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  “I love that you come to church on horseback,” she said. “I would too if my Aunt Ludy weren’t so fussy about how a ‘lady’ gets around on the Sabbath.” She rolled her green eyes, further hypnotizing Stretch. “What I was thinking—maybe we could go riding sometime together? I’m staying at Ludy’s house—she’s kin to the pastor’s wife—and well, gee, I think it’d be a lot of fun.”

  Trying to process everything—She’s even prettier up close! She wants to ride with me! That means she’s got to like me!—he could only offer a smile of such yearning that the brown-haired gal with the ballerina neck laughed.

  “Well, I best be going—my aunt’s waiting on me.” She squeezed his arm before letting go. “My name’s Penny—what’s yours?”

  “Stretch,” he mumbled.

  “Stretch?”

  He nodded, and as she looked him up and down, she nodded her approval and said, “It fits, I guess.”

  The next thing Stretch knew he was standing in the gravel parking lot, blinking in the bright sunlight, feeling as fuzzy headed as if he had gone a round with Sonny Liston.

  “Stretch, you all right?” asked Curly.

  “She came up to me,” said Stretch. “She came up and started talking to me.”

  “Who?” said Hip.

  Curly rolled his eyes. “Who do you think, Hip? The brown-haired gal.” He turned to Stretch. “She got a name?”

  “Penny,” said Stretch, with all the awe and wonder a miner inspecting his pan in an ice-cold creek might say, “Gold.”

  Their romance was fast and furious. No longer was Stretch available after a day’s work to practice Roman riding, rope tricks, or Suicide Drags. Nor did the three cowboys get together after church to practice.

  “Shoot,” complained Hip to Curly. “You’d think seeing that brown-haired gal every night would be enough, but no—he’s gotta court her after church, too.”

  Curly nodded. “Don’t much see the point of going ourselves if we ain’t gonna practice our drills afterwards.”

  “Me neither!” said Hip brightly, who preferred to sleep in his own bunk rather than a church pew. “So let’s not!”

  Stretch, once interested in the souls of his friends, didn’t seem to mind their defection; now he rode over to Penny’s after church, and let her Aunt Ludy serve the couple what she called her famous lemonade.

  “Famous for what?” whispered Stretch to Penny, once his mouth unpuckered.

  In the hours he spent working alongside Hip and Curly, he laughed and joked and seemed like the old Stretch, until he’d suddenly go quiet, as if listening to a song no one else could hear.

  “I’ve had it bad myself a couple times,” said Curly one evening.

  After Stretch, splashing cologne all over himself as if it were water and he was on fire, raced off to pick up Penny, his two friends wiled away the evening, sitting out on the rusted lawn chairs on the worn patch of dirt that was their patio behind the bunk house. They watched the sun take its red bath in the west and, as cicadas pulsed their evening percussion, observed the first stars wink and sparkle in the broad night sky.

  “A fella can have the strength of Samson,” said Curly, “but it’s all for naught when that special gal casts her spell over him.”

  Hip nodded, he hoped sagely. While he wasn’t a neophyte in matters of love, he wasn’t Casanova either. He had had girlfriends back in Tucson, and one of them had been fairly upset to learn he’d chosen to seek his fortune as a cowboy rather than a husband, but the kind of head-over-heels love that Stretch was tumbling in was a state Hip had not yet visited.

  Curly tilted his head, directing his stream of smoke at the moon.

  “Ah, Alice,” he said, softly.

  “Alice,” asked Hip. “Who’s Alice?”

  He had known who Curly had voted for in the last election: “I could tolerate Nixon as Eisenhower’s number two, but there was no way I could tolerate Nixon as America’s number one, and besides, I thought Mrs. Kennedy was awful pretty”; had known Curly loved to read almost as much as he liked riding, and his two favorite writers were, not surprisingly, Louis L’Amour and, surprisingly, Jane Austen; had known he’d planned to enlist in the army on the day he turned sixteen only to have V-J Day precede his birthday by one week (“Can’t say I wasn’t disappointed but can’t say I wasn’t relieved either”); had known that Curly’s real name was Howard and that his younger sister had been born with six toes on each foot (“Ma and Pa never had ’em removed either, and it’s only that Rita’s so pretty that it don’t matter much”). In other words, he knew a lot about Curly, but he knew nothing about this woman named Alice.

