скачать книгу бесплатно
“You’re not worried about something yourself, are you?” Edith thought her daughter was combing her hair longer than usual.
“Nothing big,” Doris June said a little cautiously as she kept combing. “It’s just that, if you want your hair that short, it needs to be cut by someone who knows what they’re doing. I think we should go to the beauty place in Miles City.”
Edith turned around. “But you always cut my hair.”
“Yes, and I can do a straight cut with the best of them. But that’s just getting things even. What you want is a whole lot more complicated. Your hair has to curve to go over the ear.”
Edith had gone to that beauty shop with Doris June so they could both get their hair styled for the wedding. Doris June had married Charley’s son, Curt, some months ago. They’d been high school sweethearts who’d been apart for over twenty-five years before Edith and Charley brought them back together. Edith thought it was the best thing she and Charley had ever done. It was also the last thing they’d done together.
She wondered who Charley was hoping to impress with his moustache.
Doris June kept combing. “It wouldn’t hurt you to get that deep oil treatment they offer. It’s good for your hair follicles.”
“My hair follicles are doing just fine, thank you.” Maybe he had met someone in Miles City. He’d been driving there a lot for one reason or another lately.
“Hmm, maybe,” Doris June said as she parted her mother’s hair and clipped half of it back. “But something isn’t right. You feeling okay?”
“Of course.” There was that new woman at the beauty shop.
“Have you been sleeping okay?” Doris June asked. “I know sometimes when people get to your age they have to keep getting up during the night to—”
“I sleep just fine.” Charley might even be having that woman trim his moustache. What better way to get to know someone?
“Good.” Doris June finished combing one side of her mother’s hair. “Are you taking your vitamins? I read the other day that—”
“For pity’s sake, I take my vitamins.”
“Well, I’m only trying to show that I’m here to help you with your problems, whatever they might be.”
“I’m sorry.” Edith supposed she did owe her daughter some kind of an explanation. She could hardly mention the letter or Charley’s moustache. She could talk about the feelings they both prompted, though. “It’s just…It’s the dead leaves outside. And making the same old kind of jelly. I’ve been feeling like my life just isn’t very exciting.”
It might be selfish, but she didn’t want Charley to date someone. When Harold died, she’d vowed no other man would ever make her feel the way he had. That’s why she liked her friendship with Charley the way it was. She thought they were both past all that dating business.
“But everyone loves your chokecherry jelly. The whole church raves about it at the harvest dinner. It’s practically a town tradition to have it.”
Edith brought herself back to the conversation. What Doris said was true. Everyone in the congregation tried to provide locally grown food for the harvest dinner and Edith had brought homemade chokecherry jelly and baking powder biscuits for decades. People said they loved her biscuits and jelly.
She’d always been a good cook—in fact, that’s how she’d gotten to know Harold. She’d been a teenager when she cooked for the thrashing crew that cut the Hargrove wheat one fall. Harold was nineteen; she was seventeen. She’d been speechless with awe just looking at him. He was a laughing, sculpted work of art like she saw in her textbooks. She’d thought a miracle had happened when he proposed. After they became engaged, he used to joke that he’d fallen in love with her cooking first and then with her.
She’d never dreamed at the time that there was anything wrong with what Harold had said. She’d told herself that just because a man liked her cooking, that didn’t mean he didn’t love her completely. Those doubts came later.
After Harold told her about his affair, she’d spent days making chokecherry jelly from the raw juice she’d canned the fall before. The bitter tartness of the berry matched the sourness of her soul. The chokecherry was one of the few fruits that grew wild in the southeastern plains of Montana and it was able to survive in the drought in a way something sweeter and softer, like a peach, couldn’t.
From that winter on, Edith had always pictured Jasmine as the exotic peach and herself as the sturdy chokecherry. She was the one who belonged; she was the one who could endure the dry days with or without Harold’s love.
“If it’s the jelly that’s troubling you, I can help you with that,” Doris June said. “Just pick the day and I’ll arrange my schedule. But it’ll have to be soon. The harvest dinner comes up on the tenth.”
That was a little over a week away.
“Charley hasn’t brought me the berries.”
Summer was already moving into early fall and chokecherries didn’t stay on the bushes forever. Edith could already detect the musty smell of grass turning brown. The berries would be ending soon.
