Colorado High

by Joyce C. Ware

  Lloyd frowned at her. “Tessa is family ... no need for it.” The last half of his sentence, delivered with a challenging stare, was aimed at Tessa.

  Tessa smiled blandly. “All I meant was, if I’d known, I would have baked a pan of that apple cake you like, Lloyd. Matter of fact, the ingredients are all waiting to be mixed. Garland’s back from college for the summer and it’s one of her favorites, too.”

  Lloyd shook his big shaggy head. “I’ll settle for a beer, Tessa.”

  “Pauline?”

  “Tea, if it’s not too much trouble, or coffee ... or juice maybe?”

  Lloyd snatched off his hat and wiped his beefy hand across his forehead. “For God’s sake, Pauline!”

  Pauline hunched her shoulders. “Whatever, Tessa.”

  Tessa’s smile was the understanding kind you give an anxious child. “So sit, you two. I’ll only be a minute.”

  Lloyd pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and whumped his bulk into it, rousing Plume, who managed a hoarse, token “woof!” from his basket before slumping back into sleep. Pauline slid into the chair across from Lloyd. Her tiny pale fingers fidgeted with the salt-and-pepper shakers. “Garland around, Tessa?”

  “She started work today, up in Telluride. She may not get back before you leave.” Lloyd eyed Tessa narrowly, suspecting a hint for a short visit. “Of course, that depends on how much time you have to spare for me.”

  Mollified, Lloyd grunted and popped off the tab on the can of beer Tessa handed him. “Telluride, huh? You wouldn’t catch me lettin’ my girls work up there.”

  You wouldn’t catch anyone up there hiring them either, Tessa thought. “How are Sharla and Mandy? You must have almost enough grandkids for a baseball team by now . . . hard to keep track, the way they keep popping them out.”

  “Sharla’s got three,” Pauline volunteered, “and Mandy four, with a fifth on the way. They’re the cutest things, Tessa! Full of ginger and curious as a litter of kittens.” In other words, Tessa thought, hell on wheels. “The girls still work part-time at their hairdressing,” Pauline continued, “so I get to see a lot of the kids. Almost like having my own,” she added wisfully.

  “Almost never won no ribbons,” Lloyd pronounced.

  “Here’s your tea, Pauline,” Tessa said. “Do you want sugar with it? Sweetener? Honey?”

  “Gawd! You’re as bad as she is!”

  “I can think of a lot worse things, Lloyd,” Tessa said. Like that first wife of yours. She knew it wasn’t nice to think ill of the dead, but in Rhonda’s case, an alternative way of thinking never came to mind. “So how’re things on the Lazy W?”

  Lloyd shrugged. “Me and Jack aren’t gettin’ any younger and the land’s sure not gettin’ better. The Hattons and the Bradburns snatched up all the good grazing land.”

  As if it had been a conspiracy.

  “They just got to Cottonwood first, Lloyd,” Tessa said. “No crime in it; none intended. Pure chance.”

  He shot her a dark look. As far as the Wagners were concerned, the bad luck that had dogged them through the years— lack of water, stock killed on highways, barns razed by fire— hadn’t a thing to do with their poor irrigation practices or neglected fences or carelessly discarded cigarette butts. Someone else was always to blame— she doubted if even God was exempted— and in the case of Barry’s death, Tessa herself.

  “Gavin come home, too?”

  Tessa, alerted by Lloyd’s elaborately offhand tone, paused before answering. “He’s got a job up in Denver for the summer.”

  “Denver, huh? Those twins of yours sure seem to land on their feet.” Tessa refrained from reminding him that a few minutes ago he’d derided Garland’s choice of work sites. “Both on scholarship, ain’t they?”

  “Partial scholarships, Lloyd. Two kids in college at the same time is a huge financial drain any way you look at it.”

  “That so?” Lloyd’s cat-ate-the-canary smile made Tessa realize she’d slid right into an artfully set trap. “Well, maybe I’ve got a way to help solve all our problems. That land me and Jack sold Terry Ballou up on the mesa?” Tessa nodded, not trusting herself to speak. “He sold the last of the lots in that subdivision he made out of it a coupla months ago . . . can you beat that? Rest of the country wrestlin’ with a lousy real estate market and here we got folks trampin’ around in snow up to their belly buttons payin’ his asking price for land that didn’t even have any water up to three years ago.”

