Daisies in the Canyon

by Brown, Carolyn

  “So you belong to me on Wednesdays.” Abby carried a bucket of cleaning supplies into the bathroom. “And I bet you’ve never been military clean in your life. Looks can be deceiving—if my old sarge put on the white glove, you’d find out you were filthy.”

  Starting at the far side with the toilet itself, she scrubbed the whole thing until it shone. She frowned at the apparatus holding the seat and lid onto the potty. She could see bits of mold down in the crevices and could hear the drill sergeant yelling at her as she stuck her white-gloved pinky finger into a valley just like that.

  She needed an old toothbrush to get that area really clean, and she found one in the medicine cabinet above the sink, along with a dozen half-full bottles of prescription medicines, all with Ezra Malloy’s name on them. She carried Ezra’s toothbrush back to the potty and cleaned out those pesky little grooves.

  “I can hear you doing flips in your grave, Ezra.” She laughed. “Well, this is just a little bit of the punishment you deserve for your sins.”

  She checked the clock when she finished and smiled. It was exactly eleven thirty—time to remove the lasagna from the oven and set it on the table and put the Italian bread in the oven to bake. Mama always said that good lasagna had to blend flavors for thirty minutes after it was cooked, and Mama had been a fabulous cook.

  Fifteen minutes later the salad was tossed in a chilled bowl. The whole house smelled like baking bread and the table was set.

  The phone rang. She located it by following the sound into her bedroom and there it was, an old black rotary shoved under the edge of her bed. Thank God that thing had never rung before or she’d have gone into instant cardiac arrest. She sat down on the floor and answered it cautiously.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Abby, this is Cooper.” As if she needed him to tell her his name. “I didn’t want to ask in front of the whole family, but could I please have your cell phone number? You have mine and I figured yours would be in my phone in the recent calls area, but it has disappeared. I’d like to call you sometime,” he said.

  The phone smelled like cigarette smoke and there was a dirty ashtray under the bed, along with several cardboard boxes. Why hadn’t she noticed those boxes before now?

  Because you haven’t vacuumed your room or dropped anything close to the bed that you’d have to pick up, that sassy voice in her head said.

  “You still there, Abby?” Cooper asked.

  “I’m sorry. Yes, I’m here.” She rattled off the number.

  “Thank you. Are you talkin’ on the phone in Ezra’s old bedroom?”

  “I found it under the bed.”

  “I shoved it up under there when we took out the hospital bed. He kept the phone on the bed with him until he died. There is also a phone outlet in the living room if you want to move it in there. And you might want to know that he did not have a long-distance plan,” Cooper said. “I’m leaving the office now. Be there at noon for my chili pie and ice cream.”

  She left the three boxes alone, but carried the ashtray and the phone with her to the living room. It wasn’t hard to find the outlet for the phone because there was a light spot on the wooden table beside the rocking chair that testified the phone had sat right there for many years. The ashtray went into the trash can—butts, ashes, and all.

  At five after twelve, Bonnie came through the back door into the utility room right off the kitchen with her nose in the air. “That is not chili. I was dreading coming home for dinner because the smell of that stuff gives me the dry heaves worse than drinkin’ too much.”

  “Why?”

  “Mama likes chili and Mama likes to drink. The morning after isn’t too pleasant,” Bonnie said.

  A cold blast of air preceded Cooper from living room to kitchen. “That’s Italian. I know oregano and basil when I smell it.”

  “And fresh-baked garlic bread,” Rusty said.

  Shiloh pushed Abby out of the way so she could wash her hands at the kitchen sink. “You lied. You can make more than chili pie.”

  “Disappointed?” Abby asked.

  “I’ll wash up in the bathroom since no one is using it today,” Cooper said.

  Abby’s heart did a flip when she realized that he hadn’t gone to the kitchen sink to wash his hands with Shiloh.

  Shiloh shook her head. “I’m not a bit disappointed to have Italian for dinner today. I can get a chili pie at a fast food place or make it in five minutes anytime I want it.”

