Janet Tronstad - Wife Wanted in Dry Creek

This morning, Leanne had asked her to take three-year-old Zach and six-year-old Ryan with her for the day so she and Walker could have a serious talk without them around. It seemed this wasn’t the first night Leanne’s husband had been gone and then refused to explain why. Katrina didn’t want the boys to witness that kind of a quarrel either, so she said yes, and now the boys were asleep in the back of her sister’s car. Leanne had insisted Katrina take her old car in case she wanted to take some of the back roads. That way, Katrina wouldn’t risk damaging her leased Lexus.

On a whim, Katrina had promised the boys a quarter for each photo she took of them today. They had been excited about earning money so she expected they’d be up soon. Even with all of the delays, they should be home at Leanne’s in time for an early dinner.

Conrad waited for the woman to walk out of his office before he put the phone back to his ear. “Now, start at the beginning.”

He had to admit he was glad she was gone. His whole face relaxed. For a while he thought he might be hallucinating, but his uncle Charley would bring him back to reality.

“Is she still there?” the older man asked a little unnecessarily in Conrad’s opinion. His uncle was looking out the window of the hardware store across the street. There was no way a person could leave Conrad’s gas station without being in full sight of anyone looking out that window.

“Yeah, she’s still here,” he answered anyway. “Did you happen to get a good look at her?”

“Elmer said she has really long black hair and is pretty.”

A whole group of older men sat inside the hardware store and kept their eyes on the comings and goings of Dry Creek. Elmer had underestimated her beauty, Conrad thought. Pretty was too tame a word to describe her. She was leggy and walked toward the beat-up old car with her long hair swinging with every step she took. She had warm brown eyes and creamy skin. Even wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, she was too exotic for this place. He hadn’t given much thought to her apart from that until he saw the tears in her eyes. That’s when all of the pieces fell into place and he recognized her.

Conrad remembered his uncle was waiting. “Yeah, she is that.”

“Is she acting peculiar?”

“In what way?”

“Well, nervous. Is she anxious to get away from here?”

“She might be a little impatient, but lots of people are.” He didn’t know how to go about this, but he knew a man needed to lance a boil if he wanted it to heal. “The thing is she looks like someone in a picture I have and—”

“Aha,” his uncle interrupted in triumph. “Elmer told me she’s probably on one of those wanted posters you keep on that bulletin board of yours. The sheriff called and asked us to be on the lookout for an old gray car with a dent in the right fender. Somebody stole it down by Pryor. On the Crow Indian reservation. Even I could see her car is gray. And banged up, too.”

Conrad closed his eyes. No one would steal that old car she was driving. Not unless they were drunk or too blind to see it clearly. “I don’t think she’s wanted for anything. That’s not where I saw her.” He drew a deep breath. “I know it’s not her, but she looks like the woman on the calendar.”

“What calendar?”

“You know the one I showed you.”

There was a moment of absolute silence.

“You mean the woman you’re going to marry?” Uncle Charley finally asked in a hushed tone. “That calendar?”

Conrad didn’t know why he hadn’t seen the pitfalls last week when he’d used a page in his calendar to make a point with his uncle. “No, she’s not the woman I’m going to marry. I’m just saying—oh, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

The fact that he had not wanted to have a serious discussion with his uncle about his love life was the reason he was in trouble now. Last Wednesday the older man had come over to show Conrad what he’d put in the church prayer bulletin—“Wife wanted for my nephew.”

A prayer didn’t get more public than that. Or more embarrassing.

Conrad knew he should have sat down right there and assured his uncle that he would get married eventually, in his own time. But he was in the middle of rebuilding a tractor engine for the Redferns and they needed it soon if they were going to plow the ground they were leasing in time to get a crop planted. So he’d tried to stop his uncle’s crusade the quick way, by pointing at the calendar on the wall and announcing that he had already picked out his future wife. It had been a joke, of course. Just a way to avoid the awkwardness of a conversation he didn’t want to have.

“She’s really here? Your wife?” His uncle sputtered, his voice rising.

“Don’t get excited. It’s not good for your blood pressure.”

“Well, I can hardly believe it.”

“That’s because there’s nothing to believe. It’s just that someone who looks like the calendar woman is here.”

When he said it out loud, it didn’t sound so bad. The problem was Conrad wasn’t sure this woman looked like anyone else. He’d never seen anyone like her in town before, not even when folks from the Miles City rodeo spilled over into the Dry Creek café. He took another look at her. For one thing, those strappy black high heels she wore would jump-start a dead man’s heart. Women around here didn’t wear shoes like that.

“Still, maybe it’s a sign,” Uncle Charley said hopefully.

“She just needs to get a new muffler on her car.”

