“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and it’s almost lunchtime, besides. Your body can’t make much energy with that little bit.”
“What you’re having is a heart attack waiting to happen,” he said, motioning at her plate.
“People have gone overboard about this fat thing,” she said, lifting a biscuit thick with butter. “A body has to have fat to process vitamins.”
He took a bite of his biscuit and looked mildly surprised. “This is really good.” he said.
“Well, if there’s one thing I can do, it’s cook. My husband Robert used to say that I could stop a war with my biscuits.”
Her ability to cook had always seemed like her saving grace, making up in part for her tendency toward foolish mistakes. Of course, her talent in this endeavor had also indirectly caused a number of her foolish mistakes. Her mother had said that her good cooking was the main reason men had always so quickly proposed to her. Rainey had married only two men, but she’d had at least half a dozen real proposals. For a time she had avoided cooking for a man for this reason—because it seemed that as soon as a man ate one of her meals, he would ask her to marry him.
Remembering this, she suffered a flash of anxiety. What if he was running away from his wife and children and fell in love with her cooking?
This gave her pause. Running from a wife and children was, in her opinion, a much more serious offense than almost any type of criminal behavior. Of course, she was getting carried away with wild suppositions, but the disturbing speculation did serve to point up the fact that she hadn’t really considered before what he might be getting away from. She had been so worried about his concussion and felt such empathy for his confusion that she had not gone any further.
“This is really delicious,” he said with enthusiasm, reaching for a second biscuit.
“Thank you. You aren’t married, are you? You aren’t runnin’ away from a wife and children, are you?”
He looked up, startled. “No. I’m not married.”
“Oh. Well, I guess it isn’t really any of my business.” She felt silly and rude and wished she had controlled her tongue.
“I haven’t ever been married,” he said, in a sort of dazed tone.
She looked at him. He blinked and looked down at his plate, and he sat there holding the biscuit and looking intense, his jaw-line very tight.
She had a strong sense that he was working up to a further explanation, and she suddenly wondered if she really wanted to know what he was getting away from. She didn’t want to be disappointed in him. Not truly knowing him, she had attributed to him a very good character, if confused, and now she realized that this might not be the case at all. A great dread of being disappointed in him washed over her.
She was certain he would have told her everything at that moment, if she had asked, but she was saved from doing that when just then a vehicle drove up, and the puppy went to barking his fierce little puppy bark.
Through the window of the door, Rainey saw the little puppy dash off the porch, and then heard her Uncle Doyle let out a yell.
“Ye Gods and little fishes,” she said, opening the door to see the puppy darting again and again at her uncle’s ankles. She hurried out to grab hold of the pup.
“That’s a feisty little fella you have there, Rain-gal. I left by way of the front door, and I guess he didn’t see me go.” He touched the puppy’s head. “You’re pretty good at takin’ care of Rain-gal, pooch.” The puppy, satisfied that things were now in control, wagged his tail.
“He isn’t really my dog, Uncle Doyle. Someone dumped him on me. He didn’t bite you, did he?”
“Naw…he’s just all show. Probably make a good companion for you while you’re travelin’ all over creation,” he said with some censure, then went on to the sink to wash his hands, adding, “I’m sorry about the kitchen mess, darlin’. I forgot all about it.”
Spying a book and the file folder from Aunt Pauline still on the table, Rainey deftly moved them, tucking them behind a canister on the counter. If her uncle happened to spy them, no doubt he would open them, and then he would get to reading and forget to have his meal. And Lord knew that Uncle Doyle didn’t need to skimp on meals.
Uncle Doyle’s thinness always gave her a little ache in her chest. He was so skinny, he disappeared when he stood sideways. She felt she must feed him.
She washed him a plate, and he sat at the table, complimenting her on her cooking so much that she became uncomfortable.
“Been a long time since I had such good food, Rain-gal. Her cookin’ is somethin’, idn’t it?” he said to Harry. “There ain’t many women can look like Rain-gal and cook on top of it, but all them Overton gals are like that—good lookers and good cookers.
