If I Had You Page 8

  “No.”

  “—it would be like an offering for you to send. So the baby would always know you cared about it.”

  “There’s no need for you to think about things like that. It’s not your baby.”

  But once upon a time, Nora yearned to say this and Tess knew it, once upon a time, you were.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Babies were the last thing on Ben Crabtree’s mind as he watched the Caterpillar bulldozer crush a thick layer of gravel over the soil roadbed of Highway 37. He had come to the conclusion that this stretch of road needed resurfacing more often than any other road in Gilford County. Hadn’t it only been eighteen months since he’d hired a crew to tar and patch out here? And now he’d had to deal with them again. Potholes as numerous as moon craters. Last time it had gotten this bad, Clyde Leonard had sent those hate letters and copies of his wheel-alignment receipts all the way to the state capitol in Austin. Ben readjusted his hard hat, pushed his pen inside his shirt pocket, and began taking long strides along the roadbed.

  As the bulldozer belched past him, exhaust pluming from its smokestack, he felt as crushed and pressured as the sharp, tiny pieces of rock beneath his feet. And this wasn’t anything he had done to himself, oh no. They were doing it to him. Both of them, together. Moving around the house and glowering at each other like two tomcats ready to go at it, ready to shred each other’s fur. Ben found it a whole lot more peaceful out here among the heavy machinery than being at his own house.

  It had become clear that Tess would open up to him, but not to her mother. Going to weekly childbirth classes with his daughter had actually started to be enjoyable. Yes, it could be scary for a man to hear about contractions and what they actually did inside a woman’s body. He would take the Army Corps of Engineers most-difficult road plans, a three-ton roller, and a broken-down asphalt paver over that any day. But sitting beside Tess, seeing how she listened, watching her face and seeing how she struggled with addiction, seeing her take the hard and the moral way out, made him admire her all the more.

  He often became sentimental about his daughter. It seemed like only yesterday when he’d sat in the Best Beginnings Clinic with Nora. (Of course, they’d remodeled it twice since then, but it still seemed like yesterday.) How proud they had been to welcome this little girl into their lives! And now, look at Tess. So grown up. A few bad choices, but beautiful. Giving birth to a child.

  When he looked at Tess, he saw her locking Nora out with the same sureness as someone slamming the lid on a coffin.

  Tess, he’d heard his wife ask her, Nora’s voice as lilting and hopeful as a love song. What do you think? I understand what it’s like to feel a baby move. I remember the first time I ever felt you.

  I don’t want to talk about this to you, Tess had said. Just don’t watch me all the time. And when she did, Ben wanted to shake Tess by the shoulders and say, “Don’t you see what you’re doing? Don’t you see that this could be a truce?”

  But Ben knew his wife, too. He knew that each time she offered this rope of acceptance, she might very well not hang on to the other end. Maybe it seemed disloyal and childish to think this about his wife, but there was a small, real element of truth in it that he couldn’t deny. Nora had a way about her with Tess that always seemed to whisper I look at you and I disapprove of something. He couldn’t help but notice, no matter how much Nora talked about God and wanting to hear His voice and wanting to know His will for her life, Nora was dissatisfied with their daughter. This one thing did not change.

  He remembered the day Tess had come home from school with ballpoint pen marks drawn around her fingernails. “That looks dirty,” Nora had told Tess with so much conviction that it had made even Ben flinch. “That looks ugly. Go in and wash that off.”

  “I can’t!” Tess had wailed. “I tried at school. It won’t come off.”

  And Nora had kept her at the sink for a good thirty minutes scrubbing after that, squirting Goo Gone over her knuckles, until Tess’s little nubs of cuticle were worn raw, but the ink was still there.

  He remembered the day Tess started work at What-A-Burger, when Nora had said, “Those aprons look cute on everybody else. You’ve got yours tied wrong or something. It looks ugly, not right at all.”

  “It’s the same as everybody else’s, Mom,” Tess had said, her voice hard. “What does an apron matter, anyway?”

