Rodeo Nights (8 page)

“There you are, Walker. Where you been? Where’s Kalli? Esther said you two were here when she stopped by the barbershop. But when I came in and nobody stirred, I thought I mighta caught the woman being wrong for the first time in thirty-six years of marriage.”

‘‘Thought you’d be back long before this, Jasper.”

“Uh, well. Uh, lots of discussing going on at the barbershop. Couldn’t, er, didn’t want to walk out in the middle.”

Walker had diverted attention to Jasper’s whereabouts because he’d felt no inclination to explain where he and Kalli had been or what they’d been doing. But Jasper’s obvious discomfort raised his eyebrows, and his instincts.

“What’s everybody discussing down at the barbershop?”

“Oh, all sorts of things. You know, that saying about ships and sealing wax and something else and kings.”

“Cabbages. Cabbages and kings.” Walker reviewed a mental picture of vehicles parked near the barbershop as he and Kalli had driven past. Around here, vehicles were as recognizable as their owners. “Must have been mighty interesting cabbages to draw most of the rodeo committee. Far as I can tell, only one missing was Dawson Fletcher.”

Jasper shot him a hunted look. “We got to look to the future. It’s our duty. It’s what folks expect of us. You’ve been ’round. You know how it is, Walker.”

“How what is?” Kalli’s voice, forcibly bright, broke the moment.

Jasper came around the counter to take the stack of clothes from her and talked nonstop about her selections, her good taste and Esther’s approval. He didn’t answer her question.

But Walker hadn’t expected him to, any more than he’d expected Jasper to tell him what they’d been talking about at the barbershop. He knew, anyhow. The future of the Park Rodeo.

The question wasn’t what they’d discussed. It was if they’d decided.

He was still puzzling that as he and Kalli got into his pickup, her packages stowed behind the seat. But the quality of her silence soon penetrated the air that swirled around them from the open windows. And the puzzle of Kalli took precedence.

She stared out the passenger window, leaving him only a slice of her face to consider. It was enough.

Reaching across the gulf of seat she’d left between them, he laid a hand on her forearm where it rested across her lap. She jolted. Not that he needed that reaction to know her regrets.

“It’s all right, Kalli.”

“Of course it is. I know that.” Squaring shoulders that looked tight, she turned a smile toward him that brought a sour taste to his throat. “You’re too intelligent a man to mistake what happened back at Lodge’s for anything but what it was.”

Slowly, he withdrew his hand, letting the drag of his finger over her arm sustain the contact. “And just what was it, Kalli?”

She took up his mild question eagerly, twisting on the seat to face him fully to lend emphasis to her point.

“It was the past.”

“The past,” he repeated without inflection.

“Yes. It’s natural, Walker. We’re back here where we were kids and where we, uh, we, uh, learned to care for each other. There are all the associations and all the emotions. It’s like adults going back to where they grew up suddenly feeling—and acting—like they’re eight years old again.”

He’d felt a long way from eight years old when he had her lips under his, but the sour taste left his throat. He wasn’t about to dispute her theory, since it seemed to make her more comfortable. Comfortable enough to look at him instead of in the opposite direction.

Not now, he wouldn’t dispute it.

“And in addition to that, uh, sort of conditioned response because of what happened before, we never really had closure on the past,” she said.

“Closure?” He turned away as if checking the side mirror, just in case his face showed more than he wanted.

“Yes, a chance to finish off the past. To put a period at the end of it.”

“You don’t think divorce was enough punctuation?”

She grimaced at his dry drawl. “That was a technicality, a legality.”

How many times had he thought that very thing, that the divorce was a technicality and hadn’t done a damn thing to change the heart of the matter? But he’d fought that thinking. Because just as many times, he’d realized there were two hearts in this matter. And they no longer beat together.

“What I mean by closure is a way to finish up the emotions, in the way signing the divorce papers finished up the marriage, the legal contract. All those old feelings came to the surface just now, because we’d never really had closure on them. Actually this was good, and natural. Very healthy emotionally. Now we’ve put the past behind us,
all
the past, and we can move ahead. We’ve closed off the parts of our lives when we, uh, when we cared for each other. And now we can be colleagues, we can cooperate for the good of the rodeo and for Jeff and Mary, and none of those feelings should shadow us.”

