Читать книгу Rustler's Moon - Jodi Thomas - Страница 9

CHAPTER TWO

Wilkes

Devil’s Fork Ranch

WILKES WAGNER STARED at his aging uncle, wondering which of them had completely lost their mind. Common sense rarely ran in the Wagner family, but Great-Uncle Vern’s suggestion was ridiculous.

“I’ve given it some thought, and this is the only answer, boy,” the crippled-up old cowboy repeated as if Wilkes were ten and not thirty-two. “Look at it this way, we breed cattle, don’t we? Why not just pick out a woman with all the right traits and mate with her? It shouldn’t take but a few tries before we got at least one offspring to claim the next generation. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance we’ll get a boy on the first try.”

“You mean marry some woman, don’t you?” Wilkes was never sure when his uncle was kidding.

“Of course! There’s an order to these kinds of things. You’d need to marry her first, get her pregnant and wait for a son.” The old man lit a pipe that looked as if it might have survived the Battle of the Alamo. “Look on the bright side, half your life is about over anyway. If you’re miserable at marriage, the last thirty or forty years will seem to move slower with a mean woman around the place and we’ll all work harder so we don’t come home early.”

Wilkes rolled his eyes. He needed another drink. Or better yet give Great-Uncle Vern a few more and with luck he’d pass out.

To humor the cowboy, Wilkes asked, “And what would those traits be that I’m looking for in this breeding-bride?”

Vern smiled as if he’d won the argument. “Stout. You don’t want one of those skinny girls who only eats out of the garden. She’ll need to have a little meat on her bones. Ain’t nothing worse than trying to cuddle up to a skinny gal on a cold night. I did that once in Amarillo, and about midnight I decided driving home in a snowstorm would be warmer.”

Wilkes grabbed a pen off the poker table and started writing on the back of his Western Horseman magazine. Not skinny.

His uncle leaned back in an old rocker that had come to the Devil’s Fork Ranch in a covered wagon. “She’ll need to know how to cook and clean and sew, too, otherwise she’d be wearing out the road to town buying takeout, hiring housekeepers and replacing clothes she’s lost a button on.”

“All that might be hard to find these days.” The only thing the four or five women Wilkes had stepped out with in the past six years could make for dinner was reservations. He considered them cooks if they knew how to use the microwave for popcorn.

His aging uncle wasn’t paying attention. He was busy thinking. “And she needs to be rich. Not just have money coming to her, mind, but already have it in the bank. You don’t want to count on her father liking you, ’cause if he don’t he might cut her out of the will. Then you’ll be stuck with a poor wife with rich habits.”

Rich. Wilkes scribbled.

“And dumb.” Uncle Vern lit his pipe. “Ain’t no smart girl ever going to marry you, even if you are good-looking. If she’s got much schooling, she’ll want to work at something or sit around and read all day.”

Wilkes had humored his old uncle long enough. Vern was the dumbest and the youngest of four children, and all his brothers and sisters claimed he’d been dropped on his head one time too many when he was a baby. He had lived on the Wagner family ranch all of his seventy-seven years. The rule was whoever ran the Devil’s Fork also had to keep an eye on Vern. Wilkes’s father and grandfather had done it, and now it was Wilkes’s turn. The few other relatives, who’d been smart enough to move to the city, never wanted to come back and take over the job.

This crazy idea Vern had tonight was the worst one yet.

Wilkes leaned forward until Vern’s whiskey-blurred eyes focused on him. “I’m real busy with the calving right now, uncle. Do you think you could keep a lookout for a possible wife? She shouldn’t be too hard to find. She’s chubby, eats beef and is rich and dumb. She’ll be wearing a homemade dress and probably have freshly made jam dripping down her chins. Oh, I forgot, she needs to be easy to impregnate, ’cause I won’t be visiting her often.” Wilkes fought down a laugh. “Only, that trait might be hard to prove on sight.”

Vern didn’t get the joke. He rocked back so far that the forward swing, a moment later, shoved him out of the chair and onto his wobbly legs. “I’ll do my best for you! I promise. Might go into Crossroads tomorrow and put up a few signs. I don’t think I’ve been to town since spring and the Franklin sisters always say they miss seeing me.”

Wilkes laughed. “You do that, Uncle Vern.”

The broken-down cowboy headed toward the massive double doors of the ranch house muttering, “I hated to have this talk with you, son, but you ain’t getting nowhere in the breeding department and ’fore you know it you’ll be past your prime or dead. Who’ll run the ranch? You had a gal once and let her go, so we got to act fast before you get any older and end up sleeping alone the rest of your life.”

