Phillip smiled crookedly. "You'll excuse me if I don't celebrate with you on that score."
"Maybe you should."
Phillip snorted with derision.
"I'll tell you something," Amos said. "There's more to what went on behind the scenes of that wedding than you know. Her folks are getting a divorce. Did you know that?"
Phillip was not surprised. He was only shocked when couples stayed happily married. "No, but then it wasn't really any of my business either, was it?"
"Helene's known her parents weren't happy for years. It's a lot of why she spent so much time with me and Chelle, my... now dead wife. She didn't want a marriage like theirs, and you oughta thank your lucky stars she didn't. You want a divorce after five years or fifteen or twenty-five?"
"Of course not but--"
Amos interrupted, "I think Helene feels more for you than she knows or wants to admit."
"Look, if you're trying to turn this into hearts-and-flowers time, forget it. She made it clear what she feels for me, and it was a big fat zero. I accept her decision. End of story."
"What if the story didn't have to end that way? What if there was a happy ending down the road for the two of you, but you'd have to work for it just like you done for every other thing you've gotten in your life."
Eyes narrowed, Phillip studied him. "Cut to the chase."
"Come to Montana, to the Rocking H."
"You've got to be joking." Phillip's eyes widened with shock. Of all the suggestions he might have been expecting, that was not one.
"Nope. Come to Montana. That's what Helene's decided to do. You come out, breathe in a change of air and give both of you some time away from everything to see just what you might have. Let her get to know you. I am offering you a job on my ranch where you can show Helene a thing or two about men and what makes a real one."
"You are funny, old man. So I do this to give Helene the chance to give me the
coup de grâce
," Phillip suggested wryly. "I think I swallowed enough humiliation at that damn wedding and reception. You want me to go out to Montana, debase myself working at something I know nothing about and probably still watch her ride off into the sunset with some stinking cowboy?"
Amos grinned again, nodding. "You might humiliate yourself, but I don't think she'll end up running off with some other fellow. I think you're the man she wants and needs, but she just doesn't know it yet. You two might not have decided to get married for the right reasons, but I think if you dig under the surface long enough, you'll find there was more to the decision than either of you knew."
"I don't share your confidence."
"You've been burned, but you think about what I've said. If Helene had settled for what a lot of her friends have, you'd have stayed here, had a marriage like everybody else and maybe done so much damage to each other it would have been too late to salvage anything. Now you got a chance."
"Sorry, but I don't think so."
"The offer is open-ended. I'll have a job for you whenever you show up."
Phillip smiled dryly. "A ranch worker," he repeated.
"Yep, bottom of the totem. You'd be fixing fence, helping round up stock, repairing the barn, chopping wood. Just plain mean and dirty work."
"For minimum wage," Phillip said with the first real amusement he'd felt in a long time.
"It starts low but builds some. Meals and a bed in the bunkhouse come with it."
"I don't have any good reason to do this," Phillip said, shaking his head. "It wouldn't make any sense."
"Not unless you wanted your wife." He grinned. "You got the guts to move into another world and show that woman of yours a thing or two about what you're made of?"
"Couldn't you just tell her," Phillip suggested with a wry smile. "It'd be easier on my ego and skin."
Amos laughed. "Women don't believe nothin' but what they see. You come on out to Montana, son, and I'll show you another way of living. Maybe you'll find out you ain't picked out the best one for yourself either."
Leaning back against a wall, Phillip slitted his eyes as he studied Amos Hartz. Just exactly what did the old man have in mind? Was it as simple as he said, or was more involved? "I’m surprised I am saying this, but I'll think about it," he said finally.
Amos picked up his hat. "You do that." He took out his wallet and fished out a card. "This is my phone number in Montana." He drew some lines on the card. "You drive out of Livingston, follow this here road about twenty miles, turn here." He drew another mark. "Again here about two and a half miles up a gravel road, and you're at the Rocking H. You decide you want to come, the welcome mat's out."
"What about Helene? Have you discussed this little idea with her?"
"No way. I don't figure to tell her neither. Helene's got enough on her mind. She's tryin' to sort through her life, figure out where she's going to go from here. If it's any consolation to you, she's no happier about what she did than you are."
"It's not much," Phillip said with a grimace.
"Well, if you come out, you'd find out for yourself what she's going to think about the idea. I won't say a word to her unless you show up. Then I'll tell her it was my idea."
"What do you get out of all this?"
Amos grinned, his smile widening, blue eyes twinkling. "Happiness for my niece... a good hand for the ranch? Who knows what I'll get out of this deal. You just think it over."
Phillip stared at him, his incredulity still showing on his face. "I'd have to be nuts to even consider it."
Amos pulled on his hat. "Most likely."
Pouring oily, dark brown
Old English
furniture polish onto a soft cloth to polish the oak credenza, Helene whisked away the dust as she renewed the rich brown of the wood. On her knees, she worked the carved front of the cabinet. The scent of the polish brought back countless memories from years gone by when she and her aunt had done the same task.
