Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) (16 page)

Right that minute, Leanne was bent close to the mirror, inspecting herself. Rainey figured that Leanne must have turned thirty-one over the past summer. She had never married, being
very involved with her career in barrel racing. She looked as beautiful as ever, even with smudged mascara and uncombed hair, the way a woman looks when she’s traveled sleeping in a vehicle. Leanne was an Overton, a first cousin by way of her mother, who had been Rainey’s mother’s younger sister. Rainey and Leanne favored greatly, although Leanne’s hair was more brown and she was smaller, more finely built. Rainey always thought Leanne could stand to gain a few pounds, but Leanne said being small was her edge in barrel racing.

“I heard you’ve been runnin’ barrels on your mama’s old horse,” Leanne said, turning to face Rainey.

Rainey nodded. “I guess we’ve been makin’ a stab at it. Havin’ some fun.”

Leanne’s eyes went up and down Rainey, as if comparing herself. Rainey felt a little flat in her blue jeans and blue denim shirt. Leanne wore stylish Western clothing, colorful and sharp. Her expression turned very satisfied.

“You never were the professional horse-show type,” Leanne said flatly. “It’s a lot of work, believe me. It takes a lot of competitive spirit.”

Excuse me?
Rainey thought. But that was Leanne. Charlene said you couldn’t take offense at Leanne or you’d be in knots all the time.

And there was truth in what her cousin said. Rainey had never been highly competitive. She wasn’t sure what she was. She always felt that she had one foot in the horse world and the other somewhere else, only she didn’t know where that was.

“Would you have a lipstick?” Leanne asked.

Rainey handed over her flowered cosmetic bag. “Use what you need.”

“I heard that Aunt Coweta left you all her Mary Kay. I used
to get a lipstick from her that I loved. A peach color…can’t remember the name right off.”

“I have a peach mocha in there.”

“This isn’t it,” Leanne said, frowning at the lipstick, “but it’ll do.”

Rainey said she would look in the boxes at home. “If I find any other peach ones, I’ll save them for you.”

Leanne also used Rainey’s powder and blush. She leaned toward the mirror, explaining all about how she probably wouldn’t have come to this rodeo, that it didn’t really pay enough—as if this were okay for Rainey, though—but Clay had wanted to come and do it with his buddy Pete Lucas, and her horse was so great that he could race anywhere and win. Her attitude was pretty much that Rainey should be prepared to lose.

The entire time Leanne talked, Rainey was thinking: Harry probably figures I fell into the toilet or something. He might poke his head in here…or he might have just given up and gone on. Who the hell is Pete Lucas? And Clay-who-won’t-stop-for-his-woman-to-go-to-the-bathroom Lovett? I just don’t keep up, and what’s more, I don’t care. I wonder if Mr. Longstreet is still sittin’ on the bleacher, thinkin’ about Mama. I should have talked to him about her. I let the chance slip right by me. Maybe I’ll get another chance, and I’ll be ready.

Leanne tossed the lipstick back in the bag and zipped it up. “I’m glad to run into you, Rainey,” she said, in an uncharacteristically sincere tone that touched Rainey. “I wanted to tell you that I was sorry about your mama. I apologize for not gettin’ home for the funeral, but I was at a big show out in California and had a couple of expensive horses up for sale.”

“It’s okay,” Rainey said. “Everything was pretty much confusion at the highest.”

Maybe Leanne would stay in the rest room, she thought, maybe comb her hair or something. If she followed Rainey out, Rainey would have to introduce her to Harry…if he hadn’t gotten tired of waiting and gone off.

“It was sure sudden, wasn’t it?” Leanne said. “My mother said about half the town formed the procession to the cemetery.”

“They said it looked like it. I really didn’t think to turn around and look right then.” She was aggravated at Leanne for bringing it all up. It was like the wound had been hit and busted open.

“I really need to go now. I need to get my horse exercised.” She reached for the door, hoping Leanne would stay in the rest room.

“I really miss Coweta,” Leanne said, following Rainey out the door.

Rainey was startled at the tone of her cousin’s voice. She looked over to see her cousin’s eyes tearing up.

Leanne continued, “I used to talk to your mama when she and I met up at different rodeos and shows. It was a lot of fun tellin’ people that she was my aunt. I mean, your mama was really somethin’. Everybody just loved Coweta. She’d come over and sit underneath my awning with me, and she’d always bring me that lipstick I liked, and we’d just talk and talk. Then, after she quit barrel racin’, I’d stop to see her whenever I went home. I could talk to her, and I never could my own mama.” She had folded her arms about herself and rubbed her upper arms.

