Stripped Bare

by Shannon Baker

  We turned off the highway onto the Bar J road. I pictured my blonde niece, full of fire and drive, ready to don her armor and ride fearlessly into battle. For all her bravado, she was still a kid. She needed me, even if she denied it.

  Roxy leaned forward and placed one perfectly manicured hand on the dash. “Where is Carly, anyway? Is she okay?”

  Red polish, of course. I unsuccessfully tried to block the memory of Ted asking me to wear nail polish. I’d reminded him how I needed to trim horses’ hooves and wash dishes and drive the feed wagon. I directed my anger at Roxy. “It’s taken this long for you to be concerned?”

  I glanced at her and she seemed pensive. She returned my glance. “I know I promised you I wouldn’t, but I could sell the Bar J. It would be the best thing for Carly, even if she doesn’t understand that now.”

  What made me think I could trust her? “How do you figure it would be the best thing?”

  Roxy looked at me like I was nuts. “Have you taken a good look at that girl? She’s gorgeous. It would be a waste to hide her out there on the ranch, working in the elements. Think of her skin!”

  Yeah. It might end up looking like mine.

  “The ranch would make her old before her time. There’s so much work, and the worry about the markets. One blizzard could wipe out a whole year’s income. She’s too smart and beautiful to live in the dark ages.”

  I thought about Glenda and me. For us, a ranch was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Did Carly feel the same way? Would she love ranching enough that sacrificing other aspects of her life would be worth it?

  My answer came in a memory. Two years ago, on Mother’s Day, Carly asked me to go for a ride with her. Dad expected us at the house for a Fox potluck, and I still needed to trail the herd from the south pasture into the Burwell section. At first I hesitated. But Carly begged me. She said she’d hook up the trailer and load the horses. All I had to do was climb in the pickup.

  It seemed important to her, so I threw away my to-do list and called Dad to tell him we’d be late. Dad’s infrequent potlucks were a Fox family requirement, so begging off was like telling him I’d joined the Apollo mission and would be going to the moon for the next two years.

  Carly drove us out to the Bar J, several miles north of the headquarters. We bumped down an old gravel road, toward the line shack where she’d lived with Glenda and Brian. The tiny two-bedroom cabin had suited Glenda fine. She loved the isolation of the home tucked below a hill.

  Roxy had Brian build her a garish Taj Mahal at the headquarters, complete with an indoor arena. Glenda had loved this simple cabin, situated at the old cow camp fifteen miles from Eldon’s place.

  Those last few months of Glenda’s life, I’d driven out to the line shack almost daily, and eventually had brought a suitcase and camped out on the couch. With Brian focused on Glenda, managing her pain with morphine injections and staying by her side, I tended to ranch chores, cooking, and Carly.

  Dark days.

  Carly had parked the trailer about a mile into one of the enormous summer pastures west of the cabin. We saddled up and rode for an hour, not saying much, but listening to the meadowlarks and watching the awkward brown curlews swoop and caw. Yellow buttercups, purple spiderwort, and pink primroses pocked the greening hills. The fresh smell of sunshine and grass perfumed the air. Carly led me up a tall hill.

  We dismounted at the top and held loosely to the reins while the horses bent their heads and chomped the juicy spring grass.

  “You know this is called Wild Horse Hill?” Carly’s hushed tone sounded as if we were sitting in church.

  I’d been up here several times with Glenda. She’d asked me to drive her here when she grew too weak to ride.

  The soft breeze teased blonde wisps from Carly’s ponytail. Her cheeks were pink because, as usual, she’d neglected to put on sunscreen. “I know I’ve been a real bitch lately.”

  I didn’t argue with her.

  “I’m sorry I skipped school.”

  “And the minor in possession?”

  She blew a raspberry. “That was totally bogus. I mean, I wasn’t the only one drinking.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “I wouldn’t even have been caught except Bryce didn’t run. I couldn’t let him stand there all alone.”

  This was one of those times, as a mother, or a pseudo mother, where you just don’t know what to feel, let alone say. Yes, absolutely, a fifteen-year-old should not be at a party drinking beer.

