Cowgirl Come Home

by Debra Salonen - Big Sky Mavericks 03 - Cowgirl Come Home

  The plane hit a pocket and made a stomach-lurching drop. Bailey gave a little gasp. Her big, badass father moaned.

  Paul glanced sideways. Sure enough, the larger-than-life, watch-out-Big-Foot-here-I-come OC Jenkins was afraid to fly. And the tinge of gray in his cheeks made Paul glad he had a supply of barf bags.

  To spare the old man’s dignity, Paul pointed to the pouch in the door and said, “Your pain meds might not work so well at cruising altitude. There’s a barf bag just in case. No shame. Happens to the best of us.”

  OC gave him a look through narrowed eyes that told Paul nothing. But he fumbled for a sack and held it on his lap for the rest of the trip, which, luckily, didn’t include any more turbulence.

  *

  OC’s hands were shaking on his walker by the time he reached Jack’s floor. He couldn’t complain about the flight or his pilot. Young Zabrinski did a good job piloting the plane. He didn’t even make moon pie eyes at Bailey the whole time—even though OC picked up on some kind of undercurrent between the two.

  He’d made up his mind not to think about what they might be doing back at the hotel. Bailey was a big girl, and she more than deserved a little happiness, if that’s what Paul Zabrinski was offering.

  Whether or not Paul could deliver was another thing outside of OC’s control.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. I was told I’d find my friend, Jack Sawyer, on this floor. Could you point me in the right direction?”

  OC hated the walker. He hated looking handicapped. But the darn thing got him help when he needed it.

  A Hispanic woman in a bright purple uniform—when did nurses stop wearing white, he wondered—burst from behind what looked like the helm of the Starship Enterprise. “You must be OC. He’s been asking for you. We’re all curious what OC stands for.”

  “Depends on who you ask. My wife would tell you Oscar Clark. Most of the bar owners in town would say Obnoxious Customer.”

  “Oh,” she said, kindly, patting his hand. “I don’t believe that.” She directed him to an open door a few steps away. “Mr. Sawyer is resting at the moment. He’s been in and out of consciousness. More out than in, lately, but I know he’ll be very happy to see you.”

  OC followed her into the room. His second stinking night as a visitor in a stinking hospital. Welcome to old age, he thought bitterly.

  He and Jack used to joke about how they’d die.

  “I plan to be thigh deep in spring melt with a twenty-pounder on the hook,” Jack once told him.

  Hooked up to more bells and whistles than either of them ever saw wasn’t even close, OC thought, pausing in the doorway to observe the body in the bed. Tall and gangly as ever, but something about hospital beds made even the heartiest person look half-shrunk.

  The nurse brought him a chair and positioned it close enough that OC could speak without feeling like he was shouting. They had some things to say to each other. Not good-bye. That was a given. OC wasn’t leaving until Jack stopped breathing. He knew if their positions were reversed Jack would have done the same.

  He felt a vibration near his hip. Bailey had insisted on him taking Louise’s cell phone so they could keep in touch.

  He appreciated that she and Paul had given him this time alone with his friend. Louise wanted to come along, but her doctor couldn’t be reached for permission to fly.

  The last thing Jack would have wanted was to cause Louise and OC any more pain. So, she’d stayed behind to watch after Paul’s children and keep an eye on that fancy-dressed brother of his.

  He held the phone out far enough to read the screen. Take a pain pill now.

  He snickered. The text came from a number he didn’t recognize but the tone was Louise’s. His wife was getting to be near as bossy as his daughter always had been. Stop drinking, Dad. Quit smoking, Dad. Get off the floor, Dad.

  Back then, he’d ignored their pleas and thumbed his nose at sane and polite behavior. But look where going rogue got him.

  He massaged the fleshy part of his leg above his stump as he felt the pain starting to radiate outward. Louise knew him better than he knew himself.

  He poured water from the plastic pitcher beside Jack’s bed into a paper cup and took one of the green pills. The blue ones were to help him shit the rock hard stools produced by the green pills.

  He sighed and closed his eyes a moment, worn out. A sound made him look up. Jack’s eyes were open, blinking.

