Dry Creek Sweethearts

She might just stop someday soon at the wide place where the Enger driveway met the main road and that old bent stop sign stood. The lilac bushes lined the driveway to the house and the fragrance of those blossoms would be worth taking a few minutes to stop and admire. She and Duane had shared a kiss or two, parked in the driveway and smelling those lilacs. Maybe it would be therapeutic for her to face those lilacs again by herself and say a final goodbye to her memories of Duane.

After all, the two people who had crashed into that stop sign twenty-some years ago, and bent it to the crooked heart shape it was today, had found peace last year by facing the ghosts of their past. They’d hit the stop sign while trying to elope to Las Vegas and it took them both coming back to the sign to figure out that they still wanted to be together.

Of course, things were different with her and Duane. They wouldn’t come together again. When she smelled those lilac bushes in the Enger driveway, she would be alone. Still, maybe she’d find some peace and be able to move on and love someone else. She sighed; it was time.

“Everybody misses their home,” Lucy said firmly as Linda put her mop in a corner and gathered up their jackets.

“Like I said earlier, Dry Creek isn’t Duane’s home anymore.” Linda gave Lucy her jacket. “He lives in Hollywood. You know that.”

Duane could be living on the moon; he was so distant.

Linda put her jacket on and opened the door going out of the café. A burst of cold, damp air came inside.

“Home is where the heart is,” Lucy said as she stepped out on the porch. She waited under the overhang so she wouldn’t get wet. “Mama used to tell us that. Remember?”

There was another flash of lightning in the distance.

Linda wished she hadn’t relied quite so much on clichés when she was inventing the stories for Lucy about what their mother had said. Linda turned the light off and shut the door behind her as she closed the café for the night.

“That might be a customer coming,” Lucy said as she looked down the road entering Dry Creek and pointed. “There’s a set of headlights.”

The rain was heavy and the night was black, but the lights were visible even though they were blurred.

Linda saw them. “The headlights are high. It’s probably a cattle truck going out to the Elkton Ranch. But don’t worry about it. Those ranch hands always carry a thermos of coffee. Besides, they won’t want to stop for anything at this time of night, especially if they have animals in the back. Once the thunder gets closer, it’ll spook anything in the truck so they want to get home and unloaded as soon as they can.”

Lucy nodded. “Maybe it’s Lance.”

Linda shrugged. “Could be.”

Lance periodically worked for the Elkton Ranch when they needed extra help or he needed extra income.

The sisters both walked quickly to Linda’s old car. Fortunately, the vehicle started right up. Linda backed the car out of its parking space and drove down the asphalt road to the gravel road leading to the Morgan family farm.

It was too bad she and Lucy were traveling in the same direction as that old cattle truck, Linda thought, because that meant they wouldn’t be passing it. Even if Lance wasn’t in the cab of the truck, the other ranch hands were always good for a big wave, especially on a stormy night like tonight. Linda could use some down-to-earth men to cheer her up. Thankfully, not every man around here needed to be a big star to be happy.

There was really something to be said for a man like Lance, Linda told herself. He was content just pulling a good horse to ride in the annual Bucking Horse Sale, a rodeo in Miles City, and working cattle at the Elkton Ranch. There was nothing in Lance that yearned for something bigger than what he already had. He’d be happy to stay in Dry Creek forever. He’d make someone a good solid husband.

Linda wondered if Duane’s dreams had made him happy over the years. He had loved to play his jazz music for people. Now, instead of an audience of twenty, the size he’d had on a good day in Dry Creek, he played for thousands of fans at the same time. The sound of the music might be different and rock music might not be his first choice, but he was probably very pleased with himself.

After all, he was on the radio, which was more than she could say for anyone else who had grown up around here, including Lance with his local rodeo fame. It was certainly more than she could say for herself.

Yes, she decided, Duane Enger probably was very happy.

Chapter Two

Duane Enger was miserable and sick and tired.

Everything was dark outside the bus except for the shine of the headlights on the wet asphalt as he drove into Dry Creek. He saw the taillights of a car in the distance so he knew he wasn’t the only one unfortunate enough to be driving around in the heavy rain. He figured his manager, Phil, who was sitting in the passenger seat right behind him, had seen the lights, too.

