Dorothy Garlock - [Route 66] (29 page)

“Have you been there?”

“I’ve been down around Albuquerque.”

She could feel his gaze, hot and questing, on her face and was grateful for the evening shadows that hid the blush that crept up her throat to her cheeks. The silence between them went on and on. She was only half aware of the sound of Anna Marie calling to her.

“Margie! Margie!” Anna Marie ran to her from the Putman camp. “Aunt Grace let me keep an egg. Look.” The egg had two round circles for eyes, a dot for a nose and a curved line for the mouth.

“Who is it?” Margie asked after looking at it closely.

“Uncle Brady. See his ears?” She turned the egg in her small fingers.

“It does look like him.” Margie looked from the egg to Brady’s smiling eyes. “When he loses his hair, you won’t be able to tell them apart.”

Anna Marie giggled and pulled on Margie’s hand so that she would bend over.

“Ask Uncle Brady if I can sleep with you again,” she whispered.

“You ask him,” Margie whispered back.

“I’m ’fraid he won’t let me.”

“You won’t know until you ask him.”

Brady’s eyes darted back and forth between his niece and the woman who had been in his thoughts all day.

“I’m beginning to feel like the skunk at the picnic. What are you two whispering about?”

Anna Marie had put the egg in the pocket of her dress and was holding on to Margie’s hand with both of hers.

“All right. Out with it,” he pressed. “What are you two hatching up?”

As his eyes roamed her face, strange feelings stirred in Margie. Her heart fluttered. She drew the tip of her tongue across dry lips.

“We-ll,” she stammered. “I was just about to invite Anna Marie to sleep in the truck with me again.”

Brady’s eyes were fixed unwavering on her.

She has a wistfulness about her tonight. She’s a woman, yet she’s a girl.

She was looking at him with wide, clear eyes. And in the flickering light of the Putmans’ campfire her face appeared infinitely soft and beautiful. An unexpected twinge of yearning stirred deep inside of him. Brady tore his eyes away and looked down at his niece.

“Do you want to accept Margie’s invitation?”

“Does that mean yes?”

“It means yes if Margie really wants you to stay.”

“She wants me. Don’t you, Margie?”

“Sure I do, puddin’. You can sleep on the box again. I like the company.”

“Goody, goody. I can stretch out my feet.”

“You could stretch your legs out in the car.”

“Huh-uh. I kicked the door.”

“I didn’t realize that. I’ll get the mattress for you.”

“Margie likes me,” Anna Marie said brightly, smiling up at her uncle.

Margie saw his jaw tighten and knew that he was remembering the cruel words that Becky, the child’s mother, had said to her.

“Of course I like you.” Margie hugged the child to her. “Everyone likes you. You’re pretty and sweet and … smart to draw your uncle’s face on the egg.”

“I gave him big ears.”

“By golly, you did.” Margie lifted the child up into the truck. “You’ve got to be washed before you can go to bed. I’ve got a bar of scented soap I’ve been saving. We’ll use it and some powder to make you smell good.”

Margie lit the lantern and set it on the icebox.

“I wish you were my mama.” Anna Marie cuddled the boiled egg in her hand and looked at Margie with big, solemn eyes. “She was pretty, like you, but she didn’t like me.”

“Oh, honey. You must be mistaken.”

“Huh-uh.”

Wanting to change the subject, Margie said quickly, “We should have told your uncle to bring a nightgown.”

“I brought one.” Brady was standing at the end of the truck with the small mattress from his car. “I’ll slide the mattress in. Can you take it from there? Otherwise you girls will have to get out before I can get in.”

Margie had cleared off the things that rode on the box during the day. She moved the mattress over and tilted it onto the box.

“Just fits. Does she have a pillow?”

“I’ll get it.”

Later Brady sat beside the dark truck, smoked a cigarette and listened to Margie talking to his niece.

“When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to read to me. I liked the fairy tales best. Want me to tell you about Cinderella and the prince?”

“I like stories. Daddy told me about the three bears.”

“Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl who lived with her cruel stepmother and stepsisters. They made her work from morning until night …”

Brady found himself listening to the story with rapt attention. It dawned on him for the hundredth time how foolish he had been to attempt to drive across the country with a five-year-old girl. God must have been watching out for the child and arranged for him to meet Margie and the Putmans. It had not even occurred to him to tell her a story. He didn’t know if he even knew one.

“The prince tried the glass slipper on every girl in his kingdom, but it fit none of them. He feared that he would never find the beautiful girl who came to the ball. Then he came to the house where Cinderella lived with her stepmother and stepsisters …”

Silence. Brady tilted his head to listen. Would Margie come out? God, he hoped so. The heavy hand of loneliness gripped him, wrapping its icy fingers around his heart at the thought of the journey’s end and never again seeing the slim, brown-eyed girl with the sweet, soft lips and the sad, shy smile.

Dear God! He was in love with her!

How had it happened? He knew that he liked her. Liked her a lot and enjoyed being with her. He hadn’t intended to fall in love until he was on his feet and could provide for a wife. Hell and damnation! He had learned that love was an intimate, gut-wrenching experience that turned a reasonably intelligent man into a blithering idiot.

Is this how poor tortured Brian felt about Becky? Is this why a sensible man like Foley Luker married a floozy like Sugar?

Inside the truck Anna Marie had gone to sleep. Margie sat on the bunk and debated about what to do. She knew that Brady was out there. If she went out, he would think that she was running after him. If she didn’t, he would think that she was avoiding him because she was still angry. She wanted him to believe that she was indifferent to him, that she was no more interested in him than she was in Jody or Rusty, which meant not going out of her way to avoid him.

She climbed out of the truck.

Chapter 22

B
RADY GOT TO HIS FEET
when Margie appeared. With a flick of her hand she motioned for him to sit down and went to sit on the fender of the truck.

“Does Anna Marie have a toothbrush?”

“She did when we started out. I looked for it this morning and couldn’t find it.”

“Even though she’ll be losing her baby teeth, she should brush them at least once a day.”

“I know. Brian was a stickler for that and for keeping her hands clean.”

“Another thing. She’s outgrown her shoes. Her little toes are red from being squeezed.”

“Good Lord. I hadn’t noticed that. She hasn’t said anything. She’s barefoot while in the car, but she puts on her shoes when we get out, because of cockleburs, nails and glass in the campgrounds.”

“She wanted me to put her egg in a safe place so it wouldn’t be broken.”

“Not much chance of that. It’s been boiled.” He got to his feet. Margie thought he was leaving, but he came to where she sat on the fender and held out his hand.

“Sit in the car with me for a while. We’ll leave both doors open so we can hear Anna Marie if she wakes.”

She ignored his hand and said, “No,” shaking her head at the same time.

“Please.” The softly spoken word coming from him shocked her. She looked up at the dark blur that was his face. “I want to tell you about Brian and Becky and how I came to have Anna Marie.”

“You can tell me here. I don’t think it’s a good idea to get in the car with you.”

“Do you think that I’m going to force myself on you? I’ve told you that I’m sorry about what happened that night in Oklahoma City. Don’t you believe me?”

“Yes, I believe that you’re sorry now, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen again.”

“Oh, Lord. I didn’t realize that I had hurt you so much.”

“The words hurt more than the rough treatment.”

“I don’t even remember what I said. Whatever it was, I said it in the heat of anger.”

“Oftentimes people blurt out their innermost feelings when they are angry.”

“Can’t you forget it so we can start over?”

“I can’t forget it. But if you like, we can start over. I don’t want to be at loggerheads with anyone as I was with Elmer all my life. And I do appreciate all that you’ve done to help me these last few days.”

“I need no thanks for that.”

“You might not need them, but I need to offer them anyway.”

“Deke said that you are one of a kind, and I believe him. If we are going to let the sleeping dog lie, come sit with me. You can call it a test … of sorts.”

She was as surprised as he was when she accepted the hand he offered. She found herself walking beside him, her hand engulfed in a large, warm one.

“What else did Deke tell you?”

“He said that you had a lot of love to give someone and the man who got it would be a lucky son of a bitch. His words exactly.”

