Dorothy Garlock - [Route 66] (24 page)

From where he sat eating supper with the Putmans, Brady had seen Margie leave the truck, go to the outhouse and talk with Foley on the way back. He couldn’t hear the conversation, but he was certain that Sugar said something after Margie had left that didn’t sit well with Foley. He had stalked off leaving his wife standing with her hands on her hips glaring after him. It was about time he got that woman in line. She was a walking, talking troublemaker.

Brady brought his attention back to what Alvin was saying.

“It’s too bad that Elmer went the way he did. The man turned sour the last week or so. I was having my doubts about going partners with him in the ice business when we got to California. Luker said the same.”

“You don’t have to worry about that now.”

“Margie is as nice a girl as I’ve ever met, and Elmer treated her like dirt.” Grace passed around boiled eggs. She had bought several dozen from Mrs. Bales. It was a treat to eat them. She usually had to save them for cooking.

“Rusty, will you take the shell off mine?” Anna Marie put the egg in Rusty’s hand. It was amazing to Brady how the child had adapted to Rusty’s blindness.

“Sure, little puddin’.” Rusty peeled the egg and ran his sensitive fingertips over it to make sure it was free of shell pieces. “There’s salt here on my plate if you want to use it.”

“Thank you, Rusty. Can I give Blackie a bite of my bread?”

Once again Brady thanked his lucky stars he had met up with the Putmans. But Anna Marie was becoming so attached to them that he feared her reaction when they parted company in California.

“I’ll go over and talk to Margie.” Alvin placed his empty plate on the table. “Tomorrow after the service we should get on down the road.”

“What will we do if she refuses what we’ve talked about?” There was concern in Brady’s voice. He didn’t understand Margie’s hostility toward him. Nor did he understand why he was so concerned about that hostility. He only knew, deep down, that he wasn’t going off and leaving her to flounder around by herself.

“There isn’t anything we can do. She’s a grown woman. Do you want to come with me, hon?” he asked Grace.

“I’ll come if you want me to, but it might be better if you talked to her alone.” Grace slipped her hand under his arm and hugged it to her. “You can talk the skin off a rabbit when you set your mind to it.”

“Bein’ able to talk comes in handy once in a while. I talked you into marryin’ me even though your pa said I wasn’t worth the powder it would take to blow me up. He said that if you hitched up with me, you and a passel of younguns would end up in the poorhouse.”

“He was wrong, and I’ve not been a bit sorry I chose you over that sissified corset salesman he wanted me to marry.”

Alvin laughed and hugged her. “You could have had free corsets for life.”

“Who needs ’em?”

“You sure don’t. Even after twenty-three years you’re as trim as you were at eighteen.”

“Sweet-talkin’ me, ain’t ya? You’re not getting another egg no matter how you rattle on, if that’s what you’re anglin’ for. They’re for the noon meal tomorrow.”

“You’re a mean, cruel woman, Gracie Louise Putman,” Alvin said affectionately, and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

“Go on with you. Just don’t forget that Margie’s got pride she hasn’t used yet. Tell her I’m expecting her for breakfast in the morning. After I finish with the dishes Anna Marie and I are going up and sit on the porch with Mrs. Bales. I’m sure glad we stopped here. I’ve taken a likin’ to that woman.”

Brady watched the couple, seeing the loving, comfortable way they were with each other. It brought back deeply buried memories of his mother and father. They had loved each other, and their love had included their sons. He remembered how his father would pull his mother down on his lap and nestle his face in the curve of her neck. Poor Brian had thought he was going to share with Becky what their parents had. But it hadn’t worked out that way.

Brady vowed, then and there, never to marry until he found a woman who would love him with all her heart and soul. One who would stand beside him through good times and bad, be his best friend as well as his lover.

Loud voices jarred Brady from his reverie. At the other end of the campground Sugar was arguing with Foley. He had moved the car from the garage and parked it beside their trailer. His hands were on her shoulders trying to restrain her. Suddenly she swung her hand and slapped him. When he released her, she tried to hit him again. He caught her arm and pushed her away.

Sugar stood still for a moment. Low, angry words streamed from her lips, then she turned, left the campground and walked down the highway toward town.

