Eighteen

Jake awoke to an empty bed. He sat up, somewhat alarmed. In the last few months, Randy had made a habit of not rising until he did, hardly able sometimes to even go downstairs without him coming with her. He heard pans and dishes clattering in the kitchen and detected the smell of frying bacon.

Did he dare wish her change last night had been real? He threw back the covers and rose to wash and dress and perform his daily ritual of scrubbing his teeth with baking soda. Randy loved his smile, so he did all he could to keep it decent. He shaved and dressed, combing his hair before putting on socks and hurrying down the slightly winding stairs that led from their loft bedroom to the great room below—only to find Randy in the kitchen area setting their huge oak table with enough places for the whole family.

“What are you doing up and cooking?” he asked her. “Do you want me to send for Teresa?”

“No. I can do this myself. I want a day with the family. Nothing has been normal yet since we got back. Things have settled down, and I want a family day. A normal family day.”

Jake frowned, watching her set out plates. She looked beautiful this morning, almost radiant, although she had a long way to go to put some meat on her bones. Her dress hung a little big on her, but it almost looked as though she’d worked at making sure her breasts filled up the bodice and a bit of enticing cleavage showed. She damn well knew he loved her cleavage. Was that for him?

“This is a bit of a change—a nice change. You okay about last night?”

“I’m fine.” She stopped stirring, leaning her head against his chest. “Thank you.”

Jake grinned. “A man doesn’t exactly need to be thanked for something like that.”

“Jake, if you ever want that again…”

He leaned farther over and kissed her cheek. “Oh, I want you any way I can get you. Let’s just take things naturally.” He kissed her cleavage. “And you look especially beautiful and enticing this morning.”

“Get your face off my breasts, Mr. Harkner. You know perfectly well Ben or one of the grandchildren could come barging in here any minute.”

He nuzzled her breasts again, and she pulled away, smiling. “Honestly, Jake, I want to make breakfast for everybody. So before you try making love right here on the kitchen floor, go outside and ring the dinner bell twice so the family knows I want them all here.”

Jake turned her and planted a long kiss on her mouth. “Yes, ma’am.” He walked to the door, grabbing a cigarette first from a tin on a cabinet near the door. He glanced back at her and saw I love you in her eyes, along with a look of yearning…to have things normal again. “You take things a day at a time, all right? And you tell me anything that’s bothering you or anything you need.”

“I will. Just don’t leave. Remember your promise not to go far away.”

He nodded. “I’ll remember.”

She held his gaze. “I love you. I’m not sure I’ve ever loved you more.”

He just nodded, knowing he didn’t need to say anything. He took a long match from a box near the cigarettes and walked out onto the veranda to light up.

“Do me a favor and go gather some eggs for breakfast,” Randy called to him.

Jake took a long drag on the cigarette as he walked to the screen door. “Me? I’ve never gathered eggs in my life. That’s a woman’s job.”

“Well, this morning it’s your job. You wanted your wife back, so she’s giving you an order.”

He kept the cigarette between his lips as he leaned against the wall near the door. “This is going too far, woman.”

Randy smiled. “Don’t wring the necks of the chickens just to get them off their nests. Be gentle. A cranky hen could peck you to death.”

Jake grinned. “I’m not going to say what I’m thinking right now.”

Randy laughed. “You don’t need to. I know exactly what you’re thinking! Now go find me some eggs.”

“I’m not guaranteeing anything.” Jake walked out, deciding he’d have to tread lightly for a while yet—make sure he didn’t do or say something that would send her back into that place he couldn’t reach. He took another long drag on his cigarette, thinking how warm it already was this morning. It was going to be a hot day. He put the cigarette to his lips again, then heard it. Crying…actually more like loud sobbing…like a little girl. The sound came from near the chicken coop several yards away near the new barn. The one the men and a few neighbors had raised to replace the one that was burned…last winter…when Brad Buckley took Randy.

He shook away the memory. He was so used to awful things happening to his family that the sound of a little girl crying brought momentary terror to his soul. He threw down his cigarette and half ran to the chicken coop to find Evie’s little girl Sadie Mae standing beside it, in a place where others couldn’t see her. She was crying almost uncontrollably, her face dirty, as was the nightgown she still wore. She held an empty basket, and a pile of broken eggs lay at her feet.

“Sunshine!” Jake hurried to kneel in front of her. “What happened?”

She reached out, hugging him around the neck. “Mommy will be mad at me! And so will Gramma,” she sobbed.

He patted her back. “Sadie Mae, it’s okay.”

She pulled away, shaking her head. “I…snuck out. Mommy will be mad I snuck out…without telling her. And…” Her little chest heaved in more sobs, and tears made clean paths down her dirty cheeks. “I was getting the eggs…for Mommy…but I fell down…and they all broke!” She cried even harder.

Jake pulled her away from the mess. “Don’t cry, Sunshine. Grampa will fix it.”