  Was he trying to figure out where he was and how the hell he got there? OC knew the feeling well.

  He reached out and put his hand on Jack’s forearm. They weren’t touchy-feely kind of men, but each was the closest thing to a brother either had.

  Jack’s chin turned. Slowly. The drugs appeared to keeping a thick layer between the patient and his world.

  “OC,” Jack said, his voice scratchy, barely audible. “You dead, too?”

  OC let out a gruff hoot. “Not yet. Neither are you.”

  Jack’s eyes closed. “Will be soon.”

  A peculiar smile formed on his cracked, dry lips.

  “Whatcha thinking, pal?”

  “Marla never did have any patience. If she’d waited a few months, she wouldn’t have had to shoot me. I’d have keeled over from the cancer.”

  OC squeezed his hand. “You knew?”

  Jack nodded. “For a few months. My coughing was scaring the fish. Doc said the X-ray of my lungs looked like Swiss cheese.”

  “You didn’t tell anybody? Even Marla?”

  “Couldn’t see the point.” His head moved a tiny bit. “Like you always said. No fixin’ stupid.”

  OC flashed to the many nights he and Jack wound up at the Wolf Den lamenting about the silly, hopeless flatlanders they’d spent the day trying to turn into sportsmen. His mouth could almost taste the whiskey.

  “Louise thought maybe Marla’s embezzling was because you needed the money for treatment. She was sure you were headed to Mexico for some kind of witch doctor cure.”

  Jack smiled for the first time. “Your wife is the kindest woman I ever knew. Tell her I said so.”

  A little cough escalated to a full-body engagement that took on the nature of an epileptic fit. A nurse—an older black woman dressed in lime green—came in. She raised the bed a few inches and helped Jack take a sip of water through a straw. She fiddled with something on one of the tubes leading from a clear sack to Jack’s arm.

  She gave OC a kind, encouraging smile before she left.

  “Goddam cancer sticks,” Jack muttered. “Bailey was right. Sorta pisses you off, don’t it?”

  OC laughed again. “Remember when she was a little girl and she’d hide our smokes?”

  Jack smiled. “Stopped up the can once.”

  OC bit his lip, the memory as clear as if it happened earlier that day. Bailey was nine or ten. She found a brand new carton of cigs OC left on the counter at Fish and Game.

  They figured it must have taken her an hour to open every pack, break them into pieces and flush down the toilet.

  When OC and Jack got back from a long day on the mountain, OC was the first to use the toilet. Since it was a particularly smelly job, he flushed before standing up to zip. The monumental backup chased him—pants around his ankles—into the main office.

  Jack laughed so hard he fell to his knees, holding his gut as he rolled, well away from the mess. Despite his best effort to stay mad, OC couldn’t help but join in. The two laughed until they cried.

  “I’m gonna miss that girl. Best of both you and Louise.”

  “What are you talking about? There ain’t no good in me.”

  Jack turned his head to look at OC. His expression stern. “You saved my life, Oscar. I’d have wound up being a bum on the street if you hadn’t snatched me outta the gutter and taught me how to fish. All the mistakes…I made those myself. Those are on me. Not you. I’m only sorry I didn’t do something to stop Marla sooner. I always knew she was poison. I let her ruin things between us, and for that I—.”

&nb
sp; OC gripped Jack’s arm hard. “No. We’re good, Jack. Always have been.”

  A tear slipped from the corner of Jack’s eyes. His labored breathing eased slightly, his muscles relaxed. The monitor showed his heartbeat slower but still steady.

  Sleep took him fast. OC could only hope death did the same. But, for as long as this process took, he’d be here, keeping watch. His best friend in the world would not die alone.

  Chapter 14

  Bailey stood at the window of their hotel looking toward the desert. Twilight was a funny thing on the vast openness. The Sierras to her right cast long shadows spreading out like the aftermath of a wildfire. Highways packed with car lights crisscrossed what once, not long ago, had been barren land.

