Nighthawk & The Return of Luke McGuire (3 page)

Her heart was pounding and her mouth was desert dry. For the first time since moving here, she wished she owned a gun. For the first time she questioned whether isolation was safe.

Drawing a deep breath, she gathered her courage and peered around the corner…and found Craig Nighthawk digging up her ruined flower beds with a spade. Staring in disbelief, she stepped out into plain view.

He paused, reaching up to wipe the sweat from his brow, and saw her. “Mornin’,” he said.

Several seconds ticked by before she could even find her voice to reply. “My God, you scared me!”

He looked surprised, as if such a notion had never occurred to him.

“I had no idea anyone was out here,” she told him angrily. “Then I heard someone digging and had all kinds of horrible thoughts!”

He nodded, leaning on his spade. “Sorry. I guess I should’ve rung the bell when I got here.”

The easy way he apologized stymied her anger, leaving her wound as tight as a top with no way to expend the energy. Inwardly she struggled for equilibrium.

“I didn’t realize you were so edgy.”

“Edgy?” For some reason she felt as if he had just insulted her. “Why wouldn’t I be edgy? I live all alone in the middle of nowhere, and nobody is supposed to be digging in my garden at dawn! Of course I’m edgy!”

He tipped his head back a little, studying her with an intensity that somehow left her feeling emotionally naked. She wanted to turn and flee, or at least kick something, but good behavior forbade it. She scowled at him. “What are you doing in my garden?”

“Digging up the plants Cromwell ruined.”

“It must run in the family.”

“What do you mean?”

“First Cromwell devours my flowers, and now
you’re
digging them up with a spade. My karma must really stink.”

He wanted to laugh. She could see it in the sudden lightening of his obsidian eyes, and in the twitch of the corner of his mouth. The sight helped ease her irritation. But apparently laughter didn’t come easily to him, because he never unleashed it. “I told you I’d repair the damage. Sorry I couldn’t get out here right away.”

Four days had passed since her garden had become a gourmet feast, and she thought she had told him to forget about it altogether. “I must be overlooking something,” she said. “Since you weren’t expected, there’s no need to apologize for tardiness.”

“I’m apologizing for not fixing your flower beds sooner.”

Esther shook her head, wondering if this man was a little slow. “I believe I told you not to worry about it. The frost will kill everything shortly anyway.”

“Maybe not for a couple more months, and it seems wrong that you should have to look at dead plants for that long just because my sheep strayed.”

“Really, I think I can handle the trauma. This is just a minor catastrophe, after all, and I
did
rather enjoy watching Cromwell dine. So please, don’t feel obliged to do anything at all about it.”

“I can at least dig up the dead plants so you don’t have to.”

In her present mood it would have been so easy to take amiss his insistence. She almost did, in fact, until she remembered this was the man who had bluntly asked if her leg hurt. If he could be that blunt, then he wouldn’t likely pussyfoot around telling her that he’d dug up the remains because she couldn’t possibly do it with her gimpy leg.

She opened her mouth to tell him about the man with the small tilling machine who, for a reasonable fee, would take care of the garden, but instead was astonished to hear herself say, “Would you like some coffee?” Well, she told herself, it would be churlish not to offer him
something
when he was working so hard on her garden. Never mind that she hadn’t wanted him to do it. He was plainly doing what he felt to be the right thing.

“Sure. Thanks.” The smile that touched his lips looked as if it weren’t used to being there. “Just black will do.”

As she limped back into the house, she heard his spade slide into the dirt again.

Damn, she wished he hadn’t come back. Now she would feel beholden to him for cleaning up that mess. She hated to feel beholden.

Worse, he had made her realize that her fears hadn’t been left behind. For all she had hidden herself in the middle of nowhere, her fears had managed to follow her and still waited, ready to pounce in an instant. Wasn’t there any way to escape?

Mugs in hand, she limped back down the hall and onto the front porch.

“Thanks.” He gave her a nod as he accepted the steaming mug of coffee, then sat on the top step and leaned back against the porch railing. “It’s a beautiful morning.”

