Tumbleweed

by Heather Huffman

  “Thank you,” I smiled at Ethan and pulled my phone out to check for service. No dice.

  “Expecting a call?” Ethan wondered.

  “Not really. I just got a complaint from my sister that she couldn't reach me. I guess I don't get cell service on the ranch. I thought I'd see if I had any luck here in town.”

  “If she couldn't reach you, how'd she complain to you?”

  “You won't survive long around my family with logic,” I promised him.

  “Cemetery and airport are about the only places to get good reception around town.”

  “You're kidding.” I stared at him in disbelief.

  “Okay. Sure.”

  We tagged along with Ethan for the rest of his errands. We stopped in at the shoe store where I found a pair of stupidly cute boots I would have given a body part for. Unfortunately the store owner only dealt in cash, check or credit card – no body parts. So, I just bought Aaron a pair of boots because he actually needed them.

  We ambled out of the shoe store, Aaron strutting like a peacock and me walking sideways so he could see that I was properly admiring the sheer coolness of them. Too bad walking sideways isn't entirely conducive to watching where you are going, as evidenced by the fact that I walked smack into Hobbes on the street. His arms instantly wrapped around me, pinning me close when I tried to jump back.

  “Sorry I'm so clumsy.” My words were apologetic but my body language shouted “Let go of me” as I pushed myself forcefully away, resisting the urge to outwardly cringe.

  “Lucky I was here to catch you.” His grin didn't quite reach his eyes. There was something else entirely in them.

  “Yes, lucky.” I shoved more forcefully at him only to find his grip tightened.

  “Hobbes.” Ethan nodded, his voice smooth as silk. The meaning of his hard stare was clear enough for Hobbes to release me with a scowl. I backed away, placing myself between this creature and Aaron.

  Not that I really thought he'd do something to either of us right here on the street, but my instincts didn't seem to agree with the logical part of me at the moment. The whole thing happened pretty quickly, but seemed to drag on forever. Ethan's eyes locked with mine as Hobbes finally moved passed us. He seemed to be making sure I was okay.

  “Did I see a sign for ten-cent ice cream when we passed the drug store?” I asked, my voice intentionally bright.

  “Yep.” His smile set me at ease.

  “Cool,” Aaron declared as we headed to the drug store.

  We both loved the town square – a real live town square. If we hadn't already been in love with our new home, we definitely were after the ice cream. Of course, like somebody from a cell phone commercial, I stopped every few feet to check for coverage. Eventually, reluctantly, sheepishly, I asked Ethan to please take me to the cemetery or to the airport.

  He opted for the cemetery, and I wandered up and down the rows of people who were most likely my deceased ancestors as I checked my phone messages. There was one from my mother, one from my father, one from each brother, a missed call from Ruth and three from Rebecca. I dutifully listened to each of them admonish me to be careful, to take care of Aaron and to call them. I was towards the end of Rebecca's messages when I stumbled across names of headstones I knew. I waved Aaron over to me as I deleted the remainder of the messages without listening to them. I could guess what they would say easily enough.

  “Look. That's your uncle there,” I pointed at the small stone that served as a reminder that before my parents had their big and bustling family, they had suffered great heartbreak. Next to him was my hero. Well, my other hero besides my daddy. It was my mama's daddy, who had taught me so much during the first half of my life. Next to him was my mama's mama. I didn't remember her much but reportedly had her Irish temper and auburn hair. Ruth was the one who had her temper, her hair, and her pretty face. Brat.

  Each marker was a piece of my history, a piece of Aaron's. He seemed unimpressed, and I knew I would have been at his age, too. It was only now that I could almost picture these people, vibrant in their day and in their own way. Living their lives as best they could before passing the baton to the next generation, hoping they'd do a little better job than the last. Ethan followed along quietly, allowing me time to ponder each stone. Despite having a million things to do back home, he acted as if there was no place he'd rather be than walking through the cemetery with us on a sunny day.

  “We should go,” I finally suggested.