Rainey felt as if something had been going on behind her back. She had not known about her mother being so close to Leanne.

“Well, she wasn’t your mama,” she pointed out. “It’s different than with your own mother. There’s some things you just
can’t tell your own mother.” But Rainey had talked easily to her mother, too.

She pushed through the front doors, and there was Harry, standing to the side. Immediately she thought that she would not tell Leanne that Harry was a doctor. Telling someone like Leanne that a man was a doctor was like waving chocolate right in front of her face.

Harry’s eyes jumped with surprise, moving from her to Leanne, obviously struck by the resemblance.

Rainey made the introductions, and Harry inclined his head and smiled at Leanne, offering a handshake.

“I’m glad to meet you,” he said.

And Leanne said, “I’m very glad to meet you,” in a way that seemed to mean: oh, boy, I’d like to run away with you. “And where did Rainey find you?” Leanne said, bold as could be, and rather as if she were surprised at Rainey knowing someone like Harry.

“She picked me up off the highway,” Harry said.

“Well, she ought to tell me where this highway is,” Leanne said. The talk went along this stupid vein for a few more comments, and then Rainey said she needed to go work her mare.

“I have to see to my Blackie, too,” Leanne said.

She pointed to her trailer. Rainey had already seen it, a fancy aluminum rig with living quarters, the sort that cost as much as a brick house. At that very minute, a man, thick shouldered in a red shirt, came out the door and stood looking in their direction.

Leanne started edging away. “Clay’s probably ready to go get somethin’ to eat, too. He doesn’t like to be held up when he’s hungry. Y’all come on over later, hear?” She broke into a run for her trailer.

Watching her, Rainey thought there seemed something out of kilter with Leanne.

Then her attention was drawn by Herb Longstreet coming out the door to her left.

“Good luck tonight, gal,” he said.

“Thanks.”

She watched him walk away, thinking that this obviously was not her chance.

Harry’s hand came to the back of her neck, and she looked at him. Suddenly she was so thankful that he was there with her. For just an instant it seemed like he gave her something to hold on to.

Rejecting this foolishness, she turned her head. “I’d better go work Lulu. I’d rather get her worked before Leanne comes over with her horse.”

But she did not step away from Harry. She let herself remain with his hand on her neck, and she leaned toward him, just a little bit.

At the Fair

H
arry stood with the puppy at his feet, his forearms resting on the fence rail, and watched her ride Lulu in the outside exercise arena. She thought he looked good in his hat.
Good
was not exactly the right word, but close. There was something about him in that hat that made Rainey feel like smiling and jumping into his arms. She had to be very careful not to reveal this and make a pure fool of herself.

It was quite trying to keep every blessed impulse to herself. She was supposed to be paying total attention to riding and training Lulu; that was why she had come to the fair, after all, in order to race barrels. And she really needed to pay attention in the practice arena, because it was filled with horses and riders. Because she was so preoccupied with Harry in his hat, she almost had a head-on collision with a big man on a bay horse. It was the big man’s fault—he was too big to even be riding that horse, and he rode right in front of her—but she should have been prepared for his stupidity.

Telling herself to settle down and get to business, she went to riding Lulu in circles, working to limber her neck. The mare had stored up a lot of energy in the confines of the trailer and the stall. For a good ten minutes she loped around with her nose tugging at the tie-down and her tail flying. Rainey let her fly and then pulled her down, let her fly and pulled her down again.

Harry kept standing there watching, and Rainey’s mind kept being drawn away, and every time she sensed Rainey’s concentration slip, Lulu took advantage of it by making slow turns and casting her own attention all over the place.

Finally Rainey rode over to Harry at the fence and asked him to leave. “I can’t concentrate with you watchin’ me like that.”

He looked surprised, of course. “I didn’t mean to distract you.”

“I know that. It isn’t your fault. I’m just havin’ a hard time with Lulu today.” And with herself, she thought. “Maybe you’d like to go over and watch the pig races or something.”

He blinked. “Okay…”

“Would you take Fido with you? I don’t want to have to worry about him, either.”

“Fido?”

“The puppy—I’m tryin’ out names. It means faithful.” She thought she might like it. The puppy looked up at her, his face a question mark, as if he might be trying out the name, too.

Harry looked a little perplexed, then he said, “Come on, Roscoe,” and he went off, with the puppy right at his heels.

