A Way With Women

“Like on that old TV show, ‘Here Comes the Brides’,” added Diego, his sparkling eyes as black and shiny as the curls sticking from beneath his battered straw hat. “Yes, indeed,” Diego continued as he stripped a sweat-soaked shirt from his middle-aged, wiry frame, folded it over the back of a swivel chair and plopped down with a grunt. “Every woman in the world be desperate to get herself hitched to a rich rancher stud like Macon, right, Macon?”

“Just ask any female,” Cam added as he tossed his work gloves next to the letters. “Marrying my son’s their main goal in life. You boys wouldn’t believe how many brides I had to fight past to get to work this morning!”

Macon shot his father a quelling glance.

Cam laughed. “Oh, c’mon, don’t get mad, Macon. I never told you to advertise for a bride.”

“No, you didn’t,” Macon said, worriedly running a hand over his head, slicking back the gold waves. “But you said you won’t legally hand the ranch over to me until I’m married.”

“Now you’re catching on.” Cam’s left hand was nearly immobile, due to a stroke he’d suffered, but he gleefully clapped the other on his knee. “I don’t want you running the Rock ’n’ Roll yet. It’s my ranch, and no matter what your ma says, I’m not retiring.”

Macon surveyed his father a long moment, his gut clenching as if he’d been punched. Cam’s shoulders, once as powerful as Macon’s, were thin and stooped, and what was left of his hair had turned bristly gray. His face was as wrinkled as a pair of old boots, and suddenly, noticing how his father had changed with age, Macon wished he’d never left home. He missed the years he hadn’t been here, working the ranch with Cam. Macon had been a late baby, the only child, and now Cam was seventy-three.

Harper, why did you make me leave?

And where had the years gone? Only yesterday, the woman he’d wanted had been in his arms. Only the day before that, he’d been knock-kneed and in short pants, chasing after Cam in the fields. Pa, when you gonna teach me to ride that big horse? When you gonna take me to herd cattle? When you gonna let me rope a bull? And now he was hearing his mother’s voice. I can’t talk sense into him, Macon. His blood pressure’s sky-high, and if he doesn’t get some help with the ranch, he’ll have another stroke. Doc Dickens says so. Blanche McCann might as well have said, Your father’s going to die if you don’t come home, Macon.

Nothing less could have brought Macon to Pine Hills, since the last place he wanted to live was in the same town as Harper. He said, “Doc says you’ve got to retire on account of your blood pressure.”

“The only pressure I’ve got is you trying to take away my ranch,” muttered Cam. “Fortunately, every woman in the world’s got the sense not to marry you.”

“If I get married, you retire,” Macon said. “You promised.”

“And Cam never goes back on his word,” said Ansel.

“Nope, I don’t,” agreed Cam. “But somehow I doubt I’ll hear church bells, since Harper wrote every woman in China, just to warn them about Macon.”

“And every woman in Pine Hills already knows better than to get involved with him,” added Ansel.

“Now, now,” chided Cam. “Nancy Ludell’s still trying. And that cute schoolteacher, Betsy, who moved down from Idaho. And Ansel’s wife’s best friend…what’sername?”

“Lois Potts,” Ansel supplied.

“Right. You went bowling with her,” Cam coaxed, his tone insinuating. “Why, Lois is the closest thing we’ve got to an heiress in Pine Hills, since she’ll inherit the Feed and Seed. Why not marry her?”

“I might marry Lois,” Macon muttered, though marrying a stranger would be just as good an option. Macon wasn’t necessarily looking to fall in love. He wasn’t even sure if he was capable of it anymore.

Ansel suddenly whirled around, shielded his eyes and squinted through a smudged window at the corral. “Hurry, Macon!” he teased. “Some women in wedding dresses are running this way!”

Diego ran to the door. “Look at them wild womens lifting their veils just so they can claw out each other’s eyes! They’s fighting over Macon like cats and dogs.” The Mexican raised his voice to a falsetto. “Please, please,” he crooned, twining a finger around the end of a black mustache, “let me marry Macon and iron his shirts and give him some good lovin’!”

“Back off,” warned Macon mildly. Suddenly, he yawned and stretched his powerful arms over his head. Damn it all—his father, Harper and the cattle, too. Late last night, over a hundred head had broken through a pasture onto Ansel’s property, so Macon had been mending fences since before sunup, stopping only to run into town to check the mail, which was how he’d discovered the letters.

Diego squinted. “What’s those letters say about how bad you is, anyway?”

Macon shrugged, lifting a pink, bubble-gum scented sheet. ‘“Dear Gong Zhu,”’ Macon drawled, ignoring the tightening of his chest as he took in Harper’s neat cursive, ‘“It’s in your best interest to know there are good reasons Macon McCann has to advertise for a bride. Think about it. What kind of American man has to go all the way to China just to get a girlfriend?”’

Ansel, Diego and Cam chuckled.

Macon stirred the letters with a finger. “Here’s another. ‘Dear Carrie Dawn Bledscoe, Please know that Pine Hills, Texas has a male-female ratio of three to one. If Macon McCann was such a great catch, don’t you think a local girl would have married him by now? He’s thirty-four, so they’ve had ample opportunity.”’

The men laughed, and despite his underlying anger, a smile tugged at Macon’s lips. “Get this,” he added. “She signs the letter, ‘Yours in female solidarity.”’

Ansel snorted. “That woman’s sure got a way with words.”

It’s not all she’s got a way with, Ansel. “This one gets right to the point,” continued Macon. “’Dear Anna Gonzales, Do not come to America! Stay in Mexico and away from Macon McCann. He’s a menace, and Pine Hills is one big dusty dive. There’s no rain, and the heat’s insufferable. Pine Hills,”’ continued Macon, fishing for another letter, ‘“sounds uneventful, right? Well, guess what, Mirabella Morehead. When it comes to wildlife, Macon’s only the beginning. Unlike in Los Angeles, we’ve got more than our fair share of poisonous snakes. No culture, either. You won’t find first-run movies, or musical events.”’

