Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel)

by Matlock, Curtiss Ann

  She had decided to at least walk over to the pig races and see if he was there, when here he came toward her. She saw the puppy first, running toward her, and that was how she recognized that Harry was the man walking forward with his head jutting up over his arms loaded with stuffed toys.

  The next thing she noticed was that he looked as if he’d conquered the world.

  He said, “I’m gonna have to go to an ATM. I spent all my cash.”

  The look in his brown eyes went clear through her. His eyes shone with pure happy delight in a way she had not before seen. It was a delight in himself, she realized. And then she saw that he was looking directly at her, and the light in his eyes grew warm and smoky.

  Gazing back into those wonderful brown eyes, she thought that she could fall in love with him so very easily. Likely she already was in love with him.

  They dumped all the stuffed toys on the mattress in the gooseneck, left Lulu tied to the trailer and soaking up sun, and went to see the fair.

  “If we want to see it, we’d better go ahead,” Rainey said, “because I’ll need to get a nap later to be ready for tonight. And let’s go aget something to eat. I like to eat a lot in the middle of the day and not hardly have any supper, because I don’t want to race with food in my stomach.”

  “I didn’t think you ever went without food in your stomach,” he said.

  Making no comment to that, Rainey fixed the puppy into a makeshift collar and lead, because she realized how negligent she had been in letting him run loose, and they took him along.

  They stopped at a booth selling fry bread filled with spicy lamb and rice. Harry was eager to try it, the same way he was eager to try everything. They carried their food and cups of Coca-Cola over to a bench underneath a gnarled elm. People were filling the fairgrounds now, and they sat watching all manner of men and women and children walking past. There was a man with three children all over him, literally. He had a tiny baby in a sling on his chest, a toddler in a pack on his back, and a little one by the hand. Then there was an old couple, eighty at least, walking hand in hand.

  Harry got up and walked over to throw their trash in the barrel. Rainey saw the warm sunlight on his hat, and then he was looking at her.

  As they started off, he took her hand.

  Walking hand in hand, as if they both weren’t contemplating a lot more, they went through the exhibit buildings, looking over all the displays of pies and breads and canned peaches and grape jelly, clothing designs, beautiful quilts, and knitted items, and photographs. Rainey did her own judging, and she put forth that everything should get a ribbon, simply for showing up.

  “Then the ribbons would be meaningless,” Harry pointed out. “No one would care.”

  “I just think all this competition is needless. Look at those who didn’t get a ribbon. They’ll feel hurt. And who are these people who hand out the ribbons, anyway? Who set them up as judges?”

  She realized that what Leanne had said about her not having a competitive spirit was churning around somewhere in the back of her mind.

  Harry looked at her as if she were a little cracked. “Somebody set them up as judges,” he said. “They probably didn’t want the job but had to do it. I had to be a judge once at a chili cook-off. One of those affairs my mother arranged to raise money for the hospital. She had a state representative, the mayor and a couple of hospital bigwigs cooking chili. She can get anyone to do anything. She made them cook, and she made me and a couple of other doctors judge.”

  “Did your father judge?”

  He frowned. “He’s the only one she can’t make do anything.”

  “Well,” Rainey said, turning the conversation a little, “what is it about everyone always wanting to beat the other fella? Look at all that football. They have kids of five playin’ football. Good grief. I think it is a major sickness of society, all this competition. People need to learn how to cooperate, not compete.”

  “Why do you race?”

  “For myself. I race to have fun and see what Lulu and I can do. And I almost hate to do very well, because that means someone else has to lose, and it’s my fault, and I always feel so bad.”

  She got a little carried away then and told him of her fantasy about maybe beating Leanne, which she couldn’t ever do, but just in case it looked like she would, she would have to throw the race to Leanne, because she could handle losing but Leanne would simply die, or kill herself, if she lost to Rainey. Then she realized how silly she was being, getting all worried about something that was never going to happen.

  She said, “I guess I am as warped as everyone else.”

  Harry laughed, and the next instant he pulled her to him and kissed her quickly. Then he said, “Everyone should be as warped as you.”

  She didn’t know what to say and had to look away.

  After they finished perusing all the exhibits, they went over to the vendor booths, where they saw everything on sale, from pottery to jewelry to specialty animal feeds. The man at that booth gave the puppy a sample of the dog food, and he did it before she said he could, which she thought was a little rude. But the puppy seemed to like it, so she bought a small bag.

  Down a few more booths, they came to one selling shiny tin-and-tile mirrors. Rainey thought they were lovely. They looked very Mexican, and she loved things with that tone, the color and earthiness of it.

  “Aren’t they pretty?” she said.

  “Well, I guess so.”

  “They are a little gaudy, I suppose.” She was a little disappointed.

  “Colorful…they’re colorful. I was just trying to picture them on a wall.”

  “It depends on the wall,” she said. “They’d probably go well in my cottage, or Mama’s house. She has all sorts of things in her house, but I wouldn’t think they’d go very well in your house.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t seen my house.”

  “You have a town house.” She had a picture of his place in her head, probably lots of leather and chrome and glass.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Well, yes…”

  She looked at him, and for an instant she saw all those prominent doctors and society women behind him. “Would these mirrors go in your town house?”