  “Water he never should have gotten!” Tessa protested.

  “He got it fair and square ... no one forced Greta Larsen to sell him those rights.”

  “Forced, no, but he sure as hell didn’t think twice about putting a lot of silly romantic ideas into her head.” She shook her head. “Best water rights in the county.”

  “Terry didn’t buy up all of them, Tessa,” Pauline said.

  “Enough to cut the value of her land in half . . . maybe more. Greta’s ranch doesn’t have a view, and the way things are going around here you need either a mountain vista or good water rights, preferably both.” She sighed and pushed a stray lock of gray-streaked blonde hair off her forehead. “Oh well, there’s no fool like an old fool. I just hope she had fun while Terry’s little dance lasted.”

  Lloyd chortled. “You gotta admit he gave her something no one else ever did. Can’t put a price on that.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m betting you and Terry have put a price on the acres being held in trust for Gavin and Garland, right?”

  “Hey, there’s no harm in talking, Tessa.”

  “I didn’t say there was. It’s a waste of your time, though. As you very well know, Barry’s will named me as trustee for his holdings until the twins’ twenty-first birthday. I have no intention of making a decision like that for them. You’ll just have to wait.”

  “That’s a year from now!” Lloyd cried. He thrust himself out of his chair and began pacing, his face darkening with angry frustration. “Goddamnit, it’s Wagner land! Bought by a Wagner, worked by Wagners— “

  “And inherited by Wagners,” Tessa hotly reminded him.

  Lloyd stopped short, turned, and leaned towards her. “Wagners? Let me tell you, lady, those kids of yours missed being left out of Barry’s will by no more’n this much!” He extended two stubby fingers held so close Tessa could barely see daylight between them. “It just about killed him, thinking about you and that fag Shelby. It was me, seein’ how much it hurt him, that told him to forget it.” He turned his fingers to stab at his burly chest. “Me! You owe me, Tessa!”

  “You can’t have it both ways, Uncle Lloyd.” Garland’s cool voice, addressing them from the living-room doorway, reduced her elders to startled silence. “If Scott Shelby fathered us, he’s hardly likely to be gay.”

  Tessa was the first to recover. “Garland! We didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Obviously,” she said dryly. “I saw that the geraniums in the barrel next to the front door could use water, so I came in the company way. You’re looking younger than ever, Aunt Pauline.”

  In fact, Pauline’s stricken expression had added ten years. “Oh, Garland! Your Uncle Lloyd didn’t really mean all that.”

  “Not to fret. We’ve all been tiptoeing around this for far too long.”

  Tessa reached her hand out towards her daughter. “Your father was your father, Garland. I want you to be sure about that.”

  “I am, Mom . . . always was. I just wish Daddy had been.”

  Pauline got up. “Lloyd, I think we’d better ...”

  “Yeah . . . yeah, I guess so.” He scraped back his chair and looked from Tessa—no help there— to Garland. “One of these days, you and me and Gavin, we really got to talk— “

  “Goodbye, Uncle Lloyd.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded, for once lost for words.

  After her in-laws left, Tessa stood at the screen door staring out at the departing truck’s plume of dust, not trusting herself to speak.

  �
��Tea, Mom?”

  Taking a deep breath, she turned slowly. “You learn how to do that in college, Garland?”

  “What’s that, Mom?”

  “Don’t play the innocent with me!”

  “Better a dropped bomb than one that lies there unexploded, biding its time. Tea?”

  Tessa, distracted, nodded. “I don’t remember ever saying— “

  Garland turned from the stove to wave dismissively. “No one ever had to actually say anything. Gavin felt it sooner than I did. There wasn’t as much . . . distance between me and Daddy as with him, maybe because I was, I don’t know, more submissive?”

  Tessa shrugged. “Cuter, I would have said.” She responded to Garland’s grin with a reluctant smile. They both knew it was a safe distinction. Even Jed had stopped well short of attaching the term “cute” to Gavin’s fierce childhood expressions of independence.

