Authors: Carolyn Brown
Rye stood at the kitchen window and stared at the lights across the road. She was in Granny’s bedroom, no doubt cleaning it out in a fit of anger. He’d called her mother a hussy in a joking tone so why had she taken such offense? He hadn’t meant it to start a fight but she was so damn cute when she was angry.
At midnight the light went out and he picked up the phone and punched in the speed dial to the house phone. On the third ring she picked up.
“Hello?”
“Wishing you had Caller ID so you could hang up on me?” he asked.
“You must be psychic.”
“Still mad?”
“I’m too tired and sleepy to be mad.”
“Good. I’m slated to ride in a rodeo tomorrow night down in Houston. Want to go with me?”
“Rye, I’ve got to get this work done,” she said.
A stone the size of the Rock of Gibraltar replaced his heart. He’d hoped she’d drop everything and go with him. But that was a fool’s thinking.
“I’m leaving at sunup tomorrow morning. Have to be there to check in for the bull riding at six thirty. If you change your mind, be ready at six. I’m sorry I called your mother a hussy but I was only joking,” he said.
“I’m sorry I accused you of wining and dining me to get my watermelon farm. Be careful and call when you get there.” She rolled her eyes. Why in the hell had she said that? She sounded like his mother or worse yet, her grandmother.
He wanted to dance a jig right there in the kitchen. “I will do that. Good night, Austin.”
“Good night.” She held the receiver to her ear long after the dial tone said he’d hung up.
At six o’clock the next morning she awoke with a start and ran to the living room window. Rain was coming down in sheets, blowing hard against the window, but she could still see his pickup as it pulled out of the driveway. She watched until the tail lights disappeared and then she brewed a pot of coffee. After breakfast she started work in the garage. Granny had kept every scrap of paper that her father had ever brought home from school and they painted a picture of her father growing up.
She was having a midmorning break when the phone rang and she really did wish for Caller ID. “Hello?”
“Are you awake yet?” Rye asked.
“Of course I’m awake. I’ve been in the garage all morning.”
“Miss me making breakfast for you?”
She smiled. “My fat cells did.”
“You don’t have any fat cells.” He pictured her in those cute little pajamas and swerved over into the wrong lane. A loud car horn jerked him into the present and he pulled off onto the shoulder and stopped.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Car horn. Someone was angry at someone else. So what did you find in the garage?” Anything to keep her talking. Her voice was rye whiskey, all fire and warmth with an aftertaste that lasted all day.
“I found four hundred dollars stashed away in the bedroom last night so now I have to go through everything a piece at a time so I don’t throw away money,” she said.
“Our grandparents are Depression kids. They hid money because they were still afraid of banks.”
“Well, in today’s economy I got to admit I’m about ready to hide it in fruit jars in the cellar too. Where are you?”
“South of Dallas a hundred miles. Got caught in the morning traffic and that held me up but I left in plenty of time to allow for it.”
“My cell phone is ringing and it’s Mother’s ring tone. I’d better go.”
“Talk to you later,” Rye said.
“Okay. Be careful.”
It hadn’t been a dial-up-sex call but Rye felt like a teenage boy who’d hacked into the 900 numbers and had free access to them. He went over every word she’d said all the way to Houston.
Tuesday evening she had to make a run to town for milk and bread and missed his call before he settled onto the bull’s back. The bull came out of the chute with both hind legs off the ground, his horns practically touching the dirt in front of him and twisting and turning like a whirlwind. Rye hung on for eight full seconds and qualified for the Thursday night ride, but it was the toughest ride he’d ever done. Not because of the bull but because the whole time he had one hand in the air and the other around the rope, he kept wishing he’d thought to ask for Austin’s cell phone number before he left.
He tried calling the house several times but got no answer. He was ready to get in his truck and drive all night back to Terral when at ten o’clock she finally picked up.
“Hello,” she said breathlessly.
“Hello,” he said in his slow Texas drawl.