Rainey worried that she may have hurt his feelings but forced herself to pay attention to the job at hand. She never got her concentration going, however, and felt that both she and Lulu were just very out of rhythm. After another forty minutes, she gave up. She thought then that she really hadn’t come up to the fair to race barrels, but had simply been coming up here
for someplace to go. But she hoped she didn’t make a fool of herself, now that Leanne was here.

“Leanne is goin’ to race tonight,” she told the mare, as she led the horse toward the barn and the wash rack. “I’m tellin’ you to get yourself ready. I don’t expect us to kill ourselves to win, but we dang sure don’t want to come in last.”

She looked around for Harry and began to regret asking him to leave. It had not helped, him leaving, and now she wondered if he would return. Maybe he’d gone for good. No…he still had his bag at the truck. But he’d gone off and left his stuff in his Porsche, so likely he wasn’t concerned with stuff like that.

As time passed, she began to get anxious. She washed Lulu and brushed her and brushed her, and he still didn’t come back. She began to really be irritated. He had taken her dog. He had better bring the puppy back before he went off for good.

She had decided to at least walk over to the pig races and see if he was there, when here he came toward her. She saw the puppy first, running toward her, and that was how she recognized that Harry was the man walking forward with his head jutting up over his arms loaded with stuffed toys.

The next thing she noticed was that he looked as if he’d conquered the world.

He said, “I’m gonna have to go to an ATM. I spent all my cash.”

The look in his brown eyes went clear through her. His eyes shone with pure happy delight in a way she had not before seen. It was a delight in himself, she realized. And then she saw that he was looking directly at her, and the light in his eyes grew warm and smoky.

Gazing back into those wonderful brown eyes, she thought that she could fall in love with him so very easily. Likely she already was in love with him.

They dumped all the stuffed toys on the mattress in the gooseneck, left Lulu tied to the trailer and soaking up sun, and went to see the fair.

“If we want to see it, we’d better go ahead,” Rainey said, “because I’ll need to get a nap later to be ready for tonight. And let’s go aget something to eat. I like to eat a lot in the middle of the day and not hardly have any supper, because I don’t want to race with food in my stomach.”

“I didn’t think you ever went without food in your stomach,” he said.

Making no comment to that, Rainey fixed the puppy into a makeshift collar and lead, because she realized how negligent she had been in letting him run loose, and they took him along.

They stopped at a booth selling fry bread filled with spicy lamb and rice. Harry was eager to try it, the same way he was eager to try everything. They carried their food and cups of Coca-Cola over to a bench underneath a gnarled elm. People were filling the fairgrounds now, and they sat watching all manner of men and women and children walking past. There was a man with three children all over him, literally. He had a tiny baby in a sling on his chest, a toddler in a pack on his back, and a little one by the hand. Then there was an old couple, eighty at least, walking hand in hand.

Harry got up and walked over to throw their trash in the barrel. Rainey saw the warm sunlight on his hat, and then he was looking at her.

As they started off, he took her hand.

Walking hand in hand, as if they both weren’t contemplating a lot more, they went through the exhibit buildings, looking over all the displays of pies and breads and canned peaches and grape jelly, clothing designs, beautiful quilts, and knitted
items, and photographs. Rainey did her own judging, and she put forth that everything should get a ribbon, simply for showing up.

“Then the ribbons would be meaningless,” Harry pointed out. “No one would care.”

“I just think all this competition is needless. Look at those who didn’t get a ribbon. They’ll feel hurt. And who are these people who hand out the ribbons, anyway? Who set them up as judges?”

She realized that what Leanne had said about her not having a competitive spirit was churning around somewhere in the back of her mind.

Harry looked at her as if she were a little cracked. “Somebody set them up as judges,” he said. “They probably didn’t want the job but had to do it. I had to be a judge once at a chili cook-off. One of those affairs my mother arranged to raise money for the hospital. She had a state representative, the mayor and a couple of hospital bigwigs cooking chili. She can get anyone to do anything. She made them cook, and she made me and a couple of other doctors judge.”

“Did your father judge?”

He frowned. “He’s the only one she can’t make do anything.”

“Well,” Rainey said, turning the conversation a little, “what is it about everyone always wanting to beat the other fella? Look at all that football. They have kids of five playin’ football. Good grief. I think it is a major sickness of society, all this competition. People need to learn how to cooperate, not compete.”

“Why do you race?”

“For myself. I race to have fun and see what Lulu and I can do. And I almost hate to do very well, because that means someone else has to lose, and it’s my fault, and I always feel so bad.”

She got a little carried away then and told him of her fantasy about maybe beating Leanne, which she couldn’t ever do, but just in case it looked like she would, she would have to throw the race to Leanne, because she could handle losing but Leanne would simply die, or kill herself, if she lost to Rainey. Then she realized how silly she was being, getting all worried about something that was never going to happen.

