December and Mae, page 5
“She doesn’t have to look like she just crawled out of the dustbin. You’ve made sure she stayed that way.”
Rarely did brother and sister lock horns, but when they did, the hands either made themselves scarce or lined up for the rounds. Old Tom glanced about, disapproving.
“I’ve made her that way? I burnt those pestiferous shreds! I scrubbed her raw. She now wears shoes, in case you had not noted. And the bits and pieces I’ve given her, which weren’t exactly rags!”
“Liz, do you not recall you aren’t that old? And what it’s like to be young? She can learn. You could teach her. Even a simple dance. How to talk to other females her age.”
“Hmmmph! Leave that up to you! You seem to have a fascination for her.”
****
Liz watched her brother, vexed. She rarely experienced freight trains of clouds as if brewing on the western horizon, black as a coal train thundering toward her. That was her brother’s expression. But when they did appear, even Liz felt thunderstruck. But she wasn’t sure where or how to avoid Luke’s wrath when his mood came storming in, carrying a whiff of brimstone.
Luke. Always so easygoing, so kind, so thoughtful, she forgot this dark obstinate side of him, and now he was going on the warpath over this ragamuffin, against his own blood kin, his own sister. She was going to say something tart, but her brother’s head was lowered like a bull ready to charge, nailing her from under thick black brows.
Liz tapped Old Tom, who affected not to be listening, to hurry up.
Luke shook his head, clicked his tongue and vaulted up, itching to take the reins, but Liz for some unfathomed reason said it warn’t proper on Sundays.
Hell’s bells, Old Tom wasn’t their servant, and he’d have another talk with Liz about getting Mae proper duds, church or no church.
Old Tom clucked to the sleek black yearling, twitched the reins, and the surrey jolted off leaving Mae to watch wistfully till out of sight.
****
Sunday after church, Beth thrust the baby, a boy, at her father.
Grinning down at the little bundle of chubby cuteness, Luke strolled her vast kitchen, cradling the boy, tickling his waving hands with his mustache and cooing in a way that would have gob-smacked his wranglers. Luke smiled into the child’s wide blue-turning-to-brown eyes. Someday, his spread would belong to this little scrap… His thoughts were interrupted by Beth’s cry.
He swiveled with the baby to see a short female at the door stoop, greeted by his daughter calling out as if seeing the Second Coming, “Heavens to Betsy, look who’s come to visit, Pa. What a nice surprise!”
Somehow the last didn’t ring quite true. And there was Beth ushering in a short, pleasingly plump, dark-haired female, fortyish, sporting a purple hat with stuffed blackbirds quivering on its brim and youthful curls fringing her forehead. The newcomer, crammed into lavender velvet, glanced eagerly about, resting on Luke a tad long as if she were a starving wolf and he a fat juicy rabbit.
Placing the baby over his shoulder, Luke groaned inwardly but, bowing slightly, put on his company face. “Madam.”
“I begged her to come visit any old time. Wasn’t that right, Alcie?” Beth enthused.
Shuck of his Sunday jacket for more comfort, Luke was still gussied up a tad for dinner with his daughter and son-in-law. He looked like a swell in the gray shirt with a bolo tie studded with a striking piece of turquoise, his Sunday-go-meeting black whipcord trousers with thin stripes and best black leather vest. He didn’t recognize it of himself, but Luke cut a striking masculine figure—shoulders like a barn door, square jaw, rangy legs, neat hips, six-three, hair like quicksilver and steel gray eyes.
Both his daughter Beth and his sister Liz, chattering like sparrows, hugged the woman, and, divesting her of her sealskin jacket, shot a smug glance behind Luke’s back. They reckoned he couldn’t see, but didn’t reckon on Luke catching the exchange in the hall-tree mirror.
“Lucian, this is Mrs. Alcie Hastings…” Judging by her mourning attire, no matter how rich, Beth needn’t inform him, “…recently widowed.”
“Why, sure,” Luke said politely, handing back the child to Beth and shaking the newcomer’s limp, moist, plump, outstretched hand. Luke quelled the urge to wipe his on his pants afterward.
“Lucian! My, what an attractive name. So noble!”
