Springwater Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

He smiled at the thought; there were worse fates, he guessed. “We’d better get over to the feed store,” he said. “See if we can find you some chickens to ride herd on.”

  Quinn beamed up at him. Then, in a gesture that touched J.T. in some deep, private place that he’d always kept hidden, even from himself, the boy squatted, patted the gravestone that bore his grandfather’s name. “We’ll come back, Granddad,” he said. “We’ll do some weeding and maybe bring you some flowers. And I’ll tell you all about my chickens.”

  J.T. chuckled and squeezed the boy’s shoulder lightly. It was true that the grave had been neglected, like so many other landmarks of his life, tangible and intangible. “Let’s go, buddy,” he said.

  Together, father and son turned to leave, walking slowly past the much older markers of Scully and Evangeline Wainwright, and those of their children and their children’s children. He thought of what Springwater and the ranch had meant to all of them, and a sense of reverence came over him. He would rebuild the place, make it pay again. For Quinn. For himself. And for them.

  J.T.’s truck was parked just outside the churchyard gate. Thoughtfully, he opened the passenger door and hoisted Quinn inside. Then he got behind the wheel, started the engine, and pulled away from the curb.

  “Do dead people know when people visit their graves?” Quinn asked.

  J.T. felt a rush of love for the boy buckled into the other seat. “Could be,” he said. “The truth is, I don’t have any idea.”

  Quinn pondered, his brow scrunched. “Probably nobody does,” he concluded.

  J.T. took a right turn into the parking lot of the feed-and-grain. “Maybe, when we stop by and pay our respects, it’s meant to do us some good, rather than the person buried there.”

  Quinn’s expression said he’d have to work on that concept for a while. He peered over the dashboard at the sprawling feed store. The place had been in business since the 1940s, if J.T. remembered correctly. Before that it had been the site of a livery stable and blacksmith’s shop. “Is this where we buy hay for the cows?”

  “Yup,” J.T. answered. “Next year, we’ll grow our own.”

  A wide grin spread across Quinn’s face. “‘We’? You mean I get to help?”

  J.T. remembered how he’d bitched about working in the hay fields as a kid, plowing and planting in the early spring, harvesting in late August. His muscles remembered the rigors of bucking bales onto the bed of a truck only too well. “Yeah,” he said. “You get to help.”

  Quinn gave a whoop of delight. No doubt his opinion would change by the time he was sixteen or so.

  Inside, they stocked up on grain and oats for the livestock, and J.T. ordered a ton of hay to be delivered. That done, he and Quinn selected half a dozen young hens from a wire pen in the back of the store. George Pickering, the proprietor, a round-faced man with bright blue eyes, caught the squawking birds by their spindly chicken legs and tossed them unceremoniously into a cardboard carrier with air holes. Although they carried on something fierce, they weren’t hurt, just ruffled.

  “Good to see you back here where you belong, J.T.,” George remarked, tucking his thumbs under the straps of his cobbler’s apron and rocking on his heels. He grinned. “I hear you’re courting Maggie McCaffrey. ’Bout time you two got together.”

  J.T. grinned and shook his head. He’d forgotten the gossipy nature of small towns. “Sounds like you know more about my life than I do,” he said easily.

  “What’s courting?” Quinn asked.

  “Never mind,” J.T. said.

  George blushed, more from consternation, J.T. figured, than embarrassment. “Well, if you ain’t makin’ time with that woman, you ought to be,” he grumbled.

  J.T. laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “What’s making time?” Quinn wanted to know.

  J.T. pretended not to hear. “I’ll need some feed for these chickens,” he said, and reached for his wallet.

  George nodded and named a price, and J.T. paid. George hoisted a fifty-pound bag of dried corn onto one shoulder without apparent strain and lugged it outside to the truck.

  “You got a plan drawn up for that new barn?” George asked, dusting his hands together after tossing the chicken feed in with their other purchases.

  J.T. knew the community was planning an old-fashioned barn raising, since he’d had calls from half the people in town, volunteering everything from nails to free labor to food for the workers. “I’m waiting to hear from the insurance company,” he said.

  George seemed reluctant to let them go. “Shame about Clive.”

