The Widows of Wichita County

by Jodi Thomas

  She wanted Davis to stand up to Carlo, to protect her, to take her side in the argument. But Carlo was Davis's friend and foreman. She was only his wife.

  She stared out into the night. Her brother would laugh at her if she called and told him the storm frightened her. He probably would not venture the hundred yards from his place near the barn to check on her. Anna thought of Helena, but it was too late to call. She must face the storm alone.

  Then, in the blackness between flashes, she saw it. One lone light to the north. It had been two weeks since the rancher had offered a hug any time she needed it.

  It is ridiculous. Do not think about it, she fretted. Men do not offer hugs to women they do not know, not even in this strange country.

  But the light shone steadily in the ever changing sky.

  It is half a mile across the prairie littered with mesquite bees, she reasoned. Halfway between was one of those barbed wire fences she hated so much. They might be fine for hemming in cattle, but she had seen how it had cut a horse who had accidentally raced into it. Her father never allowed wire to border his fields. But Davis did. He told Carlo to keep the broodmares in the north pasture. They were not so rambunctious and, if the barbs cut one a little, it would not matter. Only the colts were important as far as looks were concerned.

  Anna paced the shadowy room. Long ago she had begun to call it her cage and not her home. The heavy leather furnishings. The architectural blending of iron and beams criss-crossed over her head like bars to a cage. Even the paintings reflected Davis's taste, not hers. Only the classical music drifting around the leather and iron mirrored her taste.

  In the days since the funeral, she had found it more and more difficult to remember any happy memories with Davis. She tried to think of the first time she had seen him at her father's ranch. He had stood almost a head taller than her brothers as he examined one of her father's finest horses. He was strong and silent, just like a hero in an old Western. She had mistaken coldness for shyness. Indifference for strength.

  Thunder rattled the windows as a Texas wind blew across the land, bringing Anna back to the present. Walking to the glass, she pressed her hand against the window where the single light shone from the north. The glass was cold, but she imagined the warmth from the tiny light. Slowly she pulled away, hating her foolishness. She was not a desperate woman hungry for attention. Her life was adequate. She did not need another man to complicate it. Her husband had been dead less than a month. What kind of woman even thought about another man holding her after such a short time?

  What had Zack Larson said in the elevator that day? No questions, no strings. Just a hug.

  Thunder shook the walls again.

  Grabbing her coat, Anna was out the back door before she had time to think anymore.

  She took long strides across the muddy ground until she reached the barbed wire. Carefully she climbed over it at the post, but even her long legs could not quite make the swing. A wire caught on her pants just above her boot, ripping the material.

  Angry now, and frightened, she stormed ahead, almost daring her neighbour to be a liar.

  Reaching the edge of the porch light's circle, she saw him. He sat in a wooden swing on his wide porch watching the storm as if the show had been staged for him.

  Anna quickly took a step backward. He would probable rebuff her for slapping him, or he might laugh at her. Or hr would think he could take liberties.

  She retreated another step. She had been an idiot. Shy knew little about this Zack Larson. Davis said once that he had been a troublemaker in school, but Davis liked few people. And Larson was more than ten years past school.

  Just as she turned to go, he stood. "Anna?"

  Like an animal hearing the first crack of gunfire, she ran. Her long legs carried her across the blackness between the houses. Icy rain pelted her and the wind whipped around her like a huge belt.

  Within minutes, she was home. Her entire body trembled with cold as tears chilled against her cheeks.

  Unable to stop crying, Anna pulled off her clothes and crawled into bed. She shook with sobs and loneliness. For a moment, she had been a fool. She had forgotten she was Anna Montano, widow and owner of a huge ranch. She was no longer a dreamer. There were no arms for her to run to. There never had been.

  In 1905 Frank Phillips drilled for oil on tribal land leased to him, with her grandparents' permission, by an eight-year-old Delaware girl.

