Her Husband's Country Song for Another Woman

Prologue

Lo

The August sun is trying to kill us all, and the only shade behind the stock pens is the shadow of my grandmother’s flatbed.

I’ve sold eleven bales since morning. Two more and I can go home, strip off these boots, and stand in the creek until my feet forget what heat feels like.

Granny’s at the house with her bad hip and her worse attitude, and I promised her I’d be back before the tie-down roping finished so she wouldn’t miss it on the radio.

She likes to critique their form. She hasn’t been on a horse in six years, but she’s still convinced she could clock a better time than any man under forty.

The grandstand roars. I can hear the announcer from here, tinny and far away, though I can’t make out the words. Someone’s done well or someone’s done poorly. The cattle in the pens behind me shift and low, bored with all of it.

“Two bales,” I say to no one. “Two bales and I’m gone.”

A man walks past the end of my truck. Big. Tall enough that he blocks the sun for a second, and I almost thank him for it before I see his face.

He’s carrying his hat instead of wearing it, which is how I know something’s gone wrong.

Nobody walks out of the arena holding their hat like it personally offended them unless they’ve just embarrassed themselves in front of God and Ridley, Texas.

His jaw is set so tight I can see the muscle jumping from here, and his ears are red.

Not pink. Red. The kind of red that says he’s going to replay whatever just happened every night for the next six months.

He doesn’t see me. He’s not seeing anything. He walks past my tailgate and sits down on it without asking, without looking, without even checking if there’s someone there to object.

The truck rocks with his weight. The bales shift behind us.

I wait for him to say something. An apology. An explanation. A “sorry, ma’am, I just need a minute.” Something.

He doesn’t.

He just sits there, forearms on his knees, hat dangling from one hand, staring at the dirt between his boots.

His shoulders are enormous. His hands are enormous.

Everything about him is enormous, actually, and I’m starting to think I should say something because this is my truck and my tailgate and my grandmother’s hay, and I don’t know this man from Adam.

But he looks so miserable.

I’ve seen miserable before. I’ve been miserable before. Granny says the Joneses specialize in it. But I’ve never seen someone sit in misery quite like this, like he’s trying to disappear into it, like if he holds still enough, the last ten minutes of his life will unhappen.

So I don’t say anything. I sit on my side of the tailgate and let him have his, and I watch the dust devils spin between the stock pens, and I wait.

Ten minutes go by.

The announcer’s voice drifts over. Someone wins something. The crowd cheers. The man on my tailgate doesn’t move.

Fifteen minutes.

I should say something. I should ask if he’s all right, at least introduce myself, because this is getting weird. Granny’s going to ask why I was late, and “a stranger sat on our truck and wouldn’t talk to me” isn’t going to satisfy her.

He stands up.

Finally, I think. He’s going. He’ll tip his hat and apologize and I’ll never see him again and I’ll have a story to tell that’s barely a story at all.

But he doesn’t go. He walks to a battered Ford three spaces down, opens the passenger door, and pulls out a guitar case.

“Oh, no,” I say. “No, no, no.”

He doesn’t hear me. Or he doesn’t care. He walks back to my tailgate, sits down in the same spot, opens the case, and pulls out a guitar that’s seen better decades.

“I don’t-” I start.

He plays a chord. It’s not a good chord; it’s the chord of a man who’s taught himself guitar from library books and stubbornness, and it shows.

“Sir-”

Another chord. Worse than the first. His fingers are too big for the frets, or the guitar’s too small for his hands, or both. He’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the guitar like it owes him money.

And then he starts to sing.

His voice is low and rough and completely untrained, and the melody he’s picking out is something he’s making up as he goes.

I can tell because he keeps stopping and starting, trying a note, abandoning it, trying another.

It’s the musical equivalent of watching someone build furniture without a blueprint.

But the words. The words are about me.

“I sat down where I shouldn’t,” he sings, still not looking at me, “on a stranger’s tailgate throne. She could’ve told me off or told me gone, but she left me alone. And her eyes-”

He stops. Frowns at the guitar. Tries three different notes, rejects all of them, settles on a fourth.

“And her eyes are the color of-” He looks up at me for the first time. Really looks. His eyes are light blue, startling against his sun-dark face, and they go wide when they meet mine, like he’s just now realized I’m a person and not a concept. “-of honey,” he finishes, almost too quiet to hear.

“Honey isn’t a color,” I say.

He blinks. His ears, which had finally started to fade to pink, go red again.

“It’s more of a… descriptive substance,” I continue, because I can’t seem to stop myself. “You could say ‘amber.’ Or ‘gold.’ Or ‘brown,’ if you wanted to be boring about it. But honey’s not technically on the spectrum.”

He stares at me. His mouth opens, closes, opens again. Up close, I can see the arena dust still caught in his hair, the sweat stains on his collar, the calluses on his roping hand.

“It is now,” he says.

“What?”

“Honey.” He strums another chord, still bad, still untrained, still somehow earnest enough that I don’t laugh. “It’s a color now. I just made it one.”

