Drive-By Daddy & Calamity Jo

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  “Congratulations, Mama,” he said, handing the baby to her and grinning from ear to ear. Then, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do, he leaned over Darcy, smoothing her dampened hair back from her forehead as he kissed her there and cupped her cheek with a warm and work-callused hand. With his face close to hers, he said, “You did just fine, Darcy. Just fine. Your little girl looks just like her mama. Real beautiful.”

  Lost in the moment, Darcy covered his hand with hers and then lifted it to kiss his palm. “Thank you.” The sobbing words were all she could get out as her gaze locked with his. She saw his mouth working as he nodded and moved back. Then she turned her complete attention to her daughter. Darcy carefully lifted her baby until the soft, wet head was nestled in the crook of her own neck, and whispered, “My baby. My sweet little girl. I love you.”

  In the next few moments, Darcy’s attention remained riveted on her child. She wiped at her, cleaning and caressing her, looking her over, checking her color and making sure she was breathing okay. She all but forgot her cowboy deliverer as he worked quietly to help her body complete the birthing process.

  Once that was done, he caught her attention as he worked his way up to her head and gently removed the blanket from under her shoulders and wrapped it around her waist and legs. Then, with his shadow casting Darcy in blessed shade and drawing her attention up to him, she saw him reach into the pocket of his jeans and pull out a pocket knife…which he opened. Darcy’s eyes widened.

  “Umbilical cord,” he said. “Got to cut the little filly loose.”

  “Oh, God.” Darcy clutched her tiny daughter tighter.

  The cowboy hunkered down beside Darcy, putting a big, warm and strong hand on her shoulder. “I’ll leave it pretty long, enough to tie it off into a knot. The doctor can clean it up later.” Darcy whimpered. He squeezed her shoulder gently. “It’s okay. I’ve done this before, Darcy.”

  “To calves,” she blurted.

  “Yep. Same principle.” Very matter-of-factly, just like his answer, he opened the knife’s blade and reached into a shirt pocket to pull out a match book. Darcy’s eyes widened even more. “Got them at the hotel. Always pick them up even though I don’t smoke. They’re more of a reminder of all the places I’ve been. Glad I grabbed them, though. I need to sterilize the blade.”

  “Oh, God.”

  His eyebrows rose. “You can trust me. I wouldn’t hurt a fly. Much less a sweet little baby.” His gaze then locked with Darcy’s. “Or her mama.”

  Darcy swallowed, nodded, and looked down, kissing her baby’s head. “It’ll be okay, sweetheart,” she cooed. “We won’t let anything happen to you.” We? Who’s this we, Darcy? She shot a look to the cowboy…and simply took a deep breath, suspending any further thoughts of him.

  Thankfully—to Darcy’s way of thinking—he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he’d set himself to his task, lighting the entire book of matches and running the flame back and forth under the blade. Darcy watched in horrified wonder. He intended to put that flaming-hot knife to her baby. And then she surprised herself with the realization that she trusted him to do so.

  Really, really trusted him. His calm, quiet ways. His slow and sure movements. His very steadiness, like a rock, invited confidence in him. But when the matches were blown out, and the knife readied, when he reached for her daughter, turning the mewling, naked, precious little bundle over, Darcy began some mewling of her own.

  The cowboy met her gaze, his blue eyes steady. “It won’t hurt her. She won’t feel a thing. But maybe you shouldn’t watch.”

  Darcy liked that idea. She turned her head as he talked softly to the baby and performed this last task. “How do you know so much about this,” Darcy asked, “if all you’ve delivered are calves?”

  “I learned it from the Crow. I spent a lot of time with them when I was a boy.”

  Darcy rolled her head until she was looking at his square-jawed and tanned face. Bent over his task, intent on his handiwork, he was smiling at the baby. “The Crow?” she deadpanned, drawing his gaze her way. “I hope you mean the Native Americans, and not the kind that migrate in the winter.”

  “Well,” he said, raising a hand to swipe it under his nose, as if it itched. “The Crow used to migrate in the winter, but not anymore. And I do mean the Native Americans.” A slow grin now warmed his strong, weathered features. “This kind of job isn’t for birds, Darcy.”