“Um. Thank you, Miz Alcie. I think I might have known your husband, Ed…”
“My, yes, dear Edward. Married thirty years. One gets lonely. Do you find that? Sometimes I sit there at night and don’t know what to do…” She tittered but never took a breath before she continued, “Do you ever talk to your dear wife? I find it so comforting. My, you do have a lovely, well-run ranch. Your dear daughter told me. My Ed used to keep our place spick and span, in apple-pie order, ‘everything in its place and a place for everything,’ he always said, and ah, then I always said…” She took a breath. “But dear, you can never find anything without my help…”
Luke, lost in a tidal wave of comments, opened his mouth to speak, while his daughter looked on as if Alcie was giving Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Luke tempered his thoughts as Alcie rambled on. The woman was edgy, as was he.
“…just not the same without a man about the house. I was acquainted with your dear wife. You might not know, but we were good friends, though never invited to your place, but we did meet at the Ladies’ Aid Society and quilting bees. I vow, she was lovely, too, and I did have her over at our home for tea one afternoon, but as I said I never had the pleasure of seeing your lovely ranch…”
Luke nodded and smiled till his jaws ached. He’d rather face a grizzly in his underwear.
Alcie eventually wound down when Beth herded them to the big clawfoot table and placed the baby in his cradle, only to resume the chatter after they were all seated. Luke shot a glance at Beth that said, We will speak later. He plastered on a smile and took the time to draw the chair out for Alcie the widow—the hungry widow, it turned out, but that did not halt the flow of words.
He looked with despair over Beth’s usual Sunday spread, as no one wanted to eat whiles Alcie was full steam ahead. All getting cold. Chicken and dumplings, ham, beef ribs, sugared yams, cornbread and biscuits, big slabs of butter, scorched-just-right runner beans crumbled with bacon, black-eyed peas, and squash pie cooling on the sideboard, alongside Beth’s famous chocolate spice cake.
Luke loved Beth’s hot fluffy biscuits, so short they melted without the butter, but politely returned Alcie’s conversational parlays while they cooled. “He hailed from Illinois, your Ed, didn’t he?” Luke interrupted, as Beth passed along the melting butter, watermelon conserve, gravy and smashed potatoes. Luke made full use of the opportunity. “I recollect his folks were from there…”
His daughter made significant looks to pass the biscuits, now grown cold, while Luke made his comments to Alcie and managed to add, “You fattening me up for the round-up?” as he winked at Beth, nodding at the cake, hoping to head the widow off at the pass.
Beth laughed, with Alcie nonplussed at being shunted aside, but not for long. “Oh, my, yes! Chocolate cake! My Ed always said my cake was so light it nearly floated off the plate.”
Even Beth seemed annoyed at that.
But the widow Alcie could not be deterred. “I often thought of returning to the Midwest, but…” she airily waved a hand while gnawing on a chicken leg. “There’s no one left there, you see,” and gazed fondly at Beth, who was now looking a bit desperate herself, Luke was gratified to note.
“Your sweet daughter here—oh, might I have the teeniest bit more of that sugared ham? It is nice to have someone worry about you, and some of that redeye gravy too, ’fore you put it away. Why, I feel she is almost like my own daughter,” Alcie vowed between bites. This announcement was followed by silence as heavy as a coal scuttle.
Beth’s husband, Matthew, gamely eating, ignored the whole conversation.
Lucky stiff.
Alcie was okay, a fine woman, yet he didn’t cotton to women with dumpling faces, even if she did have rather fine eyes, if a tad set close. His Katherine had been lean, fit, and majestic as an Arabian horse all her short life. This woman you could say was comfortable.
A nice woman, even if she did keep up a wave of conversation he was drowning in—something about how dear his daughter was, and “nice to have a companion, though one misses the companionship of a man…” and she knew how close they were, and that he should come over sometime for supper, “even if I do say it myself, I set a table almost as fine as this…”
Might as well hit him over the head with an anvil.
“Besides…” She tittered. “…I could do with some manly thoughts on insurance issues. Ed took out some, you know, quite a bit,” she added meaningfully. “He certainly did not leave me high and dry. I have a tidy sum, but I don’t understand words like ‘fiduciary’ and ‘annuitized,’ and then there is the farm equipment—my, my, I don’t ken a backhoe from a cream separator,” and she tittered again. God help him.