“There were people in that car,” Phil muttered as he leaned forward to complain in Duane’s ear. “And you let them get away.”

Phil had been driving like a maniac on the way up here, refusing to let any cars pass them. Duane had finally concluded the man might be having a midlife crisis even though he was only thirty-six. Of course, it had also occurred to Duane that Phil might have been lying about his age since the day they’d met. No one wanted to be old in the music business, especially in the teenage market.

Phil was short and pudgy so he looked as if he could be any age. He was completely bald so he didn’t even have any hair to turn gray. Not that the man’s age mattered, in Duane’s opinion, unless it affected how he acted behind the wheel.

For most of the trip, Duane had been too sick to pay any attention to what was happening outside the bus. But he had stopped dozing in Idaho when Phil ran a stop sign and, once they hit Miles City, Duane asked to take over the driving. There weren’t enough road signs to clearly mark the way to Dry Creek so Phil reluctantly agreed Duane could drive.

That didn’t stop Phil from scooting forward on the seat behind the driver’s seat and giving Duane his constant opinions on everything, especially the other cars on the road.

Duane hunched over the steering wheel and coughed. “Not—”

His voice cracked.

Phil held out a cup of the coffee they’d bought an hour ago at a gas station in Miles City. “I keep saying you need to be resting your voice. I know the doctor said it was not a virus, but he meant for you to rest your voice.”

“I can talk.” Duane did his best, but the words came out thin as he reached out with one hand and took the cup.

The other man didn’t even answer. The windshield wipers were on full speed and the rain beat on the roof of the bus. Duane took two gulps of the lukewarm coffee and handed the cup back to Phil.

“I thought when you said you wanted to go home that there would at least be a clinic around here. You know, for emergencies. Like pneumonia,” Phil said.

“Don’t have pneumonia,” Duane whispered, almost sure that he was right. He’d had a low-grade fever that seemed to come and go, but that was probably nothing.

“I don’t even see a sign for a veterinarian. Those cows we passed must get sick sometimes.”

“Doc Norris. Edge of town.”

Phil grunted. “At least we could have radioed ahead for a people doctor to meet us in Ensenada if you’d followed the plan and gone on that yacht like you were supposed to. That yacht had everything.”

Phil was big on plans and yachts.

“Reporters—” Duane’s voice went to a high squeak, but he thought he made his point. Just to be sure, he added in a whisper, “With me coughing and sneezing like some typhoid case.”

Phil put his hand on Duane’s shoulder. “Let’s take it easy. I know the doctor in Los Angeles said it was probably just vocal strain and a sinus infection. But what if he’s wrong?”

“Not wrong.” Duane hoped he was right. “Specialist.”

Two days ago, Duane and Phil had been parked at the San Pedro pier south of Los Angeles, all set to join the rest of the band members on a private yacht heading down the Mexican Riviera to Puerto Vallarta. The yacht was supposed to get them some attention in the emerging markets south of the border. No one had seen the sales reports from their last CD yet, but they were likely to be discouraging and Phil’s plan was to get the band solidly in front of the Latin market before the U.S. market started to shrink. The band members were supposed to look like the carefree successful young musicians everyone thought they were as they said “Hola” to their new fans in various ports.

After six straight weeks on the road in this bus, it was going to be hard for any of the guys to look carefree. But for Duane it would have been impossible. The doctor had given him some prescription lozenges for his throat, but he looked too sick to party anywhere except in an isolation ward. He’d taken one look at his face in the mirror on the bus and decided he couldn’t get on that yacht, not if he didn’t want people to start asking why he looked so bad. No one was going to pay any attention to a note from his doctor. The press would have him dead and buried at sea before he knew what happened. Or, worse, just too old to be in the teenage market.

The truth was Duane felt bad, too. He ached all over. He didn’t want to worry about sales figures and what the band should do next. He didn’t even know what the band should do next. All he wanted to do was to go home and crawl into his bed and stay there for a month.

