This Love Will Go On Page 14

  On Tuesday, she had a surprise visitor. She hadn't seen Doug in months, but he didn't seem self-conscious about the length of time that had passed. Within minutes, he was perched on the corner of her desk, talking as if he’d never been away.

  “Ad business still bad?'”

  “Non-existent.”

  “Maybe you ought to do what this other editor of a small town paper did. He created his own want-ad business.” Doug waited, watching her. She leaned back in her chair and said in a measured voice, “And how, she asked with bated breath, did he do that?”

  Doug grinned. “Went out one night and opened all the stock gates. The next day the roads were full of cattle and the telephone in the newspaper office rang off the wall with calls from ranchers wanting to place notices in the lost and found column.”

  Raine grimaced. “I don't think that would go over too well here.”

  “Why not? You could start with Kincaid's gate. His pasture is close to town. With a little help in the middle of the night, Verylon could be another Pamplona.”

  “With young bulls running rampant through the streets? No, thank you. Doesn't sound like fun. Besides, Jade doesn't have any young bulls. He only raises steers and heifers.”

  “Too bad. This town needs something to liven it up.”

  “Maybe, but cattle on the loose wouldn't be my first choice.”

  Doug slid off the desk and cast an eye over her hands. She had picked up a pen and was toying with it for lack of anything else to do.

  “Somehow, I thought I'd see a ring on your finger by now.”

  The pen slipped from her fingers. She fought the urge to laugh hysterically. Where were all these rings she was supposed to be wearing? “Why did you think that?”

  He shrugged. “Kincaid isn't exactly an invisible man. He's known around the territory. Scuttlebutt in Canton says he's winding up his divorce.”

  “How could you possibly hear something like that?”

  “Several ladies over there have been following the proceedings with, shall we say, an interested eye?”

  The thought that Jade was no longer legally tied to Michele, that he was free to be with any woman he wanted and marry her if he chose to do so, jolted her. “A mercenary eye perhaps?”

  “From what I've heard, Kincaid has more than just his money to make him attractive to women.” His leg stopped swinging as he twisted to face her. “You seemed rather 'interested' yourself last summer.”

  She swiveled in her chair and the protesting creak of old wood filled the quiet in the shop. She kept her eyes on her hands, on the bare finger that would never wear Jade's ring. “That was almost a year ago and it didn't mean anything. There's nothing between us.”

  “I guess seeing isn't believing then. The way he was leaning over you here in the shop, I thought I'd walked into the middle of a seduction scene.”

  “You think too much, you know that:”

  “Mans be thinking too much?” he quipped.

  To divert him, she asked, “Would you like to come to the house for lunch? Julia just made one her famous ice-water chocolate cakes.”

  For a moment, he looked tempted. Then he shook his head. “I'd better not. I've got to finish the rest of my run.” He gazed at her for a moment. “I really came to say goodbye. I'm being transferred to a route in the Minneapolis, St. Paul area.”

  Her sense of loss surprised her. “That will be a promotion for you, won't it?”

  “Yes.” He stood with his hand on the doorknob, his eyes locked with hers. “Raine, you’re at a dead end here. There are more job opportunities in the city. If I asked you to come with me, would you consider it?”

  She shook her head. “Don't. Please. You've been a good friend, but…”

  “Spare me the good friend routine, Raine. Listen to me. There's nothing here for you. You should leave this place, come to the city with me...live your own life for a change instead of being a surrogate mother to your sister’s boy.”

  The phone rang once, twice, three times. Raine thought she would ignore it, but Doug gave the instrument an irritated look and in a rare burst of impatience, said, “Well, answer the damn thing.”

  “I may have to cancel my trip,” Jade said immediately into her ear, and the strangely unsettled tone took away the shock of hearing his voice and made her focus her concentration on what he was saying.

  “What's wrong?” Her worried tone betrayed her. Doug shot her a curious look.

  “It's Tate. He can't understand why I'm leaving him with you tomorrow instead of Saturday. I had trouble getting him to go to school today and he's determined not to go tomorrow. He wants to go to Canton with me.”

  “Don't give in to him.”

  “I don't want to, but the kid does know how to push my buttons.”

  She could almost see the twist of his mouth, the frustrated look in his eyes. “He probably thinks you're going to leave him for longer than a day.”

  “I've told him I'll be back.”

  “He doesn't believe you. He needs something to take his mind off worrying about you, something he can look forward to in school. Wait, Jade, I have an idea. Let me work on it and I'll call you back.”

  She hung up the phone, and began to dial again, almost forgetting that Doug was still there. But his cool voice stopped her hand in midair. “So Kincaid's not interested in you, huh? I must say I admire his technique. He strings you along with a few kisses and gets free babysitting.”

  “That's not true. You’re mistaken.”

  “I guess I was wrong to think he’d do the decent thing and marry you. Well, what the hell. I might as well make another mistake.” Resolutely, he walked around the desk, bent his head and kissed her soundly on the lips. “That's for good luck,” he said softly. “You're going to need it.”