  He smoothed the back of his head. “A person could get scared in the night by one of these things,” he said, then took her hand and tugged her on.

  Feeling the warmth of his hand against hers, she wondered what his hands would feel like all over her body. About the time she had that thought, he turned his head toward her and met her gaze. She thought then that they might have been very different in many ways, but she was fairly certain he was thinking some of her same thoughts.

  It was a statue, and the mind knew that no animal could hold itself with its back legs shooting up in the air, but the bull sure did look real. A photographer was taking people’s pictures on it. Harry and Rainey watched while he took a picture of a little boy, wearing his daddy’s black cowboy hat. The hat fell down over the boy’s face, and he kept pushing it up and peeking out. He was really cute.

  Rainey looked over at Harry and saw his eyes were zeroed in on the boy. The expression on his face unnerved her, and she noticed that his hand was gripping hers very tightly.

  Then his gaze flickered down to her, and he said, “I lost a little boy about that age, back in March.”

  “You lost him?” Her first thought was that he’d misplaced a little boy, and to wonder why he would have a little boy to misplace.

  “He died,” he said, pain flashing across his features and his eyes returning to the boy on the bull. “It was just the flu…but by the time his parents brought the boy to the emergency room, he was really dehydrated. Still, we started working on him right away. I’d had other kids like him a hundred times. But then suddenly…”

  He swallowed and looked really upset, and she didn’t know quite what to do, other than stand there and hold his hand.

 
; He said, “The thing is, complications pop up that no one has any experience with. New stuff all the time, and medicine has limitations. Sometimes, no matter what you do, a person dies.”

  All she could think to do was put her head on his shoulder.

  Then the boy was off the bull and walking away with his parents. The photographer asked Rainey and Harry, “How about one of you two?”

  Harry wanted to do it, but Rainey hung back. She never liked having her picture taken. Photographs rarely flattered her; she usually ended up with a silly grin or her eyes half-closed, making her look drunk. “Even Mama would say that I was so much prettier than any of my pictures,” she told Harry. “What does that tell you?”

  “Aw…come on. It’ll be a great souvenir.”

  “You don’t have any money,” she pointed out.

  “Okay, lend me a twenty. Come on.”

  She did want a picture of him, and it suddenly occurred to her that getting a picture of the both of them would be a good idea. Something she might like to have after this weekend was over.

  Handing over the money, she told the photographer she wanted two shots. She asked Harry to tie the puppy to a table leg, because she didn’t like the idea of trusting him to sit there. The table wouldn’t exactly stop him from running, but it would slow him down.

  The two of them getting up on the bull was a comedy in itself. Harry had to hold her to keep her from sliding forward. He held her pressed against his chest, and what held him in place, she wasn’t quite certain. While they struggled to get situated, a line began to form. The photographer got in a hurry, snapped two shots and told them, “That’s it.” Rainey had little confidence in how her image would appear.

  Much to her relief, however, the pictures turned out very well. She looked a little surprised in one, but not drunk and not too silly. And in the second she looked downright good. She gave Harry that one, because he looked his perfectly handsome self in both of them.

  CHAPTER 19

  Giving Fate the Third Degree

  They started off for the carnival rides—Rainey had been attracted by the Ferris wheel turning against the blue sky—but on their way they passed the petting zoo, where Harry was like a kid, and Rainey remembered that he’d said he had never had a pet. Then, when they passed the pig races, they stayed to watch two complete races, and then they went back to the horse barn, where they caught the tail end, so to speak, of the Western pleasure riding, which Rainey likened to watching concrete set but Harry enjoyed, so she set herself to enjoy it, too.

  Time had slipped away, and it was nearing three o’clock when Rainey said she had to go to the motel to get some sleep. Exhaustion had hit her with a suddenness, and she wanted to lie down so badly that she almost left Lulu tied to the trailer and went off to the motel. Thankfully Harry remembered the mare as Rainey was unhooking the trailer from the truck. He even walked the horse to her stall. Apparently he had sufficiently overcome his fear, at least of Lulu, who went along docilely.

  On the drive to the motel it occurred to Rainey that she had forgotten to call and reserve a room for Harry. It was possible that the motel would be booked solid, with all the fair attendees and the rodeo people flooding the area. If they couldn’t give him a room, she would have to share her room, which was the only practical and polite thing to do, and if that was the case, she knew she couldn’t be trusted.

  She didn’t mention any of those concerns, of course; she didn’t want Harry to know the nature of her thoughts at all. She sought to act perfectly cool, going on the theory that passion denied became nonexistent. This sometimes seemed to work, although she was perfectly aware that passion very often behaved like that unpredictable spark from the fireplace which can sometimes light unnoticed in just the right place and burst into a full blaze to burn the house down. Probably all she had to do was take a full look at Harry in his cowboy hat, or maybe have her gaze accidently light on the hollow of his throat, and she would end up throwing herself at him.

  She was balancing precariously between anticipation and fear, and keeping her gaze downcast, when the clerk handed them each a key, separate rooms side by side.

