Courtney June's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Courtney walked back to the log cabin with mud drying on her overalls and six hours pressing on her chest. Supper at six. She had said yes with her silence, and now she had to look like a woman a rancher could sit across a table from. She stripped off the pink overalls at the door and climbed the stairs to the loft. Her closet held three flannel shirts, two pairs of jeans with torn knees, one church dress from four years ago, and a wool coat. She pulled the dress off the hanger. Moths had been at the hem. She held it up to the balcony light and saw daylight through the skirt. She sat on the edge of the bed. The clock on the dresser said noon. The nearest town was forty minutes down the county road, and she had no truck that week — the starter was in a box on the kitchen table waiting for a part. She went to the window. Her Clydesdale stood in the near paddock, broad and patient, tail switching flies. He could carry her to town and back before dark if she pushed him. He could not carry her home in a dress without ruining it on the saddle. She thought about it for a long minute. Then she thought about the closed door forever. She pulled on clean jeans and her second flannel and led the Clydesdale out of the paddock. She saddled him, tied a feed sack behind the cantle for whatever she bought, and rode down the road at a working trot. The dress shop on the main street was closed on Wednesdays. She stood in the street and read the sign twice. The feed store was open. So was the hardware. So was the little grocery with a rack of work clothes by the register. She went into the grocery. On the rack she found a plain cotton blouse, cream colored, her size, eleven dollars. She found a denim skirt on the same rack for fourteen. She bought both and a bar of soap and rode home. At the cabin she washed at the pump until her hands stopped smelling like wire and cedar. She braided her hair wet. She put on the new blouse and the new skirt and her cowboy boots, because the boots were the only nice thing she owned and they had been her mother's. She looked at herself in the hall mirror. Not fancy. Not muddy. Clean. At a quarter to six she walked the fence line on foot, crossed at the repaired gap, and headed for the light in his kitchen window. She had solved what to wear. She had not solved what to say when he opened the door.