by Rain Trueax
"Where's Curly?" Helene asked as she poured them each a cup of hot coffee and carried it to the table where they'd slumped into chairs.
"He went home." Amos shook his head. "I know I keep saying it every year, but I got to thin that herd. Even with the three of us, it was a heck of a job separating and vibrioing all them heifers."
Phillip leaned back in his chair, a portrait of exhausted, dirty and strangely satisfied maleness; but if she'd had any idea of another romantic encounter, his red-rimmed eyes took it from her head.
"You both look exhausted." She mentally discarded Nancy's invitation to dinner and began thinking what she could hastily put together.
Phillip shook his head. "I wasn't much help."
"You sure as blue blazes were," Amos said. "You're the one took the brunt of it, not me. I appreciate it and so did Curly. You're making it a lot easier for a couple of old codgers."
"I took the brunt because I don't know how to do much of anything the right way," Phillip retorted. He patted his pocket for a cigarette, then seemed to remember Helene's injunction against smoking in the house. She could almost see him debate if he had the energy to go outside.
"Go ahead and smoke," she snapped, directly meeting his eyes for the first time.
"You sure?" he asked, although he didn't wait for her answer to pull out a cigarette.
"Yes, but I wish you'd quit. You have to know smoking is not healthy."
He lit the cigarette, drawing deeply of the smoke. "One of these days," he promised, smiling back at her, his eyes not revealing any of his thoughts, "when my life settles down, I'll quit--again."
"Humph." She looked from one to the other. "Nancy invited us to their home for dinner tonight, but I imagine you're both too tired to go."
"Nancy?" Phillip asked.
"Emile's wife."
"I thought she was having a baby." Phillip watched Helene over the rim of his coffee cup. She only wished she was better at reading between the lines where he was concerned.
"That doesn't make her an invalid."
"Invited us all?" Amos asked with a grin.
"All three names were mentioned."
"She say anything about what she was fixing for supper?" Amos asked.
"Chicken and pie were two words that come to mind."
"Sounds good to me," Amos responded, heading for the bathroom. "What time'd she say?"
"I think around six-thirty."
Phillip continued to watch her as she picked up Amos's coffee cup and carried it to the sink. "You want me to go too?" he asked.
"It wasn't my invitation."
"I know, but do you want me to go?"
She leaned against the counter and looked back at him, trying to find any trace of the suave businessman she'd met in Boston. Needing a shave, his hair disheveled from wearing a hat, sweating and working all day, rough clothing on his lanky frame, he looked as though he belonged right where he sat. It was as though the man she saw slouching back in his chair had known this life as long as Emile or Rafe. She couldn't count the times she'd seen the two of them tipping back their chairs, just as Phillip was doing. He was a chameleon, she decided before she answered his question with honesty. "Yes, I want you to go, if you're not too tired."
A faint smile on his lips, he rose and came to where she stood. When he handed her his cup, he allowed his hand to linger, brushing against hers, running the tip of his finger up her wrist. "I'm not fit to touch you, but..."
She looked into his clear blue eyes. "Why don't you go take a shower upstairs?" she asked.
"Nah, I’ll just take a quick one down at the bunkhouse.” He smiled crookedly. “That is unless you want to join me." Provocatively he ran his finger up her arm. "I could make it worth your while."
"Phillip!"
He stepped back grinning. "Just a thought." Kissing her lightly on the forehead, he headed out the door leaving behind a perplexed woman. She couldn't understand him, didn't know what he wanted, but she was beginning to realize something. She was falling in love with her own husband. A man who at least in the beginning had not wanted a wife but rather a decoration to his life. The question was, what did he want now? Who was Phillip Drummond and would she find out before he broke her heart?
Entering Nancy's fragrant smelling kitchen, Helene asked, "What can I do?"
Nancy smiled and pointed to the salad greens. Helene sat at a stool and began tearing apart lettuce.
"I think your husband seems like a nice guy," Nancy said.
"You barely met him."
