To Commit Page 11

  “Well, it is. I needed the twenty four hour a day, seven day a week thing to keep me bound up in my shell, but I’m ready to find that life I was talking to Maggie about, Momma. And if it takes a heart break or two along the way, then so be it. Even an ache might be better than a vacuum.” She reached across the table and squeezed her mother’s hand.

  “Amen to that.” Lucy thought of Junior and the way he made her feel like a queen on a throne when really she was just a sixty year old woman wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt and most of the time sitting on a green plastic lawn chair. “I’ve been in that vacuum for twenty years and it is nice to begin to find my way out of it.”

  After Lucy left, Stella made a hasty retreat up the steps to her room. She stripped out of her jeans and into a pair of long underwear and overalls. She tied her hair up into a pony-tail with a bandanna around it. She was putting on socks when she heard the front door open.

  A voice called from the bottom of the stairs. “Hey, anybody home? Stella you up there?”

  She recognized Dee’s voice and opened her bedroom door. “Come on up. I’m getting ready to go fishing.”

  “Fishing in December? Are you crazy?”

  “Probably, but I’m going anyway. Careful. Keep your hands on the rail. Good Lord, you are big as the broad side of a barn.”

  “Who are you going with?” Dee asked.

  “Rance.”

  Dee flopped down on the bed and rested her hands on her huge stomach. “The married man? I saw him at church on Sunday. He’s so pretty I thought all the women’s panty hose were going to crawl right down their legs. But he’s married, and you know that’s against the rules.”

  “He’s not married. He’s divorced and the kids the hunters were teasing him about are not real children. They are his cats. Melanie and Grace. And my mother doesn’t want me to go near him, so I’m going to prove to myself that I can have a life of my own.”

  “You surely are not going like that,” Dee said.

  “What’s the matter with this? This is what I wear when I go fishing which is seldom anymore.”

  “But with Rance? Good lord, you could at least wear some good tight fittin’ jeans to make his eyes pop out, or a pair of cut off jean shorts to show off your long old legs if it was summer. But striped bibbed overalls? You look like you just stepped out of one of those Farmer John commercial things. All you need is a pitchfork.”

  “Well, we’re going fishing and these are comfortable because they fit over my long handles, and if he doesn’t like it he knows the way back to his house, I’m sure,” Stella said impatiently. “I promise I’ll do a little better if he ever asks me out to dinner again. How about a red sequined dress slit up to my panty line and some three inch spike shoes? I could get one of those long diamond studded cigarette holders and a feather boa. Think that might work?”

  Dee fell back on the bed laughing. “Oh, Stella. Rance is going to have to get up early to stay ahead of you. Shhh! I think I hear a truck coming down the lane. If he’s wearing overalls, I may get another case of the giggles or start weeping. My hormones are so out of kilter, I can do either at the blink of an eye lately.”

  Stella’s pulse raced and her head swam like she could actually faint. Why, oh why, did this particular man jack her blood pressure up thirty points? She didn’t have time to take her overalls off and slip into a pair of tight jeans like Dee suggested.

  “Well, he’ll have to like it or leave it,” she muttered.

  Dee forced herself up off the bed and started down the stairs when Rance knocked on the door. “I’m on my way to Wal-Mart. Just stopped to see if you wanted to go with me. But I see you’ve got more important things to do. Put your boots on. I’ll let him in.”

  “Oh, my!” he exclaimed.

  “It is a bit of a shock, isn’t it? But the doctor assures me there’s only one in there and not a litter,” Dee laughed. “Stella’s on her way. She’s putting on her boots.

  “You’re Dee, right?”

  “Yes, that’s me. Good luck. Don’t know that you’ll catch much but Stella will enjoy getting out. Now come summer time, come on up to Buckhorn and we’ll show you some real fishing. Jack and I are addicts. We should have been by to welcome you to the area. I’m sorry about that but we’ll come around soon.”

  “I’ll look forward to it and take you up on that fishing,” Rance smiled.

  “Be seeing you. Gotta scoot if you’ll clear the doorway.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rance stepped to one side.

