Rodeo Nights

by Patricia McLinn

  How could she have forgotten that about him?

  Even as a boy, his skin had run hotter than anybody else’s. As a child, she’d found it odd, and saw it as raw material for teasing. As a young woman, she’d found it fascinating, and recognized it reflected a fire that ran deep within him. Now she found it frightening.

  She snatched her hand away. Digging her keys out, she turned away under the excuse of unlocking the car.

  She felt his look. If she had once been able to read him with a look, he’d had the same ability with her. She couldn’t risk that his skill had survived in better shape than hers. She needed something to obscure any trace of the tears that threatened and the heat that burned. Something to remind him how things had changed. Something—

  “You have an interview first thing in the morning,” she blurted out.

  As a reminder of the canyon the years had carved between them, nothing could have been better. Walker’s expression shifted, hardening. He said nothing.

  “Roberta’s cousin’s brother-in-law is editor of the paper over in Whiton. She asked if she should call and I said yes. He’s sending someone tomorrow. The focus will be on you. So please don’t disappear all afternoon the way you and Gulch have done the past couple days.”

  He turned away, looking over the top of the car. “You don’t waste any time, do you, Kalli Evans? Not when you want something badly enough. Like publicity for the rodeo.” He faced her again. “Or to get away from me.”

  She made no response.

  He slapped his palm softly on the car roof. “Good night, Kalli.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer before walking away.

  * * *

  THE SWEEPING WAS adequate, but they should hose down the stands more often. Kalli made a note on the clipboard she carried for her morning inspection as she started up the back steps to the Buzzards’ Roost.

  Voices above her stopped her in midstep. The light, quick tones of the young reporter, Jenny Bellkin, who’d shown up this morning. And Walker’s distinctive deep, slow notes.

  “Have you had many injuries, Walker?”

  “Nothing that’s kept me from going back.” He said it so easily. As if the specter of his pain hadn’t torn Kalli apart. As if it hadn’t contributed to the end of their marriage. “When you’ve broken your nose in a few places, you try not to go back to those places,” he added dryly. “That’s what you learn in your old age.”

  “You don’t seem old.”

  The young woman’s words might merely represent an interviewer trying to make her subject comfortable. Except Walker hadn’t sounded uncomfortable. In her mind’s eye, Kalli saw the sun-streaked hair, the deep tan, the petite build of the someone Roberta’s cousin’s brother-in-law had sent to do this story.

  “In rodeo, I’m Methuselah. Lots of cowboys my age have been retired four, five years.”

  “So when do you think you might retire?”

  Either Walker’s neutral response or her journalistic instincts had shifted Jenny Belkin’s focus; reporting Walker Riley’s retirement would be a coup. Or else Kalli had imagined the earlier intonation of more-than-professional interest. She didn’t much like the implications of that.

  “Can’t say.”

  “But if you’re not competing while you’re running the rodeo here in Park, isn’t that a de facto retirement?”

  “I’m working too hard to be retired. This isn’t what I had in mind for when I quit rodeoing.”

  Kalli knew what the next question would be, because she’d heard it before.

  “What did you have in mind for when you quit rodeo?”

  And she knew the answer because she’d heard that, too.

  Memory rose. Acrid hospital smells stinging her nostrils. Shock opening to grief, heavy and fresh. Walker, sick at heart, but when some Texas reporter asked if he’d be retiring after this tragedy, his answer coming swift and sure. Retire? I’m not retiring. Hell, no. My career’ll end when they carry me out in a pine box. Just like Cory.

  God, she couldn’t listen to him say those words again. Not after all the times she’d relived them in her mind.

  But she couldn’t move.

  Disembodied, his voice came from above her.

  “I thought I’d find myself a porch and a rockin’ chair with a view of the mountains and tell everybody who’ll listen ’bout my great career riding the bulls.”

  Jenny Belkin’s laugh barely reached Kalli over the buzzing in her ears. Her muscles loosened abruptly and she sat on the bottom step, staring at a drift of dust obscuring the toe of her Italian leather flat.