“Sounds as if it might be understandably over your head, a fine lady like you, perhaps,” he suggested politely. “Your proper place may be back east with familiar folks, like you’d have there.”
Then Alcie looked at him with eyes like two Smith-and-Wesson gun barrels. “I don’t know what you mean! I have no one left there.” Her voice rose almost to a screech. “Without a man I am nothing!” She snapped down her fork. “How could you even think…?”
Even Beth’s husband glanced up from snitching another slice of Beth’s cake.
Alcie heaved to a calm. “I have always been rather—sheltered, I know, and my dear husband’s death was…” She tucked a lacy kerchief to her smallish dry eyes. Luke was aware of Liz’s and Beth’s punitive looks nailing him to the wall, and he felt the burn.
“No, no. Not at all, not at all, be happy to go read your books and set you up straight, so’s that you can do it on your own. Maybe Beth would like to go with me and visit.”
He eyed his daughter in a manner which left no doubt what he expected. Alcie sputtered, “Why—why! That is entirely unnecessary!” She looked at their stricken faces. Matthew had halted eating.
Alcie changed like a weathervane in a windstorm, her smile now as sweet as honey oozing from the comb. “Oh, could you! That would be so gal-lant, Mr. Farnsworth. May I call you Lucas? I feel as if I know you now. You may call on me at any time.”
“It’s Lucian or Luke. Don’t stand on ceremony here.” He looked desperately at his daughter. His son-in-law was again industriously chewing, nose practically in his plate. Where did he put it all?
“I sure do love that dress you have on,” Beth cut in. “I know you do all your own sewing. There’s not a dressmaker in the county could come up with that. Isn’t it right pretty, Pa?”
“Yes, very fine, I’m right fond of purple…” The color of an old bruise.
“Well as you may recall, I’m still in mourning, but I shall soon be out of—”
The silence lengthened. Luke stuck a finger between his neck and collar. “Umm. Not here. Doesn’t mean much. Back east you have to stand on formality, I suppose…black for a few days, then gray, then purple, or lavender…hell, I don’t know.”
“Pa, there’s no need to get huffy…”
“Or use profanity,” Alcie sniffed.
Liz added to the mix, rolling her eyes at Alcie. “I’ve tried, Lord help me, Alcie, but he will take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“My deportment does not need your help, Elizabeth.”
Matthew, his son-in-law, nervous as a hound dog in a room full of rocking chairs, stifled a grin behind his coffee cup.
Oh, to be back at the ranch. Mae’s perfect little face swam before Luke’s eyes. Time with her seemed a sweet flowing stream in comparison to this. Belatedly, he became aware they watched him oddly as he stared into space with a smile on his mug.
“What’s funny, Pa? Share it with us.” It was a command.
Luke decided to keep his big mouth shut, the safest route through this minefield, so he smiled, nodded and made a bland comment, to his daughter’s annoyance and the widow Alcie’s consternation. Liz just watched her brother like a cat ready to pounce on a mouse emerging from its hole.
After they sipped coffee and nibbled a last piece of cake while listening to a gramophone record of a man called Caruso, who sounded as if he could call hogs across three counties, his daughter still didn’t get the message that her matchmaking was dying along with the tenor’s last bellow.
Beth gave it one more shot to bring down her quarry. “Pa. Maybe you’d like to be taking Miz Alcie home. Getting on late. You could hitch your horse up to her carriage, to get home on.”
“Why, yes,” urged his helpful sister Liz. “I was planning to stay over. Gives me a chance to visit my little nephew.”
Luke thought desperate thoughts. If he took the widow home, she might invite him in, presaging a spider’s web of entanglement. “Much as that would be my privilege, ma’am, I need to head on back. You too, Liz.”
Why are womenfolk such pitfalls?
“You can’t stir up a mess of oatmeal?” Liz exploded while Alcie glared.
Luke, as the target of those Smith-and-Wesson eyes, had visions of her holding him prisoner. “Nothing I’d like better, Miz Alcie. However, I have to get up early for, well, you know, the…the, umm, round-up. Best be hightailing it home. Past my bedtime anyway.” Dang. Explaining too much.
