An Angel for Dry Creek (8 page)

“What was it Paul said? ‘I am all things to all men
whereby I might win some.”' Glory located the knot on Matthew's neck and rubbed it gently.

“He didn't mention anything about being scenery.”

Glory felt the knot on Matthew's neck tighten beneath her fingers. He was even more tense now than when she'd started.

Glory had a flash of insight. “Was that what it was like for you?”

“Huh?” Matthew looked up at her too quickly.

“Being a minister,” Glory said softly, and stopped massaging him. “Was that what it seemed like when you were a minister?”

Matthew took a deep breath and exhaled. How did she know? “Only at the end.”

“After Susie died?”

Matthew nodded. “I was standing up there in front of the congregation and I felt so empty inside. Like I was only the picture of a minister standing in a pulpit. Like none of it was real.”

“Grief will do that to you.”

Matthew shook his head. He'd thought about this every day since he'd made the decision to walk away from that pulpit. “A real minister would have been able to cope. Oh, maybe not easily, but somehow. If I'm not able to be a minister in the bad times, what kind of a minister am I in the good times?”

“A human minister,” Glory reassured him emphatically. She saw the defeat on his face. And the sorrow.

The sound of little feet padding swiftly down the steps distracted them both.

“I'm first,” claimed Josh as he flung himself into his father's arms.

There goes one good massage wasted,
Glory thought wryly. Pain didn't stop Matthew. He opened his arms
wide enough to gather both boys to him. No matter what Matthew thought about his role as a minister, it was clear that his role as a father came naturally to him. Love between Matthew and his sons was a given. It was the bedrock of the twins' lives.

“Kiss?” Josh had left his father's arms and now stood before Glory.

Glory smiled. “Of course.” She leaned down and hugged Josh. Then she gave him an exaggerated kiss, the kind she'd loved as a child. She “smacked” Josh so hard on the cheek that he started to giggle. Then she offered her own cheek. “Now me.”

Josh puckered up and put his lips on her cheek for a big smack.

“Now Joey.” Glory saw Joey was hanging back shyly. When she opened her arms to him he smiled and ran up to her. She repeated the ritual with him.

Then both twins went to the edge of the sofa and knelt down as if it was the expected thing to do. This was obviously their habit.

“God bless…” Josh ran down his list first and then Joey followed. They both blessed classmates, Mrs. Hargrove, their father, the angel and even Mr. Gossett's cats.

Glory had to admit she was surprised. The night before she'd been upstairs putting clean sheets on her bed when the twins had made their trip down for a kiss. She'd had no idea Matthew prayed with them. Correction, she thought to herself, Matthew didn't pray with them, he watched over them while they prayed. Rather fiercely at that, as though challenging God to refuse their simple requests.

“Susie would have my hide if I didn't raise them to pray,” Matthew said when the twins had gone upstairs.

“But don't they wonder why you don't pray?”

“We haven't really come to that bridge yet.” Matthew picked up the family Bible, intending to stand up and put it back on the shelf. But then he realized he couldn't stand, not holding the crutches and the Bible. So he set the Bible back down on the coffee table. “So far they just assume I pray beside my bed when it's my bedtime. Since I have a later bedtime, they don't see me.”

“Before too long, they're going to realize—”

“I know. I'm a coward. I keep hoping that maybe by the time they're old enough to ask the question they'll be old enough to understand.” Matthew shifted his shoulder. He wished Glory would massage his neck again.

“I hope you're right.” Glory watched fatigue and pain sketch lines on Matthew's face as he sat there. “Your shoulder still hurt?”

“Yes.”

Glory stood up and walked behind the sofa. She reached down and began to knead Matthew's neck muscles again. This time she felt him relax. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. The light from the fireplace gave a golden cast to his face. She had a swift urge to lift her hands from his neck and trace the line of his jaw. The suddenness and the strength of the feeling surprised her. Abruptly she pulled her hands away from him. “You need your sleep. I should be going upstairs.”

Matthew's eyes opened. “You're really good at giving neck massages.”

“Experienced, anyway,” Glory said. She was glad she was standing behind him and he couldn't see that
her face was flushed. “I give them all the time to the men in the department.”