  The older man sighed a gust of cigarette smoke into the night.

  “She and I were on the circuit together—her act was called ‘Alice and El Diablo,’ and a better trick rider you never did see.”

  Hip looked at Curly, whose sentence had ended in a little gasp. The older cowboy stared at his cigarette for a moment, before flicking it into the dirt.

  “Oh, she was something else,” he said after a long moment. “Long black hair that she wore in braids and a waist this big.” Curly formed a circle with his hands. “She had the sweetest face, too, but that’s as far as her sweetness went.” His chuckle was low. “The horse should have been called Alice, because Alice was the real El Diablo.”

  “Is she still in the rodeo?”

  “Nah. She got herself killed.”

  Hip flinched. “What happened?”

  The cicadas chirped a whole concerto before Curly spoke again.

  “Well, she took a fall.”

  “Off El Diablo?”

  “Nah, off the steps of a portapotty of all things. Well, not even steps. A little palette that they had set it up on, not higher than a foot, I’d say, off the ground.”

  The older cowboy shook his head.

  “Don’t that beat all? Here was a woman who liked to take her joy rides on bucking broncos, who could ride bareback a horse most men couldn’t ride tied into the saddle, and she goldarn meets her end stepping off a portapotty.”

  “How . . . how did that exactly kill her?”

  Curly struck a match and Hip watched as the tiny triangle of flame jumped as it lit a new cigarette. He inhaled and his exhale was another smoky sigh.

  “Well, see, it was one of them clumsy moves—even people who are pure grace like Alice make a clumsy move now and again, I expect. What happened was her ankle turned and it made her fall, hard on the ground, hurting her shoulder. Now a dislocated shoulder and a broken ankle ain’t gonna kill nobody, but, man, was she mad! We were set up in Abilene for a big rodeo, and she come into the horse barn swearin’ a blue streak, holding her shoulder and limping and lost her footing again—it’s hard walking on a sprained ankle—and this time fell backwards, and wouldn’t you know some of the day help they’d hired didn’t know nothing about a horse barn and didn’t hang up the rake and there it was, resting on a hay bale points up and when Alice fell on that, well, that killed her.”

  “Jesus,” whispered Hip.

  Curly dragged his big thin hand across his face as if it were a towel.

  “Yup,” he said after he’d mopped his forehead, his cheeks, his chin. “Kinda put me in a bad place for a couple years.” He took a long drag off his cigarette. “A man don’t need drama like that in his life.”

  “Nope. He sure don’t.”

  Curly’s mouth bunched and he made a sound like he was trying to dislodge a bit of gristle stuck between his teeth.

  “And that’s what’s got me a tad worried about Stretch,” he said. “I feel like he’s heading toward a whole lot of drama.”

  Live Field Report/Sense-O-Gram

  To: Charmat

  From: Tandala

  Flowers, tamed and wild, carpet this parcel of Texas. Herewith a bunch of wild blue phlox. Simply inhale; it will make you a believer that out of Earthlings’ five senses smell is king. Then again, taste could also reign. Check out this assortment of treats. My favori
te is the bridge mix; a willy-nilly potpourri whose inventor must have thought, “Hmm—what can I dip in chocolate now?”

  I trust that you’re finding my work with Fletcher satisfactory; I also ask (somewhat belatedly) for your permission to continue independent study. I feel like a kid in a candy store times infinity.

  Your faithful cut-up,

  Tandy

  Live Field Report/Reply

  From: Charmat

  To: Tandala

  I was amused by your request for more freedom while on Earth; from here, it looks as if you’re giving yourself permission to do whatever you like. To which I say, While I think your presence provides security to Fletcher, I also agree with you that it’s wisest to act as a good mother, protective when need be but willing to let the young one learn from his own mistakes. It appears Earth’s treasure trove is deeper than we had ever imagined—I am still marveling at the scent of phlox. It seems such a communal flower, hundreds of those little purple stars bunched together on a stem, inviting one in with their sweet, cheerful fragrance. What were we thinking when we decided that the inevitable decay of flora and fauna, their resulting mess, was not worth their short but spectacular existence?

