One From The Heart (9 page)

“Petey!” she cried, her tears still streaming down her face.

“Petey! It’s not!” Ernie said with such incredulity that Hannah almost smiled.
Watch yourself, Hannah
, she thought. He had been back for ten seconds, and she was just as smitten as ever.

“Where is she?” Ernie continued to tease. “I don’t see Petey.”

“Here, Ernie,” Petey insisted.

“Where?”

“Here,” she said, patting herself on the chest.

“Well, dang if it’s not. Anna-Hannah, I thought you’d brought the wrong clown home. Here, let old Ernie take you.”

This time she let go of Hannah’s neck. Ernie stood with her for a moment, patting her on the back, then walked toward the couch to sit down. He still limped, and he still presumed, taking Hannah by the arm and pulling her along with them.

“You through crying, Pete?” he asked, repeating the question he’d asked that first night and painfully lowering his tall frame onto the couch. He glanced at Hannah, and she sat down beside him, trying unsuccessfully to read his look.

Petey shook her head no and continued to cry.

“Well, let me know when, because I want to tell you something. I want to tell you what I think about your mama.”

Hannah was about to protest, but he shot her another look.
Trust me
. She pressed her lips together and waited. She could do that easily enough—God help her. Ernie sat with Petey on his lap until she grew quiet.

“This is what I think, Pete,” he said when she was calm enough to listen. “Your mama left you with me, and she told me to take you to Anna-Hannah because she had important things to do. And what I think is as soon as she gets through doing those things, she’ll be right back to get you. Now, she knows I love you and Anna-Hannah loves you, so she doesn’t have to worry. You don’t have to worry either, Pete.”

“I want her to hurry,” Petey said, her eyes filling with tears again.

“I know you do, Pete. And I’ve told everybody I know, and Anna-Hannah’s told everybody she knows: ’If you see Petey’s mama, tell her to
hurry.’
Okay?”

After a very long moment, Petey nodded.

“Now give me a hug,” Ernie said to her. “I need one pretty bad today. How about you?”

“Yes,” Petey said, her voice still tearful.

“Right,” Ernie said, giving her a hug that was more sound effect than squeezing. “Now have you got one for me?”

“And Anna-Hannah, too,” Petey decided. “Everybody needs a hug.” She gave Ernie his return hug, hugged Hannah and finally slid down from Ernie’s lap to find Cowpoke and bring him in to watch television. Hannah got up to go into the kitchen, exhausted from the emotional trials of the morning and needing some kind of busy work to keep her mind off the man who was openly watching her every move. She just didn’t know what he wanted from her! She hadn’t from the first night he limped into her life. He liked her, she thought, but he certainly didn’t want to. She had sensed the struggle he was having with himself all along, and she couldn’t attribute it to anything but his regard for Elizabeth. The fact that a man was in love with one woman didn’t necessarily keep him from being attracted to another. It was his sense of honor and decency that kept him from doing anything about it, and John Ernest Watson, if last night was any example, was a decent, honorable man.

She began cleaning up the rest of the spilled oatmeal, wiping up places she’d already wiped because Ernie had followed her to the kitchen.

“She hasn’t had any breakfast,” she said after a time. She wanted to tell him how good she thought he was with Petey, but she didn’t want him to think she was trying to compromise him—again.

“I think she’ll be asleep in a minute. She’s pretty worn out,” he answered, his eyes trying to hold hers. “What happened?”

“She … spilled her oatmeal.” Hannah looked away and kept wiping the table. “It was all downhill from there.”

“I should have told her I was leaving. What did you tell her?”

“I told her the truth. I told her you wouldn’t be here today and that I didn’t know where you were.”

“I was standing by a damn pay telephone trying not to call you, that’s where I was,” he said testily.

“Look! You didn’t have to come back here. We would have been all right—and what are you mad at
me
for?
I
haven’t done anything!”

“Oh, no? You’ve just upset my whole damn life, that’s all!”