  He went out, leaving the door jangling along with her nerves. Was Doug right? Did Jade see her as a convenient babysitter? No, that was ridiculous. It had been her idea to keep Tate one day a week, not his.

  She shook her head and marshaled her thoughts. She had another problem to solve right now. She reached for the phone to call the school.

  She wasn't able to contact Tate's teacher immediately, but she left a message for the woman to call her and in twenty minutes, the phone rang.

  She explained to Mrs. Calhoon, the lively woman who taught second grade, what she had in mind. Mrs. Calhoon was delighted.

  “That's a wonderful idea. I'd love to bring the class down to the print shop tomorrow. Could we come in the morning, say around ten-thirty? The children are always fresher then.”

  “Ten-thirty is fine.”

  Later, after supper, when Julia had gone to bed and she sat alone in Julia's living room watching TV, the kitchen phone jangled.

  “I want to thank you.” Jade's voice had that deep, husky sound that was so familiar to her. “I don't know what you did, but it worked. Tate wants to go to school tomorrow.”

  “I'm glad.”

  “I’ll be bringing him in to the shop around eight.”

  “Fine. I’ll be here.”

  She waited for him to ring off, but he didn't. After a second or two of silence, he said softly, “Is anything wrong?”

  “No.” She said the word too quickly.

  “Raine.” It was a soft protest, an invitation to tell him the truth. Even though their communication in the last several months had been minimal, he knew instantly that she was prevaricating. “Have you been working too hard?”

  Her laugh was not amused. “Not particularly.”

  “Is Julia all right?”

  “She seemed a little tired and she went to bed early, but other than that, she's fine.” Stop probing. I don't want your concern.

  “You sound as if you could use some rest, too.”

  “I suppose I could.”

  Another long pause. “Is that a polite request for me to let you go?”

  “If you haven't anything more to say.”

  “Goodnight, Raine.” His voice was sev
eral degrees cooler.

  She hung up, knowing why she had been short with him. She had rejected Doug's words intellectually, but they had gone below the surface of her mind and lodged there. Jade was free now, free to love again, marry again. How long could she go on loving him and receiving nothing in return but telephone calls about his son and brief glimpses of him when he dropped off Tate? How could she bear to watch him go out with other women? A few minutes later in her room, she undressed and got ready for bed, knowing she couldn't put off a decision about her future any longer. If she decided to buy the print shop equipment from Julia on time, she was committing herself to several years stay in Verylon. But if Jade married another woman, she couldn't bear to stay. And if he married someone after she had committed herself to a large loan for the Linotype and the press, she would be caught here until she found someone to buy the ancient equipment and take over the payments. She could end up trapped in Verylon, with no way to escape to look for a job in Canton or Sioux Falls or anywhere else.

  She lay down and fell into an uneasy sleep. Endless, ridiculous dreams chased round in her head, dreams of Tate and Jade and cattle on the loose.

  A soft April rain began and ended in the early morning hours. Through her restless sleep, she heard it drumming on the roof. She didn't think of the consequences of that rain then, but later, it came to her very clearly when there were fifteen pairs of rubbers and boots to be unbuckled, unzipped, and loosened when the second grade class descended on the front step of the print shop promptly at ten-thirty.

  Raine went from one youngster to another, offering help. Some of the children were quite self-sufficient, while others clearly needed assistance. Tate quietly took off his own boots and shrugged out of his yellow raincoat. When the slickers were piled on the old-fashioned coat rack near the door, Mrs. Calhoon shepherded her class into a semicircle around the Linotype machine.

  Raine settled into the chair and swiveled around to look at the kids, whose curious eyes were on the same level as hers. Tate stood directly behind her and the expression in his dark eyes might have been Jade's. She tore her eyes away from Tate and began. “Before printers had machines like this one, they set type by hand on a composing stick.” She held up the ruler length piece of wood made with a back and a movable brace to keep the letters in place. “Mrs. Taylor and I don't do that. We use the Linotype to make the words your parents read in the paper.” She smiled at them. Their eyes were bright and wide as they looked at the Linotype machine. “Today I'm going to make lead slugs of the most important words in the world. What do you think those words are?”

  “Our names.” Kevin Harson shouted with an exuberance that won him a quick, sharp look from his teacher. Raine smiled. “That's right, Kevin. And do you know what I'm going to do with those lead slugs when they're finished?”

  “Give them to us,” Samantha Black shouted.

  Behind her Mrs. Calhoon murmured, “It's really better not to ask them too many questions.”

  Raine smiled and nodded, and immediately asked another question. “Can everybody see the keyboard?”

  Choruses of yes, yes, answered her.

  “I'll use a key from this side,” she pointed to the right side “for the first letter of your name, Kevin, and I’ll use these letters,” she pointed to the left, “for the rest of the letters. You probably call the ones over here capitals. Once, long ago, when printers set type by hand, the capital letters were kept in the upper part of a case like a pyramid.” She touched her fingertips together to demonstrate the shape of the case. “A printer would call out to his apprentice, ‘upper case E’ and that meant he wanted a capital letter. We still call capital letters 'upper case' and small letters 'lower case,' even though we don't use cases to keep our letters in any more. Kevin's name starts with this letter here,” she located the capital K in the fourth row down, second from the right on the keyboard. Kevin beamed. “Once I turn the machine on, it will be too noisy for me to talk. Do you have any questions?”

