“Ward,” I said.
“How old are you, Ward? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I’m twenty-five, ma’am. Almost.”
She smiled. “I remember being twenty-five, almost. Just barely. Portia was three years old. I don’t think I’d slept through the night once between then and the day she was born. I know Portia hadn’t. Do you know, I almost miss that time? She used to start crying if I left the room, and now she wants nothing to do with me. Before I left, my daughter told me I’m the dullest, most predictable person she’s ever met. That she can’t believe I waste my breath talking when she always knows exactly what I’m going to say. Can you imagine saying something so hurtful to your mother?”
“No, ma’am, I cannot,” I said. My mother, Pamela, and I were close, as close as people could be when one lived in Tennessee and the other in Nevada, back when nobody made long-distance phone calls unless somebody had died.
Emily gave me a watery smile. “Oh, well,” she said. “Would it be all right if I came along to the airport? The other women keep talking about riding in the stagecoach. I feel left out.”
I’d been looking forward to my solo journey out, me all by my lonesome up in the driver’s box, a double fistful of reins in my hands, parched sepia fields scrolling past, a Sam-rolled cigarette I’d never smoke tucked behind an ear. Somewhere some tattered scraps of poetry I wrote about such a day might still exist, but I sure hope not. “Maybe another time,” I said. “It’s hot as blazes inside the coach this time of day.” I stepped on the front carriage wheel and hoisted myself up top. “If you’ll pardon me, ma’am, I really have to get going now. I don’t want to keep our guest waiting.”
“If it’s so hot inside I could ride up there with you,” Emily said. “I promise I won’t say a word. You won’t even know I exist.”
I couldn’t have it getting back to Margaret that I was refusing such an innocent request. “All right. Put your foot on the spoke of the wheel there, like I did, and hop on up.” I leaned over and offered her my hand. Thanks to the looseness of her dress I guess I hadn’t realized how slight she was, because when she hopped and I pulled I almost threw her clear over the stagecoach instead of into the driver’s box. She landed more or less on top of me.
“Sorry about that,” I said after I scraped her off and settled her on the seat beside me. “You’re lighter than I thought you’d be considering how big your head is.”
“I have a lot of hair,” she said. “Also I’ve lost weight lately. Not on purpose.”
Ah. The Heartbreak Diet. Food on the table, but no appetite for it. Lots of our ladies came to us looking famished from it. In my early days on the ranch I confess I begrudged them the luxury of pushing a full plate away when so many people were going hungry. But it didn’t take me so very long to come to understand that our ladies’ brand of anguish counted, too. No fair saying their suffering wasn’t genuine just because they had money in the bank and a bed to sleep in. Pain is pain.
I dug around in my pocket and handed Emily another bandana.
“I won’t need that. I’m done with crying,” she said.
“It’s to keep dust out of your nose and mouth,” I said. “Come to think of it, you need a hat. Did the salesman talk you into one to go with those boots?” I wasn’t excited about handing over mine once the sun started scrambling her brains. Also, once she went inside to fetch her own hat she might decide she didn’t want to come along after all. Then she would be Margaret’s problem.
“No,” she said. “How far are we going?”
“About four miles.”
“Is that all? I won’t need a hat for that.”
“The sun is fierce this time of day,” I said. “Tell you what. You wear my hat. It should fit. I’ve got an awful big head, too.”
“I couldn’t take your hat,” she said. “What will happen to you?”
“Me? I’m like an old piece of leather already. Please, take it. Margaret will have my hide if I let you get sunburned on my watch.”
“Well, in that case.”
My hat was a little sweaty, so I tucked yet another bandana inside before I put it on her head. It fit nicely. Then I showed her how to tie the other bandana over her nose and mouth, bandit-style, against the dust the horses were about to kick up.
“Thanks,” she said, knotting it in place. “So the new guest is coming in an airplane? How exciting! I’ve never been on an airplane. Have you?”
“About as often as you’ve ridden a stagecoach, ma’am.” I picked up the reins and squinted off toward the road. The sun was so bright that I could still see the afterimage of the ranch house projected on the back of my eyelids when I closed my eyes against the glare. While I had them shut Emily touched my elbow and I jumped.
“I didn’t mean to startle you again,” she said. “I should have said your name instead. Ward. Like an orphan in a Victorian novel. Taken in by a relative.”
“Yes,” I said. “Like that.”
Chapter Two
I believe Emily had a crush on Nina from the beginning. I could hardly blame her. I was pretty dazzled by Nina, too.
“Is she some kind of gold digger?” Emily asked before either of us laid eyes on her. “I’ve heard of women burying three husbands over the course of a lifetime, but a woman anywhere close to my age who’s divorced three! None of my friends have gotten divorced even once.”
As promised, Emily hadn’t said a mumbling word on the way out, just raked the surroundings with those eyes of hers and furrowed her brow a few times. The stagecoach traveled at a blistering speed of six miles an hour, tops, so she had plenty of time to take everything in. Once we arrived and I had the horses settled, she turned her headlamps on me and let loose with, “So who’s this Nina?”
When I’d asked Sam more or less the same question, he’d resettled his cowboy hat on his head, squinted, and said, “Nina? She’s a stem-winder.” Nina had been just shy of twenty when she arrived with the first octet of pre-divorcées come to wait out their six weeks at the Flying Leap, and had repeated some years later. I gathered Max and Margaret were fond of her or she wouldn’t have been welcomed back. Let me tell you, it was a job of work, juggling the comings and goings of our guests. My hat goes off to Margaret there. It was easier for everybody involved if our guests arrived more or less in batches. Over the years, however, between choreographing all the comings and goings and not-going-through-with-its and managing a wait list about as long as your arm, our ladies’ six weeks spent with us weren’t always in perfect sync.
To help herself keep things straight when she did the booking and, eventually, to thin the herd, Margaret kept score on past guests in a secret ledger locked in her desk drawer. Fight-picker, drunk by lunchtime, mean to staff, loudmouth, idiot, or, worst of all, bore. I once passed Margaret on the telephone at her desk as she finished recommending alternate accommodations to someone so memorably unpleasant she hadn’t had to check her notes. “Nancy Casper from Denver,” she’d said when I raised an eyebrow. “Life is too short to put up with that piece again.”