  Somewhere four hours south of here was the ranch Ross bought for them. She’d only seen it in photos. She’d resisted, protested, ignored and, finally, disconnected herself from Ross’s plan. Only now did she really understand why.

  I could never live in this dry, barren landscape.

  She was Montana born. Since returning home, she’d slowly started to feel alive again, re-connected to her mountains, to the green and the heartbreakingly blue sky. She’d spent the past fifteen years trying to outrun something that was bone deep inside her.

  “Sorry about the room,” Paul said, exiting the bathroom.

  She turned. “What do you mean? It’s fine.” Fourteenth floor of a casino. Functional. Sparse. The kind of room designed to make people eager to go gamble.

  He put out his hands in a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine gesture. “You wanted two rooms. They only had one.”

  She shrugged. “That was when I thought OC was going to be with us. I hate to think of him sitting up all night at Jack’s bedside, but he’s going to do what he’s going to do. Always has.”

  She walked to the closest bed and sat, glad to get off her feet. She used the spare pillow to elevate her foot. “There are two beds. We’re grown-ups.”

  “How’s your ankle?”

  Sitting in the cramped backseat of the plane hadn’t been the most comfortable, but she really couldn’t complain. “It’s okay. You’re an amazing pilot. Smoothest flight in a small plane I’ve ever been on.”

  He walked to the minibar in the étagère across from the foot of her bed. “We got lucky. Great weather. I wasn’t sure your dad was going to be able to hold it together the whole way, but he did.”

  “He’s a tough old coot.”

  She’d come to appreciate that fact more and more the past few weeks.

  He cracked open a beer. “Want anything?”

  “No, thanks. I’m still full from lunch. Dinner. The bibimbab or whatever it was called.”

  She’d left her To-Go box with Mom, not certain how her stomach would handle the flight. So, as soon as they had a room and dropped off their bags, she started looking for a restaurant, but Paul surprised her by insisting they hop back in the rental car and head to the closest Korean barbecue.

  “My secret weakness,” he said as she called out directions via an app on his phone. “Jen wasn’t an adventurous eater, and her tastes have rubbed off on the kids. But I’m holding onto the hope they’ll come to the hot side eventually.”

  She’d enjoyed every bite. She’d enjoyed the company, too.

  Had Austen’s public airing of their dirty laundry somehow liberated them from the past? Wouldn’t that be some sort of poetic justice, she thought glancing at the clock radio on the table between the two beds.

  Seventy-thirty’s too early to go to bed.

  Paul must have been thinking the same thing because he asked, “Do you like to gamble?”

  “I gambled every time I got on a twelve-hundred pound horse. Figured that was enough excitement for a lifetime.”

  “Good point.”

  He dropped into a chair at the tiny round table and kicked up his booted feet.

  He flicked on the TV and cruised up and down the menu of stations. “Movie?”

  “Sure.” Bailey settled her tote bag on her lap and switched on the bedside lamp.

  Over the years of being on the road with rodeo, she’d learned how to travel light and still carry everything she needed to work on jewelry. Well, not everything. She couldn’t do big wire wrapped stones or intricate solders, but she could finish a few more pieces for the fair.

  “Action-adventure? I’ve been meaning to watch this, but it looked too violent for the kids.”

  “Anything you want. I’ve become pretty adept at working and watching whatever’s on. Ross couldn’t be in a room with a TV without turning it on. In some fleabag motel in West Texas, he watched a Three Stooges marathon until I thought I was going to turn into one of them.”

  “You’d make a cute Curly.”

  She looked up. “Really? I was leaning toward Moe.”

  “Naw. Curly. He was a sweetheart.” He hit mute. “Did you know his brother, Shemp, started out in the role but quit, and Curly took his place?”

  “I did not know that. Thank you,” she teased. “Now, I have even more Three Stooges trivia crowding the limited space in my brain.”

  He laughed and turned off the TV. “I’m too wound up from the flight to watch something. Wanna go for a walk?” He looked at her foot, resting on the extra pillow. “Oh, dumb idea. Sorry.”

