One From The Heart (7 page)

“That’s when you’re worried. Hey,” he said, catching her by the shoulders so he could see her face. The feel of his big warm hands through the fabric of her suit was distracting enough to make her frown. “You’re worried again. Now what are you worried about?”

“What am I worried about? Ernie, for heaven’s sake!” she said in exasperation. She tried to get away from him. Personal contact with this man was an indulgence she couldn’t afford—although the fact that he was a hard-drinking cowboy-womanizer who wouldn’t admit that he was in love with her sister ought to be enough deterrent for anyone.

“I mean, besides Elizabeth and Petey, and having to leave Petey with me,” he said. The dark eyes that held hers demanded honesty, whether she wanted to give it or not.

“That … pretty well covers it,” she said, giving him what he wanted.

He smiled his crooked smile. “Well, if that’s all you got to worry about, you got it knocked, Miss Hannah. Elizabeth I can’t do anything about. But I promise you, you can take me and Petey off the worry list. We’re going to watch Kissyfur cartoons, and we’re going to check out a few people who might have seen Elizabeth. Okay?”

She stared back at him, drawing comfort from the melancholy calm she saw in his eyes. “Okay,” she finally said.

“Damn right. Now—if we can do something about that Perry Mason outfit.”

“What is the matter with this outfit!” she cried.

“Well, Hannah, I’ll tell you what’s the matter … You want me to tell you what’s the matter?”

“Tell me, tell me.”

“Okay. It’s like a … plain brown wrapper.”

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

“You know—some things you can order through the mail and they promise they’ll send it to you in a plain brown wrapper—”

“Ernie, what has that got to do with anything!”

“Now, wait. See, when that package in the plain brown wrapper comes, everybody who sees it just
knows
there’s something wicked in there, and everybody is busy as hell wondering what it is. Now, you walk into a business meeting dressed like that, and you think you’re looking all efficient and everything—well, I’m telling you, Hannah, there won’t be a man in the place who’s not wondering what’s in that plain—”

“I get the picture!” Hannah interrupted, trying not to grin. “You really are … full of it, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know that. I just didn’t know you did.” He was trying to keep a straight face, too, but they both laughed.

“Give ’em hell, Miss Hannah,” he told her on her way out, giving her a hard hug as if he knew she needed it, regardless of the suit and the briefcase, and leaving her all addled and ridiculously reassured. She replayed the moment in her mind all day, his warmth and his masculine soap and leather scent, and the strength of his hard male body. For a moment, just a moment, she’d pressed her face into that place at his neck: the place in the V of his undershirt where she could see the beginnings of the curling hair on his chest. It had been entirely pleasant—wonderful—no matter how hard she tried to deny it.

She had to work late, and she looked up just after nine to see Ernie and Petey through the glass windows of the studio, the misery in Petey’s face abating somewhat at the sight of Anna-Hannah working hard on her ’mercial just the way she had at home.

“Sorry,” Ernie whispered to her when she came out into the hall. “I think she’s scared you’ll go off, like Libby.”

Petey, what are we going to do?
Hannah thought as she held out her arms to the child. She stood in the dimly lit hallway, holding a silent Petey tightly and leaning against the wall. Someone opened a door nearby and Hannah could hear the noise of KHRB’s eight-o’clock supermovie until the door closed again. She kissed Petey on the cheek and looked up into Ernie’s eyes, familiar now with the feelings of helplessness coping with Elizabeth’s disappearance generated.

“Hey,” he said, reaching to catch a strand of her hair that had come unpinned and place it carefully behind her ear. The light brush of his fingers against her face was like a jolt of lightning. “What you two need is a big brown milk shake.”

