Reuniting with the Rancher

They finally jolted up to Martha’s house. “I need to get this road graded,” he remarked. “It always goes to hell over the winter and spring, and that little car of yours is going to bounce like a Ping-Pong ball.”

She didn’t say anything, and he wondered if he’d trespassed by taking possession of the problem. He didn’t know whether to sigh or roll his eyes. Oh, this was going to be fun. Thank you very much, Martha.

He braked without turning off the engine. “Where do you want to plant it?”

“I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how big it’s going to get, how much sun it needs.” She screwed up her face in the way he had once loved. “City girl here.”

How could he forget that?

“Southwest corner,” he suggested. “It’ll get enough sun, keep the house cooler in the summer and lose all its leaves so it won’t keep you colder in the winter.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Slowly he rolled the truck around the house. “It’s going to need a lot of water the first month. And that’s going to be a drag. Martha doesn’t have an outside tap, so no hose.”

“Really? I never noticed that before.”

Why would she? She’d never been here long enough to really learn anything, although she had been here long enough to cause him a peck of trouble.

“I’ll have someone see to it after you go home.” That’s as far as he would go. Or so he told himself.

“Thank you.”

Damn it, he could almost hear Martha laughing and asking, “When did you turn into a chicken, boy?”

Then Holly said, “Martha always had such a big vegetable garden. She had to water it somehow.”

“That’s where the hand pump comes in. Come on, you were here lots of times. Surely you saw.”

She paused. “My God, I’d forgotten. Of course I remember. I used to love to do it for her.”

“Right. She planted in rows and pumped until the water filled the space between them. Every couple of days. The last few years it got harder for her, so I put in a motorized pump for her. Maybe you missed it.”

“I guess so. My job gives me only short vacations.”

“Well, it won’t help with the tree regardless. It’s going to be buckets.”

“I can do that,” she said stoutly.

He had his doubts, but maybe she was stronger than she looked right now.

The truth was, and he readily admitted it, he couldn’t imagine her life in Chicago, nor how she could want to go back to it. Gunshots on the streets? The crushing poverty? Gang culture? Like so many, he had only a vague idea of how some people had to live. She volunteered to face that every day. From his point of view, it had certainly taken a toll on her.

Even so, when she walked ahead of him to pick out the exact spot for the tree, he couldn’t help noticing the way her hips swayed. Or that when she turned her breasts were still full. A beautiful woman. A desirable woman.

Too bad.

When she’d chosen a spot, he headed for Martha’s shed to get a shovel. While he did that, Holly disappeared inside, then returned with two tall glasses of iced tea.

“I seem to remember you liked sugar,” she said, handing him one.

“Still do,” he admitted. “I know it’s a vice, but I work it off.”

The corners of her mouth edged up a bit. “I guess you do. I can help with this.”

“I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to dig this ground around here, but we’re going to be lucky if we don’t need a backhoe.”

That drew another small laugh from her. Angling the spade, he stood on it with one foot and penetrated the ground by about six inches. Good, the spring rains hadn’t completely dried up yet. Dirt instead of concrete.

“Being in the house is difficult,” Holly said quietly.

He looked up after tossing another shovelful of dirt to the side. “It is?”

“I keep expecting to hear Martha. To see her come around a corner. Even when it was just her and me, it never, ever seemed so silent in there.”

He hadn’t thought about that. He paused and looked back at the two-story clapboard house. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I guess it would be quiet.”

His gaze returned to Holly and he saw a tear rolling down her cheek. Whatever else he thought of her, he’d never doubted that she loved her aunt.

But talk about putting a man in an impossible bind. The thing to do would have been to hug her and comfort her. With anyone else, that’s exactly what he would have done. But Holly was so far off-limits he couldn’t even offer the most common act of sympathy. Finally he asked, “Are you going to be okay?”

She dashed the tear away. “Eventually. I just miss her so much. Damn, Cliff, I can’t even call her anymore. That keeps striking me over and over. I’ll never hear her voice again.”

He deepened and widened the hole with a few more spadefuls, then leaned on the handle and glanced at her.

“You can hear her voice,” he said. “She’s in your mind and heart now. Just give in to it and listen. If I know Martha, she’s probably whispering something outrageous in your ear right this instant.”

He finally got the hole big enough and put the tree in it. Kneeling, he tested the soil near the bottom and found it still held some moisture.

“Get a bucket of water,” he told Holly. “Just flip the switch on the side of the pump and it’ll start coming. There’s a bucket in the shed.”

She hopped to obey. It occurred to him he might have to prime the pump, so he was checking it out as she returned.

“Okay, it’s ready. Put the bucket under the spout, hook it here.” Like all good pumps, it had a nipple to hold a bucket handle. He showed her how to turn it on, then waited with her while it filled.

“There you go.”

To his surprise, she lifted the five-gallon bucket and with both hands carried it over to the tree. Layer by layer, they watered lightly and refilled the hole. When he was done, he ridged the dirt in a ring around the tree. “Now fill this ring and just let it soak in. You’ll probably need to do that every day.”

He pulled off his work gloves, leaving her to it, and put the spade away. When he returned from the shed, he found her standing with an empty bucket, staring into space.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“It’s just so peaceful out here. I wish some of my kids could experience life like this, even if only for a short time.”

Then he said the stupidest, most idiotic words to ever cross his lips. “So why don’t you bring some of them out here?”

She looked at him then. Really looked at him, her blue eyes wide and almost wondering. His groin throbbed a warning. Had he really just suggested she come back here?

Man, he needed to finish up and get out of here now.

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