  I need boots. When will I find the time? She almost giggled at the inconsequence of that thought. She faced a much more complex issue. Had Walker Riley truly changed so much?

  * * *

  “C’MON”

  Wrenching her attention from last night’s figures, Kalli looked at Walker. He’d rarely been around this time of afternoon the past two weeks, much less looming over her desk, demanding she go somewhere. “C’mon where?” she asked.

  “With me. Roberta said you left the ranch station wagon for servicing this morning. We’ll take my truck.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve cleaned out Coat’s bed, so don’t worry ‘bout getting your fancy clothes messed up on the way.”

  “On the way where?” she asked in exasperation.

  “Lodge’s store.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Clothes. That’s what they sell.”

  “I know what they sell. But I don’t need—”

  “Yes, you do. Look at you,” he ordered.

  She didn’t need to look at her two-piece dress with matching blazer—“fancy clothes” indeed! She’d even worn sandals. “I look all right. My clothes are perfectly—”

  “You look more than all right.”

  At his uninflected interruption, her heart lurched. She hadn’t thought he’d given her more than a glance through the four lunches, two joint newspaper interviews and staff meeting since that night in the hospital parking lot.

  “Acceptable,” she finished weakly, then crossed her arms on the desk, leaned forward and strengthened her voice to add, “And I’m not going anywhere.”

  Instead of responding to the challenge, he unhurriedly pushed a pile of papers from the corner of the desk to its center and propped himself there with his bent leg resting along the edge so his knee nearly brushed her elbow.

  “Jasper Lodge is chairman of the rodeo committee.”

  That didn’t warrant an answer.

  “Could be the most important vote in whether Jeff keeps the rodeo next year.”

  “I know that.” She kept her voice as even as his.

  “And he asked you two weeks ago when you were coming by his store.”

  Her shoulders tightened.

  “Asked you two weeks ago when you were going to start looking more like Wyoming and less like New York.” No one else might have caught the flick of disdain in the last two words. But she felt its sting. “Have you gone?”

  “You know I haven’t. I haven’t had ti—”

  “Doesn’t make good sense to me, alienating somebody influential. Maybe things are done different in New York.”

  She stood, snagged her purse and reached the door.

  “Well, c’mon, Riley. You wanted to go, let’s go. If you’re going to be a chauffeur, don’t keep the customer waiting.”

  Staring out the pickup window as neat frame buildings gave way to the taller, squarer buildings of Park’s downtown, she acknowledged Walker’s point. Jasper hadn’t been drumming up business—at least not entirely—he’d been commenting on image and perception.

  “You didn’t have to be snide about New York, Walker,” she said. “You could have persuaded me to get casual clothes without resorting to those tactics.”

  He passed Lodge’s plain wooden sign and turned at the side street. A car occupied the first angled spot, but the next one was open. Sometimes she forgot how far she wa
s from New York.

  “Maybe,” he acknowledged as he pulled in and turned off the ignition. “But it wasn’t just the clothes.”

  She shot him a glance and got his profile.

  “I want you to get boots, too. For boots I figured I better play it safe and get snide.”

  Despite herself, she was laughing as Walker held open the door of Lodge’s for her.

  * * *

  “WE’LL START WITH boots,” declared Esther Lodge, Jasper’s wife and the heart and soul of Lodge’s store.

  After a report on Jeff, an update on Mary, a blunt assessment that folks were playing wait-and-see with the rodeo and an account of her youngest’s progress in college, she listened to Kalli’s modest list, then set the attack.

  “You looking for basic ropers? Tube shaft or scallop? Leather? Suede? Fringe? Fancy stitch? Walking heel or dress?”

  Kalli sorted out her preferences and Esther quickly had her seated in the back corner of the narrow store. As she tried on boots, Kalli was aware of Walker picking up and putting down samples with uncharacteristic restlessness.

