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Judd spoke softly. “They’re just talking about the new woman who moved here.”
“Remember I told you about her?” Bobby added as he leaned down to look his sister in the eye. “She’s going to make doughnuts.”
“I’m not sure about the doughnuts,” Judd said. He worked hard to keep his voice even. Amanda picked up too easily on the emotion in men’s voices, and even though Judd was angry at the man who had made her so sensitive and not at her, he knew she’d think he was upset with her if he let his voice be anything but neutral.
Getting involved in the problems of Dry Creek was the last thing Judd wanted to do, but if that’s what it took to help Amanda realize all anger wasn’t directed at her, then that’s what he’d have to do. “Let’s go see what it’s all about.”
Judd walked slowly enough so Amanda could keep her fingers wrapped around his leg. She had her other hand in Bobby’s small hand.
“How’s it going?” Judd asked when they arrived at the group around the stove.
Judd had seen these men a dozen times since he’d rented the Jenkins farm this past spring, but he’d been so busy all summer with farm work and then with the kids that this was the first time he’d done more than nod in their direction.
Fortunately, the men were all too steamed up to wonder why he chose to talk now.
“Charley here is going deaf,” Jacob muttered as he leaned back with his fingers in his suspenders.
“I am not,” Charley said as he looked up at Judd through his bifocals. “I had a bad connection on that new fangled cell phone. Don’t know what’s wrong with it. Some of the words don’t come through too clear.”
“That’s when you ask the person to repeat themselves,” Jacob said.
The two men had obviously had this conversation before.
“I was being friendly,” Charley protested as he stood up and looked straight at Judd. “Everyone kept telling me to be friendly if anyone called. Now, do you think it sounds friendly to keep asking someone to repeat what they’ve just said?”
“Well, I guess that depends.” Judd hesitated. He didn’t want to get involved in the argument. He just wanted Amanda to hear that it wasn’t about her.
“You know, I got that phone because everybody said people would be calling about the ad at all times of the night and day,” Charley complained as he sat back down. “I even carried it to bed with me. And this is the thanks I get.”
“So you’re all angry because of the phone.” Judd nodded. There. That should satisfy Amanda that the argument had nothing to do with her.
“It isn’t the phone,” Jacob said as he shook his head. “It’s what he was supposed to do with the phone. He was supposed to make sure that businesses were suitable for Dry Creek.”
“He said she was a baker!” another old man protested.
“I had my mouth all set for a doughnut,” Jacob admitted. “One of those long maple ones.”
“Well, she kept saying Baker,” Charley defended himself. “How was I supposed to know that was just her name? Dry Creek could use a good bakery.”
“But she’s not a baker. She runs a dance school!” Jacob protested.
“And that’s the problem?” Judd tried again. He could feel Amanda’s hold on his leg lessen. She was listening to the men.
“Of course that’s the problem,” Jacob continued. “She doesn’t even teach real dancing, like the stomp-and-holler stuff they have at the senior center up by Miles City. This here is ballet. Who around here wants to learn ballet? You have to wear tights.”
“Or a tutu,” another old man added. “Pink fluffy stuff.”
“It isn’t decent, if you ask me,” still another man muttered. “Don’t know where she’ll buy all that netting around here anyway.”
“The store here started carrying bug netting since the mosquitoes were so bad over the summer. They still have some left. Maybe she could use that,” the first old man offered.
“She can’t use bug netting,” Charley said. “Not for ballet. Besides, she probably wants it to be pink, and that bug netting is black.”
“Well, of course it’s black,” another old man said. “Mosquitoes don’t care if it’s some fancy color.”
“Netting is the least of her worries. She isn’t going to have any students, so she won’t need any netting,” Jacob finally said.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Maybe she will take up baking—to keep herself busy if she doesn’t have any students,” Charley offered. “I heard she was trying to make some kind of cookies.”
“They burnt,” another man said mournfully. “The smoke came clear over here. I went over and asked if maybe a pie would be easier to bake.”
“She’s not going to be making pies. She’s going to go around trying to change the people of Dry Creek into something we’re not. It’s like trying to turn a pig into a silk purse. I say just let a pig be a pig—the way God intended,” Jacob said.
Judd looked down at Amanda. She’d stopped holding on to his pants leg and was listening intently to the men. He was glad she was listening even if she wasn’t talking yet. In the three months that Judd had been taking care of the two kids, Amanda occasionally whispered something to her brother, but she never said anything to anyone else, not even Judd.
Amanda leaned over to whisper in Bobby’s ear now.
The boy smiled and nodded. “Yeah, she is awfully pretty.”
Bobby looked up at the men. “Amanda thinks the woman looks like our mama.”
