~ Miss Rosalie And The Primrose Fool ~

by

D. L. Chance

Rosalie shook him awake.

“When do you intend to make an honest woman out of me, Deke?” she asked softly.

The tall, slender, still youngish man of thirty-three grunted. Blinking and yawning, he stretched an arm across the woman lying in his arms to reach for his shirt pocket. He needed a smoke after that question. Then he remembered he'd given them up last spring because her folks might notice the smell. Instead, Deke Sadler sank back into his familiar position against the backrest of the couch and sighed.

“Now you know me, Rosalie,” he whispered. “I can't help but believe a man who'd marry up permanent with a woman after what my first one did to me is a fool. Plain and simple. And I—”

“And you’re no fool,” the only offspring of Jack and Beatrice Leonard finished for him, “I know. You've told me often enough I'm thinking of having it tattooed on your hairy backside. That way I'd be reminded every time we end up on this blamed porch sofa all night. Deke, wouldn't you rather stretch out on my clean bed inside?”

Deke tried to ignore the dusty, musky odor coming off the sofa throw they used as a light blanket. “You know,” he said casually, “I’ve got a good bed of my own right out there at the ranch. Next time, maybe you could…you know.”

“I’m not about to drive out to your house after closing time just so I can explain my being there to Henry and Marvin in the morning,” she snapped. Then she lowered her voice. “It’s just not right for them to sneak around like they do, trying to catch sight of me naked. It's a sin, Deke. And I don't care if Henry is your brother, I’m not going to do it.”

“But they’re not there just now. They’re off hunting.”

“Maybe they’re not, but I’d still get seen waltzing back in here of an early morning after being out at your place all night.”

“I reckon,” he said noncommittally. Shrugging, Deke gazed off to the east where the August sun had just begun replacing the blue-gray of the new high plains dawn with the first tinges of a cloudless orange sunrise and, deciding not to point out how they were already sinning the hell out of the old couch anyway, wished fervently for that smoke.

He knew nobody could see onto the screened back porch where he and his best friend had been enjoying each other's intimate company regularly for the last three years or so. But with the outhouse just across the yard, he also knew there were times when various people, Rosalie's stern Christian folks in particular, made the occasional nighttime trek across the yard to the privy. Luckily, the three freshly whitewashed tourist cottages standing in a row off to the edge of the property which also contained the large building combining the Leonard family's café, filling station, garage and family apartment were empty this morning, so there'd be no early-rising travelers barging onto the porch looking for the breakfast the Leonards’ threw in with the tourist cabin rent. And there would be no nosy strangers wondering why his pickup truck was parked behind the large barn a few hundred feet beyond the cabins.

At one time Deke would have fought the man who even suggested his leaving his truck parked out back of the barn and sneaking toward this screened-in porch built along the back of the Leonard's roadside business for a night of friendly exercise with the Leonard’s widowed daughter might be a cowardly act. Sneaking! Since the war, Deke Sadler didn't sneak anywhere.

Especially to while away the night on a ratty old couch.

Yet, here he lay now, in the arms of his old pal, with his truck hidden safely down the road behind Old Man Gorver's Hay and Feed barn.

“Well,” he said, sighing, “I reckon there’s just no way we can keep it up then.”