A Rich Man for Dry Creek / a Hero for Dry Creek

by Janet Tronstad

  The kids groaned.

  Robert Buckwalter grunted. He wondered if he was crazy. He shouldn’t be annoyed with the ever-resourceful Jenny. He should be grateful to her. After all, he’d hired her because of her apparent good cheer and her complete indifference to him.

  During her job interview, she’d asked no personal questions about him—no sly inquiries about how often he’d be present for dinner at his mother’s home in Seattle, or whether as the family chef, she’d be required to fly to the flat he must have in London or maybe the villa he had in Venice or the chalet he had in the Alps…and surely he must have at least one of those, didn’t he? Or maybe he just traveled around in the plane he had, the one especially designed with all the gadgets, the one she’d read about in the papers, the one they called the ultimate “rich man’s” toy?

  The questions would come. They always did.

  Except with Jenny.

  But then, maybe she’d just been more clever than most.

  “Finished with the phone?” Robert asked politely. He hadn’t been fooled for a minute by the woman who had called claiming she needed to speak to Jenny urgently about some pudding order. Pudding, my foot. The woman was no salesperson.

  Why else would Jenny take the call and disappear into that hole of a pantry where no one could hear her conversation?

  Not even bats would go into that pantry if they didn’t have to. Jenny had literally needed to pry the door open earlier with a crowbar. The wood was half-rotted and the wind blew in through the knotholes.

  No, it wasn’t a place where anyone would go for a cozy phone conversation with a pudding salesperson.

  Robert Buckwalter swore he could spot a reporter a mile off and he had a bad feeling about that call.

  Maybe his time was up.

  Robert knew how to keep a low profile with the press but he was off his game. He’d gone completely rustic. On the flight over here, he’d looked at all the extra knobs on his plane’s instrument panel and wondered what he’d ever need with all the unnecessary attachments he’d asked the manufacturer to add. He couldn’t even remember why he’d wanted a cup-size blender added on the passenger side.

  He hardly knew himself anymore. It came from spending a whole five months as someone else.

  Jenny carefully laid the phone back down on the counter where it had been when the last call arrived and then picked it up again to wipe off the dust that had followed her out of the pantry.

  Robert watched her as he untied the apron strings from around himself and put the damp apron on the nearby counter. “Hope there was no problem.”

  She looked up at him in alarm. “What?”

  “About the pudding,” Robert elaborated grimly. She looked confused and guilty as sin. “I hope there was no problem with the order.”

  “No, no, everything’s fine.” Jenny blushed.

  Robert wondered what the tabloids were paying these days. “Good. I’m glad to hear that. Wouldn’t want anything to go wrong with…things.”

  Jenny stiffened. “I run an efficient kitchen. Everything will be fine.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll admit we are a little behind schedule, but your mother assured me that people will be late arriving because of the cold weather. And everything’s set up in the barn. Tables, chairs—the works. The kids even decorated.”

  Jenny hadn’t worried when she was in Seattle and Mrs. Buckwalter had called to ask her to come cater this event. The older woman had said the party was to be held in The Barn. She’d announced the fact with such flourish that Jenny assumed it was some bohemian restaurant with theme.

  Jenny was startled when they drove into Dry Creek and she saw that The Barn really was a barn, complete with hayloft and straw. Then she looked around at the few buildings in town and realized there probably wasn’t an industrial oven in any one of them.

  That’s when she first knew she was in trouble. Not that it would do to admit it to her employer’s son.

  “We’ll have the platters ready just as soon as those puffs cool. And the water’s heating for the lobsters. A half hour and dinner will be served.”

  Robert nodded as he picked up the cell phone she had laid back on the kitchen counter. He slipped it into his pocket. His phone had a redial feature built into it. Maybe he could call the reporter and stop the story.

  Robert put on his wool overcoat and stepped outside. Snow covered patches on the ground and the frigid air made his breath catch. He’d been in cold weather before at ski resorts, but the cold in rural Montana bit harder.

  The back door to the kitchen led to a dirt path that was lined with garbage cans. Fortunately, the temperature was so cold the garbage wasn’t rotting. Not that Robert minded the smells of garbage anymore.

  Robert wondered if he’d ever be the same again. He hadn’t intended to spend five months as someone else. It had started as the adventure of a bored rich man. He knew that. There was something supremely arrogant about shedding his identity like it was last year’s fashion.

  But he had done it and wasn’t the least bit sorry.

  He’d flown down to the Tucson airport last October. From there he’d headed on foot toward a little town on the Arizona/New Mexico border. He’d left his suit with his plane in a locked area of the airport. He also left his black diamond watch and his laptop computer.

  He walked away wearing an old pair of denim jeans and a flannel shirt. The only thing expensive about his clothes had been his tennis shoes. He had no car. No cell phone. A dozen twenty-dollar bills, but no credit cards.

  He still remembered how good it felt.

  That day he left behind Robert Buckwalter III and became simply Bob. He rolled the name around on his lips again. Bob. He liked the sound of it. It was friendly in a way Robert could never be.

