High Plains Hearts (62 page)

“I’ll have to tear myself away.” He ran his fingers down her cheek.

“You think that’s going to be hard? Try getting Gramps away from his show. He’s addicted to that television.”

“I am not deaf!” the old man yelled from inside the house. “I have selective hearing, so I might not have heard any of those courting cooing things you said to each other, but on the other hand, maybe I did. So there, Grub.”

Hayden’s expression was shocked. “You did not!”

Livvy could hear the sounds of his grandfather pulling himself to his feet, apologizing to the cat as he did so—“Sorry, Martha, have to stand up”—and shuffling to the door. He grinned at the two through the screen.

“Look at you two, just as cozy as kittens on the hearth. I know what I know. I may be old but I know what’s in front of my face, and I have to say that I am just tickled beyond belief.”

“Gramps,” Hayden said with an amused sigh, “you’ve got the cart way before the horse. You’ve taken a kiss and blown it into a marriage with two-point-five children and a white picket fence and—”

“Excuse me,” Livvy interrupted before it could go any further, “did either of you happen to remember that I’m still here?”

“Oh, the kiss-ee,” Gramps said.

She had to end this conversation—and quickly. “I am going to kick the both of you out of here so that you can go back to your own home, and Martha Washington and Leonard and I can get some sleep before one of us has to drive into town tomorrow morning for church. Good night.”

Lightheartedly she kissed both men on the cheek, called to Leonard to come inside, and stood at the door watching the taillights of Hayden’s truck as it left Sunshine.

She’d been kissed. By Hayden. And suddenly life, which had been extremely good before, took on a whole new shine of wonder.

T
he first flakes of snow fell slowly, tiny bits of frozen sky and cloud that initially melted upon arrival, but then clung to the earth in the shadowed corners where the wind sent them. Hayden looked out the window and sighed.

“And we’ve got winter,” Gramps said behind him.

Hayden wrapped his hands around his coffee cup, as if he could store the extra warmth for the trip out to the old resort.

He’d never been this tired in his life. Between shuttling back and forth, Obsidian to Sunshine to Obsidian to Sunshine to Obsidian, he had to fit in time to do his job in the schools and to grade assignments, talk to students, visit with parents, and serve on endless committee after endless committee.

Plus he felt that he had to constantly watch Gramps, even more so after what had happened the weekend before, when Gramps had decided to scramble some eggs, but then had gone to sleep in the chair at the kitchen table. The smoke detector had saved the apartment from a sure fire, but the alarm had nearly given Gramps a heart attack. They’d ended up in the hospital in Bismarck, with the old man hooked to monitors and machines that bleeped and blipped out endless electronic messages.

The image of Gramps in the bed, his frail and bent frame nearly lost in the white sheets and the wires clipped to his body, haunted Hayden. He’d come so close to losing him this time.

He couldn’t leave him alone during the week, so the trips in the morning and the afternoon out to Sunshine had become crucial. Livvy had become a literal lifesaver. At least when Gramps was out there, he knew that his grandfather was safe.

He suspected it wasn’t fair to Livvy, but she insisted she enjoyed the company, and he kept Martha Washington and Leonard occupied and out from under her feet.

Still though, still …

The doctor had stopped just short of an assessment of Alzheimer’s. There were other possible causes of confusion, he’d told Hayden, and he’d discussed the variety of medications the old man was on. Gramps was now on a new regimen of pills and potions, and Hayden was supposed to monitor him constantly to determine if he was better—or worse—with the changed dosages.

It was too early to tell, and Hayden felt as if a heavy blanket of care was draped firmly and perpetually over his shoulders.

Even church, which had always been a source of renewal and strength for him, had become a chore. It had become one more thing in a long string of things. At night, when he finally wrapped himself in his old Cowboy Andy sleeping bag and curled up on the too-small sofa, he tried to say his prayers, but the words wouldn’t sort themselves out of the swirling mass of all that he had to do.