  She’d escaped Ted’s bust of the party. But her friend Bryce, who hadn’t been to any beer bashes before, wasn’t clear on the escape plan and had been caught with a beer can in his hand. Carly couldn’t bear the thought of him having to face the heat alone, so she’d grabbed a half-empty can and walked out. Ted had to charge her, too. He’d tried to get around it, but I insisted she bear the consequences. I was proud of her compassion, but damn.

  “Mom used to bring me here.” Her voice, so clear in the warm air, so free of self-pity.

  When I started to sob, she spun around in surprise. “I cry too, sometimes.” She took a few steps toward me, tethered by her horse. She dropped the reins and put her arms around me. “I like to come here to remember her. She loved this ranch—and being on this hill, especially.”

  I hadn’t been back to the line shack since then, though I suspected Carly visited it from time to time, when she stayed at the Bar J on weekends.

  Roxy didn’t know the first thing about Carly. Maybe someday Carly would change her mind about running the Bar J. Heaven knows, four years away at college could transform her, though it hadn’t done so for me or Glenda. But, for now, Carly’s heart belonged here.

  My hand clenched in frustration. “You promised me you wouldn’t sell.”

  “Carly is seventeen. She doesn’t know what’s good for her. Most of us didn’t have a clue at her age.…” Her voice trailed off, as if wistful and wise. “Some of us wasted so much time and waited until it might be too late.”

  Roxy was about to say something that would really set me off. “Shut up.”

  “I love that you’re always so authentic.”

  “If you like me so much, why would you sleep with my husband?”

  She waved her hand. “You and Ted are totally separate issues. There isn’t any reason why we can’t be friends.”

  “There is that one reason.”

  “Okay, I get that you’re upset now. But you’ll fall in love with someone else, someone who suits you better. And then you’ll thank me for giving you a reason to leave Ted.”

  “You really need to shut. Up.”

  “You have to admit that life with Ted is difficult. You aren’t the least bit compatible.”

  Oh yes, we had a great deal of compatibility when it came to sex. At least, we used to. My stomach hurt to think about what we’d done and shared, how he liked to push me beyond my comfort zone, just a nudge, to do and try things I normally wouldn’t. He made me feel safe, so I could experiment. I felt adventurous and sexy. Real pain seized me, to think he’d shared all of that with Roxy. Everything I’d done with Ted, she’d probably done too.

  Maybe the pain was the baby voting for a home with a mommy and a daddy. “Life with Ted might be lot easier if you weren’t in the picture.”

  “In his way, Ted loves you. But you’re more like a little sister or a business partner. Both. He feels like he needs to protect you, and at the same time, he appreciates your attachment to Frog Creek. But you aren’t the great love of his life.”

  The Bar J headquarters appeared in front of us. “And I suppose you are?”

  Her eyes had that glint you see in romantic movies. “We’ve been together since we were kids. We had a foolish fight. But now we know we belong together.”

  I had a satisfying vision of leaping across the console and closing my hands around her neck:

  I shook her and banged her head against the cold glass and her eyes lost that love-light, started to bug out, and
her tongue thrust from her mouth. Then the pickup sprang from the road and crashed into the giant cottonwood, because I hadn’t stopped it before I throttled Roxy.

  Even my fantasies were out to get me.

  I took the spur in the road, around the main headquarters. The cookhouse sat behind the barn and a row of aging cottonwoods. My phone vibrated in the cup holder between me and Roxy. I reached for the glow and noticed twelve missed calls. Since I’d heard no “cat-erwauling,” I must have accidentally set it to vibrate.

  I punched Answer. “Hi, Louise.”

  “Ruth! Ruthie!”

  I waited.

  “Hi, Kate. Where have you been? I called out to the ranch and Jeremy answered. Who does he have out there? He better be careful. He doesn’t need any more wild seeds running around.”

  The one-story, clapboard cookhouse sat a hundred paces from the barn. Pristine windows reflected my headlights.

  “Ruthie! I swear, she disappears when I need her.” The sound of Louise’s furious chopping told me she was cooking supper. “There you are. Run down to the basement and get me a quart of tomatoes.”

  Roxy studied her nails in light from the dash.