“How?” she wept.

“Look—here comes Outlaw.” He nodded toward a mangy, stray dog that the kids had adopted as their own when he’d started hanging around. The animal seemed to be a homeless loner who came and went as he pleased, pretty much like Jake himself had been at one time. Little Jake named him Outlaw because that’s what his grampa was once. It seemed like every animal on the J&L was named Outlaw, including his favorite horse.

Little Jake actually acts like he’s proud I was once an outlaw, Jake had complained once to Brian.

I’m afraid he is proud of it, Brian had answered facetiously.

“I’ll bet Outlaw hasn’t eaten yet,” Jake told Sadie Mae aloud.

“Mommy says if we let the dog eat eggs…he’ll start getting into the chicken coop…and steal them,” Sadie Mae warned through tears.

“Well, Outlaw has to eat too, right? Let’s take the chance.” He whistled to the dog, and the black-and-white mutt came running. “Eat up, boy!”

The dog eagerly began licking at the eggs.

“See? Now you’ve fed Outlaw. That’s a good thing you did, Sadie Mae. We can’t let Outlaw go hungry, can we?”

She shook her head, smearing the dirt on her face when she wiped at her tears.

“Now, let’s clean you up, and you can help me gather more eggs. Your grandma sent me out here for eggs, and I don’t know a damn thing about wrestling with hens for them. I’ll bet you’re better at it than I am.”

She smiled a little and nodded. “I get eggs all the time for Mommy.” She looked down at herself. “What about my nightgown? It’s all dirty, and I’m all sticky. And I”—she rubbed at more tears—“I wet myself.”

“We’ll figure something out. Just stop crying, Sunshine, or you’ll make Grampa cry.”

She smiled more. “Big men like you don’t cry, Grampa.”

“Well, you just might be surprised.” He picked her up and carried her to a watering trough, pulling off her nightgown and dipping it into the water. He wrung it out and used it to wash her face and the sticky egg residue off her hands. He took off her panties and dipped her into the trough to wash her bottom and legs. She giggled from the cold water, but as soon as he took her out and started drying her off with the nightgown, she started crying again.

“Grampa, I don’t got a nightgown,” she lamented. “I don’t wanna be bare!”

“Sadie Mae, I said I’d fix things, remember?” Jake stood up and removed his shirt, then wrapped it around her.

“Grampa! It’s awful big!”

Jake took the end of each sleeve and rolled it several times until her hands appeared. “There. Now you’re all covered up until I get you another nightgown. We’ll hide the dirty one, and later, I’ll stick it in Grandma’s laundry. She has lots of you kids’ clothes. She’ll never know the difference.”

“But your shirt is dragging on the ground, Grampa.”

Jake wrapped her in his arms and stood up. She moved her arms around his neck again, hanging her head over his shoulder. “Now my shirt can’t touch the ground,” Jake told her. He walked with her to one of the barns, where he found Rodriguez raking out stalls. “Rodriguez, do me a favor. Go to the house and tell Randy that my daughter asked you to get a nightgown and some underwear for Sadie Mae. Tell her Evie told you she didn’t have any clean ones. But bring the clothes back here to me and don’t ask questions.”

Rodriguez scratched his head. “I do not understand, señor.”

“You don’t need to. Just get the nightgown and make sure Randy thinks it’s for Evie.”

Rodriguez shrugged and set the rake aside, heading for the main house.

Sadie Mae brushed a little hand over Jake’s back. “Grampa! You have owies! Does it hurt?”

Jake closed his eyes against the memories that didn’t visit him so often any more. He’d been so concerned about his granddaughter’s tears that he’d forgotten she’d never seen the scars on his back. He usually never took his shirt off in front of anyone but Randy, and rarely, his son and daughter. After some long talks with Ben and his grandsons, he’d let them see his back and explained how it got that way. Sadie Mae, my father did that to me. He beat me practically every day of my life until one day I killed him. How did he explain something like that to an innocent little girl? “Those are old owies, Sadie Mae. They don’t hurt at all.”

“What happened to you?” she asked, leaning back a little and putting her hands to his cheeks, frowning in innocent concern.

Satan happened to me. “A long time ago, I got in a fight with a big, bad bear, and he scratched me really bad with his claws.”

Her dark eyes grew wide with fascination. “Did you shoot the bear with your guns?”

“Yes, I did. And the scratches got better, and now they don’t hurt anymore.”

Her eyes teared again. “I’m sorry, Grampa.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. I got better, and now it’s all okay.” He frowned. “How did you get out of the house without anyone seeing you? Who’s guarding the front door?”

“Uncle Terrel. I fooled him!”

Jake decided to have a talk with Terrel Adams. Ever since last winter’s incident, the ranch hands, whom the girls referred to as “uncles,” had been assigned to take turns guarding all three houses at night. Sadie Mae leaned close and whispered in his ear.