Wilkes saw it then. The reason his uncle had insisted on drinking tonight and talking. He was afraid he’d outlive Wilkes and no one would take over Devil’s Fork. Vern had spent his life living on the ranch, never worrying about money or where his next meal was coming from. He’d hated school so much his mother had let him quit after the seventh grade. He loved working with horses, living alone and driving his pickup until the odometer circled twice. He was afraid of being left out here on his own.

Following his uncle to the porch, Wilkes watched Vern limp toward his cabin a hundred yards away. Light from the second-floor windows of the main house illuminated the old man’s path. The massive home had been built fifty years ago to hold a dozen kids. It now held one. Wilkes.

Vern had watched his brother, Wilkes’s grandfather, take over the ranch. When he died, Wilkes’s father became the manager. Vern said all he wanted to do was cowboy. The job of boss wouldn’t suit him.

Uncle Vern had been around all of Wilkes’s life, working cattle with the ranch hands, training horses with his father and eating supper every night at the family table in the big house. This life was all he knew. All he wanted to know.

Wilkes shook his head as his heart ached for Vern Wagner, who’d lived long enough to go from being Wilkes’s hero and teacher, to friend, to responsibility. His uncle had taught him to ride, cussed him out when he left the pasture gate open and bought him fireworks every year, even when Wilkes’s mother said she wouldn’t allow them on the ranch. The old guy may have danced with a few girls in his day, but he had never married. He was loyal to the family, loyal to the Devil’s Fork brand.

Wilkes watched the lights flick on in Vern’s cabin. “I better start looking for a fat, rich wife so I can start breeding Vern’s next guardian angel,” he mumbled as he downed the last of his whiskey, knowing he was only half kidding. Then he climbed the stairs and slept in the second room off the upstairs landing. The first bedroom was bigger, the master, but when Wilkes had returned home to take over the ranch, he hadn’t felt as if he deserved the master suite. He still didn’t.

The next morning as he drove into town to pick up fencing supplies and eat breakfast with a friend, Wilkes thought about the conversation the night before. Vern was right about one thing. Wilkes had had a lady once. The perfect one. He’d loved Lexie Davis the minute he first saw her, chased her through high school and college; but she’d never really been his. When he’d left for the army a month after they both graduated, she promised she’d wait, and she had... Only, she’d counted her time in hours. Sixty-three days into his deployment, she’d written him one letter. It said simply she’d met someone else. She’d added five words below Love, Lexi: don’t bother to write back.

Wilkes told himself a hundred times that he was over her. Maybe not everyone was meant to find that forever love. Vern hadn’t. But something broke inside Wilkes the day Lexie walked out of his life and he feared he would never mend.

Hell. Vern was right. Maybe he should start thinking about finding a wife, but it wasn’t exactly a scavenger hunt. He should make a real list. It’d be pretty much the opposite of Vern’s. He liked long-legged women with midnight hair that dropped down to their waist and laughter dancing in their eyes. Women like Lexie.

Lexie, the woman he was over, Wilkes reminded himself.

While he waited for the supplies to be loaded, Wilkes walked along the wide main street. The business district of Crossroads looked as if the stores must have been bought from a clearance rack. All different sizes, ages, styles. Nothing matched. Crossroads was a town more likely to be called quirky than quaint.

He noticed a few new stores since he’d last been in town. Businesses that had filled in where empty gaps had stood. Shiny as new teeth in an old mouth, he thought. The change made the little town look a bit more prosperous.

One empty hull had become the Forever Keepsake Shop. In his opinion, the only folks who bought knickknacks to sit around gathering dust must be orphans, because every time one of his relatives died, he inherited another crate of “treasured” family keepsakes. Sometimes he wondered if his great-great-grandparents had hauled their junk from the old country to Texas in a wagon train and not just one wagon. All the old trunks and lanterns and dusty quilts came back to Devil’s Fork like ugly buzzards coming home to roost.

Wilkes walked into the new shop hoping he might offer to supply the place. Old tools, butter churns, wall telephones, he had them all in supply.

Two women in their forties giggled when he stepped inside and closed the door. He knew them by last name. The Franklin sisters. They probably had first names, but years ago when his mother would point them out to him, she always said simply, “There’s the Franklin sisters. Poor things. Bless their hearts.”