  Indulge!

  I trust you to run the mission as you see fit and in exchange for more tastes of Earthly life (Cracker Jacks—I was transported!), I shall do my best in finding out what exactly the mission is, anyway.

  Hi-ho,

  Charmat

  Stretch was on Aunt Ludy’s porch playing a game of Hearts with Penny and the old woman, trying to sip her lemonade without shuddering. He hated Hearts and the sour lemonade that made his balls shrivel, but he realized in courting Penny he was courting her relations, too. Besides, he knew as soon as the game was over, Aunt Ludy would button her ratty cardigan and comment on the chill of the night air and excuse herself to go inside and watch Lawrence Welk on the television. He and Penny would exchange looks then, knowing it wouldn’t be long until they were out on Old Ranch Road, thrashing around in the back of the pickup truck.

  Stretch had just taken a handful of the Spanish peanuts that were Aunt Ludy’s signature appetizer when a cherry red Mustang convertible glided to a stop in front of the house.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, the papery skins of the peanuts molting in his warm hands.

  Penny, who had already stood up and was running toward the car, didn’t answer him, but Aunt Ludy did.

  “Trouble,” she said.

  Stretch was 6'3" tall, but when Penny, flushed and excited, pulled the strange man by the arm out of the car and up the steps, he felt himself shrink, felt himself recede into a tiny inconsequential speck.

  “Aunt Ludy, look who’s here!” said Penny, as if she were announcing the King to the Court of St. James. “Stretch, let me introduce you to Jake Arnett.”

  Stretch stood, needing to show off his height (and prayed that it was still there, prayed that just because he felt he’d almost disappeared, he was in fact still the same size he’d been a minute ago), and he took the young man’s hand in a grip that said, “Here I am, deal with it.”

  His brain belatedly registered the name by which Penny had introduced the man as he squeezed the man’s knuckles.

  “Hey,” he said, “I work for Jake Arnett.” He turned to Penny. “He’s not Jake Arnett.”

  “Jake Arnett, Junior,” said the man, giving his own hand a little shake after Stretch released it.

  “He’s home from school,” said Penny to her aunt.

  “Home for good, ma’am,” said Jake, nodding to the older woman. “I graduated.”

  “Who’d a thunk?” said Penny, turning to Stretch, who couldn’t help noticing she still held on to the guy’s arm. “We’ve known each other forever,” she explained. “When I was a kid, I’d visit Aunt Ludy every summer and Jake Jr. was one of my playmates.”

  “She was a chubby little thing,” said Jake Jr. “If I’d of known what was under that baby fat then . . . ”

  While Stretch’s preference was to smack this callow college boy right in the kisser, he chose to sit down instead and tipped back in his chair so its front legs were off the floor.

  Aunt Ludy filled the lemonade pitcher, and Jake Jr. was urged to take a seat, and he did so gingerly, one leg unbending.

  “Knee injury,” he explained and then proceeded to update them on his recent graduation from SMU and his last season playing place kicker for the Mustangs.

  “That’s why I drive that,” he said to Stretch, pointing to the red convertible. “I’m a Mustang driving a Mustang.”

  Penny twittered a little laugh.

  “Fortunately, I busted up my knee on the tennis court when football season was long over. But you should have seen the other guy.”

  Penny rewarded this comment with another laugh, and Stretch swallowed down bile that had burned low in his throat. As Jake Jr. the college boy continued to regale his female audience, the other male present silently heckled him.

  “I made the dean’s list twice.”

  “Really?” asked Penny, impressed.

  “Sure. Dean Brody was my roommate, and every week he posted a Who Drank the Most Beer list.”

  Asshole, thought Stretch.

  “Now that I’ve got a degree in business, I figure you owe me a dollar and ninety-eight cents.”

  “How’s that?” asked Penny.

  “Well, remember that nickel I loaned you when you were ten? It’s compounded 5 percent interest over the past nine years, plus several late fees, subject to my discretion, of course.”

  “Your discretion?” said Penny, offering her pretty smile.

  I’ll show you discretion, shithead, thought Stretch.