He knew that God was aware of how much was on his plate right now, and that He saw through the garbled petitions of a tired man.

Here it was, Sunday morning, and he didn’t even want to go to church. More than anything, he wanted to stay here, wrap himself in a nice warm throw, and read or watch television or sleep. He knew he’d benefit from the renewal that church gave him, but the thought of actually going through the process of getting ready for worship and then going there before he could profit from the service made him even wearier.

He had to admit it. He was exhausted.

He didn’t resent any of it. Not at all. He was just tired. So tired.

Gramps’s gnarled fingers touched his arm. “I know where the snowblower is,” he said. “I’d better get it ready. Once the snow starts, it’ll never stop.”

He held back an impatient sigh. “We don’t need the snowblower here. The apartment manager takes care of that. You know him. Joe, from the Cenex station? It’s one of the advantages of living in the big city of Obsidian.”

Gramps looked at him as if he’d begun spouting off multiplication tables in Portuguese. “Who said anything about bringing the snowblower here?” he asked. “I know Joe does all that. I’m talking about getting the one at Sunshine ready. And attaching the blade to the truck.”

His grandfather had a good point. Hayden had always put off those two tasks.

The snowblower was an obstinate machine that required vast amounts of effort to get it to start—Hayden remembered with dismay how his arm would ache after he pulled the starter cord on it over and over and over, trying to get the motor to catch, and finally, when he was ready to give up, the dumb thing would finally engage.

Whether or not it would stay running until he was through snow-blowing the walkways from the house to the chicken coop and the barn was another matter entirely. It was a cantankerous and belligerent piece of work, and Hayden dreaded approaching it after every snowfall.

Putting the blade on the truck was equally painful—often literally. He’d never made it without getting several gashes on his arms and hands, and one year he’d nearly sliced off his toe. He always wore steel-toed boots after that when dealing with the blade.

It was an awkward proposition, getting the blade attached to the front of the truck, but it had to be done. Usually Gramps helped him, but would he be able to this year? He had no idea.

Hayden created a smile and pasted it on. “You’re right. I don’t think this snow is going to stick, but let’s not take a chance.”

“We’ll go out after church,” his grandfather said.

Church. His entire Saturday had been eaten up with a three-hour practice for the boys’ basketball team at school, followed by a trip to the grocery store, running Gramps out to Sunshine to get his afternoon medication that he’d forgotten there, staying to fix a board that had come loose in the living room flooring, going back to Obsidian and fixing dinner, grading twenty-seven algebra exams and sixteen geometry worksheets, washing a load of sheets and changing the bed, and more that he’d mercifully forgotten.

Now this was Sunday, and he so desperately wanted a day of rest. Wasn’t that what it was all about? A day of rest?

“You’d better start getting ready for church. All I have left is to comb my silvery locks,” Gramps said, running his hand over his thinning hair.

A battle of wills began to rage inside him. His body begged for some downtime, but his soul needed some up time, an hour spent with the Lord.

God would understand. He’d—

Hayden took one look at his grandfather, who was already in his suit, his tie neatly knotted, if a bit askew, and his face shining eagerly, and he knew that the decision was made.

He’d go with the up time.

As he headed for the shower, perhaps not with the enthusiasm he usually felt on Sunday mornings, Gramps called out from the kitchen, “Hey, Grub, Livvy will be there.”

Hayden stopped, midstep, and shook his head. His grandfather was never going to stop matchmaking with the two of them. And, he admitted to himself as he continued his ascent up the stairs, he wasn’t sure he wanted Gramps to quit.

Children were scurrying around the front of the church, gathering the snow in their mittens and alternately eating it or dumping it on top of each other’s head. Hayden grinned as he watched them. It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d done those same things himself. He lingered outside, enjoying the antics of the youthful churchgoers.

Soon though, watchful parents pulled their children inside, and he followed. Gramps had already gotten himself settled with some of the other old-timers, but he stood up and hobbled over to sit with Hayden.

