Even the Nights are Better. Margot Dalton

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СКАЧАТЬ was a gentle sweet spring rain, pattering and rustling in the new green leaves, dancing on the silvered surface of the river, whispering through gullies and shallow draws in the midnight blackness. The moisture flowed like a blessing across the hills and valleys, and by dawn the world was made new, washed clean and bright as a freshly minted coin.

      Just as the rain ended, a silver-gray Camaro came skimming along a country road in the early-morning freshness, its sleek sculptured sides catching and reflecting the rising sun’s dazzling rays that broke into rainbows among the silent dripping trees.

      This vehicle belonged to Vernon Trent and was his one wry, half-joking concession to longing for vanished youth. On this glorious spring morning, Vernon Trent had just passed his forty-fifth birthday and was, on the whole, comfortable with himself and his life. He liked the maturity and confidence that came with middle age, enjoyed his friends and daily routines and didn’t really miss the real or imagined crises of youth.

      But he did have a stubborn boyish love for his shining, sporty Camaro, and never more than on a morning like this when he was alone at the wheel, the only living being in a world so fresh and lovely that it brought a lump to his throat.

      His excuse for this drive was a scouting trip before office hours, a search for likely properties for a wealthy businessman from Dallas who fancied a retirement home here in the Hill Country. But this pretext was pure nonsense, of course, and Vernon was well aware of the fact.

      After all, it wasn’t as if he’d be likely to stumble across some new piece of land for sale out here. Vernon Trent knew every inch of these hills as intimately as he knew his own tidy kitchen back in the old stone house in Crystal Creek. There was nothing for sale along this road that he wasn’t aware of already, and few that he hadn’t listed personally.

      It couldn’t hurt, though, he reflected as he glanced appreciatively out the window. It couldn’t hurt to drive for a spell out here anyhow. Maybe he’d get some ideas. And, he mused, smiling briefly into the smoky mirror, the morning was just so damned beautiful….

      The rain-drenched scrub trees in the pastures, mostly cedar and mesquite, glittered damply in the sunlight as if they were fashioned from crystal and emeralds. Beneath the trees wildflowers were already blooming in shy profusion, bluebonnets and buttercups and Indian paintbrush, fluffy wild poppies and bright Indian blanket that carpeted the fields in vivid color.

      Small animals, rabbits and coons and squirrels, frisked and played through the swaying grasses, rejoicing in life and springtime while a thousand trills of birdsong rose straight up to the clear blue heavens. Baby animals were everywhere, wobbly little calves and bony long-legged colts attesting to the enduring cycle of mating and renewal.

      Vernon passed the high curved gates of the Double C Ranch, smiling as he thought about mating and renewal. There was a lot of that going on at the Double C these days, so much that the neighboring ranchers and townspeople were having all kinds of fun making jokes about the love affairs in the McKinney family.

      They were affectionate jokes, though, because everybody liked and respected the McKinneys. In fact, there wasn’t a soul Vernon knew of who wasn’t tickled about what was going on out here, with J.T. finding himself a pretty young wife from Boston, and then all three of the McKinney youngsters unexpectedly following in their father’s footsteps within a few months. Even that lovable wild man, young Cal McKinney, looked to be on the verge of settling down with a good woman. And that, Vernon thought fervently, was a real blessing for the whole family.

      Just yesterday morning, during coffee time down at the Longhorn, Vernon had overheard Bubba Gibson joking loudly that the way everybody was behaving out at the Double C, somebody must have dumped a couple of barrels of love potion into the Claro River and let it drift downstream past the ranch.

      At the time Vernon had laughed along with everybody else, but now it didn’t seem so funny. Out here, surrounded by sunrise freshness and the beauty of springtime, it just seemed right and proper somehow that the people at the ranch should be fitting in with the cycle of nature, finding themselves some love and tenderness in a big lonely world.

      A lot more fitting, Vernon thought with a sudden tightening of his jaw, than the way Bubba Gibson was acting these days.

      No matter how many tons of love potion might be drifting down the Claro, there was no excuse for Bubba’s flagrant affair with Billie Jo Dumont, a girl younger than his own daughter. Bubba didn’t even trouble to hide his infatuation, almost seemed to flaunt it, in fact. People felt sorry for Mary Gibson, who bore this public humiliation with quiet dignity and never said a word against her philandering husband…at least, nothing that anybody heard.

      Vernon’s wide pleasant mouth set in a hard line and he frowned again, gripping the wheel and surging around a bend in the road a little faster than was really necessary.

      Like many confirmed bachelors, Vernon idealized women, liked them and enjoyed their company and had strong feelings about how they should be treated. Especially good women, wives like Mary Gibson who helped their husbands and stood by them through all the lean years, all the building and struggling and hard work. To Vernon’s way of thinking, a woman like that deserved the very best her man could give.

      If I had a wife who’d stood by me like that, Vernon thought, there’d never be a minute that she couldn’t trust me. I’d give her so much….

      But just then his thoughts halted abruptly. Even his breathing was suspended for a moment as his car purred toward the gates of the Circle T, the ranch adjoining the McKinney place. Pain stabbed at him, as fresh and powerful as it had been all those years ago.

      Briefly, Vernon Trent’s shining cheerful world turned gray and cloudy while he swept past the big stone gates.

      He gripped the wheel again, wondering with a touch of desperation if he was ever going to get over those old feelings. Maybe it was all this thinking about love, about J.T.’s marriage and the young people finding partners for themselves, even the animals all happily paired out there in the thickets, playing and mating and nesting in secret places….

      Vernon shook his head restlessly, staring down at the ditch beside the road. Something caught his eye and he hesitated, then braked, backed the low-slung powerful car around and drove slowly back toward the gates of the Circle T. He pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped, got out and walked around his car to peer down into the wet grassy ditch.

      Vernon Trent was a good-looking man, even in the bright impartial light of the sunrise. He was a little above medium height, with broad shoulders and a stocky muscular frame, though he was probably carrying twenty pounds or so of excess weight these days. Vernon knew well enough that he’d been letting himself go and should be doing something about getting back into shape, but somehow he just never seemed to find the time or the incentive. In the meantime he disguised the extra pounds well enough with casual pleated corduroys and roomy worn tweed sport jackets like the one he wore this morning.

      His face was blunt, square and full of good humor, and his brown eyes were shrewd, though they sometimes softened to a thoughtful faraway look that made people suspect that Vernon Trent might still be a bit of a dreamer.

      His thick sandy hair was half-gray, but that was nothing recent. The same dusting of silver had been there for more than twenty years, ever since Vernon came home from Vietnam. He’d wandered into the lonely bus depot at Crystal Creek on a hot August morning with his duffel bag on his shoulder and a slight limp that only bothered him occasionally, in damp cold weather. But there’d also been a look in his eyes that even his best friends had never found the courage to inquire about, and that hair gone gray before its time….

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