But there weren’t enough big brown milk shakes in the world to assuage Hannah’s worry. Petey was becoming more and more attached to her, and Hannah was beginning to look forward to their evenings together, evenings that more often than not included Ernie, with the three of them piling on the living room couch while Hannah told Petey bedtime stories. Petey’s favorites—and Ernie’s, too, she was beginning to suspect—were about Anna-Hannah’s halcyon days as Little Girl Hannah with Grandmama Browne, traveling around the country and living in motor courts or small town hotels or trailer parks with neon names like the Evening Breeze, or the New Alma, or the Blue Bird of Happiness. She told Petey about the things her grandmother had called “life’s little surprises”—a carousel in the middle of nowhere, twilight and a wheatfield full of fireflies, a first snow, chocolate cake.

Hannah was only too aware that the ten days were running out. She had tried everyone and everywhere she knew to try to locate Elizabeth, and she couldn’t expect Ernie to hang around forever—as much as she might want it. She tried telling herself that it was just that she was … comfortable having him around, even though he drove her crazy with his personal questions and his more personal looks. And his damn personal telephone calls—ones that came in night and day on
her
telephone as the news spread among the honky-tonk angels of Dallas-Fort Worth that John Ernest Watson was back in town. He never seemed to
do
anything about the women who called, but to Hannah, the Marlenes and Selenas and the Modestas who telephoned all the time were just one more reason why she shouldn’t look forward to seeing him the way she did, or to having him stay for dinner, or to being able to talk to him.

“What did you do?” Hannah said testily. “Post my number in the ladies’ room of every cowboy dive between here and Amarillo? It’s supposed to be unlisted, you know!”

Ernie grinned and took his own good time about answering. “Yeah, Hannah,” he said, “I did. All the places where Libby goes.”

“He’s just a warm, friendly person, that’s all,” Hannah whispered to herself in the kitchen one evening because she was worn out with trying to ignore him, and that was the safest reason she could think of to explain her growing infatuation. She couldn’t keep from looking at him, damn it all, and he seemed always to be expecting her to do just that. She realized he must think she had some kind of crush on him—like all the women who telephoned him, there was no way for him
not
to think it.

On the weekend, he insisted on taking her and Petey to Fort Worth for the start of the Cowtown rodeo season. He took them behind the chutes to what initially reminded Hannah of some kind of macho western ballet class. It was smelly with manure and animals, dirt and popcorn. It was dusty, littered with Styrofoam cups, cigarette butts, and army surplus duffel bags. And it was crowded with cowboy athletes who warmed up and stretched out while they talked bulls, broncs, and women—in that order—and spat tobacco juice. Through it all, the clang of the chute gates and the blare of the rodeo announcer and the cheers of the enthusiastic crowd sounded.

It was obvious to Hannah that Ernie Watson was in some kind of heaven, so much so that she couldn’t keep from smiling. He was definitely one of the boys. Every cowboy who wasn’t in the arena must have come up to shake his hand.

“You working tonight, Ernie?” a particularly young cowboy wearing turquoise leather chaps wanted to know.

“Not tonight, kid.”

“Aw, hell,” he said as if he meant it, shooting a look of apology at Hannah. “I don’t trust nobody but you to keep that bull away from my backside. You hear what happened to old Keith in Mesquite?”

Ernie hadn’t, and the young cowboy launched into a vivid description of “old Keith’s” difficulties. Hannah meant to take Petey and politely move aside so they could have their conversation in private, but Ernie reached out to catch her hand, his rough fingers sliding between hers.

“Don’t leave,” he said quietly, looking into her eyes. His fingers were warm and strong as they caressed hers, and he kept her close to him while the young cowboy continued to talk. Hannah’s knees had gone so weak she couldn’t have left even if she’d wanted to. She stood there, aware of nothing but Ernie’s warm hand around hers, staring at his profile while he listened intently to some happening with an inexperienced rodeo clown and a particularly rank bull in the Mesquite arena, and hanging on to Petey with her other hand.

This is not going to work
, she kept thinking.
This is
not
going to work
….

“What?” Ernie asked when the young man had gone, poking her in the side with his elbow.