He could tell from her voice she’d about convinced herself of her words’ truth.

It sounded to Walker like she’d been reading too many magazine articles, but he wouldn’t argue with her twisting explanations. Maybe she was right. But he figured it didn’t matter. Whatever the reason, whether the feelings carried over from the past or were something new, the result was the same. They wanted each other.

“Maybe so,” he drawled.

She seemed satisfied, settling back into the seat and looking straight ahead as they turned in to the rodeo grounds.

Yes, they wanted each other. But passion’s survival didn’t guarantee anything else had survived. Not liking or respect or enjoyment. Not love.

He knew that. But he also knew it was a start.

And he knew that sometimes you only got a start. Sometimes you got thrown as soon as the chute opened and the bull had room to make its feelings clear about being ridden.

The way Kalli had made it clear she wanted to put the passion firmly in their past.

He’d just have to see if he could hold on long enough to win this go-round.

KALLI HAD NEARLY
finished the entries for two young cowboys she hadn’t seen before, when Walker walked in the office, shadowed by Coat.

One cowboy nudged the other and she heard a muttered, “That him? Walker Riley?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Walker nodded to them in a general way as he came in. He cut a look at her that cut away just as quickly, sparing only a neutral “Kalli” in greeting, then exchanged good mornings with Roberta before making a beeline for the coffee.

He must have stopped at an outside spigot for a wash; the hair around his face and at the back of his neck shone darkly with captured water and his wrists and hands below the rolled-back cuffs of his shirt were devoid of the coating of dust he picked up from his usual morning work.

As had become habit, Coat came directly to Kalli, waiting for her to rub his ears. She always obliged, refusing to allow herself more than a pang that while the dog stayed by her whenever she and Walker were in the same vicinity, Coat was at Walker’s heels the second he made a move to leave.

Today she was in too good a mood to even have the pang.

Kalli was inclined to be indulgent over the awe in the young cowboys’ whispered exchange and their shuffle-footed shifting so they could keep Walker in sight without being obvious. The pair of them couldn’t be out of high school.

They represented the fourth and fifth entries by newcomers they’d had in two days. She’d take that as a good sign. The entries hadn’t returned to the level of before Jeff’s stroke, but they’d improved. Word was spreading that the Park Rodeo was still a good place to compete.

“All set,” she announced. “See you tonight, then, okay?”

“Huh? Oh, okay.” The first cowboy flushed and started backing out of the office when Walker glanced up. “I mean, uh, yes, ma’am. See you tonight, ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am,” agreed the second, wasting no time in following his friend. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Mouthing the oft-repeated “ma’am” in utter disgust—you’d think she was ninety-two and frail! —Kalli stared at the closed door. The dual splutter of laughter from behind her spun her around to face Roberta and Walker.

“Oh, yeah, you think it’s funny, those two kids treating me like my own grandmother?”

“Sure do,” Walker answered easily, one long leg extended from where he’d propped his hip comfortably on Roberta’s desk.

Trying to maintain the semblance of anger, she asked “How’d you like it if they did it to you?” hoping for a more sympathetic audience. No such luck.

“Do it to me all the time. Even Matt Halderman. And ain’t anybody can say he looks at you like you’re anybody’s grandmother.”

Awkwardness flooded into Kalli. Some of the casualness seemed to go out of Walker’s posture. Roberta looked bright-eyed from him to her. She’d done it on purpose, Kalli realized. Roberta had brought up Matt just to watch their reactions.

Deliberately, Kalli leaned against the counter, sliding her elbows back to rest on either side of her. “Matt’s a great guy.”

“Guess all these kids’re making you feel older, too, huh, Walker?” Roberta turned her piercing look on him.

Kalli might have been tempted to ask what made Roberta say that, but Walker apparently knew better than to give the rodeo secretary that kind of opening.

“Nah. What makes me feel old is cars I once owned being called classics. Or songs I used to listen to on the radio being ‘discovered’ by some new hotshot. Or realizing I’ve been out of school longer than I spent in it.”

Kalli winced in amused sympathy at each example.

Roberta, however, was not diverted. “So, your entering a few roping events this spring didn’t mean you’re about ready to give up on riding those bulls like you were still eighteen?”

