скачать книгу бесплатно
“I’ll get you some chokecherries. Don’t worry,” he vowed.
Edith finally turned to him. The brim of her floppy garden hat kept her face in shadow, but Charley could see the stiff curve of her lips as she gave him what would pass for a smile if he didn’t know her like he did.
Charley felt miserable.
“What happened to your moustache?” Edith asked. “I thought you were growing a moustache.”
Charley nodded. “I couldn’t decide if it made me look better or not so I shaved it off.”
“You don’t need a moustache to make you look handsome,” Edith said firmly. She sounded relieved. “You’ve got a fine face.”
“Really?” Charley smiled. “I thought maybe I could use a change.”
“Well, sometimes change isn’t what we need at all.”
Charley knew Edith didn’t like change. But the same old things weren’t always good, either. “If you ask me, we absolutely need to change sometimes. Like with…” Charley lost his nerve. He couldn’t say anything about the changes he’d like to make between the two of them. “Cars. There comes a time when a person needs a new car.”
Edith nodded. “If you want a new car, you should get one.”
“I didn’t mean me. I meant you. Besides, what’s wrong with my pickup? It can still pull a horse trailer if I need to move an animal. And I’ve just got the driver seat broken in the way I like it.”
“Then you know how attached a person gets to their car. I don’t know if I’d be able to drive a different car.”
Charley shifted his feet. “The new cars steer easier than that old Ford you have. You’d like a new one if you’d give it a chance and take it out for a test drive.”
“My old car does fine for me.”
Charley snorted. “Just because Harold bought you that car—”
“He didn’t buy it for me,” Edith interrupted. “It was his car. He bought it for himself.”
“Well, all I’m saying is that Harold wouldn’t expect you to keep it forever. Not when you consider everything.”
Edith drew in her breath. “What do you mean by that?”
Maybe Charley knew more about the past than she thought. Did he know about Jasmine?
Charley looked at her. “Just what I said. When you consider the muffler and the battery and the windshield wipers that don’t work. Harold would not expect you to keep the thing.”
“Oh.” Edith put her hand up to steady her hat against a breeze. The movement made her feet slip a little along the side of the coulee.
“But that’s why you keep that old car, isn’t it? Because it reminds you of Harold?” Charley didn’t know why it annoyed him that Edith was so loyal to her dead husband. She even had that locket the man had given her tied to the rearview mirror in the car. Charley knew it had both of their pictures in it because that’s what lockets were for. He had grieved for his wife deeply when she died, but he hadn’t set up any memorial for her in his pickup.
“There’s nothing wrong with my car,” Edith said. “I keep it because it gets me where I’m going.”
“Barely.”
Edith lifted her head. “The world would be a better place if people didn’t throw away things that still worked. Just look at how many landfills there are in this country. People need to fix things instead of throw them away.”
“I don’t think they put old cars in landfills.” Especially not around here, Charley thought. He didn’t even think there was a landfill within a hundred miles of where they stood. Probably not even within two hundred miles.
“You don’t know what they put in those things. Some of it’s toxic, too.”
Charley didn’t want to talk about garbage problems.
“Well, my nephew, Conrad, is opening a used car lot in Miles City next to his garage. He’d move his business to Dry Creek if he thought he could get enough customers. Talk to him and maybe he can put you in a newer car for reasonable payments.”
“I’m certainly not going to start buying things on credit at this stage of my life,” Edith said. She looked up at Charley. “You remember the problems we all had that year when hail destroyed the wheat crop and most of the men had to work in Billings over Christmas just to make ends meet?”
“I sure do,” Charley said. “I know Harold went. I thought it must have been hard on him. He didn’t talk much about it though when he came back.”
Edith took a deep breath and looked down slightly. “He wasn’t proud of everything he did that winter.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t suppose he told you about it?” Edith looked up again.
“Not much. He said he had dinner with Elmer a few times.”
“I’d forgotten Elmer was there that winter, too.”
