Merry Cowboy Christmas

by Carolyn Brown

  Chapter Eighteen

  Saturday was one of those days that started out fast and built speed until the sunset. With the sun shining and the roads semi-clear, folks were in and out of the convenience store all day. Fiona sold more gasoline that day than she’d sold in the two weeks her mother had been gone. She was tired and ready for an evening in Jud’s arms when she headed home.

  She turned on the radio, hoping to catch a weather report, and listened to country music. Every song reminded her of Jud and the situation she’d landed in with him. Her phone vibrated in her hip pocket just as she parked in front of a dark house. She fished it out and answered on the third ring.

  “Hey, Jud,” she said. “You working late, or are you sittin’ in the dark?”

  “Working. Another one of our heifers that we’ve been worried about has decided to calve tonight,” he said with a sigh. “Remember Blake and Allie are up in Muenster for the day so the grandparents there can have a little time with Audrey. They’re on their way home, but it’ll be after eleven when they get here. Lizzy and Toby are in Throckmorton for a Christmas party, something about one of the products she sells,” Jud answered. “Oh, and another thing. I got that extra set of keys from the hook by the back door this afternoon and stole your car for an hour this afternoon. I got the snow tires put on it and brought it back. I planned to come inside but the store was full and I was in a hurry.”

  “Thank you but I was going to do that tomorrow afternoon after church,” she said.

  A picture of Jud’s big biceps bulging as he removed one tire at a time and replaced it with a snow tire popped into Fiona’s head. In spite of the bitter cold outside, the car was suddenly too hot, so she rolled down the window an inch.

  “Maybe we can do something more fun after church,” he teased.

  Fiona couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “Pink, yellow, or blue?”

  “None of the above. I rather like the plain love more than the playful sex,” he said.

  “I missed you last night, and tonight Truman and Dora June are at Ruby’s place to play dominoes, probably until after ten. That’s why you asked about the dark house, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Dammit!”

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’m in the barn and my phone is going dead,” he answered. “If I don’t see you before then, I’ll see you in church tomorrow morning…”

  She held the phone out but the screen was blank. An empty house. Leftovers warmed up in the microwave. Depression set in as she remembered other evenings just like that in the shabby little apartment in Houston.

  The DJ on the car radio broke the silence surrounding her. “And we have a request from Diana this evening, so here’s a little Sara Evans for all y’all out there in north-central Texas.”

  “Suds in the Bucket” started off with the twang of guitar music. The lyrics didn’t match her exactly, but it sure made her antsy to get out of Dry Creek. The lyrics about not being able to fence time reminded Fiona of when she’d packed a bag and started walking out of town to go on an adventure. That same antsy feeling hit her as she sat in the car with new snow tires and looked ahead at a dark house.

  “I need an adventure tonight,” she said.

  Every song on the radio reminded her of Jud or something about Dry Creek as she drove north. When she was out of range of that station, she hit the search button and a DJ with a voice almost as deep as Jud’s filled the car. “And now for an hour of Christmas music starting with Vince Gill’s ‘Peace on Earth,’” the DJ said.

  Tears flowed down Fiona’s cheeks as the lyrics asked for peace on earth and for it to begin with her. She tried to clear her mind and think about nothing but the joy of an adventure as she drove, but when she reached Claude, Texas, at nine o’clock, she realized that every single thing she’d thought about on the journey that evening had circled right back around to Dry Creek, to her family and to Jud. Maybe it was time to hang up her adventurous nature and go home.

  A convenience store was still open, so she stopped to put gas in the car and get a cup of coffee. The small motel down the street beckoned to her, but she was reluctant to shell out any more money, so she got back in the car and started toward Amarillo. Then she saw a sign that pointed south down through the Palo Duro Canyon and she made a left-hand turn.