She could almost hear Aunt Rochelle's admonishing voice--"Don't let the furniture dry out. It needs moisture if you expect it to last for the next generation." Her aunt would push graying hair back from her eyes and look down at Helene, a twinkle in her hazel eyes. "Relationships are a little like furniture," she would add with a knowing grin. "You absolutely must keep feeding them too, buff and polish, put a little elbow grease into it. Relationships need that. It's how you make anything good last."
Helene smiled at the wisdom she'd been given so freely during those years. Although at the time she'd thought little of it, it had stuck to her, and now she treasured it as she did the oak credenza. Not believing in ghosts or spirits, Helene could feel that of her aunt throughout the home, at times nearly hear her soft, sometimes almost melodyless humming.
Rising, Helene paused a moment to stand at the large living room window and savor the view. The Hartz farmhouse sat on a rise above the ranch land. Four thousand acres of land stretched to the east and south, then reached high back into the Absaroka Mountains. Although it could not be seen from the ranch, the ranch didn’t extend that far, below in the center of the Paradise Valley, the Yellowstone River flowed, wild and free on its way to the Mississippi. It was the last untamed, undammed stretch of river of its length in the territorial United States. She could see the gravel road that wound toward the main highway, a thin umbilical cord that connected the ranch to the outside world, yet gave it a sense of isolation, peace and timelessness. It could have existed this way a hundred years before and, as a matter of fact, had.
The big house now consisted of an original log cabin and several additions. The large living room with a cathedral ceiling had been added in the 1930's when ranches all around were reeling under the effects of the depression, but somehow the Hartz family had kept holdings together and even managed to expand. The kitchen, dining room and two downstairs bedrooms were what were left of the original log home, updated with modern conveniences, but much the same as they had always been. Upstairs three more bedrooms had been added, along with the large wooden staircase at one end of the living room. The home was large, yet intimate with its log walls, wood trimmed and small paned windows, wide pine board floors, large stone fireplace, and the comfortable mix of antiques, Indian crafts, Oriental rugs, soft sofas, comfy chairs, and handmade furniture.
Most ranches its size had been bought by rich bankers or movie stars but her uncle had fought to keep this one in his own hands. She wasn’t sure how he had succeeded, but she was grateful.
Capping the polish, Helene looked at the dusted, vacuumed and sparkling living room and felt a sense of real satisfaction. She had spent almost all of the two weeks since she'd been at the Rocking H cleaning house, cooking and canning. The first frost had come like a thief in the night to blacken the tops of the garden vegetables. She'd worked hard, gathering in the salvageable produce, canning and preserving jars of tomatoes, drying herbs and storing mature squash, pumpkins, potatoes, and carrots in the unheated pantry at the back of the kitchen.
When her hair had gotten in the way, she had chopped it off herself which she frankly had felt seemed symbolic and satisfying whether it looked good or not. She hadn't done this much work in the years since she had quit coming west, after Aunt Rochelle had died. She knew it was good for her. She needed the feeling of accomplishment as she considered her life, her mistakes and what she wanted to do next. She thought of Phillip often but hadn't begun annulment proceedings. She couldn't bring herself to talk to her uncle's lawyer but soon she'd have no choice but to drive up the freeway to Bozeman. It wasn't fair to Phillip to dawdle on cutting the connection between them. If nothing else, she should give him his freedom.
When she went to put her cleaning supplies away, she was surprised to find a small leather bound book pushed back in the corner. Opening it, she saw the handwriting was her aunt’s, a personal journal. She hadn’t realized she kept one and quickly put it back. It wasn’t hers to read.
"Hey, anybody home." She heard her uncle's voice from the kitchen porch as he banged his boots on the outside step.
She walked into the kitchen she had always loved. Two woodstoves stood at opposite ends of the long room. The first, Aunt Rochelle's cook stove, was as yet unused by Helene, although she remembered wonderful meals prepared on it by her aunt and before that by Great-Aunt Tessie, Amos's mother. The other, a cast iron woodstove, took the chill off the kitchen on nippy mornings and was capable--when the electricity went out--of heating the entire downstairs. Along two walls were tall cupboards and long counters to prepare any kind of feast a woman was inclined to make.
In modernizing the kitchen, a dishwasher had been added just before Aunt Rochelle had died; and with the modern range and refrigerator, Helene had found cooking these last weeks a pleasure, especially when she could look out the window and see the Absarokas rising high above her or go out the backdoor and stand on the long porch to gaze across a mountain meadow, that seemed to stretch forever and sometimes had a small herd of elk grazing at one end of it. She would draw into her lungs clean mountain air filled with the scent of pine and sage and wonder why she'd ever left this place.
A vegetable and beef stew simmered on the back of the electric range, the smell of freshly baked bread was strong in the air. She smiled as her uncle and his large German shepherd, Hobo, came through the outside door, answering grins on both their faces. "Smells pretty good in here," Amos decreed as he headed for the simmering stew and Hobo plopped himself down behind the heavy cast iron woodstove, out of way of errant feet.
"It's not done," she warned as Amos lifted the lid on the cast iron pot.
"Just the smell's good enough for me." He took a cup of coffee from her. "You know this place hasn't smelled or looked so good in the two years since Chelle died."