by April Hill
* * * *
Walking through the screen door of the Kountry Kitchen was like stepping into a time warp. Edna was using the same plastic gingham tablecloths, the same chrome tables and red vinyl booths, and the same plastic daisies. She was also still advertising “modern, air-cooled comfort” in place of modern air conditioning. The giant swamp cooler that made it impossible to hear your dinner partner was still thrumming, rendering every metal item in the place moist and clammy to the touch. And like the thoughtful hostess she’d always been, Edna was still providing each table and booth in her little diner with its own steel mesh flyswatter—hanging from a cup hook on the table rim.
While Jenny found a pay phone and called Toliver’s office to get the address of the house, Katie sat own at a table and ordered a sandwich and a large vanilla shake. She had already devoured most of the sandwich, and was perusing the dessert list when her mother returned. After choosing the relative comfort of a padded booth rather than one of Edna’s famously hard metal chairs, Jenny picked up a stained menu, and began reading.
Suddenly, Katie reached over and tapped her mother’s arm.
“That man who just came in is staring at you,” she whispered.
“What man?”
Katie nodded in the direction of the door. “The really tall one by the door, who just came in. He’s dressed like … you know, in cowboy boots, and a hat, and…”
At first, Jenny kept reading, and didn’t look didn’t look up. “Everyone in the damned county dresses like…” And then, she did look up.
“Oh, shit!” she moaned, ducking lower in her seat. “I don’t believe it!”
The tall man in the beige Stetson, worn jeans, and scuffed boots stood in the doorway for a few moments while he checked out the room. It was obvious that he was looking for someone, and Jenny had a sinking feeling she knew exactly who that someone was.
Cal Banning hadn’t changed a lot in fifteen years. His chestnut-brown hair had begun to go slightly gray at the temples, like his father’s, and he was a bit thinner than he’d been in high school. More muscular, now, but still close to six-foot five, ramrod straight, and on the lanky side, the way so many working cowmen in this part of the country seemed to get—the ones who managed to reach their late thirties without the ubiquitous beer belly and jowls, anyway.
She had once told Cal that he looked exactly like Gregory Peck, in Roman Holiday. He’d picked her up the next evening on an old, borrowed Vespa and whisked her off to the only Italian restaurant in the county—a take-out pizza shack on the highway. There, in an improvised grape arbor at the back, the owner had overlooked the fact that Jenny was underage, and provided a small bottle of cheap Chianti. They dined on a large mushroom and pepperoni pizza, by candlelight, with mandolin music playing on the owner’s ancient Victrola. A wonderfully romantic evening—in Rome, Wyoming.
And just like Gregory Peck in the movie, Cal had worn a bowtie for the occasion, and kissed her in the Roman moonlight.
* * * *
Jenny began falling in love with Caleb Matthew Banning when she was in the third grade. He was an older man—in the sixth grade—but many years later, he confided to Jenny that he’d known even then that they’d be married, someday. By junior high school, they were both certain—along with everyone else in town—that they’d be getting married right after high school, and go off to Wyoming State as a couple. Cal would get a degree in Methods of Modern Ranching, and Jenny would take hers in journalism, or maybe art—something guaranteed not to make money, she had joked. They were going to have three kids, and live happily ever after on the small cattle spread where Cal had grown up, like his father and grandfather before him. Everyone said so.
But everyone had been wrong.
By her senior year, Jenny was fed up with living in Elkfoot. Cal, who had seen this coming for years, had pinned his hopes on college. After four years of living away from here, Jenny would come to understand how great life a small, friendly community like Elkfoot could be. And it might have turned out that way, if Jimmie Roy Walters hadn’t been expelled from high school in Las Vegas, and come to live with his maternal grandparents—who’d been enlisted to “get Jimmie Roy on the right path.” In less than two months, his grandparents concluded that they’d bitten off more than they could proverbially chew.