  Robert had intended to spend a week alone in the desert at some flea-bitten motel along the highway so that he could return to his parties with more enthusiasm. He certainly didn’t intend to be stuck as Bob. He was merely cleansing his palate, not giving up the rich life he enjoyed.

  But that first day he discovered Bob was the kind of guy people talked to. Robert was amazed. He’d never realized until then that people didn’t talk to him; they mostly just told amusing stories and agreed with everything he said.

  They were, he concluded in astonishment, handling him. How could he have not noticed?

  He didn’t have friends, he realized. He had groupies.

  An old man in a beat-up truck had given Robert a ride south out of Tucson and invited him to share supper. Supper had been spicy beans and warm rice with a toaster pastry for dessert. The plate he used had been an old pie tin and the glass had been a jelly jar. The fork he ate with had a tine missing.

  But the whole meal had been given in kindness and it tasted very good. When it was finished, the old man offered him a job earning twenty-five dollars a day chopping wood for his winter’s supply.

  Robert had been about to refuse. He had enough money in his pocket for meals and a cheap hotel. He didn’t need a charity job. But something in the man’s eyes tipped him off and instead he looked at the woodpile and saw it was empty except for a few scrub branches.

  The old man couldn’t chop anymore. He needed help. Robert offered to chop some wood to repay the man for supper.

  One meal led to the next and the woodpile grew. Robert’s days found a rhythm. He slept in a camper shell by one of the old sheds on the man’s property. The nights were a deep quiet and he slept more peacefully than he ever remembered.

  Each morning he woke up to the disgruntled crowing of a red rooster he’d nicknamed Charlie. Charlie had no trouble making his opinions known; he had never learned to bow down to the opinions of the rich. He didn’t even respect the opinions of nature. He seemed to be particularly unhappy with the sun each morning.

  Robert didn’t want to chop wood in the chill of the early morning—and especially not with Charlie strutting around. Robert had never seen anything as cranky as that r
ed bird in the morning. You’d think the morning had come up as a personal insult to the rooster. At least Charlie took it that way.

  So, instead of listening to Charlie, Robert would jog down the hard-packed dirt road for several miles. He aimed himself in the general direction of the mountains even though they were so far away he’d never get there by running. But he liked to look at them anyway.

  His morning run took him past two run-down houses with an astonishing assortment of children spilling out of each. Toddlers. Teens. Boys. Girls. One morning some of the children started to follow him on his run. Before the end of the week, a dozen kids were trailing after him and he was carrying the smallest in a backpack he made from a blanket.

  It took a full week for them all to tell him their names.

  It was the second week before Robert noticed most of them were running in thin sandals and slippers.

  Robert almost scolded them for not dressing right for running, when he realized they were wearing the only shoes they had. The next morning he brought some old newspaper with him and had the kids each make a drawing of their right foot for him.

  Later that day he hitchhiked to the nearest post office and sent an overnight package to his secretary ordering fourteen pairs of designer tennis shoes just like his.

  The shoes arrived on a Monday.

  It was Thursday before Robert saw the children were all limping and he realized he had forgotten socks. How blind could he be? He’d realized then just how removed he’d always been from the needs of others.

  He gave money, but it was other people on his staff who actually worried about the arrangements. He, himself, paid very little attention to the needs of others. His contribution was reduced to a dollar sign. It was a picture of himself that he didn’t particularly like.

  Unfortunately, others still had a fascination with his wealth and the tabloids fed their interest.

  Too bad he wasn’t still living in the camper shell with Charlie, Robert thought. Charlie might like being in the tabloids.

  Robert had discovered he didn’t like being in tabloids. In fact, he could honestly say he hated it more than Charlie hated the morning.

  Robert removed the phone from his pocket and pushed the redial button. He wondered how much it would cost to kill the story.

  Not that it mattered. Whatever it was, he already knew he’d pay it.

  Chapter Two

  Robert Buckwalter didn’t ordinarily notice the stars in the sky. But, standing still, holding the cell phone in his right hand, he looked up and blinked. Montana had a blackness to the nights that calmed him. He’d spent too much time in cities with all their noise and lights.

  All of the commotion stopped a man from thinking.

  And he needed to think his way out of this situation. Money wasn’t enough this time.

  Jenny’s sister had crumbled when she realized who was on the other end of the phone. Robert had not even needed to be stern. The young woman confessed why she’d called her sister and apologized for asking questions.

  She was contrite. She was abashed.

  She was useless.

  Robert had groaned inside when he found out why the young woman had called. He had dreaded the bachelor list even before his five months in Arizona. What sane man wouldn’t?

  The bachelor list winners might as well enroll in a circus freak show. No one left them an ounce of privacy. Or dignity. Last year he’d been number seventeen. Some tabloid had printed the sizes of all one hundred men’s underwear. Ten different women had actually sent him silk boxers with their names screened on them.

  And the letters! He had over a hundred letters from strange women asking him to marry them.

