“Back off, boy,” Wade drawled to a red-faced Kip. Kip stood in his dusty chaps at the end of the picnic table where Wade and Shelby were sitting. “She said she doesn’t feel like talkin‘ to you.” Shelby’s face had the self-satisfied look of a spoiled child who’d gotten her way. A flicker of anger ignited in me. I knew she was young and just wanted to get back at Kip, but didn’t she care about anyone else but herself? This would ruin the barbecue for everyone. I fought the urge to go over and shake her by the shoulders.
“Get out of my way, asshole,” Kip said. “I don’t care what she feels. She’s going to talk to me ...”
I jumped up and started toward them. Gabe came up behind me and caught my upper arm. “Benni, let me take care of this.”
I tried to shake free. “I can do it, Gabe.”
He ignored my words, pushed me behind him, and calmly walked toward Kip and Wade. I started to follow, but Emory grabbed my shoulder.
“Let him,” Emory said in a quiet voice.
“He hates Wade,” I said, pulling against his hand.
“He does this for a living, Benni. Let him handle it.”
Kip gripped the edge of the table, his scarred knuckles white. I pictured him upending it like in a movie scene.
Wade stood up with deliberate slowness, blocking Shelby from Kip’s view. “I said move along, boy, before I have to make you.”
Kip snatched up a full can of Coke off the table and threw it against the trunk of the oak tree. Brown fizz exploded across the table. Shelby shrieked and looked down at her splattered shirt. A couple of my male cousins started moving in closer.
“Get out of my way!” Kip yelled, pulling a buck knife from his side, brandishing it with a shaky hand.
Shelby jumped up, her face pale and frightened. “Kip, you idiot, put that away!”
Wade took a step back. In seconds, Gabe grabbed a piece of wood from a nearby woodpile, came up behind Kip, and slammed it down on Kip’s wrist. Kip yelped and dropped the knife, then bent over and gripped his wrist. Gabe moved in, picked up the knife, and tucked it in the back of his jeans. Then he grabbed Kip by the upper arm.
“Let’s go have a talk, son,” Gabe said, pushing Kip in front of him.
“You broke it,” he whined, clutching his wrist.
Gabe talked low in Kip’s ear while walking him toward my dad’s office inside the barn. Daddy and Uncle Clarence followed, shutting the door behind them.
I turned and faced the gathered crowd. “Okay, everyone, show’s over. Better get back to the food before it’s all gone.”
After a few minutes of nervous laughter, everyone went back to what they were doing. Wade grinned at me. I walked over to him, frowning.
“Wade Harper, I ought to kick your butt off this ranch,” I said.
“Now, blondie, it was just a little ole fight between cowboys over a lady. Ain’t the first one you’ve seen. Doubt it’ll be the last.”
I gave Shelby a severe look. She had the decency to flush with embarrassment. “Shelby, Wade and I need a few minutes of privacy.”
“No problem,” she said.
After she left, I really let Wade have it. He had known me long enough to know it was better not to interrupt until I’d said my piece.
“I can’t believe you,” I said for the fourth time.
“I reckon you said that a few times already,” he said. “You’re building a mansion out of a rat’s nest, blondie.”
“Quit calling me that,” I snapped.
He pushed the rim of his Stetson up to see me better. “Benni, I’m sorry if I pissed you off, but Shelby’s a grown woman—”
“She’s twenty years old. Half your age.”
“A grown woman over eighteen,” he repeated. “And she’s got a right to talk to who she wants.” He squinted his brown eyes, eyes that reminded me so much of Jack’s I had to push down the sentimental feeling welling up in me. He pulled a piece of gum out of his pocket, carefully unwrapped it, threw the red paper on the ground, and stuck the gum in his mouth. “What business do you have with it anyway?”
Before I could answer, his face stiffened, and he took a small step away from me. I turned and saw Gabe walking toward us, his jaw looking like it was made of steel piping.
“Got the young pup calmed down?” Wade asked.
“Harper, keep your nose clean while you’re in my county. I’m only going to tell you that once.”
“Yes, sir, Chief, sir,” he said, moving his gum from one side of his mouth to the other. “But, you know, it don’t appear to me that I’ve broken any laws. I wasn’t the one who pulled a knife, now was I?”