The problem was he didn’t want to go home to his bed in Hollywood. His house there was all starkly modern with red adobe walls and black marble floors. He’d never felt that he belonged there. There wasn’t even any food in the house.

No, when Duane had thought of home, there rose up in his mind the comforting picture of his old bedroom in his great-aunt’s house in Dry Creek. He had come to that house kicking and screaming, but it had been the first home he’d ever really known. His mother, when she had been sober, had rented hotel rooms by the week. When she wasn’t sober, which was most of the time, they lived in her old car.

His great-aunt Cornelia had changed all that. Even though it had been only herself and Duane, she’d insisted on regular meals together, church on Sundays and hair that was combed for school. Even with his great-aunt gone, his old bedroom in that house drew Duane with its memories until he told everyone he was going to drive the tour bus up to Montana so he could spend some time in his old home.

He must have been delusional from the fever when he said that. He’d completely forgotten all of the reasons why it would be a very bad idea to go back to Dry Creek. The house in Dry Creek would be cold and empty. Great-Aunt Cornelia wouldn’t be there to greet him with her stiff little smile. The cupboards wouldn’t have any food, either. The people of Dry Creek still wouldn’t know what to do with him.

And then there was Linda Morgan. Even a cold, empty house would still give him a warmer welcome than Linda would. She was the only woman who had ever rejected him—actually, she was the only woman who’d had the chance to reject him. But a man had to be a fool to go wandering into her territory when any number of other women would be happy to marry him. Assuming, of course, that he had any time to get to know them, which he unfortunately didn’t.

No one had told him that being a rock star would ruin any life he’d planned to have. Although, the thought had been coming to him lately, that maybe he didn’t really want a life after all. That maybe the idea of having a real life scared him to death. That when he asked Linda to marry him someday, he’d never really expected someday to come. A man like him had no business getting married anyway. He’d never even seen a marriage up close. He wouldn’t even know how to fake being a good husband.

All of which made him wonder why he was back here in Dry Creek.

“Yeah, it was the fever,” Duane muttered to himself, which only set Phil off again.

Phil had refused to let Duane go off alone when he was sick and Duane didn’t have the energy to fight him on it. Phil had his career invested in Duane’s voice and Duane respected that. The rest of the band had started muttering about needing a new manager, but Duane held fast to Phil. The man had been with the band longer than the people who were now in the band. Phil had been the one constant when old band members left and new ones came in. He’d helped build their sales with his crazy promotional schemes; he deserved to be there more than any of the current band members. It was only fair.

“Forget about maybe having a medical clinic to preserve people’s lives,” Phil muttered quietly. “There’s nothing else in this place, either. It’s spooky. I thought when you said you were going home, there’d at least be—things.”

Duane took a moment to swallow. If he went slowly, he could manage a sentence. “I told you Dry Creek was small.”

Duane reminded himself that his decision to keep Phil was a good one. Although he might mention to the man that sometimes he talked a little too much. That conversation would have to wait until a time when Duane could also talk.

“Small is Boise. Or, at worst, Butte,” Phil continued. “I didn’t think a place could be this small and still be a town. There isn’t even a Starbucks here.”

“Coffee at café,” Duane rasped. Maybe he could write out a note to Phil about the talking thing. Yes, that’s what he’d do—when he had a pencil. And a piece of paper. And the heart to do it.

Phil peered out into the blackness. “I don’t see any café. What’s the name of the place? There should be a big neon sign on top of it.”

“No name.”

“Everything has a name.” Phil turned to Duane in astonishment. “How do they get any business if they don’t even have a name?”

Duane almost didn’t speak, but he had to defend the café. “Business good.”

He knew that for a fact because his old Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Hargrove, wrote him letters now and then and told him what was happening in Dry Creek. He had asked her to keep him informed about his great-aunt’s house and Boots, but the letters tended to ramble until they included the whole town. The older woman was sensitive enough not to write about Linda, but she always said how the café was doing. Apparently, the café served a homemade blackberry pie these days that rivaled the pies his great-aunt used to bake. He’d been homesick ever since he heard that, remembering his great-aunt and the blackberry pies she used to serve.