"I know, but I make quick judgments about people. I don't think Wes likes him though."
"I could have told you that--if you'd told me Wes would be here." Helene grabbed a paring knife and sliced up radishes, tossing them here and there in the salad bowl.
"He came home with Emile and had already been invited to dinner." Nancy shrugged. "Wes and Phil aren't comfortable with each other, but maybe it's just as well they learn to get along."
"I don't see why."
"It's a tight community out here. I mean there's the new people, but they usually don't care much to socialize with us. A lot of the time they're flying in for holidays and only have a caretaker on their place the rest of the time. People who've been here a long time need each other."
"It suppose so."
"It seems to be mutual dislike, I mean Phil and Wes." She scrunched up her pert little nose thoughtfully. "I'm not sure what Emile thinks of Phil either. Men are so... competitive with each other. It might take a little time for the whole thing to shake out."
"As if women aren't competitive!" Helene raised her eyebrows and laughed. "Something is coming back to me."
"Don't bring that up," Nancy demanded.
"Ah, but it's so--appropriate. It was a blonde, whatever her name was, and she came onto Emile at a dance." She left a pointed silence before she added in a sorrowful voice, "Poor little--whatever her name was--she'll probably never be the same again. I mean did you have to yank off her hair piece right there in front of everyone?"
"It was an accident," Nancy defended, throwing up her hands innocently. "Besides, I didn't actually hurt her."
Helene raised her brows even higher.
"Well, she was all over him. Imagine unbuttoning his shirt in a public place. I mean what did you expect me to do. It was different anyway."
"Sure, you're a woman and women don't get competitive."
"Right," Nancy agreed with a laugh. "Tonight would have been easier though if I'd thought to un-invite Wes. I'd like to have Emile and Phillip get to know each other and with Wes acting like a territorial bulldog, I'm not sure it's going to be possible. Who knows if those two will make it through the evening without a blow-up."
"Honestly, I think you're worrying for nothing. Wes isn't that crazy about me and even Phillip isn't sure if he wants me or not. They're hardly apt to come to blows over me. Quit worrying."
"I don't know about that." Nancy shook her head skeptically." You know how bulls are after a heifer in heat."
"I'm not a heifer in heat," Helene retorted insulted even as she knew it was a more appropriate description than it’d have been a month earlier.
"Oh, all right. I'll drop that subject. There's something more interesting to talk about anyway." She peeled a carrot and handed it to Helene to grate. "There's something different about you tonight," she said, lowering her voice. "A glow. What's changed since we last talked?"
Helene flushed. "Don't be silly."
"I'm not being silly. I know you. Something's changed. Are you sure you aren't in love with that husband of yours?"
"You have got too much imagination." Helene turned the word into an accusation. "I can hardly wait for that baby of yours to be born. You'll be busy enough then that you won't have time to create fantasies for me."
Nancy laughed, rubbing her stomach almost absentmindedly. "You're not the only anxious one. Emile must have asked three times if I really felt up to fixing a big dinner for everybody."
&n
bsp; "Phillip wondered about that too."
"Men! You'd think a pregnancy was a disease. My husband births enough cows he ought to know better."
"It's different when it's the heifer he loves."
Nancy bent over, then let out a yelp.
"What's the matter."
"I hate not being able to reach down for anything without this--whoever it is--kicking me. Can you take the chicken out of the oven?"
As Helene carried a bowl of mashed potatoes into the dining room, setting it on the round oak table, she cast a nervous eye toward the living room to see how Phillip and Wes were managing. They seemed to have achieved an uneasy truce, but Emile and his father were carrying the brunt of the conversation.
Nancy pushed open the swinging door with a plate of fried chicken. "Dad, will you say grace for us?" she asked. Helene smiled as the four men got to their feet, obviously either hungry or eager to escape the uneasy social situation. How did a soon-to-be ex-husband and a want-to-be boyfriend usually get along?