Gabe just looked at him a long moment, then turned to me. “Let’s go finish eating.”
“Try and behave,” I said to Wade.
He just grinned and unwrapped another piece of gum.
We’d only gone a few steps when Wade called out, “Hey, Ortiz.”
Gabe stopped and slowly turned around.
“Just remember one thing.” Wade looked at me for a long ten seconds, then back at Gabe. “She might be livin‘ in your stable now, but don’t you ever forget—it was my brother who greenbroke her.”
Color drained from Gabe’s cheeks, and he sprang at Wade. I threw myself in front of Gabe and pushed on his chest with all my strength. One hundred and ten desperate pounds against one hundred and eighty pissed-off ones is not an equal contest.
I talked as fast as I could, “Gabe, forget it. He’s just trying to provoke you. He’s full of crap, and you know it. Don’t let him get to you.”
I yelled over my shoulder, “Wade, get out of here. Now!” Wade just chuckled when I grabbed Gabe’s upper arms and dug my nails into his skin.
“Please, Gabe,” I said. “He’s a jerk. You know someone here will leak it to the papers. You’re playing right into his hands. Don’t let him do that to your reputation.”
Gabe stopped and looked down at me, a cold, unrelenting look on his face. In that moment I caught a glimpse of the man who’d worked undercover narcotics so successfully in East L.A.
“Gabe, please,” I pleaded softly.
I felt his body relax under my hands, which told me that, for now, he’d back off.
“I’m starved,” Wade said, walking past us, spitting his gum on the ground next to Gabe’s foot. “Guess I’ll go see if there’s any chow left. Nice talking to you.”
Gabe stiffened again, and I gripped his arm tighter until Wade had melted into the crowd around the barbecue across the yard. I glanced around at the people who’d observed their altercation. Greer and Parker gave me sympathetic looks. Olivia whispered something to Bobby, who laughed. Emory winked at me and scratched behind his left ear, knowing that could make me smile even under these circumstances. It was our childhood method of nonverbal language. The summer we’d spent together we’d devised a whole series of hand signs that enabled us to communicate without anyone else knowing. It worked especially well in those long revival meetings at church, though we were always getting whispered admonitions from Dove to quit our fidgeting.
A scratch behind the left ear meant, Hang loose, we’ll talk about this later.
I tugged on my right earlobe. Thanks.
“I should have beat the shit out of him for talking about you like that,” Gabe said.
I pulled him toward the kitchen where I assumed Dove, the aunts, and Señora Aragon were still working. “And have it spread across every newspaper in the county? That’s just what he’s hoping. The best thing to do with Wade is ignore him. What happened with Kip?”
“His wrist is pretty bruised, but I don’t think it’s broken. Your dad’s taking him to the clinic in town to get it X-rayed.”
“Will there be any trouble for you for hitting him?”
“I could still arrest him for brandishing that knife, so I imagine he’ll keep his mouth shut.”
“Let’s forget both of them and get you something to eat.”
Gabe allowed me to lead him toward the kitchen. Ins
ide, as I’d suspected, Dove held court along with my aunts. The kitchen was warm and meaty smelling with the scent of Señora Aragon cooking refried beans in a huge iron skillet. Elvia, obviously hiding from Emory, was unwrapping some foil-covered cakes and pies.
“Got a man here who needs to be fed,” I called, pushing him toward a stool. I sent a silent message to Dove with my eyes. Somehow, with what we’d always called her seventh sense, she’d already heard about the ruckus between Gabe and Wade and went into action. Nothing tames an ornery male beast, she’d often said, like a plateful of food. Within minutes the ladies were fussing over Gabe, filling a plate with barbecued chicken, the tamales that Señora Aragon had indeed set aside for him, salad, rolls, and a huge serving of refried beans smothered with Jack cheese. My aunts would keep his irritated male ego occupied for a while. He fell right into it, joking and talking, the fight with Wade temporarily shelved. His quick switch of focus made me remember Dove’s unwavering assertion that most men’s attention spans were as long as the average two-year-old’s.
“What happened out there?” Elvia whispered as she unwrapped a chocolate cake sprinkled with coconut.
“I’ll fill you in later. I need to talk to someone.”
