Colorado High

by Joyce C. Ware

  Tessa took a sip from her mug. She looked at her daughter speculatively. “Ever thought of going brunette? With your sparkly hazel eyes it might be—“

  “Forget it. Mom. Sure, I’m flattered by Scott’s attention, and I appreciate his admiring words even when they’re not entirely sincere. When they are,” she added thoughtfully, “I suspect it’s because when he asks me to do something for him, I get it done on time. You’d be surprised what a rarity that is up there.”

  “Then why not build on it?”

  “Earlier, when you asked me if Scott wasn’t fun to be with?” Tessa nodded. “Well, his idea of fun seems to center on raising the pulse rate of every female he comes in contact with. He’s damn successful at it, too. Take Mona, the Chamber’s festival manager—she gives me my assignments, oversees what I do, and rates my performance.”

  “In other words, your boss.”

  Garland nodded. “She’s brisk, no nonsense, and very professional, right down to the tips of her polished black kid pumps— which look kind of weird up there in hiking-boot country, but Mona’s more a woman of the eighties than the nineties. You know, success-oriented. She must be in her late thirties.”

  “Oh my,” Tessa said. “Practically ready for the boneyard.”

  “The point is,” Garland continued, ignoring her mother’s wry comment, “within days of meeting Mona, Scott reduced her to a simpering schoolgirl. She’s a big woman. Mom. Not fat, but tall and solid. Statuesque. Anyway, Scott would saunter in, settle on the corner of her desk, lean real close, and talk to her in this sort of purring voice, all the while gently stroking her wrist with his fingertips.”

  “The old talking-and-touching routine. Works wonders. I use it with young horses all the time.”

  “Exactly!” Garland said. “I keep expecting him to arrive with a bag of oats and a hackamore. Not that he needs it. He just stares into her eyes, smiling that big sex smile of his— you know how a deer freezes when it’s picked up by car headlights?” Tessa nodded. “Like that. God. It’s embarrassing.”

  Garland rolled her eyes. “And the time it wastes!” she added. “Mona keeps insisting it’s all in the service of festival promotion, except the only festival her fevered mind has room for right now is Scott’s. She might as well be wearing blinders. If she doesn’t pull herself together right quick, she’ll be out on her generously endowed behind.”

  “Hindquarters, dear.”

  “It’s not funny, Mom.”

  “Scott never means any harm. Garland.”

  “Isn’t that what they say about rattlesnakes? So, okay, Friday afternoon, I’m getting my desk in order to leave, and Mona wanders in, dazed, wearing this white, drapy, pleaty thing. Not her style at all. She looked like one of those big puffy summer afternoon clouds, frazzled edges and all.

  “She’d gone to lunch at The Peaks with Scott— a long, obviously wine-lubricated lunch—in the course of which she apparently agreed to a lot of special favors for the Bluegrass Festival he’s sponsoring. Expensive, precedent-setting favors, like an augmented sound system, that she belatedly realized the Chamber’s director will not be at all happy about.

  “She wasn’t complaining or blaming, mind you— she just couldn’t understand how it happened. I didn’t know what to say— I couldn’t very well tell her she was a jerk—so I just smiled sympathetically, and after a moment she just— “ Garland fluttered her fingers— “drifted out.”

  “She’s a grown woman. Garland. If Scott shook her up some . . . who knows? Might do her some good.”

  “I’m not so sure. Face it, Mom: he’s a predator.”

  “He always was, darling . . . although I admit it sounds as if he’s settling for easier game now.”

  “Easy is right,” Garland agreed. “He just swiped Mona in with those soft paws of his”— she growled softly and made a swift cuffing motion— “more or less in passing.”

  “Well, I was too quick for him,” Tessa said, “and you’re a lot smarter than I was. Let him play his little games, but lead him a merry chase. That way you’ll both have fun.”

  “Yeah, but I’m the one taking up the slack at the Chamber as well as acting as Scott’s gofer, hotel liaison, and whatever else he and Mona dream up for me.”

  “Maybe so, Garland, but I hear opportunity knocking in the background. If you play your cards right ...”