Charley thought he saw a tear starting to form in Edith’s eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he said as fast as he could. “I’ll go check on the Morgan place and see if there are any chokecherries.”
Edith turned and started walking back up the coulee. “I don’t need any chokecherries this year. All that jelly isn’t good for us anyway.”
“But what are we going to put on your biscuits at the harvest dinner?” Charley said as he took a couple of quick steps to bring himself even with Edith. He reached out and took her elbow without asking. The woman shouldn’t be walking these coulees without even a stick to balance herself.
“There’s no need for me to make any biscuits,” Edith said and he heard her take another quick breath. “Not when we don’t have the jelly.”
“Oh, boy,” Charley said. He was in trouble now. All of the men he sat with around that old woodstove looked forward to Edith’s biscuits as much as her jelly. They claimed they were the lightest, fluffiest biscuits they’d ever eaten. Charley figured he’d have to drink his coffee at home until spring if he didn’t get some chokecherries.
He couldn’t help but notice that Edith was upset about something. She’d let him take her elbow and help her on the climb, but she kept her arm stiff, as if she didn’t want his help even though she knew she needed it.
It must be the chokecherries, Charley finally decided. She kept saying she didn’t need any berries and she wouldn’t make any jelly this year. But she didn’t speak with the free and easy style she usually had when she talked to him.
Charley suddenly realized what was going on. Edith was being polite to him.
“I’m sorry,” Charley repeated softly for lack of anything better to say. He’d already apologized three times in as many minutes, but he would do it again if it would make Edith talk to him like she used to. It made him feel lonesome, her being so polite.
Edith waved his words away. Charley wasn’t sure if that meant she’d already forgiven him or that there was no way she’d ever forgive him. They finished the walk up the coulee in silence.
They reached their vehicles at the top of the incline before Charley got a good clear look at Edith.
“What’d you do to your hair?”
“It’s just falling down,” she said, lifting a hand to her neck. “Doris June was going to cut it, but we decided not to.”
“Oh, well, it looks nice.”
Edith didn’t answer.
“I’ll wait to see that you get it started,” Charley said as they reached the door of Edith’s car.
“Thank you,” Edith said as she slid under the steering wheel of her car. Charley closed the car door for her.
“It should start fine,” Edith said as she rolled down her window. “I took the car out and let the battery recharge after Pastor Matthew helped me with it yesterday.”
Charley grunted.
“He said I should get a new battery. Maybe your nephew has a used one.”
“He sells used cars, not used batteries. No one buys a used battery. That’s something that needs to work right in a car.”
“Well, Pastor Matthew fixed mine.”
“Temporarily,” Charley said as he started to walk toward his pickup.
“It’s fine right now,” he heard her say.
Charley climbed in his truck before Edith had a chance tell him that he didn’t need to coast along behind her. He felt protective of her and that was just the way it was. He’d started feeling that way even before Harold had died.
Charley’s wife Sue had started it all, asking him one day if he thought Edith hadn’t looked a little sad the last time they’d seen her. His wife had assumed the Hargroves had been arguing and she’d asked him to talk some sense to Harold. Not that Charley ever did. He’d given Harold every chance to talk to him about any problems, but the man kept quiet. The only thing Charley had known to do was to suggest his wife invite Edith over to visit more often.
Charley wondered what his wife would think if she could see Edith now, driving so slowly and deliberately down the gravel road leading back to Dry Creek.
Now, of course, no one—probably not even Edith—remembered those days when she’d seemed so vulnerable. Both Sue and Harold were dead. But that left Charley. He knew. Everyone, including Edith, might think she was well able to take care of herself, but he knew better. Sometimes she needed help, just like everyone else.
Charley looked down at his gas gauge. He was going to need to keep his tank full if he intended to continue following her car around like the fool that he was.
Chapter Three
Edith had forgotten all about Elmer. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel of her car and it had nothing to do with driving down the gravel road. Until Charley had mentioned him, Edith had completely overlooked the fact that Elmer had been in Billings that winter, too. When Harold had assured her that he hadn’t told anyone about Jasmine, she hadn’t thought to ask if anyone had seen him with Jasmine. Like maybe Elmer.
