One From The Heart

by Richards, Cinda

  “I think she’ll be asleep in a minute. She’s pretty worn out,” he answered, his eyes trying to hold hers. “What happened?”

  “She … spilled her oatmeal.” Hannah looked away and kept wiping the table. “It was all downhill from there.”

  “I should have told her I was leaving. What did you tell her?”

  “I told her the truth. I told her you wouldn’t be here today and that I didn’t know where you were.”

  “I was standing by a damn pay telephone trying not to call you, that’s where I was,” he said testily.

  “Look! You didn’t have to come back here. We would have been all right—and what are you mad at me for? I haven’t done anything!”

  “Oh, no? You’ve just upset my whole damn life, that’s all!”

  “I beg your pardon!” Hannah said indignantly.

  “You heard me! But neither one of us has got the time to worry about that now. I called my aunt Mim in Tahlequah right after I talked to you. She wants you to bring Petey to her as soon as you can. Today—”

  “I can’t do that,” Hannah interrupted. “I have to work, and Lord knows we don’t want me to upset your life anymore.”

  “You have to take her,” he said stubbornly. “Mim’s heard from Libby.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “WHERE IS SHE?”

  “Mim doesn’t know.”

  “She doesn’t know! Then why am I supposed to take Petey to her?” Hannah said, whispering so that Petey wouldn’t hear them. But the trouble with whispering was that Ernie had to come closer to hear her.

  Maybe he really had been standing by a pay telephone, she thought as she looked up at him. He looked so tired. She could see the fatigue in his eyes, and she suppressed the urge to touch him, trying hard not to look away. The morning had been awful, and the rest of the day was showing no signs of improvement. Lord, she wanted him to put his arms around her!

  “This is Libby we’re talking about here, Hannah, not a Greyhound bus. She wouldn’t keep a schedule—even if she did happen to make one. All she told Mim was that she’d be there sometime tomorrow. With Libby, that could mean any time—night or day.”

  “What did Elizabeth say about Petey?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing! I’m supposed to take Petey there when Elizabeth obviously still doesn’t want her?”

  “Hannah, look. Neither one of us knows what’s going on, and we’re not about to find out until we talk to Libby. You don’t have anybody to leave Petey with, so we’re going to have to take her along.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we. You and me.”

  “You’re not coming with me,” Hannah said stubbornly. And she meant it. How could she go to Oklahoma with him and not make a bigger fool of herself than she already had? And what was the matter with him anyway? They couldn’t be together and not get into trouble—his words.

  “Have you ever been to Tahlequah?”

  “No, but I can read a map like nobody’s business. I had to all those years I traveled around with my mother.”

  “Maybe so. But you don’t know all the shortcuts I know. We want to get mere ahead of Libby, in case she won’t wait. Now, you know she’s as apt to go as she is to stay and wait for us, Petey or no Petey.”

  Hannah pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. She had no argument for that. None. She took a deep breath and tried to think.

  “Hannah, I want to go with you. I don’t want to worry about you and Petey on the road alone when you don’t know where you’re going.”

  She looked up at him, losing herself for a moment in his sad, dark eyes. If he’d put it any other way—made it a demand instead of a statement of fact—she would have dug her heels in. Damn it all, she cared about him. She didn’t want to worry him. She didn’t want his life to be turned upside down, even if he did insist she was the cause of it. In her opinion, it was six of one and half a dozen of the other as to just whose life had been upset by whom. “All right,” she said, because she needed him and she needed to give in to his logic. She tried not to think that the real reason he wanted to go had to be Elizabeth.

  He looked so relieved that she nearly put her hand out to touch him, after all.

  “Do you chew tobacco?” she asked abruptly instead, and he grinned.

  “Hannah, you’ve been with me night and day for almost ten days. Have you seen me chew?”

  “Answer the question!”

  “What for!”

  “Because I’m not traveling anywhere with somebody who’s going to be spitting tobacco juice!”

  “I tell you one thing, Hannah, between my dumb reasons and your dumb questions, it’s a wonder either one of us gets let out by ourselves.”