“I snuck out my window. There is a little tree growing there, and I climbed down and I went around behind a shed.”

Her antics reminded him of when her brother, Little Jake, had crept out of the house once back in Guthrie and run down the main street to find his grampa, just when his grampa was in the middle of a shoot-out with wanted men. The kid had nearly gotten himself killed, and Jake had ended up with a bullet in the leg. For some reason, Evie’s kids seemed to have a penchant for sneaking out of the house. “Sunshine, why on earth did you do that?”

Sadie Mae wrinkled her brow and looked at him like he was being silly. “Because, Grampa, I was gonna surprise Mommy with the eggs.”

She spoke the words as though he should have understood, silly man. Jake kissed her cheek and held her close. “Don’t do that again, okay? Promise Grampa. It’s dangerous for you to run around by yourself.”

“’Cuz of bad people, like those bad men that took Gramma?”

“Yes. So don’t do that again, all right? We have lots of good men here to watch out for all of you, but they can’t do that if you sneak around behind them.”

“Don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m not.” Jake saw Rodriguez returning with a nightgown.

“Your wife, she did not ask any questions, señor,” he told Jake, “but she say you better come back soon with the eggs or she will come out here herself and take a broom to you.” The Mexican grinned.

“I guess I’d better get back to the house then,” Jake answered, laughing.

“Sí, señor.”

“Rodriguez, I want you to go to Brian and Evie’s house and tell them I came and got Sadie Mae from Terrel to help me gather eggs. Tell Terrel he has to go along with my story. I’ll explain it to him later. I don’t want Evie to know that Sadie Mae came out here by herself. Understand? This is between you and me and Terrel.”

The Mexican nodded. “Sí, I will go and tell Terrel—and tell your daughter.”

“And tell Evie that Randy wants the whole family to come over for breakfast as soon as everyone is up and dressed, which they are probably already doing. It isn’t often any of us sleeps in around here. Too many chores.”

The Mexican nodded.

“And I think Ben and Stephen and Little Jake are all at Evie’s, too. Tell the boys to go milk the cows and bring a couple of buckets of milk to the main house, and then go to our house and ring the dinner bell twice. I was supposed to ring it and forgot.”

Rodriguez scratched his head. “That is a lot of things to remember, señor.”

“You’ll manage.” Rodriguez left, and Jake took his shirt off Sadie Mae and helped her step into her panties, then pulled the nightgown over her head. He grinned as he put his shirt back on, amazed at how big the family was getting. There were kids all over the place now, plus a new baby boy at Lloyd and Katie’s place and a new baby girl for Brian and Evie. Little Donavan and Esther made six grandchildren, and then there was his adopted son Ben. How in hell had he ended up with all of this?

Randy. It was all due to her and the way she loved him. He grabbed Sadie Mae around the waist with his right arm and carried her hanging sideways like a sack of potatoes. “Let’s get some eggs, Sunshine.”

The child laughed, her long, dark hair dangling nearly to the ground. Jake set the girl on a big rock outside the henhouse and picked up the empty egg basket. “You wait here.”

Just then he heard Randy hollering from the main house. “Jake, where are those eggs?”

He waved the egg basket. “I’m getting them!”

Randy went back into the house, and Jake turned to his granddaughter. “I’d better get those eggs before your grandmother comes after me with that broom.”

Sadie Mae giggled. “I can help, Grampa.”

“No, I want you to stay clean. I told your grandmother I’d get the eggs, and by God, I’ll do it.” He walked into the henhouse. Before the door closed, the rooster also strutted inside. Everyone in the family feared that rooster, also called Outlaw. The ornery bird hated men, for some reason, and every gun-toting, brave J&L ranch hand feared the creature.

Sadie Mae then heard loud squawks and a string of bad words coming out of her grandfather’s mouth—the kind of words her mother had told her she should never say. She covered her mouth and giggled at the cursing and squawking that was going on inside the henhouse, glad her grandfather wasn’t wearing his guns. Maybe if he got mad enough, he would shoot some of the poor hens, and he did get really mad sometimes, but only at bad people. Still, he hated that rooster as much as all the other men did.

Jake finally emerged from the henhouse, holding up a basket of eggs. He had scratches on his face and feathers in his hair. “Let’s take these to Grandma,” he said. “We’ll tell her I went to Evie’s and got you first, and you helped me gather the eggs. No one will ever know you snuck out.”

Sadie Mae stood up on the rock and clapped her hands, her dimples showing as she smiled with joy. “You won’t tell?”

“I won’t tell.”

“Grampa, you’re all scratched up!”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had worse injuries, but that rooster should be grateful you love him, because if you didn’t, I’d be carving him up right now for dinner.”

Jake kept the basket in his left hand so he could pick up Sadie Mae with his right arm, keeping her feet away from his wound. Ignoring the pain he felt carrying her and the eggs, he headed for the house, thinking how this was one of the best mornings he could remember.