  Tessa’s words drifted off. She cocked her head and reached out to touch Garland’s sun-streaked blond hair, so like her own, save for the gray. “How about going redder? Chestnut, or maybe auburn. I don’t think Scott’s done auburn yet. In fact,” she added with a puzzled frown, “after Water Babies, I kinda lost track of what he was doing. He married the Water Babies’ model, but the ex-Mrs. Shelby living in Cottonwood sure isn’t her.”

  “I imagine having twins to raise had something to do with your lack of attention to Scott’s career, Mom.”

  “Yeah, I imagine so.” That and trying to keep Barry from drowning himself in the bottle and the Wagner spread from going bankrupt. Tessa’s smile was crooked. “Double the trouble, huh?”

  “But a little bit of fun, I hope,” Garland said. “Even if not of the Shelby variety.”

  “More than you can know, darling.” Tessa leaned across the table, gripped her daughter’s wrist, and searched her wide-set hazel eyes. “I’ve never regretted for one single minute suffering the way I did to bring my babies into the world.”

  Garland’s eyebrows shot up. “Mom! You never said—”

  “Gotcha!” Tessa exclaimed, laughing. She patted her daughter’s arm, got up, and slid her plate into the dishpan. She peered through the small dusty window above the counter. The sun, which had earlier shone so brightly above the mountains, had dimmed. “As soon as I wash these up, we’d better get going. The way those clouds are moving in, we’ll be lucky to get home in dry weather.”

  Garland looked up from the heavy frypan she was wiping out. “Was it bad, Mom? Gav and me being born? I mean, it’s hard enough having one, but two?”

  Tessa smiled into her daughter’s anxious face. “Piece of cake. You guys popped out like muffins out of a greased tin.”

  “Cake . . . muffins,” Garland repeated as she shelved the clean dishes, “methinks you’re hoping there’s some of that strudel left to have with our lunch, right?”

  “Well, now that you mention it ...”

  “Already packed. Mom. I just have to add the bacon sandwiches.”

  “Sounds as if we’ll be having one of those greasy-sack rides Jed talked about yesterday. You about ready? I just have to roll up my sleeping bag.”

  “I’ve already done that, so yeah, I’m ready, but I sure hate to leave this place.”

  “Me, too. Always have . . . and unless something better comes along, I guess I always will.”

  Garland stared at her. “Something better?”

  Tessa’s smile was shaky. She hadn’t meant to say that; she didn’t even know where it-came from. “Just an expression. Garland. Typical of persons— okay, of women of a certain age. What are they calling it now? Midlife crisis? Forget it.”

  “That’s not the sort of thing I can use the delete tab for, Mom.”

  “I don’t know what that means, but I assume it has something to do with computers.” Garland nodded. “You see?” Tessa complained. “It’s no wonder I’m having a midlife crisis!”

  By the time Tessa secured the gate behind them, closing the calves and the chaperoning cows in for a summer of grazing bliss, the cloud cover had reduced the sun’s shine to a faint glow. Everything seemed grayer: the lush grass, the snow melt, and their spirits. They rode on in silence. When they reached the breaks above the foothills, the high peaks were shrouded by the lowering clouds, and condensation droplets began to drip from their hatbrims.

  The two women took refuge in the last, lowest, stand of aspen to eat their lunch. Remaining in their saddles, they chomped resolutely on bacon sandwiches to whose excess of cholesterol the morning’s ride had added
toughness— or as Tessa quipped, insult to injury. She glumly finished her limp portion of strudel, but Garland distributed most of hers to the Stellar’s jays hip-hopping through the branches above them.

  A steady drizzle slickened the steep descent into the sage-covered foothills. Sunset and Mackerel, their necks extended, picked their way cautiously, almost daintily, along the boulder-strewn trail. Tessa, knowing a faster pace could end in broken bones or worse, vented her frustration via a string of explosive expletives.

  Garland, who tended to keep her discomforts to herself, hunched her shoulders and pulled her hatbrim lower.

  By the time they reached home, they were soaked through. Miguel offered to see to the horses’ well-being, and after gratefully relinquishing their reins to him, they slunk inside.

  “I guess Jed won this round,” Tessa grumped as they trailed into the kitchen. “Leaving when he did, he probably beat the rain home.”