  “You can pop frozen lasagna in the oven anytime, too,” Abby said.

  “Darlin’, Mama’s people are Italian. You can’t fool me. That’s the good stuff, and that bread is not store-bought either.”

  “So that’s where you got the black hair,” Abby said.

  “Yes, it is and half of my temper.” She smiled.

  “I haven’t seen much of that yet.”

  Cooper returned from the bathroom. “Can I help put anything on the table?”

  “We’ve got it, Cooper. And Abby, you haven’t pushed me into a corner. If you ever do, you might get a taste of that temper,” Shiloh answered.

  After the funeral, they’d sat down randomly, but now they had their appointed places around the table—Rusty on one end, Shiloh on the other. Bonnie across from Cooper and Abby.

  Why does she get to sit at the head of the table? I’m the oldest, Abby wondered as she settled in next to Cooper, the sparks flitting around the room like butterflies in the spring.

  “You are left-handed,” she spit out without thinking.

  “Been that way my whole life,” Shiloh said. “That is why I always sit where my elbows don’t create a problem for the person sitting next to me.”

  “So was Ezra. Guess that’s another thing you inherited from him. This is amazing, Abby. If Ezra had realized that hiring three women would make meals appear on the table like this, he might have parted with a few dollars to run the place,” Rusty said.

  “Damn fine food. Olive Garden can’t hold a candle to this,” Cooper said. “You can make this anytime you want, Abby. Oh, before I forget. The poker game is off for this weekend, Rusty. I’ve got to transport a prisoner down to San Antonio. Want to do a ride along to keep me company?”

  “Stayin’ the night?” Rusty asked.

  Cooper nodded. “Leavin’ at six o’clock Saturday morning. We need to get him to the station there by five o’clock and processed in. Then we’ll stay the night and come back Sunday. We’ll be home by bedtime.”

  “You women able to run this place for the weekend without me?” Rusty said.

  “I reckon we can feed cows and gather eggs without you lookin’ over our shoulders,” Bonnie answered.

  “Think you could get those two pastures plowed on Saturday without tearing up the tractors?” Rusty looked down the table at Shiloh and Abby.

  “If we do tear up a tractor, I’ll get out my toolboxes and have it all fixed by the time you bring your drunk ass home,” Bonnie told him.

  “Oh, yeah?” Cooper raised a dark eyebrow.

  “Saturday is my day to cook, but we can always eat leftovers if Bonnie needs me to help her fix a tractor. Which reminds me, you will owe us big-time for not being here to cook dinner or take us out on Sunday, but I’m sure you will make it up to us the next week, right?” Abby said.

  “Sure, I will.” Cooper smiled.

  “Then I vote that Sunday after church we go to Amarillo for shopping. We will have our paychecks before you leave, right?” Shiloh asked Rusty.

  “Cash or check?” he asked.

  “Cash,” they all three said in unison.

  “Pass the bread and salad. What kind of dressing is this anyway?” Cooper said.

  “Homemade Italian,” Shiloh answered for Abby. “And a good cook never gives away her secrets. This has a touch of something I don’t recognize, but it’s awesome.”
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br />   Cooper bumped his shoulder against Abby’s. “It’s not bad for chili pie.”

  She bumped him back, not a bit surprised what it created. “Some days I get it right. Some days, the pigs wouldn’t touch it.”

  His hand on her knee said that he didn’t believe a word she’d said.

  The boxes under her bed nagged at her all afternoon as she cleaned out the barn, sweeping each stall and putting down fresh hay in case it was needed for calving season, which Rusty said would start any day. She hoped to hell Bonnie knew something about being a cow’s midwife in an emergency.

  She leaned the rake against the gate and sat down on a bale of hay to catch her breath. Why hadn’t Rusty taken those boxes out of the room? He’d removed everything else but one ashtray and the telephone. The bed had even been stripped down, and there were no towels in her tiny little half bath. He had been thoughtful and left a couple of dozen hangers in the closet, and the place did smell like it had been sprayed down with a mixture of disinfectant spray and that stuff that takes away odors.