Where Cal was steady and dependable, J.R. was impulsive and unpredictable—and fun. He drove the dusty country roads like a bat out of hell. He took up bronc riding. He scored a fake driver’s license and bought beer and cigarettes for all his buddies. He played football the way he did everything else—carelessly. When he broke his arm a week before homecoming—in a stupid fall from a yearling bull he wasn’t supposed to be riding—virtually every girl in school volunteered to run errands for him. Jenny took over his homework, and even wrote his assigned term paper—”The Global Threat to the Ozone Layer.” She began breaking dates with Cal, who never complained, hoping she’d eventually tire of J.R.’s fake bravado and immature pranks. Sure of what he wanted out of life, Cal assumed that Jenny simply needed to discover for herself what she really wanted. And to do that, she’d need some space, and a little time. So he backed off, and tried to give her both.
On the night of her senior prom, Jenny and J.R. Walters (the newly elected prom king) eloped to Las Vegas.
And now, standing not twenty feet away was the man Jenny had always loved, and ended up treating like dirt.
“Do you know that guy?” Katie was saying.
Jenny shook her head, but didn’t look up.
“Then why is he coming over, here?”
Jenny pulled the menu closer to her face, but at this point, there was no hiding. A moment later, she sensed someone very tall standing next to her. “Edna hasn’t changed her menu since you left,” said a familiar voice. “Except for her prices. Stick with the burger and fries, like we used to. Everything else the woman cooks tastes like–”
Apparently noticing her for the first time, her, Cal looked over at Katie, and shook his head in apology.
“I’m sorry, miss, I didn’t realize that you were with… that the two of you were together.”
“You’re too late,” Katie said cheerfully. “I already ate most of the grilled cheese. And you’re right. It tasted like–”
The motherly side of Jenny popped out before she could stop it, and she cut Katie off in mid-sentence. “Say that next word, kiddo, and you’re grounded for a week,” she threatened.
Katie abandoned her chair, and slid into the other side of the booth, where Jenny was doing her best to act casual. “You two used to know one another, right?” she asked eagerly.
Cal grinned. “I knew her when she was your age—and couldn’t get through a complete sentence without cussing.”
“She still can’t,” Katie said. “I keep telling her she’s a really bad role model. So, are you the guy Mom dumped to marry my dad?”
He chuckled. “That would be me.”
Jenny opened her purse and begun rummaging around, pretending to look for something.
“Jack Toliver gave me a call a few minutes ago,” Cal explained. “He said you might want to talk to me.”
Jenny scowled. “How did he know that you and I…?”
“He didn’t. There’re only two building contractors in town. I’m one of them. Jack tells me you’re thinking about doing some work on your uncle’s old place.”
“I don’t need a contractor,” she said sullenly. “I need an arsonist—one who works really cheap.” With a sigh, she put the menu down and looked up at him for the first time. “When did you turn into a contractor, anyway?”
“After I built my first house,” he said quietly.
Jenny’s face went red, and she dropped her eyes. “I remember,” she said sadly. “It was a pretty little house, Cal.”
Cal shook his head. “Not pretty enough, seems like. The client backed out, and moved away. Found something more to her liking, I guess.”
Katie was listening to this
cryptic conversation with interest. With little else to entertain her, all the innuendo about her own mother’s past was at least something.
“If you’re staying in town for a while,” Cal said, “maybe we can talk about it—your house, I mean. I never like to see one of these old places torn down.”
“Old?” Katie asked.
“About as old as they come, around here. For while, back in the 1800s, Elkfoot was a boomtown. Silver, mostly. There were close to five thousand people living here, then. Some of the luckier miners ended up with more money than they knew what to do with, so they built these big places to show off what they had—called them ‘spit in your eye’ houses. When the silver lode ran out, most of them lost what they had even quicker than they got it. So, they moved on, and left the houses to rot.”
Katie’s eyes lit up. “Hey, Mom,” she cried. “Maybe we could fix your house up and make it into, you know, like one of those bed and breakfast places!”
Jenny sighed. “In the first place, it’s not my house, and yes, darling, I’m sure people will throng here by the thousands—for the entertainment and fine dining, if nothing else. I hate to break this to you, but the nearest high-end shopping mall is only reachable by helicopter.”