“She’s got a point.” Diego swiped away tears of laughter. “The only music we gots is from frogs and crickets.”

“It’s nobody’s fault but hers if she hates it,” argued Ansel. “She could have left town. Both she and her mama said she planned to. She skipped a grade, and she had a scholarship to some Eastern school.”

“She stayed to antagonize Macon,” Cam guessed.

“Which is why I moved to Houston,” said Macon, despite the fact that no man present really understood how serious he’d once been about Harper.

“Well, amigo—” Diego looked sympathetic “—now you’re back. And the only thing standing between you and this ranch is Harper.”

Ansel grinned. “A formidable force.”

Restless and tired of the ribbing, Macon rose, crossed the room and leaned in the door frame, staring through the screen at the rock bluffs and green hills that had given the Rock ’n’ Roll Ranch its name. He watched corralled horses grazing under the shade trees. Why can’t you just leave me alone, Harper?

When he decided to advertise in Texas Men, his motive had been purely business, but when no one wrote back, Macon had felt an unexpected void and admitted the truth to himself. He wanted a wife. He’d tried for years to get over Harper. He’d waited long enough. Didn’t he deserve to start waking in the night with someone beside him, each inch of her his for the touching? She’d had a man’s warm body beside her for sixteen years. She’d enjoyed shared morning kisses and raising a son. Hundreds of protective miles no longer lay between him and Harper, and Macon needed to have a woman with him, if only to prove to Harper that he still could.

She was thirty-three now and probably nothing like the girl he’d left behind, but physical distance and the passage of time had never deadened Macon’s feelings the way he’d hoped. Some Christmases, he’d run into her, Bruce and their son, Cordy, and every time, something inside Macon would curl up and die. He’d tighten his arm around whatever woman he happened to be entertaining, intimating plenty more was going on than there ever really was, then he’d return to Houston. Oh, he’d tried other relationships, but nothing ever panned out. He’d missed Pine Hills, too, but couldn’t live in the same town as her.

But now Bruce was dead, and Macon was here to stay.

He’d offered a quick hello in the post office before he and Harper reached a silent, mutual agreement not to exchange pleasantries. Since then, he’d wordlessly checked the mail, never venturing past the copiers in the lobby, but always aware of Harper behind the counter.

Today, she’d hung a paper clock over the counter, next to a help wanted sign, indicating she’d be gone for five minutes, so after he’d checked the empty P.O. box, Macon had given in to the impulse to glance into her work space. He’d been stunned to find Harper’s un-mailed responses to his brides. Wanting time to process how she’d been disparaging him, he’d grabbed the letters and left.

But what had possessed her? She had no right to stand between him and a woman. She’d married. As much as he liked her son, Cordy, who’d been working odd summer jobs on the Rock ’n’ Roll since around the time Bruce died, Macon still hated the fact that she’d had him by another man. Macon knew he’d satisfied her sexually but figured Bruce had offered Harper another, better kind of sharing, touching her in a way so deep she’d married him. Macon tried to ignore the words teasing the edges of his consciousness. Why couldn’t it be me, Harper? Why wouldn’t you let me break the iron grip your mama had on you?

Macon’s lips compressed. He had no choice but to confront her about the letters, but he hadn’t wanted to create a scene at the post office, since it was the gossip hub of Pine Hills, and now he wasn’t sure he could handle being inside the house she’d shared with Bruce. Being anywhere near the bed where she’d given herself to her husband made Macon as tense as he’d been years ago when he’d caught his first glimpse of her.

She’d been sixteen and headed to live with relatives in Tuscaloosa when her mama’s car broke down in Pine Hills. One thing led to another and they’d stayed. Harper’s mama got a job managing a Laundromat, where Harper spent every day after school when she wasn’t sneaking off with Macon. Now he figured there wasn’t a landmark in town where he hadn’t made out with her, in the old cemetery, the rock quarry and on the sloping banks of Star Point Lake. Even Ansel, with whom Macon had been thick as thieves since birth, didn’t know how much time he’d spent with Harper, since her mama was so strict that they’d kept their meetings as secret as possible.

Her mama had died the year before Bruce had, but Macon had never stopped hating the woman. She’d had her suspicions about what Macon and Harper were doing, and anytime she saw Macon in town, she’d pull him aside, her blue eyes narrow and fierce and her voice cracking from the Camels she chain-smoked. My baby girl’s smarter than you. She don’t need your kind. You and me know you’re just using her, trying to get the one thing boys want. But she’s got herself one of those scholarships, so the last thing she needs is you.

Macon had been young and rebellious enough that he could have told the woman what he thought of her, but he hadn’t, out of respect for Harper. In her own way, Macon guessed the woman had loved Harper. And loving Harper, at least, was something Macon understood.

But she’d turned out to be her mama’s girl all the way. She’d rebelled, but not before that twisted woman had filled her head with dire warnings about men, just because she was backward and because a man had left her when she was pregnant with Harper. The summer they were out of school, Macon begged Harper to leave home and run away with him, and she’d finally said she would.

That night, he’d waited in the truck under a canopy of trees not far from Big Grisly’s Grill, alternately peering down the road and staring into a night as starry as Harper’s eyes. Where are you? he’d thought with panic. Don’t stand me up. Don’t let your mama win.

But she had.

And then she’d married Bruce and given birth to Cordy. Now Macon lifted his gaze from the horses in the corral, realizing he’d been half admiring their dreamless ease, their thoughtless pleasure. Why couldn’t his life be that damn simple? “What?”