Out on a Limb

by Rachelle Mccalla

  Grumbling, Leroy looked past her to Cutch. “You take and load that ladder, but I expect to get it back by sundown or you’ll wish I’d just shot you!”

  Elise had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Her uncle could be such a throwback sometimes. “Thank you, Uncle Leroy,” she said calmly as she began to follow Cutch out the door.

  Leroy caught her arm. “You be careful out there, honey.”

  Elise saw the concern in her uncle’s brown eyes and realized he referred to more than just her safety. Leroy was familiar with enough of her history with Cutch to know her heart was in just as much danger as the rest of her. Probably more.

  “We’ll be fine,” she assured him with a smile she only wished she felt. Grabbing her portable GPS unit and the storage bag for her glider, she hurried toward Cutch’s truck. Would she be fine? She could only pray she would.

  Cutch had to ignore his curiosity about the anhydrous tank he’d seen. Much as he wanted to check out the site they’d spotted from the air, he knew Elise was in a hurry to get her glider out of the trees, and he’d already risked her safety by agreeing to postpone the phone call to the sheriff. He could investigate the drug lab later once she was safely home and unlikely to return.

  “Thanks for telling your uncle not to shoot me,” he said after they’d driven in silence for over a mile.

  “I didn’t have much choice, did I? If he’d killed you, there’s no way I could have gotten my glider back today.”

  Her words came out in a perfectly serious voice, but when Cutch looked over, he thought he caught a hint of a smile. He fought back a grin. “Worse yet, if he’d have wounded me, you might have had to do CPR.” Expecting her to slug him for such a bold comment, he braced himself for the impact of her little fist.

  “Nah. I’d have made Leroy do the mouth-to-mouth. He’s the one with the EMT training.” She shot him a look and laughed at the horrified expression he gave her in return.

  Cutch tipped his head back and chuckled, too. It felt so good to laugh with Elise, especially after the stress-filled day they’d had so far. “Then I’m glad he didn’t shoot me after all.” He glanced her way. She had her eyes trained out the window, and her slender fingers played nervously with the shoulder strap of her seatbelt. Her laughter had already faded.

  Tension settled back over them. He felt it like a thick choking cloud, the same elephant in the room that had always come between them. And though his logical side knew it would always be there—knew they’d never overcome the chasm between them—he couldn’t help praying God would show him the way past all that.

  “So, pecans, hmm?” Elise’s question drew him back from his thoughts.

  Cutch’s instinct was to clam up. Not even his folks knew what his plans were, and he wasn’t expecting to tell anyone, either, not until he knew if his plans would succeed. Eight years ago, he’d let his guard down with Elise and shared his dream with her. She was the only one besides his younger sister, Ginny, who knew what he’d wanted. Would it be okay to let her know how far he’d come? Sharing went against his secretive nature.

  “Yeah,” he replied in a noncommittal voice and kept his eyes focused on the road in front of them.

  “Those trees looked pretty old. One of them had a dead branch, as I recall.”

  She was baiting him. Cutch warred with what to tell her. Nobody in Holyoake County knew what his plans were—and for good reason. If people thought he was foolish enough to believe in his grandfather’s ruined dream of converting the otherwise infertile hills into a productive pecan farm, they’d never believe he could do an adequate job as county assessor. He was up for reelection again this fall. He could lose his job.

  “About sixty years old,” he told her quietly, wondering how he could possibly change the subject without raising her suspicions. Who was he kidding? This was Elise. She already knew enough to be suspicious.

  “Over six hundred acres of pecan trees.” She said it like a statement, not a question, her words quiet, unobtrusive.

  She knew.

  To spare her from digging any deeper, he came right out and admitted, “Grandpa’s.” He took the next corner quietly, and they began to close in on the property.

  “You bought it all?”

  “Yup.”

  “Congratulations,” her voice stayed soft, calm. “I hope it works out for you. If anyone can make it work, you can.”