  “Yeah,” J.T. agreed. A real shame.

  “Is Clive the guy who was murdered?” Quinn asked, when they were back in the rig and pointed toward home.

  J.T. glanced at his son, frowning. “How did you know that?”

  Quinn shrugged as offhandedly as if he ran across murders all the time. Maybe he did, J.T. thought ruefully. It was a hell of a world. “I heard those newspaper guys talking, when Mom and I were at the Springwater Station.“

  J.T. absorbed that. Then said, “That’s him.” Maybe it was the tone of his voice, maybe it was something in his manner—whatever the reason, Quinn didn’t press for more information, not then at least.

  When they got back to the ranch, J.T. and Quinn fed the dogs, rigged up a temporary coop for the chickens with wire, a few nails, and some plywood, then headed out to feed the cattle, which were still pastured down by the creek. Billy was there ahead of them, pitching hay out of the back of his own truck. He grinned and waved.

  “Well, now,” Billy said to Quinn, “if it ain’t the foreman himself.”

  Quinn was delighted. “We bought some chickens in town,” he said. “Alive ones, not the kind that are cut up and wrapped in plastic. Dad and I made them a house.”

  “That’s good,” Billy said. Though he spoke to Quinn, he was looking at J.T., and his expression was solemn. It was clear that he wanted to say something more, but he refrained because of the boy.

  “Me and Cindy are fixing to move into that spare room of yours, if the offer’s still good,” Billy said.

  J.T. nodded. “Anytime you’re ready,” he answered.

  That night, after supper, the Raynors took up residence in the downstairs bedroom in back of the kitchen. The whole process took only a few minutes, since they’d lost practically everything they owned in the fire. The community had given them clothes, blankets, books, towels, and other household goods, and they had a small color television set, too. The room was good-sized, with its own bathroom, and offered about as much privacy as anyone could hope for while living in somebody else’s house.

  “I could take over the cooking,” Cindy offered, appearing in the kitchen. She wore black sweats and sneakers, and her hair was up, held in place by one of those plastic clips. She looked way too young to be a wife, let alone a mother-to-be.

  J.T. set down his coffee mug. Under protest, Quinn had gone upstairs to take a bath, both dogs in attendance, and J.T. was feeling a little dazed. He was used to living by himself. “Thanks,” he said. “I don’t mind whipping up a meal now and then, though. Fact is, I like it.”

  Cindy’s smile was shy. In the few weeks since Billy had come to work as his hired hand, he realized, he and Cindy hadn’t exchanged more than a word or two. He was essentially a stranger to her, and she to him. Now that they were all going to be knocking around under the same roof, J.T. figured he’d better come up with some polite small talk.

  “Billy cooks sometimes, too,” she said proudly. “Fish sticks and pizza and stuff like that. I think it’s a fine thing for a man to be comfortable working in a kitchen. My dad takes on like he’s being killed if you ask him to open a can of soup.”

  J.T. smiled to himself and stood, setting aside the albums he’d gotten from a closet in the study a few minutes before. He wasn’t sure he was ready to look into the faces of his father and other long-departed relatives, but later on, when he’d corralled Quinn, the two of them
would go back in time, at least for a little while.

  After laying the dusty volumes on the antique sideboard, he went to the sink, wet a sponge under the faucet, and wiped the red-and-white-checkered oilcloth covering the surface of the table. “My mother always told me that any man who won’t cook doesn’t deserve to eat,” he said. Bless her, Becky had taught him most of what he knew about self-reliance. He’d learned to cook, wash, clean, and generally fend for himself at an early age. He was wryly grateful for the lessons she’d taught him, but he had to admit that he was something of a control freak because of it, and he had a hard time letting down his guard or accepting help.

  A stomping sound on the back porch announced Billy’s arrival as J.T. was pouring himself a cup of coffee and, a moment later, he opened the door and stepped inside. Young Raynor looked worn out and more than a little distracted as he crossed the kitchen and kissed his child bride lightly on the forehead.

  “You’re all done in,” he scolded tenderly, resting awkward hands on Cindy’s shoulders. “What you ought to do is have yourself a warm bath and get to bed. Maybe take in some TV. You must be hungry, too—you didn’t eat hardly anything at Mom’s tonight.”