Chapter 18

F
OLEY STOOD AT THE BACK OF HIS CAR
and watched Sugar leave. This trip had been an eye-opener. It suddenly occurred to him that her actions didn’t hurt nearly as much as they would have a few weeks ago.

Sugar was showing an altogether different side of herself from the one she had presented when they first met and during the first few weeks after they had married. Good Lord, how can a woman be so sweet and loving one minute and a real bitch the next? Foley had begun to wonder if his loneliness and his desire for sexual satisfaction had caused him to make a complete fool out of himself. Now he no longer had to wonder.

Let a pretty young thing make up to a sex-starved man, and he loses what few brains he ever had.

“Pa?” Jody had come up beside him. “Do you want me to go get her?”

Foley didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “No, son. Let her walk off her snit. I’ll go get her in a little while.” He turned a tired, almost defeated face to Jody. “Thank you for your patience. My marrying her hasn’t turned out like I thought it would. I know this has been hard for you and Mona, and I’m sorry, son.”

“Harder on Mona than on me.”

“Well, what’s done is done,” Foley said with resignation. “I’ll keep my eyes open from now on.”

“She was so different from Mama that it was hard for me and Mona to warm up to her.”

“It’s true. She’s nothing like your mother. I wasn’t looking for someone to take her place. No one will ever do that.” Foley’s voice became rough, and he walked quickly away.

Margie always liked the early evening hours. She loved to watch the setting sun change the colors of the sky and to inhale the cool, fresh air, with the smell of the greening pastures, as it swept across the land.

When she was younger and her granny was alive, everything had been easy. She had never imagined that life would be so hard, so lonely, so full of disappointments, and could end so quickly. Like any young girl, she had dreamed of meeting a strong man who would love her with all his heart. And, as couples did in the movies, they would build a life together, fill a home with children and laughter and live happily ever after.

She supposed that was what was the matter with her now. There was an emptiness within her, a yearning that still begged for that fairy-tale dream. She was a woman with a woman’s love to give; and in her ignorance she had reached out to Brady Hoyt because he was handsome and had been kind and attentive when she so badly needed a friend.

She had been blinded by loneliness. What a fool she was, and how he must have secretly laughed at the naive small-town girl with the big dreams.

“Evenin’, Margie.” Alvin approached as Margie stepped down from the truck.

“Hello, Mr. Putman.”

“We would have had you come to supper, but Brady said you were sleeping. Grace sends an invite to breakfast in the morning.”

“That’s nice of her.”

“Can we talk a little?”

“Sure. I’ll get Elmer’s folding chair for you.” She reached in the truck for the chair, took it to the front of the truck, then perched herself on the fender.

“Nice evening.” Alvin sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him. “I thought Missouri’s weather changed fast. It can’t hold a candle to Oklahoma weather. The storm we had last night was a real tail twister. I only wish Elmer had come with us to the cellar.”

“It was a freaky thing that happened to him. He was in the wrong place when the electric line broke.”

“I’ve heard of electrocution by hot wires. I never thought I’d see it firsthand. Being in water when around electricity is about the worst place you can be.”

“Is this going to ruin your plans to set up your ice business?”

“I don’t think so. Luker and I have talked it over. It’ll mean that there will be two of us instead of three, and we’ll have to try for a bigger loan from a bank.”

“Elmer had a wife. She left him a few months ago and went out to California. I thought that was his reason for going out there.”

“He never mentioned a wife to me. She may have already left when we started talking about a partnership a couple months ago.”

“Everything he had now belongs to her.” She glanced toward the Putman camp and saw Brady squatting on his heels beside Rusty, but he was looking toward her.

“Do you know where his wife is?”

“No.” She brought her attention back to Alvin. “I’d only seen her a couple of times—from a distance. The town was full of rumors about them. They married suddenly but were not together very long. I can’t think that my father would be easy to live with. The joke around town was that he was so miserly he’d skin a mosquito for the hide.”

“He may have been different with her.”

“Something caused her to leave.” Margie was aware that Brady was still watching. It made her nervous. “Deke will help me sell the truck. I’ll give the money and what I found in his locked box to the sheriff. I don’t think it’s my place to find her.”