  Switching thought tracks from her bedroom and the boxes back to the barn, she picked up the hoe and rake and carried them back to the tack room. Sucking in deep lungfuls of barn scents, she instinctively reached for a piece of hard candy. It was a trick she’d learned in the war zones, and it came in handy with her snack habit. If she was eating something, then her sense of smell wasn’t so acute. But her pocket was empty and it was all Cooper’s fault.

  If he hadn’t set her hormones into overdrive, she would have remembered to make a side trip back to the bedroom for her normal pocketful of anxiety prevention after dinner.

  Think of the devil, and the cell phone will ring.

  She fished it out of her pocket and hit the “Talk” button. “You are in trouble.”

  “What’d I do?” he chuckled.

  “It’s your fault I didn’t put candy in my pocket and this barn smells like cows and rat piss,” she said.

  “What’s candy got to do with that and how is it my fault?”

  “We were talking about Italian food and I forgot to get my candy. Candy dulls the smell,” she said.

  “It does not. That’s a psychological trick that they tell you over there to keep you from puking when you smell bombs and dead bodies.”

  “You are full of shit,” she said.

  “Not me, darlin’. I was in the National Guard for ten years and they pulled our unit for a nine-month tour in Iraq five years ago. I was not impressed enough with my extended vacation in the sand and sun to want to reenlist. But if you’d been there to cook lasagna for me, I might have.”

  “Five years ago I was in Afghanistan. Are you flirting with me? I thought we were just friends,” she said.

  “If I’d have known you were that close, I would have popped over for a beer.” He laughed. “I called to fuss at you for lying about not being able to cook. And what would you do if I was flirting?”

  “I’d tell you that you were making a big mistake,” she said.

  “Why? Flirting isn’t falling into bed with each other again.”

  “Because it could lead to that, and you have roots and I have wings. I’m not sure they work too well together,” she said.

  “Maybe you could put down roots.”

  “Maybe you could grow wings.”

  “I’ll never leave this ranch,” he said.

  “And I don’t know if I’ll stay on this one.”

  A long pause preceded his next statement. “The canyon has a way of getting into folks’ blood. Loretta could tell you all about that. Once you’ve been here for a while and then leave, it haunts you and beckons you to come back home.”

  “Only if you left something behind,” she said. “Loretta left Jackson behind and that’s what haunted her.”

  “Be careful, Abby. It can sneak up on you. Want to go to the Sugar Shack with me some weekend for a beer?”

  “Maybe. If you don’t find a little brown-eyed doll in San Antonio this weekend who takes your eye. If you get a new girlfriend, she might not understand your friendship with the neighbor,” she said.

  “Jealous?”

  “Not even a little bit!” she lied.

  “I’m hurt,” he chuckled. “I just knew you’d be all jealous and that would give me my ego trip for the whole day.”

  She crossed her fingers behind her back. “To be jealous would mean I am more than a friend.”

  Cooper’s chuckle turned into laughter. “Now I’m really hurt. I might even be bleeding from a cutting remark like that.”

  “I’ve got another stall to clean and I’m sure you’ve got a county to save from drug dealers, cattle rustlers, and outlaws. See you tomorrow at noon. It’s Bonnie’s turn to cook and she might be making Italian too,” Abby said.

  “I’m not complainin’ one bit. See you then.”

  Holy shit! She’d just agreed to go on a date with him. Her hands actually trembled at the thought of dancing with him.

  You are going to the local bar for drinks. You’d go with Haley and not think a thing about it, so why not with Cooper?

  Because, she argued with her conscience, I’m not attracted to Haley and I am to Cooper. I’m going, but . . .

  She stopped and thought about all the thousand buts she should consider before she opened that can of worms.

