Chase the Wind (28 page)

The afternoon dragged on for Jenny. She was worried, but there
was nothing she could do, and unless someone showed up at the infirmary with an injury, she had no way of knowing what was
going on in the rest of the mission. Finally, after she had mended everything in sight, the dinner bell rang. She was out of the room like a shot, racing for the dining room. Sister Mary Frances shook
her head behind her.

The group of older boys were conspicuously missing when everyone else had gathered for the evening meal. Jenny stood at her chair, her knuckles white from gripping the back, waiting for
Jamie and Marcus to show up. A smile lit her face when she heard Jamie’s long stride in the hall. He drew the immediate attention of everyone, but he ignored the stares, just flashing his grin at Jenny as he took a seat at the boys’ table with Marcus to his left. Logan, Joe and a few more stragglers came in after them, the two bullies looking a bit out of sorts. Everyone remained standing for prayer, and then sat for the meal. Jamie and Marcus immediately put their
heads together, and Jenny noticed that by sitting on his left, Marcus
made sure that the healing wound was shielded from the prying
looks that kept roaming their way. Jenny sent God a prayer, thank
ing Him for the presence of Marcus, then turned her attention to
Mary, who was having trouble cutting her meat.

They caught up with each other on the way to chapel that night,
Jenny wanting to hear everything that had happened. Jamie just
shrugged his shoulders at her inquiry, and started talking to Mary,
who was batting her big brown eyes at him. Marcus grabbed her arm and looked at her with a big grin on his face.

“You should have seen him,” he whispered.

“What happened?”

“Logan and Joe came in while he was putting his things away and started in on him, calling him names and such. He just stood up, kind of towered over Logan and said, ‘If I can survive this, I can survive anything you can throw my way.’ He just stood there, daring them to say something or do something, and they were struck dumb. It was great.” Marcus had obviously enjoyed the moment, he just kept grinning as he told the story. “I think they didn’t realize how big he was until he was standing there looking down on them.”

Jenny looked ahead at her brother, who was walking with his long index finger grasped in Mary’s hand, her head barely coming to his waist. Being with him every day had made her forget about his great height, and since her father was also tall, she just took it for granted. A delicious smile hit her face as she imagined Logan and Joe staring up at Jamie’s handsome features and every thought in their vacant heads scattering before his size.

“Do you think they’ll leave him alone?” she asked.

“No, but they’ll think long and hard before they do anything.”

They went into the chapel, boys on one side, girls on the other. Jenny took Mary into the pew with her, Marcus slid in on Jamie’s left, to help shield him once again. The service started, little heads began to nod, and Jamie looked over at Jenny and signed that he was bored, which made Jenny roll her eyes. Soon he was silently teaching Marcus Indian signs, and they began flashing messages back and forth, while Mary slept with her head on Jenny’s shoulder.

The next day in class, the lines were drawn: Jamie, Jenny and Marcus on one side, Logan and Joe on the other. The nun who was their teacher looked from one armed camp to the other with an expression of bewilderment on her homely face. Once again, she decided that ignorance was bliss and began the first lessons of the day. Jamie caught up in no time, and the twins and Marcus sped through the lesson, then waited patiently for Logan and Joe to finish so they could move on to something else. Jamie perused the small selection of donated books, found a few he hadn’t read and asked the sister for permission to read while he was waiting. The nun seemed astonished by his request but granted it and he
settled down at his desk, his long legs stretched out before him,
and began to read
David Copperfield.
Logan and Joe looked at him with something close to disgust on their faces and returned to
their
lesson, still struggling with the words. Jenny looked over at her brother, who had quickly lost himself in the book, and decided
that he was going to be okay in spite of everything. Now she just
had to talk
him into leaving.

Talking to Jamie about leaving turned out to be harder than Jenny had first thought. He managed to evade the subject every
time she brought it up by saying he hadn’t healed enough to think
about it. Sister Mary Frances had removed the splints from Jenny’s
arm and pronounced her fit, and Jamie’s burns had healed over into raw, ridged skin. He wore the hat whenever he went out of the mission, and pretty much ignored the stares of those inside. His world consisted of the classroom and his duties in the barn,
the rest of the time was just an inconvenience to be endured until he could get lost in his books, or lost in the gentle solace of the
animals.

Jenny finally cornered him in the barn one day in late spring
where he was brushing one of the huge draft horses, talking to him
in the gentle tones their father had used when he had worked his magic with the animals. Jenny stood outside the stall and listened
for a while, closing her eyes and letting her memories take her back
to the days when she had lain in the straw and listened to her
father speak in the same manner to Storm.

“What are you mooning over?” Jamie asked, tugging on her
braid.

“Nothing. I was just remembering.”

Jamie looked around the cool confines of the stall and at the
huge brown horse, which was daintily nibbling on a straw. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” He leaned over the stall door, letting his
arms dangle down the front. Jenny leaned her back against the wall
near the stall so she could see him.

“Let’s leave now,” she said.

“Why?”

“Why stay here?” she retorted.

“We have a roof over our head, and food in our bellies, that’s
why.”

“I feel like I’m in prison.”