  Stella was in the room by the time Rance got into the foyer. He wasn’t wearing overalls but his jeans were faded out to a nice soft shade of blue and his old chambray work shirt was untucked and unironed.

  “Don’t you look beautiful. Got a lucky hat? If you do, you better grab it. I’m ready to sit on the side of that pond I didn’t know was stocked with catfish and enjoy the day. It’s nippy but the sun is shining,” he said.

  “I’ve got a lucky hat and a picnic basket which should hold us over until supper time.”

  “Show me the basket and I’ll carry it for you.” He wished he could reach out and tuck that one curl back behind her ear. When he told her good-bye after church last Sunday, he fully well intended for it to be the very last one, but it hadn’t worked that way. Not by a long shot. He still dreamed about her and thought about her all his waking moments. Maybe they were destined to be good friends instead of lovers. There wasn’t another woman on the face of the earth who’d meet a potential boyfriend in a pair of striped, bibbed overalls and who had a lucky fishing hat.

  Stella baited her own hook, which impressed him. She brought her own rod and reel, neither of which were shabby or cheap, and she had the patience of Job as she watched the red and white bobber. She sat right down on the grass without saying a word about stains on her overalls, pulled out the ugliest straw hat he’d ever laid eyes on and perched it on the top of her head.

  He dropped his hook close to the edge of the pond and stretched his lanky frame out in a half-sitting, half-laying pose as he watched both bobbers rise and fall with the motion of the murky water. It had been years since he’d fished in a farm pond. The last time was when his father took him to the neighbor’s ranch. Actually it was punishment. He’d been impatient with one of the horses and his father said he needed a lesson. So the next day he had the ranch cook pack them a couple of cold biscuits filled with left over scrambled eggs and bacon, a gallon jug of lukewarm water and six chocolate chip cookies. Then he and Rance went to the edge of a pond. The difference was the one back then was fairly new and only had a muddy embankment. This one had a nice grassy bank complete with a couple of old fallen logs for benches if a person got tired of laying or sitting on the grass.

  Rance could hear his father’s deep voice saying, “Son, we are going to fish all afternoon. When you get hungry you have a biscuit and three cookies. Don’t eat them all at once. We’ll just sit here until the fish bite or dark, whichever comes first, and by the end of the day, maybe you won’t be so quick to fire up mad at a horse who didn’t understand your command.”

  “Don’t think about the business while you fish,” Stella said softly.

  “I wasn’t, trust me. I was thinking about the last time I fished in a farm pond.” He told her the story.

  “And did you catch anything?” She asked.

  “No, but I learned a lot. I learned not to let my anger control me, and I learned that my father was a salty old buzzard. I was starving to death by the time we got home and we didn’t have a single fish. Know why?”

  “They weren’t biting,” she said.

  “Nope, had nothing to do with biting. The pond was brand new and hadn’t been stocked, and Daddy knew it. He took a whole day out of his work to teach me a lesson, and I never forgot it.” Rance watched her bobber twitch several times then settle down to the steady rhythm of the water.

  “Got one down there interested,” she whispered. “It’ll get hungry in a little while and grab that bi
g earth worm. Why did your dad need to teach you a lesson?”

  “I let my temper get ahead of me with one of the horses we were training, and I needed to learn patience. Fishing all day and catching nothing taught me a lot.”

  “Oh, and you don’t have a temper anymore?”

  “Yes, I do, but I also have a little more patience than I did then.”

  “I see. Well, it mustn’t have spoiled you for the sport. I can tell by that rod and reel and well stocked tackle box that you use it pretty often,” she said.

  “I do like to fish. My friends and I take boats out to the middle of a lake and fish a couple of times a month in the summer time. We have gone to Colorado to fish the colder waters and down to the gulf to do some deep sea fishing, but I haven’t pond fished in years. I’d forgotten how lazy it is.”

  “Not lazy,” she said. “Relaxing. Nothing to do but watch the bobber, pull in the fish, think about anything you want and talk about whatever. As long as it’s not politics since that makes most men get loud and scares the fish off.”