“When Rain-gal and her mama were here last, I had a fella from the Ag Department down in Austin pull up out there and get the scent and come in, and the next thing I knew, my hand came in and set down, too. Those two men kept eatin’ and lookin’ at Rainey and her mama, too, even though Coweta was past seventy-five then. By dang, I thought I wasn’t never gonna get them men outta here.”
“Uncle Doyle, how’s your alfalfa this year?” she said to change the subject. When not immersed in his reading, Uncle Doyle could talk a blue streak. “Uncle Doyle retired from being a county agent and is experimenting with improvin’ alfalfa,” she explained to her passenger. “He’s helped put new seed on the market.”
She watched her passenger take yet another biscuit and, following Uncle Doyle’s example, put a piece of sausage on it and spoon gravy over it. She was pleased, but a little worried, too. She doubted that her passenger was used to rich foods. Little sparks of worry went off in her mind; she had possibly corrupted him with her gravy, which was rich and could be habit forming.
“It was awful wet this spring,” Uncle Doyle was saying, “and the alfalfa got a lot of weeds. I’ll bet we had as much rain this spring as y’all did down in Houston, Harry,” he said.
Rainey realized he was speaking to her passenger. Harry. She stared at him, and he shot her a sideways glance.
“Weather patterns are goin’ a little crazy these days,” Uncle Doyle said. “Why, I can remember how parts of this country out here used to ‘bout go to desert in the summer when I was a boy. Now we got thick grass and even trees growin’ all over, and the Red has water in it most of the time. There’s some says it’s all the radio waves.”
She said, “I haven’t ever been to Houston, but I hear it is really humid there.” She kept looking at her passenger and wondered what all he had discussed with her uncle that morning. What he might have told Uncle Doyle that he hadn’t bothered to tell her.
“It can be,” he said. “Think I’ll get another cup of coffee. Anyone else want any?”
“I’ll take a half a cup,” Uncle Doyle said. “I clean forgot, Rain-gal, but Charlene called here this mornin’. I wrote a note and put it somewhere….” He looked around with a puzzled frown, then patted his shirt pockets.
“It’s okay, Uncle Doyle. I’ll call her in a few minutes.”
She tried to think of a way to bring the subject back to Houston and find out more about her passenger. Maybe she would just say straight out: So what do you do down in Houston? What are you gettin’ away from?
“Here it is,” Uncle Doyle said with satisfaction. “I got to write everythin’ down, or I forget about it.”
He handed her a scrap of paper torn from a paper bag. All that was written on it was: “Charlene called this a.m. Call her back.”
Rainey said, “I need to phone in my entry into the Amarillo rodeo, too, Uncle Doyle. I’ll use my calling card. Is Neva goin’ up to the rodeo?”
“Well, I don’t rightly know,” her uncle said, folding his arms and leaning forward on the table. “My daughter and I haven’t spoken in three months—since she chose to move in with her no-account boyfriend without the benefit of marriage.”
“Oh.”
Possibly more was called for on her p
art, but she was surprised and couldn’t think of anything else to say. She was a little embarrassed, too, wondering what her uncle must think about her passenger.
“I raised her better than that,” Uncle Doyle said. “If nothin’ else, she ought to have better sense. She’s got a blessed four-year college degree and is an assistant bank manager, and that no-account ain’t fit to roll with a pig, works weldin’ in the oil fields half the time and rodeo the other half, when he ain’t layin’ around, which is what it seems like he does most of the time.” He snorted. “Her mother’d be heartbroke.”
“I thought Neva was goin’ with a physical ed teacher,” she said, vaguely recalling what Neva had told her at her mother’s funeral back in the spring.
“She broke that off and took up with this bum.”
“Oh.”
It seemed to her that Uncle Doyle was looking at her and her passenger, who was sitting there looking uncomfortable.
“Harry and I are just friends, Uncle Doyle,” she said. Then, “I think I’ll go call Charlene.”
