Dove in the Window (5 page)

“Cool,” I said. “On which float?”

“The VFW,” he said. “We’ve been working on it for a month. I’m their featured rider since I’m the oldest veteran. I’ll be in full dress uniform.”

“You can still fit in it?” I said, impressed.

“Of course, my dear girl,” he said, his bayonet-sharp features looking somewhat insulted. “I’m
Army
.”

That was a poke at Gabe, who argued good-naturedly with Mr. Treton over our common hedge about the superiority of the Marines over the Army.

“Well,” I said, lowering my voice into a confidential tone, “don’t tell Gabe I told you, but he can’t fit into his anymore.” I didn’t mention that Gabe had weighed a sinewy 150 pounds when he was eighteen—not nearly enough for his six-foot frame. He looked much better now at 180 solid, masculine pounds. His fanatical jogging and three-times-weekly weight lifting at the police gym gave him a healthier body now than I’m sure he had at eighteen. Still, this gave Mr. Treton something to razz Gabe about.

I put the Yankee Cake I’d baked last night on the truck’s front seat and wrapped a towel around the Tupperware cake carrier to keep it from shifting. It was past five o‘clock now and though it was only a ten-minute drive to the Amtrak station, the trains sometimes arrived early. If there was one thing Emory hated, it was being kept waiting.

The train station adhered to San Celina’s unspoken code of early mission architecture with the requisite red-tiled roof; adobe-white walls; and high, airy ceilings. The station was more crowded than usual with families doing the same thing I was, waiting for relatives who preferred this more land-loving method of transportation. Sitting on the mahogany wood benches in the chilly waiting room observing the tearful reunions of families and smelling the mixed bouquet of diesel fuel, sweat, floor wax, and pine-scented cleaner brought back memories of Dove and I taking long train trips back to Sugartree, Arkansas, to visit her only sister, Garnet. Emory had lived just two doors down from Aunt Garnet in an old Victorian house on tree-shaded Palmer Street in Sugartree. As kids, we’d spent hours up in his musty attic dressing up in stiff World War II uniforms and Evening-in-Paris scented organza formals, the fabric as sheer in spots as onion skin paper. When I was thirteen, he arranged for me to experience my first real adolescent kiss with his friend Duncan Robert “Duck” Wakefield, in back of the Sugartree Dairy Queen one hot, humid Arkansas night. Emory paid his friend, the best looking boy in town, two dollars to kiss his tomboy cousin from California. He still nags me about paying him back with accumulated interest.

The train was on time, but not to my surprise, Emory was one of the last people to disembark. I’d almost decided he’d missed his train when my cousin stepped off, deep in conversation with the porter who was carrying his two Cordovan leather suitcases and a huge, tissue-wrapped package.

There was no doubt to anyone who’d known him from childhood that Emory Littleton had grown from a gawky, bespectacled boy into one fine-looking specimen of elegant southern manhood. Dressed in a pale, slightly rumpled linen suit and wearing fashionable rimless eyeglasses, his clear green eyes brightened when they spotted me.

“Sweetcakes,” he exclaimed. “What a sight you are for these sore ole southun‘ eyes.”

Unabashed, I ran across the concrete platform and grabbed him up in a fierce hug. He’d only grown more handsome in the five years since I’d last seen him, and had he not been my cousin, his liquidy southern accent and slow, confident way of moving might have melted even my cynical western heart. I didn’t see how Elvia could resist him.

“Emory, you dumb turkey,” I said, linking my arm through his. “I thought you’d missed the train. Why are you always so pokey?”

“I was helping a young lady gather together her possessions,” he said. “You know Aunt Garnet always said we should lend a helpin‘ hand to our fellow man ... or woman, as the case may be. Me and Annemarie became quite the cozy pair on our trip across this fair country of ours. Sweet young thing has people in Paso Robles.”

“Emory, you scoundrel. She’d better be of legal age,” I scolded. “There are some things even Gabe can’t fix.”

Emory gave his molasses-slow smile to the porter as he tipped him a twenty-dollar bill.

“Thank you, sir,” the porter said, touching his hat brim and winking at me. He turned back to help another passenger off the train.

“Geez, Emory,” I said. “I should have known it was dangerous to let you go across the country by your—” My words were interrupted by a high, excited female voice.

“Emory Littleton, you’d better not leave without saying good-bye.”