  She exhaled. “Imagine my relief. It’s nice to know you’re not crazy.”

  He shrugged, winking at her again. “Depends on who you ask.”

  “Great. Especially since I’m a little vulnerable here. And you have a knife in your hand.”

  His chuckle told her it would all be okay. He closed the knife, and put it down on the truck bed. “All done, Mama.” He gently handed the rooting, mewling baby girl back to Darcy. “We’ve been lucky so far. But we need to get you two into town and pronto.” He made as if to stand up, bunching his muscles and bracing his hands against his bent knees.

  Darcy stopped him with her hand on his chambray shirtsleeve. “Wait.” He did, his eyebrows raised. Darcy looked at the cowboy, at the stranger who’d saved her life—and her baby’s—the stranger with the white hat and the white truck. “Thank you. Really.”

  Grinning, proud, he ducked his head, nodding his you’re-welcome. “Nothing to it, ma’am. Like I said, just glad I could help.”

  Darcy couldn’t believe his humble speech. “Help? You saved us. Literally. I don’t know how to repay you.”

  He put his hand atop hers now and gently squeezed it. His blue-eyed gaze and wide grin warmed her more than the sun above. “No need. It’s payment enough for me to have been here when you needed me.”

  When she needed him. Darcy’s chin trembled, her eyes teared up. He was the only man in her life with the exception of her now-deceased father, who’d ever been there for her when she needed him. “Well, still…thanks.”

  He winked at her, and released her hand as he stood. And became all business. “We need to wrap this baby girl in something before we hit the road.” He began unbuttoning his shirt. “About the only thing I’ve got—” He pulled the shirt off, tossed it to the truck bed, and began tugging his white cotton T-shirt out of his waistband “—is my T-shirt. It’s clean enough, I suppose. Probably only smells like man and sweat and dust and aftershave. What more could you want?”

  What more could I want. He’d meant it to be funny. Darcy knew that. But mesmerized, lost in watching him, and holding her child close in her arms, Darcy swallowed, feeling her growing admiration of him, of his resourcefulness—not his physical presence. His kindness. Not his tanned and muscled chest. She bit at her bottom lip. Not his gorgeous smile or his blue-eyed gaze. No. Not any of those. Or even the whole mixture of them all.

  Because now that she had her daughter, she was through with men. Over them. And some Montana cowboy who’d come upon her in her hour of need wasn’t going to change that.

  2

  “I NEVER SAW the like of that navel knot your cowboy tied yesterday. Must be something they use on a ranch.”

  “I suppose. And he’s not my cowboy, Mother.”

  Darcy watched her mother shrug. “Anyway, your 7-pound, 8-ounce daughter now has an innie navel. Dr. Harkness fixed it nice, didn’t he?”

  From the comfort of her hospital bed, all stitched up and still sore from yesterday’s truck-bed birth, Darcy nodded as she eyed her mother. “Yes, he did. And no, I don’t want to go out with Dr. Harkness.”

  “Well, not now. It’s a little too soon.”

  “No. It’s a little too late, Mother. Not soon. Late.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  Darcy stared at her mother. “Yes, I do. Dr. Harkness is 800 years old, if he’s a day. Why don’t you go out with him?”

  Her mother pursed her lips. “I can’t. I’m saving myself for Brad Pitt.”

  They’d had this conversation before. “Brad Pitt is too young
for you, Mother.”

  Margie Alcott bristled in her chair next to Darcy’s bed. “Well, thanks. I needed that.”

  Darcy sighed. “No offense meant. But admit it, Brad Pitt is even too young for me.”

  “Darcy, the man is in his mid-thirties. About six years older than you.”

  “Well,” Darcy groused, crossing her arms, “he seems younger than me.”

  “Everybody’s younger than you, honey. You’re such a little old lady. Always have been. Anyway, I think you two would make a nice couple.”

  “Who? Brad and me? Or Dr. Harkness and me?”

  A sly look came over her mother’s pleasantly rounded face. “Actually, you and that cowboy.”