  “Boots first so I can help you, because I’m leaving to go by the Carmodys’ pretty soon here,” Esther said. “Lolly’s laid up with a bad back and she called to say those boys of hers have grown right out of their clothes, so I’m taking things by their place.”

  “Going by” the Carmodys’ ranch involved a thirty-mile trip one way—the last seventeen miles on dirt. Oh, yes, she was a long, long way from New York.

  “Don’t like those?” Esther whisked away a pair of lizard boots with six-row stitching of a stylized flame. “With Lolly laid up and the doctor bills, I don’t know what they’d have done if you hadn’t sent those cowboys, Walker.”

  Kalli’s gaze jerked to Walker, who frowned.

  “What—”

  But Esther had caught the signal, and talked over Kalli. “So I’ll be leaving soon. And that old rascal Jasper’s not back from the bank. Left an hour ago, but I don’t doubt for a second he’s sittin’ in the barbershop, talkin’ away. So I’ll finish with your boots, then roust Jasper on my way to Lolly’s. You and Walker look after the store while you pick out your other things.”

  Kalli shot Walker a look. He used to hate shopping. Eventually she’d realized that one reason was he couldn’t afford much. She’d assumed he would drop her at Lodge’s, then disappear. Looking after the store, he’d be stuck.

  “I can trust you, Kalli,” Esther added.

  Trust her to choose clothes, Esther meant. Her highest compliment. When people talked about going to Lodge’s to see what they could find, they meant they’d see what Esther would decide was right for them. Tom Nathan, who was on the road most of the year and divorced nearly two decades, had gotten in the habit of calling Esther from time to time to tell her he was running low on shirts, or needed a belt or jeans. She’d make a choice and send it off. Sometimes, when he got busy, packages arrived without a prompting phone call.

  He wasn’t the only one.

  “Thank you, Esther,” Kalli said, suitably modest.

  “Nothing to thank me for. You got taste. Simple as that.” She set aside the black high-shafted boots with a dress heel they’d concurred on. “Now, this pair with the slouch shaft is nice.

  “Yes, I’ll try those on.”

  “‘Course, you don’t want to use these for kickin’ ’round the pens or chutes, not like a pair of ropers.”

  “Kalli’s clear of the pens and chutes, so that’s no worry,” said Walker. “Long as they’ll do for the office.”

  Kalli might have dismissed the raw note buried under his usual slow delivery as her imagination if Esther hadn’t cleared her throat and muttered, “Well, well.”

  Kalli yanked the boots on and stood to check the fit. The man made no sense. They’d divided the rodeo—her with the business operations from the office, him with the competition from the pens and chutes. An arrangement that included a tacit agreement to limit contact that could only be uncomfortable for both. Did he want her nosing around?

  Kalli went to the only mirror. Walker stood next to it, holding a man’s dress boot worth several hundred dollars. From the corner of her eye, she watched his strong, battered hand caress the leather.

  Fighting an urge to swallow, she hitched her skirt for a better look at the boots and concentrated on the mirror.

  Walker put down the boot with enough force to rap the heel against the wooden shelf.

  “I’ll take these, too.” She added defiantly, “And let me look at the ropers.”

  She quickly agreed with Esther on a workmanlike pair in saddle-leather brown. Then, while Esther instructed Walker on tending the store— “Answer the phone, check the tags for prices if anyone wants to buy and write them down, but don’t take their money because I don’t want you messin’ with my register” —Kalli selected a pair of basic jeans.

  “Shirts are back in that corner,” Esther told her. “We got in a new one with a pleated cape-type yoke. It’s a nice cotton. The green would look real good on you.”

  Kalli spotted the jade shirt and knew Esther was right. But she opted for a plain white oxford cloth shirt and a soft rose blouse with minimal same-colored piping, both neutral enough to blend with her casual clothes in New York.

  “You take those things on back, Kalli,” Esther instructed as she gathered her purse and the parcel for the Carmodys. “Trying-on room’s around to the left.”