“Then what will you do?”

“Get myself a bus ticket.” Margie touched the two hundred dollars still in her skirt pocket. “I’m going to keep out enough money to get me to California and a little more to last until I find a job. I think he owes me that much.”

“Have you considered taking the truck on to California and turning it over to Elmer’s wife out there?”

“I may not be able to find her. Besides that, I can’t drive this truck all the way to California.”

“You can hire Jody Luker to drive. He’s been drivin’ Foley’s ice truck for several years.”

“If I pay out my money for a driver, I won’t have much when I get there.”

“Pay him out of Elmer’s money. You’ll be taking the truck to his wife. It’ll save you bus fare.”

“I’ve not the slightest idea how to take care of a car of any kind. All I know about them is that they need water and gas and air for the tires.”

“We want you and your truck in the caravan, Margie.” Alvin spoke earnestly. “It will be safer for all of us. Brady and I will see that the truck is kept in running order.”

Margie shook her head. “I don’t like having to depend—”

“You’ll be doing us a favor. If you decide to come along, you can take your meals with us. Grace would welcome your help.”

“No. You’ve already got Brady and Anna Marie.”

“He pitches in on groceries. You could do the same.”

“No. I thank you, but I’d rather be on my own.” Margie put her hand in her pocket and fingered again the bills she had taken from Elmer’s socks before she sent his clothes to the funeral home. “It would be different if I could drive.”

“You can learn by doing. Along the way there will be places where there is little or no traffic. We’ll help you in the evening. Then the first thing you know you’d be an old hand at it. We’re all hoping you’ll stay with us.”

“You and Grace?”

“Me and Grace, Brady, Rusty, the Lukers.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Putman. I’m afraid I’ll slow you down.”

“Elmer, Foley and I made an agreement when we started that we would hang together—for safety. It has proven to be a good idea. If one or even two of us had been in that campground the other night, we’d have been easy pickings for the robbers.”

“What about Mr. Luker? Mrs. Luker doesn’t like me at all.”

“Mrs. Luker doesn’t like any of us. Foley may be waking up to the fact that he’s got to take a strong hand with her.”

“I wouldn’t know what to pay Jody even if his father let him drive for me.”

“He may not want pay, but if he does, I’d suggest not more than a dollar a day. I figure it’ll take us a little more than three weeks to get there if we don’t rest on Sundays. That’s somewhere around twenty-one dollars. And you’d get a better price if you sold the truck out there.”

“I’m not interested in getting more money for Goldie.”

“Can’t say that I blame you for that.”

“Elmer was tight with his money, but I can’t believe that she left empty-handed.”

“I’m surprised Elmer wasn’t wearing a money belt.”

“He had his money locked in a stout box. It would take an ax to open it without a key.”

“I don’t think it’s wise to put all your eggs in one basket, Margie. Someone could come along and steal the truck.”

Alvin took out his pipe, lit it and watched Rusty and Mona walking arm in arm out to the fenced pasture where Deke kept his buffalo and his horse.

Lord, please let my boy find a woman who will love him as I have loved his mother. If Mona isn’t the one, I’m still grateful for the happiness she’s brought to him.

After a while, Alvin said, “It wasn’t my intention to put pressure on you, Margie. You’re a grown woman and know what you want to do. Whatever it is, we will do what we can to help you.”

“I’ll have to talk to Jody before I know if I have a choice or not.”

“All right. Let me know what you decide.”

“Mr. Luker is leaving. I suppose he’s going after his wife. She had one of her little tantrums, left him and walked down the highway toward town.”

“The man’s got his hands full with that one.”

Inside the Ford coupe at the top of the hill, Homer Persy and his Uncle Chester surveyed Deke’s campground.

“They still ain’t got electric down there. In a while it’ll be darker’n inside a blackbird’s ass.” Chester sent a quick look at his nephew. “You could sneak in there, cut up the cowboy’s tires again, then we could go home.”

“Stop bein’ a nervous Nellie. Grandma’s got your wire about goin’ to help Uncle Gordon and won’t expect us back for a month.”