Esther agreed. She settled into her rocker and watched the western mountains slowly transform from a dark purple to a gray blue as the light shifted steadily from pink to the whiteness of day. Little by little, her tension and irritation seeped away.

“I already bought the flowers for the flower beds,” Nighthawk told her presently. This morning he had his long inky hair tied back with a piece of twine and had doffed his gloves to drink his coffee. He had strong, lean hands. Esther wondered why they kept drawing her attention.

“Really,” she started to say, “you don’t need to—”

“I know I don’t,” he interrupted. “You made that clear. But I’ve already paid for them, so I’ll plant them. I couldn’t get any of those flowers you had before, though. Too late in the season. They gave me something else, but I don’t remember what they’re called.” Actually, he just hadn’t paid attention. He’d only been at the shop because he needed flowers to replace the ones Cromwell had eaten, and if they didn’t have the original varieties, then he was willing to plant whatever was available.

“Whatever they are, I’m sure they’ll be lovely.” She gave up the fight. This man was bound and determined to plant replacement flowers, and short of summoning the sheriff to evict him, she wasn’t going to be able to stop him. Nor could she find it in her to continue to be annoyed by his insistence. He felt he had to do the right thing, and that was a quality to be admired.

He rose from the step and went to the bed of his pickup, returning a moment later with a flat full of darling little purple flowers. “I should have asked the guy to write down the name. Do you know what they are?”

Esther shook her head. “I haven’t a clue. My knowledge of flowers is limited to a half-dozen really common plants. These are very pretty, though. If you’ll leave one unplanted for me, I think I’ll paint it.”

“You paint?” He looked at her with real interest as he set the flat down on the lower step and reclaimed his seat.

“Watercolors.”

“Is that your job?”

She nodded.

“Now that’s impressive. I’ve never met a real artist before.”

Esther braced herself for the usual questions about how many paintings she’d sold and how much she made in a year, but they never came. Craig Nighthawk took another sip of coffee and looked out over the gently rolling prairie toward the mountains. “It’s nice to make your living the way you want.”

“Yes, it is. Do you?”

He gave an almost undetectable shrug. “I used to. But what I’m doing now isn’t so bad. It’s a heck of a lot better than some jobs I’ve worked. At least I’m out in the open.”

“I’ve been here almost three years,” she told him, “but I’m still startled by how wide-open everything is. At first I thought it looked so barren but now…” She spread her hand expressively. “This summer I found myself standing on the porch and watching the way the wind ripples across the grass. It looks exactly like waves on a sea.”

“Sure does. You’ve got some good grassland here. Looks like it hasn’t been neglected as long as my place has.” He jerked his head toward the scrubby land on the other side of the fence. “Somebody overgrazed it, then let it go wild. It’ll be years before I get it back in shape.”

Esther blinked. “Really? I never thought about that.”

“Neither did I. I thought when I bought the place that I was getting a lot of good land.” He glanced her way and gave her a rueful smile. “’Course, what did I know about grazing sheep? I drove a truck.”

“Big occupational change.”

“Still should’ve read up before I jumped into it.”

“So what do you do about it?”

“Little by little we’re getting the pasturage in shape. Then we’ll be able to increase the flock. Might even bring in some cattle.”

“Cattle? But they can’t graze with sheep, can they?”

“That’s a commonly held belief, but the fact is you can graze ’em side by side. They mostly eat different plants, and between ’em they’ll help keep the pasture healthier.” He shrugged. “Then again, maybe I won’t get in any deeper than sheep. Ransom Laird has a spread up north of here where he raises sheep, and he seems to be doing well enough.”

“I met him once,” Esther remarked. “When I was doing something for the sheriff. He seems like a nice man.”

“Yeah.” Tipping his head back, Nighthawk downed the last of the coffee, closing the subject immediately. He set the mug on the porch with a thump. “I’d better get back to work,” he said. Rising, he returned to the garden and started digging.

Esther stared after him, wondering what she had said wrong.