  “I doubt he’d think of it in terms of winning or losing, Mom,” Garland said as she helped her mother off with her boots. “Life is more than a game to Uncle Jed,” she admonished. “You’re confusing him with Scott Shelby.”

  “Huh!” Tessa grunted, upending one of her boots. “Not hardly likely.” Water dribbled out onto the floor. Holding up a pale wrinkled foot tinted blue by the chill, she exclaimed, “Looks like it belongs on a corpse, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s disgusting!” Garland protested.

  “Age is disgusting.”

  “It has nothing to do with age,” Garland said, thrusting out her own foot for comparison.

  “Well, okay,” Tessa granted, “but practically everything else about me does. Sagging boobs and butt and dewlaps— “

  “And morale,” Garland cut in. “You look great, Mom.”

  “Yeah. For my age.”

  Garland gave an exasperated huff. “Of course for your age. What did you expect, to be miraculously exempt?”

  Tessa looked up at her daughter, her expression suddenly sober, almost somber. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I expected. Homecoming Queen. Barrel-racing champ. Daddy’s darling—hell, everybody’s darling. Oh, and the Wild Westerns girl. Mustn’t forget that.”

  “Woman, Mom, not girl. You were thirty, as I remember.”

  “But you can’t remember how it was back then—you weren’t even born yet! I was a girl, Garland. I looked like one, felt like one, and Scott promoted me as one. Wild Westerns woman? Sounds ridiculous!”

  “That’s because you’ve got your eyes fixed on the past. How about the years since? How about the woman renowned as a quarter horse breeder and trainer? Loyal wife? Cherished mother?” The last was offered in a whisper. “Like that slogan says, ‘You’ve come a long way, baby,’ and you’ve still got a third or more of your life ahead of you.”

  “In other words, buck up, old girl, the best is yet to be?” Tessa’s chin came up. “Bullshit.”

  Garland looked pained. “The clock’s ticking, Mom. Denying it just makes you seem, well. . .”

  “Foolish? I know that, but that’s the way it is. I see Scott, still taking the world by storm at sixty— and according to you, still turning women’s heads— “

  “Mom.”

  “Success after success— “

  “Mom!” Tessa blinked and paused. “I’m not so sure those successes have followed one after the other the way you seem to think.”

  “Nonsense. First there was Wild Westerns. When you add in the variations and spin-offs, that ran another good two years after I left the scene. Then Water Babies, another three if you add in the beachwear, which was a terrific success of its own, and then he branched out into menswear— “

  “Which, according to the talk in Telluride, he quietly dumped after a dismal couple of years. Add ‘em up and you’ve got ten years. If you want to be generous, make it twelve. What happened to the other eight?”

  “Well, like Jed said last night, there were all those other things, linens and toiletries, scarves and pocketbooks— I even seem to remember pantyhose with his name on it, though why anyone would care— “

  “Humdrum stuff. Hardly home-runs.”

  “How come you suddenly know so much?”

  “Mona. Before she met Scott she used to talk a lot about stuff like that, and I’m pretty good at listening.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re suggesting I try it for a change?”

  “The thing is, there’s a big gap in the Shelby success story, starting with the first wife. We know who she was— “

  “Yeah, the Water Babies girl . . . sorry, woman.”

  “How about the second? Where did she come from?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Jeannie knows her some . . . so does Jed, come to think of it.”

  “He does?” Garland said. “How come?”

  “She’s living on Scott’s ranch—what used to be his, anyway—and he’s renting the grazing land from her. Actually, he only met her last week. I meant to ask him what his impression was. Jeannie says she’s older than Scott.”

  “Older?” Astonished, Garland shook her head. “I can’t imagine Scott marrying someone older than himself without a damn good reason.”

  Tessa, lost in thought, didn’t respond. “Eight years you said? Subtract one for getting geared up for Wildings, and there’s still seven— “

  “At least seven, Mom.”

  “—unaccounted for.” Tessa got up and hooked her arm through Garland’s. “All those years ... I just assumed ... I mean, I was raising you and Gav and working at getting the horse business on a paying basis, and what with one thing and another”—they both knew that meant Barry’s drinking and the problems related to it— “well, like you said earlier, I guess I just lost track of Scott’s fashion fortunes.”