  “Oh, come on, that’s an old wives’ tale. Fish can’t hear us.”

  “Wouldn’t count on it.”

  “So what happened with your mother today?” He asked.

  “My sister is getting a divorce. She and my niece, Lauren, are moving to the Inn to help me run it and Mother is happy with me for a little while. She thinks you are the devil reincarnated and out to break my heart so we talked about Maggie, Lauren and you. And a little bit about her new boyfriend, Junior, who’s a retired teacher and the spitting image of Ichabod Crane.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Yep, my dad was scoundrel, too. He left when I was young and she’s been single ever since. How about your folks? You said your Dad had passed on. How about your mother? She got a boyfriend?”

  “Never experienced a divorce in my family. Not until I got one. Dad and Mom married young and were still together when he died. Losing him was very hard. Thought I’d never be able to step into the business in his shoes. It’s still not easy. Just because several months have passed doesn’t mean I don’t still think of him. Sometimes I even have the phone in my hand to call the house and ask him a question when I remember he’s not there,” Rance said.

  She nodded. “I came out for Granny’s funeral last winter and thought when I went back to California that it was all over. Put the Inn up for lease until the time ran out on the will’s provisions and then I’d sell it. Then I was right back here running it and glad I hadn’t been able to sell the place. But still, I turn around in the kitchen and expect to see her standing right there, shaking her finger at me and telling me how to take care of something.”

  Rance pointed at her line. “Granny was a sweetheart. You’ve got a serious bite.”

  The bobber danced a couple of times then sunk like a lead weight and Stella began reeling. It was a nice three pound catfish. She brought it to shore, unhooked it from the line, put it on the stringer and staked it in the shallow edge of the pond with a stick. Rance watched her in awe, knowing that his sister, his mother or even his ex-wife would have been dancing around squeamishly demanding that he do all the things Stella just did. Then she laced another fat earth worm on the hook and tossed the line back out.

  She looked down her perfectly straight nose at him. “I’m the lucky child today because I caught the first fish. So you have to take second place, but hey, something big has got your hook. It’s trying to run with it. Careful now, reel him in slow. Don’t let him break the line.”

  “I don’t think I need instructions. I’ve caught blue marlin bigger than this.”

  “But not out of a pond. We may have enough for supper yet if you don’t let that old grandpa break your line or maybe even the rod.”

  “Watch me!”

  It took fifteen minutes of patience, but finally he brought the twelve pound catfish to shore and wrestled with it until he got it firmly attached to the stringer line. “Lord have mercy. I think that old grandpa is worth taking home. Matter of fact he’s about worked me up an appetite. Think we could eat early?”

  “Not on your life. My boarders will be in at six for supper and that’s when it’ll be. And honey that’s not the grandpa. It’s just an uncle. The old grandpa out there in the mucky bottom of this pond probably weighs thirty pounds. He was bigger than your fish back when I was just a little girl and Granny brought me over here to fish. She caught him one time and couldn’t take him home for supper. Just turned him loose and watched him flop right back out to the middle,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Who knows? Maybe they had something in common and she wasn’t ready to cash in her chips just yet either. But your fish and mine together will make enough to feed us all at supper. I’ll make hushpuppies and fried potatoes and baked beans. I’ve already got a chocolate cake ready.” She planned aloud.

  She laid out a well worn orange plastic tablecloth, and opened her basket to reveal chicken salad sandwiches, chips and big oversized cookies. “And now we shall dine in style. Thank goodness we don’t have to share with the mosquitoes, flies and chiggers. There is something to be said for fishing in the winter.”

  He grabbed a sandwich. “It looks wonderful. You must have gotten up early to get all this ready.”

  “No, had it in the refrigerator from last night.”

  “Do you ever get tired of it?” He asked.

  “What?”

  “The Inn. Being there all the time.”

  “It’s my job, Rance. That’s what they pay me for. Cook, clean and listen.”

  “Is this your job? Fishing with me since I’m paying for suppers at the Inn?” He asked testily.

