Sugar Plums for Dry Creek

Judd spoke softly. “They’re just talking about the new woman who moved here.”

“Remember I told you about her?” Bobby added as he leaned down to look his sister in the eye. “She’s going to make doughnuts.”

“I’m not sure about the doughnuts,” Judd said. He worked hard to keep his voice even. Amanda picked up too easily on the emotion in men’s voices, and even though Judd was angry at the man who had made her so sensitive and not at her, he knew she’d think he was upset with her if he let his voice be anything but neutral.

Getting involved in the problems of Dry Creek was the last thing Judd wanted to do, but if that’s what it took to help Amanda realize all anger wasn’t directed at her, then that’s what he’d have to do. “Let’s go see what it’s all about.”

Judd walked slowly enough so Amanda could keep her fingers wrapped around his leg. She had her other hand in Bobby’s small hand.

“How’s it going?” Judd asked when they arrived at the group around the stove.

Judd had seen these men a dozen times since he’d rented the Jenkins farm this past spring, but he’d been so busy all summer with farm work and then with the kids that this was the first time he’d done more than nod in their direction.

Fortunately, the men were all too steamed up to wonder why he chose to talk now.

“Charley here is going deaf,” Jacob muttered as he leaned back with his fingers in his suspenders.

“I am not,” Charley said as he looked up at Judd through his bifocals. “I had a bad connection on that new fangled cell phone. Don’t know what’s wrong with it. Some of the words don’t come through too clear.”

“That’s when you ask the person to repeat themselves,” Jacob said.

The two men had obviously had this conversation before.

“I was being friendly,” Charley protested as he stood up and looked straight at Judd. “Everyone kept telling me to be friendly if anyone called. Now, do you think it sounds friendly to keep asking someone to repeat what they’ve just said?”

“Well, I guess that depends.” Judd hesitated. He didn’t want to get involved in the argument. He just wanted Amanda to hear that it wasn’t about her.

“You know, I got that phone because everybody said people would be calling about the ad at all times of the night and day,” Charley complained as he sat back down. “I even carried it to bed with me. And this is the thanks I get.”

“So you’re all angry because of the phone.” Judd nodded. There. That should satisfy Amanda that the argument had nothing to do with her.

“It isn’t the phone,” Jacob said as he shook his head. “It’s what he was supposed to do with the phone. He was supposed to make sure that businesses were suitable for Dry Creek.”

“He said she was a baker!” another old man protested.

“I had my mouth all set for a doughnut,” Jacob admitted. “One of those long maple ones.”

“Well, she kept saying Baker,” Charley defended himself. “How was I supposed to know that was just her name? Dry Creek could use a good bakery.”

“But she’s not a baker. She runs a dance school!” Jacob protested.

“And that’s the problem?” Judd tried again. He could feel Amanda’s hold on his leg lessen. She was listening to the men.

“Of course that’s the problem,” Jacob continued. “She doesn’t even teach real dancing, like the stomp-and-holler stuff they have at the senior center up by Miles City. This here is ballet. Who around here wants to learn ballet? You have to wear tights.”

“Or a tutu,” another old man added. “Pink fluffy stuff.”

“It isn’t decent, if you ask me,” still another man muttered. “Don’t know where she’ll buy all that netting around here anyway.”

“The store here started carrying bug netting since the mosquitoes were so bad over the summer. They still have some left. Maybe she could use that,” the first old man offered.

“She can’t use bug netting,” Charley said. “Not for ballet. Besides, she probably wants it to be pink, and that bug netting is black.”

“Well, of course it’s black,” another old man said. “Mosquitoes don’t care if it’s some fancy color.”

“Netting is the least of her worries. She isn’t going to have any students, so she won’t need any netting,” Jacob finally said.

There was a moment’s silence.

“Maybe she will take up baking—to keep herself busy if she doesn’t have any students,” Charley offered. “I heard she was trying to make some kind of cookies.”

“They burnt,” another man said mournfully. “The smoke came clear over here. I went over and asked if maybe a pie would be easier to bake.”

“She’s not going to be making pies. She’s going to go around trying to change the people of Dry Creek into something we’re not. It’s like trying to turn a pig into a silk purse. I say just let a pig be a pig—the way God intended,” Jacob said.

Judd looked down at Amanda. She’d stopped holding on to his pants leg and was listening intently to the men. He was glad she was listening even if she wasn’t talking yet. In the three months that Judd had been taking care of the two kids, Amanda occasionally whispered something to her brother, but she never said anything to anyone else, not even Judd.

Amanda leaned over to whisper in Bobby’s ear now.

The boy smiled and nodded. “Yeah, she is awfully pretty.”

Bobby looked up at the men. “Amanda thinks the woman looks like our mama.”

Judd’s breath caught. Both kids had stopped talking about their mother a month ago. Barbara was his second cousin, but Judd hadn’t known her until she showed up on his doorstep one morning. She’d paid an agency to find him because she wanted to ask him to take care of her kids while she got settled in a place. She was on the run from an abusive husband and had the court papers to prove it.

Judd had refused Barbara’s request at first. Sheer disbelief had cleared his mind of anything else. Judd had never known his mother, and the uncle who had raised him had been more interested in having a hired hand that he didn’t need to pay than in parenting an orphan. The stray dog Judd had taken in earlier in the summer probably knew more about family life than Judd did. Judd wasn’t someone anyone had ever thought to leave kids with before this. And one look at the kids showed him that they were still in the napping years.

“You must have taken care of little ones before—” Barbara had said.

“Not unless they had four feet and a tail,” Judd told her firmly. He’d nursed calves and stray dogs and even a pony or two. But kids? Never.

No, Judd wasn’t the one his cousin needed. “You’ll need to find someone else. Believe me, it’s best.”

“But—” Barbara said and then swallowed.

Judd didn’t like the look of desperation he saw in her eyes.

“You’re our only family,” she finally finished.

Judd figured she probably had that about right. The Bowman family tree had always been more of a stump than anything. Ever since his uncle had died, Judd had thought he was the last of the line.

Still, he hesitated.

He thought of suggesting she turn to the state for help, but he knew what kind of trouble that could get her into. Once children were in the state system, it wasn’t all that easy to get them out again, and he could see by the way she kept looking at the kids that she loved them.

He might not know much about a mother’s love himself, but he could at least recognize it when he saw it.

“Maybe you could get a babysitter,” Judd finally offered. “Some nice grandmother or something.”