by Leslee Green
He couldn’t think of what to say back.
After a while, the window was black and it was time for Blake to take Linda home. They left the room, unable to discuss the fact that he was leaving on tour because it would mean they would have to discuss what was happening right now. And if they discussed that, they might ruin it. It was too risky.
Linda felt like such a fool. She had always known Blake was leaving, but she had blinded herself from it.
Their stunted romance was ending soon and she was overwhelmed with the sensation that it was incomplete. She had felt so strongly that things would play out differently, that somehow, if her feeling was strong enough, it meant it was fate or destiny; it would make it that way. But she was wrong.
She had loved Blake since before she knew what love was, but clinging to someone’s hat for a decade like it was an heirloom doesn’t make things work out like magic, or have meaning. It doesn’t mean anything, she told herself. She was a just a fan in a sea of fans and, like all the others, felt like she was different. But she was no different.
She sighed.
As they left the room, Blake closed the door behind them, revealing to no one the only place in it that Linda hadn’t seen. A hat rack hung on the back of the door, littered with Stetsons that bounced in unison as it closed, and a funny little straw hat seemed out of place in the middle of all of them, hanging on the hook in the center of the others as it had for many years.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Mother.”
The whiny voice she heard irritated the woman as she tied her hair back tightly into a bun in front of her vanity, pulling it so tight that it lifted the papery skin on her forehead. She resented herself for spoiling her two daughters and allowing them to become what they were: entitled brats. But then again, she had wanted them to become that way.
She wanted them to understand that two daughters of hers could have anything they wanted. They were her blood, after all. They deserved it.
The woman also had a daughter that was not blood and therefore did not deserve anything. Blood was important. Blood was everything. And when someone interfered with her ambitions, blood was what she was out for.
“Mother!” the voice insisted, feeling ignored.
“WHAT?” Caroline’s mother snapped to her daughter.
“Mother, you can’t be serious about letting Linda go to that rodeo.”
Emily was also present. She said, “Yes, Mother. She’s already spending all this time with Blake and it’s not fair. Blake liked me at the dance and she stole him!”
“No he didn’t, he liked me!” Caroline yelled.
“Quiet,” the woman commanded. “You don’t think I’m aware of what’s happening?”
“Then why aren’t you doing anything?”
The woman turned very slowly to her daughters, anger hidden behind her already ferocious expression, scaring her children.
“You don’t think I am?”
“It doesn’t look like it,” the bolder of the two daughters said.
“And what do you know? Have you no faith in me?”
Her daughters didn’t have an answer. They were so spoiled rotten and clueless that they didn’t even know what the correct answer was.
“Fools,” their mother continued as she stood up from her mirror. “Your sister Linda will never make it to that rodeo.”
Confused, the daughters wanted an explanation. “So you were lying to her?”
“Absolutely not. Lying to her would not be beneficial to us. Giving her the opportunity to fail will prove infinitely more fruitful.”
“Why?” they asked, not understanding.
“Because your step sister was born with an attitude. She was born with resilience. She needs to be broken the way horses are broken or she will no longer be of use to us. There’s more to her attendance at this rodeo than she’s telling us. Failing to complete her assignment or make it to the rodeo to cheer that bull rider will make her feel like she let the boy down. This will hurt her. This will teach her where her place is. Simply telling her ‘no’ or revealing fully our intentions might destroy her or, even worse, frighten her away, and then she’s no good.”
“So, you’re using her?”
“Is she not using us? Living in our house? Working at our stables? And yet she shows no gratitude for my generosity. She has been provided for with everything she wants. She wants the stables and she has them, every day of her life.”
“But now she wants something else too.”
“I’m aware of it. Can you not see that her desire for the boy is of great use to us? Failing to succeed with him will ensure that she stays where we want her, forever.”
“But what if she doesn’t fail?” asked one sister.
“She will fail.”
“But how do you know?” asked the other.
“Because the task I’ve given her is hardly possible.”
“But painting the barn was hardly possible!”
“It was, and she must have received outside help to do it, which I was not expecting.”
“But from whom?”
“Who else? From the bull rider.”
“Could it have been someone else?”
Something rolled around the woman’s head that she didn’t like. “No. It couldn’t be.”
The sisters looked at each other, feeling like their mother wasn’t telling them everything.
Seeing this, the woman was angered. “Theirs is no one else who would help her. But a simple shift in strategy will eliminate his usefulness. She could have a hundred men helping her find more customers for the business and she would fail. She will not find any horses to fill those stalls.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t exist! I know the people in this town, there are none who require Linda’s services with their animals.”
“So you did lie to her.”
“I did not. She is more than welcome to try.”
“Alright, but what if somehow she were to succeed.”
“She won’t.”
“But if somehow she were to, you’d give her more chores so she couldn’t take a day off, right?”
“I will not.”
“But, Mother!”