She didn’t answer, and he let go of her hand, picking up Petey and carrying her to the fence to see the smiling girl on the white horse ride in with the American flag. The house lights dimmed, and the girl’s red, white, and blue sequined outfit glittered in the spotlight as her white horse pranced around the arena. Rodeo folk were a patriotic bunch, and the applause was deafening. Hannah felt the familiar lump in her throat as the first strains of the national anthem boomed over the audience. She had been in too many small towns on the Fourth of July, seen too many real celebrations with the home-cooked food and the marching veterans and the late-night fireworks not to get all misty-eyed every time she heard it. She stood in the darkness and wiped furtively at her eyes.

Ernie leaned down, his head close to hers. “You are something else, Miss Hannah,” he whispered. “Come on—I promised Petey a face,” he said when the lights came back on.

Hannah had no idea what that meant, but she tagged along anyway—to a little corner near a back hallway where a small folding table held a greasepaint kit. He turned over a ten-gallon bucket and made her sit on it with Petey on her lap while he turned Petey into a genuine rodeo clown—and drew a crowd. Nothing would do but that he fix Hannah’s face as well, and even in greasepaint, she was having a wonderful time, both because Petey seemed to enjoy herself so and because she hadn’t done anything on the spur of the moment in ages—other than assuming responsibility for her wayward sister’s child. She firmly suppressed the notion that her good mood had anything to do with Ernie. For about three seconds.

“Now, I tell you,” one of the kibitzers said. “I can see why
you
wear that stuff, Ernie—you’re just plain damn ugly—but what are you covering up those two pretty faces for?”

Ernie laughed and kept right on drawing freckles on Hannah’s cheeks—bigger ones than she and Petey already had.

“And she’s got to have a red nose, doesn’t she, Petey?” the kibitzer said.

“Yeah!” Petey cried. “A big red nose!”

“So what do you think?” Ernie asked when he’d finished, showing the two of them their faces in a hand mirror.

“Two clowns, Anna-Hannah!” Petey said in delight, marveling at her reflection much the way she did when she put on Hannah’s pink satin sleep shirt.

“Smile!” a cowboy called over Ernie’s shoulder, catching the moment in a Polaroid snapshot, which he handed to Ernie.

“Let us see,” Hannah said, because Ernie was taking such a long time looking at it. It was a good photograph, natural and spontaneous; she and Petey looked more like mother and daughter than aunt and niece. Hannah had every intention of keeping it, but Ernie took it back again, sticking it in his shirt pocket without comment. In fact, it seemed to Hannah that everything he did after that he did without comment. Once, when they were standing at the pens watching the bull-riding and the working clowns, he took her hand again, but he let go abruptly, as if he’d forgotten himself or had breached some personal limit he’d set. He took Petey off to get popcorn, and when he returned, he let her stand down with her popcorn box while he reached into his hip pocket for his handkerchief.

“Here, Hannah, let me get that stuff off your face before they draft you to work the arena,” he said, suddenly as bent on getting the clown makeup off her face as he’d been about putting it on.

“Not me,” Petey said, pulling on her jeans pocket.

“No, not you, Pete. You keep yours. You’re a good sport, Miss Hannah,” he said quietly as he scrubbed her face with his handkerchief. She looked up at that comment, trying to meet his eyes. He wouldn’t look at her.

Oh, Lord
, she thought suddenly.
He’s not going to make it through the ten days
.

Petey was sleeping the sweet sleep of exhaustion when they finally arrived home, and Ernie carried her into the bedroom to tuck her in. Hannah busied herself in the kitchen, thinking he’d probably put Petey down and just leave. He hadn’t spoken ten words in the last hour, and there was no reason for her to think he’d hang around so he could
not
talk to her.

She was standing at the kitchen sink, washing the few breakfast dishes she hadn’t had time to do earlier. She didn’t see Ernie until he reached around her and turned off the faucet. He took a cereal bowl out of her hands and set it on the counter, then he reached up, pressing the warm roughness of his palms against the soft skin of her face—a face that still had traces of greasepaint on it.

“What?” she said as his thumb brushed lightly over her lower Up. She tried to look into the eyes moving so intently over her face. Her heart was pounding, and she knew perfectly well
what
, but she said it anyway.