The preacher's sermon didn't last nearly long enough. All too soon, Julie was watching Griffin drive off with two girls and a little boy in the backseat of his truck. All of them were strapped in, but she still worried that something might happen on the way home.
The whole afternoon and evening stretched out in front of her like eternity.
She drove home and walked around the entire house and picked at loose peeling paint, checked the garden space, and contemplated making it a little bigger the next spring. She heard the phone ring and panicked, ran into the house, and grabbed it on the fourth ring, her mind galloping as fast as her heart.
Annie was crying and lonely for her already. Griffin had wrecked the truck on the way home. That damn pony had bitten Annie's finger off. The cat had scratched her eye and she'd be blind for life. Julie should have never, ever let her go over there to that ranch of horrors.
"Hello," she said breathlessly.
"Julie, were you running?" Deborah asked.
"I'm so glad it's you," Julie said.
It was Deborah's turn to panic. "What's happened? Is Annie all right?"
"Everything is fine. I just let my imagination run away with my emotions. Annie's gone to Lizzy's for the whole day, remember?"
Deborah laughed. "If it weren't five hours over there we'd go shopping to make the time go faster. Do some thing. Don't just sit there and fret."
"What?" Julie asked.
"How long has it been since you went to the beauty shop or shopped without Annie underfoot?"
"I can't remember," Julie said.
"Get dressed and get out for the afternoon. It will do you good."
"But what if she needs me or they call or…"
"Does she have your cell phone number?"
"Oh, no! I didn't give it to her. I'm a bad mother," Julie said.
"Call the ranch house and tell Griffin. If anything goes wrong, they'll call you and you can be home in an hour if you go to Gainesville. Buy something pretty for school next week or do some early Christmas shopping," Deborah said.
Julie agreed but it wasn't easy. She dressed in jeans and a pink T-shirt. She almost changed her mind when she walked out the front door. She couldn't go that far. What ifs crawled out of every crevice of her imagination.
"This is ridiculous," she said aloud. She fished in her purse for the cell phone and called the ranch number, branded into her mind because she'd dialed it so many times for Annie to talk to Lizzy and Chuck on the days they didn't see each other at school.
On the fifth ring she got the answering service and said, "Marita, this is Julie. I'm running over to Gainesville and want to leave my cell phone number in case of emergency. If you need anything I can pick up for you over that way, just call." She rattled off the number and flipped the phone shut.
She backed the truck out of the driveway and drove south. In minutes she'd passed a small cemetery and was on Highway 82 headed east. She couldn't begrudge her daughter the day or the friendship, but she damned sure didn't have to like the loneliness.
Half an hour later she was in Gainesville at the outlet mall. She spent two hours in Burke's buying five outfits, a package of size five panties with the Disney princesses on them, and a pair of new sneakers for Annie. Then she found the sleepwear rack and there was a Barbie nightshirt with a purple dot on the tag which meant it was on sale, so she tossed it in the cart.
She found a pantset and two dresses for herself. All of them had colored dots on the tags, which reduced the price even more. She made a pass through the Old Navy store and added a few more items to Annie's stash and four pairs of socks on sale for a dollar a pair to hers.
She meandered through the discount bookstore and bought a mystery for two dollars. Maybe she'd have time to read again over the two-week Christmas break. She checked her phone every ten minutes the first hour. After that, she made herself leave it alone. It was turned on and Marita would call if Annie needed her. She trusted that woman as much as her own mother.
At mid-afternoon she treated herself to an apple dumpling at Cracker Barrel. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten alone in a restaurant. Family, friends, Derrick, Annie. In that order. When she was a little girl and up until she was sixteen, Luke took his family to dinner once a month at a nice restaurant, where they had to be dressed up so it was an occasion. Then she had her driver's license, a job at the local Subway, and a schedule that interfered with dinners with her parents.
Looking back she regretted that. She should have made time for them even if she was going through an independent streak. In those days she went with her friends to McDonald's or hung out with them at Dairy Queen. Then high school was over and she was in college. Dinners weren't part of the program in those years. Pizza, ordered in, if someone had a few dollars, and ramen noodles cooked in the microwave if they didn't. Dramatic problems solved over a six-pack of beer.
Then there was college graduation and a wedding the same summer. Derrick was five years older and had been courting her for a year. They'd met at a party and six weeks later had fallen into bed at the Jefferson Inn in a room that had a Jacuzzi tub. Dinners with Derrick were always dress-up affairs, with cloth napkins and wine in crystal stemware, followed by sex in the Jefferson Inn with a bath afterwards in the fancy tub. While she soaked in bubbles and jet sprays, he set up his laptop and conducted business.
Annie's dinners out started with her in a high chair making embarrassing-sized messes at first. At three she'd look at the menu with Julie and they'd decide together whether she'd have macaroni and cheese and carrots or a hamburger. Never peas. She hated peas.
Right then, Annie would be having snacks with the Luckadeaus—her relatives. That brought Julie up short. Annie was really kin to those people. When she was thirty-four, would her dinner memories include the Lucky Clover ranch and Lizzy and Chuck? Would she start calling that man who owned the ranch, Uncle Griff? When Julie thought of all the Luckadeau relatives that would come out of the woodwork, she shuddered.
As she ate she wondered briefly what her life would have been like if Annie had been a boy. If Griffin was right and only the girls he and his brother produced would have the white streak, then a son would have had blond hair and blue eyes. Derrick might not have ever known the child wasn't his, but Julie would have. Derrick was one of those men that blended in with the surroundings. When he walked into a room or a bar, the women didn't give him a second glance. Graham's son would have had that Luckadeau magnetic force when he entered a room.