“I beg your pardon!” Hannah said indignantly.

“You heard me! But neither one of us has got the time to worry about that now. I called my aunt Mim in Tahlequah right after I talked to you. She wants you to bring Petey to her as soon as you can. Today—”

“I can’t do that,” Hannah interrupted. “I have to work, and Lord knows we don’t want
me
to upset
your
life anymore.”

“You have to take her,” he said stubbornly. “Mim’s heard from Libby.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“W
HERE IS SHE
?”

“Mim doesn’t know.”

“She doesn’t
know
! Then why am I supposed to take Petey to her?” Hannah said, whispering so that Petey wouldn’t hear them. But the trouble with whispering was that Ernie had to come closer to hear her.

Maybe he really had been standing by a pay telephone, she thought as she looked up at him. He looked so tired. She could see the fatigue in his eyes, and she suppressed the urge to touch him, trying hard not to look away. The morning had been awful, and the rest of the day was showing no signs of improvement. Lord, she wanted him to put his arms around her!

“This is Libby we’re talking about here, Hannah, not a Greyhound bus. She wouldn’t keep a schedule—even if she did happen to make one. All she told Mim was that she’d be there sometime tomorrow. With Libby, that could mean any time—night or day.”

“What did Elizabeth say about Petey?”

“Nothing.”

“
Nothing!
I’m supposed to take Petey there when Elizabeth obviously still doesn’t want her?”

“Hannah, look. Neither one of us knows what’s going on, and we’re not about to find out until we talk to Libby. You don’t have anybody to leave Petey with, so we’re going to have to take her along.”

“We?”

“Yes,
we
. You and me.”

“You’re not coming with me,” Hannah said stubbornly. And she meant it. How could she go to Oklahoma with him and not make a bigger fool of herself than she already had? And what was the matter with him anyway? They couldn’t be together and not get into trouble—
his
words.

“Have you ever been to Tahlequah?”

“No, but I can read a map like nobody’s business. I had to all those years I traveled around with my mother.”

“Maybe so. But you don’t know all the shortcuts I know. We want to get mere ahead of Libby, in case she won’t wait. Now, you know she’s as apt to go as she is to stay and wait for us, Petey or no Petey.”

Hannah pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. She had no argument for that. None. She took a deep breath and tried to think.

“Hannah, I want to go with you. I don’t want to worry about you and Petey on the road alone when you don’t know where you’re going.”

She looked up at him, losing herself for a moment in his sad, dark eyes. If he’d put it any other way—made it a demand instead of a statement of fact—she would have dug her heels in. Damn it all, she cared about him. She didn’t want to worry him. She didn’t want his life to be turned upside down, even if he did insist she was the cause of it. In her opinion, it was six of one and half a dozen of the other as to just whose life had been upset by whom. “All right,” she said, because she needed him and she needed to give in to his logic. She tried not to think that the real reason he wanted to go had to be Elizabeth.

He looked so relieved that she nearly put her hand out to touch him, after all.

“Do you chew tobacco?” she asked abruptly instead, and he grinned.

“Hannah, you’ve been with me night and day for almost ten days. Have you seen me chew?”

“Answer the question!”

“What for!”

“Because I’m not traveling anywhere with somebody who’s going to be spitting tobacco juice!”

“I tell you one thing, Hannah, between my dumb reasons and your dumb questions, it’s a wonder either one of us gets let out by ourselves.”

“Do you or don’t you?”

“Not when I’m sober! I have to be drunk to stand the taste of it. All right?”

“All right!”

“All right!” he repeated.

“Just so you know,” she said to underscore her position.

“Just so I know?” he said incredulously. “You give me hell about not chewing tobacco when I don’t chew, and I’m supposed to
know
?”

“It makes as much sense as anything else that’s happened around here lately,” she said significantly.

“Well, now, you got me there, Hannah. You going to work?”

“No, I’m not going to work. Petey’s had enough of musical caretakers for one day.”

