Nikki sat down with her back to the log, took a worm from the container, and baited her hook. “We stayed over there because we knew Eli Johnson wouldn’t come across the water to fuss at us. And if he did, it’s only about a hundred yards from the creek to the road back there, so we could outrun him.”
“Why’d you come here?”
“The water is spring fed, so it’s always cold. We’d cross the Red River to Terral, Oklahoma, where they grow lots of watermelons. We’d steal three or four, bring them here, and put them in the water to chill. Then we would split them open and have a feast.” She tossed the line out into the water.
“I can’t believe you stole watermelons,” he chuckled.
“Don’t tell my mama, but I drank beer on those nights too.” She wiggled around until she was comfortable but kept a firm hold on the rod. “Some of us actually fished and if anyone caught anything, we’d build a fire up next to the edge of the water and cook it.”
“I should’ve known you’d fished before, the way you baited that hook.”
Nikki’s red and white bobber danced out there on top of the water. She took a deep breath. “My dad knew Eli Johnson, and I used to come here with Daddy to fish when I was a little girl, back before Quint got sick. Last time we were here was just before my brother died. Guess it kind of brings back memories.”
“I’m sorry, maybe we could load up and go up to the Red River,” he said.
“No, they’re good memories. It’s just that when we were in high school, I was still struggling with everything,” she said. “I’m pretty much past that now.”
“Want to talk about it?” Tag laced his hook with two worms and tossed it out a few feet from hers.
“Nothing to talk about, really. Mama was always sick with something, supposedly, and Daddy was gone much of the time. He drove a truck out of Dallas through the week, but he got to come home every Friday night. Saturday, he’d try to do something with me and Quint. Fishing when the weather was good. Hiking sometimes in the fall, but it was always away from the house and Mama’s constant nagging. Then Sunday morning we’d go to church, and afterwards I’d make our dinner and he’d have to go back to Dallas for his next run.”
Tag sat down beside her. “I think Eli used the log for a bench, but it makes a better backrest. I can’t imagine not having a dad around all the time.”
“It was a way of life for us. We couldn’t wait until Friday nights. When he left on Sunday, Quint and I cried. But not where he or Mama could see it. It would make him sad, and Mama would think we were sick and want to give us some kind of awful medicine. So we’d go to my room and cry together.”
Tag leaned over slightly and touched her shoulder with his. “Anyone ever tell you that you had a dysfunctional family?”
“Oh, yeah, I knew that the first time I brought a friend home with me after school and Mama told me we’d have to stay outside until her mama came to get her.”
“That’s harsh,” Tag said.
“I didn’t ever do it again.” Watching the bobber was mesmerizing.
They were silent for a while and then she said, “Daddy came home for a whole week when Quint got bad and died. Then he left on Friday, as usual, and never came back. Mama got divorce papers in the mail the next month, and I haven’t seen him since the funeral. But I got to give him a little credit. He set up an account for her, and money goes into it every month. She lives as comfortably as when he used to come home every weekend.”
“Wow, that must’ve been a lot for you to process—losing your brother and dad at the same time.”
She turned to answer him and could see genuine care in his blue eyes. Just that much was a comfort. “I’ve never told anyone that before, not even Emily.”
“Why?”
She couldn’t tear her eyes from his. “It sounds like I’m a victim, and I don’t want to be like my mother. Even though he’d had all he could probably stand and left me to fend for myself with her, I wanted to be like him. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Not to me,” Tag answered.
“She told me I was like him when I moved out of the house right after graduation. I thanked her and then closed the door behind me as I took out the last load of my things,” Nikki said. “I took her words to mean I was strong enough to leave and if I had that much strength, I could make it on my own.”
Tag scooted toward her, laid his fishing pole down, and cupped her face in his hands. His lips found hers in a sweet kiss of understanding and appreciation. When it ended, he picked up the rod again and stared out into the water.
If all that didn’t run him off, Nikki thought, then he was one determined cowboy.