  “Don't you want to call your family back?” he offered.

  “Not particularly,” I answered honestly. “I'll come back later.”

  “You can use my home phone tonight if you want,” he offered and I nodded gratefully.

  “Hey, could we take a round-a-bout way home?” I asked. It had been years since I'd spent any time in these parts, and I would be relying on a little girl's memory to guide me, but there was one place I really needed to see.

  We piled back into the truck, and I giggled gleefully when the radio fired to life and the Oak Ridge Boys' “Elvira” came pouring out of the speakers.

  “Oh, turn it up!” I pleaded. This song brought back memories of riding in the back seat, urging Daddy to drive faster over the hills. It was my favorite song ever; I loved the deep bass “oom-bam-pa mow-wows.” That and a chorus of “high-ho Silver and away-a-a” were enough to make me squeal with delight when I was five.

  Ethan chuckled and obliged. Aaron was quick to jump in and sing with me. Ethan seemed skeptical at first, but eventually joined in the concert. He followed my directions as I occasionally stopped singing to tell him to turn right or left. Of course, I never gave him any notice because I'd realize just before we were passing the road that it was one from my memory.

  I nearly didn't recognize the old corner gas station. All my life, they had a German Shepherd dog on their front porch. Puppies turned old and gray and into a new puppy, but there was always a German Shepherd. There was no stately guardian and the doors had long been closed, never to reopen. I sobered briefly, remembering all the trips down to the store to get Grandpa strawberry swirl ice cream when the chemo had made him so sick nothing else seemed worth eating.

  “There,” I called out suddenly. “Pull over here.”

  Ethan parked the car in what could loosely be called a subdivision. This cluster of houses in the middle of farms and woods held little resemblance to the farm of my childhood.

  “Come here,” I pulled Aaron out of the truck with me. “Over there, that was where the main house stood. The dog house was back there. We used to sit on the porch and watch the deer graze in that field. On the other side of the road was the barn. There was a pond. The cattle were kept over there….”

  In my mind's eye these houses melted away and my home was as it had been nearly twenty years before. I could see myself tromping across the fields, left behind by the older kids but content to play with the pack of dogs that were my best friends in the whole wide world. I'd had two calves that I'd raised and turned into pets despite Grandpa's warning not to.

  I could see the spot where I would bury my chicken livers when mama insisted I at least try them before wrinkling my nose. It was near the field where we'd play baseball and tag and a whole slew of other games we never came up with a name for. I'd never forget the day my cousin accidentally knocked his mama unconscious with a baseball bat.

  The stack of hay bales I used to sneak off to play on would have been behind where the old weather-beaten barn had stood. They were all gone now. Replaced by tidy little houses that didn't seem to fit this wild place I had called home. Unbidden tears sprang to my eyes. “This was all ours, as far as you can see in either direction.”

  “Really? How come Grandma and Grandpa never talk about it?” Aaron's eyes were wide.

  “I think it makes them sad they had to sell it,” I shrugged. “They did what they had to for their kids.” I felt a twinge of guilt. Was I hurting Aaron, chasing after my dreams like this? Why couldn't I be as strong
as my parents had been?

  “This is pretty country. It just gets more rugged the further you get into the hills.” Ethan came up behind me. “I can't imagine having to live in the city after this.”

  “No one else seemed to mind, just me.” I smiled at him. “We can go now. Thank you for bringing us here.”

  The ride back seemed a little more subdued. Aaron seemed to be lost in thought, undoubtedly considering this new side of his mother. Ethan was probably thinking about all he hadn't done on this day he'd wasted because of me. Johnny Cash rumbled on about walking the line, and I wandered what it would be like to have someone walk the line because of their great love for me. Sadness tugged at the corner of my heart. Sadness for all the what-ifs that seemed to be bubbling forth thanks to my little saunter down memory lane.

  Back at the ranch, the files had not organized themselves. They were right where I'd left them, waiting for my attention. Not wanting to be alone while his buddy Ethan was checking fences in the westernmost fields, Aaron decided to help me clean my office. He wiped down file cabinets and furniture while I figured out the best system of organization to use.

