Mayfly Melodies

Twenty-Four

Noah

I can remember sittin' in a café when I first started in rodeo, and waitin' until somebody got done so I could finish what they left—Chris LeDoux

It had been a strange week.

Noah couldn't pinpoint the exact moment that things had started to veer off track. It was as if one day things had started to get peculiar and those peculiarities had just built up and up until all he could conclude was that something was clearly wrong in his corner of the universe.

First was the fact that Bailey seemed to be avoiding him. He wasn't sure what he had done wrong but clearly something had irked her. She'd barely spoken to him in the days following the rodeo but he couldn't figure out where he'd screwed up. Bailey had been in a fine mood as he'd dropped her off at her car in town that night. She'd even given him a goodnight kiss, one that had replayed in his mind for hours before he finally fell asleep well after midnight.

It was strange behaviour, mainly because he figured that Bailey wasn't the sort of girl to really ignore someone. She seemed to face her problems head on which meant that she either wasn't interested in him anymore or he'd screwed up very, very badly and hadn't even realized it.

Then, in the midst of all of the tension with Bailey, he'd found that Caroline seemed to be in a very good mood. He'd even heard her humming again; some tune he didn't recognize but seemed to be a sort of song. Though she fell silent each time she found him looking, it had been happening with more frequency. At least once a day he found her making noise and the improvement in her behaviour was so significant that Noah found his own mood to be blissfully joyous.

If those two events hadn't been odd enough for him in the span of one single week, he'd also been offered a job. It was a strange proposition and one that had come seemingly out of nowhere. He'd gotten it only that morning as he'd helped out Dwaine Stannard, the owner of the Tishomingo Rodeo School, teach a handful of rowdy children the art of mutton busting.

Dwaine was the same age Noah's father would have been. He was a tall, only an inch or so shorter than Noah's six-foot-three-inches. He was a nice man, gruff, and a good teacher. It was clear after just a few minutes of watching Dwaine with his class that he had the respect of each and every student. It wasn't difficult to figure out why. Dwaine Stannard had been a rodeo champion back in his day. He'd won countless buckles and was on the path to a hall-of-fame career when a bad fall from a bronc had ended his career.

Aimless, he'd returned home to Tishomingo and opened his own rodeo school. It was the most popular one in the entire county with people flocking to the school from as far as Coalgate and Lane.

On that particular day, all of Dwaine's employees who normally helped him with the kids were absent. Noah didn't know where they were but he knew that Dwaine had been disgruntled with most of them when they'd bumped into each other at Annie's. Noah had stopped in at the diner for a coffee on his way back from the tack and feed store only to find Dwaine sitting alone at the counter.

Many days, Noah still felt like an outsider in the small city. It was the downfall to moving away from your home, he supposed. Especially when your new home was filled with such a tight knit group of people. It was why Noah made an effort, whenever possible, to speak with his new neighbours. A simple conversation was what led him to meet Rob Grant, long before he'd even known Bailey existed. He'd chatted with the man once in a lumber yard and extended his offer of help to mend some fences on the Grant property for the sake of trying to find a home in Tishomingo.

Noah wasn't ever entirely sure how well he was doing at creating relationships. Often he felt like his attempts fell flat. But, it didn't stop him from trying. So, he'd struck up a conversation with Dwaine and, when the man had mentioned that he had twenty kids coming for a mutton busting class with no help, Noah had felt the need to volunteer.