  Like taking his work boots off after a long day, like loosening his belt after a huge Thanksgiving feast, something inside his soul gave a long-suppressed sigh at her words. She believed in him? She’d said so eight years ago, but he’d figured—

  “You have any success with it yet?” she interrupted his thoughts.

  “Not really. The trees are strong, just not productive.” Though he hoped Elise would know better, he felt he had to say, “Don’t mention the pecan trees to anyone, okay?” He glanced over at her.

  “I never have.” She returned his look. “Although I don’t see why you have to be so secretive about it.”

  Cutch looked back at the road. “Everybody knows loess soil isn’t good for anything,” he explained. “If people thought I was deluded enough to think it was good for growing pecans, they’d not only figure I was crazy but they might decide I don’t know enough about land value to be the county assessor after all.”

  “Oh.” Elise filled that lone syllable with understanding. “You don’t think—”

  “I didn’t win the last election by a very large margin. And county assessors tend to make enemies faster than they make friends.”

  “Oh.” The syllable came out an octave lower this time, as though weighed down by the gravity of his words. “I won’t say a thing about the pecan trees, Cutch. Or your plans.”

  “Thanks.” For all the bad blood between their families, Cutch knew Elise would be true to her word. When he looked her way again, she had her eyes on the trees before them.

  Cutch turned onto the road where he’d picked up Elise, which ran along the north end of the property. He headed in from the west, on the far end from where he’d spotted the anhydrous tank. Somewhere in the trees south of them they’d find Elise’s glider. Unless the gunmen found them first.

  Elise had her portable GPS out and watched the screen as it counted down their longitudinal progress.

  “Right about here,” she said.

  Cutch slowed the truck to a stop off to the side of the road a bit. He hopped out and grabbed the ladder from where he’d stored it in back. Elise pulled out the neatly folded nylon bag that she’d explained would carry the folded glider.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She had her eyes on the GPS screen but looked up at him and smiled. “Ready.”

  They found a stretch where the brambles and bushes weren’t too thick, and Cutch used the ladder to hold down the barbed wire fence as they climbed over. He had a tricky time keeping the ladder from getting caught up in low-hanging branches, but Elise helped by going ahead with the GPS and holding branches back for him to carry the ladder through. They tromped in relative silence until she said, “Okay, we should be closing in on it soon. Up this way.” She pointed down the valley.

  Cutch looked up through the treetops and soon caught a glimpse of yellow and red fabric fluttering in the wind. They hurried over, and a moment later, he blinked up into the treetop at her mangled glider.

  “Is it salvageable?” he asked skeptically.

  Elise sounded a little worried, too. “I sure hope so. The Labor Day Powered Glider Festival is Monday down in the Kansas City area. Before this happened I was planning to drive down tomorrow. I guess I still hoped I might be able to get her patched back together in time to go on Monday.”

  “That’s the day after tomorrow,” Cutch mused, then looked over and saw the disappointment on Elise’s face. “I’m sure it won’t look so bad once we get it out of the tree.” He leaned the ladder against a bough and circled around, trying to assess what the best approach might be.

  Whe
n he turned back around, Elise was on the ladder.

  “Hold on, now,” he ran over and steadied the ladder. “I didn’t put that there to climb on. You could tip and fall and hurt yourself.”

  “It’s fine. I’m going to pull myself up onto the next branch.” Elise stepped off the ladder onto a solid-looking limb and began climbing up the tree branches from there.

  “Careful,” Cutch warned from the ground.

  “It might surprise you to know I actually jumped out of this tree earlier today, from over there,” she gestured to where her cut harness straps dangled a few branches away. “I was fine then, and I’ll be fine now.” As she spoke, she made her way out onto the long limb where the lower parts of her glider were ensnared.

  Cutch watched, feeling futile, while Elise teased the torn fabric free, snapping off twigs and leaves and dropping them to the ground. “Can I come up there and help you?”