  “Here we go.” Darcy threw her hands up, more to dispel her persistent thoughts about her mystery cowboy than to wave away her mother’s words. Still, those she had to challenge. After all, she’d stuck herself firmly in this I-don’t-need-a-man corner for the past nine months. She couldn’t now, because of a chance meeting, admit that she was wrong. Darcy exhaled sharply, signaling her determination to reentrench herself in her own views. “What makes you think I need a man?”

  “Well, that tiny little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes down there in the nursery, for one thing. She needs a father. You know—that nucleus family thing you hear so much about.”

  “Nuclear, Mother.”

  “Is that it? Well, it’s the same thing.”

  “I guess.” Darcy looked down at her hands and picked at a nail. Could she feel more guilty right now? It had taken her by surprise, this feeling of being alone in a way she hadn’t anticipated. Could it be that she wasn’t cut out to be a mother? She shook her head. No. The last thing she needed right now was to doubt herself. She couldn’t, not with another life depending on her to be the adult here.

  “It’s not as if I’m deliberately denying my daughter a father,” Darcy suddenly blurted into the silence that had settled between them. “I’m not trying to make some politically correct feminist statement here. Being a single mother wasn’t exactly in the game plan, remember.” To her distress, Darcy’s chin quivered.

  Her mother reached out, laying a hand on Darcy’s arm. “Oh, baby, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Darcy squeezed her mother’s hand…and felt worse. Now she’d upset her mother too. “I know. God, Mother, the hormones. I’m all over the page with this. One second I’m mad, the next crying. Is this normal?”

  Margie Alcott nodded, her smile returning. “Oh, sure it is, baby. You’re a mess, and you’re fine. It’s all normal.” Her mother squinted, as if in thought…which she promptly shared. “Well, honey, as normal as you’ve ever been. You always have been a little bit different, you know. Special, I like to say.”

  “Thanks,” Darcy replied. It was moments like these that reminded Darcy that the reason her mother knew where all her buttons were and how to push them was because she’d installed them.

  “Now, Darcy, don’t you make that face that says I don’t know what I’m talking about. Because I do.”

  Knowing she and her mother would never agree about Darcy needing a man in her life, she sighed and changed the subject. “Isn’t your little granddaughter the sweetest thing you ever saw?”

  At the mention of the baby, Margie Alcott put her hand to her bosom, and her smile turned beatific. “She’s so beautiful, Darcy. I think she looks a little like that cowboy who brought you in yesterday.”

  Well, that hadn’t worked. Here they were…back to the cowboy. Darcy shifted…painfully…in her bed. “Oh, stop that, Mother. He delivered her. He didn’t father her.”

  “Well, I wish he had. I saw him when he brought you in yesterday, you know. A handsome man, with that white hat and white truck. It’s all just unbelievable, Darcy. And in the newspaper. You can see it for yourself right here. Big headlines. And a nice picture.” She handed Darcy the folded newspaper she brought with her.

  “A picture?” In her mind, Darcy again saw the camera light flashing as she and her baby, wrapped in that Indian blanket, were being carried in by the cowboy whose unbuttoned chambray shirt had bared his chest to her cheek. “Dear God. Was I covered?”

  “Well, I should say so. Look for yourself. It’s right there on page one.”

  “Page one? Great. Slow news day in Buckeye, Arizona?”

  Margie Alcott puffed up sanctimoniously.

  “It was until you decided to deliver your baby out in the desert. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life, Darcy. Why, it’s a wonder your…stuff didn’t get all sunburned, just hanging out there like that. What if someone had come by and seen you?”

  Darcy could only stare at her mother, and fight the heat staining her cheeks. “Someone did come by and see me, Mother.”

  “I know. It’s all there. On page one. Look at it.”

  Against her better judgment, Darcy finally looked. Yep, there she was. On the front page. Atop a gurney and being wheeled into surgery for stitching. The look on her face was probably the same one she’d have if she’d just escaped an alien abduction. But the accompanying picture was of her proud and grinning mother, fresh from the beauty shop, holding her new grand-baby, whose tiny little face was scrunched up in a scream. Darcy flopped the daily paper down. “Lovely. You look great, Mother.”