“The police department?” Matthew asked warily. He remembered that's where she said she worked. He supposed it was possible. The FBI might borrow someone like her to do a little preliminary research on cattle rustling. She would find out things a regular agent wouldn't. Just look how the folks in Dry Creek had already taken to her. She inspired confidences. He certainly found it easy to talk to her. Too easy.

Glory nodded. “The captain taught me. He used to give them, too. Said it was one thing a policeman always needed.” Glory was chattering and she knew it. But it helped her collect her composure. She'd never had these feelings while giving a neck massage to anyone else. “From all the time in the patrol cars. And then the stress.”

Matthew listened. Okay, so the police department angle was true. He didn't think Glory would lie. Not even if she was undercover.

Glory didn't stop. “Some of the worst stress. The captain used to say being on patrol was like being squeezed into a little box for hours and then stepping out for a few seconds to get shot at.”

Shot at!
Matthew stiffened. “You don't work where you get shot at, do you?” The thought of anyone shooting anywhere near Glory made him want to lock her in the house and never let her out. He hadn't thought about the undercover job in that regard. Surely no one would shoot at Glory.

“Well, not often—”

“
Not often!
What's not often?”

“Well…usually not really,” Glory said, stumbling.

Matthew relaxed. “That's good. But just for my
peace of mind, tell me, when was the last time someone shot at you?”

“Last Wednesday.”

“Last Wednesday!”
Matthew turned around and looked at her. She was already making her way to the stairs. “That's not often?
Last Wednesday!
”

“But it was nothing. Just some gang kids.”

“Nothing! I don't care if it was kids, their bullets are just as real!”

Matthew stood up. He forgot he needed the crutch. He didn't even feel the pain in his knee. He knew he didn't have the right to order Glory to quit her job. But last Wednesday! She made it sound as if getting shot at was an everyday thing.

“Well, their bullets are not as straight as some,” Glory said softly. She had one foot on the first stair and she smiled. She could tell Matthew that last Wednesday was the only time a bullet had come anywhere near her, that her job was as safe as being a plumber—but she found she liked the fierce look of protection that covered his face. In the firelight, with his chestnut hair mussed from the massage, he looked like a Highland warrior.

Matthew stopped himself from demanding that she quit her job. It was not his place. He knew that. But surely someone should stop her. “What does your mother think about that?”

“My mother thinks I'm a grown woman,” Glory said. It was true. Her mother had been shocked that a bullet had hit the building close to where Glory was standing. But she hadn't worried about Glory's ability to take care of herself. Only the captain ever worried about her.

“Well, there's no doubt about you being grown.”
Matthew ran his hand over his hair. He was beginning to feel the pain in his knee, and he sank back down to the sofa. “It's just, well, bullets. That's not good.”

“I'll be fine,” Glory said softly. She was touched he would worry about her. “I really don't get shot at often.”

Matthew snorted and shook his head. “Not often. Last Wednesday.”

“Not often,” Glory repeated firmly as her feet climbed the second stair. She felt a smile curling around inside her. He cared about her. Matthew cared. Well, she thought as she tried to rein in her happiness, he cared that someone didn't shoot at her. It might not be so much after all. Even a stranger might care that she not be shot and killed. Or run over by a truck. Or fall off a building.

“Say, who fixed the step?” Thinking of tragic accidents reminded her of the loose board that had tripped Matthew the day before. Only it wasn't loose any longer. She saw the bright heads of the new nails that held the board firmly in place.

“I did.”

“But you can't get up these stairs?” Glory measured the distance. The loose board had been near the top of the stairs. She looked down at Matthew sitting on the sofa in the firelight.

“I can if I do a kind of backward crawl—push, sit, push.” Matthew looked up at her and grinned. “Mrs. Hargrove didn't think about crawling.”

“No, I guess she didn't.”

Mrs. Hargrove might not have thought about it, but Glory couldn't think of anything else. She thought about it when she brushed her teeth and slipped on her pajamas. She thought about it when she turned down
the sheets on Matthew's bed. She even thought about it as she lay slipping into dreamland. And every time she thought about it she smiled. Matthew's virtue, not his knee, kept him downstairs. That was as it should be. She didn't want to start getting attached to a man she couldn't trust—What? The thought pulled her away from sleep and made her sit up straight in bed. Attached? Was she getting attached to Matthew? She knew she was a little attracted to him. Okay, a lot attracted to him. But attached and attracted were two different things. She couldn't afford to be attached. They had no future together. No future at all. And she'd best remember that. She couldn't afford to get attached. No, there must be no attachment. Absolutely none.