Using her ebony cane, a lady well into her eighties, dressed in a pink lace dress, picked her way across the platform toward us.

“Benni,” Emory said, grinning, “I’d like you to meet Miz Annemarie Burchard, of the Atlanta and Paso Robles Burchards. Known far and wide for her wicked game of Hearts.”

I pulled my arm out of his and smacked him across the chest. “You never change, you jerk.”

“And God is in His Heaven,” Emory replied.

After his affectionate good-bye to Annemarie, we walked out to the truck. I carried one of his suitcases since he refused to let me have the tissue-wrapped box.

“Still the consummate cowgirl, I see,” Emory commented, settling his expensive luggage carefully in the rusty bed of my truck. “Now that you’ve caught yourself a man with a regular paycheck, maybe you should think about acquiring yourself a vehicle more appropriate to your social level.”

“Which is?”

“Wife of one of the county’s higher officials. Rumor has it in the family grapevine that you’ve actually had to wear a dress for more than weddings and funerals.”

“That is pure Yankee propaganda. Sometimes I wear a dress to church on Sunday.” I looked at him and grimaced. “But the stories aren’t completely inaccurate. I’ve had to attend more society functions in the last nine months than I have in my whole life. Kicking and screaming the whole way.”

Emory’s thick blond eyebrows arched in question.

“Okay, more like whining. Being the police chief’s wife is different than I thought it would be.”

“Most things are. But isn’t Señor Ortiz worth the effort?”

I growled deep in my throat. “Most of the time. Gosh, I’m so glad to see you. It’s been way too long.”

Emory held out the wrapped box. “Likewise, dear cousin. This is for you. And please make note that only my deep and abiding love and affection for you could impel me to lug these tawdry tidbits clean across the country.”

I grabbed the box and tore the tissue off, hoping it would be what I thought it was.

“Oh, Emory.” I squealed when I saw the case of chocolate Moonpies. I tore open the box, opened a cellophane wrapped pie and took a huge bite. “I haven’t had one of these in years. I could just kiss you.”

He curled his lip in disgust. “Please, not until you gargle. I have no idea what you see in that white-trash snack food.”

“I love you with all my white-trash heart,” I said, taking another bite.

“Spill the beans,” he said, after settling down in the front seat. “Clue me in on all the gossip from the western end of the clan.”

As we drove through the parched, golden November hills toward the ranch, I caught him up on all the birthings, graduations, loves, and breakups of the family. Then I told him about what was going on at the museum and the women’s western art show I was helping to coordinate.

“So you
are
becoming quite the little society wife,” he said, his voice smug. “And to think I knew you when the only thing you organized was an unruly conglomeration of cattle.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back to my old self this weekend. I do like my job and I do love Gabe to distraction, but I can’t tell you how much I miss living out at the ranch.”

“I know, sweetcakes.” He squeezed my shoulder with his long-fingered hand. And I knew he did understand. Though we didn’t see each other often, Emory and I wrote long letters to each other and had ever since that summer he stayed at the ranch. Sometimes I think Emory knew me better than anyone else alive.

We chattered like two excited teenagers for the rest of the drive. When we turned down the long driveway to the ranch and passed under the Double Rocking R wrought iron gates, he rolled down the window of the truck and inhaled a dramatic, deep breath.

“Never thought I’d be sayin‘ this, but I have had the occasional nostalgic longing to smell eucalyptus—even if it does stink like cat piss.”

I laughed. “You sentimental guy, you.”

The lawn and area around the house was already crowded with RVs, horse and people trailers, and mud-splattered trucks. Emory and I parked behind my uncle Luke’s new brown Ford crew cab. From over near the barn, the heavy roar of men’s laughter filtered across the yard. Emory and I went into the house first so he could say hey to Dove and the rest of the women.

A wave of women’s high-pitched voices rolled over us when we entered the crowded kitchen. Almost everyone was occupied with some chore: rolling pie dough, cutting up vegetables, frying chicken, or folding napkins at the counter. Huge plastic glasses of iced tea and lipstick-imprinted coffee cups rested elbow close to each woman. The steamy room smelled of hot oil, cinnamon, smoky butter, apples, and women’s perfume.

“Emory Delano Littleton, you come over here and hug my neck,” Dove cried. She put down the hot pie she was pulling out of the oven, wiped her hands on her red calico apron, and held out her plump arms.

