Big Sky Mountain

chapter NINE



WHEN HUTCH ARRIVED at Boone’s place that morning, he brought along plenty of tools, a truck with a hydraulic winch for heavy lifting and half a dozen ranch hands to help with the work. Opal followed in her tank of a station wagon, bucket-loads of potato salad and fried chicken and homemade biscuits stashed in the backseat.

Boone, standing bare-chested in his overgrown yard, plucked his T-shirt from the handle of a wheelbarrow where he’d left it earlier, now that he was in the presence of a lady.

Hutch grinned at the sight, and backed the truck up to a pile of old tires and got out.

Boone walked over to greet him, taking in the other trucks, the ranch hands and Opal’s behemoth vehicle with a nod of his head. “You always were something of a show off, Carmody,” he said.

“Go big or go home,” Hutch answered lightly. “That’s my motto.”

“Along with ‘make trouble wherever possible’ and ‘ride bulls at rodeos till you get your teeth knocked out’?” Boone gibed.

“Is there a law, Sheriff Andy Taylor, that says I can only have one motto?” Hutch retorted. The Maybury reference had been a running joke between them since the election results came in last November.

“Reckon not,” Boone conceded, looking around at the unholy mess that was his property and turning serious. “I appreciate your help, old buddy,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” Hutch replied easily. “It’s what friends do, that’s all.”

Boone nodded, looked away for a moment, cleared his throat. “What if Griff and Fletch get here and want to turn right around and head back to Missoula?” he asked, keeping his voice down so the ranch hands and Opal wouldn’t overhear.

“One step at a time, Boone,” Hutch reminded him. “Seems like the first thing on our agenda ought to be making sure the little guys don’t get lost in all this tall grass.”

Boone’s chuckle was gruff. “I laid in plenty of beer,” he said.

“Well,” Hutch replied, heading around to the back of his pickup to haul out shovels and electric Weedwackers, “don’t bring it out while Opal’s around or we’ll get a rousing sermon on the evils of alcohol, instead of all that good grub she was up half the night making.”

Boone’s chuckle was replaced by a gruff burst of laughter. “If she’s brought any of her famous potato salad, she can preach all the sermons she wants,” he answered, and went to greet the woman as she climbed out of her car and stood with her feet planted like she was putting down roots right there on the spot.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hutch watched as Boone leaned down to place a smacking kiss on Opal’s forehead.

Pleased, she flushed a color she would have described as “plum” and pretended to look stern. “It’s about time you got your act together, Boone Taylor,” she scolded. Right away, her gaze found the toilet with the flowers growing out of the bowl and her eyes widened in horrified disapproval. “That commode,” she announced, “has got to go.”

She summoned two of the ranch hands and ordered them to remove the offending lawn ornament immediately. Two others were dispatched to carry the food and cleaning supplies she’d brought into Boone’s disreputable trailer.

“If it isn’t just like a man to put a toilet in his front yard,” she muttered, shaking her head as she followed her willing lackeys toward the sagging front porch. “What’s wrong with one of those cute little gnomes, for pity’s sake, or a big flower that turns when the wind blows?”

“Does she always talk to herself like that?” Boone asked, helping himself to a Weedwacker from the back of Hutch’s pickup.

“In my limited experience,” Hutch responded, reaching for a plastic gas can to fill the tank on the lawnmower, “yes.”

The next few hours were spent whacking weeds, and the result was to reveal a lot more rusty junk, numerous broken bottles and the carcass of a gopher that must have died of old age around the time Montana achieved statehood.

Opal occasionally appeared on the stooped porch, shaking out her apron, resting her hands on her hips and demanding to know how any reasonable person could live in a place like that.

“She thinks you’re reasonable,” Hutch commented to Boone, who was working beside him, hefting debris into the backs of the several trucks to be hauled away.

“Imagine that.” Boone frowned, shaking his head in puzzlement. He’d worked up a sweat, like the rest of them, and his T-shirt stuck to his chest and back in big wet splotches.

“And don’t think I didn’t notice all that beer in the fridge!” Opal called out, to all and sundry, before turning and grumbling her way back inside that sorry old trailer to fight on in her private war against dust, dirt and disarray of all kinds.

“Beer,” one of the ranch hands groaned, his voice full of comical longing. “I could sure use one—or ten—right about now.”

Later on, when the sun was high and all their bellies were rumbling, Opal appeared on the porch again and announced that the kitchen was finally fit to serve food in, and the thought of her cooking rallied the troops to trail inside, take turns washing up at the sink and fill plates, buffet style, at the table.

