Authors: Amanda Carpenter
“You big idiot!” she exclaimed affectionately as she threaded her arm through his and started walking back towards the large house. “What was the big idea, trying to race Strawberry against me like that?”
“Idiot! You’re barely back five minutes and you’re calling me names!” Ralf replied, sounding hurt. “Besides,” he continued, happily argumentative, “I didn’t race Strawberry, but
you
could have broken the sound barrier, by the way you were driving.”
“Ha! I was driving very respectably,” she denied innocently. “Just a little fast, that’s all.”
“You’re going to get your ears blistered if Mom was near the front of the house and watching.” This was said with a great deal of satisfaction.
Jack and the other two were watching as the two headed back towards the house.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Carrie exclaimed, grinning. “I’m going to catch it anyway for being so late. Oh, that reminds me.” She turned back and yelled at the three men. “Jack! Could you see that the nuts on my rear left tyre are tightened as much as possible? I had a flat about a half an hour ago.”
“Sure thing, Carrie.”
“Thanks!” She swiveled back towards the house. Ralf put his arm casually around her shoulders.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hmm?” She tilted her head to look at him as she slipped her arm about his waist.
“It’s kinda nice to have you home.”
She crinkled her eyes at him. “Oh, yeah? It’s kinda nice to be home.”
The sky outside was quite dark when Carrie finally entered her room. She turned on the bedside lamp, moving tiredly and feeling the ache of the past day’s journey in her muscles. Going to an open door in one corner of the room that led to a tiny little bathroom, just perfect for one individual, she bent to turn on the hot water tap in the bathtub and let the water gush out over her left hand before moving back into the bedroom again. Then, lying down on her bed with a tired sigh, she listened to the sound of running water and she thought back over the evening.
It had been happy, as Metcalfe reunions go, but Carrie had been battling with a sense of quiet depression, an undercurrent of tension. She had been too busy remembering recent scenes, quarrelling, a fair-haired man, and words that should have been left unsaid. It was so good to be back, good to be visiting. She was afraid to admit just how badly she needed this visit.
The tub sounded like it was getting full, so she pulled off her clothes and took her bathrobe from the closet. She sighed with a shivery pleasure as she slid into the steaming water. It was relaxing to just sit and soak out all of the weariness, and to just drift in thought.
Dad was still the same. He would never change, would never be anything different from what he was right now. Big, gruff, tough, Cliff Metcalfe was the right kind of man to be in charge of a large ranch. He was just like the original cattle baron from the old west. He was blunt in his words, unsubtle and harsh, and he ruled his ranch and family with the proverbial iron fist. At least he ruled everyone except for me, she amended truthfully. It made for a smooth running household. Except for Carrie.
She could just imagine Cliff Metcalfe’s perplexity when he had been told by a white-garbed nurse twenty-three years ago that offspring number three was a girl, not a boy.
Cliff had never expected anything else but sons and he had no idea how to treat a small daughter. His wife, Janet, did her best to teach him. In fact, Carrie shuddered to think of how her childhood could have been without the feminine influence her mother had provided. Probably she would have ended up as gruff and rough as the rest of the Metcalfe clan.
But at this thought, Carrie had to shake her head. No, that was the whole problem to begin with. Ralf and Steven were more or less like their father in every way. Indeed, she hardly had anything in common with her mother either, in spite of some feminine interests. In a family that resembled a pack of woolly bears, Carrie had been like a young kitten, lost and overwhelmed by her large and overbearing brothers and father, creeping around in corners and jumping like a rabbit whenever someone spoke to her. It was how things had been all through her childhood.
Cliff had reacted with loud words and gruff actions. He was bewildered at the odd little fledgling he had sired and at a loss as to how to treat her. He would switch from treating her as if she had been made of finest glass porcelain to berating her on her “lack of spunk”. And, all the while, a small and rather bewildered little girl would watch him with large and wondering blue eyes. It was enough to drive the man crazy!