Cal laughed. “You need to keep up. A new Walmart opened up a few months back, not more than fifty miles from where you’re sitting. And with the Labor Day parade coming up, we’re expecting a big crowd in town. Maybe five or six hundred.”
Jenny politely declined Cal’s invitation to stay at his place while she decided what to do, but she did agree to meet him at the house the next day. Her decision to stay for a day or two was made mainly out of curiosity—about the house, of course.
Early the following morning, after a sleepless night in Elkfoot’s only motel—a defunct bar and grill converted into six tiny, airless rooms that offered hourly rates and X rated movies—Jenny left Katie sleeping, and drove to the house. With few choices in her small suitcase, she had spent close to an hour deciding what to wear, and another half hour playing with her hair and makeup. All to meet with a contractor she had no intention of hiring, even if she had the money.
Cal was already at the house when she arrived, sitting on the steps of the sagging front porch. It was no surprise at all to Jenny that her heart seemed to skip a beat when she caught her first glimpse of him.
They toured the house, and while Cal poked at the clapboards and pulled up a section of the rotting floor, Jenny watched him work. She found herself remembering the night they had parked by the lake—the night he had first removed her bra and leaned down to kiss her breasts. First the left breast, and then the right. And then, as she closed her eyes and moaned with pleasure, he took her nipple into his mouth, and…
“I’ve seen a few lousier ones in my day,” Cal said, coming up behind her. “But not many. You’ve got some serious sagging, which means a major reconstruction.”
Jenny came out of her lovely daydream with a start. “What?”
“Your floors,” he said, giving her a curious look. “The joists will have to be completely replaced, and these old planks are shot. It’s a shame, too. Planking that wide is going to set you back a fortune, even if I can find enough to…”
“I don’t have a fortune, Cal. I don’t have anything.”
He grinned. “I was thinking of a kind of partnership.”
“Partnership?” she asked suspiciously.
“You know what sweat equity is?” he asked.
Jenny grimaced. “No, but I don’t much like the sound of it. What does it mean?”
“Well, in this case, it’ll mean that I put up the cash, and you work your butt off.” He chuckled. “Oh, and take orders from me while you’re doing it. If we get started right away, and the roof’s no worse than the floors, you can move in before the first snow.”
“I can’t move back here, Cal.”
“Because of me?”
She hesitated. “Maybe. What I did to you was awful. I know that, and I wish there were some way I could make up for it, but there isn’t.” She gave a small, bitter laugh. “If you feel like punching me in the nose, for a start, go for it.”
He smiled “Only if you promise me a shot at Jimmie Ray as part of the deal.”
“What happened wasn’t his fault, Cal. It was mine. Besides,” Jenny said with a sigh, “I don’t even know where he is, most of the time. He calls maybe twice a year talk to Katie—and to borrow money—but I haven’t seen a child support check in three years.”
“How does Katie feel about all this?”
“I know she’s hurt that he never calls, but she handles it. Katie’s a trooper.”
“She deserves better, and here she could have it. I never stopped loving you, Jenny. You need to know that. If you’re willing to try again, I…”
“Damn it!” Jenny cried. “Do you always have to be such a fucking saint about everything?”
Cal laughed. “A fucking saint?”
“You know what I mean,” she shot back. “Could you just once get mad when I act like an idiot? Yell at me, maybe, or call me a bitch, or…” When she sank down on a wobbly chair, and buried her face in her hands, Cal knelt on the floor next to her.
“Would you like to know what I wanted to do when you took off with the prom king, without so much as a note of explanation?” he asked. “What I stayed awake every damned night for six months, dreaming about doing?”
Jenny looked up. “What?”
“I had it all worked out. Every detail. I knew I’d probably get tossed in jail for it, but I figured it was worth it.”
“You’re not the kind to really hurt anyone, Cal, and you know it,” Jenny said. “Not even yours truly, here, who should have been at the top of your hit list.”
