Dry Creek Sweethearts

Their mother hadn’t said much about love or happiness or anything that a young girl could hold on to so Linda added a few quotes of her own to the stories she told Lucy on the theory that their mother might have said something like that if she’d given her and Lucy more than a passing thought. Her mother had been so caught up in mourning the death of their father years ago that she hadn’t paid much attention to either of her two daughters. The admonition to stay away from Duane Enger was the only advice her mother had ever given her about men.

Linda knew a young girl needed more than that. She needed to feel loved. She also needed to have some words to guide her. And someone to listen to her and understand what she was saying.

“Maybe you’re right,” Linda finally said. “A name for the café couldn’t hurt us.”

Lucy smiled up at her. “You won’t be sorry.”

“Just think of something without Jazz in it. All we need is a simple name. Something like the Morgan Café or the Sunshine or—”

“Definitely not the Sunshine Café,” Lucy said. “Not in this mud.”

The rain was a blessing in this part of Southern Montana. For years, there hadn’t been enough of it and the ranchers had been worried about drought. Now the skies were being overly generous with moisture, which made a lot of people, and their cattle, happy even if it didn’t do much for the floor of Linda’s café.

Still, Linda knew that happy ranchers made good customers, so she thanked God for the rain.

“We’ll think of a name on the way home, after I finish mopping.” Linda congratulated herself on moving Lucy’s attention away from the letter. Hopefully, once it was hanging on the wall, Lucy would forget about it.

Linda pulled her mop out of the bucket. The lemon smell of her cleaning solution cut through the old coffee smell. Linda prided herself on her black-and-white floor. That, along with the gray Formica-topped tables, gave the whole place a fifties look. And it was neat and orderly, just the way she liked. She had an old malt machine on the counter and two-dozen malt glasses hanging from a rack above it. She was also saving up for a genuine ruby-red jukebox to put next to the door of the kitchen. When that happened, everything would be perfect.

And, if the decor wasn’t enough to inspire a name, the café itself should be. She made an honest cup of coffee and charged fair prices. She ran a working person’s café that offered good value. There should be a name in all of that somewhere.

“The name shouldn’t be too froufrou, though,” Linda told her sister. “Remember who most of our customers are. Ranching families. We could just call ourselves the Dry Creek Café and everyone would be happy.”

Lucy wasn’t listening. “I should write and tell the Jazz Man about his guitar hanging on our wall.” Lucy adjusted the framed letter she’d just hung. “I think he’d want to know, especially if we have a name.”

Linda sighed. Maybe she’d made a mistake in letting Lucy think life was filled with more love floating around than it really was. “He gets lots of letters, honey. Tons of them probably.”

“But not letters from Dry Creek,” Lucy said confidently. “This is his home. He wants to hear from us.”

Linda didn’t answer. What could she say? So she just pushed her mop across the floor. The rain was coming down steady still. She’d just seen a flash of lightning and she wanted to get the floor mopped quickly so they could get back to the farm before the roads got any worse. She didn’t want to get stuck in the mud.

“I think he might want to know about all the rain we’ve had this spring,” Lucy continued. “He knows how dry it usually is so he’ll be happy. His great-aunt’s lilac bushes are going to be in full bloom pretty soon if the rain ever stops.”

A person had to drive past the Enger driveway in order to take the road out to the Morgan farm. It always made Linda sad to see the old Enger house standing there without anyone living in it, so she tried not to look in that direction as she passed.

It was time to stop avoiding things, she decided. She needed to put the past to rest.

She might just stop someday soon at the wide place where the Enger driveway met the main road and that old bent stop sign stood. The lilac bushes lined the driveway to the house and the fragrance of those blossoms would be worth taking a few minutes to stop and admire. She and Duane had shared a kiss or two, parked in the driveway and smelling those lilacs. Maybe it would be therapeutic for her to face those lilacs again by herself and say a final goodbye to her memories of Duane.

After all, the two people who had crashed into that stop sign twenty-some years ago, and bent it to the crooked heart shape it was today, had found peace last year by facing the ghosts of their past. They’d hit the stop sign while trying to elope to Las Vegas and it took them both coming back to the sign to figure out that they still wanted to be together.

Of course, things were different with her and Duane. They wouldn’t come together again. When she smelled those lilac bushes in the Enger driveway, she would be alone. Still, maybe she’d find some peace and be able to move on and love someone else. She sighed; it was time.