  Garland brought two steaming cups to the table. “Later, when Daddy started drinking so much, it got worse for both of us. Remember when Gav finally told him flat out he wasn’t interested in becoming a rancher? Not that it could have come as much of a surprise.”

  Tessa closed her eyes, remembering.

  You ain’t no son of mine!

  The more interest Gavin showed in book learning, the more Barry had resorted to deliberate lapses in proper English. Gavin’s unerring eye for a promising colt cut no ice with him.

  “Where the hell is the surprise in that?” Barry had flung back at her when she faced him with it. “We know who his mother is!”

  Tessa pulled the sodden tea bag out by its cardboard tag and dropped it in the saucer Garland held out to her. “Where did you hear about Scott Shelby? You’ve been in Telluride for only one day— hardly time enough to hear those old rumors.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Mom! Everyone in the whole damn country knows about you being Scott Shelby’s Wild Westerns girl.”

  “C’mon, honey, we both know this isn’t about a fancy modeling job I had twenty years ago.”

  “I know Daddy was resentful of the money you made at it.”

  “Who the hell told you that!”

  “Uncle Jed,” Garland muttered, adding another spoon of sugar to her already sweetened tea.

  Tessa cupped her ear with her hand. “Can’t hear you!” she singsonged.

  Garland sipped her tea, grimacing at the syrupy taste. She looked her mother straight in the eyes. “Uncle Jed.”

  “That son of a bitch.”

  “Mom!”

  “He had no right!”

  “He has more right than anyone but you!” Garland scrambled up from the table and dumped her tea in the sink. She stood for a moment, turned away, breathing hard. She turned back, head high. “A right, may I remind you, that you chose not to exercise.”

  Disarmed by her daughter’s dignity, Tessa struggled to meet it. “Okay, so maybe I should have told you myself, but I was waiting for the right time and . . . well, it just never came along.” Her smile was rueful. “Or maybe it got mislaid among all those other things I kept to myself, like keeping the Wagners out of bankruptcy court, and Pauline’s abortion ...”

  Garland’s eyes widened. “Aunt Pauline had an abortion? I always thought she couldn’t have children ... or that Uncle Lloyd couldn’t—although knowing him, that’s a possibility I bet nobody would dare mention.”

  “Lord, what a tragedy it was!” Tessa said. “They hadn’t been married very long, and Pauline, knowing how much Lloyd wanted a son to carry on the Wagner tradition— “ She paused to grin. “He claims Jack’s boys aren’t worth feeding to the coyotes.”

  “Yikes! They may be flops as cousins, but I wouldn’t have gone as far as that.”

  “Those were Lloyd’s words, not mine.”

  “Flavored with sour grape juice maybe?”

  “Probably. Of course in my opinion, the Wagner tradition’s not worth much either. Anyway, once Pauline knew she was pregnant, she was so anxious to determine the baby’s sex, that without telling Lloyd, she made an appointment for one of those ultrasound things. She asked me to drive her.”

  “Why you, Mom?”

  “Her own family lived too far away, and I was the only Wagner she trusted not to tell Lloyd. What could I do? She’s an awful wimp— probably couldn’t live with Lloyd if she weren’t—but she has this . . . this little girl sweetness about her.”

  “I know what you mean,” Garland said. “So what happened?”

  “Well, she learned she was carrying a boy, which thrilled her, of course, but the doctor saw something that bothered him. He advised amniocentesis, which confirmed his fear. Seems the fetus had a neural tube defect— spina bifida, they call it. It’s always pretty bad, but she wouldn’t know just how bad until the baby was born.”

  “Oh, Mom!”

  “I drove her back to learn the results. There was this coffee shop, next to the hospital, where I waited for her. I remember I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich— you know, flattened and crispy, the way you can never do it at home?— but before it came she slid opposite me into the booth. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her face was this awful greeny-white. Well! It was plain the news wasn’t good, and by the time my sandwich arrived I’d as soon’ve eaten a cow flop.”

  Tessa sighed. “Some families can accept whatever the good Lord chooses to send their way, but Pauline knew the Wagners, especially Lloyd, couldn’t . . . not in a case like this, anyway.”

  “You and Aunt Pauline have never exactly been buddies, Mom. Didn’t all this sudden togetherness of yours give Uncle Lloyd pause?”