She ate slowly, paid her bill, and went to Wal-Mart, where she meandered through the store to kill time. She bought shampoo, deodorant, and a big jug of bubble bath for Annie. When she checked her watch, it was only four o'clock, so she went to the Dollar Tree and bought six coloring books and a new package of crayons for the kids. Chuck was actually better at coloring than the girls. He took his time and went about it slowly, while they hurried and often went outside of the lines.
At six she started home, stopped in Muenster for an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen, the official stop sign in Texas according to their advertisements. As she was leaving she heard an elderly man ask another if he'd heard about the fires up north. She thought that was strange. Fires were raging out west in California. People were being evacuated by the hundreds in northern California. It had been a dry winter so far all across the United States. She wondered about Mamie's buyer. Had any of her squash relish wound up in the fires?
Griffin got the call right after lunch. He and the kids were playing in the backyard on the swing set when Marita called him about a wildfire that had jumped the Red River north of them and was wiping out everything in its path between there and Capps Corner. He and Carl left orders for the hired hands to plow a fire break around the entire north side of the ranch and headed north with the Saint Jo fire department to suit up for the fight.
It had started west of the Taovaya's Indian bridge on the Oklahoma side of the Red River, traveled east toward the old Courtney schoolhouse, and jumped the river south of that point. It ate up acres of dry grass, leaving ugly blackened earth behind as it traveled south like a steamroller over the gentle rolling hills, prairie, and pastures. People were moving cattle, plowing fire breaks, and doing everything possible to keep it from taking their homes and livelihood with it.
Griffin had fought fires before but nothing like the blazes higher than a house moving right toward the fire fighters. The flames were alive and dancing as the wind fueled them. They dared mere man to tangle with them and reached out with long hungry tongues to gobble up anything in their path. By the time Griffin was suited up and holding a hose he knew it was going to be an all-day affair and could stretch on into the night. The only clouds in the sky were those formed from smoke, so they couldn't even expect relief in the form of rain.
At mid afternoon, the Saint Jo women brought sand wiches and cold drinks in the back of a pickup truck and fed everyone who could stop for a five-minute break. Griffin ate with one hand and kept working. At six o'clock it was approaching the northern edge of the ranch and Griffin prayed the fire break would hold. If it didn't, he'd call Marita and tell her to take the kids to town. Cold chills popped out on him when he thought about losing the ranch house. He'd lived there his whole life, married Dian in the backyard, brought Lizzy home from the hospital to that house, fought with his sister and brother all over the place, and made love to his first girlfriend in the hay barn.
"I won't let it burn," he shouted but no one could hear him above the noise.
He'd long since tossed the fireman's suit into the back of his truck. Even though it was winter, a hot wind blew from the fire and he couldn't breathe with all that equip ment. If he got hurt he'd bear the burden of it. He fished into his overall pocket for his cell phone and called the house. Marita answered on the first ring.
"Time to evacuate?" she asked.
"Not just yet. Kids all right?" he asked.
"They're in Lizzy's room playing. Don't have a clue that there's danger. Told them the smoke might make them cough and that's the reason they had to come inside. Where's it at?"
"One section road is separating us from it right now. I can see the fire breaks. Hope they hold. There's a hot spot to the south of our place, too. Tell anyone who's not busy to go plow a fire break around Julie's house. One flicker and that old house will go up like kindling," he said.
"I'm on it. Be careful," Marita said.
"Always," Griffin hung up and watched the flames waltz over the last hill toward his property.
The tractors arrived to plow a wide furrow all the way around Julie's property, taking out half the garden and a section of her fence. Then the drivers got away from the heat and flames as fast as they could. One spark in the wrong place and a tractor could become a gas bomb.
Fire trucks from Saint Jo, Muenster, Nocona, Wichita Falls, and Wilson and Terral, Oklahoma, were lined up at the section line road. Weary, bone-tired, hungry fire fighters held their breath hoping that the gravel road would hold the fire and it wouldn't jump onto the Lucky Clover ranch. The blaze that bore down on them lost momentum when the wind died down to nothing more than a gentle breeze. It continued to devour the dirt but it didn't look nearly as formidable as it had. When it reached the road, it had sated its hunger and stopped.
He went to check on Julie's place. One ember floated across to her garden but the firemen shot it with a blast of water. Her house was standing even if her garden was all but demolished and her fence on the ground.
Finally, it was basically over at six thirty. Other firemen would keep watch through the night, especially if the wind picked up. It had been a close call. There was nothing left between the ranch and the river to burn and south of the ranch was charred black.
When he called Marita to tell her it was under control, she said that the buildings at Illinois Bend were saved, two homes had been damaged but not lost up near the lake, and a hay barn was still smoldering. He downed a bottle of water and leaned back against the head rest. He couldn't remember the last time he was that tired, physically and emotionally. Or that angry at Graham, either. He shouldn't have gone off to fight a war. He should have been there with him protecting the ranch. He heard the vehicle come to a screeching halt behind him but he was too tired to even look in the rearview mirror to see who was slamming on their brakes.
"What in the hell did you do to my property? Try to burn it down?" Julie screamed at him as she ate up the distance between them with long strides.
He got out of the truck and stood beside it. "I protected it as best I could. Your yard is a mess but we saved the house."
"Where's Annie? Is she all right?"
"She's still at the ranch. It's not eight o'clock yet, is it?"
Julie slid down the side of his truck until she was sitting on the baked earth. Her place had been pitiful enough but now it was truly a mess. Smoke still hung in the air as if the whole county was a cheap two-bit bar on the wrong side of town. Half the fence was mangled under plowed ground. Her house was standing and the cats were huddled under the porch swing. But everything else looked as though it had barely survived a nuclear attack.