  On September 6, they hit a gusher and AAI roared, making Phillips and one little girl rich overnight.

  Yet, Texas and Oklahoma ranchers still considered themselves ranchers and not oilmen, many times refusing to lease oil rights to their land at any price.

  October 29

  North of the Montano Ranch

  On Larson land

  Zack Larson wasted his time trying to sleep. By dawn he felt as though he had personally wrestled the storm and lost. About the time his coffee was ready, Bella had showed up in her broken-down Ford pickup.

  "Morning, kid," Bella grunted as she dragged her aging Hoover through the side door of his kitchen. "You sleep last night with all that racket the Irish were making?"

  Zack grinned and poured a cup of coffee into her old pink mug she kept on his windowsill. Bella had been his mother's housekeeper and friend since before he was born. He might be thirty-four, but she still called him kid. And she still defined thunder as the dearly departed Irish throwing potatoes in heaven.

  When his mother died, Zack kept Bella on even though his place was hardly big enough to demand much care. Folks told him she once had a drinking problem and had no steady job, so he figured she needed the work.

  Regular as clockwork, once a week, she cleaned. Of course, her eyesight was fading and her joints were stiff. Nothing got dusted above her head or below her knees. It didn't matter that he'd bought a new lightweight vacuum; she only trusted her Hoover. She cleaned the old-fashioned way with ammonia and water, vinegar for spots and bleach settling in the sinks long after she left. For days after the spring cleaning, Zack's eyes would water every time he entered the house. Luckily, she only felt the need to spring clean every third year or so.

  He handed her the cup as she made herself comfortable at the tiny dining table crammed into a small kitchen. The yellow linoleum tabletop was covered with Zack's efforts at bookkeeping.

  Bella showed no sign of being in a hurry. After all, she worked by the hour. Zack's house took her all day, no matter what she cleaned or how long they talked.

  "Storm kept me up," he finally answered. "How's the road from town?"

  "A little muddy, but not bad." Bella's chubby finger gripped the mug. "Why?"

  "I thought I'd go in after a few supplies. You need any thing?"

  She shook her head. Hair that had never known a style wiggled around her wrinkled face. "I learned a long time ago, kid, to bring what I need when I come all the way out here. No sense driving into town for something you should have remembered. When I was young, we only went to town once a month and that was plenty. Folks nowadays think the Farm-to-Market Road is the interstate."

  "Now, don't give me a hard time-" Zack fought down a grin "-or I'll get married again on you."

  Bella snorted. "Oh, please, not that."

  Zack remembered the hell his wife had put Bella through. From the moment they married, Bella could do nothing right. The only time his wife stopped complaining about the housekeeper was when she started picking on him. It took Zack only a few months to discover he did everything wrong, then a few more months to decide not to change. By the time he got around to telling his wife the bad news, she was packing.

  He smiled at Bella, the only woman he needed in his life. "You want me to bring back some of that Chinese food for lunch while I'm running my needless errands?"

  Bella acted like she pondered the question. "It's hardly fit to eat." She scratched her chin. "'Course, I'll be mighty busy today. Don't know if I'll have time to stop and eat, much less cook anything."

&
nbsp; Zack cut her brainstorming short before she did any damage. "Extra egg rolls and extra sauce, right?"

  "You talked me into it. But I'll still make you a batch of brownies for dessert. Them Chinese places never have fit desserts."

  He nodded as if they'd struck a bargain. "I'll be back in a few hours, and we'll eat. Then, if the ground's not too wet, I'll work on the fence that borders the Montano spread."

  Bella sipped her coffee slowly. "Sad about the accident. That poor beautiful woman left all alone. She's not stuckup like some folks claim. I go over now and again to help her clean."

  Standing slowly, Bella reached into the canister on the counter and pulled out two cookies from her stash. "Not that her place needs cleaning. You could eat pudding off the floor and not get a flea's-weight of dirt."

  She dipped a cookie into her coffee.