After hearing her story, Tag realized what a safe and love-filled environment he’d had the privilege of growing up in. No wonder Nikki was so independent and untrusting. He suddenly felt the need to call his mama and dad and thank them for all they’d done for him. He had been such a wild child, and he regretted all the nights when his mother probably lay awake wondering where he was.
“I guess I’ll have to pay for my raising someday,” he muttered.
“What was that?” Nikki asked.
“Just thinking of my own family and how I can’t expect to have an easy life of parenthood. Everyone has to pay for their raising,” he said.
“Your poor babies,” she giggled. “Speaking of which. How’s the jaw since the stitches came out?”
“Little tender yet. Dr. Richards said it’ll still take a while to heal since the cut was so deep. And I do get to ride again. ’Course, the next ranch rodeo isn’t for two weeks. Last day of this month to be exact. You going to be there to see me ride?”
“Probably, unless Emily needs me over at Longhorn Canyon. That’s the day before the kids come in for the summer. I told her I’d help out with whatever she needs since it’s her first time to be a bunkhouse supervisor,” Nikki answered. “I don’t think there’s a fish in this creek anymore. We haven’t even had a nibble since we got here.”
“We need a beer. Can’t expect to catch anything if you aren’t drinking a beer. Fish come around when they catch the wonderful smell of cold beer,” he teased as he opened the cooler and brought out two bottles. He twisted the lid off both of them and handed one to her. He took a sip, then set it to the side and reeled in his line.
“Givin’ up?” she asked.
“Nope, just sharin’.” He held the top of the hook with one hand and poured beer over the worms with the other. “Give the fish a little taste of something good instead of plain old worms.”
“You’re crazy,” Nikki laughed.
There’d been so much sadness in her eyes when she talked about her family, and now one silly stunt with a few drops of beer made her eyes glitter again. Tag was suddenly floating on air for doing that for her.
“Been told that lots of times,” he chuckled. “Can’t deny it. Won’t admit it.”
“That old Fifth Amendment thing, huh?”
“Yep.” He tossed the line back into the water, and immediately the bobber sank. “See, crazy works.” He got so excited that he knocked his bottle of beer over.
She grabbed it before it spilled even a single drop. “Don’t waste beer just because you’ve got Moby Dick on the line.”
“Thanks,” he said as he brought in a nice-size catfish. “A couple more of these and we’ll have us a fish fry. You’re invited even if you don’t catch anything.”
“Well, thank you for that, but my bobber is doing a cute little two-step out there.” She motioned out to the creek with her bottle and then took a long draw. “That’ll give me the strength to get it in. Want to bet who’s got the biggest fish?”
“Sure. Loser has to kiss the winner.”
She hauled in a bass about half the size of his catfish. Tag removed the fish from her hook and put it on the stringer with his. Then he took it to the edge of the creek and staked it in the soft mud and rinsed his hands. When he returned, she was in the process of baiting a hook and pouring a little of
his beer on it.
“Hey, now, you got to use your own beer.” He plopped down on the quilt beside her. “It don’t work if you use someone else’s.”
“Bull crap,” she said.
“Before you throw that line in the water, you owe me a kiss. Mine was bigger.”
She laid the rod and reel down, threw a leg over his body so that she was sitting in his lap, and removed his old straw hat. Then she drew his face to hers and kissed him—long, hard, and with so much passion that he was panting when it ended.
“Damn, lady, I hope that all my fish are bigger than yours today,” he said between short breaths.
“After that kiss, you’re calling me a lady. What constitutes a lady?” She shifted her body until she was back at her original spot. She tossed her line out in the water and took a sip of beer.
“You do, Nikki,” he said. “If you look up the word ‘lady’ in the dictionary, I’m sure you’ll find your picture beside it.”
“And where would I find your picture?” she asked.
“Beside the word ‘rebel,’ but I think it’s beginning to fade.” He smiled.
“And how does that affect you?”