The ranch hands each sneaked a can of beer from the fridge—Opal turned a blind eye to those particular proceedings—and wandered outside to eat in the shade of the trees.

Opal sat at the table in the middle of Boone’s freshly scrubbed kitchen, and Boone and Hutch joined her.

“You’re a miracle worker,” Boone told her, looking around. The place was still scuffed and worn, just this side of being condemned by some government agency, but all the surfaces appeared to be clean.

“And you’ve been without a woman for way too long,” Opal retorted, with her trademark combination of gruffness and relentless affection.

Boone loaded up on potato salad—he probably hadn’t had the homemade version since before Corrie got sick—and helped himself to a couple of crunchy-coated chicken breasts. “I’m surprised at you, Opal,” he teased. “To hear you tell it, women are made to clean up after men. If that gets out, militant females will burn you in effigy.”

She expelled a huffy breath and waved off the remark for the foolishness it was. After a moment or two, her expression turned solemn and she studied Boone as though she’d never seen him before, peering at him through the lenses of her out-of-style eyeglasses.

“This isn’t what Corrie would want, Boone,” she said quietly. “Not for you and certainly not for those two little boys of yours.”

Boone put down his fork, still heaping with potato salad, and stared down into his plate in silence. He looked so stricken that Hutch felt a crazy need to come to his friend’s rescue somehow, but he quelled it. Intellectually, he knew Opal was right; maybe she could get through to Boone where he and Slade and a lot of other people had failed.

“We weren’t planning to live in this trailer for more than a year,” Boone said without looking up. “It was just a place to hang our hats while we built the new house.”

“I know,” Opal said gently. “But don’t you think it’s time you moved on—built that house, brought your boys home where they belong and maybe even found yourself a wife?”

At last, Boone looked up. The misery in his eyes made the backs of Hutch’s sting a little.

“I can’t marry a woman I don’t love,” he said hoarsely, “and I’m never going to love anybody but Corrie.”

A silence fell.

Boone took up his fork again, making a resolute effort to go on eating, but his appetite was clearly on the wane.

“It was a hard thing, what happened to you,” Opal allowed after some moments, her voice quiet and gentle to the point of tenderness, “but Corrie’s gone for good, Boone, and you’re still alive, and so are your sons. They need their daddy.”

“My sister—”

“I know Molly loves them,” Opal said, when Boone fell silent after just those two words. “But they’re yours, those precious boys, flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone, blood of your blood. They belong with you.”

Boone pushed his chair back, looking as though he might bolt to his feet, but in the end stayed put. “I truly appreciate your hard work, Opal,” he said, without looking at her or at Hutch, “and I mean no disrespect, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know how good Griff and Fletch have it with their aunt and uncle and all those cousins.”

“I’m sorry, Boone,” Opal said. “You didn’t ask for my opinion and I should have kept it to myself.”

Boone left the table then, left the kitchen, without a backward glance or a word of parting. The screen door, half off its hinges, crashed shut behind him.

“It’s progress, Opal,” Hutch told the woman quietly, painfully aware of the tears gathering in her wise old eyes. “That Boone will let the boys come back to Parable even for a holiday weekend—it’s a big thing. Last Christmas, he went to Missoula, rather than bring them here. Now he’s cleaning up the place and he’s letting us help, and that’s something he’s resisted for a long, long time, believe me.”

Opal sniffled, swatted at Hutch, and stood up to clear away her plate and Boone’s. “When did you get so smart?” she countered. “I’d have sworn you didn’t have a lick of sense yourself, entering rodeos, stopping weddings, living all by yourself like some fusty old codger twice your age.”

“Why sugarcoat anything, Opal?” Hutch joked, and commenced eating again. “Tell me how you really feel.”

The food was good, after all, and there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with his appetite, whatever might be going on with Boone’s.

“The man’s depressed,” Opal fretted, scraping the plates clean and setting them in the newly unearthed sink. “He puts on a fine show, as far as being sheriff, but he’s got to be feeling pretty darn low to let things come to this.”

“Try not to worry,” Hutch said. “Corrie’s death threw Boone for a loop and that’s for sure, but he’s coming around, Opal. He’s finally coming around.”

“I hope you’re right,” Opal fussed, sounding unconvinced.

“You’ll see,” Hutch answered, wondering where he was getting all this confidence in his best friend’s future all of a sudden. He and Slade and plenty of other people had been worried about Boone for years.

