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As I walked down Sheridan Avenue, I was feeling a mixture of nostalgia and dread. The nostalgia was there because I had spent the embryonic beginnings of my career in geology in the oilfields nearby. The dread was there because of the reasons I had returned.
The air was cold and dry, and the great backdrop of Rattlesnake Mountain loomed like a frozen wave on the western horizon. It was late March, too early for campers and the skiers didn’t come this way, so the wide streets of Cody, Wyoming, were dotted only by a smattering of local pickup trucks. The crush of summer tourism would not begin until May, when the snowplows opened the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park.
I shifted the backpack child carrier, redistributing the weight of the baby girl who was riding in it. “This town was named for Buffalo Bill Cody,” I said, as I continued along the sidewalk, trying to dispel the unpleasant mixture of feelings by chatting with the baby in the habit I had developed when I carried her along on my walks. “Buffalo Bill was a scout who became the first and last of the great Indian Show hucksters. He made a lot of money and built that hotel over there, and named it after his daughter.” We were passing The Irma, a classic Victorian-Western confection that fronted proudly on Sheridan Avenue, the main drag through town. “But when he died, he was flat-busted
broke, and the story goes that his widow sold his corpse to pay the bills; true or not, his burial shrine down in Denver is something of a tourist trap. Imagine living your life as best you can only to have your grave become a roadside attraction. But of course, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center was named after him, and if he hadn’t already been dead, he could have certainly held his head up over that.”
The baby gurgled conversationally as she bobbed along behind my shoulders.
“I’m going to take you to just one of the five museums housed in the Center,” I told her. “The Whitney Museum of Western Art. It’s time we started on your cultural education. You just stick with Auntie Emmy. I’ll start you out with some cool cowboys and Indians stuff, like Charlie Russell or my all-time favorite, Frederick Remington.”
Of course I didn’t expect a seven-month-old baby to know a Remington from a Pokeémon card. My real reason for taking her to the art museum was so that her mother could take a much-needed nap. Her mother was my dear pal Faye Carter Latimer, although Faye didn’t use the Latimer part, out of rage. The baby was Sloane Renee Latimer, the most cheerful half-orphan you’ve ever met. At least, once we got her past the colic she was cheerful. The colic was dreadful. When Sloane Renee screamed, the world stunk.
I truly hoped that Faye was getting some sleep, because it had been a long drive up from Salt Lake City, and the purpose of her visit was worrying her even worse than it was me. She was supposed to meet with a potential client. I should have been fairly relaxed. I was just along to fill in the cracks between single motherhood and her career. I could kick back and indulge in visiting my favorite museum in the whole world.
My anxieties stemmed from a variety of stimuli, not least of all was the fight I had just had with Faye. I had left her staring at the wall in our room at the Pawnee Hotel. The Pawnee is a good old girl of a hotel, but many rungs
below what Faye was used to on the great ladder of hostelries.
It had been one of our small but deadly fights.
“Why didn’t you book us a room at The Irma?” she had inquired, keeping her voice neutral.
“This was cheaper,” I had replied, trying to sound matter-of-fact.
She had come back quick and harsh: “Is this some kind of a joke, or are you trying to tell me you think it’s time I began to live within my diminished means?”
She had given me the opening I had longed for, but I had diverted. “I’ll just take a walk while you get some rest,” I had said. “You’ll want to be fresh for your meeting.”
“Fine,” she said, making it sound like it wasn’t. “I’m not sure I can sleep in a place like this, but we’ll see if fatigue can prevail where my silver spoon dumped me off.”
I scrutinized her words as I continued down Sheridan Avenue, now passing various shops that sold Western-wear and Indian trinkets made in China. It had been the most direct communication we had had since before the baby was born, and I tried to tell myself that her efforts to get her business might therefore be a good thing. Perhaps the fresh stress of trying to function in the outside world would pry her out of the brooding silence she had dwelt in since her husband’s death.