  Suddenly, the flat land where dirt met a sky full of bright twinkling stars disappeared as she fell into a deep canyon filled with shadowy formations on either side of the narrow two-lane road. Somewhere in the middle of the journey, her eyes grew so heavy that she dozed and awoke with a jerk to find that she was on the wrong side of the road headed straight toward a barbed wire fence. With adrenaline pumping, she whipped the steering wheel, overcorrecting to the point that she just missed another fence on the other side of the road. Finally getting it under control and back on the road, she let out all the pent-up air in her lungs in a long, loud whoosh.

  She pulled into a short lane with a locked gate right ahead of her. Hands shaking, her heart still pounding, she looked up past the canyon walls at the sky above her where the moon hung weightless with a billion stars around it. She remembered the song from a couple of hours before and nodded. She wished that Jud was with her and that all those stars were shining on them as they cuddled up and slept together in the backseat of the car.

  She turned off the engine but wasn’t sure what to do next, so she laid the seat back and gazed at the sky through the top of the windshield. She’d wait until her pulse settled back to normal before she got back out there on the road and drove up to Silverton. According to the last sign she’d seen, it was probably only half an hour at most from there and then she’d get a motel, no matter what the cost.

  She wrapped her coat tightly around her chest and shut her eyes. Just for a minute until her heart stopped racing, but the adrenaline left as suddenly as it had flashed through her body and she fell asleep.

  Jud slipped into the house a little after midnight. He grabbed a fistful of cookies from the countertop and poured milk into a quart jar. There was no light under Fiona’s door, but he knocked very lightly in case she was still awake.

  She didn’t answer, so he eased the door open. Her bed was unmade, her spotless room every bit as empty as the feeling of emptiness in the whole upstairs portion of the house. Come to think of it, her car hadn’t been outside, either. Leaving the door open, he quickly went to his room, put the cookies and milk on his nightstand, and got his phone attached to the recharge cord. Not waiting until it even had one bar, he hit her number and it went straight to voice mail. Either her phone was turned off or she was in a place with no service. She hadn’t mentioned going anywhere, but then their conversation had been cut short when his phone went dead.

  He headed toward the bathroom for a quick shower. When he returned, he tried calling her three more times but it still went to voice mail. Finally, at one o’clock, he crawled into bed and slept fitfully until morning.

  Dora June wore a bright red robe and a very worried expression when Jud reached the kitchen for breakfast. “You heard from Fiona? Allie and Lizzy both called this mornin’.”

  Jud shook his head.

  Truman sat at the table with his breakfast before him. “Quit your fussin’ and carryin’ on, woman. Fiona is a grown woman and she don’t have to answer to you. If she wants to lay out all night in some dive motel with God knows who, it ain’t none of your business.” He stopped long enough to sip his coffee. “I keep tellin’ both of y’all that girl won’t never have roots. Her wings have probably carried her away and we might not see her for another year.”

  Jud’s heart skipped a beat. He’d never thought about her leaving permanently. His wildest idea was that Mary Jo and Sharlene had talked her into going back to that bar with them and that some other two-steppin’ cowboy would take her eye.

  “The girl has run away again. Get that through your heads. Now eat up, son, so we can go see if that new calf is as good as the one
you got the day before,” Truman said grumpily.

  Jud ate breakfast, but he might as well have been eating sawdust. He helped Truman with chores, but that morning he didn’t care if he changed Scrooge into a nice person or not. He just wanted to know that Fiona was safe. He tried several more times to reach her and got the same results every time. At least Truman didn’t harp on the issue anymore. That much was a blessing. When they finished at Truman’s place, they went straight to the barn where the two calves were penned up with their mothers.

  Blake was already leaning on the stall door, a smile on his face. “I believe this one is even better stock than the last one. He’s got good heavy bones and look how alert he is.”

  Truman climbed up on the first slat and tilted his head to the left, frowned, squinted, and nodded. “You’re right. That’s a breeder. You’ll have to watch Herman. He’ll try to tell you that it ain’t so he can get a chance to buy him.”