Alcie looked sadly at him for a moment and then, swatting him with a small lacy fan, simpered, “Oh, I understand. You men! I have my boy with me.”
The woman had more moods than a peddler had pots and pans. She meant the boy waiting throughout dinner by the stove with his own plate, stowing its contents away as fast as he could in a way that showed what sort of mingy household the widow Alcie managed, despite her affluence.
His big-hearted son-in-law interrupted, “Why don’t I take you on home, Miz Alcie?”
The widow shot him a look that would fry an egg. “I don’t want to put you out…”
“No trouble a-tall. I could use the fresh air…been working all day on the manure spreader, all bolloxed up…” Matthew trailed off at the look his wife gave him, then mulishly crammed on his hat and yanked his coat from the hook, leaving the widow little choice but to hastily wrap her fur and summon her boy.
Luke could read his mind. Lord knew Matthew needed a break, if taking a widow home was a holiday. Beth never wanted him far from sight, unless Luke himself was around.
“All right, then, guess that does it. Thanks, Bethy, for your usual glorious grub.”
Luke gave the widow a stiff bow and offered, “Nice making your acquaintance, Alcie.”
“Yes, indeed. I hope we may kindle that friendship.” She did not give up easy. She winced, a stiff little smile tightening like a purse string, and held out her plump hand—expecting it to be kissed, Luke guessed too late, bumping her forehead and knocking her bonnet askew as he bent. Alcie turned on her heel and swept out, twitching her finger at her boy. “Come, Jeb. Make haste. These people have important things to do,” she said pointedly.
After she left Luke rounded on his daughter. “Whew! I know you have my best interests at heart, Beth, But…” He shook his finger in her face. “Little missy! Let’s stop the matchmaking! I’m fine. I have my work. I have the ranch. I have my boys to look after, and Liz to keep me—company.”
“But, Pa!”
“Enough! My back is up about this. No more!”
“But Pa, I only…”
He cupped Beth’s cheek and said kindly, “You mean well. I have my memories, kitten.”
Beth folded her arms. “Sure, Pa, but memories don’t keep you warm at night.”
Liz gasped.
Beth rounded on her, snapping, “Liz. Maybe you’d like to see to the kids, if this conversation is too adult for you.”
“Well, really, Beth! Such manners. What has gotten into you, I’d like to know? Katherine did not raise you this way, and you needn’t be crude.” Liz walked slowly to the stairs, huffing, “I don’t know what the big secret is anyway.”
Luke watched her leave with mixed feelings. Since when was he scared of Beth?
Beth waited till her aunt was upstairs. “You need, like a, well, a…fast woman,” Beth hissed once Liz was out of hearing. “When’s the last time you had a good—?” She made a vague gesture.
He chopped his hand to stopper her words. “Beth!” Luke shook his leonine head, swiping back a lock of gunmetal hair. “Always been a right caution, Beth, but this is the limit.” He began to cram on his hat.
“I mean it, Pa! We are adults. I’m a married woman. I ken what it’s all about. I’m not a blushing girl! We’ve always talked things over. We have no secrets. How—how is your, well—love life? You are still a young, vigorous man—you are fine-looking—any woman…”
He threw an ironic look at Beth that said, I give up.
“Really, Pa! Look in the mirror when you shave, for a change. You are a nice-looking man! Why, any woman would be proud to be on your arm.”
Luke made a negative noise. He placed his hat back on the table.
Beth watched with an impish smile, like when she was twelve. “Pa? Do you have a lady friend?”
“Disrespectful daughter of mine, she’d be no lady if she cavorted in the way you mean.”
“Pa! I only want you happy.”
Luke knuckled the table hard. “No more, Beth Anne.”
Beth slowly took her seat. Luke hesitated, brushing the cloth of imaginary crumbs. “And yes, I was stepping out with a—a woman who will remain known to me alone, Miss Snoopy-Drawers. I don’t wish to offend the lady.”
“Pa. I wouldn’t gossip.”
“Not until you told your best friend, and she?” He snorted. “Only way to keep a secret amongst three females is if two of them are dead.” Laughing, Luke clapped back on his Stetson. “And I am very fond of you, little darlin’. Tell Liz I’ve gone on and to take her time. I’ll survive fryin’ my own eggs.”