  “This is my afternoon off. This is not my job. This is something I wanted to do, and why did you ask me that? Are you spoiling for a fight?”

  “I just wanted to know where I stand. It’s evident your sister and mother think I’m a monster. Do I really look like your ex? I mean you are tall and blond like my ex, but that’s where the resemblance ends. You’d never be passed off as her twin,” he said.

  “At first glance you’d remind a person of Mitch. But that’s as far as it goes. He has dark brown eyes and his hair isn’t as thick. He’s not as well built as you are. He doesn’t do any kind of physical work. Right now I’m enjoying this lovely day in your company, Rance. Next week we may hate each other, but today we’re fishing buddies. And it seems to me that any kind of lasting thing, a lifetime thing, if you’ll let me use that cliché again, maybe should start with a good, strong friendship. I fell head over heels in love with Mitch when we were in the seventh grade—looking back I don’t think that was so good.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m not the sage of the millennium, I’m just putting into words the feelings I’ve had and fought with a long time. Love is nice. It’s very, very cozy and warm. But like is important, Rance. Maybe as important or even more than love. I remember when I told Granny I was going to marry Mitch. She said, ‘Stella Sue Brannon do you like that boy?’ and I said, ‘Granny, I love him!’ And then she said to me, ‘Love is fine and you’ve got to have it. But there’s times when love gets thin in any relationship and like has to step in and take over. If you don’t like him as well as love him, then you’re goin’ to be out in the cold when the love is tested.’ I never knew what she was talking about until the day he came in the front door and said he wanted a divorce. I sat in the middle of the floor and finally realized I didn’t like Mitch. The love had worn thin, matter of fact had played plumb out and I didn’t like him. Probably never really had liked him. And those words came back to me. What she said made sense. I decided living with failure wasn’t going to kill me. I got settled into the Brannon Inn rut and I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, Rance. I’ve never gotten on a soap box twice in two weeks in my whole life,” she said.

  “Because I’m a good listener, and because I asked. Granny made a lot of sense. I don’t think I ever liked Julie either. Boy, we did have
an attraction. Couldn’t be in the same room without our hormones getting out of control. But like her? Nope, I didn’t. She was self-centered, egotistical and nothing was ever good enough. Me included. When the love died, there wasn’t even enough to get mad about. It was like the end of a movie. We both left the courthouse, shook hands and she crawled into a big limo with her boyfriend and went back to the airport to fly to California for a photo shoot.”

  Stella refilled their coffee cups from a thermos. “Crazy how little things stay in your mind. I can remember thinking that I’d wasted years on someone Granny had been right about all along.”

  A mischievous grin tickled the corners of his mouth. “You think you might fall in like with this old cowboy someday?”

  “Don’t know. I don’t believe in like at first sight. You’ll have to wait around in the wings and take me fishing a few more times before I know. Granny always said a good fishing buddy was worth more than a pot of gold.”

  “Wise, wise woman. Think we might take our lines out of the water and take a nap? I see you brought a quilt along and goodness knows nice days in December are rare even in Oklahoma. Weather man said it would get up to fifty-five degrees today and it feels like he’s right for a change.”

  She rolled her eyes in mock horror. “Why Rance, are you asking me to sleep with you?”

  “Yes, Miss Stella, I am. But sleep only. My eyes are drooping and my stomach is full. And besides I never sleep with a woman who isn’t in like with me.”

  “Then we shall take a nap as soon as I put the remnants of this food back in the basket.” Her heart soared.

  Chapter Nine

  Rance was startled awake by high pitched, piercing screams not three feet from his ear. He sat up with a jerk, looked around trying to collect his bearings and wondered exactly why he was sleeping on the ground out in someone’s pasture. He turned quickly to find Stella huddled up in a ball, her knees pulled all the way to her chin, her eyes enormous with pure fright.

  “Stella, what is it?”

  She was sitting up but her eyes were glazed and fixed. He had a hired hand who acted just like that when he had a bad nightmare. Everyone had learned not to touch him until he was really awake or he’d come up swinging both fists.