Carrie climbed out of the tub and toweled herself dry, still lost in her own memories. Now all she could do was laugh as she remembered how the Metcalfe household had been rocked by her presence in its midst. Sometimes she would secretly wonder if, in the hospital all those years ago, some forgotten nurse had accidentally switched the real Metcalfe baby with that of another couple.
It was an interesting speculation. The atmosphere had dramatically changed when Carrie hit adolescence. It was as if someone had lit
fire to a previously undiscovered fuse in Carrie’s personality for, as soon as she had encountered puberty, she exploded like a firecracker on the Fourth of July, and nothing was ever the same again. She had embarked into the age-old, dreaded stage of teenage rebellion, and rebel she did with style. She became argumentative, aggressive, erratic, and at odd times, tearful. Also, she became wildly creative.
She would sketch everything under the sun, everything that was still or that would hold still for any length of time. Nothing would escape her eagle eye and charcoal pencil. Members of the household would sigh resignedly whenever they saw little Carrie trudging determinedly their way, a cowlick of hair falling in her eyes and a concentrated frown on her forehead. She managed to get Jack, grumble though he would, to pose for a half hour so that she could sketch him on his horse. It had been a rough drawing with dark lines and quickly penciled-in shadows, but it was the very roughness that captured the essence of the cowboy quite powerfully. She had presented it as a Christmas present to her father, and Cliff was immediately caught by the power of the picture. It was the only picture that Carrie ever drew that he could understand, but it was enough to give him a glimmer of enlightenment as to the key to her own personality. He promptly had the picture framed and hung in the large, dark brown-paneled front hall of the house where it held the position of honour and drew the attention of all that entered the house.
He also sent Carrie to art school when she had graduated from high school so that she could study under people who would understand and guide her intelligently. It was something Cliff afterwards regarded as a mistake, for Carrie immediately began to plan for a career as a photographer. He had been sure that she would want to come back home after college and marry someone suitable from the valley to start a family of her own, under the parental regard and guidance of her loving parents—father, to be specific. It was a misunderstanding that eventually led to a glorious argument.
Carrie had no intention of falling in with her father’s wishes, and she told him so quite emphatically. Outraged and furious at her “adolescent show of rebellion”, as he called it, Cliff threatened to cut off all of her considerable allowance, and would not pay for her last year of college. It didn’t bother her in the slightest. She merely packed her things and headed off for Chicago to start a life of her own. She called up an old acquaintance who in the past had admired her artwork and photographs, and she told him of her situation. He immediately offered her a job as a photographer for his modeling agency, and it was the true start of her career.
Carrie loved her work, loved it so much that she would spend as much as fifty hours on the job in a week’s time. She built up a good working rapport with her models and became more and more in demand as her photographs became more and more known. Also, she worked on projects of her own and hoped to soon have an exhibition of photographs and artwork in Chicago. Negotiations with the art gallery had been arranged and all her work had been completed. All she had to do was wait for the last-minute preparations and advertisements, and everything would be all set for the opening of the exhibition in August, two months from now.
In the meantime, she was on a much-earned and much-needed vacation for as long as she wanted. It really should have been heaven.
It wasn’t.
But she didn’t want to think about that now. Carrie spent the next fifteen minutes convincing herself of that as she finished her preparations for bed. She tried to ignore the fact that she would have to think about it, sooner or later, and deal with her messed-up life. There would be time to face it tomorrow. Sleep came very easily for her that night, tired as she was from driving to Grand Junction from Chicago in two days. Her slumber was deep and unbroken.
Morning dawned with a brilliance as the Colorado sun blazed over distant mountains in a golden splash of radiance. Instantly, as the first tip of that glowing orb crested the line of mountain tops, the whole valley was awash with a vivacity of colour that changed the scene from the lavender and pastels of a watercolor painting to that of a brilliant oil, and yet was still subtle in its changing hues.