 

The Bullet carefully cut into his piece of lemon meringue pie.

His plans hadn't worked out. He hadn't counted on the floor inside the church being wet from all the rain. But when they reached the doorway, the Bullet saw the slickness. The old man didn't walk very well and the Bullet worried he might slip.
I can see him to his pew. Then I'll leave. Just a quick dive in and then I'll be gone.

But the hymn started before he got the old man settled, and a woman pressed a hymnal into his hands.

After the service the old man, Douglas was his name, insisted on buying him a piece of pie. The Bullet gave up. What would it hurt to sit with the man a bit and have a piece of pie?

T
he hoofbeats in Glory's dream turned to pounding. She woke uncertain if the pounding was real or in her head. It took a minute to remember where she was, but in the half-light of morning the room was beginning to look familiar. Matthew's room. She was safe in Matthew's room. But something had startled her, she decided. There, she heard it again. A pounding from downstairs.

Matthew was in the kitchen starting the fire when he heard the first pound on the door. He hadn't brought his crutches with him, but had hobbled from sofa to wall to doorway to chair so that he wouldn't need to prop them up when he lit the stove. It was a good plan, but it didn't get him to the front door any too soon.

“What's wrong?” Matthew yelled when he finally pulled the door open.

There stood Duane Edison, a slender teenager with dark hair that needed cutting and a scowl on his lean face that needed tending. The boy paused for a moment before demanding. “I need to talk to the angel.”

Matthew didn't open the door any farther. “Can't it wait for morning?”

“It is morning,” Duane said in surprise. “It's past six. The sun's even coming up.”

“Not everyone lives on Montana farm time. She doesn't get up at five.”

“I'm up.” Glory could hear them as she walked down the stairs. She'd thrown a woolly robe on over her pajamas and put a pair of heavy socks on her feet. Her hair wasn't combed and her teeth weren't brushed, but she was up. “What's wrong?”

“You the angel?” Duane asked as he peered past Matthew's shoulder.

“Around here I guess I am.” Glory sat down on the sofa. She was too tired to debate the fact before she'd even had any coffee. “What do you need?”

“You the one that got Linda all funny on me?” Duane entered the house.

“Aah, you're the Music man.” Glory remembered.

“Jazz Man,” Duane said, tight-lipped. The cold had pinched his face and left it colorless. He wore a black leather jacket and had his hands jammed far down into his pockets. “I'm the Jazz Man.”

“Of course, I remember.” Glory pulled her robe closer. It was cold in the house. “You're her boyfriend.”

“Was her boyfriend,” he corrected her sourly as he joined her on the other end of the sofa. He took his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them together. He looked up at Matthew. “Want me to start a fire for you?”

“Just got one started. It takes a few minutes to warm up. But thanks for the offer.”

“Heard about your leg,” Duane mumbled. “Need any help, let me know.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

“It's not like I have lots to do now, anyway.” The boy looked sideways at Glory. “Not since Linda gave me her ultimatum.”

“Well, it's not like it needs to be forever. You kids are awfully young to get married.” Glory stuck by her decision. Neither one of them looked a day over sixteen. It might not even be legal for them to marry without parental consent. “Way too young.”

“Oh, we're still getting married.” Duane looked up at her in determination. “It's just that now she wants a prenuptial agreement, says she won't even—” He stopped himself and looked at Matthew. “Well, you know, she won't—unless I sign an agreement.” He looked at Matthew again, measuring him. “Is it true you're a preacher?”

“Was a preacher.” Matthew nodded. Dry Creek didn't need a newspaper to get the news around. “Not anymore.”

“Still, you probably don't…” Duane hesitated and then he hurried on. “I mean, you don't know what it's like.”

Matthew squelched his chuckle. “I was a minister. I wasn't a eunuch. I know about sex and the trouble it can cause.”

“It can get you into trouble, all right,” Duane agreed with a sigh.

Glory decided the room was definitely getting warmer, even without the fire. “What kind of trouble are you and Linda in?”

“Oh, not that kind.” Duane blushed. “We're careful.”