  Just imagine if he was in the number one spot. They might as well shoot him now before his mailman filed for workmen’s compensation because of the backache from delivering those letters—a fair number of which would come with a string-tied package. Somehow the packages with string on them always included baked goods. Chocolate-chip cookies. Plum bread. One enterprising woman had shipped a pot roast in a gallon-size zipper bag because some tabloid story had mentioned he liked beef.

  And the underwear givers and the cookie bakers were not even the worst of the lot. The more aggressive called on the telephone and demanded to talk to him. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. They knew how to dodge every polite refusal. His secretary was likely to quit this time around.

  Maybe he should hire Charlie to take those calls.

  Robert, himself, wasn’t interested in a wife that came from a list.

  It was old-fashioned, but Robert knew if he ever did marry it would be a real marriage. One that lasted a lifetime. Not one based on lists or money. Odd as it sounded, he’d realized in his five months away that he wanted a wife who would want a simple home with him. Without servants and expensive antiques. Someone who would want him to mow the lawn and take out the trash. Someone who would talk to him and not just quietly pretend to find whatever he was talking about fascinating enough for both of them.

  A woman like that probably didn’t even read the tabloids. She certainly wouldn’t mail him a pot roast or a pair of boxers if she didn’t know him.

  No, if Robert ever wanted to live a normal Bob-like life, he needed to start it now. He needed to get off the list.

  The trouble was he didn’t trust the young woman he’d spoken with to simply tell her editors that Robert Buckwalter thanked them very much for thinking of him, but could they please think of someone else for their bachelor list.

  Fortunately, Robert knew one thing and that was the celebrity world. He’d been forced to learn how it worked. He knew stories were killed every day and that lists could go up in smoke with the wrong move.

  As Robert saw it, he had one chance to change things and that was to make himself very unpopular. He needed to do something that would alienate women everywhere. He’d asked the woman and she’d confessed that the list was to be released on February 29. Leap Year’s Day. Women’s choice. It was already February 20. He needed to act fast.

  First, a victim must be found. He found that nothing set off women better than mistreatment of one of their own. And Jenny, the chef, must know about the action so she could tell her sister who would then tell her employers. That should get his name thrown off the list and into the trash.

  Robert felt better already. All he had to do was be obnoxious. His feet were still sore, but he was sure he could be sufficiently unpleasant to raise some eyebrows.

  Confident that his troubles would soon be over, Robert slipped the cell phone back into the pocket of his overcoat and started to whistle.

  He was almost cheerful when he stepped back into the kitchen. It wouldn’t be too hard. Before long his reputation would be back where it belonged—in tatters.

  All he needed to do was find a woman to persecute.

  Robert stepped into the kitchen to find it empty of everything except steam. He walked over to the stove and looked into one of the big lobster pots. It was empty, as well.

  Good, he thought to himself in satisfaction, the party was starting. An audience would be helpful for what he needed to do.

  The dining room of the café had been turned into a girl’s dressing room and Robert walked quickly through the haze of perfume. Makeup was scattered over the table closest to the door and several pairs of high heels were lined up along the right wall.

  Robert stopped in front of the mirror taped to the inside of the door and ran a comb through his own hair. He brushed a few snowflakes off the shoulders of his overcoat. The overcoat was black. His suit underneath was black. Each cost more than most men made in a month.

  Robert nodded at his reflection with satisfaction; he looked good. Every man should look good on his way to his own public scandal.

  The first bite of the cold when he stepped out the front door made him step even faster. The café was just down the gravel road from the barn where the party was to be held and the space between was full of old cars and trucks. This part
of Montana certainly wasn’t prosperous, he thought as he spied the old cattle truck that was parked next to the bus his mother had rented to haul all the teenagers around.

  He nodded to an old man who was weaving between the cars with a bottle of beer in his hand.

  “Coming to the party?” Robert looked closer at the man.

  “Ain’t been invited.” The man’s beaten face looked anxious in the moonlight.

  “Everyone’s invited,” Robert said firmly. The old man looked like he could use a good meal that didn’t slide down from the neck of a brown bottle. “What’s your name?”

  The old man looked startled. Robert didn’t blame him. He was startled himself. Since when had he cared about the names of poor old men?

  “Gossett.”

  “Well, Mr. Gossett, I hope you’ll come have some dinner with us.”

  “I ain’t dressed for it.”

  The man was wearing a beige cardigan sweater covered with what looked like cat hair and a thermal undershirt that had a yellow ring around the band. His neck was scrawny and his eyes were bloodshot. His denim jeans had grease stains on the knees. Only the man’s boots looked new.

  “This will set you up,” Robert said as he took off his overcoat and offered it to the old man. “Put that on and you’ll be right in fashion.”

  Warm, too, Robert thought to himself.

  The man’s startled look turned to alarm. “You with the Feds?”

  “The who?”

  “The FBI. They don’t think I seen them. But they’re here. Sneaking around in the dark. Watching me.”

  “They’re not watching you,” Robert said gently as he offered the coat again. “I’ve heard there’s been some cattle rustling reported. Interstate stuff. It’s been going on for some time and they can’t get a handle on it. That’s why they’re here. It’s just the cattle. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”