Leaving Gabe to the ministrations of his fan club, I went out to the front porch and scanned the crowded front yard for Shelby. Someone needed to tell her just what kind of trouble she was heading for by getting involved with Wade, and it appeared that privilege would be mine. Not seeing her, I went looking behind the barn.
A large group of people had gathered by the big corral where some of my girl cousins had set up three metal trash barrels and were timing themselves in barrel racing. There were probably some great picture opportunities, so I was guessing that Shelby was somewhere in the crowd. Sure enough, I found her with Greer, Parker, and Olivia sitting on the wooden corral watching the young cowboys try to beat the women’s times. Next to them was Roland Bennett, the owner of Bennett’s Gallery of Western Art downtown.
“Roland, you made it!” I said.
“Have you ever known Rolly to miss a free meal?” Greer said with her deep, contralto laugh.
“Now, Greer, I haven’t even inspected the food yet,” he protested, his well-fed face assuring us it wouldn’t be long before he did. He was dressed in new black Wranglers, a black silk cowboy shirt, and a suede vest decorated with intricate Native American beading that probably cost five hundred dollars. A paunchy little man with round copper-colored glasses and a thin filigree of blond hair covering his oval head, he wore his clothes awkwardly, as if they were a costume. Which, I guessed, in a way they were. Getting to know him the last few months, I could imagine him leaving the western art world when it was no longer the hot thing and putting on a double-breasted navy jacket and captain’s yachting cap or a three-piece suit and antique pocket watch if that were the dress of his favored customers. But costume or not, he knew how to do one thing, and he did it well—and that was match artist up with collector. That knowledge could sometimes make or break an artist’s career.
“Don’t worry, Roland,” I said. “There’s plenty of chow left. No one ever goes away from a Ramsey barbecue hungry.”
I turned to Shelby, who was fiddling with a filter on her camera. “Shelby, can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure, go ahead,” she replied, not looking up from her camera.
“In private.”
She glanced around at the rest of the group. They all gave embarrassed downward looks. She shrugged and said, “Sure, why not?”
“Let’s go over to the garden,” I said. Though it would probably get crowded later when the women were done in the kitchen and Dove wanted to show off her one acre flower, fruit, and vegetable garden, right now it was empty. “There’s a bench underneath the walnut tree.”
“Whatever.” She bit the word off with a petulant tone. I had a distinct feeling this talk wasn’t going to go well.
I was right.
“Chill out, Benni, I’m not going to marry the guy,” she said after hearing my warning about getting mixed up with Wade.
“That’s good, since he is already married,” I replied.
She peered through the viewfinder of her camera, focusing it on something across the garden. My eyes followed the camera’s lens. A rabbit sat among Dove’s winter squash. He froze when Shelby’s shutter clicked, then disappeared with two hops into the undergrowth.
“You know one of the first things I learned when I started studying photography?” she asked.
I didn’t answer, not wanting the conversation to veer away from the subject at hand—her flirting with Wade.
“It was a quote by Dorthea Lange. She said ‘One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.’ I’ve never forgotten that. It’s also how I try to live all my life.” She fiddled with the camera in her lap, ignoring me with an adolescent deliberateness. A pollen-fat bee hovered above us, then darted up into the cloudless sky like a tiny helicopter.
An impatient sound gurgled in my throat. Only someone who was so young and immature could take a quote like that and twist it around to justify doing whatever felt good at the moment—no matter who it hurt. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean her words to be used as a justification to live thoughtlessly.”
“Benni, I consider you a friend and I appreciate your concern, but I’ve lived on my own since I was seventeen and I really have managed to survive quite well. If I want to hang out with Wade or anyone else, I will, and I don’t think it’s any of your business one way or the other.” She stood up, slung her camera over her shoulder, and walked through Dove’s apple trees without a backward glance.
Irritated, I sat there for a moment, knowing she was right about one thing. It wasn’t any of my business. But I couldn’t help feeling like a big sister wanting to warn her that the trail she was riding down was most likely washed out around the corner and she was heading for a nasty fall. I sighed and stood up, also knowing there was nothing else I could do. Like all of us, she had to make her own mistakes. She just had no idea how big a mistake Wade Harper could be.
My only other chance to head this potential wreck off at the pass was to talk to Wade, an exercise in futility I didn’t relish and certainly didn’t want Gabe to see me do. I had to try, though, for Shelby’s sake and for Wade and Sandra’s. If there was any chance of saving his marriage, he had to haul his tail back to Texas as soon as possible.