  Or the day Tess had been experimenting with makeup, and Ben had heard Nora say, “You can’t carry that off, Tess. It looks cheap. It looks like dirt around your eyes.”

  Tess had taken to wearing so much mascara and purple eye shadow that she looked like she’d been thrown a good one-two punch in the boxing ring.

  What had he hoped for when Tess had come home? That it wouldn’t be the same between his daughter and his wife? That Nora might see Tess in a different way? That Tess might be different?

  Whatever kept them from reaching for each other stayed as set and as rigid as the concrete that the Sorenson road crew was pouring over Highway 37 beside his feet.

  Dust imbedded in the nostrils. Ground soil. The stenchy exhaust of passing cars and hot asphalt. Yup, give him earth-moving equipment any day. Front-end loaders and bulldozers and dump trucks might be oily and cumbersome and tricky. But they were predictable. He could handle that better than what was happening at his home.

  Ben glanced up and saw Porter McKay sauntering along, heading toward him on the asphalt shoulder, a thermos in one hand, scrubbing off some aforementioned grime from his neck with the other. “Hey,” Porter called out as he tossed his hard hat aside. “Got some of Vera Jo’s coffee left over. Thought you might want a sip.”

  “Can’t say as I do.” Ben cocked his elbow against the front door of a yellow department truck that said PILOT CAR. FOLLOW ME. “That stuff’s been sitting since six this morning; it’ll probably eat my innards out before it hits bottom. I like Vera Jo, don’t get me wrong, but she makes coffee strong enough to choke a horse.”

  “You insulting my wife’s coffee?”

  “Nope. Just being honest.”

  They slapped each other across the shoulder blades in the age-old ritual of understanding each other. Then, just as Ben expected Porter to head on off and offer the coffee even Porter couldn’t drink to some other unsuspecting victim, his employee unlatched the tailgate of the pilot car and had a seat instead.

  “You got a minute, Ben? There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Sure I do. What is it?”

  “Well, I . . .” Porter set the thermos squarely on the tailgate and torqued the lid tighter. “There might not be a right way to do this, but Vera Jo’s been begging me to try. Got something to ask you.”

  “About what?”

  Porter had pulled a bandana out of his pocket and was wiping sweat off the back of his neck. Then he held the hanky in both hands, wringing and wringing it between his big, dirt-encrusted hands, until he’d twisted it so hard Ben thought he might tear the thing in half.

  “You need a loan or something, buddy? You know I’ll do what I can.”

  “No. Oh, no. It isn’t that.”

  “You need time off or something? Are you and Vera Jo trying to get away? I don’t see any problem—”

  “No. It isn’t that.” Porter wasn’t himself. He kept staring down at the shoelaces of his work boots, examining them as if they were the most interesting shoelaces ever to be strung into a shoe. “Got a question about Tess being in town.”

  Ben stood a little straighter. “Oh.”

  “I’ve been noticing when I’ve seen her, you know. She’s—” He stopped, obviously searching for words. “She’s—”

  “She’s what, Port?”

  Apparently Porter had forgotten the dangers of the coffee. He unscrewed the drinking cup and sloshed something that smelled like burned rubber into it. He took one sip and spewed it over the side of the tailgate. “She’s either gaining a lot of weight in all the wrong places or else she’s having a kid. Whi
ch is it, Ben? Because, you see, I’ve got a good reason to know.”

  Ben didn’t know what to say. He thumped his hard hat with the heel of his hand. “That’s it? That’s what you wanted to know? Yeah, she’s pregnant all right.”

  “I was afraid of that. I mean, I heard folks talking in the checkout line over at the Food Basket. Caroline Rakes and all.” He broke off. “Gosh, Ben. I’m sorry. That’s such a shame. It’s such an awful thing to have happen to your little girl.”

  Ben was taken aback. What was he supposed to say? I accept your condolences? It isn’t all that bad? “We’re getting by,” he said, his voice level.

  “Reason I said something is this. My boy and his wife, they moved up to Storm Lake, Iowa. You remember him, don’t you? Porter Jr.?”