  “When can I see my name?” Kevin asked.

  “Right now,” Raine said, smiling.

  She swiveled around, knowing that out of the fifteen pair of bright eyes, it was Tate’s that captured her attention. The machine began its rattle and bang and soon Kevin's name came sliding out. Each child had written his or her name on a card and Raine watched those cards and tapped out the correct letters. In minutes, she finished the last name and turned off the machine.

  “My name looks funny.” Kevin was clearly disappointed.

  “That's because it's the mirror image of itself. Let's put some ink on it and see what happens.”

  She went to the marble table, swabbed the lead letters with an ink dauber and pressed it on the large sheet of paper she had prepared for the purpose. She held up the paper for Kevin's inspection. He grinned. “It’s my name.”

  She was besieged by voices saying, “Do mine, do mine.” One by one, she inked each name and pressed it on a separate piece of paper, explaining that this process was called letterpress printing. As she handed out the sheets, she cautioned the children not to touch their names after she’d inked them and to keep the lead slugs wrapped in paper. She explained that the ink was called permanent because it was very hard to scrub off.

  When she did Tate's and handed it to him, he accepted it gravely. It was a revelation seeing him with his class. He seemed quieter, more controlled. His resemblance to Jade was overwhelming. On an impulse, she asked Tate for his name, made an imprint of it and held the paper up for the rest of the class to see. “Notice that Tate has two ‘Ts’ in his name and part of those t's rise above the letters ‘a’ and ‘e.’ That part is called an ascender. Tammy on the other hand,” she turned to a blue-eyed girl standing next to Tate, “has an ascender and a descender. See how the ‘y’ comes below the line?”

  “Why did you tell us that?” Kevin asked, his eyes tightened into a squint.

  “I just thought you might be interested in how each letter is different, just as each one of you is different."

  “Oh.” Kevin subsided and clutched the lead slug that spelled his name inside the paper as if it were gold.

  Later after the children were shown the press and the paper folder, they got back into boots and slickers and trouped out the door.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Calhoon said to Raine. “You've sharpened their interest in letters and words immensely. Reading is going to be much more interesting to them from now on. I only hope I can answer all the questions they're bound to think up when we get back to school.”

  “If you have get any tough ones, give me a call. I’ll be here all day.” Then she added lightly, “I wasn't being altogether altruistic when I suggested this, you know.”

  “You've been a real help with Tate, Jade tells me.”

  Raine kept her voice casual. “I suppose I'm trying in a small way to undo the damage.”

  “Last fall I wouldn't have thought that was possible. I worried about Tate. But now, he seems quite content.”

  A cry went up from one of the children out on the sidewalk. Mrs. Calhoon raised her eyes heavenward. “I'd better go. Thanks again.”

  Doug had told Raine that casting the names of the grade school children in type was a tradition in newspaper offices around the country, but she had never done it before. She wished she had. This would be the last year there would be schoolchildren in Verylon. It would also be the last year she would be working in the print shop, if she didn’t do something about it.

  Seeing Tate with his classmates was interesting. He'd matured so much in the last year. She wanted to be here to watch him grow, to see him turn into a man with Jade's integrity and fortitude. She had to stay. She'd tackle Julia about buying the Linotype and the press as soon as possible.

  She had no chance to talk to her aunt that day. It was Friday and the children's visit had put Raine behind schedule. The time flew by and suddenly it was three o'clock and time to collect Tate from school. Since Raine was the Linotype operator, the t
ask fell to Julia.

  “Don't come back here,” Raine told her. “Take him home and give him his snack and milk. I can finish up here by myself.”

  Julia looked doubtful. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I'm sure. If I get a couple of uninterrupted hours, I’ll have this done by five-thirty.” Julia agreed and hurried out the door.

  Raine had just finished typesetting the last page and had turned off the Linotype machine when she heard the bawl of a calf. She must be hallucinating. She carried the heavy galley over to the marble table and was leaning over scanning it, when she heard a calf bawl again. She raised her head and looked out the window. There, out in the street, several Hereford calves ambled lazily. They were the nearly full-grown kind that Jade would soon be sending off to market.

  It wasn't a stampede, it was an invasion. A curious steer poked his nose at Harry's screen door and another munched on the small tree Raine had planted in a square flower box in front of the shop.

  “Here, you get out of there.” She opened the door and waved her arms. The steer merely raised his head and gave her a long, unbelieving stare and went back to eating her tree. A quick look down the street told her there were at least fifty head of cattle on the loose. Some of them were grazing on the grass in the park, their hooves marring the turf softened by last night's rain. John would be furious. She swore softly under her breath and ran back through the still open door into the shop to pick up the phone with shaking hands, thinking it was a heck of a time for Jade to be out of town.