Sliding On The Edge (6 page)

Her look could shrivel a Vegas pit
boss I swear.

“
Get in.” Kay climbs into
her battered truck. “We are going to Sacramento.” She starts the
engine. “Buckle up. And from now on, drop the tacky
language.”

This ride is like the others: silent,
except for the whir of traffic outside and her truck, of course. It
rattles so much I expect parts to shake free and hurtle into the
cars behind us. She never turns on the radio, and I’m sure from the
way she looks she won’t let me turn it on either, so I hum to
myself. This used to drive my mom up the wall, so I hope it will
get to Kay too. That’s exactly what I want to do for the next forty
minutes—push all her buttons. Rile her up. See her turn
red-in-the-face angry. I’ll show her who’s callin’ the shots about
work, about clothes, about my life.

When she pulls into a parking lot and
gets out I follow, dragging my shoes over the steamy asphalt. Push
a button here. Push a button there. Push a . . .she disappears
inside a store without turning around to look at me.

“
She’s pissed.”

I enter the store and find her waiting
next to the drinking fountain just inside.

“
Here’s three hundred
dollars.” She holds out three single bills. “I’ll meet you here
when you’re done.”

I work on looking casual when I take
the money. I don’t say anything. But when I do a one-eighty and
scuff my way to the racks, I roll my eyes at the three hundred
bucks Kay just plunked in my hand. That’s the electric bill, the
water bill, a few movie tickets, and some burgers with curly fries.
Maybe even a rehabbed air conditioner, one that actually works all
the time. Living with Kay might be cushier than I
thought.

I look around the store. This place
holds more promise. Other girls with some style savvy are alongside
me, pawing through the clothes. I take my time, and once in a while
glance toward the drinking fountain. There she is: Kay Stone,
looking like she’s the store greeter, with nothing better to do
than stand where she is.

When I’ve loaded my left arm with
possible buys, the clerk counts out my allotted seven items and
unlocks a dressing room.

“
I’ll check back,” she says
and leaves me inside with a three-way mirror under fluorescent
lights that, with my dark eyes and black hair, turns my skin
pasty.

Mom used to hate dressing rooms like
this, and when it came her turn to try on something, she’d boot me
out the door. “You bring me stuff when I need it, okay?” she’d
say.

“
What’s the deal? You
watched me with my butt hanging out.” “Shut up, Shawna.” And in a
few minutes she’d stick her hand out, dangle the jeans or the
backless top and send me to find another size. Another color.
Another style. This would go on a loooong time.

“
Well,” I asked her once,
when she unlocked the door and stepped out after an hour-long
dressing-room session. “What are you getting?”

On her index finger she twirled a
halter-top.

“
That’s the one I wanted,” I
said. “You told me it was too . . . skimpy or some kind of crap
like that.”

“
Who’s paying for this, you
or me?” She shoved her face close.

I could have said something. Something
like, who does the kid part of your act? But I didn’t. The
halter-top wasn’t worth it. I could have said she was a little old
to wear clothes from the Junior section. But I didn’t. Nothing was
worth the hell I’d get for saying that.

Now, without Mom, I take my time under
the fluorescents. I pull on pants and a top, turn to check my
backside. Not bad. But maybe no more curly fries for a
while.

I’m into and out of the next outfit
before I finish zipping up.

That’s totally not
happening.

And before I know it, I’ve tried on
everything. In little more than an hour, I’ve found my Sweet River
High wardrobe. I pay the bill and hold out the change to
Kay.

“
Keep it. But give me the
receipt in case you have to bring something back.” She folds the
receipt and puts it into her pocket. “Come on. We’ve got work to
do.”

It’s after two when we finally get
back to the ranch.

“
Put your things away, then
come out and do your chores.” Kay walks to the barn.

I shrug after she turns her back. I
want it clear that I don’t care one bit about her, her chores, or
even the clothes. Well, maybe the clothes. A little. It’s kind of
neat to take each piece out and see it in my private space. Sort of
like bringing home new friends and getting to know them
better.

Chapter 11

Kay

Kay found Kenny leaning against the
side of the barn, staring across at Floyd’s.

“
Looks like you survived the
shopping trip!” He gave her his lopsided grin.

“
Yes. I would have preferred
a long morning in hell.” Kay sighed and looked over at the shabby
barn on the next ranch. “If I drank in the afternoon, I’d go next
door to Floyd’s and have a double with him right now.”

“
You raised one before. You
can do it again,” he said.

“
No. This is different.
She’s as skittish as a horse new to the saddle. Nicholas never had
an edge to him like Shawna has.” She closed her eyes and tried to
picture the lanky boy with the wide-set eyes that made her feel
alive whenever he turned them on her. It was hard now to recall him
any other way, except as the young boy who sat between her and
Peter in the movies, or galloped ahead of her like he’d been born
in that saddle. She couldn’t remember him as the man who chose to
marry the girl of her nightmares, the man who joined the service,
the man who left and never returned.

“
She’s really got to you,”
Kenny said.

Kay frowned, drawing her dark brows
together. “Truth is she worries me—a lot.”

Kenny nodded. “Something’s under her
saddle, and you’d best find out what before too long.”

“
Are you trying to scare me
more than I am already?”

“
Nope. Just giving my
opinion. I charge for advice,” he said, pushing away from the barn
and heading toward Floyd’s.

“
Now what are you up to?”
she called after him.

“
Same as always. Those
horses of Floyd’s are out of water again. They may as well have
water. They don’t have much else.”

“
What about the gray? Any
change?”

He shook his head. “She’s better, but
I’m keeping in touch with the vet. Might give her a turn around the
place to stretch her legs.”