“Some days I’m good with it. Some days not so much. Guess I’m still on the fence.”
She watched her bobber go down and reeled in a catfish, not as big as his, but a good size. “A barbed-wire fence can get pretty uncomfortable.”
He took the fish off and put it on the stringer. “I know it all too well. The barbed wire is biting into my butt pretty good.”
“You deserve it,” she told him as she put another worm on her hook and slung it out to the middle of the creek.
“You are a tough lady,” he said as he poured some of his beer over the worms on his hook and then finished it off.
“Had to be to survive. Don’t know how to be any other way now.”
He watched both bobbers as they moved down the creek in the current, not touching but close to each other. Remembering what his granny had told him when he was making a difficult decision about not being able to ride two horses with one ass, he began to imagine himself crawling off the barbed-wire fence.
“But which side am I on?” he muttered.
“You’re talkin’ to yourself again,” she said. “Look at that. It’s like there’s a magnet in our bobbers drawing them close together.”
“I know the feelin’,” he said, giving her a meaningful look. “How about you?”
“Little bit, but to be honest, I had a bad experience with a relationship last spring. It was getting pretty serious when I found out he was married, and his wife was pregnant,” she said.
“And he’s still alive?” Tag chuckled. “Did you have that pistol back then?”
“Oh, yeah, but I couldn’t take a daddy from a baby, even if he was a sorry daddy,” she said. “Just thought you should know before we take this any further. I’m not sure why I feel like I can talk to you like this, Tag. It doesn’t have anything to do with chemistry, but more friendship.”
“It’s because we’re both troubled souls,” he whispered.
“Maybe so. I need closure, and you do too,” she said.
“You got it, darlin’. I’ve never talked to anyone about serious things like I have you, so thank you for that,” he said. “And anytime you need to talk about anything, my door is open.”
“Thank you. Mine too,” she said.
Later that night, Nikki sat on the end of the sofa next to Goldie and replayed the whole afternoon in her head. That song about living like you were dying came to her mind.
“Well, Goldie, he’s been fishin’. Now all he has to do is stay on a bull named Fumanchu for at least three seconds and go skydiving, then maybe he’ll have the rebelliousness out of his blood,” she said.
Telling Tag about her early years and about Quint brought back the emotions of those last hours with him there in the hospital. Quint knew he wasn’t going to get better, and he accepted it. But not Nikki—she had held out hope for a miracle right up until the moment when he breathed his last. She was holding his frail hand when that happened, and she sobbed into her father’s shoulder. When the undertaker came for his body, the two of them had gone home to tell Wilma that Quint’s race was finished.
Nikki closed her eyes at the painful memory. Wilma had yelled at them for letting the undertaker take him to be embalmed. She’d wanted him cremated so that all those germs would be destroyed forever, and she wouldn’t get leukemia.
Why do you trust that cowboy enough to talk to him about our family? The past should be buried and forgotten, not hung out on the line like underpants for the whole world to see. Wilma’s voice was very real in her head.
Exactly what was it in the past that her mother wanted to bury? The whole town knew that she had problems. Simply seeing her in the Walmart store in her outlandish garb was proof of that. A heavy feeling settled in Nikki’s chest, and she knew that she had to talk to her mother, face-to-face.
Well, are you going to answer me or just sit there like your father and ignore me when I talk to you? Wilma had said that many, many times to both her children.
“Tag might be a renegade like you say, but he listens to me and tries to make me feel better,” she said out loud. She wiped a tear from her cheek and put a finger on the goldfish bowl. The fish swam right to it as if she understood that Nikki was having a tough time. “Goldie, I’m going to Mama’s tomorrow evening. It’s time we had a serious talk that has nothing to do with her medicine or her schedule.”
She could have sworn that the goldfish smiled at her.
Chapter Twelve
Nikki awoke on Monday to a text from Tag: Want to get a burger tonight?
She sent one back: Have plans. When’s the fish fry?
The next one said: Friday night. Interested?