  “Pastor Steve called. Today, please, Ruth. He can’t get ahold of Roxy. Get me an onion while you’re down there. Oh, and see if there’s any peaches. I told him to go ahead and have the Lutherans bring the desserts, and the Catholics will do salads. The UCC can bring finger sandwiches.”

  A person had to run gate on Louise’s phone conversations. You opened the gate to let some sentences in, closed it to let others out, and when all was done, you studied the bits you had caught in the corral and tried to make sense of it.

  Louise chopped and chattered. “I’ll end up in the loony bin. Dad’s on the train. Mom wants them to play Gregorian chants and recite the ‘Desiderata.’ I can’t get in touch with Carly, and you’re not much better. I suspect you’re avoiding me.”

  Nothing got by Louise. “I’m talking to you now.”

  “Thanks, Ruth.” To me: “I’m making authentic Hungarian goulash from a recipe I found in Cooking Light. But I don’t have paprika. You think I can substitute a touch of chili powder? It calls for celery, but Dutch’s didn’t have any. I didn’t have time to thaw a roast, so I’m using hamburger. But it ought to turn out yummy. I’ll freeze some for you.”

  Delicious. “Thanks.”

  “Anyhoo, the funeral home called me and needs the suit to bury him. They want someone to pick out the illustration for the pamphlet. I didn’t know what to tell him.”

  “Just a sec.” I lowered the phone. “The funeral home needs a suit and decisions on the pamphlet.”

  Roxy gave me a stricken look. “No. I can’t do that. It takes me back to Brian.” Her voice tipped toward that hysterical scale I hated.

  “Who’s there? Who are you t— Is that Roxy? Oh, no. Do not tell me you’re with Roxy.”

  I wished I could see Louise’s face. “Yeah, Roxy is here.”

  The chopping stopped. “Don’t do anything stupid. She’s not worth it. I mean it. She’s the kind that will sue if you break her nose.”

  If I thought breaking her nose would help, I’d take the chance. “Don’t worry. We’re working together to find Eldon’s killer.”

  It sounded like she dropped a pan on the stove. “What?”

  I made fake static noise, not expecting to deceive her. “Bad signal. Bye.” I punched off her tinny protest.

  With that out of the way, I scanned through my missed calls. Ted, Sarah, Diane, Sarah again. Several local numbers I assumed were people trying to get the latest scoop. Ted, Ted.

  Roxy reached for the door handle and I held up my hand to indicate one minute. I called Jeremy and got a quick update. We’d had four calves, one cow was in labor now, and all was well.

  Roxy and I climbed from the pickup, and I walked around the grill to stand with her, looking at Rope’s house. The yard light on the barn pushed back full night. Smells of roasting meat mingled with the calving lot odor.

  She patted her flat stomach. “I’m starving.”

  Yeah. Starving. She’d probably wolf down two saltines and a whole carrot stick. My stomach turned over.

  I glanced at the barn. The old-fashioned wooden structure had the typical barn roof. Painted red, with white trim at the hay loft and doors and the Bar J brand outlined neatly above the double doors into the main section, the barn acted as a divider between the headquarters and the cookhouse.

  Nat and Rope had lived in the cookhouse since they were married. Nat kept the yard green, if not lush. A chain-link fence separated it from the dirt and gravel where ranch pickups and trailers lined up next to the fuel tanks on their stilts. A gate and a door gave access to the corral and the barn, respectively, so Rope could make his way as easily to the barn as anyone at the headquarters. The corral at the end of the barn opened into the calving lot behind Eldon’s house, as it did at Frog Creek. A two-lane road looped to the outside of the calving lot, linking the two houses.

  I’d been in the Bar J cookhouse during brandings, when Glenda was alive. The front room looked like a miniature version of an old church basement. A long cafeteria-style table filled the center, with a collection of old, mismatched chairs lining it. This is where Nat would feed the hay crew and ranch help on cattle-working days. The kitchen and the family’s living room were through the open doorway at the back of the house. I assumed bedrooms were down a short hall.