Cal chuckled. “That’s a pretty good way of putting it, actually. Hit list. What I wanted to do was bust into the wedding, like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, punch the groom’s lights out, and carry you off over my shoulder.”
“That’s Tarzan and Jane, not The Graduate,” she corrected him.
“It’s my movie,” he continued, ignoring her. “When we got outside the church–”
“It wasn’t a church,” she interrupted, again. “It was a tacky wedding chapel in Las Vegas, with a fake Scottish décor. The Wee Kirk o’ the Neon Cactus, or something.”
“When we got outside, I tossed your wedding dress over your head, hauled down your white satin panties, and spanked the living daylights out of you. Right there, on the sidewalk.”
“Charming fantasy,” Jenny commented wryly. “But as I recall, the panties were pale blue nylon. Two for five bucks, at Kmart.”
“You haven’t heard the best part,” Cal added. “After I’d set your ass on fire, you realized how stupid you’d been, and begged me to forgive you, and take you back.”
“And did you?”
“Not right away. I dumped you in the back of that old blue pickup I had in high school, and…”
“The one with the bad transmission and bald tires?” she asked sweetly.
He grinned. “Anyway, we drove back here, and checked into the Presidential Suite at the Hyatt Regency.”
“The Hyatt Regency? In Elkfoot?”
“Hey, it was my damned fantasy. I’d read in a magazine about this hotel chain called the Hyatt Regency, and the place sounded pretty fancy. Perfect for what I had in mind. As soon as we checked in, I turned you across my knee, and walloped you ‘til you were howling bloody murder—to be sure you were getting the point. There was this big, red velvet four poster, and every time you mentioned J.R., or complained, I bent you over the end of the damned bed and paddled you, again—with this big wooden hairbrush that appeared magically.”
“Why only three days in bed?” she asked coyly.
He smiled. “It was a hell of a fantasy, while it lasted, but even in a fantasy, I was still broke, and had to start making a living, sometime.”
“Yeah,” Jenny conceded. “You were always the practical kind.
You know, I get the spanking part, and even the sex, but after what I did to you, why did you even want me back? Even in a fantasy?”
“I wanted you back so I could prove to you that I could get it right, if I had a second chance. But I don’t feel that way, now.”
Jenny swallowed hard. “You don’t?”
“No. I finally figured something out. The fact is you didn’t dump me. You dumped this whole town.”
She sighed. “And everything it stood for.”
Cal shook his head. “Your real problem back then was that you were a snob.”
“That’s not true!” she cried. “I may have been an idiot, but I was never a snob!”
“Sure, you were. You hated this town, and everybody in it, because you thought we were all ignorant hicks. And you started hating me because I didn’t hate it. You couldn’t wait long enough to see what we could make of our lives, together—to give us a chance, or me a chance. And now, the problem is, you’re still not ready to give us chance, and you’re still a snob.”
“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me!”
“No, Jenny. The stupidest thing I ever said was when I told you I wanted to marry you right after graduation. The second stupidest thing was telling you about that damned house I was buying for us. Until then, you were counting on being able to talk me into leaving for good. But after I told you about the house, you figured I was a lost cause. So, you panicked, and took off like a scared, trap-shy rabbit, instead of sitting down and telling me how you felt.”
Jenny stood up and started for the door. “Since you still think I’m such a fucking snob, and an impatient, ungrateful, unappreciative bitch, I’m going back to that fucking hellhole you people call a motel, get my daughter, and go fucking home!”
Cal grabbed her elbow. “No, you’re not,” he said firmly. “You’re going to stay right here, and talk this out, the way we should have done fifteen years ago. And if you use that damned word one more time, instead of standing here and discussing this reasonably for once, I swear to you, I’ll wallop it out of you.”
Jenny narrowed her eyes, and spoke very slowly and very clearly. “If you don’t let go of my fucking arm, Mr. Banning, and let me get the fuck out of this fucking disaster of a house, and out of this fucking hick burg that I wasted an entire fucking week coming back to, I’m going to fucking…”