  “Pause?” Tessa gave a bark of laughter. “I can’t imagine anything giving old Lloyd anything as la-di-da as pause, Garland. Besides, it was all over with that same afternoon. Pauline’d been too nervous to eat anything before we left home that day, so they just sort of fit her in. An abortion may be final, but unless you wait too long, it’s not very complicated. On the way home she told me she had her tubes tied, too, even though her chance of conceiving another similarly affected child was only about two to five percent.

  “To me that seemed like a pretty slim chance, but I obviously couldn’t say that to her. Ever since, though, I’ve wondered if she had waited—even a day or two— if she would’ve gone that far . . .”

  Tessa pushed her fingers through her hair. “But, like they say, what was done was done. The hospital wanted to keep her overnight—she looked awful and felt worse—but what choice did we have? I called Lloyd to tell him Pauline wouldn’t be back in time to fix his dinner, which didn’t sit too well. He thought we’d gone to a swap meet, and I guess in a way we had.” Tessa’s smile was bitter. “When we pulled in, I just hustled Pauline upstairs into the back bedroom and told Lloyd something she ate had backfired on her. He spent all the next day looking for strays, and when he came in, she told him she’d lost the baby. I guess he had to get his own dinner that night, too.”

  “Didn’t Uncle Lloyd wonder why she never got pregnant again?”

  “Oh sure, but he never suggested getting medical advice. Pauline told me he finally decided it was one of those female things. Besides, knowing Lloyd, I imagine he wasn’t keen on running the risk of being told he wasn’t as potent as he once was.” Tessa shrugged. “Blaming Pauline was easier.”

  “Poor Aunt Pauline!”

  “The Wagner men aren’t noted for their sensitivity to women’s problems, Garland— in this case, that worked to Pauline’s advantage.”

  Garland leaned forward. “Then why did you— “ Her hands, clenching into fists, pulled at the tablecloth. “Damn it, Mom, you know I loved Daddy, but— “

  “Why did I marry him?” Tessa reached over to smooth out her daughter’s hands. “The Wagners were everything my sober, sensible parents weren’t. My father never thought much of Boyd Wagner as a rancher, but my adolescent eyes saw him as larger-than-life, fearless, even a bit dangerous.” She smiled at her daughter. “Your grandfather was in his mid-forties then, Garland, the prime of his life, a
nd I swear the ground seemed to shake beneath his feet. And the boys! Oh my. Barry was the handsomest, Lloyd the strongest, and Jack the wildest, but all three had something of the others in him. They could have any girl they wanted . . .

  “Which accounts,” she concluded briskly, “for the Wagner look stamped on some of the first babies born to the Cottonwood girls of my generation.”

  “Including Gavin and me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Despite our hazel eyes?”

  Tessa’s mouth thinned. “Yes!”

  Garland grinned. “Like Uncle Jed says about cattle, I guess the Wagner bulls were prepotent.”

  “It’s still family business, not Jed Bradburn’s,” Tessa retorted. “He shouldn’t be talking with you about it.”

  “I asked him, Mom. Besides, Jed’s been more family to Gavin and me than the Wagners ever have.”

  Tessa looked pained. “Oh, Garland . . .”

  “I’m not blaming you, Mom, I just think it’s time we were straight with each other.”

  Tessa leaned towards her daughter and cradled her long fingers in hers. “Then believe me when I tell you that Scott Shelby is not only not your father, he couldn’t have been. He’s just about the most charming man I ever met, with a line strong enough to rope in the wildest range cow, but Hattons keep their promises, even those they wish they’d never made ...”

  Her voice trailed off; her eyes looked beyond Garland, through the window to the mesa looming darkly against the sunset sky. She took a deep breath and met her daughter’s wide hazel eyes. “I never cheated on your daddy, Garland.”

  “That’s what Uncle Jed said, too, Mom.”

  Tessa released Garland’s hands. “My hero!” she sneered.

  “C’mon, Mom. No point in blaming the messenger.”

  But Tessa did.

  Pleading first-day-on-the-job fatigue, Garland went to bed early. Tessa tiptoed to the entrance of the bedroom corridor and waited until the narrow wedge of light under her door was extinguished. Closing the hall door behind her, she strode to the kitchen and dialed Jed’s number.