basic, it was artistically arranged, and there were always celery tops, sliced olives or sprigs of parsley to decorate the plate.
Cliff didn’t notice, and he ate the decorations like a horse at a bush.
The next week, Cliff eased back from the table and scolded Tolly, “In another month, I’ll weigh a ton.”
Tolly dismissed that. “I don’t feed you enough to gain even two pounds.”
“I can hardly get up on Jasper. And he complains about carrying my weight around.”
Tolly pulled in the comers of his mouth and retorted, “You can’t possibly weigh any more than you did when you came here.”
“My pants have trouble zipping up.”
Tolly gasped. “Those house cleaners found your pants and washed them in lye?”
Cliff replied earnestly, “I hopc that’s what happened. I’d hate to starve myself and then find I wasn’t fattening but becoming a skeleton.”
And Tolly promised, “I’ll find out
Chancy volunteered, “Come upstairs and weigh on my scale. It’s accurate.”
Cliff looked at her naked-eyed and asked, “Your... scale?” He would get to go upstairs and see the rest of the house? Enter Valhalla? Actually see where she lay—dreaming of him? Sure.
She was saying earnestly, “I really don’t think you’ve gained any weight. You just haven’t been careful to keep your things neat and tidy.”
“In the laundry basket?”
“Oh. Well, they think they’re helping you in washing the clothes. You need to use the lock we gave you on the basket.”
“What kind of crew are they?”
“Very earnest.” She was serious. Then she was also earnest. “You didn’t see them.”
“No. I was off trying to unstick that da—recalcitrant bull. He was dragging his—belly in the mud His valuable...beily. All’s he did was bellow.”
Tom said, “We heard him,”
The rest at the table had to agree. One of the crew snorted in his laughter, but the rest were passably serious.
So Cliff went upstairs to Valhalla and was weighed. She said kindly, “It won’t be accurate just after a meal this way, but it will give you an idea of what you do weigh.”
And his weight was okay. His pants weren’t.
Cliff slid his eyes around Valhalla and memorized the layout of rooms. Then he went off down the stairs and out of the house on some ranch problem.
So Chancy took his discarded trousers to be replaced. It wasn’t a town, it was just a tent sale at a wide space in the road. They had automobile parts, tractor parts, rope and a gas tank. Just about nobody ever wanted gas. They had their own on their places. Of course, there was the occasional traveler who tried the endless two-lane highway. They were the ones who needed the gas.
In that place, the things they had on hand were jeans and shirts and wide-brimmed hats. They had boots. It was where Chancy shopped. They didn’t carry dresses. There weren’t that many women around that particular area. If they wanted dresses they went to Uvalde.
The strip shops did have other things. There were saddles and blankets and guns. The guns were not readily available. They were hidden. And they were only shown to known people from right around there. Otherwise, they were not openly a part of the stock.
Once, they’d been held up. And one of the men had been shot—for guns.
There was a big sign out on the road showing what they had and at the bottom was: No Guns.
It was a lie, but nobody that was a stranger ever saw one for sale.
Chancy showed the trousers at the place she could buy jeans. It showed the waist was a size 38.
Pete laughed. “Did you wash these.” And it wasn’t a question. Nobody, who knew her, thought Chancy was domesticated. She could well louse up anybody in any household skill.
She replied in a stilted manner, “The cleaning crew. Cliff apparently forgot to put them away.”
Pete grinned. “That crew ought to have a slice of my sales. They get me more business from them than any other way. Most people would just wear their jeans to rags. That crew gets them into new jeans regular.”
She ignored his comment and just said patiently, “Give me three pair that are actually 38 at the waist. That’ll hold him ’til he can come in for himself.”
So Pete inquired, “What d’you want me to do with these? They’re still in good shape.”
She said quickly, “I’ll take them.”
“The waist’s too big. There’s nobody out at your place that can fix these to fit.”
“I’ll wear a belt.”
That was when the word went around that Chancy was interested in Cliff, her new head. That got a lot of good smirking laughs.
Sometimes people just don’t have enough to think about.
Her face kind of pink, Chancy took Cliff’s shrunken jeans, a new web belt for him and his new pairs of jeans back to her car. She drove back to the ranch. There, she put the three trousers and the new belt in his room before he came into the house that evening.
In the meantime, she measured, cut off the bottoms of the legs on his old jeans and put them on. They were close. A belt did it. He’d never remember that once they had been his jeans.
But he did. He looked at her wearing his shrunken pants and he opened his lips to breathe more quietly. His bottom had been there. His sex had been there. She was in his pants. Boy, was she ever in his pants.
Chancy mentioned, “So you recognize your jeans?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m surprised. They don’t fit you anymore. So I cut these off. See? I can wear them.” She lifted her arms and turned around. She had a sassy backside.
She could “wear” him!
His hands were back in his pockets. They were there so much lately that the hands both thought they belonged in his pockets. Women are a nuisance.
So Cliff called his sister in San Antonio.
His sister said with an impatient sigh, “Now what.” That wasn’t a question. His sister then was silent, just waiting for—whatever. Her name was Isabel. She was a year older than Chancy. It was tough being sister to a man like Cliff. It meant a lot of phone calls from anxious females.
So Cliff told Isabel, “You need to come on out here and visit for a while. It’ll enhance your attitude and let you see how other folks live.”
“I don’t care how ‘other folks’ live!”
“This will be an expanding experience.”
And Isabel groaned, “Some woman’s after you and you want me to help you escape.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“You want me to help you with a wo—”
“This female doesn’t realize she’s actually a woman. She thinks she’s as good as any man and she tries to prove that all the time. She isn’t pushy. She just pitches in very earnestly and thinks she’s helping.”
Isabel protested, “Oh, for crying out loud!”
He gasped in admiration. “You’re cleaning up your cussin’. Somebody around I ought to know about?”
“Our parents live here also. They