An incredible surge of hope rushed through Kalli. What she’d overhead him tell that reporter, Jenny Belkin, ran back through her head. If he retired…

Even if he wasn’t prepared to retire completely quite yet, perhaps he’d give up riding bulls. Nothing in rodeo came without risk, but in the roping events, at least there wouldn’t be nearly a ton of angry bull determined to get rid of him.

“Nope. Doesn’t mean that at all.”

And just that easily, hope washed away, leaving only a raw discomfort at acknowledging the strength of the brief emotion. Turning her back on the hope and its aftermath, refusing to analyze either, she also turned away from Walker and Roberta, finding a few final touches necessary on entries she’d previously considered complete.

Still, she had the impression Walker spoke directly to her when he added, “I’m going to keep riding bulls until my body falls apart. It’s what I do. It’s who I am.”

The sharp silence lasted past comfort before Roberta asked, “Then why were you in roping events, if it wasn’t because you wouldn’t be the lone one with gray hairs entering?”

“I did most all the events as a kid, and worked roping now and again, all along. Way it turns out, it was good experience for doing this now, wasn’t it? Gives me an appreciation of what those cowboys go through, what they need in the way of stock and all.”

Roberta made a scoffing sound, but nothing more. That restraint seemed to encourage Walker.

“Like now,” he went on, and, although she kept her head down, Kalli could hear him moving behind her, going to the opening in the counter, coming around it and heading toward her. “It’ll help me sort out tonight’s stock. Soon as Kalli gives me that preliminary entry list.”

He’d stopped immediately across from her, his hands resting on the counter between them.

“The list’s right here.”

When she’d first known him, his hands had seemed unwieldy, but he’d grown into them by his late teens. They’d always been nicked and callused. And so strong. Strong enough to hang on to a bull or a bronc. Strong enough to drive her wild. Yet gentle, too.

Now they looked more than nicked and callused. They looked battered, with evidence of harsh demands made on them, of broken bones imperfectly healed, of dislocations ignored entirely.

“Kalli?”

“Oh. Yes. Here’s the list.”

“Thanks. Soon as we get this stock sorted, Gulch and I are opening the arena so the newcomers can get accustomed to the setup. So if you need me, that’s where I’ll be.”

SO IF YOU
need me, that’s where I’ll be.

Skittering away from other implications of Walker’s last statement, Kalli considered it in a practical light some time after he’d swallowed the last of his coffee and headed out.

There was a significant amount of time here at the rodeo when she didn’t know where Walker was. Not that she needed him, of course.

Most days, he and Gulch returned from picking up the day’s fresh stock from the Jeffries ranch around noon or early afternoon. Some days, she saw him before he headed out to get the stock. Sometimes not. The “nots” held a majority.

He and Gulch would do a rough sorting of incoming stock depending on the early entries, leaving the final ordering of bulls and steers and calves and broncs into pens until a couple hours before the events. Afternoons he spent finishing any repairs around the grounds left over from the morning, or sometimes he and Gulch disappeared on unspecified duties. But they were always back for final preparations for the night’s rodeo and the actual running of it. Afterward, one or the other of them would organize the crew that returned the stock to the ranch, where the animals remained until Walker judged them rested enough for another run in the competition.

She’d wondered where Walker and Gulch took off on those afternoons they disappeared, but not enough to reveal her curiosity by asking.

So if you need me, that’s where I’ll be.

An innocuous enough statement. But it kept echoing as she and Roberta proceeded with the routine of taking entries and organizing the evening’s rodeo.

Yet, when the call came from Mary, she didn’t go out after him or take Roberta up on her offer to fetch him.

After all, he hadn’t said anything about finding him if she had good news.

“...so they’re moving Jeff up to Billings tomorrow—tomorrow!” Mary sounded so youthfully breathless on the phone that Kalli grinned even as a few tears of relief slipped free. “We thought it would be weeks yet, but ever since he started speaking, his progress has been so much faster, and they said his overall condition is strong enough to go into the rehabilitation program, then, boom! This spot opened up. It’s like everything just clicked.” Even Mary’s sound of exasperation sounded happy. “Everything except my packing. I’m going out to the house right now to throw a few things together, then I’ll stay at the hospital tonight to go up early in the ambulance with Jeff. Once I get settled, if you wouldn’t mind, I might ask you to bring a few things—”