  “What about you, Truman?” Blake asked. “Would you buy him if you had a chance?”

  Truman shook his head. “Sorry, boys, but I’m not real sure that this time next year I’ll be in the cattle business. I been doin’ some real hard thinkin’. I ain’t through yet, but seems like God is tellin’ me what I need to do. I just got to figure out if I want to listen to Him.”

  “You plannin’ on arguin’ with God?” Blake asked.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Truman answered.

  “How does that work out?” Jud asked.

  “Okay, if I let him win. If he lets me win, then not so good most of the time.”

  “What’re y’all fightin’ about this Sunday mornin’? Where Fiona is or isn’t?” Blake turned around and sat down on a hay bale.

  “You heard anything about that flighty girl?” Truman stepped down from the slat and leaned against the stall.

  “Not a word. Allie has sent a dozen messages and she called Sharlene. Neither she nor Mary Jo have seen her. I keep tellin’ Allie that Fiona is a big girl and she’s promised her mama she’ll run the store, so she’ll be home by tomorrow at the latest. And she’s supposed to go shopping with the ladies after church, so if she can’t make that, she will call.”

  With every fiber of his being, Jud hoped his cousin was right. What if she was mad at him for stealing the car and putting those snow tires on it without waiting for her to help him? What if she’d planned something special for the evening and thought he was making excuses not to be with her?

  “I expect we’d all better get on about the church business now. Dora June has to teach that Sunday school class, so we have to go earlier. I envy the lot of you that,” Truman said.

  Blake shook his head. “Would you say that again? You envy the guys who bought the Lucky Penny? Never thought I’d see you on our ranch or hear you say that.”

  Truman pushed away from the stall. “Maybe I was wrong. I’ll admit it if I decide I was.”

  “Is that what you and God are in a fight over?” Jud asked.

  “Hell no! That’s my decision, not God’s.”

  A hard shiver awoke Fiona. Somehow during the night she’d kicked all the covers off her bed. She reached for them, but got the steering wheel instead. That popped her eyes wide open as the realization of where she was and what had happened washed over her like baptismal waters.

  Sleet made little popping noises as it hit the roof of her car. She quickly brought her seat upright, started the engine, rubbed her cold hands together until the circulation was better, and shoved the gear stick into reverse.

  The roads were clear when she started back south, but they were getting slick when she started climbing to the top of the canyon’s edge not far from Silverton. Even though the sky was gray, when she reached the tiny town, the sleet had stopped and the roads were clear again.

  Her phone vibrated and she picked it up to find a dozen messages from Jud, five text messages from each of her sisters, and one from Sharlene asking why she’d gone out to have a good time and hadn’t invited her or Mary Jo to go along.

  She knew she needed to call her sisters first, but she wasn’t ready to talk to them. So she sent Lizzy a short message: See you in church. Then her phone screen went blank and there were no more bars.

  Lights were shining from a little restaurant on the north side of the street in Silverton, and she pulled the car into the parking lot. A cup of coffee was all she intended to buy, but when she stepped out of the car, a wave of light-headedness swept over her. That little niggling voice in her head said that if she didn’t eat something, she might see her sisters in church, but it wouldn’t be today and she’d most likely be lying in a casket instead of sitting beside them on the Logan pew.

  At 5:00 a.m., she wasn’t surprised to find she was the only person in the café, so it didn’t take long for the waitress to bring out her order. She was busy cutting up her fried eggs when the waitress asked if she was just passing through or looking for a job.

  “What kind of job are you talking about?” Maybe this was Fiona’s answer. She’d have never thought she’d find it out there in the flattest part of Texas but stranger things had happened.

  “I need a waitress. You just looked kind of lost, so I thought I’d offer.”

  Fiona looked up at her name tag. “Thank you, Macy. I am lost, but I think I’m about to find the light at the end of the tunnel.”

  “If you change your mind, write down the numbers on the bulletin board in the foyer,” Macy said. “Here comes my early morning coffee drinkers with a fresh crop of bullshit to spread this Sunday morning.”

