Kendall walked over. “Are you ready to go?” he asked softly.
JoAnn nodded. “Yes, let’s go.”
As they walked the short distance back to their cabin, Kendall asked, “What was your friend looking so upset about? What’s her name anyway?”
“That was Rose. She’s just dealing with some troubles. No big deal.” JoAnn didn’t feel comfortable talking about her friend’s problem with her husband. What if he told Elijah what she’d said? No, it was better left between her and Rose.
Kendall looked at her strangely, but didn’t ask again. “What are you fixing for lunch?”
JoAnn sighed. “I never realized what a burden my family was on the cook back home. We all expected to eat three times a day just like you do. Why do people think they need to eat three times a day? Why isn’t once enough?”
He wondered if she really expected him to answer that. “Umm…”
She went straight to the ice box and pulled out leftovers from the previous night. “We’re having cold sandwiches, and that’s that. I won’t try to make a gravy for them, because I’m sure you won’t eat it anyway.” She looked at him. “Any objections?”
He shook his head, realizing there was no other wise course of action. There was no way he was going to make her happy unless he just agreed with her at the moment. She wasn’t going to cook anything else anyway. He walked into the bedroom and changed. She’d never seen him in anything other than his Mountie uniform, which he wore even to church, so it would be a change.
When he went back out into the main room, he was wearing casual slacks and a blue button-up shirt. “Do you want to go on a picnic?”
JoAnn nodded, grabbing a basket from the work table. She wrapped the sandwiches in paper and then put them into the basket, adding some extra bread and a jar full of water. “I’m ready.”
He looked at the basket, not saying a word. Jess would have included a dessert…but he wasn’t married to Jess. And Jess had a tin ear. He’d realized that when she’d first arrived. He didn’t know if he wanted to be married to a woman who couldn’t sing, but that didn’t matter anyway. His wife had a lovely voice. Why he still had Jess in his head as the perfect wife, he didn’t know. Maybe because she cooked so well. That must be it.
“How long have you known Jess?” Kendall was thrilled to have found a safe subject that wouldn’t make her angry. If they had many more fights during meals like they’d had the previous night, he was sure he’d have indigestion.
“We met our first day of school. There were three of us who were always together. Jess, Lisa, and me.”
“What’s Lisa like?” he asked. He hadn’t heard Lisa mentioned before, but he hadn’t spent any time at all alone with Jess.
“She’s really sweet. Jess and I started working after we finished our schooling, but Lisa couldn’t. Her arm doesn’t work right, and she limps, so she does a lot of charity work. She loves animals, and she has this tiny little dog named Sophie that she talks about all the time, and she takes everywhere with her. She even took her to church one day!”
“Oh, wow. Your pastor allowed that?”
JoAnn shrugged. “It was a big church, and Sophie was in a picnic basket. Only Jess and I knew, and we giggled and giggled.”
“So Miss Hazel wasn’t kidding when she said Theodore and I need to keep our eyes on you two.”
“I think we’ve outgrown that kind of thing.” JoAnn didn’t mention that it had happened less than six months ago. Now that she was an old married woman, it felt juvenile to have found it so funny.
“That’s too bad. It’s always funny to see an animal get loose in church.”
JoAnn laughed. “Jess and I kept thinking it was going to happen. We’d see the lid of the basket move a little, and we’d both start laughing again. It was a good thing I wasn’t singing that day, because I’d have never made it through a song. My mother took me to task that afternoon. She was not pleased with my behavior.”
“Well, I think she should have been. Sounds like you were using one of the qualities God gave you in abundance.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Humor!” Kendall grinned at her as he stopped beside a bench in front of the small lake at the edge of town. “Do you want to eat here? I think this is a beautiful spot for a picnic.”
She nodded, sitting down and arranging her skirts around her. She put the picnic basket beside her on the bench and opened it, handing him his sandwich. “We’re going to have to share the water. I didn’t think to bring two jars or glasses.”
He shrugged. “We’re married. I don’t think it’ll hurt anything if we share a drinking glass.”
Once they were eating, she looked out across the lake. “There’s that silly moose again. He got all tangled up in our laundry yesterday.”
“He’s been causing some trouble in town. I want you to stay away from him.”
“But why? Jess said he just seems to get into mischief, but he isn’t dangerous.”
Kendall shook his head. “Don’t you go thinking you’re going to make a pet out of that silly moose.”
“Why? I was going to name him Mickey Moose. Don’t you like that name?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Mickey Moose sounds stupid. Why does he need a name? He’s not a pet!”
She shrugged. “He’s around so much that I think he should have one.”
“If you see him without me around, I want you to go straight inside and shut the door. A moose can kill you very easily.”
“Mickey would never kill me!”
Kendall didn’t think that statement deserved an answer. “I want to teach you to shoot.”
“Why? I’d never shoot anyone or anything. You’re not suggesting I shoot Mickey, are you?”
“Stop calling him that. He’s a wild animal. Wild animals do not need names. But yes, I would like you to know how to shoot so that you could kill him if he was threatening you. Or what if a bear came after you?”