She said, “I guess I am as warped as everyone else.”

Harry laughed, and the next instant he pulled her to him and kissed her quickly. Then he said, “Everyone should be as warped as you.”

She didn’t know what to say and had to look away.

After they finished perusing all the exhibits, they went over to the vendor booths, where they saw everything on sale, from pottery to jewelry to specialty animal feeds. The man at that booth gave the puppy a sample of the dog food, and he did it before she said he could, which she thought was a little rude. But the puppy seemed to like it, so she bought a small bag.

Down a few more booths, they came to one selling shiny tin-and-tile mirrors. Rainey thought they were lovely. They looked very Mexican, and she loved things with that tone, the color and earthiness of it.

“Aren’t they pretty?” she said.

“Well, I guess so.”

“They are a little gaudy, I suppose.” She was a little disappointed.

“Colorful…they’re colorful. I was just trying to picture them on a wall.”

“It depends on the wall,” she said. “They’d probably go well in my cottage, or Mama’s house. She has all sorts of things in her house, but I wouldn’t think they’d go very well in your house.”

“How do you know? You haven’t seen my house.”

“You have a town house.” She had a picture of his place in her head, probably lots of leather and chrome and glass.

“Why do you say that?”

“Don’t you?”

“Well, yes…”

She looked at him, and for an instant she saw all those prominent doctors and society women behind him. “Would these mirrors go in your town house?”

He smoothed the back of his head. “A person could get scared in the night by one of these things,” he said, then took her hand and tugged her on.

Feeling the warmth of his hand against hers, she wondered what his hands would feel like all over her body. About the time she had that thought, he turned his head toward her and met her gaze. She thought then that they might have been very different in many ways, but she was fairly certain he was thinking some of her same thoughts.

It was a statue, and the mind knew that no animal could hold itself with its back legs shooting up in the air, but the bull sure did look real. A photographer was taking people’s pictures on it. Harry and Rainey watched while he took a picture of a little boy, wearing his daddy’s black cowboy hat. The hat fell down over the boy’s face, and he kept pushing it up and peeking out. He was really cute.

Rainey looked over at Harry and saw his eyes were zeroed in on the boy. The expression on his face unnerved her, and she noticed that his hand was gripping hers very tightly.

Then his gaze flickered down to her, and he said, “I lost a little boy about that age, back in March.”

“You lost him?” Her first thought was that he’d misplaced
a little boy, and to wonder why he would have a little boy to misplace.

“He died,” he said, pain flashing across his features and his eyes returning to the boy on the bull. “It was just the flu…but by the time his parents brought the boy to the emergency room, he was really dehydrated. Still, we started working on him right away. I’d had other kids like him a hundred times. But then suddenly…”

He swallowed and looked really upset, and she didn’t know quite what to do, other than stand there and hold his hand.

He said, “The thing is, complications pop up that no one has any experience with. New stuff all the time, and medicine has limitations. Sometimes, no matter what you do, a person dies.”

All she could think to do was put her head on his shoulder.

Then the boy was off the bull and walking away with his parents. The photographer asked Rainey and Harry, “How about one of you two?”

Harry wanted to do it, but Rainey hung back. She never liked having her picture taken. Photographs rarely flattered her; she usually ended up with a silly grin or her eyes half-closed, making her look drunk. “Even Mama would say that I was so much prettier than any of my pictures,” she told Harry. “What does that tell you?”

“Aw…come on. It’ll be a great souvenir.”

“You don’t have any money,” she pointed out.

“Okay, lend me a twenty. Come on.”

She did want a picture of him, and it suddenly occurred to her that getting a picture of the both of them would be a good idea. Something she might like to have after this weekend was over.

Handing over the money, she told the photographer she wanted two shots. She asked Harry to tie the puppy to a table leg, because she didn’t like the idea of trusting him to sit there.
The table wouldn’t exactly stop him from running, but it would slow him down.

The two of them getting up on the bull was a comedy in itself. Harry had to hold her to keep her from sliding forward. He held her pressed against his chest, and what held him in place, she wasn’t quite certain. While they struggled to get situated, a line began to form. The photographer got in a hurry, snapped two shots and told them, “That’s it.” Rainey had little confidence in how her image would appear.

Much to her relief, however, the pictures turned out very well. She looked a little surprised in one, but not drunk and not too silly. And in the second she looked downright good. She gave Harry that one, because he looked his perfectly handsome self in both of them.