There had been another man from Dry Creek in Billings that winter, too, but he’d moved his family away the following spring. They hadn’t lived in Dry Creek long and they’d moved south to Tennessee shortly after that hard winter. His name had been William something. She thought it was William Townsend.
Edith looked out the rearview mirror and saw Charley faithfully following behind her in his pickup. She almost wished Charley had known about Harold’s affair so she could ask his advice about what to do now. It didn’t seem right to just announce the affair now that Harold wasn’t even alive to defend himself. And, after all these years, she wondered if there was any point to making it public. Maybe all it would do was shatter Doris June’s heart.
But on the other hand, maybe the reason Jasmine contacted her was because she was planning to tell people what had happened. Edith watched enough daytime television to know people like that existed. She would rather the story came from her mouth than Jasmine’s.
She just didn’t know what to do.
Edith could see why people who tried to cover up things almost always got caught, assuming they didn’t have a heart attack from the stress first. It was too hard to remember everything. And to know what to do at every twist and turn.
Edith arrived in Dry Creek and she honked her horn to signal Charley that she had made it back safely and that, while she’d appreciated his escort, she hadn’t really needed it since her car had made it to town just fine. As usual.
In response, Charley rolled down his window and put his arm out to point at the café.
Edith smiled. Now that he’d shaved his moustache, her world had settled back into place. She had to admit she could use a cup of tea. It was the middle of the morning and she’d like nothing better than to sit with Charley and try to think of a way to get his advice without telling him anything he didn’t already know.
Charley pulled up beside her car and was at her door to open it before she could get her hat pulled off. She reached up to anchor the pins in her hair better as she looked at Charley.
“You could have gone ahead of me,” Edith said as she finished with her hair. “There was no need to wait.”
Charley grunted. “I won’t always be there following behind you and what then? That’s when your car’s going to break down.”
Edith swung her legs around to get out of the car. “Any car can go bad at any time.”
“That’s why you shouldn’t be driving by yourself,” Charley said triumphantly as he held out his hand to help her stand.
Edith took his hand graciously. “If my car breaks down, I’ll just get someone to fix it. You don’t need to worry.”
Charley snorted, but he didn’t say anything else as they walked toward the door of the Dry Creek Café. Linda Enger, the owner of the café, had put a sign over her small restaurant a few months ago. The café had a fifties look to it, with black-and-white linoleum on the floor and memorabilia hanging on the walls. She even displayed a guitar that belonged to her new husband, singing legend Duane Enger. He went on tour periodically and Linda loved to boast about where he was playing.
Edith could hear someone in the kitchen when they entered the café, but there were no other customers. She was glad for that just in case her conversation with Charley got more candid than she planned.
“How about here?” Charley asked as he led her to a table by the far wall.
Edith nodded.
There were two menus on the table, standing upright between the napkin holder and the salt and pepper shakers, but no one in Dry Creek ever looked at them. Everyone knew the regular items and if there was something special on the menu, Linda would let them know.
Linda brought out coffee for Charley and tea for Edith before she even asked what they wanted.
“Maybe some buttered toast,” Edith said when Linda took their order.
“Biscuits for me if you have any,” Charley added.
Linda went back to the kitchen.
Edith curved her hands around the hot cup. “I’m glad you wanted to stop. I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“Yeah?”
Edith nodded and took a deep breath. “I’ve been wondering what you think about digging up old troubles.”
“You mean like debts that aren’t paid?”
“No, things that people did that were wrong, but happened a long time ago. Is there any reason to talk about it now?”
Charley looked a little surprised. “I don’t know. I’d say it depends. Was anyone hurt?”
Edith nodded. “But it was a family matter.”
Charley took a sip of his coffee. “Well, maybe it needs to be talked about in the family then.”
“Oh, I don’t know if there’s any point to that. Doris June doesn’t even—” Edith stopped. She hadn’t meant to tell Charley it was her family she was discussing.