  “I do.”

  “They’ve been trying to have a little one for a long time. It’s been so important to Kelly, that’s his wife, and every month she ends up falling apart. It’s like something dies every time she . . . well, every time she finds out it didn’t take again.”

  This conversation had started to make Ben uncomfortable. “Porter, I don’t think—”

  “I can’t go home to Vera Jo without at least bringing it up, Ben. Vera Jo’s been hounding me every time I go out the door, saying I ought to ask. What’s Tess going to do with that baby once she has it? Is she willing to give it away?”

  Ben lifted his behind off the truck and began to walk. Porter jumped down and followed him, leaving the thermos behind. “Because, if she is, Porter Jr. and Kelly might like to have it. I mean, they could take real good care of a baby. It would sure perk Kelly up.”

  “I’m not sure what to tell you, Port.”

  “Vera Jo thought it would help y’all out, too.”

  The bulldozer had turned around and was coming toward them again. Thank heavens, something to drown out this conversation. The thought of brokering Tess’s baby on the roadside was more than Ben could bear. Porter might be working for years out here. And here Ben would be, listening to stories from Storm Lake, Iowa. The way Porter liked to talk, Ben would be hearing how Porter’s grandchild was getting first teeth and taking first steps. He’d hear about the first time it said Grandpa, the first day in kindergarten, the first fever, the first haircut.

  “You’d better get back to work, Port. You tell Vera Jo to talk to Janet Whitsitt at the clinic. That’s what you need to do if you know somebody interested in adopting—” He never could have guessed how hard this would be.

  Yes, adopting a baby would be good for Porter Jr. and Kelly McKay. Why should I begrudge them something like that?

  Ben couldn’t be sure whether his last words to Porter had been drowned out by the roar of frustration in his own ears, or by the roller making a second pass over Texas State Highway 37.

  TESS KNEW THE BIPLANE was winging somewhere in the sun; she could hear its engine droning. A flicker of a cloud and she could see it, its wheels almost skimming the tops of the oak groves as it aligned with the dirt airstrip and flew straight toward her. Just when she thought Creede was headed to land, the plane pulled up again, vapor curling in streams beneath the plane’s wings, strewing over the field.

  Tess waved. In times past, Creede would have quickly waved back. Instead, this time, he hesitated. With a short, slight cock of his wrist, he circled around to make another pass.

  The plane bounced once when he finally brought it down. It alighted, its rotary engine throbbing, its wheels sending up spumes of dust. The heavy sound faded and the propeller slowed. Behind him, the window said AG-CAT. Creede climbed between the wings and jumped out.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Creede didn’t speak. He found a massive black dirt clod and chocked it behind a tire.

  “I guess you decided that since I passed out when I saw you, you’d better not talk to me or anything. I thought you’d be long gone in the Air Force by now.”

  “I was making plans with a recruiter, Tess. That’s not for a little while down the road.”

  “And you were talking about getting married. I want to hear about that, too. Nobody will talk about it in front of me.”

  He searched her face. “I’ve got to feed Grandpa’s horses.” He brushed past her with long-legged strides and his words came stringing back to her. “I’m already going to catch it, flying instead of doing my chores.”

  “I don’t know why you won’t talk to me about getting married.” She trailed him across his grandfather’s pasture like a pesky little sister. To keep up, she had to take two steps to each one of Creede’s. “Who’re you marrying? Who is Candice Murfree?”

  Creede had come to a metal gate. He unfastened it, rounded the fence, and began to wrap the thick chain around the post so it stayed secure behind him—whether to keep the horses in or her out, Tess couldn’t tell. “I don’t know why you’d think it would be any business of yours, who I’m marrying.”

  Just as soon as Creede had secured the chain, Tess unfastened it again and followed him through. “You said I scared you. Right when they were taking me to the clinic, I heard you. You said, ‘Tess, you know how to scare a person.’ I heard you.”