  Number one, the biggest but in any equation, was never start something that couldn’t be finished. It showed poor judgment. It didn’t matter how his touch made her feel—nothing could last between them. Her fault, not his. She had a deep fear that she’d be like Ezra when it came to a permanent commitment and parenthood and another fear that she’d demonstrated exactly the latter when she blew up that building with the little girl inside. Cooper deserved better than that.

  But number two stated that it was better to nip something in the bud. If she stayed in the canyon, Cooper was and would always be her neighbor.

  “But the flirting and the bantering is so much fun,” she whispered. “I like him. I really do. He’s a decent man.”

  She finished the last stall seconds before she heard two tractors and a truck pulling up outside the barn. Rusty’s glasses fogged over when he left the cold and came into the tack room.

  “Time to call it a day,” he said.

  Without the glasses, his eyes weren’t nearly as big and there was a softer look about his face. His lips weren’t as firm and hard looking, yet his chin was stronger. Standing with his feet apart, his jeans tight, his boots scuffed from work, wearing his standard mustard-colored work coat, he’d make any woman take a second look. Yet not one single spark flickered between them. She felt like she was looking at a cousin.

  “What?” he said as he put his glasses back on.

  “Nothing. When do we get to see the bunkhouse?”

  “Anytime you want to after you’ve been here a year and run me off the ranch,” he said. “Until then, by the will Ezra left behind, it belongs to me. I will tell you that it’s small and only houses six men at the most. Oh, and when it’s my time to host poker, we play down there.”

  “Rusty, I don’t think any of us will be firing you. As far as I’m concerned, you’ll have a job on the ranch as long as you want it,” Abby said.

  “Thank you. We’ll have to see how long I want it. Now, let’s call it quittin’ time. Even old slave driver Ezra knew a body needed rest after long days of hard work.” Rusty smiled.

  She stopped long enough to make a ham sandwich out of yesterday’s leftovers, put it and a handful of chips on one plate, and use a second one for a huge slab of coconut crème cake. With a can of beer under her arm, she made her way to her bedroom with barely a nod at Shiloh, whose head was thrown back on the sofa, or Bonnie, who’d let all three dogs into the house to lie on the rug in front of a cold fireplace. When she started down the hallway, Martha got up and meandered
toward the bedroom with her.

  “Let me grab a shower first,” Bonnie groaned. “No, I’m having a bath—a long one to get the aches out of my poor body.”

  “I’ll go second. I’m halfway into a romance book I want to finish tonight,” Shiloh said.

  “See y’all in the morning.” Abby carried her food to her room.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor, her food spread out around her. Martha plopped down beside her and she fed her bits of cake, sandwich, and even chips. Bonnie hadn’t said that anything but chicken bones would hurt the dog, and the old girl seemed to really like cake.

  She could see the corner of one of the boxes. They probably contained exactly what was advertised on the end: three sets of Corelle dishes in that old modernistic gold pattern that was popular when the dishes first came out. There were even a few of them left in the mismatched set of plates in the cabinet. But right there in bold Sharpie letters on the end of each box were her initials—AJM—and she wanted to know why. How in the world had he even known her name? Her mother had said that he hadn’t wanted to see her or to know what she’d been named.

  She pulled all three boxes out to find numbers on the tops. One, two, and three—evidently she should start with one, since Ezra had made it easy. It had to be his handwriting, but the perfect numbers and letters had an almost feminine slant to them.

  “So he was a perfectionist?” she said.

  Pushing her half-eaten sandwich to the side, she decided she would give the rest to Martha. She upended the beer, taking several long gulps.

  “Maybe I need some of his white lightning before I open the boxes,” she mumbled as she pulled number one closer.

  The tape was yellowed and peeling on the first box. The second one had started to turn colors, but it was still stuck down fairly well. The third one looked fairly recent.

  “So he closed them up and never looked back?” She frowned.

  She slipped a fingernail under the tape on the first one. It tore lengthwise, leaving some of it stuck firmly. After three tries, she pulled a knife from her pocket, flipped it open, and slit the tape.