Chapter 2

One of the things I learned, being on the farm was how valuable the friendship of a dog can be. Buster was always there to greet me when I stepped out of the bunkhouse. He was always glad to see me any time of the day, no matter what I smelled like. And he was happy in an obvious way about the attention I gave him. He was glad I was in his life, and I was glad he had come into mine. Of course if given a choice to get attention from me or Jill, he'd go to Jill in a heartbeat, but I didn't mind. I had to admit I'd like her petting me too.

That would be worth staying alive for, even if it made me feel faintly perverted.

To be honest there was another thing worth staying alive for. That was Lynne's cooking.

Actually, eating was the high point of each day all week long. Lynne could cook, and she cooked what the pundits call "comfort food." I could have gotten three dollars apiece for her hot rolls back in Chicago. And her pies? I could eat an entire pie at one sitting, even if I had to use a broomstick to cram it down my throat. I would have been entirely happy looking like Jabba the Hutt if I had been able to eat her pies all day long.

Except that I worked so hard I COULD have eaten a pie a day and never gained a fricking ounce.

Jill always rode out with me, telling me where to drive the four-wheel-drive truck to do the next job. Then, when it was time for lunch, she'd drive the truck back to the house, get food, and bring it back out to where I was still working. If we needed anything, she'd go back and get it. I worked. That's all I did.

Except for when we got to break for lunch. Even Lynne's cold comfort food was delicious. And in the evening, after I'd stopped shivering from the ice cold water in the bunkhouse shower, I'd go up to the farmhouse where there would be beef and mashed potatoes, with green beans, or black-eyed peas, or corn, and fresh baked hot rolls and butter. And pie for dessert.

Actually, the work wasn't so bad either, all things considered. It got my mind off of cheating almost-spouses and jocks with cocks that probably hang halfway to their knees, and who drive BMWs instead of a six-year-old Chevy. And there was something that stirred my heart when I looked down a stretch of fence and saw nothing but shiny barbs on tight wire, stapled to posts that, if not perfectly perpendicular to the ground, at least all tilted the same direction at the same angle.

And then it was Saturday, and Randy called to tell Lynne my car was ready. I found out about it when she rode out on one of her horses, to bring us lunch. It was roast beef sandwiches and potato salad and celery sticks with peanut butter spread on them. She had a jug of tea too. She spread it out on the tailgate of the truck and ate with us.

"You should probably wrap things up after lunch and come on in," she said. "We need to get you to town before he closes for the day."

"Yeah," I said, suddenly wondering what I was going to do that night. I had been working for my room and board, so I hadn't spent anything. Suddenly my dark and dusty room, and that cold water in the bunkhouse shower didn't seem all that much to put up with, considering it was free and I got to eat like I was eating right then.

"I don't want you to go!" wailed Jill.

"Stop that!" barked her mother. "Bob has his own life to get on with."

"Not really," I said, without even thinking about it first. It just came gushing out of my mouth.

"Why can't he stay?" whined Jill. "He's actually pretty good at doing stuff."

"Jill, we can't afford to pay him, and this isn't the kind of job he's looking for anyway," said Lynne.

"Well, maybe," I blurted.

Which is how coincidence led me to extend my stay at the Simmons horse ranch and apple orchard for a month ... and then another month, during which I found out what harvesting apples was like, and then two more months, at which point I had to ask for some more blankets. I was used to the cold showers by now, but I liked to sleep warm. Lynne looked at me over the rim of her coffee cup. It was late, and Jill had been sent to bed.

"How long are you going to stay?" she asked, suddenly.

"Is that your way of saying I need to move on?"

We'd gotten to know each other pretty well in the almost six months I'd been there. There was little formality between us any longer. I had settled into what now felt like a reasonable existence. I liked Lynne a lot. I adored Jill. I had a place to stay and the best food I'd ever eaten. I watched a little TV with them some nights, but mostly I read books in the bunkhouse. I had gotten special dispensation from Janet Biggs, the town librarian, to exceed the five-book limit because we only went to the library once a month, and I could usually go through ten books a month easily if they were any good.

"Of course not," she said. "I'm just wondering how much longer you're going to enjoy this cave man routine you're in."

"Cave man?" I could feel my eyebrows rise.

"Bob, no man I ever met enjoyed sleeping in an old bunkhouse by himself, taking cold showers, and working his ass off every day for nothing." She looked almost irritated.

I thought about it. She was right. Before I had gotten there, if somebody would have described it all and said "Want to do that for six months?" I'd have laughed and suggested they were crazy to even ask.

"I guess I feel like I'm actually doing something worthwhile," I said, realizing that was exactly how I felt.

She thought about that for a half minute. "Well ... you ARE doing something worthwhile," she said slowly. "You're making Jill's and my lives a lot easier. I just don't see what you're getting out of it." She frowned. "At first I thought you were angling for sex..." She obviously hadn't meant to say that out loud, and her hand came to slap over her mouth.

I blinked. "Sex?"

Her cheeks got pink. "At first, when you wanted to stay ... I thought you were trying to wiggle your way close to me ... that you had some kind of nefarious plan."

I laughed. I laughed out loud. The first thing that popped into my head was that any man who attempted to pull something over on Lynne Simmons was looking for trouble. She was a smart, tough woman. I'd been there long enough by now to know she could work me into the ground. I'd thought more than once that it wasn't fair that she was having to scrape along, because she deserved to be a LOT better off than she was, both financially and in the comfort department.

She looked like I'd slapped her and I realized she had interpreted my laughter as an indication of what I thought of her as a woman ... a sexual being ... that I was rejecting her outright.

"It's not what you think!" I said, holding up a hand. "You're a babe. But you're also a man-eater, and I knew better than to..."