“You wouldn't need to be careful if you didn't—” Glory stopped herself. If she knew anything about teenagers it was that one didn't inspire confidences by scolding them for the obvious. “What trouble is it, then?”

“It's money.”

“Money?” Glory was surprised.

“Yeah, we need money if we're going to get married. Five thousand dollars.”

“Why five thousand?”

“If we had five thousand we could put a down payment on the old Morgan place, not John's place, but his father's old place. It's not much, but it's good dry land and it's got a small house. Needs a new roof, but I could fix that. Already talked to the bank in Billings. They said we'd need five thousand at least. But neither of our folks have that to spare—couldn't ask them, anyway. So that's why I thought of music. I play a fair guitar and Linda sings real good. My friend Bob is good on the drums. Thought maybe we'd pick up some money at small county fairs and rodeos. Nothing big.” Duane's face glowed proudly while he talked about their dream. “We'd have done it, too, except, well, you talked to Linda and…”

Glory's heart sank. “I didn't mean she should never marry you. Why, you both must still be in high school.”

“Graduated last fall. Both of us.”

“That'd make you how old?” Glory wasn't feeling any better. Giving love advice wasn't her calling in life. She should have sent the girl back to her mother.

“I'm nineteen. Linda's eighteen. We hadn't planned on going to college, so I've been helping my folks and Linda's working at a doughnut place in Miles City.
We've both been saving our money, but so far all we have is twelve hundred dollars. That's why I thought of forming the band. Thought we'd maybe even get some Christmas gigs.”

“I know some retirement homes up near Havre that might be willing to pay for a music program,” Matthew said. His minister friends would be so happy to hear from him they'd probably pay the kids twice the usual rate. “That's if you know any church music.”

“We grew up in Sunday school,” Duane said indignantly. “We know them all from ‘The Old Rugged Cross' to ‘This Little Light of Mine.”'

“Well, that sounds like a good plan,” Glory said. “Tell Linda to invite me to the wedding.”

“Oh, she'll have to be the one inviting, all right,” Duane said with a bitter edge to his voice. “After the prenuptial agreement, she'll make all the decisions.”

“What?”

“The prenuptial,” he repeated as though she must know. “She said you told her not to let me take advantage of her talent, so the prenup puts her in charge of everything. She's the lead singer. The money person. First on the deed to the Morgan place when we sign the paper. First in everything.” Duane slumped down on the sofa. “She's even the one calling the shots about, well, you know…. Even kissing,” he wailed indignantly. “Everything. She's in charge.”

“Oh, dear,” Glory murmured as her eyes met Matthew's over the slumped figure of Duane. Matthew's eyes had a sympathetic twinkle in them.

Matthew leaned over and whispered to Glory, “Not as easy as a person would think to be an angel. Lot like being a preacher. Everyone expects you to always know everything and always be right.”

“Well, they picked the wrong person for always being right.”

“No one's ever always right.”

“How do I fix things now?”

Matthew straightened. “Duane, why don't you bring Linda here for supper tonight? Glory and I will talk to her.”

“I hope you'll set her straight,” Duane muttered as he stood. “A man can't have his wife wearing the pants in the family.”

“There's nothing wrong with a woman making decisions,” Glory began indignantly. “Most women have good heads on their shoulders.”

“She going to be talking to Linda?” Duane looked at Matthew skeptically and cocked his thumb at Glory.

“You don't have a clue, do you, son?” Matthew put his arm around Duane's slender shoulders. “Being married isn't about one person making all the decisions. Being married is about teamwork. And a good team takes the best from both parties.”

“Yes, sir,” Duane agreed glumly as he walked toward the door.

“See you and Linda tonight at five-thirty,” Matthew said as he opened the door for the young man. “And remember, think teamwork.”

“Yes, sir.”

Matthew waited for the door to completely close before he grinned and announced, “How about we start out with you talking to Duane? Then we switch.”

“Sort of like good cop, bad cop?”

“Just giving them two perspectives.”

“I don't think Duane wants two perspectives.”

“That's why he needs them,” Matthew said as he hobbled back to the kitchen door, whistling all the way.

Glory studied his face. It wasn't just the whistling. He was excited. “You like this, don't you? This people stuff. Giving advice. Solving problems. Helping out.”