If he had to pick some woman to make his point, Conrad wondered why he hadn’t chosen an ordinary woman who really existed in his world. Maybe someone like Tracy Stelling, who cut his hair once a month at the Quick Clips in Miles City. She’d grown up on one of the ranches near here and, although she’d left for a dozen or so years, she’d returned, looking subdued and grateful to be home. He’d have a chance with someone like that. He’d even been thinking of asking her out to dinner so he wouldn’t be lying if he said he was considering Tracy for a wife.

“Every relationship needs to start someplace,” his uncle said.

“That’s the whole point. There is no relationship. She’s just passing through. And she’s not even the real woman. I mean the woman I thought she was.”

He looked over at the calendar again. The woman was wearing a deep red dress with a white apron and holding open the door of a rundown farmhouse. The woman stood defiantly as if she was trying to fight off some crushing despair. He hadn’t noticed until she was standing at his window, looking out and blinking back her tears, that her profile was the same as the calendar woman.

“Conrad? You still there?” his uncle asked.

He swallowed, but he couldn’t talk. The calendar woman had reminded him of the feeling he’d had when he’d been five and his mother had died from pneumonia. Just the way she stood there holding that door, he’d known she’d shared the same feeling as him at some time in her life. They’d both screamed at the wind, even when no sound was coming out of their mouths.

“I’m just thinking—what if she did steal that car?” his uncle continued. “A thief could be dangerous. Knives. Guns. That kind of thing. Not that the sheriff said anything about the suspect being armed, but you never know. You need to be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” Conrad said, hoping it was true.

“I could call the sheriff and have him check the woman out,” his uncle persisted. “We should at least get a license plate number.”

If it would make his uncle stop asking questions about the woman, he’d give him the numbers to Fort Knox if he had them. He looked down at the work order he’d just filled out. “The plate number is SAQ718.”

He’d had to go back into the service bay to write down the number because the woman didn’t know it. Of course, lots of people didn’t know their license plate numbers. That didn’t mean they were driving stolen cars.

“Say it again so I can write it down.”

“SAQ718. But I just don’t think—”

“Well, you’re a good judge of character,” his uncle muttered, contradicting everything he’d said up to this point. “You’re probably right about her. It wouldn’t hurt to talk to her, though. Find out a little more about her.”

“She’s got two little kids in the backseat sleeping.”

“Oh.” His uncle’s voice turned flat. “She’s married then?”

To his surprise Conrad felt an echo of the older man’s disappointment. He hadn’t quite realized that. “I suppose that’s what it means all right.”

Now this, he told himself, was the reason it was foolish to put that prayer request out there. It was bound to be discouraging to everyone involved. He trusted God with his very soul, but when it came to finding a wife, all Conrad could remember were the few days in junior high when PE class became dance class. A boy, or a man, had to ask the question and hope for a dance even if he knew the woman would rather spit in his eye than say yes.

And the church—he couldn’t bring the whole church congregation into this. There’d be advice given and awkward questions and, worst of all, expectations. No, a man needed to find his own wife. His friends couldn’t do it for him.

“I’ve got to go,” Conrad said in a hurry. “She’s coming back over here.”

“Now?” his uncle asked. “Hold on—I’ll be there.”

“No—She’s my customer—I’ll—” Ask her to dance, he almost said, but stopped himself.

“I’ll bring her some coffee,” his uncle said. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

“No—” Conrad protested again, but the phone was already dead.

He wasn’t equipped for this kind of thing. He’d always figured that, if he married, it would be a dignified, orderly thing. If only he’d spoken directly to his uncle instead of making a joke, then he could have told him that he intended to ask Tracy out. He’d always thought that, if he got married, it would be to someone comfortable and safe like her.

He’d seen how his father had suffered when his mother died so he wasn’t looking for some grand passion that would twist him around and knock him flat when something went wrong. He didn’t expect his wife to be a great beauty or a great talker or to inspire a great feeling in him. She’d just be an average woman who was content to stand beside him in life.

He only had to look through the windows to see the calendar woman as she now stood waiting for him. There was nothing average about her.

Even more alarming, when he turned to look out the other window, he saw his uncle coming across the road with a grin on his weathered face and a cup of coffee in his hands. His arthritis certainly wasn’t bothering him now.

Well, Conrad decided, there was nothing for him to do except to walk into the garage and find out what he was made of. She was waiting for him. It wasn’t a good time for him to recollect that he never had learned to dance, but the thought came anyway. His palms were already starting to sweat.

Katrina shivered as she crossed her arms and stood in place. The windows in here were small and covered with frost from last night. The smoke from the muffler still hung in the air. A large tractor took up half of the garage, but there was plenty of room for her to pace around her sister’s old car.

“I’m freezing,” she said as he was coming out of his office. She was surprised her nephews were warm enough with just their coats on to keep sleeping, but she’d checked on them and they were.