  “Or lack thereof,” Garland said, as they walked together into the living room. She moved to the big stone fireplace, crouched, and rearranged the partially burned logs. “Got any newspaper, Mom?”

  “Should be some in the cupboard.” Tessa curled herself up in one of the big easy chairs and watched as Garland tucked the newspaper spills under the blackened logs and touched a match to them. The tiny curls of fire twisted from one side to the other, fingering up between the logs, seeking the oxygen needed to sustain them.

  “I suppose,” Tessa murmured, her eyes narrowing as the fledgling flames grew brighter, “it wouldn’t cost me all that much to go up there hat in hand.”

  Garland, who stood bent, her hands extended towards the flaring tongues of fire, turned her head to smile at her mother. “To Scott? For not keeping up your subscription to Vogue?”

  “No, to Jed. For being such a ... a ...”

  “Shit?”

  Tessa winced. “Don’t know as I would have put it quite like that.” She shifted uneasily. “Of course, he might just slam the door in my face ...”

  She sighed. Apologies had never been easy for her. As a child, she would sit hour after hour in her room, denied the companionship of a visiting playmate she had somehow offended, rather than say she was, sorry, even if, deep down, she was.

  But in this case ...

  Her eyes closed. How did that song go? Something about woman being invincible?

  Yeah. She could do it.

  “What’ll you bet me,” she drawled, “that if I mix up a loaf of your grandmother’s famous never-fail pound cake, throw in some extra raisins and a bag of chocolate bits, and announce in a real loud voice I brought a sweet treat for his dad, Jed won’t have any peace till he let’s me in. I swear. Garland, that old coot can smell sugar a mile off!” She flashed her daughter a smugly triumphant look. “If it works for Nell and her damn brownies, it ought to work for me.”

  “That poor old man!” Garland wailed. “I know you treasure that recipe of Grandma’s, but haven’t you ever wondered if you left something out when you copied it? Something crucial? I mean, face it. Your pound cake is dreadful.”

  “Shoot, I know that!” Tessa’s evil chuckle bubbled u
p into a wide grin. “But so is Pop Bradburn.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The old Wagner homestead, reached by crossing the busy highway connecting Cottonwood with Ouray, lay four miles east of Skywalk Ranch at the end of a mile-long access road corrugated by ranch vehicles and the motorcycles that had always been the Wagner boys’ favorite mode of transportation.

  Barry, thanks to numerous DUI citations, had been forced to give up his bike years before his death. In Lloyd’s case, it was a bloody collision—the pal joyriding with him was decapitated—that persuaded him, as Pauline’s pleas never had, to trade in his big Harley against a used, stripped-down, four-by-four. He still had a lead foot on the pedal, but since he drove it more off-road than on, fewer innocent people were at risk. Jack, who required neither alcohol nor buddies to fuel his recklessness, continued to scorch the highways, an accident waiting to happen.

  Jack Wagner disdained the hog bikes so dear to Lloyd and his late brother’s hearts. His sleek black machine of Japanese manufacture had been customized by a Grand Junction shop to Jack’s exacting requirements for big bucks his family could have put to better use. Local guys familiar with such matters pronounced it the sexiest bike in the county—maybe the entire state. Tessa, seeing it parked Tuesday morning in front of the old ranch house where Lloyd and Pauline now lived, knew it as the noisiest.

  Many a tourist’s car had swerved perilously near one or another mountain road’s edge as Jack came snarling out of nowhere, long hair streaming back from his unhelmeted head as he rocketed past. A mean, lean machine, just like his precious bike.

  Tessa slid her pickup in next to it, swirling dust over its immaculate surface. As she tucked her sunglasses back in the case clipped to the windshield visor, she caught a twitch of the kitchen curtain out of the corner of her eye. A moment later, Jack ambled out into the porch. As usual, his bike, even when dust-covered, looked cleaner than he did.

  “Hey there, sister-in-law. Seeing you makes this fine morning we’re having even finer.”

  Tessa closed the truck door behind her. “Jack,” she said curtly. She drew back as he came down the steps towards her.