The remark was unfair, and she knew it. Petey wasn’t his responsibility, even if he had been willing to stay in Dallas and help take care of her until last night. Ernie made no comment, though it was plain enough by the way he pressed his lips together that he wanted to.

“How soon can you be ready?” he said after a long pause.

“I have to stop at the station before I go.”

“We can do that on the way. I’ll be back in about an hour,” he said, and he left her alone in the kitchen, still wiping up imaginary oatmeal.

Petey had fallen asleep. Hannah used the time to pack a few things for this mad trip to Oklahoma, making a great effort not to concern herself about Ernie’s whereabouts—not an easy thing to do when he had two telephone calls from the same strange-voiced female while he was gone, one who wouldn’t leave a message. It was early afternoon and raining when he returned. He’d changed his clothes, and he’d had a haircut, of all things. He was still wearing his cowboy garb—jeans and a plaid shirt and a denim jacket. But he looked so
groomed
somehow. And masculine. And handsome. Hannah didn’t comment, but she couldn’t keep her eyes off him, and he kept catching her at it.

“Fifteen bucks!” he finally snapped, snatching off his hat and pointing to his freshly barbered hair. “Okay?”

“And worth every penny,” she assured him, whether she should have or not. “You’re gorgeous.”

He grinned, a little embarrassed, a little shy, and clearly pleased.

“Elizabeth will love it,” she added, and his grin faded.

Petey let her face be washed, and Hannah told Ernie about his telephone calls. He made no comment, and they were ready to leave by two. It was still raining. Ernie and Petey waited in Ernie’s beat-up, no-color pickup truck in the KHRB parking lot while she went inside. She dreaded having to see the station manager, dreaded having to ask him for more time off, but there was no help for it. She fully expected to come out of his office unemployed.

“What happened?” Ernie asked the minute she returned, hardly giving her time to get in out of the rain and close the truck door.

“What happened?” Petey echoed, and Hannah smiled, letting out the breath she’d been holding practically from the time she’d gone in.

“He let me have the rest of the week—until next Monday. He’s even going to take over my reading class,” she said, still in a daze. “Those two furniture outlet scripts I just did—the man bought them.” She looked at Ernie and grinned. “Lord, I feel like the weight of the world’s been lifted—till next Monday, anyway.”

“You look like it, too. Nice to see that smile again.” He stared into her eyes until they both grew awkward, then started the truck and headed for Garland and Route 75 north. He’d insisted on driving, recuperating knee or not, and Hannah settled back, her mind wandering as she half-listened to Petey happily chattering to Cowpoke and the rhythmic, hypnotic sound of the windshield wipers. Her spirits rose, in spite of the weather and the reason for the trip, and in spite of a sudden attack of nostalgia. When her mother was alive, a spur-of-the-moment excursion like this had been one of her favorite things, and she’d continued her travels long after other women her age had settled down in a rocking chair by a quiet hearth.

“What are you thinking about?” Ernie said, breaking into her reverie.

“Oh—Little Girl Hannah, I guess. And Grandmama Browne. She loved a trip like this. She liked to just hop in the car and go. When I was ten, we were living in Greenville, South Carolina. I came home from school one Friday, and she said, ‘Have you ever seen the mighty Mississippi, Hannah Rose?’ She knew perfectly well I hadn’t or, if I had, I didn’t remember it. The next thing I knew, I was in a blue and white ’fifty-three Chevrolet Bel Air coupe with a toothbrush and a change of underwear, and heading west. She liked to stop at these little community stores in the middle of nowhere—those places where they slice up their own meat and cheese. She’d buy a loaf a bread and a half-pound of bologna, and we’d pull off the road someplace and make sandwiches. It was wonderful. She worked as a waitress most of the time—really long hours. She couldn’t be a grade mother or a den mother, but she drove a whole weekend just so I could spit in the Mississippi River.” She glanced at Ernie, then let her eyes linger because at that moment he was watching the road.