At the table, Amos gave a simple blessing before everyone began to pass and serve themselves from the bowls and plates. For the moment it was enough to say, could I have... Try this... There was no need for more complex conversation. But then all the plates were filled.
"So, you vaccinated cattle today," Emile said, looking at Phillip.
"Got 'em all done too," Amos answered. "Thanks to Phil here."
"I think you mean in spite of Phil, don't you?" Phillip quipped, taking a sip of water and looking down the table to where Wes had taken the seat next to Helene.
"No sir, I don't. You're getting the hang of working cattle just fine. By the end of the day, you handled those chutes like a pro."
"Only caught my fingers three times in the gears and handles," Phillip added wryly bringing forth the hand to show the reddened digits.
"Everybody gets their fingers caught in the chutes now and then," Emile said, taking a bite of chicken, as he watched Phillip.
Wes changed the subject. "How long you figure to be around anyway, Phil? I mean, how long can you leave your important business back East?"
Phillip looked at him thoughtfully. "I don't know. I'm getting a phone hooked up down at the bunkhouse to allow me to communicate with my office. Communication is really the key to everything." Phillip looked pointedly at Helene, and she felt herself blush. From the smile on his face--for once--she knew exactly what he was thinking.
"I can't believe that would be enough to really keep a consulting business going," Wes said. "You aren't thinking of living here year-round, are you?"
"If I do," Phillip quipped, "I'll be sure and let you know first one, Wes."
Wes glared at him but subsided back to his food as others asked Phillip polite questions about his business.
As the conversation drifted around the table between the coming elections, a new forestry proposal that would affect grazing rights, a grizzly that a trapper had shot just outside his cabin at the boundary to Yellowstone Park and the fine with which he'd been threatened, and the murder of a prosperous rancher upstate, it seemed it was little time at all before Helene and Nancy were clearing the table and Nancy was producing an apple pie.
"Wow," Phillip said appreciatively, his blue eyes gleaming, "did you bake that yourself?"
"Sure did," Nancy said with a grin as she set it down and began cutting it into pieces. Helene came back from the kitchen with a carton of ice cream.
Helene remembered Phillip’s reaction to her own pie. Clearly to him, apple pie was the most wonderful dessert he’d ever tasted.
"How many want ice cream on this?" Helene asked, adding a dollop of vanilla ice cream to each piece of pie as directed. She couldn't help but smile at Phillip's obvious pleasure as she handed him his dessert.
"Maybe you ought to sample it before you say too much," Nancy said. 'I was a little distracted today. Maybe I put in too much of something."
"Doesn't look that way to me," Amos said as he reached for his own piece.
As Helene watched Phillip appreciatively take his first bite of the pie, savoring the taste, she thought about his brief description of his growing up years. He had missed a lot. Even though her parents had often been too busy for her, Uncle Amos and Aunt Rochelle had always been there as surrogate parents. The holidays had meant warm family times. There had been lots of home-baked treats and special family dinners. Phillip hadn't experienced those same things, and it had left a mark on him that she was only slowly beginning to comprehend. He didn't trust family because he had never really experienced it, or his experiences had been negative rather than positive. She wondered if it was too late now.
Pouring everyone another cup of coffee, Nancy looked over Phillip's shoulder at the empty pie plate. "I think you liked that," she said teasingly.
"Best pie I ever ate," Phillip stated flatly. Then added, “Other than Helene’s, of course.” He smiled at her.
"Well, now we know you like our pies. What do you think of our West?"
Phillip managed to swallow his coffee before he choked. "What could I think?" he asked, hoping he could avoid a straight answer to her direct question.
"You could hate it, love it or not have made up your mind yet," Nancy suggested, sitting beside Emile and lightly massaging her husband's neck.
"I see you're not going to let me off the hook," Phillip said with a faint smile.
"Is it such a complex question?" Nancy asked innocently.
"I don't think we should put Phillip on the spot this way," Helene said, interrupting protectively. "What he thinks or doesn't think of the West is his business."
