Bounty

I reached out blindly, knocked it off the nightstand, mumbled, “Damn, shit, fuck,” as I pushed to hang off the edge of the bed and grab it.

  I remained hanging over the edge of the bed as I looked at the screen telling me it was just after six and the number calling was local but not programmed in.

  Damn these mountain folk. With all that quiet and nature and peace, why did they get up so fucking early?

  I’d programmed in Max’s number. Jim-Billy’s. Krystal’s.

  This one…whoever it was, I didn’t know.

  I took the call and put the phone to my ear.

  “’Lo,” I muttered.

  “Jus. Deke,” his deep voice reverberated in my ear.

  Sleepily, and agreeably, I felt that reverberation in my pussy.

  I was enjoying that as Deke’s alert, attractive morning voice kept coming at me.

  “Max got your text about the glaze you want. He’s got shit on today…”

  Deke continued speaking about picking up materials, the fact I needed to select a color for the paint for the utility room, how Max couldn’t get the supplies to the house until Tuesday afternoon, and other stuff about Deke having more than enough to do in the meantime but my utility room was going to have to be delayed. This information coming at me included the option of Deke going that morning to pick up the stuff, which would mean he’d be late getting to my place.

  There was also something about Bubba coming to help him on Wednesday when he was going to blow insulation into the rafters so my heat didn’t escape out the roof, something he stated was priority.

  It was a lot of words, especially from Deke. And I liked listening to them, especially the way his voice sounded and the fact it was sounding over the phone in the morning after he’d called me.

  But unfortunately he stopped talking.

  Though I’d find he didn’t stop talking.

  I’d just let his voice lull me back to semi-sleep, hanging over the side of the bed.

  “Yo! Jus! You there?” I heard him bark.

  My body jerked, I blinked and put a hand to the floor to push myself up into the bed.

  “Yeah, I’m here. I’m listening.”

  Nothing from Deke and I thought I’d lost him right before I heard him mutter, “Jesus, the gypsy princess fell asleep fuckin’ talkin’ to me.”

  “I only fell semi-asleep,” I corrected. “I’m fully awake now,” I shared (partial lie, I was only mostly awake).

  Another mutter of, “Jesus.” Then, “I’ll let you get your beauty rest and go pick up the shit.”

  “No,” I said, this part groggy, part desperate. “I like progress. You’re so fast and so good, four hours of lost progress could mean anything. You could have the kitchen done in four hours.” That was an exaggeration, but whatever. Slightly groggy thoughts of a kitchen were dancing merrily in my head as I finished, “So no way I wanna lose four hours.”

  “Be at your place at eleven, eleven thirty and you’ll get progress,” Deke replied, obliterating my merry kitchen thoughts.

  “How about you be at my place at the normal hour, tell me where to go to get the shit and then I’ll go pick it up so Max doesn’t have to waste his time to see to that errand.”

  “So she did hear me,” Deke replied, though he did it like he wasn’t actually talking to me.

  “Like I said, dude, semi-asleep.”

  “Whatever.”

  I lounged on my side on my bed but I did it feeling the amusement laced in his one word not only in my pussy, but also several elsewheres and those elsewheres were not (all) erogenous zones.

  “Deal?” I asked, doing my best to pay no attention to those elsewheres.

  “Deal,” he replied then, not surprising with Deke, he offered no words of farewell.

  He just hung up.

  Me being me and way too into Deke, I grinned at my phone thinking that was hot.

  * * * * *

  I stood outside my truck on the side of the road, the wind picking up, so much of it that it was blowing even my heavy hair in my face as I put the phone to my ear.

  “Yo,” Deke answered.

  “Houston, we have a problem,” I shared.

  “You got lost,” he guessed.

  “I can read directions, Deke, even in your handwriting, which, by the way, is a little scary,” I told him.

  Deke ignored my assessment of his handwriting.

  “Then what’s the problem?” he asked.