  Margie patted her silver-gray hair. “You think? Let me see that.” She reached for the paper, and Darcy gave it to her, lovingly watching her mother scan the photo. “Well, I do, don’t I?” Then she began turning pages, perusing them carefully. “But I’m going to get after that Vernon Fredericks. After all, he’s the editor. And there’s not one picture in here of your hero.”

  “My hero? You mean the Lone Ranger?”

  Margie looked up from today’s copy of the Buckeye Bugle. “Is that what you call him? The Lone Ranger?”

  Darcy shrugged, seeing again, in her mind’s eye, the man’s blue eyes and hearing his calm voice. “I have to call him something. In all the excitement, I forgot to ask him his name. And then, once we got here, he just drove off.”

  Margie folded the paper and tossed it on the floor. “Well, who do you think he is?”

  “Just some turned-around cowboy from Montana. At least, that’s what he said.”

  Her mother pulled her chair closer. “I hope you at least thanked the man, honey. He did save your life. And your baby’s.”

  “I know, Mother. And I did thank him.”

  “What’d he say to that?”

  Darcy exhaled her frustration sharply. The woman wanted all the details. “He said it was nothing, as I recall.”

  Her mother sighed romantically. “Cowboys. They’re just the most polite breed of man around.”

  Darcy shrugged. “I suppose.”

  Her mother’s raised eyebrow said she’d detected something in Darcy’s shrug that she didn’t like. “Now, don’t go blaming him for what that stupid old professor of yours did to you.”

  Darcy crossed her arms defensively. “Oh, you mean ask me to marry him, get me pregnant and then run off…for a second honeymoon with his wife?”

  “I told you he was a married man.”

  “You told me nothing of the sort. You didn’t even know him.”

  “I know his big-city kind.”

  “You do not. Buckeye’s the only place you’ve ever lived. And Dad was the only man you’d ever known.”

  Her mother’s chin rose a notch. “That may be. But I read a lot. And I watch those talk shows on TV. I’ve learned a few things.”

  What a sweet, confined little world her mother lived in—one Darcy had hated to intrude on, last Christmas at semester’s end, with her own harsh reality. “I’ll bet you have.”

  “I have. Now I’ve been thinking about something else, too.”

  “Dear God.”

  “Don’t be disrespectful, Darcy Jean Alcott. I’ve been thinking about your cowboy. I think this whole thing—him being there when you needed him—is not just chance or luck. No, he was supposed to be here a
t that time for you. That’s all there is to it. After all, his home state is off the beaten path.”

  Darcy remembered him saying the same thing yesterday. But she wasn’t about to tell her mother that. “Off the beaten path? Like Buckeye, Arizona isn’t? We’re fifty miles southwest of nowhere, Mother.”

  “Hardly. Phoenix is just down the road. I swear, Darcy, you act like you left civilization when you came here from Baltimore. But anyway, what was I talking about?”

  Darcy sighed. It was pointless to fight. “My screwed-up life.”

  “That’s right.” With that, Margie Alcott opened her sack lunch, arranging everything atop Darcy’s bedside tray. She pulled a roast beef sandwich from a plastic bag. Darcy had to grin. It was ten-thirty in the morning. Volunteering was a hungry business.

  “So. What was he doing down here? That cowboy, I mean.”

  Relentless, the woman was. Darcy could only stare at her sweet mother in her pink hospital uniform as she bit into her early lunch. “You mean besides delivering your granddaughter?”

  “I do,” she said, chewing. “I can’t imagine.” She swallowed, grabbed her soda, held it out for Darcy to pop the top, and then slurped from the can. Finally, she pointed at her daughter. “And don’t you ever go off again without that cell phone, you hear me? It scared me to death yesterday when you were brought in. I don’t think I could go through that again.”

  “I think you came through just fine, Mother. After all, you were front-page news.” Darcy didn’t have to be told how the Buckeye Bugle was there to get its headline. Who didn’t know that Barb Fredericks’s son, Vernon, was the editor? The same Barb who weekly played bridge with Darcy’s mother and their two other partners in crime, Jeanette Tomlinson and Freda Smith. The bane of Buckeye. All four of them.