Matthew turned around as he reached the kitchen. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

 

Glory fretted about Linda and Duane until she turned the key in the hardware-store door. Matthew was late taking the twins to school, so he'd asked her to open up for him so that Elmer and Jacob could get their coffee.

“Brrr.” Glory watched her breath turn white. The hardware store was as cold inside as it was outside. “It'll take more than coffee to take the edge off this morning.”

“It's a cold snap, all right,” Elmer agreed. “Almost didn't get the pickup started to come down.”

Yesterday Glory had set up her easel close to the front window of the hardware store. The night cold had frosted over the edges of the large window, but the middle was clear. She could look out and see the whole main street of Dry Creek.

Coffee could wait a minute, she decided. The view from this window was postcard perfect.

The Big Sheep Mountains stood solid and round in the distance, their low peaks wearing blankets of fresh velvety snow. About halfway down, the thick snow changed to thin gray patches mingled with muddy-green shrubs. On the frozen ground right outside in Dry Creek, old snow lined the asphalt street and bunched up against the buildings.

“How long has this town been here?” Glory asked as she turned to Elmer and Jacob. The two men were putting wood in the fire.

“Since the days of the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909,” Elmer said as he put a match to the kindling. “Folks—a lot of them from Scandinavia—came here. Trainloads of them—a body could lay claim to 320 acres of Montana and all they had to do was live on it for three years. Sounded like a dream come true.”

Elmer paused to put his hands out to the warming fire. “Course, they couldn't predict the drought. And the hard times. Wasn't long before people all over these parts were leaving. They couldn't scrape together enough to plant crops, to eat, to live. But old man Gossett—father to the Gossett who lives next to the parsonage—owned the land here and he told folks we'd make it if we worked together. That's when they founded the town—called it Dry Creek after a little creek that used to flow into the Yellowstone. Folks thought the creek would come back after the drought ended and we could change the name of the town. The creek didn't return, but we kept the name. Kinda liked it after a while. Reminded us things have been worse. Gave us hope. We've always scraped by in Dry Creek before and we'll do it again.”

“Hmph,” Jacob added as he shut the door to the old woodstove.

Glory didn't know if he was agreeing or disagreeing “What do the young people do?” She was still thinking of Duane and Linda. “Do they stay or move away?”

“Most leave,” Elmer said with a touch of scorn as he reached behind him for the electric coffeemaker. “There's not much work here and what work there is is hard work. Kids nowadays want it easy.”

“Can't blame the kids for wanting to eat.” Jacob defended them as he measured coffee into the filter.

“Maybe you need to start some kind of business here,” Glory offered as she walked closer to the fire and rubbed her hands “I've read about Midwestern towns that brought in businesses so there'd be jobs for people. Maybe you could try that.”

Elmer gave a bitter chuckle. “You see the window there. Look out it. Do you see anything that would make a big corporation move here?”

“I didn't say it needed to be a big corporation,” Glory persisted as she spread her hands out to catch the heat that was already coming from the small cast-iron stove. “All you need is a few small businesses. Maybe an outfit that makes something.”

“The women at the church made up a batch of jams one year that were good—I always thought they could sell them,” Jacob said thoughtfully as he put his wooden chair in front of the fire.

“Well, that would be a start,” Glory said as the bell over the door rang. A gust of cold air followed Matthew into the store. “Maybe they could hook up with a catalog. Do special orders. It'd definitely be a start.”

The crutches kept Matthew from swiveling to close the door quickly, so another gust of cold came in before he got the door shut. “Sorry.” Matthew wiped some fresh snowflakes off his wool coat. “Start of what?”

“Glory was thinking of new business ideas for Dry Creek,” Elmer informed him as the coffee started to perk.

“What kind of businesses?” Matthew asked as he took off his jacket and hung it on a nail behind the counter.

Glory tried not to look, but the snowflakes made Matthew's hair shine. He had flakes on his eyelashes and eyebrows. The cold drew the skin tight against his
cheeks and forehead. Lean a pair of skis against his shoulder and he could be an advertisement for sweaters or skis or some resort. He could be a model.

“Any kind of business.” Glory shrugged. “Jams. Woodworking. Modeling.”

“Modeling? You mean sitting for a painting?” Matthew asked thoughtfully. “Would anyone pay for that?”