  “Do you or don’t you?”

  “Not when I’m sober! I have to be drunk to stand the taste of it. All right?”

  “All right!”

  “All right!” he repeated.

  “Just so you know,” she said to underscore her position.

  “Just so I know?” he said incredulously. “You give me hell about not chewing tobacco when I don’t chew, and I’m supposed to know?”

  “It makes as much sense as anything else that’s happened around here lately,” she said significantly.

  “Well, now, you got me there, Hannah. You going to work?”

  “No, I’m not going to work. Petey’s had enough of musical caretakers for one day.”

  The remark was unfair, and she knew it. Petey wasn’t his responsibility, even if he had been willing to stay in Dallas and help take care of her until last night. Ernie made no comment, though it was plain enough by the way he pressed his lips together that he wanted to.

  “How soon can you be ready?” he said after a long pause.

  “I have to stop at the station before I go.”

  “We can do that on the way. I’ll be back in about an hour,” he said, and he left her alone in the kitchen, still wiping up imaginary oatmeal.

  Petey had fallen asleep. Hannah used the time to pack a few things for this mad trip to Oklahoma, making a great effort not to concern herself about Ernie’s whereabouts—not an easy thing to do when he had two telephone calls from the same strange-voiced female while he was gone, one who wouldn’t leave a message. It was early afternoon and raining when he returned. He’d changed his clothes, and he’d had a haircut, of all things. He was still wearing his cowboy garb—jeans and a plaid shirt and a denim jacket. But he looked so groomed somehow. And masculine. And handsome. Hannah didn’t comment, but she couldn’t keep her eyes off him, and he kept catching her at it.

  “Fifteen bucks!” he finally snapped, snatching off his hat and pointing to his freshly barbered hair. “Okay?”

  “And worth every penny,” she assured him, whether she should have or not. “You’re gorgeous.”

  He grinned, a little embarrassed, a little shy, and clearly pleased.

  “Elizabeth will love it,” she added, and his grin faded.

  Petey let her face be washed, and Hannah told Ernie about his telephone calls. He made no comment, and they were ready to leave by two. It was still raining. Ernie and Petey waited in Ernie’s beat-up, no-color pickup truck in the KHRB parking lot while she went inside. She dreaded having to see the station manager, dreaded having to ask him for more time off, but there was no help for it. She fully expected to come out of his office unemployed.

  “What happened?” Ernie asked the minute she returned, hardly giving her time to get in out of the rain and close the truck door.

  “What happened?” Petey echoed, and Hannah smiled, letting out the breath she’d been holding practically from the time she’d gone in.

  “He let me have the rest of the week—until next Monday. He’s even going to take over my reading class,” she said, still in a daze. “Those two furniture outlet scripts I just did—the man bought them.” She looked at Ernie and grinned. “Lord, I feel like the weight of the world’s been lifted—till next Monday, anyway.”
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  “You look like it, too. Nice to see that smile again.” He stared into her eyes until they both grew awkward, then started the truck and headed for Garland and Route 75 north. He’d insisted on driving, recuperating knee or not, and Hannah settled back, her mind wandering as she half-listened to Petey happily chattering to Cowpoke and the rhythmic, hypnotic sound of the windshield wipers. Her spirits rose, in spite of the weather and the reason for the trip, and in spite of a sudden attack of nostalgia. When her mother was alive, a spur-of-the-moment excursion like this had been one of her favorite things, and she’d continued her travels long after other women her age had settled down in a rocking chair by a quiet hearth.

  “What are you thinking about?” Ernie said, breaking into her reverie.