E
sther really needed to get to work. She had a gallery showing in London coming up in a couple of months, and she still had several of the promised paintings to complete, not to mention one she hadn’t even started yet. Instead she was standing in her kitchen cooking a huge breakfast for a man she didn’t know who plainly just wanted to be left alone.

She couldn’t quite explain why she thought that. He’d been sociable enough, but had given her the distinct feeling that it wasn’t easy for him. Of course, it wasn’t easy for her either, so perhaps she’d been guilty of projecting her feelings onto him.

And what the hell did it matter? Obviously she was losing her mind, cooking breakfast for a man she didn’t know when she made it a rule to avoid men as much as humanly possible. Something must have shaken a few of her screws loose.

Even so, she kept right on cooking, frying slices of the small ham she’d meant to use for her dinners, making home fries because she was out of bread for toast, and finally scrambling some eggs.

And something inside her quivered with unease. Was she doing this for Mr. Nighthawk because he’d been kind enough to restore her garden—or was she doing this because it was what a woman was supposed to do for a man? The mere thought nauseated her.

But she finished cooking breakfast anyway. When she went out front to get him, he was just finishing. Her garden plots were a riot of pink and purple blossoms and Nighthawk was putting the spade in the back of his truck.

“Come in for breakfast,” she called to him. “I have home fries, ham and eggs.”

He turned slowly, his inscrutable face betraying just a smidgen of surprise. “I don’t think I ought to come in.”

It was as if his words snapped her into a bird’s-eye position, looking down on the two of them, seeing herself as a woman alone in the middle of nowhere with a man she didn’t know. Of course he didn’t want to come into the house. “I’ll bring it out onto the porch then.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Of course he was hesitant. He had no idea what kind of person she was. The realization eased her own apprehension. If he was concerned about such things, then she probably had nothing to fear from him.

She had a round table and chairs at one corner of the porch, and it was there she served them both breakfast. The breeze blew gently, carrying the fresh scents of the morning earth to them, enhancing the already delicious aroma of ham, potatoes and eggs.

Craig ate with obvious appreciation. “You eat like this every morning?” he asked her.

She felt a laugh quiver on her lips and in the pit of her stomach. “Of course not.”

He looked straight at her then, his dark eyes holding her. “Thank you. You didn’t need to go to this trouble for me.”

“It was the least I could do.”

The breeze gusted, snatching a tendril of her auburn hair and dragging it across her face. She tucked it back behind her ear and tried to ignore the way this man’s attention made her feel. Little butterflies had settled in her stomach and she felt exhilarated somehow. But then he returned his attention to his plate, and she felt strangely deflated.

The silence felt awkward, so she searched for some safe topic of conversation. “How is Cromwell doing?”

He looked up again and smiled, an expression that took her breath away. When he was straight-faced, he looked stern and proud, but now he looked…welcoming and warm in a way that made her feel she could trust him. A little warning sounded in some corner of her mind, reminding her that looks could be deceiving. After all, hadn’t her father been as handsome as the devil himself?

“Cromwell is Cromwell.” He shook his head slightly and shrugged. “I’m beginning to think I should have named her Marco Polo, or Magellan. She managed to cross the fence again and when I found her yesterday she was maybe a quarter mile from the rest of the flock.”

“How does she get through that barbed wire?”

“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know. The really amazing thing is that she crossed the electrified fence, too. Sometimes I think she teleports.”

A bubble of laughter rose from Esther’s stomach and tumbled over her lips, bringing another smile to the harsh landscape of Craig Nighthawk’s face. They both apparently had the same thought because at the same instant he whistled and she hummed the opening bars of “The Twilight Zone” theme. And together they burst into laughter.

“Great minds think alike,” Craig remarked. “I don’t know about that sheep, but I’m honestly beginning to think she jumps the fence.”

“It could be. They can jump, can’t they?”

“I haven’t a clue. It’s not something that ever crossed my mind before, but it’s clear as day that that ewe couldn’t have come
through
the fence, because if she had she would have gotten a serious sting from the electrified fence and wouldn’t have gone any farther.”