He’d been twenty before he found out why they were poor things. Apparently, in the late seventies or early eighties, they’d both fallen for the same boy—a good-looking Gypsy kid with bedroom eyes and the last name of Stanley. He ran off with a girl from another Gypsy family in town, and both the Franklin sisters were brokenhearted. They swore over an ocean of tears that he was the only man either would ever love and they would never marry.

Some thought that sad; others just thought it was their escape, because the two weren’t likely to marry anyway. By eighteen, they both tipped the scales at over two hundred pounds, and at twenty-five, they’d gained another fifty or sixty. By thirty, they both sported faint mustaches.

Even on a dark night no one would mistake them as pretty. But they were sweet as warm toffee. Every few years they took up a new business in town. As far as he could remember, they’d had the Sweet Shop, the Quilting Bee and a used bookstore called the Book Hideout.

Wilkes smiled at the two sisters. “Morning, Miss Franklin and Miss Franklin.” Even round and hairy, there was something about the ladies that was adorable.

Both giggled. “How can we help you, Wilkes?” they said at once.

Wilkes didn’t want to seem the village idiot, so he said, “I’m looking for a keepsake to give a friend who is visiting.”

“Do you know him well?” the shorter Miss Franklin asked.

Wilkes lied again. “No. He’s just someone stopping by for a cup of coffee. He’s thinking about going into ranching.” Dumb lie, Wilkes thought, but he was too far in now to back out.

“We know just the thing.” Each woman grabbed a box from the stacks behind the counter.

Wilkes didn’t care what was in the boxes. He picked the smallest and thanked them. Handing them a twenty, he wasn’t surprised to get only coins back. They managed small talk about Uncle Vern’s health while one sister bagged his purchase.

When they passed it to him, one Miss Franklin started mentioning every relative she had who was still unmarried. “Fran’s newly divorced, you know, but she’s a treasure.”

The other sister chimed in. “Avis is a little older than you, but she’s real pretty, and then you know Molly and Doris. I think you went to school with them. Both were engaged last year, but it didn’t work out.”

Wilkes never knew what to say. He’d been tricked into a dozen meet-the-single-relative dates, and they’d all turned out bad.

The taller Miss Franklin must have gotten the message, but she wasn’t ready to toss in her matchmaking wand. “I guess you heard Lexie Davis is moving back.”

He hadn’t heard. He didn’t care, but that didn’t stop the conversation.

“Her second marriage didn’t work out, you know, and her aunt is poorly. Lexie is hoping to get on at the high school. She can teach both drama and English, she claims, though she’s never had to work. Married well both times, you know.”

Wilkes had to get out of the store. He didn’t want to hear more about Lexie. Not in this lifetime. Besides, how “well” are marriages that don’t last two years?

“I wish I could visit, but I’ve got my hands full this morning.” Wilkes had a death grip on his box as he backed toward the door.

They both looked sad.

Wilkes couldn’t talk about Lexie. One goodbye letter while he’d been away in the army had been enough to kill any hope of love.

She hadn’t waited. He wasn’t interested. End of story. Wilkes didn’t want to reread that chapter in his life. He’d been home six years and hadn’t run into her. She was just a memory now.

He stormed out the door not even remembering if he said goodbye.

With no thought but to escape, Wilkes darted into the next business. The welcome sign clanged like a gong. The smell of hair spray and bleach almost knocked him back outside.

A beauty shop. Wilkes swore. Why couldn’t it have been a bookstore, or a Laundromat or better yet a bar?

He looked around at women with aluminum foil in their hair and took a step backward. Alien invasion came to mind.

The gum-chewing girl with green-striped hair darted around the counter and caught up to him. “May we help you, mister?”

“No, thanks,” Wilkes managed. “I was, uh, just looking for my aunt.”

One of the aliens in the back yelled, “Your last aunt died five years ago, Wilkes Wagner.”

Wilkes pulled his hat down and answered, “Then I guess she’s not here.”

He ignored the laughter and walked out, head high, keepsake box in hand. Thank goodness the next place down the road was a café he knew. Dorothy’s Café had been around for as long as he could remember, and the food served was exactly the same. Fried grease with a side of starch. He might be a half hour early to meet his friend, but the café seemed a safe place. He knew it would take a little time to wash Lexie out of his mind.

As he sat down at the first booth, he saw a sign across the street that said Puppy Paradise, Dog Grooming and Training.

No doubt about it, Crossroads, Texas, was growing. Wilkes couldn’t wait to show Uncle Vern the new place. Maybe he’d suggest grooming the cattle.

