Loner's Lady

A wave of dizziness swept over her. The heat. The spice-scented air in the kitchen. The smell of the man’s body as he bent near and set the mixing bowl before her. Soap and sweat and something else. She flushed crimson, from the V below her neck where she’d left Dan’s shirt unbuttoned, all the way up to her hairline.

She kept her eyes on the bowl of cake batter and counted her strokes. At three hundred fifty-seven, her arm gave out.

“Finished?” he asked.

“Close enough. Butter those two round tins and see if the oven’s ready.”

“How do I tell when it’s—”

“Stick your hand in for a count of four. If you can’t make it to four, it’s hot enough.”

“An inexact art,” he muttered. “Like you said.”

“I find that very little in life is clear-cut,” Ellen responded. “The Lord does not seem to understand ‘exact.’”

Jess caught a flicker of some emotion that crossed her face and just as quickly disappeared. Regret. And a generous dose of bitterness. She’d been through a lot, managing without Dan. Even a strong woman would break eventually. He wondered how long she would last.

At her direction, he poured the batter into the tin cake pans, dropped them sharply on the surface of the stove “to break up air bubbles,” and slid them onto the oven rack. When he straightened, he noticed Ellen was nodding sleepily over the mixing bowl where she’d been swiping her finger for a taste.

“Go out onto the front porch,” he ordered. “Get some air.”

She struggled to her feet, grasped the crutch and clumped into the parlor. “I’ll do the washing up later,” she called as she opened the front door.

He heard the screen door swish shut, then the rhythmic creak of the willow rocker. Jess sat down in the chair she had vacated. His eyes glued to the oven door, he began to count the minutes before his cake would be done.

Ellen awoke when a laden dinner plate settled into her lap and a low, raspy voice said, “Thought you might be hungry.”

Jess leaned over her, one hand on the back of the willow rocker, the other steadying the plate on her thighs. The musky male scent of his body jerked her heart into an uneven rhythm.

“That was thoughtful of you, bringing my lunch out here.”

“More like supper. Look.” He tipped his head toward the flaming sky in the west.

Ellen stared past his shoulder at the peach-and-purple clouds on the horizon. “My chickens,” she murmured. “The cow…my cake! Oh for Lord’s sake, I forgot all about it. It’ll be burned to cinders by now.” She started to rise, then remembered the plate on her lap.

“I milked,” Jess said quickly. He caught the plate as it slid toward her knees. “Fed the chickens. Took in the washing.”

He didn’t tell her what else he’d done while she slept. Didn’t tell her he’d combed a five-square-foot piece of her farmland until his knees ached and the back of his neck got sunburned.

“What about the cake? I can’t attend the social without my cake!”

Jess shook his head. Women took the smallest things so seriously. “The cake,” he began. He almost said “my” cake, but caught himself in time. A woman might take usurpation of a cake extra seriously.

“The cake is cooling in the kitchen. Looks pretty near perfect if I do say so myself.”

“It ought to be,” Ellen said. “I’ve been winning prizes for thirteen years. Fourteen counting this year.”

He gave her a quick, interested look. “You live here all your life?”

“In town, yes. We bought the farm after my father died, four years ago.”

“I take it winning is important to you?”

She thought about that for a full minute. “It didn’t used to be. It didn’t much matter until I got old enough to understand why the town folks shunned me. After that I couldn’t stand not winning.”

“Why—?”

“Because of my father,” she said quickly. “He wasn’t much liked when he was alive. He…drank.”

“What about Dan, your husband? Did the town folks—”

“Dan has nothing to do with it.” But the tightness in her voice told Jess something else. Her standing in the Willow Flat community had been based on her actions, not Dan’s. For that, Jess was glad. She’d built a life here. He wanted to leave her that.

Ellen studied the plate of food on her lap. Two hard-cooked eggs, cut into quarters. Slices of red, juicy tomatoes, a wedge of cheese and two pieces of her day-old brown bread, thickly buttered.

“Too hot in the kitchen to cook,” Jess muttered.

“I see you found my tomato vines.” In a soft voice she added, “I am proud of my tomatoes.”

“Irrigated with wash water, like you said. At least that’s what I think I used.”

Ellen laughed. “They’ll probably taste like soap.”

“They’ll taste like tomatoes.”

Her smile faded. “I try not to think about the way of nature. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Mostly he taketh away. He must have missed my tomatoes.” She popped a section of boiled egg into her mouth.

“You sound like you’ve picked a good quarrel with the Lord.”

“I am plenty mad at him at present. I will still be mad at him when they lay me in my grave.”

Jess knew better than to pursue the matter further; he’d get her riled up and she’d be hard to handle, riled up. He studied the dark shadows beneath her eyes, her work-worn hands, the pulse throbbing at the curve of her throat. Ellen O’Brian was a fighter. He had to admire that.

But she wasn’t going to win. A sour taste rose in his mouth and he swallowed hard. “About this social tomorrow…”

“What about it?” she asked over a mouthful of tomatoes. “It’s the Fourth of July, always a big town wingding. I never miss it.”

“Think you could sit a horse?”

Her face changed. “Guess I’ll have to if I want to go.”

“There’s a doctor in town, right?”

“Yes, my uncle, Dr. James Callahan. Why? Are you ailing?”

“Thought he might put a plaster on your broken leg. A plaster cast is easier to walk around on than a splinted limb.”

Her face lit up as if somebody had turned up a lamp flame inside her. “Then maybe I could even join in the dancing. That’s the best part of the social.”