“Why do you electrify the fence? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Only for predators, and Cromwell, if I’ve done it right. So far it seems to be working and it’s easy to move with the flock. These home fries are really great, by the way.”

“Glad you like them.” She went inside to get the coffeepot and returned to fill his mug, then set the pot on a hot pad beside them.

“What made you move out here?” he asked. It was a casual question, the make conversation kind, and there was no reason she should feel threatened by it. She felt threatened anyway.

Looking away from him, she stared out over the softly rolling land toward the mountains. “I…needed to get away. From everything.”

“Well, you can’t get much farther than this,” he said easily enough. “At times I’ve gone weeks without seeing another living soul.”

She returned her gaze to him then, feeling cautious but curious. “Do you want to get away, too?”

He hesitated, helping himself to another mouthful of potatoes before he answered. “Getting away can mean a lot of things. I wanted to get away from the reservation.”

She hardly knew how to respond to that. Being of immigrant stock herself, she bore the guilt of a nation when it came to the treatment of the Native American peoples. At the same time she had very little real notion of the wrongs that had been done to people like Craig Nighthawk, so she felt herself floundering for something that might be an appropriate response. “I come from Seattle,” she said finally. “I really don’t know a whole lot about reservations….” Even in her own part of the country.

He shrugged. “Most people don’t. And some are better than others. The one I was raised on is dirt poor and it kind of encourages kids to dream of escape.”

“Is that why you settled on truck driving? To escape?”

“Partly. Partly it had to do with a guy I met when I was about twelve. There was a truck stop on the edge of the res and I hung around over there looking for odd jobs. I could pick up a dollar here and there to do things like empty the trash, wash a windshield—whatever. Anyway, there was this trucker named Chigger who used to lay over there for a day or so every couple of weeks. For some reason he took a shine to me. Taught me how to play poker and introduced me to science fiction. He kept a whole bunch of his favorite books in the cab, said they were his best friends. I’ll never forget when he gave me a copy of
The Foundation Trilogy.
I still have it.”

Esther was touched. “He sounds like a wonderful man.”

“He was.” Craig smiled faintly. “He also filled my head with tales of being on the road. Action, adventure, new sights, new people. He made it sound like going on a voyage of discovery. As if truckers are the world’s great explorers.”

“Do you still feel that way?”

“Oh, maybe not as much as when I was a kid. But I still love it. There’s something about climbing up in the cab to set out on a fresh trip that just—” He broke off and shrugged. “I felt free.”

Esther pushed her plate to one side, having eaten all she could. She preferred breakfast to be a light meal. “You must feel very confined now, then.”

“I reckon.”

A sound from the screen door drew her attention. Guinevere stood there, looking expectant. “So you finally decided to get up, sleepyhead?” Esther smiled and explained to Craig, “Guin always sleeps late in the morning. Usually I’m out in my studio and working for hours before she finally decides to get up.”

Guin woofed and Esther rose, going to let the dog out for her morning run. But Guinevere had an itinerary of her own and instead came over to make Nighthawk’s acquaintance. He greeted the dog with his palm up and Guinevere quickly decided that he was okay. She accepted a scratch behind her ears, then dashed off the porch and out into the fields.

“She loves it here,” Esther said. “So much freedom. In Seattle I had only a really tiny fenced yard for her to play in.”

Craig rose, stretched mightily, then gathered up his dishes. “I need to be getting back to work. So do you, probably. I’ll just carry these things in for you.”

Esther stayed where she was on the porch, not wanting to make him uneasy by going into the house with him. He made two trips, even though she told him just to leave things, thanked her for a great breakfast, and drove away.

The morning was suddenly quiet again, except for the harsh cry of a hawk, the whisper of the breeze and the steadily fading growl of the truck engine.

Standing at the porch rail, Esther watched the dust cloud raised by Craig’s truck as it traveled down the rutted drive to the road. Finally it vanished and the day was still and empty again.