He ordered coffee, then opened the box he’d bought. To his shock, he’d paid twenty dollars for a mug that looked to be about the same as the one the waitress delivered with his coffee.

Only, the mug in the box was obviously worth far more because it read, “You are at the Crossroads of your life.”

Wilkes laughed. Nothing had changed in his life in six years. It was hard to see a crossroads when he knew he was born with only one way to travel. He had played four years of college football without managing to pick up much education and served three years in the army without collecting any bullet holes, but by twenty-six, after drifting across the United States and back, he’d come back home to do what he always knew he’d do. Run the ranch. It wasn’t as if he’d given up on his dreams; he’d never really had any to begin with.

His folks weren’t dead. They were simply absentee landlords. Never around to help or fix things, but calling in now and then to check on what he was doing. They must have started packing the day they’d called Wilkes and found out he hadn’t even bothered to look for a job after he got out of the army. He was drifting and they had the solution to his no goal, no direction life.

His mother’s folks were aging and needed help downsizing and selling several small businesses. So Wilkes’s parents moved to Denver claiming Wilkes would run the ranch while they were gone, since he seemed to have nothing else to do.

He’d agreed, thinking they’d be gone a few months. Six years later his dad looked like an aging hippie and his mother was taking meditation classes so she could teleport. They took cruises with Wilkes’s eighty-year-old grandparents and showed no sign of coming back to the work of ranching.

Wilkes told himself he didn’t care. After all, he had no plans after the army and he loved ranching.

“Morning, Wilkes,” a low voice greeted him.

Wilkes turned to see Yancy Grey coming through the door. He was a few years younger than Wilkes, but they’d become friends working on a park project together last year. Yancy had an awkward way about him at first meeting. He’d talk too fast sometimes or be unable to find the right words, but Wilkes didn’t mind. When Yancy settled down into a conversation, he could tell a story with the best of them and Wilkes had the time to listen when Yancy needed to talk.

“I’m glad you had time to meet me.” Yancy slid his thin frame into the other side of the booth. “I need to ask a favor.”

The café was empty, so they weren’t likely to be bothered. Yancy worked across the street as the handyman at the retirement community. The senior citizens seemed to have adopted him when he was homeless and he looked after them like a hen with a nest full of chicks.

Since Wilkes was only talking to himself lately, a favor might pull him out of his slump. Maybe he’d even tell his friend about Uncle Vern’s plan to marry him off to the first chubby, rich, dumb girl they could find.

“How can I help?” Wilkes had no idea what Yancy needed, but if it was in his power, he was up for the job.

“I got a history question for you.”

Wilkes thought maybe he should warn his friend that just because a man had a history degree didn’t make him an expert on any time period. He’d majored in history because it had sounded easier than English. “I’ll do what I can.”

Yancy straightened, took a gulp of hot coffee the waitress slid in front of him and started. “You think a house can...you know...draw you to it? Kind of like it’s calling you?”

Nope was the first answer that came to mind, but Wilkes leaned back deciding this conversation might just be interesting. “Tell me about it, Yancy.” His friend seemed suddenly far younger than twenty-seven.

“You’ll think I’m crazy.” Yancy leaned back as if pulling away. He’d spent his late teens and early twenties in prison. Sometimes that lack of trust showed through.

Wilkes didn’t judge him for his lack of skills or scars. He had his own scars.

“I can’t help if I don’t know the facts, Yancy. Just start from the beginning without leaving out anything. I’ll wait until I know the details before I call you crazy.”

The handyman nodded, took another gulp of coffee and said, “Last night, like I do a lot of nights, I took a walk down the north road. The moon seemed to be whispering secrets in the midnight air, like it does on cloudy nights, you know?”

“I know.” Wilkes’s brain cells woke up. He didn’t know any such thing, but he’d follow along where this went. He doubted he would be any help to Yancy Grey, but he wanted to hear more.

“I went down the road toward the old Gypsy House. You know the place covered by weeds and long dead trees.”

Wilkes nodded.

Yancy continued, “I’ve heard there are folks who swear they saw strangers as foggy as ghosts going into the house after dark and never coming out. According to the retired folks across the street the place is haunted by dead Gypsies or hippies. No one knows which. Some say the crumbling old place almost took four teenagers’ lives a few years ago, but I was too much into my own problems back then and don’t remember the details. When I ask about the house, folks claim evil lived there. One even said he thought he heard a scream once when he passed the place.”