“I cannot simply pile on endless impossible chores for Linda to do or our deal will be meaningless. It is very important for her to believe that there is hope.”
“But there isn’t any, right mother?”
An uncontrollable sneer pulled the edge of her lip upwards and she could feel the coldness of her own heart. “No,” she said.
“Not even if she finds a bunch of customers for the stables? What about then?”
The woman simply could not contain the sneer on her face.
“Then she will wish she hadn’t,” she said, her voice lowering, her monstrous nature on full display.
And with that, the woman felt she had entertained her daughters enough and she left the room, pacing away quickly, hiding herself.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"Alright, it's time to put on the charm," Blake said with a dashing grin directed at Linda.
"Quite charming," Linda said kind of sarcastically, trying to poke fun at him even though he actually had all the charm she could ask for.
Blake was immune to teasing anyway unless it was about his age. He opened the door on his pickup truck and stepped out, holding a handful of the colorful advertisements that he and Linda had put together the day before to promote horseback riding lessons.
She carried some too and Blake reached into the back of his truck and removed a folding table.
"I still don't understand why we need the table," Linda said.
“Because that’s what the Girl Scouts use.”
“Because they have boxes of cookies!” Linda said, repeating something she had mentioned several times already.
Blake removed a folding chair with his other hand. “It’ll just look more professional this way.”
“I think it’ll scare people
away. They’re going to think we’re trying to register them to vote.”
“Well, then, we’ll bring it back if we have to. We don’t know how this is going to go.”
Linda looked at the entrance of the grocery store they were approaching and, along with Blake, felt uncertain as to how well this plan was going to work.
“Yeah, I’m not sure about this.”
“What else do you have in mind?”
“I don’t know, this is usually where-“
Linda stopped herself from saying, “Where my fairy godmother appears and does magic.”
“Where what?” he asked.
Linda ignored his question. “The manager said this was alright? I mean, we’re not a charity.”
“Yeah, it’s fine; she’s a friend of mine.”
“Really? How do you know her?”
“Well, earlier today I walked into the store and asked for the manager, then I became friends with her.”
Linda shook her head.
Blake did seem somewhat proud of his effect on people, but at the same time, he was oblivious as to how out of the ordinary it was.
Most likely, the store manager he had won over was a fan of his, recognizing him from the rodeos most people in town followed, but as Linda watched him stride through the parking lot, a bounce in his step that only confident people have, lighter than others without the weight of their insecurities, Linda felt that even without his small town fame it was probably easy enough for him to succeed with people.
When they got to the front of the store, Blake unfolded the table incredibly close to the door of the supermarket, embarrassing Linda.
“Blake, you don’t own the whole world,” she said as she moved the table back from the door.
“Have a seat,” he said to her as he unfolded the chair at the table and pulled it out for her. She obliged and sat down, and attempted to arrange the flyers in an attractive manner on the table.
Blake scoured the people in the store for potential customers while Linda continued to inch the table away from the door.
“Who are we looking for?” Blake asked.
“Mostly girls, honestly,” she said as she arranged papers. “Boys ride too and some adults will take lessons now and then but it’s almost entirely girls that do, and only girls that stick with it for very long.”
"Well, there are only adults in this store," Blake said.
“That’s fine, we’ll just hand out flyers and hopefully some takers will be parents. Why don’t you come sit down?” Linda asked, wondering if Blake’s overwhelming presence would frighten people away. But all anyone did was smile at him as they passed, happy he was there.
He was so warm, comfortable, and almost childlike in the way that he was unaware that anything he did could ever be misinterpreted, it ended up being the truth.
He brought the kind folks of Stagecoach, Montana back to a friendlier time when people greeted each other as they passed, and they weren’t dragged kicking and screaming; they came willingly and enthusiastically, wishing him, “Howdy,” right back as he said it to them, even though they probably only used that particular greeting once every two or three years.
Linda observed him, wondering in disbelief how long he could stand in that doorway saying hello to people and not get tired of it, but it never wore on him. He could go forever. He was a happy man that the world had not scorned. He was an endangered species that Linda wanted to lock in a display case in a museum. But first, she would allow him to pass out some flyers.
“We need moms,” he decided out loud. He turned to Linda and said, “If there’s one thing I can spot, it’s a mom.”
Linda’s forehead furled as she wondered why Blake had the ability to spot moms so accurately or what use it was to him. She laughed to herself and decided to chalk it up as just one of the many odd things that she had heard people say lately, and then she changed her mind and decided to ask him about it.
“What makes you think you can tell if a woman is a mom?”
“Just watch.”
Blake caught the attention of a woman exiting the store. “Howdy, Ma’am. You look like you’ve given birth.”
“Excuse me?”
“BLAKE!” Linda shouted, moving immediately around the table to interrupt.
“Ummm, what I meant was,” Blake started to say.