“I’m so glad you called. Didn’t know if you’d try to call tonight but I hoped you would. I laid the phone down on the kitchen counter after we talked this morning and went to get my cell phone to talk to my mother and forgot about the other phone and the battery went dead. I spent the day cleaning out the garage and why in the hell didn’t you get my cell phone number before you left…” She sucked in a full lung of air and started again, “…what if you’d been killed on that bull and why do you ride those mean things anyway and…”
“Whoa!”
“Don’t you whoa me, Rye O’Donnell!”
He slapped his thigh and turned around three times in the motel room. She cared enough to worry about him!
“I’ve got a pen in my hand. What is your cell phone number? I’ll program it in and put it on speed dial. And if you were so worried why didn’t you call me?”
“How could I? Granny didn’t have Caller ID and I don’t have your cell number.” Her tone was pure frustration.
“Two things. It’s programmed on her phone. Your cell phone is star number one. Mine is star number two. And it’s on a piece of paper on the refrigerator. Those last couple of weeks her memory was bad so I wrote it down and stuck it to the refrigerator door with a magnet.”
“Well, hell’s bells, nobody told me that. How’d your rodeo go?”
“I racked up enough points to ride again on Thursday. I’ll be home Friday evening. Want to drive down tomorrow and watch me ride on Thursday?”
“Still got work to do, and I want to look at that wine business a little more. Do you have any idea what she means by fast yeast like Montrachet? She says in her recipe that watermelon juice has a tendency to spoil before it reaches a preservative level and to use this fast yeast and I need something called Campden tablets.”
“No, but I bet we can find out if we go to her suppliers. She had to have ordered it from somewhere because you sure can’t buy anything like that at the grocery store in Terral.”
He did a few fast moves of a line dance in happiness. She was intrigued by the wine. Would that keep her in Terral?
“I guess so. And she talked about putting the fresh squeezed juice in the refrigerator for the first twenty-four hours for the Campden to work. And to never use anything but pure juice. She said some recipes call for water but to ignore them. I feel like I’m groping in the dark but it’s all so interesting,” she said.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’ve seen her float a hydrometer in the juice to see how much sugar to add. She told me once she had to do it with every single recipe because the watermelon juice was different in every batch she grew. A good wet spring made for better juice. Drought years were horrible.”
“Guess I’ve got a lot to learn,” she said.
Wednesday, she kept her cell phone with her but by midmorning figured out that she had no reception down in the wine cellar so she left the door open and laid it on the top step. It rang ten minutes later and she scrambled up the stairs so fast she didn’t even see the granddaddy long-legged spider.
“Hello!”
“Well, that was a spicy greeting. Are you about to get that rat’s den cleaned up? Think you can come home a few days early? We could fly to the beach and spend a long weekend together. What do you think?” Barbara asked.
“Sounds like fun but it’s not going to happen, Mother. It’s coming along but not very fast and I’ll be here the full time. Right now I’m in the wine cellar.”
“You are where?”
“In the wine cellar. Granny made this wonderful watermelon wine that everyone rants about. She’s got a fancy setup down in the storm cellar. I’ve been learning about making watermelon wine and, Mother, she’s made a small fortune with it.”
Barbara laughed. “Well, that’s a business you can sell and build a nice little nest egg for retirement. Gotta run. There’s a salesman with a question about a used car. Talk to you later.”
She’d barely made it to the bottom of the steps when the phone rang again. She got it on the second ring and answered.
“Hey, what are you doing today?” Rye asked.
“I’m in the wine cellar. I tried the garage but all I could think about was wine so I’ve been down there reading over her notes and trying to figure out things. I found a place where I can buy that Montrachet yeast online and from the looks of it she bought it in pound packages. And Campden is sodium metabisulfite in tablet form and goes into the juice twenty-four hours before fermentation. It’s a process, let me tell you. I can’t wait to make my first batch.”
“Sounds like you are a fast learner. Granny told me the first time she decided to make a batch that it wasn’t any better than glorified Kool-Aid but you’ve got a head start with her recipes.” He wanted to be next to her, not all the way across the damn state, but the purse if he won tomorrow night would go a long way toward a bull he had his sights on buying for his own rodeo stock.
“I wish I had some good ripe melons to start on right now,” she said.