  Taking a break in what Stretch could only call a performance, Jake Jr. took a sip of lemonade. He grimaced, his mouth frowning to expose all of his lower teeth.

  “Got a little tip for you, Miss Ludy,” he said. “You might want to turn up your ratio of sugar to lemons.”

  That Penny and her aunt laughed hurt Stretch’s feelings all the more.

  How come I can’t tease her about her lemonade? he thought, and then as resentment built toward the one who could, he added words for which his pious mother would have scrubbed out his mouth with lye soap: Son of a bitch! Bastard! Dickhead!

  “Stretch, Jake Jr. asked you a question.”

  “Huh?” said Stretch, the front legs of his chair thunking on the porch floor as he sat forward.

  Penny gave Stretch a look he had never before seen on her face—one of exasperation and embarrassment—and he couldn’t have been more shocked and hurt than if she’d karate-chopped him.

  “I was asking where you went to college,” said Jake Jr. amicably.

  “Where I went to college?” said Stretch, as if answering the dumbest question he’d ever been asked.

  Jake Jr. looked at Penny and shrugged.

  Stretch wanted to jump between the two of them, to block them from any more of their cozy looks.

  “Young Stretch here’s not a college boy,” said Aunt Ludy, her bony fingers scratching the hollow in the center of her collarbone. “Not every one is, you know.”

  “Ain’t that the truth” said Jake Jr. “I sure didn’t figure I was. Anyway, I guess I’ll be seeing a lot of you this summer—I’ll be working on the ranch, too.”

  “Now won’t that be fun,” said Stretch, and rising, he held out his hand to his beloved. “Come on, Penny, we don’t want to be late for the movie.”

  “Movie?” said Penny, “but I thought—”

  There was no time to express her thoughts, for he had grabbed her hand and was pulling her down the steps and toward the rust-spotted pickup truck parked ahead of the cherry-red Mustang convertible.

  Like a worm in an apple, anxiety bore its way into Stretch’s courtship.

  “He’s just a friend!” Penny claimed, but her assurances had the effect of butter on a burn—they felt good for a second and then proceeded to make things worse.

  �
�What does she mean by friend?” asked Stretch one day as the cowhands sat outside the bunkhouse, finishing their supper.

  “I’d say that’s what she means,” said Curly. In the past week, he and Hip had watched their friend go from a dreamy, ballad-humming fellow in love to a nervous, short-tempered man, certain the arrow Eros had aimed at him was a poison one. “They’ve known each other a long time. They’re friends.”

  “Ha!” said Stretch. “How many girl friends do you have, huh, Curly? I don’t see you taking walks or sitting on a porch with no girl friend!”

  “I had a friend back in Tucson,” said Hip. “Girl by the name of Dawn. We both had BB guns and we’d target-practice together. Cans and stuff. She was a real good shot, and afterwards we’d talk about stuff like how Miss Henski, our teacher, had b.o. like a man, or who we thought made a better cowboy—John Wayne or Gary Cooper. See, we went to the Saturday matinees together too and—”

  “—shut up!” said Stretch. “This ain’t two kids talking about movie actors or some teacher who stunk! This is about—”

  “—anyone want more?” asked Dash, emerging from the kitchen, pot in hand.

  Hip declined, his mouth feeling nearly blistered, but Curly held out his bowl.

  “Fill ’er up,” he said, “and tell me, what other peppers am I tasting beside the New Mexico and the serrano?”

  “You’re a connoisseur, my friend,” said the cook, scraping the last of the stew into Curly’s bowl. “I might have thrown in a little poblano, a pinch of—”

  “Jesus R. Jones!” said Stretch, pushing himself away from the table. “I’m watching the love of my life slip through my fingers and you guys are talking about peppers?”

  He stomped off toward the bunkhouse as if he were trying to kill a particularly big and nasty bug with each step.

  Curly spooned stew into his mouth and sat for a moment, considering.

  “Ah, yes,” he said presently. “A pinch of cayenne.”

  It was with great relief that Stretch realized that what Jake Jr. meant by “working on the ranch” didn’t mean working with the cowhands.

  “Nah, the pantywaist is inside all day, working with the bookkeeper,” said Stretch, repeating the news Penny had given him. “Guess he can’t handle the life of a cowboy.”