Phillip knew because of Helene's protective intervention, he could avoid the issue, but he chose not to. "I have a question for you all. What is this West you talk about?"
Wes sat up straighter. "You don't know what the West is?" he asked with at least pretend amazement.
"Sometimes you people talk as though this is a foreign country or something, that people out here have a different set of values than anyplace else. Is that how you see yourselves and this country?
"Maybe a little," Nancy admitted. With a small smile, she suggested they sit in the living room where it was more comfortable for the rest of this conversation.
Helene looked at Nancy speculatively, wondering what Nancy's purpose had been in bringing up the issue. Her friend had always been provocative in her comments. It was one of the things Helene liked about her, but she was never snide.
"Can I help you clean up?" Helene asked, carrying dessert plates into the kitchen and hoping Nancy would agree so she could ask her what had possessed her to put Phillip on the spot that way.
"Nope. I'll do that later. I want to enjoy the conversation." Nancy smiled benignly at Helene, her face ingenuous--except in the gleam of her blue eyes.
"I should apologize to you, Phil," Nancy said as soon as everyone was seated again. "It must have sounded like an accusation the way I put my question. I didn't mean it that way." She smiled a gamine grin that Phillip thought would have made it nearly impossible for anyone to take offense at what she'd said.
"We are defensive though," Emile said, leaning forward, his voice intense. "Outsiders come here, buy up the land, move into the valleys and hills and they don't understand our ways, share our values. They don’t understand the problems we face with say wolf or grizzly predations. They want us gone is the honest truth and leave this place for vacation homes and the wolves and grizzlies.”
“I have read about the conflicts,” Phillip agreed, “and see how it seems confrontive.”
“It causes a lot of trouble when newcomers or worse outsiders expect to change everything to meet what their goals or what they left behind. If they didn’t like how this was, why’d they bother to come?"
“Everybody came sometime,” Phillip argued.
“Outsiders cause us a lot of grief.”
"Outsiders. That's a good word for the way you people treat anybody who wasn't born on your land."
"O
h my, I'm sorry I ever brought any of this up," Nancy said.
Phillip made his own tone conciliatory. "I'll concede the evils of the big cities with high taxes, crime, pollution, and overcrowding, but how about if we keep this discussion to the thing I really don't understand. What is the philosophy that you folks see as being Western, that separates a Westerner from what you would call an outsider?" He had no desire to get into an argument with Emile. On the other hand, fighting with Wes might have a certain appeal. His eyes narrowed as he looked toward Wes, who had settled next to Helene on the gingham covered sofa. What were that guy's intentions?
Emile subsided back, as Nancy, who had moved to sit on the arm of his chair, began soothingly kneading his shoulder muscle.
There was a silence "A lot of the ways around here have changed, even since I was a kid," Amos said finally. "There was a time when a man was judged by what he did not just what he owned. There wasn't so much concern with how much money you had, but more how you did your work, what your word was worth. You know, even now with some of the old timers, a handshake is as good or better than a paper contract would be somewhere else. In fact, with a lot of men, you never get a signed contract. A man's word, that's everything. Know what I mean?"
"Maybe. I deal with people a lot on the look in their eye," Phillip said thoughtfully. "It doesn't always work out though when you don't have the expectations written down. People remember their promises differently."
Amos grinned. "Well, that's true out here too, but if a man's worked the winter at your side, you've watched his kids grow up, seen how he keeps his stock, how he maintains his fences, you get a feeling for him and the kind of fella he is. A man who can do does. A man who can't brags.”
Phillip smiled. “That’s pretty much true anywhere.”
"Well we do come out here from other places, heck, if we count our families, all of us came from someplace else, but there's different kind of men, not so much matters about where they come from, but more what they're like inside. There's those that come, buy up land, fill it with cattle, overgraze their places 'til there isn't a blade of grass left, then go belly up. They're sucking it dry and pretty soon somebody else's got what's left. The city folks look at it and don’t know it was another city folk who done it.