“I wish I could have loved him the way a woman loves her special man. He is one of the most caring, unselfish people I’ve ever known.”

“He’ll meet someone someday who will realize that. My mother said that God made a woman for every man and that he made her for my father.”

“What a sweet thing to say.”

“He loved her very much and didn’t last very long after she died.”

Brady opened the passenger side of his car and left the door open after Margie had gotten in. He went around to the driver’s side and slid in under the wheel.

“If it gets too windy, close the door.”

“I hadn’t visualized the land here in the Texas Panhandle as so flat and treeless.”

“It is that. I prefer mountains and valleys.”

“Is your ranch on a mountain?”

“It’s in a lush, green valley. The grass at times comes up to the horses’ bellies.”

“Who do you sell your horses to?”

“Mostly other ranchers. Some go to the army. I also run a few hundred head of steers. They are what pay the bills.”

Margie was surprised that she was so comfortable with him. They were quiet for a long while before Margie spoke.

“It’s been strange without Elmer. Somehow I keep thinking that he’ll show up and tell me to get out of his truck.”

“I know the feeling. I kept thinking that Brian would walk in the door. It wasn’t until Anna Marie and I drove away from the house that I felt that it was over, that he was really gone.” He put a cigarette in his mouth, flipped the head of the match with his thumbnail and lit it.

“When we get to a town that’s big enough to have a shoe store, will you help me pick out shoes for Anna Marie?”

“Sure. She’s a smart little thing … for her age.”

“Is she? I’ve not been around enough children to know.”

“The people I worked for had a boy and a girl. They were six and eight. Anna Marie is very bright. She acts as mature as the eight-year-old.”

“She talks about you a lot. She’s not been around many young women her mother’s age. The woman Brian hired to take care of her was a grandmother. When Anna Marie wasn’t with Brian, she was with her. She may have thought all young women were mean like her mother.”

“Well, for crying out loud. I certainly hope that your brother set her straight about that.”

“He tried. When I think of how he died, it almost tears me apart.” Brady rushed on, hurrying to say what he wanted to say. “He was my twin. We looked exactly alike except for the scar in Brian’s eyebrow. That’s how the teacher told us apart. We even fooled our pa sometimes. We were always together. After the folks died it was just the two of us. We worked together, had fun together, without a thought that someday there would be only one of us left.

“Then he married Becky.”

Margie watched Brady’s large hands grip the steering wheel and knew that talking about his brother was painful. When one of his hands left the wheel and groped for hers, she put her hand in it.

“He loved Becky with all his heart from the time we were fourteen. He could see no other girl but her. She led him a merry chase through school and afterward. She was a goodtime girl: loved to go to parties, dances, smoke cigarettes and drink bootleg whiskey. But she always kept Brian on the string. I think she married him to get away from home. Her folks were clamping down on her. Brian thought that she would settle down once they had a family.

“She did for a while. She hated being pregnant. Brian did everything for her. He was thrilled over Anna Marie. Becky never wanted to have much to do with her. Brian named her Anna after our grandma and Marie after our mother.”

“Was your brother a rancher?”

“No. With the money we got from our parents and grandparents he bought a newspaper in a little town in Kansas. Becky didn’t want to move, but she did; and it wasn’t long until she had a circle of wild friends and fell back into her same old pattern. Foley’s wife reminds me of her, but Becky wasn’t as pretty or as flirty. If Brian knew she was messing around with other men, he never let on.”

“What about you at that time? Did you go to Kansas?”

“No. I took my money and went west. It meant that Brian and I would be separated for the first time. But he had a wife who didn’t like me much, and I couldn’t abide her. It was best that I go my way and Brian go his. During the four years I was in Colorado I came back several times.

“Then I got a letter from Brian saying that he was about to lose the paper because he couldn’t give it the time it needed. He didn’t mention Becky, but I knew by the tone of the letter that she was at the root of his problems and that he was in a terrible state of depression. I got on the train the day I received the letter and got there an hour too late.”

Margie didn’t know what to say. She heard the pain in his voice and desperately wanted to say something to comfort him. She took his hand in both of hers, drew it into her lap and held it tightly.