  “I’m goin’ to sleep for at least two hours,” she told Harry, as she opened the turquoise door to her room, letting the puppy go on in, which he did, as if to check it out and make certain it was safe for her.

  Harry was looking at her. “Sounds good,” he said.

  “I don’t want to eat any later than six-thirty, though. I like my stomach to be pretty empty when I go to race.”

  He nodded, still looking at her. She thought she was saved from her uncertain passion because he had left his hat in the truck. And, too, she was simply too tired to face passion and all the fears it generated.

  She picked up her bags, went into her room, shut the door and leaned against it, holding herself back from calling after him, listening to him go into his room and shut his door.

  She set the bedside radio alarm for five o’clock. Then, down to her bra and panties, she slipped between the bedsheets, all parts of her body voicing relief. She didn’t, of course, fall directly asleep. She lay there listening for sounds from Harry’s room, but she didn’t hear anything. The people on her right came in and began arguing, something about where they were going to eat. The puppy jumped up on the bed, and she told him to get off. There was no sense starting that habit, but he looked so downcast that she put her jeans on the floor for him to lie on. He seemed pleased.

  The phone rang in the arguing couple’s room, and this reminded her that she needed to call Charlene and check in with her location and motel phone number. She thought she would have to defend herself immediately, because she had not telephoned her sister sooner, but Charlene started right in with the latest episode of Daddy and That Mildred.

  “Get this,” Charlene said. “This morning before dawn, That Mildred Covington twisted her ankle while she was gettin’ out of the bathtub, and she had to sit back down in it and call for Daddy to come help her out.”

  “Was he in her house?” Rainey was a little shocked. It wasn’t like her father to stay at anyone’s house. He hardly visited inside someone’s house, although he would go up to the porch or stand in the yard and talk. If Mildred Covington had gotten him to go over there all night, she was making good headway.

  “No. He was at home. That Mildred is apparently practical and takes her cordless phone in by the bathtub each time she bathes. And she just as apparently doesn’t have any girlfriends she can call, so she calls a man to come over and help her naked self out of the tub.”

  Rainey pictured Charlene’s head going back and forth for emphasis.

  “The phone is practical,” she said. “She probably should get one of those call buttons. Mr. Blaine helps a lot of his customers set those up.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She thought she could hear Charlene drumming her fingers.

  Charlene said, “Daddy had to help her out of the tub and take her to the doctor, too.”

  “Well, it’s good that he could help.” Rainey didn’t volunteer the information that sprains couldn’t be firmly diagnosed, and it could have been every bit the farce Charlene obviously thought it was.

  “Oh, that woman makes me just want to go over there and jerk her head off,” Charlene said.

  Rainey was beginning to feel the same way, which she thought was a silly sentiment. “Charlene, it is good That Mildred Covington can give Daddy something to help him through his time of mourning.”

  “Oh, yeah. She’s gonna end up givin’ him a heart attack, that’s what, makin’ him haul her big naked butt all over creation.”

  “If she hoped to titillate Daddy, I doubt she succeeded. His eyesight is pretty poor these days,” Rainey said, and jumped to change the subject by telling her sister about running into Leanne. “She’s racing here, too.”

  “Then I hope you weren’t plannin’ on winning. Last I heard from Joey is that Leanne can’t be beat with that horse of hers.”

&nbs
p; “That’s what I hear, too.”

  “How’s Leanne doing? I have not seen her in…gosh, probably a year.”

  “She’s pretty, just like always. She tried to be nice. She said she was sorry about Mama, and she about started cryin’. Did you know she and Mama were good friends?”

  “Everybody was Mama’s friend. She didn’t know a stranger,” Charlene said. “And one time I went over to the house to visit with Mama and Aunt Vida, and Aunt Vida went on and on about what a good smart daughter Peggy was and what a no-good foolish daughter Leanne was. Mama took up for Leanne so strongly that I was a little surprised, but Aunt Vida is so thick she never noticed. I understood Leanne a lot better then. I guess she has to act stuck-up, with her mama always down on her. Peggy had her picture in the paper the past week. She’s been voted best teacher in the school district.”

  “Leanne’s had her picture in the last three issues of the WPRA.”

  “A rodeo publication is not the same thing in Aunt Vida’s eyes. For one thing, it is not a home paper, so none of Aunt Vida’s friends read it.”

  “I met another friend of Mama’s, a Herb Longstreet. Did you know him?”

  “No…I don’t think so. But good golly, Rainey, Mama would start talkin’ to anybody like they were a long-lost friend, and later, when I asked who was that, she’d say, ‘I don’t know. We were just talkin’.’ I don’t know how she managed to never get robbed. Speaking of robbed, what happened to your doctor?”

  “He isn’t a robber.”

  “That’s good. What happened to him?”

  Rainey shifted up on the pillows and gripped the receiver. “He came on up here to Amarillo with me.” Her voice came out hoarse.

  “Oh?” Charlene waited, and when Rainey couldn’t get anything else out, she said, “How deep are you?”

  “Deep enough to need a lifeline.” She was a little surprised at her answer. Until that minute she had not realized the depth of her emotion for Harry. She gripped the phone receiver as emotion swept her—doubts and fears, mostly.