Cowboy Sing Me Home

by Harris, Kim Hunt

  “He already did what he wanted to do,” came his father’s voice over his recliner. “That’s why he has to get married now.”

  “You just keep feeding your face and stay out of this,” Helen yelled. She turned back to Luke, her countenance once again soft.

  “What I really want?” Luke laughed. “Ma –”

  “I mean, do you really want to marry Melinda? Maybe you two could work something out…”

  “She said she would get an abortion if I didn’t marry her.”

  That was what it boiled down to. Either marry Melinda, or stand by silently while the life of his child was ended before it began.

  And that was one thing he could not bring himself to do.

  “Oh.” Helen sat back in her chair and looked at her lap. “Well, I’ve always said it was the woman’s right to choose.”

  “It puts a different spin on it when it’s your blood being chosen, doesn’t it?”

  He and his mother looked at each other for a long moment. Tears welled in her eyes as she said, “Luke, you don’t love her, do you?”

  Luke shook his head slightly.

  “Do you think you can learn to?”

  He chewed his lip. He’d liked Melinda, at one point. Liked her enough to sleep with her, which he didn’t do with every girl he dated, despite his reputation to the contrary. They’d laughed a lot. She could shoot pool, he knew, and she was a good dancer. They’d enjoyed movies together, and even had a fairly interesting discussion about a book they’d both read.

  It seemed like a fairly decent list, for a good date. But for a partner for life?

  Whenever he tried to picture himself coming home to Melinda, night after night, sitting across the dinner table from her, waking up next to her…

  They would be like his parents, he thought with a shock. Eventually, he and Melinda would look at each other across the table, realize they were stuck with a person they had no real affection for, and they would despise each other. Just as his parents did.

  He’d vowed that he would never do that to a child. He’d made the decision long ago that he would not marry, and would not have kids, to make sure he did not repeat the same mistakes his parents had made. They couldn’t stand each other, didn’t belong together, and never had. And here he was, poised on the brink of doing exactly the same thing, and he had no idea how to stop it.

  “I have to,” he said finally. “I have to learn to love her. That’s all there is to it.”

  “And the baby?”

  Luke drew his head back, shocked that she would even ask. “Of course I’ll love my own child.” That one he didn’t have to think about. The one bubble of positive feeling in this entire episode, the bright light he clung to that gave him the slightest hope that everything would be okay, was this baby.

  With that thought came another, a fainter light on the horizon that he focused on. If he loved the baby enough, surely he could nurse that love, and tend it, and make it grow so that it covered the mother and the child. Surely, if he tried hard enough.

  Throughout the previous night and today, thoughts of Dusty surfaced again and again. Every time he had himself convinced, in fact, that he was happy about this impending marriage, Dusty’s face would appear before him, her strong, nimble hands, her throaty voice, her bright head bent over her guitar. And he would wonder how. How could he even tell himself he could be married to Melinda, when she wasn’t Dusty.

  He’d never been a good liar. He couldn’t lie to himself. He didn’t love Melinda. But he wasn’t a child either. He was going to marry Melinda. And he was going to make it work. He was going to keep his mouth shut, do right by Melinda and the baby, because they both deserved the best he had to give.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Ma. Don’t worry.” He stood and bent to hug her where she sat. He cradled her head in his arms and kissed the top of her head. “Everything’s going to be okay. You’re gonna be a grandma.”

  Helen laughed and sniffed back her tears. “About time, too. I’m the only one at Bunco night who still carries a rabbit’s foot for luck instead of grandbaby pictures.”

  “Well, get the camera ready. This is going to be one cute kid.” He patted her as he pulled away. “Tell Dad I’m going to feed the dogs.”

  He tried to get to his parents’ house a couple of times a week to help out with chores and minor repairs. Though Claude insisted he could take care of things himself, Luke knew his knees no longer bent when he told them to, and his back didn’t straighten back like it once had. Claude needed the help, whether he admitted it or not.

  After feeding the dogs, Luke noticed a couple of fence pickets that were leaning in, so he grabbed a hammer and some nails from the tool shed. His dad came out to the porch and watched.

  “Gonna have to get that fence replaced one of these days. It’s gonna cost almost as much as the house did, though.”

  Luke sat on the step by his father’s feet. Even the concrete was hot, and he rested his hands between his knees. The Jubilee started in thirty minutes, but he didn’t really care today if he was late or not.

  His dad sighed and sat beside him. Luke knew he was mad at him, disappointed in him. Luke figured he had a right. Claude probably thought he was passed the age when he had to worry about shotgun weddings. Since he wasn’t exactly pleased with himself, Luke welcomed, in a way, whatever his dad was about to throw at him.

  Luke kept his face forward, but cut his eyes to his dad to study his profile.

  People had always told him he looked just like Claude. Until today, Luke had been unable to see it. His face felt numb and his mind detached as he slowly studied his father’s face and realized he felt as old as the man beside him. It sounded like someone else’s voice, telling Claude now that he and Melinda would be getting married within the month, that there was going to be a baby. His entire life flashed before his eyes, and he had to keep reminding himself that this was him he was talking about, not someone else.