Maybe all he’d come back here for was a piece of pie.

Phil was leaning closer to the tinted windows on the right side of the bus. “I can’t see anything else, either. And there’s only one streetlight. How does anyone see anything in this place?”

Duane followed the direction of Phil’s eyes. “One light’s…enough.”

Duane didn’t have enough voice to explain that the residents of Dry Creek wanted to see the stars at night and too many streetlights would interfere with that. His great-aunt had carefully explained it to him. The town actually voted not to have the county put in more lights. He’d thought, at the time, that the town was voting itself back to the Dark Ages. In contrast, the Chicago he remembered had been lit up like a torch. He couldn’t believe the people in Dry Creek weren’t worried about crime.

Phil shook his head. “I’ve never seen this kind of darkness. And emptiness. What do people do with all this space? They should build a couple of skyscrapers. Or at least those big storage places. Even if people didn’t want to be here, they could ship their stuff up and store it here. I wonder if they know how much money they could make with storage. Maybe then they could afford to put up some streetlights.”

Duane cleared his throat so he could defend his town. “Good place.” Duane swallowed. It had taken him years to make his peace with his feelings about the town, but he had. “They have stars—and national park for Custer’s Last Stand.”

“And they have you,” Phil said with a touch of enthusiasm as he turned to look fully at Duane. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier. You grew up in Dry Creek. People always love it when their celebrities have humble roots. The one thing I’ll say for this place is that its roots couldn’t be more humble if someone planned it that way.”

Duane tried to speak, but nothing came out. He wasn’t sure the people of Dry Creek would want to claim him the way they did General Custer even though the good general had lost his battle and Duane hadn’t lost any of his fights in Dry Creek. Well, except maybe for the last one when he’d refused to meet Lance behind the old barn at his great-aunt’s place the day he was leaving for the last time. Even General Custer insisted on knowing why he was going to battle and Lance had refused to talk about what was wrong, so Duane refused to fight him. The people of Dry Creek all probably thought he was a coward by now.

Phil continued thoughtfully. “That’s right. Small-town boy makes good. People love that kind of stuff. We might even be able to tie it in to the Custer thing. You don’t have any Native American blood in you, do you? This might even be better than the yacht. We can do a press conference right here in Dry Creek, childhood home of music legend Duane Enger. People would love it.”

Duane shook his head. “My voice—”

Phil wasn’t listening. He had a faraway look on his face. “I knew if I just kept thinking, something would come to me. It’s been a while since I’ve had a brainstorm like this one. But I’m back in the game.”

Phil turned to look at Duane and grinned. “We can do this. This could be our turnaround press conference. It could put us right back on top.”

“But—”

Duane wasn’t sure what the people of Dry Creek would think if he tried to use their town to promote himself. Everyone had been polite to him while he lived here, but it still wasn’t the same as being one of them. On the streets of Chicago, he’d had no problem being himself. Of course, in Chicago no one cared who he was anyway, so it was easy. In Dry Creek, people hugged each other and had expectations of closeness. And niceness. And all of those things that made Duane nervous. He didn’t know how he would have adjusted at all if he hadn’t brought that guitar with him to hide behind.

“Don’t thank me,” Phil said. “It’s the least I can do for you. I know you stood up for me with the rest of the band. But, don’t worry. I won’t let you down.”

Duane opened his mouth and nothing came out. It might not be his vocal cords this time, though. He hadn’t known Phil had found out about the secret meeting the band had held.

“Who told?”

Phil wasn’t paying any attention. “Don’t worry. You’ll be better in no time. We’ll keep the hot fluids coming. It will take a day or two to arrange things anyway. I’ll need to think of an angle to give to the reporters. They’re not all in Puerto Vallarta covering the rest of the band. But we still need an angle. It’s not enough that you came home. You need a reason.”

“I’m sick.”

Phil frowned. “That won’t be enough. You’re not dying. I’d try the adoption angle, but everyone’s done that one to death. I want something fresh. Besides, then you’d really need to adopt a baby and that would be complicated with the bus and all. And, since everybody’s doing it, we’d have to get an unusual baby to make the news anyway.”