Further down the street, I noticed that I was doing some brooding of my own. It began to hit me that I was at least as tired as Faye. After all, we had gotten up at four and had been on the road since six, and I had done most of the driving. I cast a longing glance at a saddlery, wondering if I’d ever own a horse again.
When I inherit the ranch, the first thing I’ll do is buy another horse,
I told myself, but the thought brought its usual sadnesses. Life was marching by, and the viability of ranching continued to spiral downward. In the next block, I sniffed at the heady scent of cinnamon rolls that spilled from a cafeé, and wondered if I’d ever have a disposable income again, so I could indulge
in the little goodies that somehow make life seem more secure.
“Do you smell that, Sloane?” I asked the baby. “Just as soon as you grow more teeth, we’ll try some. You’re going to
love
cinnamon rolls.” I stopped, realizing that I had not had lunch. I knew that I should turn around and make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from my stash of ingredients in Faye’s car, but instead I followed my nose into the cafeé, saying, “But as your mother always says, there’s no better time than the present.”
The rolls were fresh and sweet, without being cloyingly so, and rich in the spicy liquor that so delightfully oozes from the swirls of that pastry. I shared my prize frugally with the baby, giving her tiny bites and making mine last too, then dawdled over a cup of coffee, relieved at the way the sugar and caffeine revived me. But no matter how slowly I savored the treat, it was too soon gone, and someone else was waiting for the table, so I got up and prepared to leave.
I was just putting on my mittens to push the door open and leave when I about collided with a man who was just coming in from outside. He had his collar turned up against the cold and his head tucked down, so I didn’t see his face at first, but something about him was instantly familiar: the thickset torso, the wild brush of hair, the humble clothing designed for manual labor. Recognition registered somewhere deep in my gut before it even hit my brain, and when he looked up, ready to dodge me, his eyes widened as he recognized me, too. It was Frank Barnes, my old oilfield boyfriend. I had not seen him since I had moved on to a better job in Denver. How many years had it been?
I started to step back, unsure of my welcome, but he grinned, so I did, too. “Frank! How are you?” His hair had gone silvery gray. How old was he now? Fifty?
He clasped my shoulders with his thick, rough hands and stared happily into my eyes, then his gaze slid sideways. As he took in the little creature that was riding papoose on my back, his mouth sagged open in happiness.
“Em! You’ve got a … a baby!” His eyes shot next to my left hand, upon which I had already placed a mitten.
My stomach tightened. “She’s … I’m babysitting for a friend.” Immediately I wished I had lied and claimed her as mine, because Frank had left me for—
No, I left him,
I asserted to myself—
or more precisely, I left town to take that job, and while I was gone, he—but I suppose I was never really going to come back …
We were being jostled now by other people who were trying to come into the restaurant, so Frank let go of my shoulders and stepped to one side, but his eyes stayed locked on Sloane Renee Latimer. His face had spread into a delighted grin. “She’s beautiful,” he said, offering her a callused finger to grab. He leaned his big face close to hers and said, “You certainly is. Yes, you certainly is.” The baby was totally enthralled by his big, grizzled smile. Her eyes had gone round, and she was giving him her best drop-dead-gorgeous dimpled grin.
“Yes, she has me wrapped around her littlest finger. This one, right here.” I was relieved for the distraction. It gave me a moment to pick my wits up off the floor. Frank had passed on into the ranks of the Married People, and I was still Single, something of which I was not proud. I was beginning to wince, now that I was almost thirty-nine, when the headlines of supermarket tabloids trumpeted statistics about women who did not marry by thirty, or thirty-five.
Too quickly, Frank’s gaze shifted back to me. “You’re just leaving. Can you stay? I was just going to grab some …”
“Ah, sure.”
Beaming with delight, he led me back toward one of the tables and helped me off with the backpack. He set it down expertly, flipping the bail out to steady it. He held out his hands and she gurgled. He offered me a quick
may I?
glance and then undid her shoulder harness and lifted her from the backpack.