  “I have a flat. I also don’t have a spare. And I further don’t have AAA. Though I do have a bunch of stuff in my truck and some of it’s back in the bed.” I looked to the heavens. “Last, I’m no meteorologist but I think in about five point two seconds, it’s gonna start raining.”

  “Where are you?”

  “You know that road off the main road into town that you turn off to before you turn off on the road that you then turn off on to finally turn onto Ponderosa?” I asked stupidly, not having memorized the road names (some of them being county road numbers) that led to my house.

  Deke did not confirm he knew that road.

  He just stated, “I’ll find you,” and hung up.

  As I stood there waiting for Deke to find me, I tried to enjoy the lovely feel of the wind whipping against my skin. I didn’t often get opportunities to stand outside and have the wind glide through my hair, shape my clothes to my body.

  However, I wasn’t able to fully enjoy this lovely feeling. I was too busy glancing at the back of my truck where bags of cement that didn’t look waterproof were laying.

  Fortunately, Deke’s arrival in his bronze Ram with patterned steel tool cabinet in the back growled up like the monster it was, the sound of the engine beating back the soft wafting of the wind.

  Deke was behind the wheel, phone to his ear, and I watched with some marvel as he drove past me, executed a three-point turn then drove past me again to park at the side of the road in front of my truck, all with his phone still to his ear.

  He angled out of his truck, yes, with his phone at his ear.

  “Yeah, County Road 18. ’Bout a mile off of Main Street.” I heard him say as he sauntered toward me and my vehicle.

  He glanced at me as he passed me and stopped beside the bed of my truck.

  “Tow it. Fix it. I’ll text you Jus’s number so you can deal with her on it,” he kept speaking. “Right. Cool. Later.”

  He disconnected and shoved his phone in his back pocket, his gaze coming to me.

  “Wood, man who owns the local garage, is sending a tow.”

  “That’s cool you did that. Thanks,” I replied just as a gust of wind blew a hank of hair across my face.

  I pulled it away, flicking it back over my shoulder and finding when I’d accomplished this, Deke’s eyes were at my shoulder.

  “Paint’s in the cab. The rest in the back,” I shared.

  His head twitched like his mind was elsewhere and I’d alerted him to the present then his chin lifted and he turned to the bed.

  I moved around the hood to get the paint that was on the passenger side, which included cans of primer, as Deke instructed I buy.

  I moved all the paint to his truck. Deke moved all the cement and grabbed the glaze.

  I started to go to his passenger side when he said, “Leave the keys under the floor mat, you got one in that heap.”

  I lifted my gaze to his.

  “Say what?” I asked.

  “Leave the keys under the floor mat. Wood’ll need ’em.”

  “Like, leave the keys to my truck under the floor mat with my truck abandoned on the side of the road?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yeah, like leave the keys to your truck under the floor mat with your truck which has got a flat and can’t go nowhere so it’s on the side of the road so whoever Wood sends out with the tow, someone who’ll be here in probably ten minutes, can get your truck and they’ll have the keys.”

  “Why do they need the keys?”

  “So they can deal with your flat and not have
to roll that old-ass fucker out of a bay to park it while they wait for you to come pick it up.”

  “Deke, I’m not leaving the keys to my truck right here.”

  “Jus, no one’s gonna steal that wreck and not just because they can’t without changing the spare themselves, a spare that doesn’t exit. But because they won’t have enough time and no one would want that wreck in the first place.”

  He was ticking me off.

  “It’s not a wreck,” I snapped.

  He looked to my truck and back at me.

  “Jus.”

  That was it.

  Just Jus.

  Like that said it all.

  Sure, my faded red old Ford pickup looked like a wreck.

  But it was no wreck to me.

  “Maybe I’ll wait until they get here,” I suggested.

  “You wanna hang at the garage while they find time to fix your tire?”

  This did not sound fun and I had things to do that day.

  “Deke—”

  “Keys. Truck. Now, Jus. It’s gonna start comin’ down and soon and we want that cement in your house, not in my truck turnin’ into concrete while we argue about somethin’ stupid.”