  “Don’t bother. I doubt this branch could hold both of us, and besides, I’m making pretty good progress.” She’d made it to where the aluminum frame scissored through the smaller branches. After some futile tugging, she sighed. “I don’t suppose you have any pruning shears or a small saw or something? I just need to get these branches out of here.”

  “Actually, I have saws, clippers, shears, you name it—in my truck. Want me to run back and fetch some?”

  Elise made a face at the branches and sighed again. “Yes. If you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll be right back. Just don’t hurt yourself while I’m gone.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  As Cutch turned to hurry off, he glanced up at Elise and saw her smiling down at him. As soon as she saw him looking back, her smile disappeared. He hurried off to his truck with a grin on his face. Elise McAlister had been smiling at him. It was enough to make a grown man giddy.

  The underbrush was thick, and in his haste, Cutch didn’t bother trying to move quietly. He crashed through the woods, rounding the hillside and coming up on where he’d left his truck. Branches snapped and leaves rattled as he hurried toward it. He didn’t see the other vehicle until it began to pull away.

  Cutch froze. A red pickup sped away from where it had stopped beside his truck. He tried to get a glimpse inside, but the driver must have heard him coming, because he sped off in a cloud of dust.

  He tried to get a peek at the license plate, but between the dust cloud and the branches blocking his view, he couldn’t even see enough of the truck to determine a make or model. By the time he broke free of the snarled bushes, the truck had disappeared over the next hill.

  Clambering over the fence, Cutch hurried out onto the road. Tire tracks crisscrossed through the sparse gravel. He couldn’t begin to sort out which ones may have belonged to the vehicle. After he caught his breath, he wondered if the pickup he’d seen had actually been stopped by his, or if in his paranoia he’d only imagined it. It would be easy enough to tell himself the encounter had meant nothing—that the red truck was simply another vehicle passing through the remote area on business of its own.

  But that was just it. They were in a remote area. The only people who’d likely be passing by were the owners of the neighboring properties, and most of them tended to use the next road south, which was better maintained and less hilly. Cutch rarely used this road unless he was working on the north end of his land as he had been early that morning before he’d picked up Elise. Besides, he didn’t know of any neighbors who drove a red pickup truck.

  It didn’t take Cutch long to grab a handful of the useful sawing and pruning tools he still had stowed in his truck from his work that morning. He hurried back, relieved to find Elise still clinging to the branch by her glider. She’d even managed to free more of the other wing while he’d been gone.

  “You know anybody who drives a red truck?” he asked as he drew closer.

  She laughed at him. “A whole lot of people drive red trucks. Both Rodney and Leroy have red trucks. Ed McClinton down the road from us, too, but his is kind of a burgundy-red. What shade are you looking for?”

  “More of a cherry-red.”

  “Bernie Gills, the sheriff’s deputy, drives a cherry-red truck. And doesn’t your grandpa Scarth have a red truck?”

  “That’s right.” Though he was in his late eighties, Cutch’s mother’s father still drove regularly and preferred to stick to the back roads where there was less traffic. He’d even have an innocent excuse for stopping if he thought he’d recognized Cutch’s pickup. But it wouldn’t have made sense for him to have driven off in a hurry if he’d heard him coming or for him to have been out on this end of the county.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I saw a red truck stopped near mine when I came out of the woods. It drove off in a hurry.” He saw the worry on her face and realized he might be scaring her for no reason. Elise had enough on her mind as it was. Cutch injected a lighthearted tone into his voice. “It’s probably nothing.”

  Elise wasn’t so easily dissuaded. “How many people use that road?”

  “It’s a public road,” Cutch said dismissively, not wanting to worry her. He held up the assortment of saws and clippers. “Which of these do you want to use?”

  Elise frowned at him and then scowled back at the tree branches. “Toss me that little folding handsaw. That should do it.”