She made a sound of glee. Holding her in one arm, he unzipped his jacket with the other hand, spread wide the
layers of goose down, and nestled her inside against his flannel shirt. Sloane laid her little heady right down against his neck and patted his chest with one tiny hand. I tried not to sigh audibly as the memory engulfed me of how secure I had always felt there.
The woman behind the counter boomed, “Hey there, Frank! Who’s your buddy?”
“Pretty little thing, huh? She’s with my old friend Emmy here.” He carried the baby over to the counter but lifted one finger away from his two-handed cuddle to indicate my presence. To Sloane, he said, “What you having, little one? Some nice salami and Swiss? Cup of coffee? Hm?”
The woman behind the counter laughed. “Your usual.”
“Yeah.”
She reached out and tickled the baby by one ear. “That’ll be up in just a few. I’ll call ya.”
Frank brought Sloane back to the table and sat down. The two of them seemed lost in a lovefest, he kissing and caressing, she settling down and looking drowsy for the first time all day. “What brings you to town?” he asked, his lips lost in the soft down of her hair.
“I’m just babysitting while the baby’s mother takes care of some business here in Cody.”
“What kind of business does she do?”
“Oh, she’s a pilot, and she uses her airplane to transport things that need special or discrete handling. She calls her business, ‘Special Deliveries.”’
Frank raised an eyebrow.
I laughed. “It’s nothing too complicated, really. She’s got a potential client here—some old guy who’s a family friend or something—who’s here for some special meeting at the art museum. Bunch of specialists in for some reason. The one Faye’s meeting has some artwork that the museum wants to include in an exhibit. Collectors can be fussy about who handles their treasure, and how it gets where it’s going. Insurance and such. So the idea is that she’ll meet with the guy and the curator, and they’ll see if they can work things out.” I smiled, thinking of the early days I knew Faye. “The
fact is that she doesn’t really have a business. It used to be that her biggest problem in life was figuring out how to use her trust fund to dispel boredom. She bought a hot twin-engine plane and got to tooting around with expensive stuff, like jewels. Growing up with the trust fund set, I guess she knew a lot of people who needed things moved on the quiet. It was a good day when it covered her expenses.”
“But then she became a mother.”
“Right. Then she got pregnant, and decided that she truly loved the man and wanted to do it by the book, so she married him. Unfortunately, her trust fund turned into a pumpkin the instant she got hitched.” I shook my head. “And like you, I don’t know how well her flying service is going to mix with motherhood. I picked up a pilot’s license myself along the way—”
“Really?” he said, obviously impressed.
I was glad I had at least slipped that success into the discussion. “It’s nothing as fancy as Faye has; just the basic single-engine VFR rating—but it taught me that you’ve got to stay sharp and concentrate or you shouldn’t be at the controls. Well, the baby doesn’t seem to need as much sleep as most babies, and when she does konk out, Faye often lies awake.”
“Sleep deprivation,” Frank mumbled. “Worry.” He grunted empathetically. “Well, Em, you always did get yourself involved in interesting things.”
I smiled uncomfortably. Yes, Frank knew that I traveled in strange circles, going places and hanging out with people he was unlikely to meet. He had all but never left northwest Wyoming, except to go to Vietnam. Now he was married, and had a son. How old would that child be now? “How’s your wife?” I asked, unerringly coming up with a sure way to jam a wedge into the conversation.
Frank turned and looked at me squarely, the pleasure in his eyes suddenly extinguished. “She drinks,” he said bluntly. “I’m just in town to attend an Al-Anon meeting.”
I made a quick study of my boots. “I’m sorry to hear.”
“Yeah. Well.” Suddenly he laughed, like wasn’t life
crazy? “Hey, that’s what I get for foolin’ around. Ya knock the lady up before you know her, and ya take home what ya catch.”