In his absence, Esther realized what a powerful presence Craig Nighthawk was. Not even Guinevere’s eventual return filled the gap.

Strange, she thought, then headed out to her studio to paint before the morning light was gone.

In a burst of extravagance, she had replaced part of the north side of the barn’s gambrel roof with skylights, so that light poured into the barn. As long as it wasn’t raining, she always had the best light by which to paint. If the day turned gloomy, there were other tasks to fill her time, such as sketching new ideas.

Today she worked on a planned landscape of the Rocky Mountains as they appeared to her from her property. It was one of her most ambitious projects to date, intended to fill a sixty-by-forty-inch sheet of three-hundred pound stock. Contrary to her usual method of painting and then flattening the paper, which rippled from the watercolors, she had decided to stretch this piece on a frame because it was too large to flatten on her usual equipment.

After soaking the paper for several hours, she had stapled it tightly to the frame. Today it was as taut as a drumhead, and dry so she could begin sketching on it.

The sense of magical expectation that had consumed her this morning began to return, filling her with anticipation of the project ahead.

Hours later she was still working steadily when the letter carrier drove up. Esther had a mailbox out on the road like everyone else hereabouts, but Verna Wilcox had taken one look at Esther’s brace and had started delivering the mail right to the studio or house. Verna claimed it was no trouble, especially since Esther didn’t receive a whole lot of mail, mainly a flurry of bills toward the end of the month, and an occasional letter the rest of the time.

“Knock knock,” Verna called cheerily from the door of the studio.

“Hi, Verna!” Smiling, Esther turned from her work. “What have you got for me?”

“A letter from your agent.” Verna carried the white envelope to her and paused to look at the sketch which now covered two-thirds of the paper. “Oh, my, my, my, that’s going to be pretty.” At forty-five, Verna was a younger version of her mother, Velma Jansen, the dispatcher at the sheriff’s office. Both women were thin to the point of emaciation, with lined, leathery skin, and a tendency to smoke too much and speak their minds with complete freedom. “’Bout time you got around to painting a big picture.”

“They’re certainly increasing in popularity.”

“Of course. People need things to hang on the wall over the sofa.”

There was no way on earth Esther could take offense at Verna’s opinion. Art for the sake of art wasn’t important to letter carriers. Verna was practical to the last bone in her body and anything without a utilitarian purpose was a waste.

Esther tucked the letter from her agent into her pocket. “I’m finished for the day. The light’s starting to go. Do you have time to come in for a cup of tea?”

Verna glanced at her watch. “Sure thing. You’re the last stop on my route and I don’t need to get the truck back until four-thirty.”

Together they walked back to the house and into the kitchen where Verna settled at the table while Esther put the pot on to boil.

“What happened to your garden out front?” Verna asked her. “I thought you had geraniums and marigolds out there.”

“I did, but a sheep ate them.”

“A sheep?” Verna barked a laugh. “Let me guess. One of Nighthawk’s sheep?”

“A ewe he calls Cromwell.”

“Did he pay for your garden?”

“Actually, he came over just this morning and replanted it with all those new flowers.”

“He did?” Verna looked surprised. “He hasn’t exactly been the sociable sort hereabouts.”

“He seemed nice enough to me. In fact he insisted on replacing the flowers even though I told him it wasn’t necessary.”

Verna nodded slowly, taking in the information. “Well, he hasn’t had much call to be sociable around here, I guess. He used to be a truck driver, you know.”

“He mentioned that.” Esther poured boiling water into the teacups and carried them to the table. She put out three different boxes of herbal tea as well as Earl Grey and Darjeeling.

Verna selected Earl Grey and dipped the bag in and out of the water. “Well, he’s not a trucker any more, and if you want my opinion it’s because of all that time he spent in jail. Probably lost his job.”

“Jail?” Esther sat slowly as her heart skipped uncomfortably. “He’s an ex-con?”

“No! No, no, no,” Verna said swiftly. “Hell, you was here at the time. Don’t you remember? He’s the one they arrested first for raping the little Dunbar girl. Before Dud Willis confessed.”