  Fiona laughed with her as she hurried off to get four old men seated by the window. When she’d finished her breakfast, Macy brought a to-go cup full of coffee and the bill to her table. Fiona handed her a ten-dollar bill and told her to keep the change. She walked right past the bulletin board, out into the cold winter air, and headed home.

  She was driving through Floydada when a song on the radio made her pull off the side of the road and listen to it more intently. The song had been popular when she was in high school, but it made more sense to her that morning than it ever had.

  Strange, that Sara Evan’s song “Suds in the Bucket” had put her on this trip and now it was Sara’s song “Three Chords and the Truth” that put her mind and heart in perfect harmony. She kept time to the music with her thumbs on the steering wheel. The song was about a woman who thought she was over a man but a song on the radio had changed her mind with three chords and the truth. Fiona missed Dry Creek and she didn’t want to leave in six months.

  “I’m ready to go home,” she whispered as she pulled back out onto the road.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Fiona slid into the last spot on the pew that Sunday morning, right next to Jud, who kept his eyes straight ahead and didn’t even acknowledge her presence. Lizzy leaned forward and shot her a dirty look. Now wasn’t this just the cherries on the top of a triple fudge brownie sundae?

  “Where have you been?” Lizzy mouthed.

  “Later,” Fiona said.

  “Good morning,” the preacher’s loud booming voice cut through the low buzz of whispers.

  Fiona wondered how much of the conversation was about her that morning. If Sharlene had already found out that she’d been out all night, then the whole town knew. Suddenly, she could feel the whole congregation plus the preacher staring at her. It didn’t matter. She didn’t give a damn what they thought, what they imagined, or what was truth or rumor. She’d found peace and that was worth every hour she’d spent driving half the night.

  She nudged Jud. “We need to talk.”

  He nodded but didn’t glance her way.

  She’d recharged her phone while she’d taken the quickest shower in her life, then changed from her jeans and sweatshirt into a nice straight denim skirt and a pretty red and green plaid sweater. She had kicked off her work boots and put on a pair of red leather ones that she hadn’t worn in years, but they felt comfortable.

  “I’m going to read
from Luke about the birth of Jesus,” the preacher said.

  She tried to listen, but the vibration in her purse that sat between her and Jud let her know someone had sent her a text message. She looked over at Jud, but his hands were crossed over his chest. Leaning forward, she could see that Lizzy and Allie both had phones tucked inside their Bibles and their thumbs were flying.

  It’s a good thing Dora June couldn’t see them or she’d be tapping them on the shoulder and giving them one of her meanest come-to-Jesus looks. Fiona eased the phone from her purse, opened a hymnal, and laid it inside. Instantly, a message from each of her sisters popped up, asking the same thing: Where in the hell have you been?

  She typed in: I was driving alone all night, except for a few hours when I fell asleep at the bottom of the Palo Duro Canyon. It was worth every hour because I found what I was looking for. She sent it to both of them with the flick of a fingertip.

  “And that was?” Jud whispered.

  “You were reading over my shoulder.”

  He nodded.

  “That’s not nice.”

  He tilted his head to the side. “I was worried.”

  She turned her phone off, returned it to her purse, and sat up straight, determined to hear the story of baby Jesus again. Her sisters would have questions. Jud would have questions. Even Dora June would grill her, but right then Fiona didn’t want to answer any of them. She wanted to enjoy her decision because it seemed right. Every other plan she’d made felt as if she had to work at it. She’d decided this morning that there was no plan. She would enjoy life wherever she was, take what it offered and make the best of it and hope that Madam Fate or Lady Destiny would lead her in the right path.

  If Jud Dawson was part of that future, then so be it. If he wasn’t, well, it had been an interesting two weeks and she’d always be grateful to him for what they’d had, no matter what it had been. It was the unrest that he’d brought into her life that had caused her to find harmony in her soul.