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Jolene Bremond knew better.  It wasn’t her first rodeo, after all.  And it’s not like she didn’t have plenty of examples around her.  Her own mother had fallen for a cowboy 20 years earlier.  It didn’t end well.  Just a broken heart and a belly full of baby.  At least in that case he’d stuck around long enough for Jolene’s mother to not regret it when he left.  It was more of a relief than anything else by then.

Jolene sure wasn’t looking for a cowboy.  She was just minding her own business working the front register of the Rusty Hammer Hardware Store when he walked in.  He asked her where the barbed wire was in a voice that was low and husky and filtered through lips that were no stranger to Marlboro Reds, whiskey, and more women than he ever had stopped to count.

When he first asked she looked up, not even knowing he’d been standing there.  She immediately looked back down as soon as their eyes met, a reflexive action based on the look in his eye that silently said things his mouth would never dare say.

“Back of the store.  Next to the exit out to the fencing.  Right side of the door.”  She didn’t see him tip his hat.  She waited till she heard the footsteps of his size 12 Justin’s get far enough away to look up for the view of him walking towards the barbed wire.  

She thought to herself that the back of his Wrangles draped over his backside like the icing of a cake.  They were worn and faded and had been patched and stitched up in several places.  She wondered if a woman had taken the care to see after his work jeans or if years of being alone had taught the cowboy how to tend to such things on his own.  His boots were worn and had formed to his feet like a second skin, the soles worn more on the outside edges due to the bowlegged walk he had.

He made two trips to the back of the store for rolls of the barbed wire.  Each time he returned to the front with two rolls on each arm and stacked them next to the counter so she could write them up.  

By the second trip to the front Jolene was no longer attempting to hide her gaze.

His arms were weathered and tan.  Scarred from countless trips just like this one, arms loaded with wire, or something else hard and coarse that would leave marks.  She bent over and wrote up the purchase on the sales order pad, careful to be sure the carbon paper was lined up neatly underneath.  Her downward cast eyes raised up just enough to note that the front of the Wranglers contained what appeared to be a treat equal to or surpassing the one in the back.

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“Can I get you some help to carry that out?” she asked.

He tipped his hat again as he grabbed the first two coils and carried them out the front of the store.  He dropped them on the ground next to the back end of an orange 1955 Chevrolet 3100 4×4 4-Speed.  Dropping the tailgate, he went around to the passenger door and pulled out an old Pendleton blanket with an Indian print on it and spread it out on the floor of the bed.  Then he placed each of the rolls on the blanket so the barbs wouldn’t scratch the oak bed underneath.

Emory Easton.  That was the name on the check he laid on the counter next to the order pad.  The address was from Daingerfield, Texas.  That should have told Jolene something.  But it didn’t.  

She was instead focused on the care he took loading the barbed wire into the truck, laying it carefully on the wool blanket.  The way his muscles flexed.  How his back was straight and rigid when he was done.  He came back in for his receipt.  “Maybe I can buy you a cup of coffee sometime.  I’m new in town,” he said.

It’d be a cold day in Hell, Jolene thought to herself. “Maybe.” she said.

The next day they were across from each other in a booth at the back of the Dairy Twin.  Emory Easton noted how Jolene’s lipstick just barely exceeded the lines of her lips, as though she was wanting them to appear bigger than they really were.  There was no need for her to take those precautions with the large soft mounds under the flimsy yellow striped cotton blouse.  He knew the perfume she was wearing was probably cheap.  Girls who worked in hardware stores didn’t buy expensive perfume.  But it smelled faintly  like roses and the scent of it made him want to see if he could find exactly all the places she’d applied it that morning before she left for work.

Jolene wondered how he kept his teeth so white.  They almost glowed.  His hands were big and rough; it was obvious he worked outdoors.  Yet, his fingernails were clean underneath, a sign that he was careful to take care of himself.  Emory Easton was a man who knew his place in the world, but refused to let it define him.

A week later they were outside the old camper Emory had pulled behind him to Fort Stockton.  It was parked out behind the hay barn on the ranch where he was working.  Emory dropped the tailgate on the Chevy 3100.  He spread out the old Pendleton on top of several inches of fresh cut hay and scooped up Jolene and laid her out on the blanket like he was setting the table for a feast.  In a sense, he was.

Two months later the two of them were at Manny’s Motor Mart.  Jolene’s old Plymouth had crapped the bed and she had to have a way to get to the hardware store for work every day.

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Manny got her into a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air 4-Door Sedan 283 Power Pack 3-Speed w/OD.  “It’s a sleeper, just like you,” Emory said.  “With a front end and a rear end that both look good.  Coverin’ the bases comin’ or goin’.” Manny was rightfully embarrassed.

The 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air four-door sedan had been acquired by Manny a few weeks earlier on a trade and was believed to have been optioned from the factory with a 283 cubic inch Super Turbo-Fire V8 and a three-speed manual transmission with Touch-Down overdrive. Finished in Highland Green and Snowcrest White, it was further equipped with a PosiTraction differential, 3.36:1 gears, a four-barrel carburetor, a dual exhaust system, and body-color 14″ wheels that were mounted over unassisted drum brakes. 

The cabin was trimmed in green vinyl and featured bench seating, a heater, a defroster, and a Faria tachometer. Looking in through the driver’s side window, Emory said, “It’s got everything you need.  Nothin’ you don’t.”  He reached down and squeezed Jolene’s left ass cheek.  “Just like you.”

Emory peeled off seven $100 bills from the roll of bills he always had in the front right pocket of his shirt, a mother-of-pearl snap the only thing protecting his life savings.  They celebrated by driving the ‘new’ Chevy to Pecos for steaks at a place called Sweetie-Pie’s.  The steering wheel framed an array of factory instrumentation, but the speedometer had no problem showing triple digits on the highway into Pecos.  The Faria tachometer was backlit and occasionally required a light tap to function.  That’s a lot more than Emory required as Jolene teased him through his heavily starched Wranglers. As he pushed the Super Turbo-Fire V8 nearly to its limit, Jolene nearly pushed Emory to his.

The celebration continued after dinner, the pair checking into the El Rancho Motel in Pecos.  Emory had stopped for a bottle of Thunderbird wine at the local drug store but told Jolene they were out of condoms.  She thought it was odd that a drug store would be out of condoms, but have plenty of wine.  But then Pecos was different from Fort Stockton.  And they were celebrating, after all.

Two months later Jolene drove the Bel Air out to the ranch to tell Emory she was pregnant.  She was surprised that he didn’t have more of a reaction.  She thought it might just take a day or two for it all to sink in.  She was pretty surprised herself, after all.

She drove out again the following day.  There was a picnic basket next to her on the bench seat upholstered in Light and Medium Green vinyl with patterned inserts.  When she pulled the Bel Air around behind the hay barn, the old trailer was gone.  So was the Chevrolet 3100 pick-up.  Emory had signed the title to the Bel Air over to Jolene and tacked it to the side of the barn before he packed up and moved on.

That’s the thing about cowboys.

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