She sent back a smiley face, crawled out of bed, and spent the day doing housework, laundry, and grocery shopping—and worrying about how her mother would react when she showed up at her house just before seven o’clock.
By late afternoon, her stomach was in knots, so she only had a bowl of chicken noodle soup for supper. She picked up her purse and locked the door before she lost her nerve. When she got to her mother’s place, she sat in the car for a full five minutes. Maybe she should just take Wilma’s call like usual. She could sit right there in her car and say what she was supposed to, couldn’t she? For real closure, she had to have some real answers. She needed to know things that had never been talked about before.
She inhaled deeply, got out of the car, and marched up to the house with determination. The sound of her phone ringing in her purse came right before she hit the doorbell with her thumb. She heard the sound of all the locks clicking and then the door opened.
“What are you doing here?” Wilma asked through the storm door. “We’re supposed to be talking on the phone right now.”
“We’re going to be talking face-to-face tonight. Are you going to let me in?”
“I suppose.” Wilma’s expression said that she wasn’t happy. “Why did you come?” She went back to her recliner and took a sip of her seven o’clock glass of sweet tea.
“Are you going to invite me to sit or offer me something to drink?” Nikki asked.
“I didn’t plan on you being here, and there’s only enough tea to last me until I go shopping, and if you want to sit, then sit. I’m not keeping you from it,” Wilma said.
Nikki kicked off her flip-flops, sat down on the sofa, and drew her legs up under her, which got her a dirty look from her mother. People did not put their feet on the furniture, and if they did, then it had to be sprayed with disinfectant.
“I want to know about when you and Daddy got married,” Nikki said.
“That’s old news,” Wilma said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m not leaving until I get some answers,” Nikki said. “I can sit here all night if I need to.”
Wilma gave her the old stink eye. “I was working at
a café downtown. He drove a truck through here on Friday nights on his way to Dallas. He’d stop by for a piece of pie and we got to talking. I was almost thirty and had no intentions of getting married. After all, I’ve never been healthy, and I didn’t want children.”
“So why did you marry him?” Nikki asked.
“I was tired of working at the café, and he said he loved me. No one had ever told me that before. So we got married and before we could even discuss kids, I was pregnant with you. It was horrible. I was sick the whole time, and when you were born, you had the colic, and Don was gone all week on the truck. I thought I was getting a good man who’d take care of me. All I got was two squalling kids I didn’t want.”
Nikki’s blood ran cold in her veins. What if she turned out to be like her mother when she had children? Would she feel like they were a burden too?
No, I will not. Her kind of problems are not inherited, and besides, I’d refuse to be like that, she thought.
What if you’re like your father and get tired of a bad marriage and just walk out? asked that pesky voice in her head.
“Hush,” she muttered.
“Don’t tell me to shut up,” Wilma said. “You asked, so I’m telling you.”
“I’m sorry,” Nikki said. “I wasn’t talking to you. Go on.”
“Then Quint got sick and I had to take care of him. I did my duty by y’all as best I could, but you got to realize just how sick I’ve always been. I should never have married or had children,” Wilma whined.
“Did Daddy ever get in touch with you after he left?”
Wilma looked past Nikki at the picture of Jesus on the far wall. “Not with me,” she answered. “He sent those divorce papers, and it said right there in them that he’d put money in my bank account every month, so I signed them. It was a relief. We hadn’t…” She blushed.
Nikki had never seen her mother’s cheeks turn that red and could count on the fingers of one hand the times she’d seen her smile. “Hadn’t what?” she pressed for more.
“You know.” Wilma blinked several times. “My mama was past forty when I was born and Daddy was fifty. Daddy was gone before I got married. Mama had the same problems I do. She didn’t come from healthy stock either. She didn’t want me to get married, told me how awful things would be…you know, in the bedroom. She was right, so after Quint was born, I told Don he’d have to sleep in a different room.”
Cowboy Rebel--Includes a bonus short story Page 11