Judd’s breath caught. Both kids had stopped talking about their mother a month ago. Barbara was his second cousin, but Judd hadn’t known her until she showed up on his doorstep one morning. She’d paid an agency to find him because she wanted to ask him to take care of her kids while she got settled in a place. She was on the run from an abusive husband and had the court papers to prove it.
Judd had refused Barbara’s request at first. Sheer disbelief had cleared his mind of anything else. Judd had never known his mother, and the uncle who had raised him had been more interested in having a hired hand that he didn’t need to pay than in parenting an orphan. The stray dog Judd had taken in earlier in the summer probably knew more about family life than Judd did. Judd wasn’t someone anyone had ever thought to leave kids with before this. And one look at the kids showed him that they were still in the napping years.
“You must have taken care of little ones before—” Barbara had said.
“Not unless they had four feet and a tail,” Judd told her firmly. He’d nursed calves and stray dogs and even a pony or two. But kids? Never.
No, Judd wasn’t the one his cousin needed. “You’ll need to find someone else. Believe me, it’s best.”
“But—” Barbara said and then swallowed.
Judd didn’t like the look of desperation he saw in her eyes.
“You’re our only family,” she finally finished.
Judd figured she probably had that about right. The Bowman family tree had always been more of a stump than anything. Ever since his uncle had died, Judd had thought he was the last of the line.
Still, he hesitated.
He thought of suggesting she turn to the state for help, but he knew what kind of trouble that could get her into. Once children were in the state system, it wasn’t all that easy to get them out again, and he could see by the way she kept looking at the kids that she loved them.
He might not know much about a mother’s love himself, but he could at least recognize it when he saw it.
“Maybe you could get a babysitter,” Judd finally offered. “Some nice grandmother or something.”
“You know someone like that?”
Judd had to admit he didn’t. He’d only moved to Dry Creek this past spring. He’d been working long and hard plowing and then seeding the alfalfa and wheat crops. He hadn’t taken time to get to know any of his neighbors yet.
He wished now that he had accepted one of the invitations to church he’d received since he’d been here. An older woman, Mrs. Hargrove, had even driven out to the ranch one day and invited him. She’d looked so friendly he’d almost promised to go, but he didn’t.
What would a man like him do in church anyway? He wouldn’t know when to kneel or when to sing or when to bow his head. No, church wasn’t for him.
Now he wished he had gone to church anyway, even if he’d made a fool of himself doing so. Mrs. Hargrove would probably help someone who went to her church. She wasn’t likely to help a stranger though. Who would be?
“Maybe we could put an ad in the paper.”
Barbara just looked at him. “We don’t have time for that.”
Judd had to admit she was right.
“Besides, this is something big—the kind of thing family members do to help each other,” Barbara said with such conviction that Judd believed her.
Not that he was an expert on what family members did to help each other. He couldn’t remember his uncle ever doing him a kindness, and the man was the only family Judd had ever known. His uncle had lost all contact with his cousin who was Barbara’s father.
He had to admit he had been excited at first when Barbara had come to his doorstep. It was nice to think he had family somewhere in this world.
He looked over at the kids and saw that they were sitting still as stones. Kids shouldn’t be so quiet.
“Are they trained?” he asked.
Barbara looked at him blankly for a moment. “You mean potty-trained?”
He nodded.
“Of course! Amanda here is five years old. And Bobby is six. They practically take care of themselves.”
Barbara didn’t pause before she continued. “And it might only be for a few days. Just enough time for me to drive down to Denver and check out that women’s shelter. I want to be sure they’ll take us before I drag the kids all that way.”
Barbara had arrived in an old car that had seen better days, but it had gotten her here, so Judd figured it would get her to Denver.
Still, if she had car trouble, he knew it would be hard to take care of the kids while she saw to getting the thing fixed. He supposed—maybe—
“I guess things will be slow for the next few days,” Judd said. He’d finished putting up the hay, and he had enough of the fence built so his thirty head of cattle could graze in the pasture by the creek. He meant to spend the next few days working on the inside of the house anyway before he turned back to building the rest of the fence. He supposed two trained kids wouldn’t be too much trouble.
Judd didn’t exactly say he’d keep the kids, but he guessed Barbara could tell he’d lowered his resistance, because she turned her attention to the kids, telling them they were going to stay with Cousin Judd and she’d be back in a few days. That was at the end of August. It was mid-November now.
Judd still hadn’t finished all of the fencing, and it was already starting to snow some. If he waited any longer, the ground would be frozen too far down to dig fence holes. That’s why he was at the hardware store today getting nails and talking to the old men by the stove.
Judd watched the old men as they smiled at the kids now.
Jacob nodded slowly as he looked at Amanda. “I saw your mama when she brought you and your brother here. She stopped to ask directions. You’re right, she was pretty, too.”
“My mama’s going to come back and get us real soon,” Bobby said.
Jacob nodded. “I expect she will.”