  Shit.

  With no other choice, I stomped to the driver side and put my keys under the front seat (for he was correct, I had no floor mats).

  I then stomped to the passenger side of Deke’s truck. He was already at his side.

  We climbed in.

  Deke started up his behemoth and we took off.

  “Need to get a new ride, Jus,” he advised me.

  “I do not. My truck’s perfect.”

  “Perfect for that gig you got goin’ on. Not perfect for a woman who lives alone in a remote location like this with an unpredictable climate like the one we got in Carnal.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Unless you take serious good care of it, you’re lucky you only got a flat.”

  “I take serious good care of it,” I assured. Then asked, “The gig I got going on?”

  “The whole gypsy princess thing.”

  I looked from the road to him. “It’s not a part of my gypsy princess thing. My gypsy princess thing isn’t even a gypsy princess thing. It’s boho.”

  “Whatever,” he muttered.

  But I was still put out.

  “Not whatever, Deke.”

  He glanced at me before looking back to the road and ordering, “Calm, Jus. Not bein’ a dick. Just looking out for you and that truck is thirty years old, it’s a day.”

  “You’re correct. It’s also the truck my granddad owned when I was two and my family was visiting him and we took our first special just-grandfather-granddaughter trip to go get ice cream. That first being the first of many. Something that was special to me for years, but started off special, if the story my folks and Granddad often told that, when I was three and he said he was getting a new truck, I demanded he give the old one to me. I guess I was pretty adamant about it and made an impression. No matter how many trucks came later, we never went for ice cream in anything but that truck. He kept it for decades. The last time we went to get ice cream, I was twenty-nine, and it was in that truck. And he left me a lot when he died, most of that really good memories. Part of that was that truck.”

  When I was done telling my story, Deke had no reply and the interior of the cab felt strange. Not good. Not bad. Just strange.

  And I guessed I wasn’t done laying it out because I continued to do so just as I’d been doing, sharply with unhidden temper.

  “On the sad day that truck dies, I’m parking it in my front yard, filling the bed with dirt, and planting flowers in it. In other words, I’m keeping that truck forever, Deke. Forever. And ever. And ever.”

  “Baby, calm,” he urged softly, not taking his eyes from the road.

  I sucked my lips between teeth and felt the sting of tears hit the backs of my eyes so I turned my head immediately to look out my side window.

  Baby, calm.

  And with just that, I was calm.

  About what he said about Granddad’s truck.

  Everything else that was Deke, I was not.

  God, why didn’t he remember me?

  Why could he not be mine?

  Why couldn’t I have his voice in my bed in the morning, feeling that in my cunt when he could do something about it?

  Why did I have a life that gave me so much, so fucking much, all of it meaningful, all of it amazing, and yet the one thing I ever saw that called to my poet’s soul in a way that I knew only it could feed it, nurture it, give it peace, I could not have?

  Baby, calm.

  “Shouldn’t’ve said dick about your truck, Jus. Wasn’t cool,” Deke said quietly.

  I drew in a deep breath and replied, “It’s okay. You didn’t know.”

  “And sorry you lost your granddad.”

  God, seriously, he just had to stop.

  “Thanks,” I murmured.

  Deke said no more.

  We got home. I brought in the paint. Deke brought in the other stuff, doing it while the skies sprinkled water.

  It wasn’t until five minutes later, when I was behind closed door in my bedroom, when the heavens opened.

  I sat on my bed sideways, staring out the two-story slanted wall of windows into the storm, thinking the visual I had was sheer beauty and hoping I never got used to it at the same time counting my blessings, the only two I could come up with at that moment was that I had that view and that I had a roof.

  Then I got my shit together, opened my nightstand, and took out my leather-bound notebook. A different one than the one Deke saw me scribbling in when I wrote a gold record song about him seven years ago.

  I’d filled that one up. This one was new.