  “Thanks, Esther. I’ll leave a check for the boots and whatever else.”

  “That’s just fine, as long as you don’t let this cowboy here try to work my register.”

  With a laugh, Kalli slipped behind the curtain to the dressing room. But she could hear their voices.

  “You could use some shirts, too, Walker. How long’s it been since you bought decent ones? You’ll look like one of those clowns dressed in rags instead of a champion bull-rider if you keep puttin’ off spending some money on your appearance, boy. A champion ought to look like one.”

  “Esther Lodge, if you had the outfitting of me, I’d have spent all my time and money on looking like your idea of a champion and none of it being a champion.”

  “False economy to wear your clothes to rags. You need shirts, boy.” The sound of a door closing told Kalli that Walker had been allowed no time for a rejoinder.

  Slipping off her jacket and unhooking her skirt’s side closure, Kalli mulled over the exchange.

  Had Walker put off Esther for a reason other than he didn’t feel like buying shirts? She laid the blazer, then the skirt across a bench.

  Granted, rodeo champions weren’t in the same income bracket as million-dollar baseball players or football stars, but the national title was worth a good bit. Enough to not be short of money for shirts.

  If he’d held on to it.

  Could Walker have blown his winnings? Others certainly had.

  He’d been careful with money when they were married, but he’d had no choice. She’d never known him when he had money. How had he reacted?

  Unsteady fingers slowed pulling on the new clothes. Images of Walker struggling financially stirred too many possibilities. Had he let money trickle through his fingers? Or had it gushed away in generosity and wild times? If she’d been there...

  She let out a settling breath as she tucked the rose blouse into the jeans and turned to the mirror. A younger woman looked back. A woman with less armor against the world. A woman with tangled hair and cheeks blushed by sun and wind instead of cosmetics.

  The woman she used to be.

  A woman who didn’t have the strengths she had now. Who hadn’t learned the things she’d learned. Who hadn’t lived the life she’d lived.

  A woman who loved Walker Riley.

  The eyes of the woman in the mirror widened and glistened with gathering tears. She shook her head, shattering the illusion and banishing the past.

  With clear eyes, she looked at her reflection, and saw the woman she’d become. Not perfect by any mea
ns, but not a naive girl, either. Not even the clothes of yesterday could keep it from being today.

  She gave herself a little shake and started unbuttoning the blouse.

  “Kalli?” An elbow hooked the curtain, shoving it aside.

  “Hey!” Kalli’s hand closed the throat of the blouse.

  “Ain’t nothing I haven’t seen before.” But he didn’t look at her. “Brought you some things.”

  “Some things? Looks like half of Esther’s stock.”

  “Only in your size.” Walker dumped an armload of blouses on the bench, spilling jeweled colors, bandanna-print yokes, Aztec embroidery and color-blocked shoulders.

  “Hey, my clothes are under there.” Kalli started toward the haphazard stack that threatened to iron creases into her two-piece dress and blazer.

  “Won’t need ‘em.” Walker snagged her arm.

  For an instant, as she faced him in the constricted dressing room–close enough to smell the sun and dust on him, near enough to see the groove from nose to mouth that lifted so distinctively when he smiled–the possibilities of not needing clothes around Walker sizzled through her blood.

  “Try this on. You won’t go back to city clothes. Not as long as you’re here.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Her tone was defiant, but she accepted the jade pleated-yoke shirt.

  “ ’Cause you’re more comfortable in these.” He started out, then paused in the doorway to toss her another instruction. “Better get started because I’m coming back soon as I pick out jeans. And I’m not knocking.”

  She frowned, but shrugged out of the rose shirt and traded it for the jade. It did look good. The shoulders’ slight extension made her waist look small where the shirt tucked into the jeans. And Walker was right— She wouldn’t get back into her New York clothes until she had to. She’d forgotten how comfortable these clothes were. Designed for a day in the saddle, they ranked comfort over fashion.

  She turned her back to the single mirror, then twisted to try to see that view.