  Claude listened and nodded, in that silent, stoic way of his. “I guess I ought to be offering some kind of fatherly advice right about now. But you’re a grown man. You know what’s what, and have for a long time. I suppose you made this bed, and now it’s time to lie in it.”

  Luke swallowed and nodded. For the past day he’d alternated between feeling sorry for himself, and being ashamed for feeling sorry. He kept telling himself to think about Melinda. She hadn’t planned this, either. He’d promised her that he’d taken all the precautions, and he had. Now she was going through an unplanned pregnancy, but she had accepted it and was ready to deal with it.

  He studied his hands, feeling the sweat on his scalp running down to collect at his collar, and told himself that was all over. The feeling sorry, and ashamed, and putting up any resistance. This was the way things were, and he was going to make the best of it.

  He opened his mouth to ask a question he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to. “Is that what happened with you and Ma? You made your bed, and you had to lie in it?”

  Claude turned to him with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Is that why you got married? She was pregnant?”

  “Don’t you ever say that about your mother again. She was a nice girl.”

  Luke bit his tongue and didn’t point out that even nice girls made mistakes. “Dad, it’s obvious that you two don’t love each other and don’t want to be together. I just want to know why.” He needed to know, he realized. Now, more than ever, he needed to know what had gone wrong between them. He needed to know what to do, or what not to do. “What happened to make you two hate each other so much?”

  “We don’t hate each other.”

  “You argue about everything from the color of the car to how hot it is. You haven’t gotten along as long as I can remember. Something had to happen to cause this kind of rift between you.”

  Another thought occurred to him, and his mind almost shied away from it, but he had to know.

  “Was there someone else? Did you lov
e someone else, but had to marry Ma?”

  Claude stared at him for a long time. Luke had only seen his jaw muscle twitch like that a few times before, and knew his father was as angry as he ever got.

  “I don’t hate your mother. I have never loved anyone the way I love her.”

  “Then what happened?”

  His father stood. “That’s none of your business.” The screen door slammed behind him.

  Luke sat with his elbows on his knees and stared at his hands, feeling the sweat run down his back, the sun on his cheek. His dad was wrong. It was more his business than it was anyone else’s.

  Heaving a great sigh, he stood and left for the Jubilee.

  It didn’t matter, he told himself as he drove back into town from his parents’ farm. Whatever hard and stubborn feelings that lived between them were their problem. He couldn’t do anything about it. He’d learned that a long time ago, when he was a kid and tried to coerce them into being affectionate to each other, the way Toby’s parents were. They were both too bull-headed to make the first move.

  He frowned and adjusted the visor to cut down on the glare from the blacktop. It was so hot the tar looked like a wet, black river. He couldn’t do anything about his parents, but he could do something about himself. He would treat Melinda with respect and kindness. He would never belittle her, call her names, walk away while she was talking to him. He would take whatever kind feeling he had toward her and nurse it, build on it. And eventually, what they had would be good, and real. Dusty would be long gone, relegated to a fond place in his memory.

  He almost had himself convinced. Until he got to the square and heard her voice. His ears instantly picked up on that voice, Dusty’s voice, low and throaty and strong through the noise of the gathering crowd, through the heat, to settle into a place inside him he hadn’t known existed until she touched it. It was a place of home, and destiny, and self. His soul, he thought. She spoke, and it touched his soul with a belonging that was immediate and right, as if she’d been there all along. He knew then that his child would be grown and gone and having a child of its own, and he would still feel this desire to hear that voice again.

  He stood beside his pickup and braced his hand against the bed, the heat of it warming his hand. Though he wasn’t close enough to make out the words she spoke, he listened to the rhythm and tone, remembering the way that same tone had vibrated through him when they’d danced together, and the first time he’d heard her sing, clear and strong and sultry.

  He was late, and hanging back like a coward.

  He made himself walk across the brown grass, nodding to friends and acquaintances. Dusty stopped and cast a look at him, then turned back to talk to Stevie who stared at her, enraptured. Luke heard whispers behind and around him, and felt tension in the crowd rise as he made his way through.

  “Sorry I’m late.” He slipped his guitar strap over his head.

  She just shrugged and went back to her conversation with Stevie, her fingers moving like fine birds as she spoke. She was three feet away, her hair pulled up in a loose ponytail, fine soft strands escaping to lie against the column of her neck.

  Not even a breeze stirred the warm heavy air, and Luke felt suddenly so tired he didn’t know if he was going to make it through the Jubilee and the gig at Tumbleweeds afterward.

  If Dusty felt even a little of the anguish Luke did, she didn’t show it. Her performances at the Jubilee and at Tumbleweeds afterwards were flawless. Several times during the night Luke got caught up in the energy of the moment, watching Dusty with the memory of her touch on his hands, her lips against his.

  Then he looked out into the crowd to see Melinda there, her eyes worshipping him, beaming as people came up to congratulate her on her engagement. And reality crashed back down.