Running for sheriff was the first sign of life he’d shown since losing Corrie, and there had been precious little reason to be encouraged since then.

Boone knew his job—even as Slade’s deputy, he’d been a standout, steady, dependable, honest to the bone. His clothes were pressed, his boots polished and he got his hair trimmed over at the Curly Burly salon once a month like clockwork.

But then he came home to a hellhole of a trailer and did God knows what with his free time.

“He’d be a good match for Tara Kendall, you know,” Opal speculated aloud, her tone wistful. “Both of them lonely, with their places bordering each other the way they do—”

“They hate each other,” Hutch said.

“Same way you and Kendra do, I reckon,” Opal shot back, smiling.

Hutch felt a slow flush climb his neck to pulse hard under his ears, which were probably red by then. “I don’t hate Kendra,” he informed his friend gravely. He couldn’t say whether or not Kendra hated him, but he sure hoped not, because that was just too desolate a thing to consider.

“And Boone doesn’t hate Tara, either,” Opal went on, self-assured to the max. “She makes him feel some things he’d rather not feel, and that scares the heck out of him, and the reverse is true, too. Tara’s as scared of Boone Taylor as he is of her.” She paused, probably for dramatic effect, then delivered the final salvo. “Just like you and Kendra.”

Hutch was suddenly too exasperated to eat, even though he was still a little hungry after working like a field hand all morning. Ranching involved some effort, but these days he spent more and more of his time supervising the men who worked for him, driving around in his pickup, riding horseback for the fun of it instead of rounding up strays or driving cattle from one feeding ground to another, or checking fence lines.

If he didn’t watch out, his own prediction would prove true and he’d be too fat to compete in the rodeo by the end of the week.

He excused himself, rose stiffly from the table and carried his dishes and silverware toward the sink. He scraped his plate into the trash, set it in the hot, soapy water Opal had ready, and left the kitchen.

* * *

“GO OVER THERE?” Kendra repeated, peering through the pair of binoculars Tara had brought out onto the porch so they could spy on the doings over at Boone’s place. Heat surged through her as she watched Hutch haul his shirt off over his head, revealing that lean, rock-hard chest—the one she’d loved to nestle against once upon a time. “Are you crazy?”

“It would the neighborly thing to do,” Tara replied, appropriating the binoculars and raising them to her face. Lucy and Daisy, having run off all that energy chasing each other around Tara’s yard and trying to catch grasshoppers, were asleep in the shade of a gnarl-trunked old apple tree nearby.

“Since when are you and Boone on ‘neighborly’ terms?” Kendra countered. Damned if she didn’t want to get a look at Hutch Carmody, up close and shirtless, but damned if she’d indulge the whim, either.

“We’re not,” Tara admitted. “But after all the verbal potshots I’ve taken at the man for maintaining an eyesore, the least I can do is encourage him to stick with the cleanup campaign.” She handed the binoculars back to Kendra, who immediately used them. “Besides, Opal is over there, working her fingers to nubs. Maybe she could use some help from us.”

“Right,” Kendra said, thinking of her business suit and high-heeled shoes. “I’m certainly dressed for it.” She watched, heartbeat quickening, as Hutch used the T-shirt to wipe his forehead and the back of his neck. Muscles flexed in his arms and shoulders, making her mouth water. “You, on the other hand, look like a fugitive from a rerun of Green Acres, so you might as well go right on over there with your bad self.”

“Not without backup,” Tara said.

“Opal is backup enough for anybody,” Kendra replied. It was almost as though Hutch knew she was watching him from afar; he seemed to be overdoing the whole manly thing on purpose just to rile her up.

Take the way he walked, for instance, with the slow, rolling gait of an old-time gunslinger, like his hips were greased, like he owned whatever ground he set his foot down on. And the way he threw back his head and laughed at something Opal called to him from the porch of Boone’s trailer.

“Scared?” Tara challenged.

“No,” Kendra lied, lowering the binoculars with some reluctance. She needed a few moments to process the sight of Hutch Carmody walking around half-naked. “I’m supposed to pick Madison up at preschool. And there’s supper to think about, and—”

“You’re supposed to pick Madison up in two hours,” Tara pointed out.

“Why do you want to do this?” Kendra asked, almost pitifully. She felt cornered by Tara’s calm logic. “You can’t stand Boone Taylor.”

“Like I said,” Tara replied with a self-righteous air, “good behavior should be encouraged. Besides, I’m dying to know why he’s suddenly so interested in all this DIY stuff.”

