The Best Husband In Texas

With her carrying the purring kitten, whose head must be getting dizzy with its vibrating sounds, Austin finally took Iris home. She had given no indication of being ready to leave his place.

He’d wrestled with just keeping her there until she said something about leaving. But how would her parents feel about him just...keeping their daughter?

Well, three other men had. She’d probably never even had a fling. They’d all just courted her and married her.

What about the second one? Had he just moved in on her? It hadn’t been long after the first one was buried that she’d married the second.

It had been almost a year.

On the other side of his truck, with the cat on her lap in exhausted sleep, Iris sat as though she’d always sat there. She didn’t talk to him at all.

He asked her, “Want to name the little bull calf?”

She looked over at Austin. “What would I name him.

“Not Spots. That sounds too much like a dog.”

She lifted her chin then lowered it to indicate she agreed.

Austin waited for her to say something. But she just sat there. So he asked, “What would be a good name for a grown bull?”

She silently considered. But she gave no names. She looked out the car window.

He said, “How about Bull’s Eye?”

She slowly looked over to him. He saw the movement from the corner of his eye. When she was actually looking at him, he glanced over and smiled before he looked back at the road.

She said, “Okay.”

Austin had been pushing for her to counter with another name. Now the new little calf would carry that name all the rest of his days. Bull’s Eye. She’d never know how many jokes there’d be that Austin would have to listen to again and again. Endlessly. For the bull it wouldn’t make no never mind, but for Austin... Good gravy!

Austin took Iris back to her mother and was pleasant and cordial to her hovering parents. Of course, he’d gotten there when it was almost suppertime and so he accepted the hospitable offer of something to wet his whistle. He sat and sipped his drink and visited so that no one could hustle him out of there.

Since he had settled in so well, there was nothing for the Smiths to do but suggest that he might stay for supper. It was so weak an offer that he should have declined, but he looked at his watch. He acted surprised as he saw the time it was, and he said, “Why...thank you. I will.”

At the table were the middle daughters and the young son. And there was Iris who was silent. She moved the food on her plate and didn’t join in on the conversations that eased around the table.

Her sister Emily was animated and flirty with Austin. She was twenty-two and worked at the telephone company office. Her animation was frowned on by her mother, but Emily ignored her mother’s squinted eyes and chatted and laughed.

Sixteen-year-old Andy just ate. He was in that growing period in which he whipped down his food like a plague of locusts.

Jennifer and Frances were simply amused observers, and at times they shared hilarious glances.

Austin knew they were simply amused and not being nasty. Their daddy wasn’t as certain. He eyed the two whose shared humor was especially sharp.

When dinner was over, they all cleared the table, and Austin did his share. But he didn’t leave. He amused Jennifer and Frances so that their eyes sparkled.

The time went past and the parents exchanged glances. Austin gave no sign of leaving.

Edwina raised her eyebrows in question to her husband, but he shrugged.

However, at about nine-thirty, Austin did begin to leave. As he got up he said, “will....” in prelude.

Iris, too, rose and said, “Good night.” And she just left the room and went off up the stairs and was...gone.

So it was her family who saw Austin out to his truck.

Three

In the two days that followed, Austin paced and thought and groaned. He didn’t for one minute think there was any way, at all, to get through the invisible, steel shield that surrounded Iris Smith Osburn Dallas Alden.

However, he felt the urgent need to see her. Why? Well, he...just...needed to see her. She was vulnerable. She’d already had three husbands. What if some other man got to her and convinced her to take him! Austin needed to be close to her so that she remembered him first.

But he seriously doubted that Iris thought anything at all about poor old Austin Farrell. She was oblivious of anyone. She was not in touch with the rest of the world. She endured the time that passed so slowly.

She was... Well, when Austin had escorted her to the play, she had watched, and she had absorbed it. Had she agreed with it? Now, that would be interesting.

Austin got his Stetson and went back to his pickup to go over to Iris’s house to see her. Well, the house actually belonged to her parents and her siblings. How droll that he thought of it as being hers.

After he knocked once on the door, it was her mother who opened the door and smiled. She called to her daughter upstairs. Austin declined going into the living room and finding someplace to sit. He waited at the bottom of the stairs.

Mrs. Osburn Dallas Alden came down the stairs. She had on a different loose, long, carelessly wrinkled dress and her hair was not tidy. She had used no makeup at all. Even so, she was the woman he wanted to be with for the rest of his life.

Austin smiled.

Iris glanced at him in an uninterested manner. The time passed. She said nothing, so he didn’t, either. They stood there. She finally asked, “What is it?”

“Come see the calf. He’s steadier.”

Without any response—at all—she walked on past him.

His mouth opened in shock because he thought she was snubbing him entirely. However, at the front door, she turned to it, reached over and opened it, went through the door and on outside toward his truck.

Recovering from his shock, and by striding with some push, Austin got to the truck before she did, and he opened the truck door for her. He stood there with the door opened for her and he watched her.

Again, Iris got into the vehicle without paying any attention to Austin.

He was transportation. That was obvious.

He went around the back of the pickup and got in on the driver’s side. He glanced over at her as he put in the key, started the motor, and eased along, saying nothing. But using the car phone, he called her mother and told her where Iris was and where she wanted to go.

Her mother said, “Thank you” in a very tender, relieved manner.

Now...why did her family want her with him? Or were they just grateful that they’d know now where she was and with whom? He was the “whom.” It was better to be with her, albeit silently, than to pace his empty house all by himself, just wondering where she was.

Iris said no word, at all, on the entire way to Austin’s place.

When the two arrived there, at the barn, she was out of the pickup before he’d rightly stopped and gotten out to help her.