  Luckily, I had already decided how to answer the phone because it rang off the hook that afternoon. Bill collector after bill collector called wanting to know when they would get the payment that had been promised to them. I finally decided to just ignore it. If I wanted to talk to bill collectors, I'd answer my own phone. Well, if I had cell service and wanted to talk to bill collectors, anyway.

  With Aaron chattering happily, the afternoon passed much more quickly than the morning had, and before I knew it, Sue was standing at my office door looking irritated with me. The thought occurred to me that she would be an attractive woman if she ever stopped scowling. But she didn't, and the result was a slightly pinched look.

  “I've tried and tried to call you. Dinner will be at 7:30 tonight if you and Aaron want to join us.” She made little effort not to openly scowl at me. “We won't always have these dinners, just when Jim is in town. It's late tonight because Ethan isn't in from the fields yet.”

  “Okay,” I nodded seriously. “I'll take a look at the phone, too.”

  “Mom, you totally just lied to her. The phone is fine,” Aaron admonished after we were alone.

  “Yes, but she doesn't know that. Do as I say son, not as I do.”

  I hadn't completed nearly as much as I would have liked, but progress was progress, and it was time to call it a day. Aaron and I stopped by Tumbleweed's turnout pen to say hello on our way back to the cabin to clean up.

  Blue bounded up to greet us in the yard, absurdly pleased with life. We stopped to play with him for a second more before tearing ourselves away. Sue was already irritated with me. No sense making it worse by showing up late for dinner. Besides, maybe I could get answers to some of my questions with Ethan and Jim in one place.

  Turns out getting useful information out of either one of them was like plunging headfirst into an Abbott and Costello routine. I went a little glassy-eyed at one point, envisioning Jim in a bowler hat asking Ethan, “Who's on first?”

  I finally gave up making sense of any of it and decided to just muddle along as best I could. Anything had to be better than what they had been doing. How much money had been lost due to poor management? It almost didn't seem fair; so many people were losing their homes due to no fault of their own and this guy was breezing along without a clue but with enough money to somehow stay afloat. Until now, that is. Guess I should just be glad they needed me now and stop grumbling that there was actually work involved with the job after all.

  Chapter Four

  The first week in our new home flew by and my office slowly started to take shape. We somehow found ourselves tagging along to Ethan's church with him that Sunday, too. The more people came up to welcome us, the more I realized I was related to half the building. I felt a little guilty not knowing the names they rattled off to me as they explained just how our family trees converged. I'd vaguely recognize the surnames from Mama's Bible, but more often than not, the given names were lost on me.

  Week two melted away as I divided my time between implementing a computerized accounting system and getting Aaron ready for school. The stables seemed a little quiet once he'd started school, and I missed him. Ethan always seemed to be off somewhere getting the place ready for fall, which meant no one had taken a look at the hole in my roof. To tell the truth, I forgot about it until the first good rain. That problem was solved by placing a big metal trash can directly under the hole until I got a chance to pick up a couple of pieces of wood from Ava. What I wound up with was a messy patch, but it did the trick.

  Aside from my weekly trips to church and the occasional jaunt to town, I had become quite the recluse. In some ways it was nice. Sometimes it was lonely, though, so when Ethan invited Aaron and me to a “singin'” over in the nearby town of Mansfield, I jumped at the chance. Not that I had any clue what exactly a “singin'” was. Aaron and I were pleasantly surprised that it was a concert of sorts, and the group was really good.

  The music had a bluegrass feel with its own Ozark Mountain twist. I can't say I've ever heard anything quite like it, but we were quickly hooked. I closed my eyes and allowed the rumble of the bassist's voice to roll over me. Even from across the room I could feel it driving the beat on, a steady anchor beneath the tinny swells and ebbs of the lead singers. He was talented, startlingly so. And come to find out, he was my cousin, too. I was beginning to wonder if there was anyone in this town I wasn't related to.

