Many Waters

by William Woodall

  Chapter One - Lisa

  I didn’t recognize Cody at first.

  The lunch crowd had finally trickled out from the Dairy Dip, and I was sitting at the register for a while to rest my aching feet and read a little bit of my brand new Scarlett Blaze romance novel. It was only my third day on the job, and it takes a while to get used to standing up so much.

  It had been one of those days when it’s hot enough to make the devil sigh, when nothing wants to move but the flies against the window panes and the dirt devils on the empty highway. It was hot even with the air conditioner on full blast, and I remember hoping there wouldn’t be any more customers to have to deal with before I went home at three. I was ready for a shower.

  All that changed when Cody walked in. All I noticed at first was a particularly handsome young cowboy, with the broad shoulders and lean muscles that come from a lifetime of ranch work. He was wearing boots and dusty Wranglers, with a white straw hat and a horsehair belt with a silver buckle that had a golden letter C in the center of it. He had close-cropped dark brown hair and bright blue eyes like a Siberian Husky, and that’s when I knew him; no one has eyes like Cody. . . bluer than gas flames or corn flowers, blue as the lupines that blossom in spring. I hadn’t seen him since I was twelve, but I’ll never forget those eyes.

  “Cody?” I asked, getting up so fast I almost dropped my book. He glanced at me carelessly for a second, and then his face lit up with recognition.

  “Lisa!” he cried, and immediately swept me up in a ferocious bear-hug. He smelled like sweat and horse manure, but I was too glad to see him to care about that. I hugged him back, and then stood back and looked him up and down again.

  “So where have you been, boy? You’ve changed a lot,” I said. And he had, too; he was nothing like the thin, rangy kid I remembered.

  “Oh, same old place, you know. But what about you, Miss Stone? I bet it’s been eight, ten years since I saw you last time,” he said.

  “Well, we just got back in town about three months ago. Mama dragged us off to South Carolina for a while, and then Florida. But we’re back now, as far as I know. Jenny’s working down in Tyler and I’m going to nursing school and working here part time,” I said.

  “That’s awesome. Well, listen, why don’t you give me a call sometime? We can catch a movie or somethin’, catch up on old times,” he said.

  So we traded numbers, and after he left with his cheeseburger and coke, I thought to myself that the world can be a really small place sometimes.

  There was a time when I used to think I was in love with Cody, back in seventh grade when we both thought the whole meaning of the word was to hold hands in the hallway and keep pictures of each other on our phones. But still, he was the first boy who ever kissed me, at the fall dance that year, and when we had to move away at Christmas I thought I was heartbroken forever.

  But time passes and you tend to forget about such things after a while. My childhood love was long ago and far behind, and life tends to be a lot more complicated at twenty-one than it ever was at twelve. But the memory of loving him was still sweet, and I was unattached at the time, and I confess the thought did cross my mind that there might still be some lingering embers between us. Maybe it was silly to think so, but then again I’d never know unless we spent some time together.

  So I went with him to the movies in Longview on Friday night, mostly just for fun but also out of curiosity to see if anything might develop. I don’t remember what we watched; a forgettable creature feature with enough of a love story to make it interesting for me and enough explosions to make it interesting for him. We brushed fingers in the popcorn tub now and then, and I could almost-but-not-quite swear he lingered a fraction of a second longer than strictly necessary whenever we touched. I don’t think he was even aware of doing it, but I smiled to myself.

  He took me out for frozen yogurt afterwards, something I hadn’t done in years. I got a single scoop of mint chocolate chip (my favorite), and he had two scoops of strawberry vanilla swirl.

  “So what did you think of the movie?” he asked.

  “Eh, it was pretty good. The monster looked fake, though,” I said.

  “Yeah, I agree. No real monster would look anything like that,” he agreed, and I laughed.

  “You know what I meant, silly,” I said.

  “Sorry, couldn’t resist,” he said, taking another bite of his strawberry vanilla.

  “I bet not,” I said.

  “So what brings y’all back to town after all this time? Any special reason?” he asked.

  “Well, yeah. Mama had a stroke a few months ago, and things got hard after that. Grandma’s old house in Ore City was just sitting there empty, so we decided to move back home to be closer to family and cut down on expenses and things like that,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

  “It’s all right. She’s doing a lot better now, but she still needs somebody to help her out with things,” I said.

  “Well that’s good, at least. So you think you’ll be around for a while, then?” he asked.

  “Yeah, for the foreseeable future. It’s good to be back home, though. No place else is ever quite the same,” I said.

