Take things slow? He was used to a very different sort of people. She suspected his social group were casual about relationships. She couldn’t ever be casual when it came to her heart. That’s why she was still alone. Maybe that’s why he was, too.
They were both used to being in charge.
Stephen kept making choices that he expected her to applaud. Barbara couldn’t have cared less that they were good choices that she might have made herself—given the opportunity. He was desperately trying to be helpful. She had not yet come out and told him to “back off.” He didn’t deserve to have his feelings hurt because he was trying to be kind. She already cared about
him too much to want to hurt him.
She’d been on her own, built her own business, raised two children, paid her bills, kept up with her medical knowledge and skills. She’d been making her own decisions and doing a good job of it. Suggestions she could tolerate from him and even appreciate. Directions—no. She might be oversensitive, but that was tough.
Meanwhile I may wreck the van because I am not paying attention to my driving.
What on earth was she thinking? It was seven fifteen on Friday morning and they were on their way to a giant stock barn chock-full of cows and hogs and sheep and goats and rabbits and guinea pigs...
She glanced over at him. His head was resting against the seat back. His arms were still folded neatly across his chest. He didn’t snore and his mouth stayed closed. That was a plus. His dark lashes—longer than any man deserved—curled on his cheek. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes gave his face character—not that it needed any more.
Her mother had told her years ago that the only human beings who looked attractive while they slept were under six years old. Stephen proved her wrong. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, with his slightly sharp nose and too strong chin, but it was a good face. She smiled over at him. Slightly too strong was an understatement. She’d bet his students tried to keep on his good side. He’d be a champion glarer when provoked by a lazy student.
Not a morning person, obviously, but he’d gotten up early enough to brew coffee and fix hers the way she liked it. He’d actually taken the time to discover how she drank it. Grumpy but thoughtful. Not a bad combination at 7:00 a.m.
They drove through Williamston and across the bridge over the Tennessee River tributary that divided the small town. To the north perched the town itself, with its courthouse in the square surrounded on four sides by shops built circa 1900. She considered stopping in at the café to pick up doughnuts but didn’t want to disturb Stephen. Plenty of pickings at the fairgrounds that would be much more appetizing and damaging to her waistline.
South of the bridge and through what passed for suburbia in Williamston was the park where the fair set up for ten days each fall. The rest of the year it was home to soccer fields and playgrounds for children, cattle auctions, antique bazaars, car and boat shows—whatever could fit the grounds or the permanent buildings beside the traveling midway set up for the fair. Past those barns sat a large greenhouse attached to one small exhibit hall where quilts, pickles and jams, and prize plants were exhibited for ribbons and bragging rights.
The midway brought with it rides like the Tilt-A-Whirl and the bumper cars, as well as games like ring toss and the shooting alley. There was even a tunnel of love on an elevated platform filled with water from a nearby hose.
At the very back of the midway stood the roller coaster and the Ferris wheel. Because they traveled with the carnival and were set up and taken down at each new location, both were grand old classics. The coaster didn’t turn itself inside out and upside down out like those at the permanent amusement parks. The Ferris wheel did not have a second wheel on top that fell precipitously as it swapped places with its twin.
Not yet open for business, the two rides looked as formidable as dozing T. rexes hungering for prey. Bad analogy, Barbara thought. She closed her eyes for a second and wondered why she had agreed to swap a ride on the wheel for Stephen’s ride on the coaster. She really wanted to take a turn on the lovingly restored Parker carousel, which was housed in its own permanent building in the park. She’d fallen in love with horses when her grandfather had held her on a white horse with a pink saddle at the antique carousel in Memphis when she was no more than three. Maybe she could convince Stephen to avoid both wheel and coaster in favor of the gentler wooden equines.
She rolled up to the front gate of the fairgrounds, where a man in a green uniform with Midway Security on the pocket held up a hand to stop her, then came over to the window of her vet van.
“Morning, Dr. Carew. You on call today?”
She smiled and nodded. “Friday is always my day, Bobby Joe.”
“Who’s Sleeping Beauty?” he whispered as Stephen opened his eyes, yawned and stretched.
“My vet tech.”
“Okay. Here’s some passes. Y’all can ride all day for free.”
“Why, thank you.” She felt her stomach lurch. That’s all she needed. Ride all day for free. Yikes.
“County don’t pay none of you vets for this, ma’am. Passes is all we can do. Put this sign on your dashboard, so’s you don’t get a ticket. We saved all you vets the best parking place on the grounds down back of the stock barn, where the office is. We been chasing folks off that space all week.” He pointed to his right. “Go down yonder and drive all the way around on the gravel drive past the rides and the midway.”