  Zack knew better than to interrupt. He scooted the canister closer to her.

  She munched as she continued, "Her husband would call me and insist I come. She didn't say a word when I'd show up. He'd tell me to clean the place, and she'd just stand there. Then he'd leave, and I'd sweep spotless floors and mop like I was doing some good."

  "Odd," Zack mumbled. He stood and put his cup in the sink. He had no intention of gossiping about Anna. But shutting Bella up once she got started was harder than delaying birthing after a heifer took to ground.

  Bella shook her head. "Not so strange. He was wanna-be rich. Thinking he needed a housekeeper, too proud to consider his wife was one. He'd brag about my work and ignore hers. I felt sorry for her. She's a real lady, better than Davis Montano deserved. And she can paint, too, real good. Pictures that make your heart sad to look at them. In a movie I heard a man once describe a painting that brought out feelings like hers do. He said the artist's tears must have blended with the colors. Her work's like that."

  Zack stared out the window toward Anna Montana'. place. He could imagine her painting. But he also remembered the slap she gave him the last time they met. A slap that should remind him she was not interested in even speaking to him.

  She was a proud, now rich, rancher. He had to fight to keep the loans paid when they came due. She came from Europe, a place he would spend his life only dreaming about. He had never been farther away than Oklahoma City_ Enough people in town remembered the trouble he got into the year his folks died that they probably told Anna Montano she would be better off if she never spoke to her neighbor for the rest of her life.

  He grabbed his hat and nodded toward Bella. "Wash that old quilt on the porch swing, would you?"

  "The one your grandma Larson made?"

  "Yeah, and put it back beside the swing."

  Without waiting for the questions, he headed out, telling himself he was crazy for losing sleep over what he thought he saw standing in the rain last night.

  Three hours later, he stood knee-deep in mud, trying to install a stile over the barbed wire fence between his ranch and Anna's when he sensed her again, just as he had last night.

  Zack looked up. She was riding full-out from the west. Her body moved in long, fluid movements, a part of the horse. Zack watched her as she spotted him and reined her mount.

  He lifted one gloved hand to the brim of his hat and tipped his Stetson slightly in greeting.

  Her only response was to turn and ride away.

  Zack smiled as he tugged off his glove and reached in his pocket for the scrap of material he had found in the very spot where he was now installing a walkover. She might never set foot on his land again. But if she did, she would have a place to get over the fence without ripping her clothes-a place well hidden by thick brush and the roll of the land from anyone who might be watching from the Montana buildings.

  October 31

  Memphis, Tennessee

  Randi Howard paid her money and maneuvered her large purse around the pimple-faced roly-poly teenager taking tickets.

  "Third one to the right," he mumbled as she passed.

  "You're welcome," she answered back, then hurried down the carpeted hallway to the last theater door on the right. She almost laughed at the excitement rushing her blood. This was a big-time theater, not some small local place that smelled of mold and age. She was in the big city now.

  She'd been in Memphis for three days and was batting zero on working on her great plan to become a star. No apartment. No job. Her motel was the right price, but noisy until after midnight. Tonight, being Halloween, there was no telling how long the parties would last. Of all the holidays. Randi hated this one the most. People were frightening and mean enough without getting dressed up.

  She had spent the day rubbing elbows with all kinds of creeps, being nice, putting her best foot forward, and now all she needed was a little downtime.

  Falling into the first plush theater seat she found, she decided life wasn't all bad. This place was dark and cool, and the chair rocked. Here she wouldn't have to worry about being hit on or told to look somewhere else. At one place she had applied they asked if, while she was singing, she would mind taking off her clothes. He didn't see why she was offended. He offered to pay five bucks more an hour.

  She relaxed, breathing in the popcorn-flavored air. This had been a good idea and it even came with a movie.

  She rocked back as the previews started with a volume high enough to push anyone still standing into a seat. The place darkened and music surrounded her.

  Randi tried to let go of the day but she was too sober to stop thinking.

