A Cowboy's Plan. Mary Sullivan

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      Kurt rose and followed the Rev down the street. The good Samaritan had charity in his heart for a member of his flock, but none for a stranger. Not very reverend-like behavior.

      He walked with his hands behind his back, his shoulders slightly stooped, a big black cricket with long thin limbs.

      Because of that split second of fear she’d felt, she shouted at his back, “Drop in tomorrow for some candy. I’ll serve you myself. Maybe it’ll sweeten your disposition.”

      She turned and stomped out of town.

      No way was someone as priggish and uptight as that Looney Tune holding her back.

      “Just you try and stop me.” After what she’d lived through in her twenty-two years, the preacher man didn’t intimidate her one bit.

      Halfway home, a cloud passed across the sun, like a dark harbinger of bad tidings. Harbinger. Great word. She needed to bring it home to Hank. He loved words.

      The cloud turned the Technicolor scenery into black and white. No, not all of the landscape. Only the tiny portion she walked through, like a cartoon character with a rain cloud hovering over her.

      Unsure why that made her feel afraid, she shivered.

      C.J. STEPPED OUT of the store onto sun-drenched Main Street to hunt down BizzyBelle and put her back in her pen. His father and Kurt walked up the street toward him.

      “Kurt,” his dad said, patting the man’s shoulder, “I need to talk to my son. Head on over to the rectory. I’ll only be a minute.”

      He turned to C.J. and said, “Un-hire that girl.” No preamble. Just an order.

      “What?” Since when did Dad interfere with how C.J. ran the candy store?

      “I said, don’t hire her.” The Reverend clasped his hands behind his back. “She’s a bad influence. A Satanist.”

      “For Go—For Pete’s sake, Dad. She isn’t a Satanist.”

      “She most assuredly is. Have you seen the way she dresses?”

      “Of course I have. It’s just her style.” His own doubts about hiring Janey bothered him. He didn’t need to hear them echoed by his father.

      “I have a mission in life,” the Reverend intoned, “to keep my son safe and on the right path.”

      Not that old argument again. “Dad, I’m twenty-six.” Sometimes the frustration threatened to explode out of him. “I make my own decisions in life.”

      His father looked at him with that reproach that said C.J. had disappointed him. But the man in front of C.J. wasn’t his father. He was the Reverend Wright.

      “You know,” C.J. said, “I’d like you to slip off your holy mantle once in a while and just be my father.” An ordinary man talking to his ordinary son.

      The Reverend frowned, obviously lost. Dad didn’t have a clue what C.J. was talking about.

      “I’m not in the mood for one of your fire-and-brimstone lectures this afternoon.”

      “Son,” the reverend said—C.J. hated when he called him son in that sonorous voice he used on the pulpit—“your life is finally on the right track. Keep it that way.”

      “Dad, I am. I only hired the woman. I’m not dating her.”

      “Get rid of her,” Reverend Wright said.

      “Mom left the store to me. I assume she thought I could handle the responsibility.” C.J. shoved his hands into his pockets. “Besides, there aren’t a whole lot of people in town who want to work in a candy store.”

      He started toward Bizzy, who was eating something at the curb on the far side of the street. Scotty waved to him on his way from the hardware store to the bank.

      “What about the rodeo?” Dad asked, shooting the conversation off in another direction.

      C.J. stopped. So. Dad had heard about that. “What about it?” he snapped.

      “I heard you signed up for Hank’s rodeo. Why are you involved in it again? Have you no respect for David’s memory?”

      “How dare you accuse me of such a thing?” With his back to his father, C.J. squeezed his lips together. Yeah, he had a lot of respect for Davey, but he also had no choice.

      C.J. turned to face down his father. “I knew Davey better than anyone and I’ll bet he’ll root for me when I finally get back up on a bronc.” Which he planned to do tonight.

      As usual, Dad’s mouth did that lemon-sucking trick that occurred whenever they talked about the rodeo.

      “You don’t want to go down that road again. Look how it ended last time.” With a final look of reproach, Reverend Wright walked toward the church, tall, sure of himself, and implacable.

      C.J. scrubbed his hand across his short hair. Yeah, he remembered. It had ended with Davey’s death. C.J. needed that prize money, though.

      It’s not just about the money, his conscience whispered. Not by a long shot.

      “Oh, shut up.”

      C.J. shook his head. His return to the rodeo was all about the prize money. That was it. He would rodeo and win. He had someone to cover for him in the shop now. No way was C.J. getting rid of Janey.

      No matter what Dad said, C.J. wasn’t returning to his wild ways. He’d grown up and worked himself over into a mature man. Couldn’t Dad see that?

      C.J. was in no danger of falling backward. He could control any superficial attraction to Janey and he would rodeo for the money, then get out of it again. No worries, no danger.

      REVEREND WALTER WRIGHT strode down Main Street toward the rectory.

      He’d thought things were finally okay.

      C.J. had settled down, had grown up and taken responsibility for the boy he’d sired with that trollop from the city.

      Now, along came the young Gothic girl to tempt him. What if he again became that wild man he’d been throughout his teenage years? Walter couldn’t live through that again. Was the Gothic woman nurturing C.J.’s dangerous dreams of the rodeo? Had they been seeing each other for a while and Walter hadn’t known?

      His hands grew damp. Someone said “Hello,” and the Reverend nodded. He had no idea who had just walked past him.

      He couldn’t go through the nightmare of C.J.’s adolescence again. He couldn’t watch C.J. fall into temptation, turn his back on everything Walter had taught him, sire another child out of wedlock. C.J. had survived that dark day four years ago when a bull had gored David Franck, but what if this time it was C.J. who died?

      Reverend Wright craved the solace of his church and stepped into its cool interior. It immediately brought him a measure of peace.

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