  It was also in those first few weeks that, while sifting through the farm's finances, I learned that despite two years of slight rebounding from poor hay harvests, we'd had another bad harvest this year. Even with my limited knowledge, I wasn't sure how we'd come back from that. We barely had enough hay to cover our current herd, let alone any left over to sell, and forget about bringing on more animals right now.

  Farms all around us were having “herd reduction” sales, and the first time horse buyer could pick up a horse for a song. Of course, so could horse traders and more than one horse with perfect conformation and a mile-long pedigree found its way to the meat market overseas as a result. A lot of horses less fortunate than Mountain View's were looking more than a bit thin lately, like the little red roan appaloosa on Hobbes' place that Aaron and I had taken to sneaking treats to.

  We named her Allie and gave her attention whenever we passed her on our way to or from anywhere. There were times I stood at our pasture watching this year's babies playing and wondering what kind of world they'd been brought in to.

  Of course, whenever I mustered up the gumption to walk over to Ethan's to call my family, I always hung up with the feeling they really couldn't care less. But these animals were important to me. What's more, we were happy here. It seemed I'd finally found somewhere that Aaron and I fit.

  So maybe I wasn't exactly accepted with open arms at the local hangouts, and maybe shopping for the purpose of finding inner peace was out, but I had found something I'd never considered possible for me – contentment. There was so much to do; I was never bored. If for some freakish reason things slowed down in the office, there was always something to fix outside or a horse that needed something.

  As much as there was to be done, there was still time to sit in the swing in the evening, sipping sweet tea and talking to Ethan about the state of the world, politics, religion, or whatever else crossed our minds. I found myself looking forward to our sunset talks almost as much as the morning stroll to the barn. That was a quiet time for just me and my thoughts, and at the end of the walk, Ethan was there to greet me with that easy grin of his.

  The other thing I made time for was leaning against the railing to watch Aaron's horseback riding lesson with Cheyenne.

  “This kid's a natural,” she spoke to me without taking her eyes off of Aaron. “And he works hard, too.”

  “My back is killing me from cleaning horse hooves. I really don't like cleaning the h
ooves,” Aaron interjected with a grimace.

  “It'll make you stronger,” she reassured him.

  “And it'll get easier with time.” I smiled.

  “I'm not sure if I believe you.” He eyed me warily.

  “Where's the trust? Where's the love?” I feigned shock.

  “Put your hands down, but don't hang on the saddle horn,” Cheyenne corrected Aaron. “Your balance should be in your hips, not your hands.”

  “When did you get your start?” I briefly turned my attention from Aaron to Cheyenne.

  “I don't remember a time when I wasn't riding.” She shrugged casually. Her bright copper hair shimmered in the sunlight as she followed Aaron in a circle around the pen, her presence silently driving the horse forward. “This has always been what I wanted to do.”

  “Me too,” I sighed wistfully. “But it was pretty low on my folks' list of priorities. I never had lessons.”

  “Oh, me either. Mama never cared much for horses. I walked to the nearest stables and asked what I could do for them just so they'd let me hang around. Eventually they let me ride, and then cleaning stalls turned into exercising the horses. That just kind of evolved into competing in events and eventually training. When I was 15, they started paying me for the work I was doing, and I squirreled away enough money to buy my first horse.” She smiled prettily at me.

  “That's great,” I muttered feebly, resisting the urge to grimace. Pretty, perky and driven. Maybe for giggles later I'd get her to tell me how she landed a perfect husband first go-round, too.

  Inferior feelings to the next door neighbor aside, there was a rhythm to life on the ranch that fit us easy enough, and before I realized it, the last days of summer had drifted away and we were greeted by the crisp, clean scent of fall. The evenings of catching fire flies were replaced by an explosion of color on the Ozark mountaintops.

  It was over a hot cup of coffee on a cool clear morning when I finally got a chance to talk to Ethan about the direction the ranch was headed.