Kenny climbed over the top rail and
walked across Floyd’s property. He walked slower these days, but
with the same side-to-side cowboy sway. Once she’d asked him how a
cowboy wound up a Vietnam medic.

“
Every war needs a good
cowboy, don’t you know that?” He’d looked off into the distance
before answering. “‘Sides, I needed a place to hide out. Nobody was
gonna go after me in one of them soggy rice paddies.”

She’d wanted in the worst way to say,
“Hide out?” But she’d only looked at him with the question in her
eyes.

“
I never said I was a saint,
did I?” he asked.

She smiled again as she had
that day.
St. Kenny. That has a nice sound
to it
, she thought as she watched Kenny
fill Floyd’s watering trough. The horses clustered around, dipping
their heads low and drinking under the hot sun.

If I had the
money
, she thought,
I’d buy those horses and put them out to pasture. Someday
I’ll do that. Someday I’ll buy Floyd out. He needs to live
somewhere else, where he doesn’t have that burned-down house to
look at everyday, a place where the memories aren’t so
horrible.

She clenched her jaw. The memories of
that night were horrible to her as well, even after all these
years. She still felt the lick of flames on her face, heard Floyd’s
screams, saw herself in slow-motion running behind Peter and
Nicholas, feeding the water hose to its full length. She wished she
could erase those pictures forever. She hated it when they flashed
through her head and made her chest tight with regret. Now there
was Shawna. More regret, another reason to be tense. She sighed.
She had to do something to get her mind off the past and her
troubling granddaughter for a while.

She looked into the barn. Kenny was
right; exercise might do the gray some good. Kay saddled the mare
and set her down the trail at a slow walk. She followed her
property line to the creek, and then cut across the water and up
the other side, where the hill crested onto an open meadow of
August-brown grass. The gray seemed to perk up, so she nudged her
sides with her heels and the horse shot forward, eager to stretch
her legs. Kay felt that surge of power under her, and thoughts of
the past and Shawna vanished.

She could still sit a horse, even at
sixty. Well, okay, sixty-four. Her one lie, and even Kenny didn’t
know it was a lie. She didn’t tell it to be coy; she told it to
give herself a future, because if she hung around long enough, the
good had to start outweighing all the bad.

She smiled and gently drew
up on the reins. “Okay, old girl, let’s take it slow for awhile
before we pull something.”
Was she talking
to the horse or herself? Maybe both.

The gray seemed suddenly sluggish, so
Kay slid from the saddle and walked her slowly up the
hill.

She and Peter and Nicholas had come
this way so many times that she didn’t think about where she was
going. The trail wound around an open meadow and back to the creek
in an easy loop that took about an hour. She’d be back in time to
help finish the chores and make dinner, and do everything she did
every night.

But now Shawna was back in her mind.
What Kay understood about teenage girls was close to nothing. They
were aliens who spoke a different language, dressed with more body
parts showing than if they were in their bedrooms, and pierced
themselves in places that made her cringe. At least Shawna wasn’t
punched full of holes, at least not ones she could see, anyway. Kay
made a mental note to ask about that later. And what about
tattoos?

She’d never imagined doing anything
close to what the girls did nowadays, but she’d grown up in the
good old days, the fifties. The year she turned fifteen, Elvis
shocked the world with his swivel hips that sent the censors into
cardiac arrest. But there was that Spring Break her last high
school year. Kay fit her boot into the stirrup and slung her leg
across the gray. She leaned back in the saddle and gave the gray
her head.

“
Take your time,” she said,
and stroked the firm neck.

The picture of that April
day in 1957 always came clear and strong, refusing to fade. Yet it
wasn’t an important day at all, compared to others that followed.
Her mother had stood looking pinched as a drawstring bag, and her
grandmother gazed across the table like she’d been stunned by a
blow to the head. They were in Mom’s kitchen, and she’d just come
back from Nancy Kendal’s slumber party.
Strange
, she thought, stroking the
gray’s neck,
I can smell that spice cake
sitting on the table, as if Gram had just baked it.
She could even hear her mother’s voice.

“
What possessed you?” her
mother shouted, but she didn’t wait for an explanation. Instead,
she wrung her hands like she was rehearsing Lady Macbeth and asked,
“What were you thinking?”

“
Everybody’s doing it, Mom.
It’s only a little bleach, for gosh sakes.”

“
A little? Your hair is
orange!”

It was true. Nancy’s had turned a
creamy yellow, but then she’d started with light brown hair. Kay
had to admit she was disappointed with the orange, but frankly
she’d been afraid to add more bleach. Her hair might fall out, and
then what would she do? “It’ll grow out.”

“
And what a fine mess that’s
going to be. A nice black line down the center of your head. You’ll
be able to join the circus.” Her mother picked up her purse. “Well,
you’re not going out like that, so I guess we’ll have to dye it
back.”

“
Where are you going?” Kay
yelled.

“
To the drug store,” her
mother yelled back. “And you be here, young lady, when I get
home.”

The gray mare reached the creek and
stopped midway across for a drink.

How can I compare bleached
hair with what the kids do today
, she asked
herself, sitting taller in the saddle.
I
can’t.

She sighed, wishing she could explain
to her mom how fashionable orange hair had now become. She’d just
been a few decades ahead of her time.

Kay tried to remember the
rest of that day, but it had slipped away to some part of her brain
that couldn’t or wouldn’t recall it.
How
long ago had that happened, anyway? she wondered. Fifty years? More
than half a life.

It was time to get back to this other
half of her life. The half not lived yet with all of its
uncertainty, especially about Shawna.