  The bad thing about job hunting in bars, she decided, was going into them in daylight hours. A bar might look great after dark, but in the sunlight most looked seedy. There were no shadows to hide the stains on the welcome mat or the blood splattered in some long-forgotten bar fight. The people found in a bar before dark were also different. A few were just in to drink their lunch, but most looked like they lived around the clock in the smoky air. They were like the strange little bugs and spiders found in caves. They'd lived in the environment so long their skin had become translucent, their eyes blind to light.

  Randi pulled one of the beers from the six-pack she'd stuffed in her huge purse, thinking she wanted to just forget the day and have some fun. She rocked back and forth trying to think of the name of the movie she was about to see. Not that it mattered, she'd be too far gone to remember by halfway through.

  She thought of calling Crystal and checking on Shelby. Or Helena. Both had made her promise to call. The old lady had even insisted on giving Randi a phone card before she left Clifton Creek. "A phone card." Randi laughed out loud.

  "Who do I have to call? Next thing you know she'll he getting me a cell phone for Christmas."

  "Hey, lady!" someone yelled from a few rows back. "You going to talk or watch the movie?"

  "I haven't decided!" Randi yelled back, noticing for thc first time that the movie had started.

  "Well, make up your mind before I call you and tell you to shut up!"

  Randi gulped down a long draw. There was something exciting about arguing with someone in the dark. "How about I come back there and show you what I can do with my phone card?"

  "Come on back and bring your doctor. You'll be needing him."

  Randi twisted around hoping to tell which one of the shad ows was her advisory. All the heads looked the same. "And you bring your mother," she shouted. "Because you'll be crying for her like a little boy."

  "Shut up and watch the movie!" a deep voice declared from somewhere on the left. "I didn't pay money to listen to you two exchange mating calls."

  Several other people joined in, adding their two cents.

  Randi swore and straightened back into her seat. She'd ended up in the middle of a damn choir.

  She finished off the first beer and let the bottle clank its way along the floor to the front.

  "That beer you drinking, calling card lady?" Her original harasser was back.

  "That's me. If you were old enough to drink I'd give you one!"

  "I'm old enough!"


  Randi held up two beers and yelled, "Well, come on down!"

  Ten minutes later she was sitting on the curb in front of the theater she'd just been kicked out of. Her harasser sat beside her offering her Milk Duds while he drank one of her beers.

  "How old are you?" She looked at six foot of mostly arms and legs.

  "Twenty-three," he answered. "How old are you?"

  "The same," she lied. "And in all the years I've been twenty-three I've never been kicked out of a theater for drinking."

  "Sorry about that." He tapped his bottle against hers. "Better luck next time."

  He didn't sound any sorrier than any other man she had ever heard. But Randi forgave him anyway. Holding something against a man was no better than keeping a grudge against a dog. They may wet on your carpet and look real sorry when you yell at them, but that doesn't mean you won't be stepping on another damp spot soon.

  "How about I buy you a plate of the best barbecue in town, lady?"

  Randi smiled. "And I buy the beer, right?"

  "Right," he smiled. She almost expected to see braces on his teeth.

  Two hours later, after they'd eaten and drunk their fill, the kid did her a big favor. He introduced her to his cousin, the owner of a bar, who needed someone to serve drinks. The cousin even agreed to let her sing a little on slow nights.

  Randi returned the favor. She kissed the kid good-night at her car. He might want more, but he was too young. The fantasy of what might have been between them would give him far more pleasure. When he really was twenty-three, he'd think of tonight and wish, and when he was forty-three he'd probably remember the night and laugh. And, if she were lucky, when he was sixty-three, he'd look back and regret missing out on what might have been.

  She returned alone to her hotel room. Most of the noise had stopped. Her brain was too clouded with beer to think She stumbled around the small space pulling off her clothes When she finally landed in bed, Randi grabbed her pilknand screamed into it with pure joy.