“Same as usual.”
“Oh, you know where you’re going, ma’am. We gave you two parking spaces in case you brought a trailer with you. Tacked a sign up says Reserved, DVM.”
“You think most people know what a DVM is?”
“Everybody down that end owns stock. They know.” He looked past her shoulder. “Uh-oh, we’ve got us a little traffic jam behind you. Have a nice day, Doc.” He waved her through.
The road led around the perimeter of the midway, the food tents and the rides. The music of a dozen competing sound systems pumped out songs. The barkers limbered up their voices to entice the early arrivals. Through the open windows of Barbara’s van, she smelled beignets, doughnuts and hot grease.
“Here we go,” Barbara said and pulled into her parking spot, mercifully not yet purloined by a stockman looking to unload his cattle close to the judging arena.
“Ah, the heady smell of manure in the morning,” Stephen said as he joined her beside the arena. The stands were already filling with parents ready to cheer on their children and the animals they had raised, while farmers and ranchers checked out their competition.
“I’ll run into the office to see if I’ve had any calls,” Barbara said.
* * *
WHILE HE WAITED for Barbara, Stephen checked out the spectators. Both sexes and all ages wore much the same costume. Faded jeans, cowboy shirts that always closed with snaps instead of buttons so that they could be ripped open fast in the event of an accident, dusty boots and battered, sweat-darkened Stetson hats. If Stephen had learned anything from his years as a horse-show father, it was that new, expensive and too neat spelled amateur.
Barbara tapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve got a quarter-horse mare with a capped hock down there in the end stall, and an Angora goat in the next barn over that lost an altercation with a concrete pillar and tore a horn. Then we’re free to go find breakfast.”
“Good. I’m starving.”
But his hopes of eating soon dimmed. Stephen watched Barbara calm the lanky teenage girl who sobbed as she clung to the neck of her bulky quarter-horse mare.
“We’re supposed to be in the barrel-racing at two this afternoon,” the girl wailed. “Ladybug and me’ve been training all year. I’m up for the state championship.”
“What happened?”
“She must’ve bumped the side of the trailer on the way over here. She was fine when we left home.”
“If we can help it, I don’t want to give her any drugs that will disqualify her. Can’t promise anything, Jean Anne, but here’s what you do. Take Ladybug down to the wash rack and run the hose on that hock for at least thirty minutes, rub in some liniment, give her some rest, then in a couple of hours do it again. Walk her between. She’s not a bit lame, and there’s no heat. With luck the swelling will be down by noon. Give me a call and let me know. She ought to be okay to race unless she does go lame or the hock swells up more.”
“Oh, thank you, Dr. Barbara!” Jean Anne flung her arms around Barbara’s neck.
Stephen followed Barbara to the next barn, where a long-haired and beautifully groomed Ang
ora goat dripped blood from the base of his left horn. His owner met Barbara at his stall.
“I know I can’t show him today with this, but I don’t want to dehorn him right now, either.”
“Horn’s not torn completely. I can stop the bleeding, wrap it, give him antibiotics. He should be good to go until you get home to your own vet.”
“Do it.”
She did.
She slipped her hand under Stephen’s arm. “Breakfast?”
“You got it.” They meandered down the aisle toward the open side facing the parking lot and the midway.
As they strolled toward the exits, someone shouted from one aisle over. A moment later came a bawl that sounded more like a scream.
“That’s a cow!” Barbara said. “What’s happening back there?”
“It sounds more like a cavalry charge,” Stephen shouted over the increasing din.
A dozen people, male and female, erupted around the corner and ran toward them. An older man shouted, “Out of the way! He’s loose!”
Air horns blared from the rafters. “Loose animal! Loose animal!” a voice yelled from the loudspeakers.
“Not cavalry,” Stephen whispered. “Pamplona! Barbara, come on!” He wrapped his arms around her and yanked her into an empty stall as a black bull galloped down the aisle toward them, eyes rolling, veering from side to side, bumping into stalls, slipping on the dirt footing. Stephen held the stall door shut as the bull thundered by.
“Let me go!” Barbara reached for the door. “He’s terrified.”
“You can’t stop him. He’ll kill you.”
“If he gets loose on the midway, they’ll shoot him.” She yanked the stall gate open.
Stephen attempted to drag her back, but she shook her arm free.
Some brave soul pulled his dually truck across the end of the aisle to block it so the bull couldn’t escape that way. At the other end another truck slid into place to block that route as well. The bull was effectively trapped in the aisle unless he decided to jump over a truck that was marginally larger than he was. He must have decided he’d never make it. He lowered his head, snorted, pawed and shook his heavy shoulders in frustration.
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