I poured myself a glass of tea and sat down next to my aunt Kate, Dove’s oldest daughter, at the long breakfast counter while a genial Emory answered all of Dove’s questions about the Arkansas clan as well as allowed himself to be poked and inspected as if he were still eleven years old.

“You’re too skinny,” Dove declared after making him turn around for her. “We’ll take care of that these next few days.”

“Dove, I have no doubt about that,” Emory said, giving her another hug. Her eyes glowed as bright as a Coleman lantern. Emory had wormed his way into Dove’s heart that summer he stayed with us after his mom died. He’d arrived at the ranch an angry, hurt, and confused little boy. Under Dove’s firm but loving care and the friendship he and I forged because I’d also lost my mother at a young age, he’d gone home after three months healed enough to grow up into a wonderful and compassionate man.

We gabbed with the aunts and cousins for the next hour, and when he found out that the sleeping arrangements inside the house were strictly feminine, we headed toward the bunkhouse to secure him a bed. Luckily there was still one free, so he threw his leather suitcase on the upper bunk, then cautiously inspected his accommodations.

“You didn’t tell me it was to be a cowboy campout,” he said, his voice accusing.

“Aw, you’re tough,” I replied. “You can handle it.”

Just then, Sam, my nineteen-year-old stepson, walked out of the bathroom wearing a pair of faded Wranglers, his black hair wet from a shower. Just as he did, the bunkhouse door opened and my dad’s two ranch hands sauntered in.

“Hey, Sam, did Gabe get a hold of you?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said, rubbing a white towel over his hair. His coppery skin was two-toned now with a rancher’s tan that ended at his neck and upper arms. “I saved him a bunk. He’s not happy about it, though.” He grinned at me—a brilliant, white, kiss-me-quick smile that Elvia said sold more books at Blind Harry’s than her thirty-percent-off specials.

“A man of obviously superior intelligence,” Emory said, trying not to look too disdainful of his rustic accommodations.

Sam looked Emory up and down, then glanced at the two hands who’d stood quietly next to the door. Bobby Sanchez had worked for my father for three years, ever since graduating from San Celina High. A native of San Celina, he’d never wanted to do anything but cowboy. He was a short, wiry young man with black shaggy hair and long sparse sideburns. Next to him was Kip Waterman, Shelby’s boyfriend. He was as blond as Bobby was dark and husky with a thick chest and the short, sturdy legs of a bullrider. With a complexion burnt shiny red-brown from working outdoors, he’d be spending a lot of time in the dermatologist’s office in a few years if he didn’t learn how to use sunscreen.

Being the most self-possessed man I’ve ever known, Emory calmly ignored their obvious expressions of amusement. Sam’s brown eyes gave me a questioning look.

I slipped my arm through Emory’s. “Sam, this is my cousin Emory from Arkansas. He’s a journalist.” I glanced up at Emory. “Sam lives and occasionally works here at the ranch.”

After shaking hands with Sam and his cohorts, Emory excused himself to use the restroom.

“Your cousin, huh?” Sam said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the laughter out of his voice. He draped the towel around his shoulders, reached into the large built-in closet, and pulled out a blue chambray work shirt. In his worn Wranglers and scuffed roper boots, he looked every inch the consummate western male down to the superiority he showed toward men who didn’t appear to share his overt masculine image. It wasn’t the first time I wondered if it had been a good idea for him to move out to the ranch when he was still so impressionable. On the other hand, he was the product of a half-Latino cop father so the machismo roots ran deep—only the clothing was different.

“Don’t you be turning your nose up at Emory,” I scolded him lightly. “He can hold his own around you macho men, linen suit or not.”

The expression on Sam’s face doubted me, but he didn’t know Emory the way I did. Like most men who first meet Emory, Sam and his buddies vastly underestimated him.

“Cute tan,” I said, changing the subject.

He blew out an irritated breath. “It’s so embarrassing when I go surfing. Not that I have time for that anymore. But I learned how to shoe horses last week. Thought my back was going to kill me.” Sam, a Southern California suburb-raised boy, was learning ranching from the cowpie up. He was a quick and enthusiastic learner, but still green in many areas.

“Wuss,” Bobby said. Kip gave a sharp laugh. Sam tossed his wet towel at them. It hit the floor, and Kip kicked it into a corner.