If she hadn’t been so worried about that letter, she would have thought to remind Charley about the berries. According to the calendar, she should be making that jelly now. She wished she had finished the jelly before she got the letter. The satisfaction of seeing all those jars of dark red jelly would have eased some of her nerves.
“Maybe Charley’s just off his schedule since he moved into his place in Dry Creek,” Doris June said. “He’s probably so busy unpacking he doesn’t even know what month it is.”
“Maybe,” Edith said. After the wedding, Charley had rented the old Jergenson house and moved off the farm, leaving the place to Curt, Doris June and Curt’s teenage son, Brad. He claimed the small town of Dry Creek was more restful than the farm and allowed him to be closer to his friends.
Edith leaned forward so she could see down the street to the hardware store. Yes, Charley’s pickup was parked out front just like it usually was unless he was out doing a small vet job. The Jergenson place was only a quarter mile from the hardware store, but Charley preferred to have his pickup with him in case he got a call about an animal.
“You don’t suppose he’s sick?” Doris June asked.
Edith shook her head. “He wouldn’t be out in public if he was sick.”
Every fall a group of men, mostly retired farmers, started to gather each morning around the potbelly stove in the middle of the hardware store. The warmth of the burning wood and the smell of the coffee brewing on the counter made these men feel right at home. The gathering was a ritual of sorts.
In the summer, the men met over at the café, where there was air-conditioning. But their hearts were with that aging stove and as soon as the fall chill was in the air, they returned like homing pigeons to the unvarnished wood chairs clustered around the old thing.
Even before Charley moved into town, he had always joined the other men around the stove when he could. That part of his behavior wasn’t puzzling. What was just becoming clear to Edith, however, was that Charley was no longer making it a point to stop by her place for breakfast before settling down with the men. And he’d never forgotten her chokecherries before.
“He’s not sick but something’s wrong,” Edith said. Maybe he knew she wouldn’t like him dating.
Of course, Charley still came by to see her. It’s just that he never came at meal time and he never quite seemed himself. It was like he was holding something back from her. Edith knew she was keeping a secret from Charley, but for the first time she realized he might be keeping a secret from her, too. Charley was her oldest friend and—until now—she’d assumed he confided in her as much as she confided in him.
She had a sinking feeling Charley had been trying to tell her something important for some time now. The last time he had come to her house, he had cleared his throat a dozen times, but all he’d done was repeat what he’d already said about her not driving her car outside of Dry Creek. Charley hadn’t come inside her house to deliver his opinion, either. He’d stood out on the porch even though he couldn’t have been comfortable in the early morning cold. She’d thought it was odd he’d come by only to tell her the same thing he’d told her many times before. He must have planned to tell her something else and couldn’t.
“So, we’ll wait on the haircut?” Doris June asked as she twisted the hair back into its usual bun.
Edith nodded. She had to pull her worries back and stop leaping ahead to conclusions. She didn’t even know why Charley had grown that moustache for sure. Maybe it had nothing to do with dating some woman.
“Good,” Doris June said as she started putting the hairpins back in place. “That gives me time to rake up those leaves for you before I head back to the farm.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I’m glad to help out. You know that.” Doris June untied the dish towel from her mother’s shoulders.
After Doris June left, Edith went out on the porch to sit. Her daughter had raked the yard and brought in the Mason jars from the garage. She’d also stored the lawn mower in the shed and checked all the windows in the small room over the garage to be sure they were tightly closed. Edith rented that room out here and there and she liked to keep it ready for use. The only fall chore remaining was the jelly.
Edith stood up. She was tired of sitting at home and brooding. There was no reason she couldn’t go get those chokecherries herself. Pastor Matthew had recharged the battery in her old car last week so she was finally able to drive. She’d begun to wonder if she’d ever get her car working again. She must have asked every man in town for help, but all of them, except the pastor, had said they had misplaced their jumper cables and couldn’t help her.
Now that she could, she’d just drive to the coulee over by the Elkton Ranch and pick a bucket of chokecherries. Everyone knew that was the best place to pick them, even this late in the season. Big Dry Creek ran through that coulee and the soil was good. There’d be chokeberry bushes alongside the coulee going down to the creek, and cattails by the creek itself.
Edith turned to walk back inside her house so she could get ready. Now that she’d decided to do it, she was looking forward to it. The exercise would help clear her mind. All that berry-picking might even ease the arthritis in her hands. She’d wear her gardening hat, of course, and her walking shoes with thick, high socks so her legs wouldn’t get scratched by the thistles that would surely be around.
