Rattlesnake Crossing

"This afternoon I thought I had it all figured out," she told him. "Then the whole thing fell apart on me. By the time it was over, it turned out that what I thought I knew I didn't know at all."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Butch asked.

"Not really. I guess what I need to do now is just forget about it. Try to keep work at work and home at home."

Butch passed her a bowl of dressing. "It's Roquefort," he said. "My own recipe.”

"Homemade?"

"But of course. If it's any consolation, the same thing happened to me today. What I thought I had all figured out for Chapter One wasn't figured out at all."

"So you've started, then-writing, I mean."

"Everybody always says make an outline," Butch said. "So I tried that. I worked on the damned outline for a solid week and wasn't getting anywhere. Then I finally figured out what the problem is. I've always hated outlining. Always. So I threw out the outline and started over from scratch."

Dipping a sprig of asparagus into the dressing, Joa

"See there?" Butch said with a grin. "I'll bet you thought I was just another pretty face." And then they laughed some more.

"Seriously, though. You said you were going to write mysteries," Joa

"Well," Butch said, "that's what I thought I had figured out. I thought I'd write books about a kind of tough-guy cop. Now I'm not so sure."

"Why? What changed your mind?"

"You."

"Me?" Joa

"Because from what I've seen in the last few days around here, being a cop is a whole lot harder than I ever thought. And I'm not so sure I want to write about a tough guy, either. There are a lot of those in fiction, you know."

"Are there?"

"Sure. So maybe I'll write a book with a female protagonist instead."

"I see. A lady detective." Joa

"I was a boy, I'll have you know," Butch replied indignantly. "I wouldn't have been caught dead reading a Nancy Drew."

"But you did read the Hardy Boys," Joa

"Of course. Didn't everybody?"

Again silence filled the room and they ate without speaking. Joa

"Since I haven't written Chapter One yet, that seems a bit premature. So no, I haven’t"

"Well, you should," she said. "When it comes time to start, that's what's supposed to go on the title page-the book's title and the author's name."

"Butch Dixon," he said slowly, sounding it out. "That doesn't have much of a ring to it. Sounds like somebody who'd write auto-repair manuals. No. Butch Dixon isn't going to cut it. And Frederick Dixon isn't much better."

"Then what's your middle name?" Joa

"Why do you want to know?"

"I just want to, that's all."

Butch sighed. "I hate my middle name," he said. "I haven't had enough to drink to start telling people my middle name."

"You're not telling people," Joa

"Wilcox," he said with a glower. "Not two 1's like the town. One 1."

"Why don't you use your initials, then?" Joa

Butch choked on a sip of champagne. "Faye Wanda!" he repeated. "'That's awful."

"But you see what I mean."

"Okay, F. W. Dixon, then. That's all right, I suppose. But doesn't it sound familiar? I'm sure I know of a writer by that name."

When they finally managed to dredge the name Franklin W. Dixon out of their Hardy Boys memory banks, they gave up eating altogether and collapsed on the floor amid gales of helpless laughter. Joa

"No wonder the name sounded familiar!" Butch gasped, wiping the tears from his eyes. "We were just talking about him. And I can still see it now, the name and the initials printed on the ski

"Right," Joa

Eventually they got up, cleared the table, and loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. With the kitchen cleaned up and the dishwasher ru

Butch noticed her rubbing her arms. "It never gets this cool in Phoenix during the summer," he said. "Too much humidity. Too much pavement."

"Are you going to miss Phoenix?" she asked.

"I wondered about that, but don't think so." He paused. In the interim, a roving band of coyotes howled back and forth across the valley.

"See there?" Butch added. "You don’t hear very much of that in Peoria anymore. No, I don't think I'll miss the city at all."

"So that's why you were so busy the last few weeks? You were working on the deal to sell the Roundhouse?" He nodded.

"I was worried," she said. "Especially when I called and the phone was disco

"Maybe what?"

"I thought maybe you'd taken up with some other woman."

"That was bothering me, too," he said glumly. "I wasn't hearing much from you, either. You kept saying you were helping out a lot with Ruth and Esther, but I was obsessed by the idea that some other guy had moved into the picture."

"So we were both… well… jealous."

"I guess so."

"Don't you think that's fu

"No," Butch said, shaking his head. "It's not fu

"You mean that, don't you?" she said.

There was real wonder in her voice. After months of bantering back and forth, after months of what she had regarded as just having fun, she had finally caught a glimmer, a hint, of the depth of feeling Butch Dixon kept hidden under layers of jokes and easy laughter.

"Please, Joa

She moved closer to him on the swing, letting the bare skin of her leg meet tip with the soft, worn denim of his jeans. Then she reached out and took his hand. "I wouldn't want to lose you, either," she said. She raised his tightly clenched fist to her lips and kissed the back of it. Under that light caress she felt the tension recede from Butch's hand and body both.

"Wouldn't you like to come inside?" she whispered. "No," he said. "Really. I think I'd better go. Now, before things end up getting out of hand."

For months Joa