Carrie was unaware of the magnificence of the scene outside her window, however, caught as she was in the throes of sleep. A noise gradually began to sink itself into the well of her consciousness, and she surfaced slowly back into the waking world. Opening her eyes and looking about her, still fuzzy around the edges of her brain, she moaned as she caught sight of her bedside clock.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” she grumbled, closing her eyes in horror. The early hour was enough to turn one’s stomach. The pounding at her door came again. It was too much to take lying down.
“Do that again and I’ll break your face!” she howled at the door as she bounded out of bed, threw on her robe, strode over to yank the door open and glared threateningly at the rude intruder. Her scowl soon disappeared, though, and she slowly started to grin with delight as she took in the bulky length of Steven, her oldest brother by seven years. Of all of the Metcalfe family, Steven was her favourite, for he came the closest to understanding her. He hadn’t been home last night but had been away at the north cattle station, checking out the health of the herd there. He had been expected back some time later during the day.
“How’s tricks?” he asked laconically, his large smile and the twinkle in his eyes belying his casual tone.
“Steven! Back already—oh, here, let me get dressed and I’ll be out in a minute,” she exclaimed, running her hands through her hair distractedly as she made an effort to wake up.
“Coffee’s on downstairs. Emma just made a fresh pot,” he informed her, his rumbling deep voice coming up from his chest like a small earthquake. He chucked her under the chin with a rough and affectionate hand. “See you on earth, sport.”
“Sure—er—be right there.” She dashed back into her room and fumbled for a pair of jeans and a thin summer top. It was already warm in the room and she knew that she probably would want to change to shorts later, but that could wait. Moving quickly and efficiently, she made short work of cleaning her face and putting on some light make-up before twisting her glossy, honey brown hair up into a comfortable knot high on her head. She stood back and reviewed herself critically.
A small-boned, slight girl looked back, her dark blue eyes long and slightly slanted and her cheekbones strong (traces of an American Indian ancestry). A mouth now held crooked but usually well positioned, and a firm, stubborn chin completed the inspection.
“Your face is too thin,” she informed the mirror helpfully. “And you’ve got bags under your eyes.” The girl in the reflection shrugged philosophically as if to say, “
C
’
est la vie,”
and Carrie hastened to tell her, “You do have nice hair, though.” When her hair was down, it swirled around in a layered effect, a mass of curls making a halo about her face.
Sticking her tongue out at the mirror and not waiting to see its reply, she hurried down the stairs, towards the back of the house where the huge kitchen was. She loved the design of the house with its big, open verandah that ran the length of the back side. There was a feeling of airiness in the house from the uncarpeted, glossy oak floors to the simple taste reflected in the décor. It was roomy enough for all the traffic that travelled through every day, and things were in a perpetual state of energetic chaos with the ranch hands coming in and out and her two brothers and father, not to mention her mother and Emma, the housekeeper and cook, and the girls who helped out with the housework twice a week. It was impossible to get lonely on the Metcalfe ranch, Carrie thought. You never got the chance.
Raising a thankful prayer towards heaven for her cozy apartment waiting for her eventual return, Carrie stepped breezily into the kitchen, her face readily smiling as she found her brother sprawling in a chair beside the kitchen table, his legs easily taking up most of the large space in front of him. He was calmly demolishing a huge breakfast roll that he held in one hand while his other hand engulfed the circumference of a steaming mug of coffee. The plate beside him was empty, save for a few crumbs.
“You didn’t save me a breakfast roll!” she scolded him lightly as she found a fresh cup of coffee poured and waiting for her.
Steven looked surprised. “Did I eat all of them already? There were only four, anyway.” She groaned at this. He glanced at her, his face suspicious. “You never eat anything for breakfast, so what are you complaining about?”
“It’s the thought that counts,” she told him. She moved to kiss his forehead. “It’s good to see you. How’s everything up north?”
“Things are just fine,” he replied disgustedly. “Personally, I think it was a wasted trip, but Dad wanted me to check up on Patrick.”
She asked, amused, “Why didn’t you tell him you thought it was a waste of time instead of giving in to him? I swear, this family has Dad so spoiled he must be rotten inside!”