  I flicked the band from around it, opened it to where the pencil was wedged into the page and I stayed cross-legged on the bed, head bent, letting some of what I’d just felt pour onto the page.

  It was past time. My agent had phoned weeks ago saying Stella Mason (her stage name was her maiden name, Stella Gunn) of the Blue Moon Gypsies wanted another song.

  She and the Gypsies had turned three of mine multi-platinum in the last four years.

  They’d always only recorded their own stuff along with a number of kickass covers. It was an honor they’d branched out to me.

  But Stella was also a friend. She was killer talented, so amazing onstage, it was hard to believe. She’d loved my album. Loved it. Got her hands on it and reached out to me before it was even released to connect about how much it had moved her.

  And she was that one shining beacon in the life that didn’t let that life in any way consume her, chew her up, take pieces out of her.

  She had her shit together. She also had a man who hung the moon for her. Not to mention, they made two babies who they doted on.

  It was like that life didn’t touch her, even as entrenched in it as she was, as crazy as her band was (and they were all nutcases, lovable ones, but extreme ones).

  She had the love of a good man, of her family, of good friends (some of whom I’d met) to keep her safe.

  So she stayed that way.

  I finished the lyrics, had set the notebook aside and was tapping them into a text to Stella when I heard a knock on the door.

  I looked up to my wall of window to see it was still raining, not hard but coming down.

  I threw my phone with my unfinished text on the bed, crawled off, walked to the door and opened it.

  Deke stood there.

  No.

  Deke carrying a white deli bag stood there.

  Lord, he’d gone out to get lunch.

  Apparently, for me.

  He held it out, (yep, for me).

  “Tuna melt,” he announced. “Sourdough. Cheddar cheese chips. Shambles is all about caramel today, so it’s one of those cookie-lookin’ brownies, not chocolate, but with caramel.”

  I took the bag, my poet’s soul keening, my lips muttering, “Thanks.” br />
  “Wood says they’ll be done with your truck around four. Just needs you to phone in with a credit card. He’s good with a couple of his boys bringing it up.”

  “I’ll call him.”

  “Also said, your truck is so kickass, he wants to buy it. I told him not to go there.”

  He told him not to go there.

  Looking out for me.

  I could do nothing but say, “Thanks again.”

  He nodded and shifted as if to move away so I continued on a blurt.

  “My dad died not very long ago. We were tight. It’s fresh but I’m…I…” I shook my head, “I’ll never be over it. Brings up other stuff. Like Granddad dying even though losing him was a while ago. I overreacted then sulked. I’m sorry.”

  Deke nodded briskly. “Lost my dad when I was two so I don’t know what you’re feelin’ since I don’t remember the man. Still know it sucks not to have a dad and I get where you’re at so you don’t have to apologize for me puttin’ my foot in it.”

  Damn, he’d lost his dad when he was two.

  Two.

  That keening turned to longing, to touch him, soothe him, something.

  Anything.

  I could do nothing except defend him against himself.

  “You didn’t know.”

  “That don’t mean I didn’t put my foot in it.”

  This was true.

  I let that go and said softly, “Sorry you lost your dad, Deke.”

  “Long time ago,” he noted.

  “I’m still sorry,” I pushed.

  “I am too.” After he said that matter-of-factly, he put an end to that part of the discussion with, “We good?”

  I nodded, preposterously overwhelmed that he bought me lunch, unhealthily overwhelmed he wanted us to be “good.”

  With me having nothing more I was willing to give him on a blurt or in any way, I had nothing more to detain him when he turned and walked away.

  * * * * *

  At around eleven thirty the next day, I wandered from my deck, through my room, down the hall and to the utility room.

  Yesterday, Deke had primed it and painted it the soft blue I’d chosen.

  Right then, smooth, wet, concrete floors were drying.

  I moved down the hall, all of which was now drywalled (but not taped), what Deke had done when I was picking up the stuff and between paint and cement drying. Following the noises, I found him in the powder room which it was clear upon stopping in the doorframe he’d just begun to start with the sheetrock.