“I’ve heard the stories, too. Did you feel the evil?” Wilkes interrupted.

Yancy shook his head. “The house had been drawing me since I arrived in Crossroads, even before I’d heard it was haunted. I guess you probably heard I came to town broke, alone and fresh out of prison.”

“I heard. Also know you helped the sheriff catch a gang of rustlers who almost killed Staten Kirkland.”

Yancy smiled. “Yeah, after that folks accepted me. I’m doing all right now. Got a good job. Hell, I even saved enough to buy a car outright, no payments, but still I walk at night out to that old place. I feel like it’s mocking me. Daring me to step inside. Sounds crazy, don’t it?”

Wilkes shrugged. “I’m tracking you. Keep talking.” He didn’t want to admit that stressing over a woman who left him years ago might fall into the crazy folder, as well.

Yancy continued, “As I got close to the house last night, it seemed to grow. Maybe it was in my head, but with every step closer the place looked bigger. I’ve seen some bad things in my life, but last night I swear I felt a shiver run down my back like someone walked over my grave.”

Wilkes smiled realizing, truth or not, the guy could tell a story better than Uncle Vern.

“When I felt it calling last night, I gripped the flashlight in my pocket like a weapon and stepped off the road, determined to get to the bottom of this nightmare. I headed through the high weeds that circle the place like a moat around a monster’s castle. I had to do something.” Yancy’s hands balled into fists.

“I yelled that I was going in, but I sounded like a frightened boy. I’m tired of having bad dreams, Wilkes, and last night I figured to put an end to it.

“The warped frame of what had once been a screen door tapped against the side of the house as if knocking on a crypt’s door in a forgotten cemetery. I planted my boot on the porch and stepped up, relieved that the wood took my weight.” Yancy took a few seconds to breathe.

Wilkes waited.

“I yelled like I wasn’t afraid. ‘You don’t frighten me.’ I took one step toward the door. The boards creaked as if crying out for me to stay back, but I didn’t stop. I widened my stance and pulled the hammer I’d brought from the loop on my pants. With as much force as I could manage, I pulled the nails from the two-by-fours blocking the door.

“As the boards rattled across the porch, I took a long breath. What I was doing was probably a crime. The place has do-not-enter signs posted at every corner of the house. But I didn’t care. I’d made up my mind.”

Wilkes shoved his coffee cup aside. He felt as if he was at the old house with Yancy. His senses hadn’t felt so alive since the army.

“Once the boards were off, I shoved the door open and flashed my light inside. Three rotted steps led down onto what looked like a dirt floor. If there was wood beneath the dirt, I couldn’t tell. When part of the roof must have tumbled in on the high school kids, no one thought to clean anything up.

“I avoided the steps and jumped down into the lower level of the house. The remains of a staircase leading up to the second floor lined one wall. They reminded me of rotting, broken teeth hanging lopsided in an open mouth. When I passed my light over the floor, I noticed a few old broken chairs and a bed frame.

“All the noise of loose boards rattling and wind whistling through cracks seemed muted inside. I just stood there, too afraid to go farther. If something fell on me, I’d be nothing but bones before anyone thought to look for me in that old place. Then, in the stillness, I swear I felt a hand on my shoulder, a slight tug pulling me deeper into the blackness.”

Wilkes could barely breathe waiting for what came next.

“Whatever drew me to the house seemed to want to keep me there.

“Fear stampeded through my blood, I raced out and hammered the boards back across the door knowing even as I did it that I’d have to come back.”

Yancy took a drink. “The house calls me, Wilkes, I swear, and it won’t stop until I figure out why.”

Wilkes exhaled deeply. “That’s some story. What’s your question?”

Yancy grinned. “Can you help me figure out what it wants with me? I need to know the history of the place and who I have to get permission from to go in without worrying about being caught. I’ve thought about it all night. You’re the only person I know who might go back with me. I remember that night on the Kirkland Ranch when we were waiting for the rustlers in the dark. You said, after the army, you gave up being afraid of anything. Well, now is your chance to prove it. Go back to the house with me.”

Their waitress must have been tired of waiting for them to motion her over. She appeared, notepad in hand, ready to take their order. “If you two don’t order breakfast soon, you’ll have to switch to the lunch menu.”

Both men apologized to her and ordered the special. She refilled their coffee and mentioned something about how Dorothy should charge for squatters.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Wilkes smiled. “I’m in. I’ll see what history I can find on the house and we’ll recon the site one night soon.”