  “Oh—Little Girl Hannah, I guess. And Grandmama Browne. She loved a trip like this. She liked to just hop in the car and go. When I was ten, we were living in Greenville, South Carolina. I came home from school one Friday, and she said, ‘Have you ever seen the mighty Mississippi, Hannah Rose?’ She knew perfectly well I hadn’t or, if I had, I didn’t remember it. The next thing I knew, I was in a blue and white ’fifty-three Chevrolet Bel Air coupe with a toothbrush and a change of underwear, and heading west. She liked to stop at these little community stores in the middle of nowhere—those places where they slice up their own meat and cheese. She’d buy a loaf a bread and a half-pound of bologna, and we’d pull off the road someplace and make sandwiches. It was wonderful. She worked as a waitress most of the time—really long hours. She couldn’t be a grade mother or a den mother, but she drove a whole weekend just so I could spit in the Mississippi River.” She glanced at Ernie, then let her eyes linger because at that moment he was watching the road.

  I love to look at him, she thought crazily, the thought presenting itself even though she knew perfectly well she couldn’t afford to indulge in that kind of wistfulness.

  He glanced at her. “Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Have you seen Rick what’s-his-name since Petey’s been staying with you?”

  “Archer,” she supplied, wondering where that question came from. “No. Why?”

  “Talked to him?”

  “No. Why?” she said again.

  “I was just wondering.”

  They were on the road nearly an hour before he asked what was really on his mind, driving in a heavy downpour on the nearly desolate stretch of road outside Sherman.

  “Hannah, how … involved were you with Archer?”

  “None of your business,” Hannah said quietly, because it wasn’t and because she didn’t want to answer him.

  He was about to say something else, but she looked at him hard over Petey’s head.

  “Okay, fine,” he said a little shortly. “Then you can tell me why you didn’t get married to that guy you were supposed to marry—the one before Rick what’s-his-name. Libby told me one time her baby sister was getting married. Why didn’t you?”

  “Don’t you think you’re getting a little personal here?”

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet, Hannah Rose,” he advised her, looking at her long enough to make her worry about his driving. “And I told you before: I don’t waste time working up to something.”

  “Will you look where you’re going!”

  “I am looking where I’m going. Why didn’t you marry him? You find out you didn’t care anything about him or what?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  “What was his name—Williamson?”

  She looked at him for a long moment. Elizabeth had told him more about her than he’d ever said. “Yes,” she said finally. “Williamson. Nathan Williamson.”

  “Libby said he broke your heart. Did he?”

  “Yes, Ernie, he broke my heart. We wanted different things. I had a career. He wanted a housewife. I loved him; he loved me, but somehow we missed knowing that about each other until it was nearly time for the wedding. He couldn’t believe I wouldn’t give up my job and be just Mrs. Williamson, the mother of his children. I couldn’t believe he’d ask me to do it. I thought we could work it out—compromise. I thought that right up until the time he married somebody else. Okay?”

  “That’s why you got so caught up in your job at the big station downtown,” he said perceptively.

  “That’s why,” she agreed. “It was the least I could do, considering my degree of sacrifice and personal pain.”

  “And you regret it?”

  She thought before she answered. “No. There were other differences, things I thought wouldn’t matter then, but they probably would have eventually.”

  “What things?”

  “Ernie—”

  “Hannah, I want to know. Tell me.”

  “He grew up in a stable traditional family. I didn’t. And I don’t think he would have ever let me just up and throw the kids in the car and drive them to the Mississippi River so they could spit in it.”

  “No?” he asked, grinning.

  “No,” she assured him.

  “Hannah, about last night,” he said abruptly. “It didn’t come out the way I meant. I said it all wrong—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that, Ernie. I mean it.”

  “Hannah—”

  “Ernie, it doesn’t matter! Elizabeth is my sister. I love her.” We both do, she thought. She was afraid he was going to insist, but he didn’t, probably because Petey chose that moment to interrupt her chat with Cowpoke and look up at them. The conversation turned to lighter things, to more about Little Girl Hannah and to how long it would be until they could stop for a brown milk shake. Hannah could feel that Ernie was only postponing his explanation of his abrupt departure last night. One of life’s little quirks, she thought resignedly. When they’d first met, she’d given him the chance to tell her about his commitment to Elizabeth. He hadn’t taken it, and now, when she didn’t want to hear it, he was going to insist on telling her.