“Everybody misses their home,” Lucy said firmly as Linda put her mop in a corner and gathered up their jackets.

“Like I said earlier, Dry Creek isn’t Duane’s home anymore.” Linda gave Lucy her jacket. “He lives in Hollywood. You know that.”

Duane could be living on the moon; he was so distant.

Linda put her jacket on and opened the door going out of the café. A burst of cold, damp air came inside.

“Home is where the heart is,” Lucy said as she stepped out on the porch. She waited under the overhang so she wouldn’t get wet. “Mama used to tell us that. Remember?”

There was another flash of lightning in the distance.

Linda wished she hadn’t relied quite so much on clichés when she was inventing the stories for Lucy about what their mother had said. Linda turned the light off and shut the door behind her as she closed the café for the night.

“That might be a customer coming,” Lucy said as she looked down the road entering Dry Creek and pointed. “There’s a set of headlights.”

The rain was heavy and the night was black, but the lights were visible even though they were blurred.

Linda saw them. “The headlights are high. It’s probably a cattle truck going out to the Elkton Ranch. But don’t worry about it. Those ranch hands always carry a thermos of coffee. Besides, they won’t want to stop for anything at this time of night, especially if they have animals in the back. Once the thunder gets closer, it’ll spook anything in the truck so they want to get home and unloaded as soon as they can.”

Lucy nodded. “Maybe it’s Lance.”

Linda shrugged. “Could be.”

Lance periodically worked for the Elkton Ranch when they needed extra help or he needed extra income.

The sisters both walked quickly to Linda’s old car. Fortunately, the vehicle started right up. Linda backed the car out of its parking space and drove down the asphalt road to the gravel road leading to the Morgan family farm.

It was too bad she and Lucy were traveling in the same direction as that old cattle truck, Linda thought, because that meant they wouldn’t be passing it. Even if Lance wasn’t in the cab of the truck, the other ranch hands were always good for a big wave, especially on a stormy night like tonight. Linda could use some down-to-earth men to cheer her up. Thankfully, not every man around here needed to be a big star to be happy.

There was really something to be said for a man like Lance, Linda told herself. He was content just pulling a good horse to ride in the annual Bucking Horse Sale, a rodeo in Miles City, and working cattle at the Elkton Ranch. There was nothing in Lance that yearned for something bigger than what he already had. He’d be happy to stay in Dry Creek forever. He’d make someone a good solid husband.

Linda wondered if Duane’s dreams had made him happy over the years. He had loved to play his jazz music for people. Now, instead of an audience of twenty, the size he’d had on a good day in Dry Creek, he played for thousands of fans at the same time. The sound of the music might be different and rock music might not be his first choice, but he was probably very pleased with himself.

After all, he was on the radio, which was more than she could say for anyone else who had grown up around here, including Lance with his local rodeo fame. It was certainly more than she could say for herself.

Yes, she decided, Duane Enger probably was very happy.

Chapter Two

Duane Enger was miserable and sick and tired.

Everything was dark outside the bus except for the shine of the headlights on the wet asphalt as he drove into Dry Creek. He saw the taillights of a car in the distance so he knew he wasn’t the only one unfortunate enough to be driving around in the heavy rain. He figured his manager, Phil, who was sitting in the passenger seat right behind him, had seen the lights, too.

“There were people in that car,” Phil muttered as he leaned forward to complain in Duane’s ear. “And you let them get away.”

Phil had been driving like a maniac on the way up here, refusing to let any cars pass them. Duane had finally concluded the man might be having a midlife crisis even though he was only thirty-six. Of course, it had also occurred to Duane that Phil might have been lying about his age since the day they’d met. No one wanted to be old in the music business, especially in the teenage market.

Phil was short and pudgy so he looked as if he could be any age. He was completely bald so he didn’t even have any hair to turn gray. Not that the man’s age mattered, in Duane’s opinion, unless it affected how he acted behind the wheel.

For most of the trip, Duane had been too sick to pay any attention to what was happening outside the bus. But he had stopped dozing in Idaho when Phil ran a stop sign and, once they hit Miles City, Duane asked to take over the driving. There weren’t enough road signs to clearly mark the way to Dry Creek so Phil reluctantly agreed Duane could drive.

That didn’t stop Phil from scooting forward on the seat behind the driver’s seat and giving Duane his constant opinions on everything, especially the other cars on the road.

Duane hunched over the steering wheel and coughed. “Not—”