I walked from crowd to crowd in the waning November sunlight looking for Wade, but couldn’t find him anywhere. I didn’t ask anyone as I was getting enough curious looks as it was. Finally I gave up and decided that someone upstairs was trying to tell me to let the situation go—at least for now. Inside the ranch house, the sofas and chairs in the living room had already been pushed to one end, and I found my husband, along with various members of my family, sitting around five card tables, the first round of the annual poker game just starting. Dove was wearing her lucky dog-pee-yellow “I Ain’t Old, I’m Sundried” cap. That meant the serious playing had commenced.
“Going to join us, honeybun?” Dove asked, shuffling the cards like a Vegas pro. She dealt them swiftly, then picked hers up and frowned.
“This isn’t a hand,” she said. “It’s a foot.”
Not that her comment meant anything. I’d once seen her bluff her way into winning a fifty-dollar pot of quarters. My uncles and aunts and various cousins had settled in with huge mugs of Folger’s coffee, bowls of M & M’s, and salted cashews. That meant the games would be going until way after midnight, the men being granted special dispensation from the ten o‘clock curfew. They’d started early this year—4:00 P.M. rather than when the sun went down—probably because Dove was feeling lucky.
Gabe scooted over to make room for me at one of the tables. I shook my head no.
“No, thanks, I’m too tired. You all would get my money in two minutes. I think I’ll get some cake and go in the bedroom. Has anyone seen Elvia?” I wanted to
run the whole Wade-Shelby-Gabe thing by her.
“She went home,” Dove said, slapping a card down and picking up another. “One of Sofia’s grandbabies was feeling kinda puny, so Elvia drove her over to see him.”
“I’ll call her, then.”
I went into my old bedroom, full now with sleeping bags, overnight bags, and the various paraphernalia of traveling women. I pushed aside a bunch of heavy sheepskin jackets and wool-lined Levi jackets and rested my back back against the maple headboard. I dialed Elvia’s number and was surprised when she answered.
“How’s the baby?” I asked.
“Fine. It’s Maria’s first, so she’s nervous. It was just a bit of colic.”
“I’m going to kill him if I can ever find him,” I said, lapsing straight into my whining. That’s one of the advantages to having a friend who’s known you since childhood. You don’t need to go into a lot of background detail.
“What did Wade do to Gabe to make him so mad?” she asked.
I told her.
“Greenbroke you? That sounds like Wade, crude and pathetic. And to think he still has the ability to procreate.”
“The thing between him and Gabe I can handle. I’ll just keep them apart while Wade is here. It’s Shelby I’m worried about. She’s young and angry and ...”
“Stupid,” Elvia finished.
“I was going to say stubborn, but stupid works. She thinks she has everything all figured out, but I’m afraid she’s getting in chin deep pitting Kip and Wade against each other. They both have hair-trigger tempers and enough sense between them to buy half a cup of store-brand coffee. Someone’s going to get hurt before this is through.”
If my words had been a poker hand, they would have worn crowns.
3
AFTER A LONG conversation with Elvia, I turned on the miniature television sitting on the dresser and promptly fell asleep in the middle of a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat movie about a malevolent tornado. I woke up at ten o‘clock surrounded by tiny sleeping cousins. Trying not to wake them, I eased out of bed and headed for the living room, where the poker games were still going full force. After refusing another invitation to join, I went outside to attempt once more to find Wade. Never mind the situation between him, Kip, and Shelby—we still had some unfinished business with that foul-mouthed crack he made about me. The yards around the house and barn were quieter now with most of the younger children bedded down for the night in the haphazard array of trailers, campers, and tents. Only a few dozen adults and teenagers were still wandering around. Somewhere a guitar played, and someone sang an old cowboy ballad I remembered from my childhood, used to settle down restless cattle and cranky children. Nostalgia like a thin icicle stabbed my heart. It seemed only months ago that I was one of those sleepy kids, my legs and arms tangled with my equally exhausted cousins, warm and secure in the knowledge that the adults were there protecting us and making sure everything would be okay until we woke in the morning to the smells of toasty campfire coffee and honey-cured bacon.
Dove in the Window Page 7