A Cowboy's Plan. Mary Sullivan

his hands behind his back. “She’s a bad influence. A Satanist.”

      “For Go—For Pete’s sake, Dad. She isn’t a Satanist.”

      “She most assuredly is. Have you seen the way she dresses?”

      “Of course I have. It’s just her style.” His own doubts about hiring Janey bothered him. He didn’t need to hear them echoed by his father.

      “I have a mission in life,” the Reverend intoned, “to keep my son safe and on the right path.”

      Not that old argument again. “Dad, I’m twenty-six.” Sometimes the frustration threatened to explode out of him. “I make my own decisions in life.”

      His father looked at him with that reproach that said C.J. had disappointed him. But the man in front of C.J. wasn’t his father. He was the Reverend Wright.

      “You know,” C.J. said, “I’d like you to slip off your holy mantle once in a while and just be my father.” An ordinary man talking to his ordinary son.

      The Reverend frowned, obviously lost. Dad didn’t have a clue what C.J. was talking about.

      “I’m not in the mood for one of your fire-and-brimstone lectures this afternoon.”

      “Son,” the reverend said—C.J. hated when he called him son in that sonorous voice he used on the pulpit—“your life is finally on the right track. Keep it that way.”

      “Dad, I am. I only hired the woman. I’m not dating her.”

      “Get rid of her,” Reverend Wright said.

      “Mom left the store to me. I assume she thought I could handle the responsibility.” C.J. shoved his hands into his pockets. “Besides, there aren’t a whole lot of people in town who want to work in a candy store.”

      He started toward Bizzy, who was eating something at the curb on the far side of the street. Scotty waved to him on his way from the hardware store to the bank.

      “What about the rodeo?” Dad asked, shooting the conversation off in another direction.

      C.J. stopped. So. Dad had heard about that. “What about it?” he snapped.

      “I heard you signed up for Hank’s rodeo. Why are you involved in it again? Have you no respect for David’s memory?”

      “How dare you accuse me of such a thing?” With his back to his father, C.J. squeezed his lips together. Yeah, he had a lot of respect for Davey, but he also had no choice.

      C.J. turned to face down his father. “I knew Davey better than anyone and I’ll bet he’ll root for me when I finally get back up on a bronc.” Which he planned to do tonight.

      As usual, Dad’s mouth did that lemon-sucking trick that occurred whenever they talked about the rodeo.

      “You don’t want to go down that road again. Look how it ended last time.” With a final look of reproach, Reverend Wright walked toward the church, tall, sure of himself, and implacable.

      C.J. scrubbed his hand across his short hair. Yeah, he remembered. It had ended with Davey’s death. C.J. needed that prize money, though.

      It’s not just about the money, his conscience whispered. Not by a long shot.

      “Oh, shut up.”

      C.J. shook his head. His return to the rodeo was all about the prize money. That was it. He would rodeo and win. He had someone to cover for him in the shop now. No way was C.J. getting rid of Janey.

      No matter what Dad said, C.J. wasn’t returning to his wild ways. He’d grown up and worked himself over into a mature man. Couldn’t Dad see that?

      C.J. was in no danger of falling backward. He could control any superficial attraction to Janey and he would rodeo for the money, then get out of it again. No worries, no danger.

      REVEREND WALTER WRIGHT strode down Main Street toward the rectory.

      He’d thought things were finally okay.

      C.J. had settled down, had grown up and taken responsibility for the boy he’d sired with that trollop from the city.

      Now, along came the young Gothic girl to tempt him. What if he again became that wild man he’d been throughout his teenage years? Walter couldn’t live through that again. Was the Gothic woman nurturing C.J.’s dangerous dreams of the rodeo? Had they been seeing each other for a while and Walter hadn’t known?

      His hands grew damp. Someone said “Hello,” and the Reverend nodded. He had no idea who had just walked past him.

      He couldn’t go through the nightmare of C.J.’s adolescence again. He couldn’t watch C.J. fall into temptation, turn his back on everything Walter had taught him, sire another child out of wedlock. C.J. had survived that dark day four years ago when a bull had gored David Franck, but what if this time it was C.J. who died?

      Reverend Wright craved the solace of his church and stepped into its cool interior. It immediately brought him a measure of peace.

      Someone had left an arrangement of yellow asters and pussy willows and Chinese lanterns in a large vase on the altar. Most likely Gladys Graves, Amy Shelter’s mother. Bless her. Walter thought about her too often.

      Last weekend, the ladies had polished the wooden pews until they gleamed and smelled of Murphy Oil Soap. He ran his hand across the back of one of them. How many hands had touched this over the years? How many souls had he saved? Or was it all an illusion?

      He backed away from that thought. Of course his work was good. Of value.

      He continued up the aisle, toward the altar and the small stained-glass windows that framed it.

      Walter shivered and stepped to the side of the altar, lit a votive candle, knelt on a hard bench and prayed for the repose of Davey’s soul. He also prayed for forgiveness for the bull that had gored Davey four years ago. He asked God’s forgiveness for himself, for the gratitude he harbored in his soul that the young man gored had not been his own son.

      As he stood and limped toward the back of the church with pins and needles bedeviling his feet, and as he closed the church door, as he walked around the outside of the church to the rectory, he still worried about his son and resented that woman.

      He stepped into the cool foyer.

      When he picked up the day’s mail, his hands shook. He stared unseeing at the letters, then dropped them on the table and rested his fists on top of them. He hung his head.

      “Rev?” The voice from the living room sounded hesitant. Reverend Wright looked up. He’d forgotten about Kurt.

      “You okay?” Kurt asked.

      The Reverend pulled himself together and straightened. “Did Maisie feed you?”

      Kurt nodded and stood. “I heard what you said to that young woman about not working in the candy store.” He shuffled toward the door. “She got a job. Jobs are good.”

      Kurt opened the door of the rectory. “She gave me twenty dollars, Reverend. Nobody gives me twenty dollars.”

      He stepped outside, leaving the door to close behind him with a solid thud.

      So the Goth girl wasn’t all bad.

      Walter tried to smile, but it felt sickly. Kurt didn’t understand why he had to keep C.J. safe. The Reverend couldn’t lose him the way he’d lost his wife.

      Elaine had died on the road, speeding, as was her wont. He’d warned her so many times to slow down, but she’d been a hard woman to tame.

      Truly his mother’s headstrong son, C.J. was tempting fate again by entering that damned rodeo. How could the Reverend survive his death or disfigurement? He was all he had left.

      He had to find a way to stop C.J.’s involvement in the rodeo and with that woman.