The Reading Garden - Short4
Important notice: All excerpts have been submitted by the author.
Author: Peggy Moreland
Prologue
Sixty or so men were crowded into the End of the Road Bar,
the official gathering place for the male population of
Temptation, Texas. Some sat slumped at tables with their backs
rounded against spool-back chairs. Others straddled bar stools,
their dusty, mud-caked boots hooked over the stool's lowest
rungs. Those unfortunate enough to have arrived too late to
claim a proper chair hitched a foot against chipped plaster and
pressed their shoulders to the wall, while still others leaned
back on elbows braced against the long, scarred bar.
Having made the trek into town straight from work on their
respective farms and ranches, most of the men wore jeans and
boots. Others sported bib overalls over soiled T-shirts. Since
there wasn't a lady in sight to complain about the breach of
etiquette, to a man their heads were covered, either with straw
cowboy hats or monogrammed caps advertising farm equipment or
feed.
Arriving late, Harley Kerr stopped just inside the door and
looked around. Cody Fipes, his friend and Temptation's sheriff,
sat a table in the rear of the room. Harley slipped into the
empty chair Cody had saved for him and was rewarded with a beer
shoved his way. With a nod of thanks, he one-knuckled his sweat-
stained hat to the back of his head and closed a hand around the
cold brew.
"Was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it," Cody
murmured in a low voice.
"Bull got in a pasture with some heifers," Harley replied
dryly. "Took me a while to convince him he didn't belong there."
Hot and tired, he tipped back his head and took a long, thirst-
quenching drink before setting the beer down and turning his
attention to Roy Acres, Temptation's mayor.
Seated on a tall stool centered in front of the long bar,
Mayor Acres resembled a fly-fattened frog. His faced flushed
with the effort, he raised his voice a level higher to be heard
over the scrape of chairs and buzz of conversation as he called
the meeting to order. The topic for the night's meeting?
Temptation's quickly disintegrating population and the closing of
local businesses.
Heads wagged regrettably as Mayor Acres read through the
list of businesses that had closed in the past year. Lips pursed
as Acres reviewed a survey taken at the local high school that
revealed only seventeen percent of the students registered there
intended to remain in Temptation after graduation.
Usually filled with raucous laughter and loud country music,
the End of the Road was as quiet as a church house on Saturday
night as its occupants absorbed the depressing news about the
town where they'd spent their entire lives. If something wasn't
done and done fast, Temptation, like so many other rural
communities, would soon be nothing but a ghost town.
Few understood this better than Harley Kerr and Cody Fipes.
They'd spent a lot of time over the past few years cussing and
discussing Temptation's slow decline. But unlike Harley, Cody
had come up with a plan. Not one that Harley totally supported,
but he figured at least it was a start.
With a tense glance at Harley, Cody stood and dragged off
his hat. "Roy," he said, nervously tapping his hat against his
knee, "I think I might have a solution to Temptation's problem."
"Well, speak up, then," Mayor Acres grumped impatiently.
"That's why we're here."
Cody hauled in a steadying breath, not at all sure how his
idea would be accepted. "What we need to do," he said slowly,
"is to advertise for women."
Somewhere in the crowded room, the legs of a chair hit the
floor with a loud thump, and one man, caught in midswallow during
Cody's brief recitation, spewed beer. Across the room someone
shouted, "Hell, if you're horny, Cody, why don't you just drive
up to Austin and pick yourself up a whore for the night?" The
comment was met with hoots and hollers and a general round of
back slapping.
Cody frowned. He hadn't expected anybody to jump on his
idea, at least not at first, but he sure as heck hadn't expected
to be made a fool of.
"That's not what I had in mind," he said dryly. "It doesn't
take somebody with a college degree to figure out that if you
want to grow a town, you need women to do it. As far as I know,"
he added, narrowing an eye at the man who'd told him to find
himself a whore, "men haven't figured out how to reproduce on
their own just yet."
He shifted, drawing his hat between his hands. "What we
need to do is take a look at the businesses we've lost, assess
what businesses or professionals we'll need in the future and
advertise for women to move here and fill those needs."
At the word "need," someone snickered and Cody shot him a
look that would peel paint off a barn. Sorry he'd even bothered
to share his idea for saving Temptation, Cody rammed his Stetson
back on his head. "That's all I've got to say," he muttered,
then sat down.
The laughter continued and Cody's face turned redder and
redder until Harley felt compelled to come to his friend's
defense. With a sigh, he pushed to his feet. "You boys can
laugh all you want, but I haven't heard a one of you come up with
a better idea. Personally I don't give a double-damn whether any
women move here nor not." He waited a beat, then added, "But
Cody's right when he says it'll take women to grow our town." He
clapped a hand on Cody's shoulder in a show of support. "I, for
one, stand behind him on this plan of his to advertise for women,
and I hope all of you will do the same."
What no one in the room realized was that the reporter from
the county newspaper was busily scrawling notes on a steno pad,
recording Cody Fipes's plan to save Temptation. When the weekly
issue was delivered to its subscribers on Wednesday, the entire
county would read about the meeting in the small town of
Temptation, Texas, whose population had dwindled to a depressing
978, and Cody Fipes's suggestion for how to save it. By
Thursday, the AP service would have picked up the story and
carried it nationwide.
By Friday afternoon, news trucks and vans would line the
narrow main street that marked the town of Temptation, their
cameras rolling, hoping to capitalize on this story of the town
who hoped to save itself by advertising for women.
Within forty-eight hours, single women from all fifty states
would be gossiping--and maybe dreaming a little--about the small
Texas town of Temptation where the men outnumbered the women
eight to one. © 1997
***
*About the author: USA Today Bestselling author Peggy Moreland has published
twelve books with Silhouette Desire and Silhouette Special
Ediiton, and is contracted for three more Desires to be released
in 1998. A RITA finalist and winner of the National Reader's
Choice Award, Peggy's known for her strong characterizations and
visualization skills. MARRY ME, COWBOY is the first in a three-book series from Silhouette Desire. The second, A LITTLE TEXAS TWO-STEP, is an August release, and the third, LONE STAR KIND OF MAN, is a September release. Write to Peggy Moreland. Visit Peggy Moreland's home page.
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