Free Cowboy Sing Me Home by Kim Hunt Harris Page B

it
was piled up in the corner of the barn.  And some of it…” He pushed back the
cotton so that they could see blue plastic underneath.  “Most of it is wadded
up plastic bags from Walmart.   I knew those dadgummed things were going to
come in handy some day.”
    They walked back down the row and Luke bought both of them an ear of corn
dripping with butter.  They sat on a bench and ate while the watched the
growing crowd.  Most of the booths weren’t officially open yet, and many
weren’t going to be until the next day, but something this exciting drew a
good-sized crowd who just wanted to watch. 
    Dusty pointed to a couple of teenage girls in dark gray costumes that
looked like paper mache boulders.  “What in the world are they supposed to be?”
     Luke drew back his head.  “They’re rain clouds.  Don’t they look like
rain clouds?”
    “Oh sure.  Of course.  At first I thought they were big rocks, but now
that I look a little closer…”
    “If they were big rocks they would have some hard edges to them.”  He
motioned the girls over and made them twirl around.  “See how rounded and
billowy they are?  Like rain clouds.”
    Dusty looked at the sincere expression on his face and couldn’t help but
smile.  “This was your idea, wasn’t it?”
    He started to shrug, but one of the girls nodded.  “He was all excited
about it.”
    “Actually, the whole Rain Fest was my idea.”
    “I wish you’d had some idea how to keep these things from getting so
hot,” the other rain cloud said.  She palmed the edge of her costume and
shifted it up and down, as if the small movement would generate a breeze.  “I’m
sweating so hard, when I take this thing off they’re gonna smell me clear to
Abilene.”
    “He wanted us to carry little buckets of water and sprinkle people with
them, but we decided we couldn’t waste the water.”  The girl giggled and
pointed.  “Look at Andy.”
    A skinny boy about their age approached.  He wore a black spandex suit
with a glittering silver lightening bolt painted from his shoulder to his toe. 
He stopped in the street, beamed at them, and stuck his scrawny chest out in a
superhero pose, which caused the girls to giggle harder.
    “All right, we have rain clouds, we have lightening.  Pretty soon we’re
going to have big crowds of people.  Y’all get out there, be good hosts, and
make some rain.”  Luke shooed them back down the street.
    Wynonna Judd came over the P.A. system singing “Rockin’ With The Rhythm
Of the Rain,” and Dusty studied Luke as he scanned the crowd.  When he turned
to her, wiped butter from her lower lip and then kissed her, she let him.  Not
that she was averse to kissing him; she was just usually the one who decided
when and where any contact was exchanged. 
    A little voice niggled in the back of her mind that she was relaxing some
of her rules with Luke Tanner, and that was probably not a good thing.  But his
mood was infectious, and she decided she didn’t have to remain on her guard
every second.  She had laid the ground rules with him last night, and she was
sure he had no doubt which one of them had the upper hand.  So she could let
him lead her around like a sixteen-year-old with his steady, if that was what
floated his boat.  It didn’t mean anything if she didn’t let it.
    He tossed both their corncobs in a trashcan and they set off again down
the street.  “I see a lot of familiar faces, so I think these are all
volunteers.  But let’s check the front gate to see if we’ve sold any tickets
yet, just in case.”
    “What’s the town going to do with the money raised?” 
    “Half of it’s going into an emergency fund for people in the county. 
Anyone who lives here can apply for a small grant, like if they electricity’s
about to be cut off, or there’s an unexpected doctor bill, stuff like that. 
Nothing big, but hopefully there will be enough to see anybody through a rough
spot.  And the