  Cody smiled a little, and I knew what he was thinking. He’s always been the kind of boy who had dirt in his blood, as they say; he loved the land almost the way you’d think a hickory tree might love it, with roots planted deep in one spot and limbs reached out to taste the sunshine and the rain beneath a sheltering sky. He was strong that way; full of life and sure of where home would always be. It was one of the main things my younger self had always loved him for, and I was glad to see it hadn’t changed.

  We talked for a long time that night about all kinds of things, sitting on the tailgate of his truck and eating our yogurt till it got too drippy to be any good. After that we just talked. I told him about how I liked to do landscape painting with oils and watercolors, and he told me about his calf-roping days on the high school rodeo team. But the most interesting thing I found out was that he had a band called the Mustangs along with two other boys.

  “What kind of stuff do y’all play?” I asked, curious.

  “Red-dirt mostly, sometimes southern rock or gospel,” he said.

  “That’s so cool. You really get paid for it and everything?” I asked, suitably impressed.

  Red dirt music is basically homegrown Texas country, just in case you never heard of it before. The kind of stuff local bands like to play on small-town summer evenings, mostly for love of music and home. There’s nothing better than a good red dirt band and some spicy beef barbecue at a Friday night tailgate party, and a case of cold Dr. Pepper to wash it all down with. What’s not to love? Maybe I’m letting my southern country girl roots show, but hey, that’s who I am.

  “Yeah, sometimes we get paid a little bit, but we mostly play for tips. We have to take whatever we can get, pretty much. Coffee houses, county fairs, things like that. Sometimes even bars and honky-tonks if that’s all we can find. And then we do the music service at church every Sunday, but we don’t get paid for that. You ought to come listen sometime,” he said.

  “Where at?” I asked.

  “At the cowboy church in Avinger. Starts at eleven, if you want to come. Just wear jeans or whatever; it’s not formal at all,” he said.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I agreed.

  And so it was that I found myself driving out to Avinger on Sunday morning, dressed in nothing fancier than a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Mama would have died a thousand deaths before setting foot inside a church in anything but a dress, and I have to confess I was more than a little uneasy with the idea myself. I had to keep telling myself I’d been specifically told to wear jeans.

  I’d never actually been to a cowboy church before, even though I’d seen them often enough. The one in Avinger looks more like a barn than a church, although I have to admit it’s the
only barn I’ve ever seen that had stained glass windows. It helped when I got there and saw that everybody else was wearing jeans and such, too, and when I got inside I soon found out the reason. The church was built like a barn on the inside, too. Everything was rough wood and bare concrete with sawdust sprinkled on the floor. People were sitting on bales of hay rather than pews, and the only modern-looking spot in the whole place was the podium and the altar. It was quite a sight, to me at least.

  I spotted Cody and a few others up on the stage area behind the podium, setting up sound equipment and fiddling with instruments. I waved at him when he glanced my way, and he smiled and bounded down off the stage.

  “Hey, Lisa. I’m glad you could make it,” he said, giving me a quick hug.

  “Aw, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” I said.

  “So what do you think of the place?” he asked, sweeping his arm around at everything.

  “It’s definitely different,” I admitted, and he laughed.

  “Yeah, that’s what everybody says at first. I guess it seems ordinary to me by now,” he said.

  “When are y’all playing?” I asked.

  “In just a minute. We’ll go first, and then preaching, and then some of us at least will go out on the trail ride for an hour or so. Want to come? I know you don’t have a horse but I guess we could ride double if you want,” he offered.

  “Sure. Wore my jeans, didn’t I?” I said.

  “Yup, that you did,” he agreed.

  He had to get back up on stage after that, and then they played for about thirty minutes. They were pretty good, as far as I could tell. They played several songs I’d never heard before, and a couple of hymns straight out of the hymnal.

  Cody came down and sat next to me on the hay bale when the music was over, and from then on out the service progressed more or less like I was used to.

  After church he led me out the back exit doors to the corral; another anomaly. I’d never been to a church that had a corral before. It was full of horses, and Cody seemed to know exactly which one he was after.

  “Be right back,” he told me, climbing up and over the metal pipe fence and landing on his feet. It didn’t take him long to catch a pretty brown-and-white splotched horse, which he led up to the fence by his halter.

  “This is Buck,” he said, as if introducing me to an old friend.

  “Buck?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Short for Buckwild. I named him that because he was so crazy when I first went to break him. Threw me in the dirt more times than I can remember. He’s my buddy now, though,” he said, stroking the horse’s mane affectionately.

  “How long have you had him?” I asked, reaching out to pet the horse’s soft nose and being careful not to let him nip my fingers.