“You know,” Hayden said to him in the moments before the service started, “you’ve really got to get better boots. Those things you’re wearing have not only seen better days, they’ve seen better decades.”

Gramps shook his head. “They don’t make them like they used to.”

Hayden started to respond but Gramps interrupted, standing up as quickly as he could and moving into the aisle. “Livvy!”

He also jumped up, banging his knee into the hymnal rack.

Livvy looked like the spirit of snow herself. Her face glowed crimson from the cold, which made her eyes sparkle with an even brighter deep brown.

“I’m freezing,” she said as she slid down the pew next to Hayden, and Gramps followed her, so she had one on each side of her. “I know it’s not really that cold, but the wind just cuts through me.”

“It does that,” Gramps said. “You’re wise to wear a scarf, but you need something more substantial than that.” He motioned to the airy chiffon scarf she had draped around her neck, and she laughed.

“This is just for vanity, Gramps,” she said. “I have one that’s out there in the entryway, keeping my coat company, that would keep out arctic breezes, let me tell you. My mom sent it from Sweden. No breeze is getting through it, trust me.”

The service started, and Hayden let the words lift his cares from him.

Reverend Carlisle’s theme was “Coming Home,” based on, he explained, the upcoming set of holidays. As winter comes onto the starkness of the Badlands, it begins with a feast, a celebration of what has come before. The harvest, he pointed out, is the culmination of a busy season of planting, tending, and caring, before the reaping begins. The banquet is the ultimate festivity.

He leaned across the pulpit and grinned at the congregation. “Think how often we meet over food. We commemorate birthdays with a cake. Graduations, at least here in Obsidian, are marked with open houses and tray upon tray of bars and cookies and chips and dips. Weddings not only include a spectacular wedding cake, but a reception or perhaps a dinner. Even funerals end with us gathering over food.”

Gramps’s stomach growled, and Hayden and Livvy exchanged quick smiles.

“So we do as the song so known at Thanksgiving reminds us to do: We gather and we ask the Lord to bless us. And of course, we do this over as much food as we can possibly prepare,” the minister continued. “And that leads us into what’s commonly known as the holiday season, and if you look at the magazine display down at Grocery World, you’ll see that probably ninety percent of the magazines offer tips on how to avoid gaining weight in this time period.”

Reverend Carlisle patted his stomach. “As you can see, I am not an avid reader of these magazines.”

The congregation laughed.

“Let me give you the gospel now. It’s John 16:32: ‘Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.’ Why, you might wonder, am I choosing this text, which talks about us being apart, not coming together? Because, my friends, it’s simply this: It’s easier to talk about the happy, feel-good things—what we used to call warm fuzzies back in the ancient world—but what we need to discuss is the time when those end. When we’re in the January of our holiday season.”

He must be more tired than he realized, Hayden thought. None of this was making sense. Why was Reverend Carlisle talking about the holidays so early, and now he was on to January?

“I want you to see this as a continuum. It’s beginning now. I know that some of you are, in fact, getting ready for the winter ahead. You came in through it. Winter starts early out here; you know that. And we tear through its beginnings thinking only of celebration and gathering and togetherness. But January does come. In our lives, it’ll come. The time when there aren’t parties and cookies and punch. Don’t think of what you’ve lost. Think of what you’ve gained in these last days of autumn, what you’ve stored away just as surely as the squirrel stores its acorns. These are the things you will feed on in January.”

Scattered. That’s what was going to happen. He had put off answering the letter from the school district in Florida, perhaps under the misguided notion that the offer would simply evaporate and he wouldn’t have to deal with it, but the superintendent had called him on Friday afternoon, asking for a definitive answer.

He could go to Florida, and even take Gramps with him. Sunshine was now in fantastic shape, and Livvy could open it in the spring without his help. He could try life in the big city, and see if his career path could actually have an arc in it instead of a flat line.

He could, but he didn’t want to. He knew what his answer was going to be.

He knew.

When he got home, he would write a letter to that school, turning down the job—and choosing love.