  After leaning the other tools against the base of the tree and carefully collapsing and securing the blade inside the saw’s handle so Elise wouldn’t cut herself with it, Cutch tossed it gently into the air in her direction.

  Elise’s fingertips brushed it as it flew near, but then it dropped to the ground again. “Almost. Good toss. Try it again. I’ll see if I can’t lean out farther.”

  “Be careful,” he warned her as the saw left his hand.

  The next toss was even better, delivering the saw gently to the airspace right in front of her. She clamped her hand around the end, fumbled for a hold and somehow, in her efforts to grab it, let go of the tree branch with her other hand. She tottered on edge for a second as the saw began its downward descent.

  “Elise!” Cutch shouted as she began to fall. Without thinking he stepped forward, arms stretched wide, and caught her as she came down.

  “Oof!”

  He fell backward, pinned to the ground by a red-faced Elise.

  “What are you doing?” she screeched at him. “Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  Momentarily winded, Cutch took a second to drag in a deep breath and took the liberty of brushing a clump of leaves from Elise’s hair with his fingertips. “I’m okay. Are you okay?” Her hair felt silky under his fingers, which weren’t used to touching anything so soft. He tucked the ends back behind her ear as he had so often seen her do.

  Elise froze, sprawled awkwardly across Cutch’s shoulders with her knees buried in the leaves beside him and more leaves half covering her. She didn’t care about the leaves or the dirt or even the fact that she’d landed with such an awful thump.

  Cutch had his fingers in her hair. His hand all but cupped her cheek as he tucked her hair behind her ear. His well-muscled chest rose and fell as he sucked in air after the hard landing. The startled birds had begun to sing again by the time Elise pulled her rattled brain back to earth.

  “Sorry about that. I almost had it,” she apologized, taking inventory of her hands and deciding they weren’t too dirty to press against his shoulders as she tried to push herself up.

  All she had to do was put her hands on his shoulders and push herself up. She could do this.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Concern filled Cutch’s vivid blue eyes.

  Okay? She was in the arms of the man she loved. Of course she was—

  “No.” She shook her head. She didn’t love him! She must have hit her head harder than she’d thought.

  Cutch rolled on to his side and cradled her on his arm. He brushed the side of her face with his fingers. “Are you experiencing dizziness? Double vision?” He pulled his hands away
and held up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  Elise pulled her eyes away from his face long enough to look at his hand. “Three.”

  A relieved-looking smile passed over his face. “Good. Are you feeling better? Ready to try standing?”

  Mortified that she’d let their encounter continue, Elise nodded and scooted onto her feet while Cutch took both of her hands and pulled her to a standing position. She forced herself to stand steadily, though the strong tug of his arms almost tipped her back against him again. She couldn’t let that happen.

  “I’m okay,” she assured him and turned her back to him, heading for the ladder.

  “Whoa, no you don’t,” Cutch said, tugging on the hand he still held.

  “I have to get my glider down,” Elise reminded him, frustrated that she was still on the ground, wasting time with him, when she needed to be in the tree freeing her glider. The fact that he had hold of her hand didn’t help matters any, either.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “That’s really not necessary—”

  “Elise,” he interrupted, “you fell out of the tree. Not two minutes ago you were very shaken up and even a little disoriented. If I let you go up there again, you could fall and hurt yourself even worse this time.”

  As much as Elise wanted to protest, to tell him she really hadn’t been all that shaken up, such a confession would require explaining the real reason she’d felt so disoriented—because of her lingering attraction to him. And there was no way she’d admit that. “Fine.” She fumed. “Let me hold the ladder for you.”

  Cutch shoved the collapsible handsaw into his back pocket and headed up. “I’ll have this down in no time,” he said as he began his ascent.

  Unfortunately, “no time” ended up being almost two hours by the time Cutch freed the entire glider and handed it down in two pieces. Elise was further disheartened when she inspected the damage and discovered she wouldn’t be able to attend the Labor Day Powered Glider Festival after all—not as a participant, anyway.