  “I got him when I was fourteen. We went to a place where they let you adopt abused and neglected horses. He was an orphan so I had to bottle feed him for a little while,” he said.

  He led Buck outside the corral and quickly and expertly slipped his bridle on.

  “I think we’ll ride bareback, if that’s okay. Not really good for his kidneys to ride double with a saddle on there. Just hold on tight to me and not him, and sit as far forward as you can, okay?” he said, and I nodded.

  He got on first and helped me up behind him, and I laced my fingers together around his stomach and stayed as close to him as I could, just like he told me. I could feel his taut muscles and smell the clean scent of his skin through his t-shirt, and I won’t deny that I enjoyed it very much.

  We rode along a dirt track that wound through the wooded hills behind the church along with a group of several other people, and it was hot even with the breeze that day.

  “Y’all played really nice today. I really liked that song about Nebo’s Crossing,” I said after a while.

  “Thanks. Me and Cyrus wrote that one, actually. I think I’ve got some demo disks out in the truck, if you’d like one. That song’s on there,” he said.

  “I’d love one,” I said.

  “Okay. Just remind me about it when we get back so I don’t forget,” he said.

  It wasn’t all that much longer before we did get back, and he swung me down with one arm before dismounting himself. He took Buck’s bridle off and turned him out in the corral while I waited beside the truck.

  “So what about that disk you promised me?” I asked when he got back.

  “Hold on a second and I’ll see if I can find one,” he said, rummaging through the console.

  “Here you go,” he finally said, handing me a disk in a paper sleeve. The name of the group was written on the disk itself with a black marker, along with a website address and a phone number.

  “I’ll listen to it later sometime. I’m fixing to have to get home and check on Mama, but you can stop by about one thirty and have lunch with me at work anytime you want to. That’s my break time,” I offered, and he nodded.

  “We’ll see what we can do,” he said, with one of his little smiles, and then he gave me another hug before I left.

  On the way home I found myself thinking a lot about the way his muscles felt under the thin cotton of his t-shirt, and the deep but musical drawl of his voice, and a dozen other things like that. He was no boy anymore, and I couldn’t deny there was definitely still some chemistry there. I couldn’t help wondering if he felt it too.

  I suppose I’ve always had a certain romantic streak. My father was like that; he loved poetry and music, and I remember him telling me he hoped I might find such a love as that someday, so fiery and strong that naught on earth could ever break it. Those were the very words he used, too. He fed me on Marlowe and Coleridge from my earliest memories, and after that, how could I not be an idealistic dreamer?

  Unfortunately he wasn’t exactly the faithful type himself, and he finally disappeared completely when I was twelve; that was the main reason we moved away that year. I had a hard time with it for years, but Mama always told me to love the good in him and forgive the bad, and never to drink the poison of hating him. I’ve been grateful to her many times for that, for casting aside her own pain and showing me by example that we live for God and not for the world. She’s my hero, and always will be.

  Another thing she’s always told me is that whenever I meet a man who seems interesting, the very first thing I should do is to pray about the situation. Cody was definitely appealing, so I murmured a silent prayer that God would touch his heart and inspire some interest in return, if that was something which would make both of us happy and if that was what He wanted for both of us.

  No, I wasn’t exactly thinking about running down to the church to get married before the sun set; I’m not that silly. But it’s always something to consider, at least in an abstract, long-term kind of way. I certainly didn’t want to end up as one of those frumpy, starchy old spinsters who talks to her tomato plants and lives in a run-down house with forty cats.

  On the disk, Cyrus was singing Nebo’s Crossing, a verse about how Moses stood up on top of Mount Nebo at the end of his life and saw the Promised Land across the Jordan River, and how God is always faithful to keep His promises even though it might take longer than we like, sometimes. Very true, and good to remember.

  As soon as I got home, I went out to the back yard to weed and water the garden, but my mind was a million miles away from such a mundane chore. We’d had a vegetable garden for as long as I could remember, no matter where we lived; mostly tomatoes and squash and a few other things, and cabbage and broccoli in the winter. It was a quiet and satisfying kind of hobby, even though I was having to keep a close eye on things to make sure the plants didn’t burn up in the heat.

  But the whole time I was busy digging and weeding, I kept thinking about Cody; the sound of his voice, the roughness of his hands, and perhaps what his lips might feel like, pressed up to mine. A little bit of bare skin contact on a hot afternoon goes an awfully long way, when it comes to putting thoughts
like that in your head.

  But in the meantime, I was content to wait and see.