  They stopped along the road for something to eat, Petey and Hannah waiting in the truck while Ernie dashed inside a place with a flat roof and chipping paint and a neon name, Starlight Café, in the big front window. He was a regular, she could tell by the big hug he got from the woman in pink hair curlers at the cash register. He brought the woman closer to the window and pointed at his pickup truck. The woman smiled and waved, and Hannah and Petey dutifully returned the silent greeting. And the Starlight Café—as Ernie had promised—served excellent hamburgers and brown milk shakes. The cab of the truck was filled with the wonderful aroma of toasted bread and onion-flavored meat.

  “Come here often, do you?” Hannah asked, because the entire staff was now in the window waving as they pulled away.

  He grinned. “I’d take you inside if we had the time. That’s Ozelle—the one with the curlers. The woman’s crazy about me.”

  Hannah grinned in return, relaxing a bit in the truce they were enjoying. She had no idea where they were—somewhere between McAlester and Muskogee to the best of her calculations. They’d passed all those bodies of water—or perhaps it was one large and irregular body of water. She really couldn’t tell in the rain with the daylight nearly gone. Petey remained chipper and wide awake, much to Hannah’s relief. As long as she was awake, Ernie wasn’t likely to insist they talk about last night.

  It was dark by the time they neared Muskogee, and Ernie pulled off on the side of the road.

  “How about driving for a while, Hannah. My knee’s killing me.”

  She gave him a worried look, one he couldn’t see in the darkness of the cab. He got out and limped around to the other side while she climbed over Petey.

  “Are you … okay?” she asked as he got in on the passenger side, the worry he couldn’t see now perfectly audible in her voice.

  “Yeah, I’m okay. It just hurts. I got the clamps out today. We’ve got about thirty more miles. Just go into Muskogee on 69 here, and come out of it on Route 62.”

  That seemed to be the extent of his directions, bec
ause he pulled his hat down over his eyes and slid down in the seat.

  “Are you sleepy, Ernie?” Petey wanted to know—a very timely question in Hannah’s opinion. He was supposed to show her shortcuts, not sleep. He certainly seemed to put a lot of stock in her claim she could read a map—if she had a map.

  “Yeah, Pete. I am,” he said, looking out from under his hat.

  “I’m not,” she assured him.

  He laughed. “Yeah, and green vegetables look like marshmallows. How about leaning back here and singing me a song. Sing ’Honky Tonk Man.’”

  Petey sang with great enthusiasm, and Ernie again disappeared under his hat. Hannah drove carefully into the rainy night, following Route 69 the way he’d told her, and both he and Petey were fast asleep before they reached Muskogee. She found Route 62 to Fort Gibson with minimal bother, and she didn’t wake him until they were a few miles out of Tahlequah.

  “What?” he murmured at the pressure of her hand on his arm.

  “We’re almost in Tahlequah,” she said.

  He sat up and looked around. “Are we? Okay—drive straight through town. On the road going out, look for a mailbox with the name Swimmer. Less than a mile out, on the right.”

  “Swimmer,” she repeated.

  “Right. Have you ever been in Oklahoma before?”

  “Not awake,” she said, switching the heater to defrost to clear the fogged-up windshield.

  “So what do you think of it?”

  “Well, I think it’s dark and wet. And flat.”

  She could feel him grin, and she turned her head to look at him.

  “Look where you’re going, Hannah,” he chided her, and none too soon. She drove intently now, not wanting to get them lost when they were so close to their destination. She could feel Ernie’s eyes on her, feel exactly how far away he was from her in the darkness of the truck’s cabin. Petey slept sprawled between them, and Ernie swung his arm across the back of the seat. His fingers were only inches from her shoulder. She could feel them so acutely that she drove past the Swimmer mailbox and had to back up on the dark road to make the turn.

  Ernie said nothing as she turned into the long, muddy drive that led to the house. She could make out very little—the lights of the house in a grove of trees in the distance. And she was suddenly apprehensive—which was ridiculous. Either her troubles with Elizabeth were about to end, or they weren’t, and there was no use fretting about it.