“No,” Duane squeaked in alarm as he slowed the bus down. He realized he was stopped in the middle of Dry Creek, but there wasn’t any traffic so it didn’t matter. Surely no one would let him adopt a baby; he’d never even been close to a new baby. He turned around so he could face Phil. He could only mouth the word. “No.”

“That’s what I’m saying. No dying. No baby.” Phil tapped on his knee with his fingers as he thought. “I’ve got it. We’ll say you’re here to visit your old high school sweetheart. Don’t I remember you wrote that one song—”

“No!” Duane half stood up. He even managed more than a squawk.

“You don’t need to get so testy about it,” Phil said. “But we have to say something. Your fans will want to know why you’re here and not with the rest of the band in Mexico, partying your heart out. We need something the fans can grab hold of and feel good about. If your great-aunt was still alive, we could say you came to visit her. Sweet little old lady and all.”

“Cornelia?”

Great-Aunt Cornelia had been a drill sergeant. That was the only thing that had saved them. He never could have stayed if she’d been sweet. He would have had to hitchhike back to Chicago. Great-Aunt Cornelia knew just how much softness he could handle and she never smothered him with sentimental stuff. He still missed her.

Phil didn’t even stop. “But that’s out. Visiting her grave is too morbid. And, we certainly can’t say you’re here to go hunting for wild game or anything because that’s a big no-no with some groups. And there’s no water around for fishing. There’s really no reason for you to be in Dry Creek.”

Duane’s head hurt. For years he would have agreed with Phil; there really was no reason for him to be in Dry Creek. But lately he’d started to miss the place although he couldn’t quite say why. He looked out the bus window at the buildings just in case someone had added an opera house or something since he’d been here last. Of course, no one had. There were still only the usual places. The hardware store, the houses, the church—Duane stopped. “Say I came to visit the church.”

Duane had gone to church when he lived with his great-aunt. It had been one of her rules. He hadn’t paid much attention while he was in church, but he’d learned enough to know that churches were supposed to help people who were in need and he was definitely in need. Besides, he’d much rather go to a church service than have to explain to Linda why the papers all said he had come back to visit her. At least God wasn’t likely to spit in his eye the way Linda would. He hoped not anyway. After all, Great-Aunt Cornelia had always said God was good at forgiving people.

Phil was nodding. “Church might work. It’s a nice sentimental touch. It goes with the humble roots. And it would work in the Latin market.”

Duane nodded as he turned around and switched on the ignition again. He was glad that was settled.

The band hovered on the precipice and Duane wanted to do what he could to help. The band had already fallen apart once several years ago and reorganized with different people. He’d been the new one in the old band and now he was the oldest in the new band. And he felt it.

He missed the old band members; the ones who’d left so they could have normal lives.

The new members were trying louder and more aggressive sounds in their songs and Duane couldn’t seem to get his voice right to make it happen. That’s probably why his voice was strained. Sometimes the sheer noise of the new songs they played made him want to cover his ears. What if the others sensed that in him? In the old band, he had always been the one who was out there, ready to take the next step forward. Now, he was the one who was holding everything back.

Maybe that’s why he was drawn to Dry Creek. He’d known what he wanted from his music when he was here.

“We’ll say it’s a pilgrimage thing,” Phil said. “People like that kind of thing. A spiritual quest in the church of your childhood. This might work.”

Duane passed the last house in Dry Creek and then saw the driveway to his great-aunt’s house. There were no lights in the house, of course, because no one was living there now. Still, Duane felt satisfaction when he drove past the bent stop sign and turned the bus onto the driveway. He was back on Enger land at last. His grandfather had farmed this land. Coming to this place had made him feel, for the first time as a boy, that he wasn’t just drifting through life. Granted, at the moment, it was muddy Enger land, but Duane’s roots were here even if they were buried deep.

The bus was about halfway down the driveway when Duane felt the tires start to spin. He pressed on the gas and the tires spun some more. After the third time on the gas pedal, he was well and truly stuck in the mud. He didn’t think Phil even realized what had gone wrong and Duane didn’t have the voice to explain it all to him so he just said it was time to rest.