“Hey, are you Blake Lockwood?” the woman asked.
“I sure am!”
As Linda arrived at the two, she watched in disbelief as she discovered, apparently, the secret to Blake’s success with people revealed. It seemed that it didn’t matter what he said at all; that tall, friendly, handsome cowboys got a free pass in this town.
“I’m bringing my whole family to come watch you down in Helena next week! My husband and the kids, we’ll all be there cheering for you, Blake. It’s too bad about what happened in Boseman. That bull wasn’t fit to ride.”
“You can’t win ‘em all, ma’am. How old are the young ones, might I ask?” Blake said and winked at Linda.
She wanted to tell him, “You don’t have to wink, I know why we’re here,” but she didn’t.
The woman, pleased that Blake would ask and ecstatic that he would take interest in her family, responded, “Well, our youngest is six now, he’s a boy, and we have three daughters, nine, twelve, and thirteen.”
“Oh, daughters nine, twelve, and thirteen?” he repeated loudly so Linda could hear, as if there was any chance she hadn’t, and winked directly at her again.
Again, she had some thoughts she would have liked to share with him but didn’t. Blake went on.
“Have you ever considered enrolling the kids in horseback riding lessons?”
“Well,” the woman responded, a little off guard, “Not really, we have an old mare out in the field that the children already tend to and know how to ride.”
“Yes, but have they been properly educated in Equestrian riding? Western? Jumping? Umm...” Blake looked to Linda for help.
“Dressage?” she added.
“Dressage?” the woman asked, unfamiliar with the term.
"Without a proper education, they might not ever learn how to do that," Blake said, not knowing what it was either. He handed the woman a flyer. "We're having a special right now down at the Stagecoach Stables."
“Well, I don’t know,” the woman said, reading the flyer skeptically, “who teaches the course?”
"I do," Linda said and extended her hand to shake with the woman's.
“Oh,” she said, disappointed.
Linda looked at Blake, her eyebrows raised at the woman’s reaction.
“And I’ll be down there Saturday to help teach their first lesson, and it’s free when you sign up for four more!” Blake added, inventing the part about signing up for more lessons.
“You’ll be down there?”
“Yes ma’am, bring the kids on down. I can’t wait to show ‘em a few things about riding.”
The woman was sold.
“Oh, okay Blake! I’m sure my daughters would love to. I’ll bring all three of them. They’ll be excited to meet you!”
“Sounds like a deal! I’ll be waiting for them. What are their names again?”
Blake really knew how to handle this woman.
“Oh, the youngest is Morgan, then its Sally and Sue.”
“Sally and Sue! Tell them I can’t wait to meet them.”
The woman left, nearly dying, heaving air in and out of her lungs from the interaction.
“Layin’ it on a little thick?” Linda asked.
"No," Blake said, and his genuine ignorance to what she was hinting at made Linda realize that maybe Blake was actually just that friendly. Wow, was she that cynical?
“Well, if you keep it up at this pace, the stables will be paid off in a month.”
“That’s the goal.”
It was a great feeling having someone really in her corner, and someone useful! Linda was not used to it.
“Can I get you a soda or som
ething, Blake?” Linda asked, grateful.
“No, that’s bad for your teeth,” he said.
He did have very nice teeth.
The evening continued as Blake scored countless positive interactions. Most of them weren’t set in stone, but there were many that were legitimate prospects.
As the sun turned orange and came down over the west, Blake posed for pictures with his fans, new and old, in front of the grocery store, some of whom he had met before and all of whom were happy to see him.
It was a little too much for Linda to know he would be leaving soon and, when the last flyer was gone and Blake kicked the legs up under the folding table, Linda didn’t want their goofy adventure to end.
“I guess I’ll be coming down Saturday, by the way.”
“Yeah, I gathered that.”
They walked back towards the truck and Linda carried the chair.
“Those moms sure love you, Blake.”
“Yeah, they look up to me I think.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re older than them.”
Under his breath, Blake said, "I'm twenty-seven."
Linda laughed as Blake put the table in the back of his truck.
“Blake! I’m just kidding. You’re a hero to these folks.”
Blake took the chair from Linda and put it in the back. Linda grabbed onto him.
"Why do you care about your age?" she asked. "Twenty-seven's not old."
“It’s old for a bull rider.”
And suddenly it made a lot more sense.
He put his hands around her and she became aware of the people walking past, as if her jealous stepsisters were going to pop out from under a minivan and accost her.
But no one cared what they were doing and they remained in each other’s arms, the sun now gone and stars appearing.
“What are you going to do when bull riding is over?”
“I don’t know. Ride into the sunset?”
“Start a family?”
Linda awaited Blake’s answer with particular curiosity.
"I never thought about it. I’m on the road for months at a time and the rest of the time I’m off ranching. I can’t even really have a girlfriend.”