“Well, darlin’, you’ll have to wait until the end of June for that. Maybe even the first of July since you’re getting a week late start on planting. But they’re always ready by July 4 so you should have your hands deep in the juice by then.”
It hit Austin right then like a dump truck full of bricks falling on her head that on July 4 she’d be in Tulsa in a new office with a lovely view and at least a hundred people on her payroll full time instead of six until the middle of July.
“You still there?” Rye asked.
“Yes, I’m here. I was just thinking.”
“Well, go on back to your wine making business. I’m meeting a fellow with a good rodeo bull for sale for lunch. I’ll call you later tonight.”
“I’ll be right here,” she said and hung up with a heavy heart. She went back to the house, made a ham and cheese sandwich, put it on a paper plate with a pile of barbecued chips to the side, and carried it with a can of cold Diet Coke back to the cellar.
It was almost seven when Rye called again and she was shocked to see that it was dark when she hustled to the top of the stairs for the phone.
“Where are you now?” he asked.
“I’m turning out the light and leaving the cellar. Where are you?”
“Fixing to walk into the rodeo and see how my competition looks. If I win the purse tomorrow night I’m buying the bull. We agreed on a price and he’ll be a great addition to my stock for the summer.”
“Purse?” she asked.
“The money for being the best,” he laughed. “You ever been to a rodeo?”
“No.” She pulled the string on the light and closed the cellar door with one hand.
“What was that noise? Did you fall?”
“The cellar door got away from me,” she said.
“First bull is fixing to come out of the chute now. I’ll call you before I go to sleep,” he said.
“I’ll still be here,” she said.
How long could she say that? The idea of never trying her hand at watermelon wine was weighing heavy on her mind. Maybe she’d keep the farm and hire a foreman, take the best of the melons to Tulsa, and make Lanier Wine up there.
She carried that idea into the house but it didn’t last until she’d run a bath. “Granny would jinx it and make it all go bad. Then I’d have nothing but gallons of glorified Kool-Aid.”
Thursday, he called twice in the morning, twice in the afternoon, and just before he got on the bull. Then he called her five minutes later to tell her his score and things were looking really good for buying the new rodeo bull.
“That’s great! So you’ll be home tomorrow evening?” she asked.
“That’s right and you’d better be ready to go on our very first real date. How about a picnic down on the riverbanks?”
“What if it rains?”
“Then Chinese and a movie in Duncan?”
“That sounds like a plan,” she said.
“I miss you,” he said softly.
Why was it that as long as she was talking to him on the phone she was fine? Sure, she visualized his cute butt in those Wranglers and his smile and that dimple in his chin. And she dreamed about him kissing her again and again. But when they were together she felt like her world was falling apart at the seams. Maybe it was because they’d started out with a phone relationship and that’s where she was comfortable.
“You going to answer that?” he asked.
“I’m sorry. I was thinking about that picnic.” She told a white lie. “What would you like me to bring?”
“A bottle of Granny’s wine. You. A pizza from down at the Mini-Mart. You. Don’t bother with napkins. Did I mention bringing you?”
“Why no napkins?”
“If you get pizza on your face or hands, I’ll lick it off,” he said.
A delicious shiver raced down her backbone and settled low in her gut. “You are a rogue, talking to me like that when I’m a thousand miles away.”
“You mean you would like it?” he teased.
“Good night, Rye. I’m hanging up now.”
She heard his husky voice chuckle as she flipped her phone shut.
Friday morning she forced herself to do some work in the garage but her mind kept going to the cellar and Rye. She’d think about making wine and that would bring on a tasting session with Rye which would trigger a hot feeling on her lips thinking about kissing him after tasting watermelon wine. She almost popped the cork on a bottle of Lanier Wine just to see what it did taste like but she wanted to share that moment with Rye.
After lunch she took a bath, washed her hair, and went to Ryan to cash the hired hands’ checks. She’d promised to buy the ice cream that week and she looked forward to seeing her grandmother’s old friends again. They did not disappoint her. They were waiting at the same table when she pushed inside the drugstore.