She glanced over at Ford and remembered having a terrible crush on him when she was a teenager. Trouble was that back then, with five years between them, she was just a child to him. Then when she was old enough to really fall in love, she had already vowed that she would never get involved with a serviceman. Relationships could become permanent, and early in her life she had vowed that if she ever did get married, it would be to someone who was already grounded and had roots.
Creedence Clearwater Revival’s song “Proud Mary” blasted from the phone, and all three of the passengers sang along at the top of their lungs. Joelle turned aroundto see them doing a chair dance, wiggling their shoulders and bodies down to the waist, and holding their beers high as they kept time with their feet—all three in colorful flip-flops.
She smiled at their happiness and turned back around to find Ford staring at her with his brown eyes that were so dark they were almost black.
“What?” she asked.
“I was just doing the math. How are we going to spend time in each of these places and be home in two weeks?” he asked.
Sharlene shook her head slowly and raised both eyebrows. “Is that what Billy Joe told you? Two weeks?”
“I figured you wouldn’t go with us if I told you we would be out longer”—Billy Joe chuckled—“and you need a vacation to unwind before you take over Henry’s job as foreman of the ranch. We’ll be home when we get home, but I promised Sharlene we’d be there by the middle of August so Joelle can get back to her teaching job.”
“You can’t be serious!” Ford grumbled.
“Serious as one of them cardiac arrests my doctor keeps fussing about if I don’t stop eating bacon,” Billy Joe said. “By the time we get back home, you’ll be tired of traveling and be ready to put down some roots.”
Joelle jerked her head around to look at her aunt Sharlene. Her aunt just smiled and closed her eyes to listen to the next song on the playlist. Did her aunt feelthe same way? Was that what she meant about the trip being what Joelle needed to realize that she should be on the ranch and not in the classroom?
“It takes a lot of greenback dollars to live at that fancy place y’all have been looking at,” Ford said. “You need to sell the land to pay for the next twenty years.”
“You think I’m going to live to be a hundred, do you?” Billy Joe laughed out loud. “Boy, I’ll do good to make it another ten years, and for your information, I’ve got enough of the greenbacks buried in quart jars out in the backyard to keep me in a fancy place until I’m a hundred and twenty.”
Joelle shivered at the thought of her aunt having money in the ground, but she wouldn’t put it past her. All these folks had lived through tough times, and not a one of them was very trusting when it came to banking and finances.
“Why would I want to tie myself down to raising cattle and cutting hay?” Ford asked.
“To help you get rid of those bad dreams,” Billy Joe answered. “Until you put down some roots and find a good woman to keep you warm at night, those things are going to follow you around. Onliest way you’re going to outrun them is stand your ground and fight, just like you did in the army. But enough about that. We’re on our way to the first campground. We’ll be getting our instruments out and playing around a campfire tonight. Got to get all polished up to do somesidewalk singin’ when we get to Nashville. We’re a bit rusty right now.”
“From the pictures Aunt Sharlene showed me, it’s more like a firepit than an open campfire,” Joelle whispered.
“Thatwouldbe safer,” Ford said out the side of his mouth. “We don’t want to have to dig up the backyard for enough money to bail them out of jail for setting the west part of the state on fire.”
“Amen!” Joelle agreed.
***
In the middle of the afternoon Ford pulled into the Ole Towne Cotton Gin RV Park where Nita had made reservations. Ford parked in front of the office building, and Nita got out of the back of the bus and went inside to collect their permit.
In a few minutes Nita returned waving a brochure. She got back in the bus and closed the door, opened up a map and started giving directions. “Drive straight ahead, and then…” She pointed. “Our spot is just around the next bend over there. These old oak trees will give us good shade, and we can get the barbecue grill going. Pull up right there, and we’ll help unload the tents and everything.”
“I’m ready to cook us up some hot dogs, some beans, and fried potatoes as soon as we get the tents set up,” Billy Joe said.
“Where’s the food?” Ford asked.
“In coolers in the trailer,” Sharlene answered. “We brought enough stuff for the trip. We just have to get fresh ice every day before we start out.”
“They had ice and some supplies at the office back there,” Nita told them. “It’s just two more days to the dude ranch. I still don’t know why in the world you want to go to a ranch when you’ve lived on a ranch all your life, Billy Joe.”
“Why are we going to Nashville?” Billy Joe countered. “You’ve been singing country music all your life. Why would you want to go to Nashville?”
“Okay! Okay!” Nita snapped. “I get your point, but I think what really got your attention was the shooting contest, the mechanical bull, and the two-stepping at the honky-tonk.”
“You got it!” Billy Joe said. “I’m going to dance some leather off the bottoms of my old boots with any pretty woman who will dance with me. And I’m going to beat you and Sharlene both in the shootin’ contest.”
“Hey, now,” Sharlene scolded. “I could outshoot and outride you any day of the week.”
“We’ll see about that,” Billy Joe shot back at her.