Edith nodded to herself. There was nothing like a walk over some solid Montana farmland to make her remember who she was. She was a good strong woman. It was time to be reminded of that. She didn’t need to fret over the actions of any man.
Chapter Two
Charley Nelson sat with his empty coffee cup in one hand. A checkerboard was laid out on the table to the right of his chair. If he looked past the woodstove, he could see through the windows of the hardware store and out to the street. He’d been looking through those windows for the past twenty minutes, waiting for Elmer Maynard to finish talking about the paint job he planned for his old white Cadillac.
Before Elmer had started talking, Charley had set up the board so they could play. Then he’d gotten a fresh, hot cup of coffee. Elmer didn’t even seem to notice the board, he was so busy debating the virtues of midnight blue and ocean blue when applied to a car. Charley was amazed a man could have so many opinions about the different shades of blue yet never have any strategy when it came to a simple game of checkers.
Between the stillness out the window and the drone of Elmer’s voice, Charley was almost dozing when he heard a sound in the distance. At first, he couldn’t really make out the sound, but as it got louder he placed it quickly. It woke him right up. “What’s that woman doing?”
Charley set his coffee cup down on the table and looked around him with a scowl. The hardware store was having a sale on nails so there were a dozen men leaning against the counter, wanting to make purchases. “I thought we all agreed no one was going to jump start that battery for Mrs. Hargrove.”
Not a man dared lift his gaze to Charley and that included the salesman who was just there to bring in a new display case of shovels. He didn’t even know Mrs. Hargrove.
Finally, Elmer jutted out his chin and said. “We didn’t agree. You told us what you wanted, but that didn’t mean we agreed with you.”
“Yeah,” a couple of the men said.
“Well, you should have enough sense to agree. All of you.” Charley stared down each of the men who dared to meet his gaze. He knew Edith could make most of them do anything she wanted if she put on her Sunday-school-teacher voice. But he thought he’d impressed upon them the need to stop her from driving that beat-up old car. The thing barely ran. It was a break-down waiting to happen.
There was another moment’s silence, broken only by the crackling of the wood in the stove.
“I’m the one who jump-started the battery for her,” Pastor Matthew finally said from where he stood behind the counter. He’d been going over the catalogue to fill out the order form for new nails. “It seemed the Christian thing to do when she asked.”
Charley’s face got red but he figured he couldn’t very well tell the pastor to stop acting like a Christian. Everyone knew it was his job to do things like that. Trust Edith to pick the one man in town who Charley couldn’t easily scold.
“Well, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not a good idea at all,” Charley muttered.
“She’s not a bad driver,” Elmer said. “For a woman, that is.”
“She’s an excellent driver,” Charley snapped back. “That’s never been the problem. It’s that car. It should have been chopped up into scrap metal years ago. The muffler is almost worn out and those windshield wipers are about to fall off.”
“Well, then you should fix it up for her, if you’re so worried,” Elmer said.
“It would take more money to fix that car than to buy you a new Cadillac,” Charley said, even though he knew it wasn’t strictly true. Still, it was foolish to fix up that eyesore when it would cost less to buy a reasonable used car that a dignified woman like Edith would be proud to drive.
“She’s awfully fond of that car,” the pastor said from the counter. “It seems it was the last car Harold bought before he died. Memories, you know.”
Charley grunted. He didn’t like to speak ill of the dead, but he couldn’t help it. “That man never could pick a car that was worth anything. I can’t understand why she’d want to keep a rattletrap around to remind her of Harold’s poor judgment when it came to cars. He always planted his wheat too early, too, but that’s neither here nor there.”
“Well, if you’re so set on her having a new car,” Elmer said as he hooked his thumbs on his suspenders, “why don’t you just sic that nephew of yours on her? It’s Conrad, isn’t it? You told me he’s adding a used car lot to that garage of his and I drove by the other day when I was in Miles City. Let him sell her something.”
“She might not be able to afford a new car,” the pastor cautioned.
“The ad in front of Conrad’s shop said they never turn anyone away,” Elmer said. “So money should be no-o-o problem.”
“He got that sign from another car lot that had gone out of business,” Charley said. “Conrad doesn’t want to put much money into signs before he knows if he’ll get any customers.”