  J.T. looked away, aware that the exchange was an intimate one, for all its mundane innocence. He wished he were in the barn, or at least another room, where he wouldn’t see. Wouldn’t hear. Something about their innocent closeness made him ache with a sort of longing he didn’t care to examine too closely, and while he was coming to grips with that, McCaffrey sneaked into his mind. He imagined her living in this house, touching him gently, letting him touch her …

  “I’m fine,” Cindy insisted. “Are you coming to bed?”

  Billy sighed. “Yes,” he said, and propelled her gently in the direction of their part of the house. “I need to have a few words with J.T. first, then I’ll be along.”

  She murmured a good night to J.T. and left the kitchen. Her footsteps sounded heavy and slow for someone so young. A door closed in the near distance.

  “Coffee?” J.T. said to Billy, still standing near the counter. Billy shook his head. He looked serious again; a man with something weighing on his mind. “I have an idea it was Randy Hough and my brother Travis who set your barn on fire,” he said bluntly.

  J.T. had his own suspicions on that score—he clearly recalled that neither Hough nor DuPres had been in the Brimstone Saloon when he took in the printout of Steve Jenson’s mug shot, just before the fire started, though it was general knowledge that the pair spent most of their free time there, playing pool—but with no proof, he’d kept his theories to himself. Travis and Randy were regulars at Springwater’s favorite watering hole, it was true, but there were certainly other places they could have been. “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  Billy’s slim shoulders were stooped, as though he’d been carrying the burdens of a much larger, much older man; life had probably never been easy for Billy. “They’ve got too much money these days, both of them. Somebody’s paying them for something, and I don’t think it’s pulling green chain over at the sawmill.”

  “Did either one of them actually admit anything to you?”

  Billy shook his head. “Not yet. I’m working on it, though. Hanging out with them as much as I can, and all like that.”

  J.T. heard Quinn upstairs, running a foot race with the dogs, from the sounds of it. Quinn was laughing, while Winston and Blackie barked their heads off. So much for peace and quiet. “I don’t want you playing hero,” J.T. told Billy, keeping his voice down. “Leave this to Purvis and me.”

  Billy’s jawline tightened slightly. He glanced toward the hallway behind him. Cindy was running water in the bathroom and singing a popular country-and-western song in a high, pretty vibrato. “Travis and Randy won’t tell you or Purvis anything much,” he said. “They may not be real bright, but they know enough to cover their asses.”

  J.T. thrust a hand through his hair. “This is a dangerous situation,” he reiterated. “Just leave it alone, Billy.”

  Color flared in the younger man’s face, but before he could reply, Quinn and the dogs burst into the kitchen from the enclosed stairway and brought happy chaos with them. Quinn was wearing flannel pajama bottoms, and his hair, just washed, was standing out all over his head. “Hi, Billy,” he crowed.

  Winston and Blackie raised an exuberant canine chorus behind him.

  “Settle down a little,” J.T. said, addressing both the boy and the dogs.

  Billy grinned at Quinn, and then greeted each of the hounds with a vigorous ear rubbing. “Howdy, Quinn,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’m good,” Quinn said, with manly importance.

  “How come these dogs are wet?” J.T. inquired.

  Quinn pretended not to hear. “Did you see my chickens?” he asked Billy.

  “Sure did,” Billy answered. “That’s some fine-looking poultry you got there.”

  Quinn looked up at J.T. “Can I email Mom?”

  “Sure,” J.T. said, shaking his head. He wasn’t used to his son’s quicksilver subject changes and often felt as if he’d gotten off the conversational train a few stops too early.

  The boy said a hasty good night to Billy, then dashed into the study, followed closely by Blackie and Winston, who were game for any adventure.

  “I meant what I said, Billy,” J.T. said, when Quinn was out of earshot. “Purvis and I will handle the police work.”

  Billy just looked at him for a long moment, then turned on his heel and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor.

  J.T. sighed, feeling about a hundred years old all of a sudden, then opened the refrigerator and started gathering the ingredients for an omelette. Quinn and the dogs returned to the kitchen just as he was about to summon them.