“A bear? Are there bears around here?”
“You’re living at the edge of the wilderness in Canada. I’d say it is the wilderness, but the town is here, so it’s not really the wilderness…but yes, there are bears here. Why would you think there wouldn’t be?”
She shrugged. “I guess I didn’t think bears went into towns very much.”
“They don’t, but this is mostly in the country, not the town. There are bears. I promise. You need to be able to shoot to protect yourself. Unless you already know how to shoot?”
She laughed. “Sorry, learning to shoot bears or meese or moosi or any other wild thing was not part of my drawing room education. I’m so sorry about that.”
“I guess it wouldn’t have been. What’s a meese or a moosi?”
“I like those words better for the plural for moose. It doesn’t really feel like it should be the same word for singular and plural, does it?”
“Yes, it does. Moose is the plural and the singular. Not meese.”
She made a face. “You’re a real spoilsport sometimes, Kendall.”
He shook his head at her. “I’m really not. I am serious about my work and keeping my wife safe, though, so we’re going to have those shooting lessons. Do you want to start after our picnic?”
“I thought I was going to teach you to read music after our picnic. What happened to that?”
“I can learn to read music after dark. You can’t learn to shoot after dark. We have a little shooting range made up out in the woods. I’ll show you.”
“What if a bear or a moose stumble on you while you’re practicing? Do you shoot him for being in his own territory while you’re out there playing with your gun?” she asked. She knew she was being difficult, but she really couldn’t see herself shooting any of God’s creatures.
He frowned at her. “If an animal threatens me, yes I shoot it.”
She swatted at a mosquito on her hand. “You’re welcome to shoot the mosquitoes, but not the moosi. I like them.”
He chose n
ot to correct her word choice again. If she had to call them meese or moosi, it wouldn’t hurt him any. She would be the one looking silly, not him. “Mosquitoes are a little too small to shoot.”
“If I run into a bear, may I name him Bob? Bob Bear sounds really nice.”
He groaned. “You want to name the moose Mickey, and a bear Bob. You like alliteration or something?”
“I love it. I think that any time two words are together, they should start with the same sound. Don’t you?”
“Not particularly. I guess I can live with it though. Just promise me you won’t name our first son James Joshua Jameson, though.”
“Oh, of course not. He’d be Joshua James. Has a better ring to it, don’t you think?”
Shaking his head, Kendall got to his feet. “Let’s head back. I want to grab my other gun, and I’ll show you how to shoot.”
“Your other gun? Are you saying you brought a gun on a picnic with your new bride?” JoAnn frowned up at him.
He held a hand down to help her up. “I always have a gun on me. It’s my duty to keep you and the citizens of British Columbia safe. I’m always on the job and prepared. It’s part of being a Mountie.”
“And you obviously take your job very seriously,” she said. As they walked back to town, hand-in-hand, she sang a little song. “So shooting and then music? I do want you to learn to read music. We’ll be able to do so much more with our music that way.”
He nodded. “All right. We can do that.” He still didn’t feel comfortable letting her teach him anything, but he wasn’t going to tell her that again. She’d made it very clear the night before that she didn’t like him saying so.
JoAnn didn’t like her first shooting lesson. The gun hurt her hand when it jerked back. “Just let the bears eat me. Evelyn made it really clear that she could handle a bear bare-handed anyway. Get it? Bare-handed?” She laughed at her joke while Kendall glared at her.
“Are you finished joking around? This is serious. You need to be able to protect yourself.” He reloaded the gun. “Now, watch me this time. You have to use the sights to line up your shot.” He glanced over and saw her still giggling at her own joke. “Will you please pay attention?”
“I’m trying. I just forget how funny I am sometimes.”
Kendall demonstrated the perfect shot one more time before handing her the gun. “Now you try it.”
“My hand is going to hurt so much, it’s going to be hard to play my instruments. I don’t know how you do it.”
“I’m used to it, because I’ve practiced. Remember how much your fingers hurt when you first learned to play the guitar? Now they probably don’t hurt at all. That’s because you’ve practiced and gotten used to it. You need to do the same with your gun.”
“I can’t. I don’t have a gun.”
“Now you’re just being difficult.” Kendall sighed. “Shoot the rest of the bullets in the gun, and then you can be done for the day. We’ll walk back to town and you can teach me to read music.”
“You’re going to love the freedom that reading music gives you.” She turned to talk to him, the gun swinging around toward him.
He caught her wrist, and carefully pointed the gun down. “Don’t ever point a gun at someone unless you plan to shoot them. So don’t ever point your gun at your husband!”
“I have a feeling that in the years to come, you’ll be the person I want to shoot more than any other. Don’t you think?”
Kendall shook his head with a sigh. “You’re going to be nothing but trouble to me, aren’t you?”
She grinned, turning back toward the target and taking careful aim. She emptied the gun, hitting the target with two out of the five bullets. “I did it! I did it! Did you see that?”
He nodded, pleased with her enthusiasm. “You hit the outside of the target, so it would be like shooting a bear in the arm instead of in the gut, but you did it.”