“Well, he shouldn’t put up a sign if he doesn’t mean it,” Elmer said. “That’s the worst thing he can do for business. Besides, selling something to Mrs. Hargrove would be business so I’d think he’d hop right on it. Everyone in the county will notice if she’s driving a new car. A good word from her could bring him more customers than he’ll know what to do with.”
Charley reached over to get his empty coffee cup and then stood up. “I guess it couldn’t hurt to talk to him.” He walked over to the counter and set the cup down. “Conrad has to prove himself a salesman someday. If he can sell a car to Edith, he can sell a car to anyone.”
The pastor looked up from his order form and nodded at Charley. “That woman knows her mind, all right. She won’t be easy to convince if she doesn’t want to be.”
“Some women get a new car just because they like the color,” Elmer said. “Remind your nephew to talk about color with her. The blues are always popular. Tell him to say it’ll match her eyes.”
“Edith’s eyes are green,” Charley said as he started walking to the door.
“Hey,” Elmer called out, “we haven’t had our game yet. Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back,” Charley said. “I just need to check up on that car.”
Charley stood on the porch of the hardware store and looked down the road. He could see Edith’s mustard-colored car in the distance, billowing out enough smoke to show that it was still moving. He shook his head as he walked over to his pickup. It wasn’t easy to talk sense to a stubborn woman, but he had to try.
Edith stopped her car at the point in the road near where the coulee started to dip. Autumn came fast and furious to this part of Montana. When she got out of the car, she looked in all directions and could see the brown patches of grass that had already turned for the year. Farther out, she could see the Big Sheep Mountains.
Edith made sure her socks were pulled up as high as they could go before she took her bucket and started to the edge of the coulee. The ground sloped down gradually and she had to be careful not to slide.
She wasn’t more than eight feet down the slope when she heard the sound of a vehicle stopping on the road above. She supposed it was one of the hands at the Elkton Ranch making sure she was all right. Everyone in the whole county knew her car so they wouldn’t be wondering who was walking down in the coulee; they’d just be stopping to make sure she was okay.
“I’m fine,” Edith called out. She was far enough down in the coulee that she couldn’t see who it was that had parked. “Just going to pick some chokecherries.”
“Well, that’s a fool thing to be doing.”
Edith didn’t need to see the man to know that it was Charley up there. She hadn’t seen him for two days, she thought in annoyance, and he decided now was the time to talk to her. Her daughter hadn’t put the pins back in Edith’s bun securely and she could feel her hair starting to pull loose. Even with the hat on her head, a person could still see her sagging hair. She probably looked frightful. Plus, the hat was yellow and she always had thought it made her face look a little green.
“You don’t need to come down,” Edith called back. The best thing would be if Charley just went away. Then she wouldn’t need to worry about how she looked. “I’m doing fine.”
She didn’t know why she was suddenly worried about how she looked when it was only Charley. He knew she was a plain-featured woman with work lines on her face. He’d probably seen every one of her gardening hats over the years.
Charley stood at the top of the coulee and saw Edith slowly walking down. He could kick himself. He’d completely forgotten about picking the chokecherries. His mind had been on that old car of hers. He should have remembered she’d need those berries to make her harvest-dinner jelly.
“I’ll be right there,” Charley said as he started down the coulee. Edith was holding herself stiff and he wondered if her arthritis was acting up. “You don’t need to be climbing down no coulees.”
“I can certainly pick a few chokecherries,” Edith said. “Just because I haven’t done it for a few years doesn’t mean I can’t.”
Charley noticed the woman didn’t even turn around to face him. That didn’t bode well.
“I’m sorry I forgot.” Charley kept right on going down the side of the coulee, sidestepping instead of walking straight to keep his balance. “I can get the berries now though. Just give me a few minutes.”
Charley caught up with Edith as she reached the chokecherry bushes. They were gnarled and rooted deep in the sandy soil with nothing but thistles to keep them company. Those bushes had been there for decades and each year they were red with chokecherries until the birds from Canada started picking the berries off as they flew south.
There were no red berries in sight.
“They’re all gone,” Charley said. The birds had already been here. The bushes were picked clean. “I’m sorry. Maybe there’s some left over on that hill by the Morgan farm.”
Those berries were never as plump and Charley knew that, but he saw no reason to remind Edith of that fact.
“It’s all right,” Edith said. “I can get by without chokecherry jelly.”
Charley noticed that she still hadn’t looked at him. “But you always make chokecherry jelly.”
“Only because there’s no peaches around.”