“You can’t just make up a color.”

“I just did.”

“That’s not how colors work.”

“It’s how songs work.” He’s almost smiling now, just at the corners. “The song says your eyes are honey. So they are.”

“The song’s not finished.”

“It will be.” He looks at his guitar, then back at me. “When I figure out what rhymes with ‘honey’ that isn’t ‘bunny’ or ‘money’ or ‘funny.’”

“Sunny,” I offer.

“Sunny.” He tries it, mumbling under his breath, picking out that half-formed melody. “Her eyes are honey in the sunny…” He shakes his head. “No. That’s terrible.”

“It’s all terrible,” I say. “No offense.”

“None taken.” He sets the guitar across his knees and looks at me properly now, full-on, like I’m a puzzle he’s just decided to solve. “I missed my calf.”

“I heard.”

“Whole grandstand saw it. My rope went left, he went right, I went straight into the dirt. Eight seconds of looking like an idiot in front of everyone I know.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I deserved it. I got distracted.” He pauses. “Pretty girl selling hay behind the pens.”

“I was behind the pens. You couldn’t have seen me from the arena.”

“I saw you when I walked in this morning.” His ears have reached a shade of red I didn’t know skin could achieve. “Couldn’t stop thinking about it. The honey.”

“The honey.”

“Your eyes.”

I should tell him to leave. I should tell him this is weird, and he’s weird, and I don’t know him, and I have two bales left to sell and a grandmother who’s waiting and a creek with my name on it.

Instead I say, “I’m Lo.”

“I’m Jesse.” He holds out his hand. It swallows mine when I shake it. “Jesse Cooper. I rope. Badly, apparently.”

“You sing badly too.”

“I’m aware.” He’s definitely smiling now, small but real. “I’m going to get better.”

“At roping or singing?”

“Both. But singing first. I’ve got a song to finish.”

“The honey song.”

“The honey song.” He looks at me like I’ve just handed him something precious, which I haven’t. I’ve handed him nothing. I’ve insulted his music and corrected his color theory and done absolutely nothing to earn the way he’s looking at me right now.

“I need to sell two more bales,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say.

“I’ll buy them.”

“You don’t need hay. You already brought feed for your horse.”

“I’ll figure it out.” He’s already pulling his wallet from his back pocket. “How much?”

“You’ve already got hay.”

“I’ll get more horses.”

“You’re going to buy more horses so you have somewhere to put the hay you don’t need?”

“I’m going to buy hay so I have an excuse to come back next Saturday.” He holds out two twenties. “How much?”

I look at the money. I look at him. His ears are still red, his eyes still that impossible light blue, his guitar still the ugliest instrument I’ve ever seen. His song is still the worst piece of music I’ve ever heard, and he’s still sitting on my tailgate like he belongs there.

“The flatbed’s here every Saturday,” I say. “Eight to four. My grandmother sets the prices and she doesn’t negotiate.”

“Neither do I.” He sets the twenties on the tailgate between us. “I’ll see you Saturday, Lo.”

He puts his guitar back in its case, tips his hat, the one he’s been murdering with his grip for the last half hour, and walks back to his truck. I watch him go. I watch him drive away. I sit on the tailgate with forty dollars I didn’t earn and a half-remembered melody I can’t get out of my head.

“And her eyes are honey,” I sing under my breath, trying to find the tune he was reaching for. “In the sunny… in the runny…”

It’s still terrible.

I’m still smiling.

***

The courthouse is cold, and my grandmother’s ring is warm on my finger, and Jesse’s hands are shaking so bad he can’t get his on.

Four years. Four years of Saturdays at the tailgate.

Four years of that song getting better, then good, then something that makes me cry every time he plays it.

Four years of learning him, his laugh, his stubbornness, his way of going quiet when he’s feeling too much to speak.

Four years of him learning me right back.

“You’re supposed to slide it on,” I say. “Not fight it.”

“I’m not fighting it. My hands are just-”

“Shaking like a leaf in a tornado?”

“I was going to say ‘excited.’” He finally gets the ring past his knuckle, and his exhale comes out shaky with relief. “There. Done - it’s official.”

“Not quite.” The justice of the peace clears her throat. “I still have to pronounce you.”

“Right, sorry. Go ahead.”

She does. She says the words, and we sign the papers, and then we’re walking out into the Texas sun as husband and wife, and Jesse picks me up and spins me right there on the courthouse steps, and I’m laughing, and he’s laughing, and somewhere in Ridley there’s a flatbed truck that changed my whole life.

“Mrs. Cooper,” he says, setting me down but not letting go.

“That’s me.”

“Mrs. Cooper.” He says it again like he’s tasting it. “Lorilee Cooper. Lo Cooper, my wife.”

“Your wife.”

He kisses me. Soft, then not soft, then soft again. His ring catches the sun when he cups my face in his hands, and I think: I’m the luckiest girl in Texas.