  His blush touched her. He was a kind person. Not once during today’s flight had he asked, “What’s in it for me?” She hadn’t asked herself that question, either, but now that they were alone in a hotel room, it seemed a bit disingenuous to pretend there wasn’t a large elephant ambling around.

  “I went to the diner today to ask you out on a date, remember?”

  He pressed his hand to his face, peeking between two fingers. “I know. I’m still waiting for you to forgive me for having the world’s biggest jackass for a brother.”

  She set her work aside and curled her legs under her. “As much as I hate to admit it, your brother is right about one thing. I ran away. From you, your parents, my family, my life. I told myself I was running to something, but my freshman year was a disaster.”

  He moved to the foot of the bed and sat, hunching forward, elbows on knees. “How?”

  “I went from a big fish in a small pond to a guppy surrounded by a lot of local kids who knew each other and were a lot cooler than some hick girl from Montana. I cried every day for a month. I would have left, but I couldn’t afford to ship Charlie home.”

  She looked at him and admitted, “And I had nobody to talk to about what I was feeling. You were my best friend. And you weren’t speaking to me…even if I had been brave enough to call.”

  He polished off the last of his beer and tossed the empty can into the garbage can. “I didn’t leave the house except to go to school and work at the store for four months. When Meg came home for Christmas, she told me I was an idiot who had his whole life ahead of him.”

  “She sounds smart. Did I ever meet her?”

  “I don’t think so. She went straight from her BS to her master’s and doctorate. She teaches and does research on wolves, and was involved in their re-introduction to Yellowstone.”

  “Wow. That is so cool.”

  He nodded. “Not all the ranchers around here would agree with you, believe me.”

  Bailey made a face. “When she was home, did you tell her about me?”

  “She’d heard about the abortion from Mom. Meg’s the only one I told about the curse.”

  “What did she say?”

  He was quiet a moment then answered, “She called me a brat for trying to invoke some ridiculous, unsubstantiated hocus-pocus drivel simply because I didn’t get my way.”

  He gave a wry laugh. “If I remember correctly, her exact words were, ‘Life isn’t fair, little brother. Just ask the wolves.’”

  Bailey didn’t say anything for a moment. “Ross always dreamed about living off the grid. I think he saw himself as some old west cowboy bucking the system. Just him, his horses, and, maybe, me.” As an afterthought. “At th
e end of his last season, he had enough money and enough interest in Daz to line up some investors. He bought a place a couple of hundred miles south of here…without telling me.”

  “Ooh. Bad idea. I speak from experience.”

  “I refused to even go look at it. He left Daz with me and said he’d be back as soon as the fencing was done.” She found out later he picked up some gal from the circuit on his way through Bakersfield. “I’m sure he expected me to be a wreck without him. Instead, I got busy making and selling jewelry.”

  She fiddled with the turquoise ring she’d made to celebrate the day her sales topped two grand.

  “When he came back, we had a huge fight. He tried to paint this great picture of living off the grid. I told him I needed the Internet to sell my stuff. We were too far apart to even think about reconciling. I told him he could take Daz, but I expected half of the stud fees and a portion from the sale of Daz’s get from Ross’s mares.”

  “Sounds fair. But I’m guessing he didn’t agree.”

  She’d expected hostility and name calling. Instead, he’d looked dumbfounded. He honestly didn’t understand her at all. Somehow, that hurt worse. Had she really loved and married a man who didn’t know her?

  “He was upset. Worried about how he was going to swing the deal without my help, but he didn’t argue with me. Instead, he went after our horse trailer that he’d lent to some guy hauling mustangs from Nevada. Something happened while Ross was there. Ross wouldn’t talk about it, but he came back with a shiner and a bloody lip.”

  She’d spent nearly a dozen years tending his wounds.

  “I gave him an ice pack…helped him get cleaned up. He offered to take me to dinner before he and Daz hit the road.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I thought—hoped—we might be able to be friends.”

  “But it was too soon,” Paul supplied in a been-there-done-that tone.

  “He tried using Daz against me. Said I was abandoning our son.”

  “Letting Daz go was like losing a piece of my heart. But I couldn’t support us both at that point in my life, and I thought he’d be better off with Ross.”