Laying her napkin beside the plate, she left the men. Harry seemed to get on well with her uncle; he could handle any needed explanations.
“You were supposed to call me as soon as you got there,” Charlene said, causing Rainey to sit down, feeling like she was wilting.
She sat in the old gooseneck rocker, and it rocked forward, setting her off balance and just about sliding into the floor. She was trying to get straight and listen to Charlene at the same time, which put her at a distinct disadvantage.
“I got really worried last night,” Charlene was saying in her sharp tone. “For all I knew you were squashed in the truck along a Texas highway.”
“I didn’t realize you expected me to call last night. It was late when we got in—about two o’clock in the mornin’.”
“And just what is this we business? Uncle Doyle said you have a man with you—a guy named Harry. You didn’t say anything yesterday about a boyfriend. You haven’t gone and gotten married again have you?”
The questions, jumping from boyfriend to marriage, confused Rainey. “No, I didn’t get married,” she said at last. “I just met him last night, Charlene, when I almost ran him down on the road. He had run his car off the road, and…”
“He ran off the road?” Charlene broke in. “What are you doin’ pickin’ up a drunk who ran his car off the road?”
“He wasn’t drunk,” she defended. “He’d just had an accident is all, and he was walkin’ along the side of the road in the dark. He was out in the middle of nowhere, and I had to give him a ride, and he’d hurt his head but didn’t think he needed to see a doctor, and well, he needed someplace to go for a few days.” Whew! She’d spoken as fast as possible to avoid another interruption.
“He needed someplace to go?” Charlene sounded incredulous. “You picked up a stranger because he needed someplace to go?”
Rainey felt herself wilting a little more. “Well, he had a concussion.” She straightened. “I couldn’t just leave him there. It’s sort of complicated, Charlene.”
She began to get irritated. She could try again to explain, but she rather thought she would get nowhere. Her sister did not have the type of mind or heart to understand unorthodox circumstances. Charlene was a black-and-white sort of person.
“He could be a murderer,” she said.
“He hasn’t murdered us yet,” Rainey said practically. “He’s really nice. Uncle Doyle even seems to like him.”
“Oh, gosh, Rainey, you are just like Mama.”
Charlene spoke with great censure and equal distress, and Rainey didn’t know what sort of reply was called for. And more disturbing, it sounded as if her sister had begun to cry.
“Oh, Rainey, That Mildred Covington was over at Daddy’s all night. Helen went by there first thing this mornin’, and there they were, sittin’ at the breakfast table, That Mildred Covington still in her robe. Helen was embarrassed to death, and That Mildred Covington just sat there, bold as brass. Lord, at her age. I don’t know how Daddy can just forget Mama in such a short time. And everybody’s goin’ to start talking about it.”
Apparently Mildred had become That Mildred. Rainey said, “He hasn’t forgotten Mama, Charlene. You know he hasn’t.”
“He sure is givin’ every evidence of it. Just like, okay, she’s gone, let’s get on with things.”
Rainey thought that there really wasn’t a reason not to get on with things.
“It’s like Mama didn’t count for anything, cookin’ and cleanin’ for him, settin’ out his paper every Sunday, just the way he liked it.” She was clearly sobbing.
“Oh, Charlene, Daddy’s just horribly lonely. Mama did see to his every need, and he’s at a loss without her. Really, him lettin’ Mildred do for him is a compliment to Mama—it shows how much he loved having her that he’s lookin’ to find the same with someone else.”
She was trying to see this thing in the best light. She wasn’t nearly as shocked as Charlene, because she had suspected that this was going on. She thought it might help to add, “And they are in their eighties, Charlene. They were probably just watchin’ movies all night. You know how Daddy likes to watch that Western channel.”
“I don’t care what they were doin’ all night. It’s what it looks like. I wouldn’t be lettin’ my little Jojo go stay at some boy’s house, even if she is only eight years old, so I don’t think it is any different for Daddy and That Mildred to carry on like that.