  Creede grunted. “Well, I said it because I was shook up. You fell down in front of me like a tree in a forest.” He climbed onto a mountain of bales stacked on the leeward side of the fence and stood with his thumbs hooked through his belt loops, his tattered Six Flags Over Texas T-shirt tight across his broad chest. He stared down at the hay.

  She pointed toward the bale beside his left boot heel. “That one right there. That’s a good one.”

  “No. That one’s moldy.”

  As if to spite her, he picked out another instead, pitched it over into the corral as the horses began to nose their way in. He jumped down behind it and, with one tug of his fist, the orange twine snapped. A potpourri of dried alfalfa, meadow grass, and clover tumbled out. She could smell it even where she stood.

  The horses began to munch, a lovely sound.

  “Don’t you think it’s time I started getting on with my life?” Creede asked her. “There’s other important people out there besides you. What makes you think you can waltz back into town and everybody’s going to start caring about you again?”

  “I don’t think that. I don’t think that at all.”

  He stared at her. “Look at you. Just look at what you’ve done. I’m mad at you, Tess, and I can’t help it.”

  “How can you throw that at me now? You were the only one I could ever talk to.”

  That stopped him. He planted his muddy boots wide apart and stared at her growing belly. “Can you still get on a horse?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because of that.” He nodded toward her middle again.

  “I’m pregnant. Not dead.”

  “If you help get these chores done, we can ride a while.”

  “What is it, Creede? Every time a person wants to talk to you, she has to ride something.”

  He scowled at her.

  She said, “I’ll saddle the horses.”

  “No you won’t. Not with the—” He stared her down. She saw that he wouldn’t say the word. “I don’t think you ought to lift anything.”

  “The baby,” she said. “It’s a baby. You can talk about that with me, too.”

  He disappeared inside the shed and came out with a thick horse blanket beneath a scuffed leather saddle that was as pungent as an old, sweaty shoe. Something about that leather smell, so sharp and so rich that moment, made Tess feel like she had finally, lavishly come home.

  “You can ride Raina. You remember her. You’ve ridden her before.” He clicked his tongue and a huge grey horse bobbed its neck and mane, dragged its hooves through the dust as it started toward them.

  Oh yes. Tess remembered Raina. The first time Creede had ever kissed her, they had been riding this horse. Young enough to play games on horseback then, riding bareback and double, they’d been dashing through the pasture toward Grandpa Franklin’s cattail pond.
Just when Tess thought Creede was going to pull the reins up short and let the horse drink at water’s edge, he shouted, “How about a swim?!” and spurred Raina on instead.

  The horse crashed into the pond, powerful legs sending up fan-sprays of water. Before Tess knew what was happening, they were in over their heads, bobbing, struggling to stay atop the horse. “Hang on,” he kept shouting at her, as Tess clung to the broad wet neck and folds of horseflesh.

  Later, with Raina grazing and tethered to a tree, the sun so bright they couldn’t open their eyes into it, the warm afternoon baked them dry. Shoulder to shoulder, ankle to ankle, the warm earth soaking up through their shorts and the sun pouring over them like molten brass, Creede raised himself up on one elbow and rolled toward her.

  “What?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Because I like to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  She had seen something in his eyes that day that she’d never seen in a boy’s eyes before—not one that looked at her. When he had leaned his face toward hers and barely brushed her lips with his, the kiss had been so light, it could have been a gentle wind crossing her mouth.

  Today, once Creede had gotten a lead rope on Raina, he tossed the saddle over the horse’s back. Tess stood behind him, feeling helpless and ill at ease, watching Creede’s biceps knot as he yanked the cinch with more than the usual vigor.

  “Can’t seem to get away from people who like horses,” she commented with false ease, making conversation. “I’ve got this friend, you know what he likes about horses? That one neon red horse on the roof of that building in Dallas. A city horse. Not a real one.”

  Maybe he didn’t hear. Creede adjusted the stirrups without glancing at her. He had adjusted stirrups for her so many times, he didn’t need to measure.

  “He’s so crazy about that horse, he reads stories about it and talks about it and frames it in his hands when the sun goes down.”

  “That somebody in Dallas?”