Magpie

This story was written in a challenge to use these keywords:

marriage • checklist • songbird • mango • ranch
stroke • magpie • scowl • simper • commotion

MAGPIE

Margaret Daniels had bright red hair and a personality just as bright red. She was a passionate girl, cooped up like the chickens swarming the ranch she grew up on. She despised it as much as she loved it. The tire swing clinging to the old oak branches. Its worn rubber was not as weathered as the thatched roof of the farmhouse. The land splaying and the hills rolling.
Not once, ever, had Margaret Daniels ever questioned her place there. The sounds of fluttering wings, rumbling tractors, and clopping hooves was as familiar as her own heartbeat.
But the most familiar sound was that of the songbird. Its cry sounded different to everyone, each left resonating with a unique impression. Margaret herself had always heard it as an odd sound of angry laughter.
Mr Daniels, the main man In Margaret's life and owner of the farm, had always heard a cry of fear in the birdsong.
Daniels, known by loved ones as Dan, had a toothy grin but was mostly found with a scowl. Dan was anything but proper, a man who was tall on both sides, big, gruff, with a strong jaw. The biggest, strongest part of him was his hands. His thick fingers and rough knuckles. But, like every good country man, those hands were gentle.

"You like these hands?" He would tease when he saw her looking at them. "You'll like someone else's better one day.
"No, I won't."
"You gotta find yourself a man, Maggie." He would say over morning coffee and bacon. "Gotta have marriage on the mind."

On good days he would shoo Margaret away from her chores and quietly tell her to get "alone time". Margaret needed much of this. And so she would sit in the shade of the fruit trees. They were abundant and full of variety.  Apples, oranges, mangos. The mango trees were hardest to maintain, the most stubborn, requiring the most maintenance and needing the most care.
Dan often told Margaret she was like that mango tree. "You just need someone to take care of ya."
He nicknamed her Mango Maggie on her stubborn days, the difficult days. But he was aware of her sudden sweet side. And he always told her how perceptive she was, how uniquely she could pinpoint emotion and beauty. She was like that songbird. On the good days, he called her Magpie Maggie.
Now, Maggie could have gone on like this. She could keep twisting herself like that mango tree or sing to herself like that magpie. But that is not the way of the world.

Bailey Raymond was in a nice black suit the night he jerked his bright white car into the Daniel's crops. Maggie and Dan had rushed out to the fields, pushing their way around the prickly stalks. Never before had they seen a bright clean white car perched among the wild life of their rustic ranch.
Maggie creaked open the door only to find a man inside, quite awake and staring as if in shock. "H-hello. I'm Bailey Raymond." He sputtered.
He had padded shoulders, chestnut hair and evergreen eyes. Long, thin fingers tousled his hair.
Dan didn't like those eyes. Green was a bad sign, he said.
Bailey Raymond went on to explain in a rush how he had been at a gala. He was a jewelry salesman for an international company—
Nobody cares, Dan had interrupted. "Why is your car in my crops?"
"Right," Bailey Raymond smiled apologetically as Maggie helped him out of his car.
"There was a storm as I was leaving and I couldn't see anything. I confess I am not used to country roads, and the dirt had been muddied, there was a lightning flash and I startled so my car swerved and next thing I know—"
"He talks too much," Dan muttered to Maggie. "I'm going inside."
He turned to the green-eyed man. "What do we call you?"
"I go by Ray, sir."
"Well then, Ray. I trust you know you're not leaving this land until you've fixed the damage you've done to my crops."
"Dan—!" Maggie protested. But Bailey Raymond, or Ray, stilled her with a hand on her shoulder. "It's alright. I understand. Besides, I've got nowhere else to go. This week was my road trip."