  Either Dusty was a very good actress, he decided, or he was a bigger fool than he thought for believing there was something special between them. She’d accused him of having an enormous ego, and he figured she must be right, because as the night wore on and it became painfully clear he was the only one pining away for this lost relationship, he decided he had to talk to her alone, just one more time, to see if she was as okay as she appeared.

  He was perfectly aware that he was playing with fire. He practically had to force Melinda to leave without him at the end of the night, citing a very real concern for the baby’s health with Melinda staying up late. She kept looking between Luke and Dusty with suspicion in her eyes and it took Luke many reassurances and promises before she finally got in her car and drove away.

  He stalled as the rest of the band packed up and left for the night. Dusty was in the back room, and he could hear her rummaging around. He should leave. He also knew that there would be hell to pay if Melinda found out he had hung around after practice to talk to Dusty. He should leave, now, before she came out of the office.

  But he stayed. He packed up his stuff, set it by the door, and thought about putting some quarters in the jukebox. But he was enjoying the quiet, and in his mind he could still hear her song, “Outside Looking In.” Through the open door, the night had finally cooled off slightly, enough to make it bearable.

  When she came out of Rodney’s office and saw him still standing there, she stopped. She looked at him for a moment, then went about the business of gathering her things. He stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, and watched. He thought about offering to help, but knew she would push him away so he just watched, taking in her long slim legs, the white blonde hair she’d let down from its ponytail, the curve of her cheek and line of her jaw. The green eyes she turned on him, finally, as if ready now to deal with him.

  “You have something you want to say?”

  He had a lot he wanted to say, he realized. But not much he could.

  “I just… I guess I wanted to check and make sure you’re okay. Last night was kind of… ugly, and I didn’t get to talk to you afterward.”

  She cocked her head. “Do you want me to tell you I went home and threw myself on my bed and cried myself to sleep, Cowboy? That I’m heartbroken and don’t know when I’ll ever get over it?”

  He leaned against the door jam. “I wouldn’t believe you if you did. You wouldn’t stand for your heart to be broken.” He twisted his keys in his hand, lined them up neatly in a stack, fanned them out, lined them up again. “I wish things hadn’t turned out like this. I mean – “

  “I know what you mean.” She hefted her case and moved toward the door, toward him. “If she’d just waited a few more days...” She set her jaw and tried to walk past him.

  He put out a hand to stop her. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, ‘if she’d just waited a few more days’?”

  “If she’d stayed away for a few more days, we could have been together. And then you could go on with your life with her. She has impeccable timing, this fiancé of yours.” Her eyes flashed green, her jaw tight as she talked.

  “Is that what you think I’m saying? That I’m upset we didn’t get to have sex last night?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am. But it was more than that. You know it was.” His heart pounded as he took her guitar from her and set it on the floor. “It was going to be more than that.”

  Her eyes stayed steady on his, but she didn’t speak.

  He sighed and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Her voice was soft, and he felt for some reason that he’d betrayed her, broken a promise he hadn’t made. He put his hands on her shoulders, soft but firm, and led her outside.

  “What are we doing?”

  “I want to dance with you.” He had told himself not to touch her, that he couldn’t put his hands on her and then walk away. But his hands were on her now, his arms around her, and she wasn’t pushing him away.

  “This is not a good idea.”

  “This is all I’m going to have of you, Dusty.” He was on the verge of begging, but it didn’t matter. He would worry abo
ut wounded pride later. “This is it. Just let me have this.”

  She stepped close into his arms. “There’s no music.”

  “That’s funny, I can hear music just fine.” He tucked her head to his shoulder, memorizing the feel of her, the weight of her palm against his own, the gentle pressure of her leg against his. He took it all in desperately, storing it up, imprinting it on his mind to take out and savor later. Decades later, when there was enough distance between them that he safely could.

  They swayed together in the dark, their feet scraping against the dirt and gravel as they moved slowly in a small circle. The sky was studded with stars. He held his palm flat against her back, the warmth of her skin penetrating through her thin shirt. He felt the solid bone of her spine, the steady thud of her heart, the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. He pulled his head back and looked down at her. Her eyes were closed, and when they rotated into the light from the open door he saw a faint sheen of moisture on her forehead, her upper lip. He’d never seen anything as fine and delicate as the curve of her lashes, the bridge of her nose, the soft bow of her lips.

  Luke’s hand slid up from the small of her back, over her shoulder, and cupped her jaw. He could feel her heartbeat in his fingertips at her neck. Gently he pushed her jaw up and lowered his head to hers.

  He felt her breath on his lips, and she jerked away, stepping back out of his embrace. She glared at him. “I don’t kiss married men.”

  He didn’t point out that he wasn’t married yet, because he knew how ridiculous it sounded. Instead, he took her hands and gave voice to an impossible plan as soon as it popped into his mind.

  “Let’s run away.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s hook up your trailer and hit the road. Just you and me. Forget about Rain Fest, and Aloma, and everything else. Just leave. Tonight.”

  She was thinking about it. He could see the thoughts flicker across her face, and his heart leapt at the idea. To just chuck everything, and follow his heart. To be free, and happy. To just be with Dusty.

  Just as he could see her consider the idea, he saw when she discarded it, too.