  “Wash your hands,” J.T. said, without glancing at his son.

  “You sound like Mom,” Quinn replied, but he washed. The dogs collapsed onto the rug by the backdoor with huffing sighs, closed their eyes, and began to snore. J.T. smiled to himself. It was no easy task keeping up with a six-year-old, for man or dog.

  “Did you get any email?”

  “Yeah,” Quinn said, scraping back a chair and sitting. His chin nearly touched the table edge. “Mom’s leaving for South America tomorrow.”

  “You okay with that?” J.T. asked carefully, glancing at his son.

  Quinn nodded, then sighed in a way that pinched J.T.’s heart. His eyes looked huge, and his freckles stood out. He was tired, though he would probably fall asleep standing up before admitting that. “I guess.” A lengthy pause followed. “What if they don’t come back, though?”

  J.T. brought the omelette to the table on a platter, along with some buttered toast. “They will,” he said.

  Quinn looked stubborn. “But sometimes people go away and they don’t come back,” he insisted.

  J.T. answered quietly. “If that happened—and it won’t, Quinn— then you would stay here with me and somehow we’d deal with it.”

  Quinn bit down on his lower lip for a moment, then asked in a small voice, “Am I too big to sit on your lap?”

  “Nope,” J.T. said, and held out his arms. Quinn scrambled into J.T.’s embrace, and they sat together like that for a while, saying nothing at all, and it felt good.

  “I’m hungry,” Quinn said, after a few moments had passed.

  J.T. chuckled and set him on his feet. He peered at the omelette cooling in the middle of the table. “That’s breakfast food, isn’t it?”

  J.T. grinned and nodded for Quinn to sit down. “Not if you have it for supper,” he said reasonably.

  “Can we look at those pictures you were telling me about before?”

  “Sure,” J.T. said. “Let’s just finish eating first, though.”

  Quinn did justice to his dinner, then pushed his plate away and watched while J.T. had seconds. Ranch life sharpened his appetite the way police work never had—maybe it was the fresh air, or the relative lack of dead bodies.

&n
bsp; “Mom and Brad tried to have more kids,” Quinn confided, out of the blue. “Mom went to the hospital, too, but when she came back, she didn’t bring a baby.”

  Annie had stood at the sink, with her back to him, and told him about the miscarriage. J.T. sensed, not for the first time, that Annie’s joining Brad in Caracas, without Quinn, had more to do with shoring up the marriage than she wanted anyone to suspect. “How did you feel about that?” he asked cautiously.

  “I’d like to have a little brother,” Quinn allowed.

  J.T. watched his son, waited, knowing there was more.

  Quinn ruminated a while before getting to the heart of the matter. “I probably wouldn’t be so special to Mom if she had another kid, though.”

  J.T. set down his fork and made a game-show buzzer sound. “Wrong,” he said, relieved when Quinn grinned broadly. “No matter how many other kids come along, Q., your mom and I will go right on loving you. So will Brad.”

  “Do you think you’ll get more kids?”

  J.T. loved kids, especially the one sitting across from him, of course, but he hadn’t thought about starting a new family. For the last several years, he’d pretty much been concentrating on survival.

  “Maybe,” he allowed. “Maybe not. I’d need a wife first, for one thing.”

  “But if you and Maggie got married and made some babies together—”

  J.T. had to clear his throat. “That’s a big if,” he said. “Nobody said anything about Maggie and me getting married, Q.” He couldn’t help imagining it, though. Him and McCaffrey as man and wife, making love, laughing together, sharing worries and arguing. Something ground painfully, deep within him.

  “But it could happen—couldn’t it?”

  “I suppose,” he said, careful to keep his tone even. “Right now, what’s important is your knowing that nobody—and I mean nobody—could ever take your place with me.”

  Quinn looked relieved. “It might not be too bad, having a brother,” he reflected, at some length, a lot more relaxed, “but a sister—”

  J.T. thought back to his own childhood; he would have given plenty to have a whole posse of siblings. Even a sister or two. “Whatever happens, Quinn,” he said, “you’ll be O.K.”