Judd gave him a curt nod of thanks. Barbara had asked for a few days, but Judd had figured he’d give her a week. By now, she was at least two months overdue to pick up the kids.
Judd hadn’t told the kids he’d contacted the court that had issued the restraining order their mother had flashed in front of him and asked them to help find her. Fortunately Barbara had listed him as her next of kin on some paper they had. The court clerk had called every women’s shelter between here and Denver and hadn’t located Judd’s cousin.
Judd had had to do some persuasive talking to the clerk, because he didn’t want to mention the kids. He figured his cousin needed a chance to come back for them on her own.
“She’s just hurt her hand so she can’t write and tell us when,” Bobby added confidently.
“I expect that’s right. Mail sometimes takes a while,” Jacob agreed, and then added, “but then it only makes the letter more special when you do get it.”
The older men shifted in their seats. Judd knew they were all aware of the troubles Amanda and Bobby were having. They might not know the details, but he had told his landlady, Linda, back in the beginning of September that he was watching the children for his cousin for a couple of weeks. By now, everyone in Dry Creek probably knew there was something wrong.
Even if he was a newcomer, he would be foolish to think they hadn’t asked each other why the kids were still here. Of course, the old men were polite and wouldn’t ask a direct question, at least not in front of the kids, so they probably didn’t know how bad it all was. They probably thought Barbara had called and made arrangements for the kids to stay longer.
“Speaking of letters, maybe we could write a letter to the new woman and tell her we all want a bakery more than a ballet school,” Charley finally broke the silence with a suggestion.
“We can’t do that,” Jacob said with a sigh. “You don’t write a letter to someone who’s right across the street. No, we need to be neighborly and tell her to her face. It isn’t fair that we let her think she’ll make a go of it here with that school of hers.”
“Well, I can’t talk to her,” Charley said. “I’m the one who promised her everything would be fine.”
“Too bad she wasn’t the one who was deaf,” one of the other men muttered.
“I’m not deaf. I had a bad connection is all,” Charley said. “It could happen to anyone.”
“Maybe he could go talk to her,” the other man said, looking up at Judd. “He seems to hear all right.”
Judd felt his stomach knot up at the idea. “I got to count me out some nails. I’m building a fence.”
He walked back to the shelves that held the boxes of nails. Amanda and Bobby trailed along after him. Judd looked down at Bobby. “Why don’t you take your sister and go across to the café and put your order in for some of that cocoa? Tell Linda I’ll be along in a minute.”
The Linda who ran the café was also his landlady. She was renting him the Jenkins place, with an option to buy come next spring. Judd had saved the few thousand dollars the state had given him when it settled his uncle’s estate and added most of the other money he’d gotten to it for the past six years.
He’d started out working as a ranch hand, but the wages added up too slowly for him, and so he’d spent the next couple of years on the rodeo circuit. He’d earned enough in prize money to set himself up nicely. Right now, he had enough money in the bank to buy the Jenkins place, and he’d already stocked it with some purebred breeding cattle. He could have bought the place outright, but he wanted to take his time and be sure he liked it well enough before he made the final deal. So far, the ground had been fertile and the place quiet enough to suit him.
Judd watched Amanda and Bobby leave the hardware store before he reached into the nail bin and pulled out another nail. Fortunately, the older men had given up on the idea that he should talk to the new woman. They probably realized he’d botch the job.
Outside of talking with Linda at the café and smiling politely when Mrs. Hargrove had delivered the books the school had sent him when he’d decided to homeschool the kids, Judd hadn’t had a conversation with a woman since his cousin had left the kids with him. Well, unless you counted the court clerk he’d talked to on the phone.
Judd never had been much good at talking to women, at least not women who weren’t rodeo followers. He had no problem with women at rodeos, probably because they did most of the talking and he always knew what they wanted; they wanted a rodeo winner to escort them around town for the evening. That didn’t exactly require conversation, not with the yelling that spilled out of most rodeo hangouts in the evening.
As long as his boots were polished and his hat on straight, the rodeo women didn’t care if he was quiet. He was mostly for show anyway—if he was winning. If he wasn’t winning, they weren’t that interested in talking to him, or even interested in being with him.
The few temporary affairs he’d had with rodeo followers didn’t leave him feeling good about himself, so eventually he just declined invitations to party. By then he was counting up his prize money after every rodeo anyway, with an eye to when he could leave the circuit and set himself up on his own ranch.
In those years, Judd hadn’t known any women outside of rodeo circles, and he thought that was best. Judd never seemed to know what those women were thinking, and he didn’t even try to sort it all out. He liked things straightforward and to the point. The other kind of women—the kind that made wives—always seemed to say things in circles and then expect a man to know what they meant. For all Judd knew, they could be speaking Greek.
Judd had a feeling the new woman in Dry Creek was one of that kind of women.