“And another thing, he is barkin’ up the wrong skirt. Mildred Covington is a far cry from Mama, that’s for sure. She wears those knee-high hose with her dresses, for heavensake. They show when she sits there in that rocker, and it looks so tacky. But I can’t seem to do anything with him, Rainey. You are the only one who can, because you’re just like Mama.”
Rainey was surprised by the hint of helpless distress in her sister’s voice. She had never witnessed her sister helpless. Charlene was always so managerial.
“When are you comin’ home, Rainey?”
“I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. “I’m going up to the Amarillo rodeo this weekend…I think Lulu and I have a good chance of winnin’ up there. Lulu came in second down in San Antonio, you know, with seventeen point nine seconds.”
She hoped by changing the subject to the rodeo and her plans she would get her sister’s mind off wailing over their father, as well as off the subject of Rainey going home. She did not feel up to going home yet.
“I hope you do as well as you’d like. But you’ve been gone long enough, Rainey. You need to plan on comin’ home.”
Rainey thought at least she had succeeded in getting Charlene’s mind lifted up; her sister sounded much more like her commanding self.
Rainey scraped the leftovers from breakfast into a pan on the porch. There had not been very much left, so she had cooked a bit of cornmeal mush, too. The puppy, wagging his entire back end, lapped it up.
“I thought you didn’t want him,” Harry said, looking on from where he leaned lazily against a porch post.
She thought of him as Harry now, after Uncle Doyle addressing him as such a number of times over breakfast.
“I don’t,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’d let him go hungry.”
“Maybe your uncle would keep him.”
“He’d likely forget to feed him. In case you haven’t noticed, Uncle Doyle is somewhat absentminded. He’s very focused on his research, and when reading anything that interests him, he forgets everything else.”
Her passenger nodded, looking somewhat absentminded himself. He had beautiful eyes. Long dark eyelashes.
Quite suddenly she realized he was staring at her. She tried to look nonchalant.
“Are you still planning to go into town to take your tire for repair?” he asked.
“Yes…after I get a shower.”
“I’d like to ride along with you, if that’s okay. I need to get some things—toothbrush and shaving supplies and maybe
a change of clothes.”
She looked at his clothes. “You might not find anything like what you’re wearin’.”
“I imagine I can find some jeans that’ll do just fine.”
He cast her a crooked grin, and his eyes seemed to sparkle for a moment, but back of that sparkle was a heavy sadness. She looked at him for a long second, wondering about his sadness, before she turned away into the house. She might have taken that opportunity to bring up the matter of the life he was getting away from, but she shied from that. She felt she would be prying, and she wasn’t certain she felt up to taking on someone else’s sadness. And she sure didn’t want to be disappointed.
What she wanted was a shower.
CHAPTER 6
Every Story Has a Chapter
As she opened the truck door, she caught sight of the puppy several feet away. He stood poised, with the tips of his ears up, looking at her with longing.
She sighed. “Come on.” She lowered the tailgate—easy now with the trailer unhooked—and he jumped inside, big paws sliding on the slick metal bed. Slamming the tailgate, she returned to slip behind the wheel. Harry was looking at her.
She said, “Maybe I’ll pass a house with kids in town and have the chance to drop him off,” and put on her sunglasses.
It was the sort of day that could be mistaken for August, except that the light, while bright and warm, was thinner. Even the air was thinner. It came in a fresh breeze beating through the open windows, tugging at their hair and bringing the scent of the earth.
They passed a field of cotton, and she pointed it out.
“I know what cotton looks like,” he said, with that crooked grin she was beginning to think of as familiar.
“Well, I don’t know how much cotton they grow down around Houston.”
“They raise cotton a lot of places,” he said. He looked at her and then turned his gaze ahead out the window.
She returned her eyes to the road, wondering about him and his life. She wished she didn’t wonder so hard.
With a quick movement, she flicked on the radio, and lively country music filled the air. Their glances met, and they smiled at each other, before jerking their gazes away at the same instant.
Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) Page 6