Kendra sighed, recalling her phone conversation with Joslyn earlier that day. “Well, I can tell you that,” she said importantly. “Boone’s boys are coming to stay with him for the weekend. He’s getting the place ready for them.”

“Boone has children?” Tara looked honestly surprised.

“Two,” Kendra replied, wondering how Tara could have lived around Parable for so long without knowing a detail like that. “They’ve been living with his sister and her family in Missoula since his wife died.”

“I knew he was a widower,” Tara mused sadly. “But kids? The man just packed his own children off to his sister’s place after they lost their mother?”

“Well, I don’t think it was as cut and dried as that....” Kendra began, but her voice fell away. She liked Boone, and felt a need to take his side, if sides were being taken, though like just about everyone else he knew, she could have shaken him for turning his back on a pair of small, motherless boys the way he had.

“He’s even more selfish than I thought,” Tara said decisively. She got out of her chair, still holding the binoculars, and went into the house, returning without them a few moments later. Evidently their spy careers were over. “Who does a thing like that?” she ranted on under her breath as she plunked back into her chair.

Compassion for Boone welled up in Kendra’s chest. “You weren’t here when his wife died,” she said quietly. “It was terrible, Tara. Corrie was in so much pain toward the end and Boone couldn’t do a thing to help her. That would be hard for anybody, but especially for a man who’s been strong all his life.”

“You can bet it was hard for those little boys, too,” Tara pointed out, but her tone had softened somewhat by then. “How old are they?”

Kendra made some calculations, “Probably five and six,” she said. “Something like that. Cute as can be—both of them look just like their dad.”

A deep sadness moved in Tara’s lovely eyes.

Kendra considered the possibility that her own mother might have abandoned her not because she didn’t love her, but because she was overwhelmed by life in general. Maybe she’d suffered from depression, like Boone, and become trapped in it.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

“Don’t be too hard on Boone,” she said, deciding it was time she and Daisy headed back to town. “He and Corrie married young, and they loved each other so desperately.”

Tara nodded slowly. She was looking in the direction of Boone’s trailer, although at that distance, with no binoculars to bring them closer, the people appeared tiny and it was hard to tell one from the other.

“Hey,” Kendra said to her distracted friend, preparing to descend the porch steps, call for Daisy and head for her car. “Why don’t you and Lucy come into town later and have supper with us?”

Tara smiled, rose from her chair, came to stand at the porch railing, resting her hands on top of it. “Thanks,” she said, with a little shake of her head. “Maybe some other time.”

Kendra nodded, and moments later she and Daisy were in the Volvo, heading down the driveway toward the main road.

Her thoughts and emotions were jumbled—visions of Hutch, bare-chested in the afternoon sunlight, predominated, but there were images of Boone at Corrie’s funeral, too. It had rained that gloomy late-winter day, and a bitterly cold wind had driven all the mourners from the graveside the moment the last “Amen” had been said—except for Boone. He’d simply stood there, all alone, with his head down, his hands folded and his suit drenched, gazing downward at his wife’s coffin.

Finally Hutch and Slade and a few others had gone out there to collect him, and he’d swung at them, shouting that he wasn’t going to leave Corrie alone in the rain. They’d finally prevailed, but it was a struggle, Boone saw to that.

Since then, he’d never been the same.

He worked hard—it was common knowledge that he sent a lot of his paycheck to his sister for the boys’ support—and then he went back to that sad piece of land he’d once had such great plans for, and that was all.

It grieved the whole town, because Parable was, after all, a family, and Boone, like Hutch and Slade, was a favorite son.

When Boone ran for sheriff, everyone’s hopes rose—maybe things were finally turning around for him—but until today, when the cleanup effort had apparently begun, there had been no further indication that anything much had changed.

At home, Kendra changed into khaki walking shorts, a green tank top and sandals. Then she brushed her shoulder-length hair, caught it up in a ponytail and checked the contents of her refrigerator, considering various supper possibilities.

She’d stopped thinking about Boone’s situation, which was a relief, but Hutch refused to budge from her mind no matter how she tried to distract herself.

And she definitely tried.

She tossed an old tennis ball for Daisy in the backyard for at least fifteen minutes, then collected the day’s mail from the box attached to her front gate. Nothing but sales fliers and missives addressed to “occupant”—everything had to be forwarded from her old address on Rodeo Road.

Not that she received a lot of mail in this day of instant electronic communication.

She chucked everything into the recycle bin and booted up her computer, a streamlined desktop set up in her home office. Nothing there, either.