“So now we never have to practice again because I did it, right?”
Kendall shook his head at her. “Every weekend until I’m sure you could kill a bear before he got to you.”
“How many weekends will that be?”
Probably the rest of our marriage. “I’m not sure. We’ll see how you do!”
“You don’t think I’ll ever get good, do you?” JoAnn asked him skeptically.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. You might!”
She glared at him, but gave him the empty gun and watched him carefully check to make sure there were no bullets left before putting it into his holster. “Now for music lessons!” She couldn’t believe how excited she was to share her love of music with someone else who obviously loved it as much as she did. “I’m going to teach you the treble clef first. That’s what you need for the guitar. But I’m going to teach you the bass clef as well, because you’ll need that for singing.”
“Why would I ever need music for singing? I hear it once, and I can sing it.”
“Because you need to be able to see it when you look at it and hit all the right notes.” She held his arm and spoke enthusiastically as they walked back toward town. “I promise, you’ll love it!”
“Whatever you say.”
6
When JoAnn first pulled out some of the sheet music she’d brought with her, Kendall blanched at just the sight of it. He took a deep breath and took the page from her, looking at it. To him it just looked like strange lines. “My dad is the best musician I know. He spent a long time trying to learn to read music, and he couldn’t ever figure it out.”
JoAnn frowned. “It’s really not that difficult. Did he have a teacher?”
“He did.” Kendall shook his head. “I think maybe because my dad couldn’t do it, I have in my head that it’s too difficult for me.”
“Well, it’s not. You’re an intelligent man.”
“Are you saying my dad wasn’t?” he asked, not sure if he should feel complimented or offended.
“No, of course not. Some people are better in life than they are on paper, though. One of my most intelligent students, who memorized every single lesson and could do arithmetic like nothing I’ve ever seen, didn’t have the ability to learn to read. He would stand up and recite the reading from the night before by memory, because his mother had read it to him.”
“That’s strange. I never saw my father read. Mom would read him the paper every morning before he went off for the factory.”
“What my student told me was the words danced on the page. I don’t know if your father had the same problem. Did he have the opportunity to go to school when he was young?”
Kendall shrugged. “He never talked to me about his schooling. I know he was the youngest of ten children, and he helped with the family farm. I don’t know if he helped because schooling wasn’t a possibility, because they needed him on the farm, or because he just couldn’t learn.”
“I’m not sure, but I do know you have the ability to learn this. You read, don’t you?” she asked. She was sure he did, but she asked just in case.
“Yes, I’ve been reading since I was a small boy. My father insisted all of his children knew how to read young. Mother would sit and work with us, and then when we went to school, we were ahead of the others.”
“Then let’s get started. I know you can learn this.” She taught him the secrets she knew to learning the lines and spaces on the treble clef, explaining how to use FACE and ‘Every good boy does fine.’ By the end of the evening, he could play some tunes just using the notes in front of him.
“That was wonderful!” she praised after he’d played ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’ “You’re a very fast learner.”
“But you’re having me play baby songs I already know.”
“In a different key, though, so it’s not the same.” She put the music down for the night. “Now we should just play something we enjoy singing together.”
“Maybe we should talk a little. Get to know each other better.” Kendall felt like he knew her musically, but as a wif
e, she was still a virtual stranger.
“We could. I’m pretty boring without my music, though.”
Kendall shook his head. “I have a very hard time believing that.”
“You do?” JoAnn was surprised. Most people accepted her words at face value when she said she was boring, because it was true. She loved to sing and play, but all of her spare time was taken up practicing.
“What do you do for fun?”
She shrugged. “I play my violin, guitar, or piano. I sing.”
“You were friends with Jess and…what was the other girl’s name? Lisa? What did the three of you do together?”
JoAnn’s face softened into a smile. “We spent a lot of time talking. We jump-roped some, but Lisa had trouble with lots of physical things. Sometimes we played games where we had to think. We loved to play charades together.”
“See? You did things that weren’t musical then. What game was your favorite?”
“You won’t laugh?”
“Of course not. Why would I laugh?” Kendall wasn’t sure what she was going to tell him, but he knew he’d never laugh whatever it was.
“I like to play chess. I’m really good at it.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “It was my father’s favorite game, and he started teaching me about the time I started my piano lessons...so when I was about three or so. I haven’t lost a game in a whole lot of years.” She’d gotten so good she could beat her father and both of her brothers.
“Did you bring a set with you?” he asked.
“I did. Do you play?”
“My father taught me as well. I’ve never beaten him.”
“We’ll have to play!” She ran for her trunk that had been pushed off to one side in the main room, knelt in front of it, and rummaged through her things. When she found the small travel chess board, she pulled it out and carried it to the table. “We can play chess and still talk. It’s not like music.”
He grinned, sitting across the table from her. “Let’s play.”
They played for the rest of the day, only taking a short break so JoAnn could make a quick meal of bacon and pancakes. They were fairly evenly matched. She won five games, and he won four.
RNWMP: Kendall (Mail Order Mounties Book 1) Page 5