  We started across the dirt ranch yard toward the house. A country song erupted from Roxy’s purse. It was one of those whiny women singing about true love. I avoided country music—not easy in Nebraska—so I couldn’t identify the song. In one movement, Roxy jerked her purse from her shoulder, located the phone in a pouch, and had it to her ear before it rang twice. “Yes.”

  She pulled the phone away from her ear. “I’ll be there in a second,” she whispered to me.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out who was on the phone. I didn’t want to hear her sweet-talk my husband, using some kind of code so I wouldn’t know what they meant. I planted my feet and put my hands on my hips, sending a threat I fully intended to carry through.

  Roxy rattled, “Can’t talk.” She slid the phone back into her bag.

  We continued up the walk.

  If Eldon was reluctant to spend money on the headquarters house, he seemed even stingier with the cookhouse. It needed a coat of paint, and several of the spindles on the porch railing needed replacing.

  I banged on the front door. It was one of those century-old wood frames that didn’t seal completely, with glass panels in the front, the caulking chipped and falling out. Paint peeled from the metal knob and from the plate that held the old-time keyhole, which had probably never felt the turn of a key. A frilly fake-lace curtain on the inside blocked all but the outline of Nat approaching.

  Roxy’s phone sang again. She glanced at the display, frowned, and turned her back to me. “This is Roxy.”

  Nat opened the door. She stood squarely in the doorway, blocking most of my view of the inside. She bit her lower lip and shot nervous glances beyond me, taking in Roxy and the pickup. “Oh, my. Kate Conner.”

  She said it loud, as if announcing it. Maybe Rope lurked in the living room at the back of the house.

  “Is Danny here?” I asked.

  The question rattled Nat further. “No. It’s a … He’s in town. Play rehearsal.”

  I strained to see behind her and she wiggled into my way. “You picked him up this morning?” I went on.

  She hesitated, as if trying to remember. “Yes. No. He was already in school when I got back to town. Everything is fine. It’s okay.”

  I doubted anything was ever okay for this nervous wreck. “Can I come in? I need to ask you about the land Eldon gave to Danny.”

  Behind me, Roxy added a definite tease to her voice. “I’m surprised to hear from you.”

  Nat shifted from foot to foot, her eyes constantly scanning behind me. “I do
n’t … I can’t really…” She let out a long breath. “Leave us alone. Please.”

  She must really be afraid. It wasn’t fair to put her in a dicey situation. “Can you tell me where Rope is? I’ll go talk to him.”

  Her hand shot up to her mouth. “No.”

  Roxy startled me by putting a hand on my arm. She frowned and listened intently, then answered, “You’re on your way now?”

  Nat and I watched her.

  After a few seconds, Roxy responded, “Of course. That’s perfect.”

  More male rumbling from the phone, then she hung up and looked at me. “Change of plans.” She pulled me away from the door.

  Without waiting, Nat pushed the door closed. The curtains ruffled, then stopped moving.

  I let Roxy tug me down the sidewalk. “What change?”

  “You have to take me home.”

  “I what? No. I’m not your chauffer.”

  “The wind will wreck my hair, and I don’t want to get mud and cow poop on my boots.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  “You’ll want to be there, anyway. This is part of the investigation.”

  Everything she did chapped me. “Who was on the phone?”

  “That was Glenn Baxter. He’s on his way to my house.”

  21

  I carried the smell of roasting meat with me even after we’d loaded into the pickup and backed out of Rope’s yard.

  Roxy yanked down the visor and fluffed her hair. “It’ll have to do. I won’t have time to curl it.”

  Ted should see Roxy all flustered in anticipation of meeting another man. A prospect who could provide her with more than Ted ever would. Financial potential beyond her dreams. Ted should know the depths of her shallowness.

  Ted loved me. I believed that. Last Sunday, I was stacking the dinner dishes in the strainer. We don’t have a dishwasher. It’s just another of the luxuries my siblings take for granted. I try not to covet their appliances, but I hate doing dishes by hand. I especially loathe drying. I played a Jenga game with the glasses, plates, and bowls; if I lost, all the dishes would tumble from the counter and smash on the floor. That wouldn’t be a big loss to anyone, since I was still using the hand-me-down Corelle with the little green flower border I’d inherited from Aunt Twyla.