Finally it was time—or close enough to it—to drive over to the preschool and collect Madison. Daisy rode shotgun in the Volvo’s front seat, panting and taking in everything they passed with those gentle brown eyes, as if there might be a quiz later on what she’d seen and she wanted to be ready for any question.

The preschool occupied a corner of the community center, a long, rambling building that also housed the Chamber of Commerce, along with several conference rooms and a performance area with a stage. The local amateur theater group used the latter, as did the art and garden clubs, and dances, wedding receptions and other events were held there, too. Outside, there was a pool, a tennis court and a baseball field.

The town was justifiably proud of the whole setup, and maintaining the place was a labor of love, done mostly by volunteers.

Kendra parked near the baseball field, her usual place, and walked Daisy around on a leash, poop bag at the ready, while they waited for Madison’s “class” to be dismissed for the day.

The bell rang and children catapulted through the open doors of the preschool, releasing pent-up energy as they laughed and jostled each other, celebrating their freedom.

Kendra, standing beside the car with Daisy, smiled as she watched Madison’s head turn in her direction, watched her smile broaden as she raced over, waving a paper over her head.

“Look what I drew!” she crowed, shoving the sheet of paper at Kendra and then dropping to her knees in the grass to cover Daisy’s muzzle with kisses and ruffle her silken ears.

Kendra looked down at her daughter’s artwork and felt a wrench in the center of her heart. Madison had drawn a house with green crayon, recognizable as the one they lived in, with four distinct figures standing in the front yard—a little girl with bright red hair, a yellow dog, a stick-figure rendition of Kendra herself, notable for an enormous necklace of what seemed to be blue beads, and a tall man wearing jeans, a purple shirt, brown boots and an outsize cowboy hat.

Hutch.

“It’s a family!” Madison said excitedly. “One with a cowboy daddy in it.”

Kendra swallowed. “I can see that,” she said quietly, before handing the paper back to Madison. “That’s a very nice picture,” she added, afraid to say more, lest the sudden tears pressing behind her eyes break free.

“Can we tape it to the ’frigerator?” Madison asked, her huge gray eyes solemn now, as though she expected a refusal and was already bracing to argue the point.

“Sure,” Kendra said with a smile after clearing her throat.

She spent the next five minutes getting Madison, the dog and herself squared away in the Volvo.

“My friend Brooke has a daddy,” Madison announced, once they were in motion. “So do lots of the other kids.”

Give me strength, Kendra thought prayerfully. “Yes,” she said.

“They put daddies in their pictures, so I did, too,” Madison explained. “I made mine a cowboy.”

“Does this cowboy have a name?” Kendra ventured. She couldn’t just shut the child down, after all, and there was no use trying to change the subject before Madison was ready because she’d pursue it.

“Cowboy man,” Madison said in a cheery, who-else tone of voice. “He has lots of horses, and I get to ride one of them sometime.”

“That will be exciting,” Kendra agreed, smiling.

“He said that,” Madison chimed from her place in the backseat, Daisy beside her. “You heard him say that, didn’t you, Mommy? That I could ride one of his horses if you said it was okay?”

“I heard,” Kendra said. Did Hutch even remember making the offer? Or had he simply been making conversation, telling the child what he thought she wanted to hear at that particular moment?

To him, it was probably just small talk.

To Madison it was a promise, sacred and precious.

Kendra bit her lower lip, thinking. She could play the heavy, of course, say she’d rather Madison didn’t get on a horse until she was a little older—conveniently, that was the truth—but one, she didn’t want to raise a fearful child and, two, why should she be the one to disappoint Madison, while Hutch came off as the good guy, the one who’d tried to make the dream happen and would have succeeded, if not for her?

No.

This time, for once in his life, he was going to follow through.

Madison would have her horseback ride; Kendra would make sure of that, for her little girl’s sake.

As soon as they got home, Madison fetched a roll of cellophane tape from Kendra’s office, climbed onto a chair and proudly affixed her “family” drawing to the refrigerator door.

“There,” she said, getting down and standing back to admire the installation.

Kendra admired it, too. “You’d better make some more pictures,” she said thoughtfully. “That one looks a little lonely all by itself.”

Madison readily agreed and ran off, Daisy on her heels, to find her crayons.

Kendra returned the chair to its place at the table, got out her cell phone and bravely keyed through stored numbers until she found Hutch’s. When was the last time she’d dialed that one?

“Hello?” he said after the second ring.

“We need to talk,” Kendra answered, employing a clandestine whisper. “When can we get together?”