“You’d feel worse out there on your own.”

“How can you say that?”

“Jen, think about it. We have no place to go, no money, no way
to make a living. No one would hire us, we’re too young.”

“Jamie—”

“No,
I know I’m right. We have to stay here until we’re old
enough to make it on our own. It’s not bad here. You just need to
quit thinking about what we used to have.”

“How can I, when every minute of the day I just want to jump
on the back of a horse and go tearing out of here?”

Jamie looked out the door of the barn to the plains beyond. The sun was high in the afternoon sky and the heat of it rippled in the distance, creating the illusion that he was looking through a thick
pane of glass. Occasionally, the warm breeze stirred the tufts of the
long grass that covered the rolling land, turning the stems over so that the land looked like waves coming into shore, each one dis
appearing into itself.

“I know,” he said simply, “but you can’t, so get over it and get
on with your life.”

“Get on with my life?” Jenny could not believe her ears. “How
am I supposed to get on with my life when I’m stuck here?”

“It won’t be forever, Jen. I promise. We just have to wait until we’re older. Then we’ll go, we’ll get jobs, and we’ll get our own
place.”

Jenny tried to look into the deep blue eyes that were hidden within the shadows of the hat. She could not see them. He was
good at hiding them from her now, and hiding all the things that were concealed in their depths. She wondered how much of what he said was coming from his practical nature, and how much was coming from his fear of rejection because of the scars. One thing
she was sure of: he wasn’t ready to leave. No matter what she said,
she wouldn’t change his mind.

He was back at work now, bent over the hooves of the giant horse, bracing his knee under a trunk-like leg that could snap his
in an instant, confident in the knowledge that the horse would not
harm him.
I
wish I felt that safe,
she thought to herself as she
watched him work. She felt as if she had been waiting on the edge of some precipice ever since she’d arrived at the mission, and she
knew that someone was anxious to push her off and watch her
tumble into space with nothing to hold on to. The feeling had been
keeping her awake at night and followed her through her days as
they melted into weeks and then months. But Jamie was content,
and as long as he stayed, she would stay. She left him to his animals
and went back to her mending
life at the mission soon became as routine as life at the ranch had
been. Jenny still was restless, longing to leave, but not willing to go anywhere without Jamie, who managed to stay hidden in the
deep recesses of the barn. Soon the long, hot, hazy days of summer
were upon them and they found a small pond where they would sneak off on Sunday afternoons when they were supposed to be
resting and studying God’s word.

Jamie and Marcus would shed their clothes with great joy and splash around in the cool water while Jenny and Mary dangled their feet over the rocks and let the water wash the heat away.
Jamie tried to get Jenny to join them in swimming, but she refused,
now self-conscious about the differences in their bodies. After a
while, Jamie and Marcus would come out and take Mary to sit
under the nearby trees, allowing Jenny privacy to swim at her lei
sure. It seemed a lifetime since she had shed her clothes and swam,
and she splashed around in the stream with joyous abandon. She submerged herself in the pond, the water coming up to her chin,
and turned graceful circles, watching the murky water ripple away
from her.

They had been sneaking out every Sunday since the end of June without being caught, but Jenny knew it was just a matter of time before this pleasure would be taken away from them, either by
Father Clarence or the weather, as it was now coming to the end of August. She was determined to enjoy these outings while she
could, so she closed her eyes and let her feet come to the top, the
water carrying her up until she was floating on her back, little
ripples breaking against her ears. She felt her hair fan out around her, the golden tendrils dancing around her fingertips and spread
ing out behind her like giant wings. Jenny lost herself in the sensation of floating, her body cooling until she didn’t know where her skin ended and the water began. She cleared her mind of all the turmoil that was constantly nagging at her and concentrated
on the moment, seeing nothing behind her closed lids but blue sky
and cool water.

Something foreign caught her attention, the sound of a breeze rustling the branches of a tree, but when she opened her eyes, the
leaves above her were motionless in the heat of the afternoon. She
heard it again, so she planted her feet in the muddy bottom and
ducked down until the water hit her chin.

“Jamie?” she called. There was no answer, so she turned slowly,
thinking she would catch some animal that had come to the pond
for a drink. Another rustle, low to the ground, behind her. “Marcus,
you better come out!” Then she heard a snicker that could
only
have been made by Joe, and she knew that Logan had to be there,
too. She heard Mary’s laughter in the distance and felt a sinking feeling when she realized that Jamie was out of sight.

“I know you’re watching me, Logan,” she said to the bushes as she crossed her arms over her breasts. She heard a rustling again, then saw Logan stand, with Joe coming up behind him.

“Why don’t you come on out?” Logan was holding her shirt in
the crook of his finger; behind him Joe held up her skirt.

“Why don’t you put my clothes down and leave before my
brother kills you?” She hoped she looked confident, and she prayed
that Jamie would get bored with waiting and come for her.

“I ain’t afraid of your brother. He ain’t gonna do nothin’ to me.”

“Yeah,” Joe added.

“Come on out, or are you scared?”

“I’m not afraid of you, or your little weasel of a friend,” Jenny
retorted, hoping to buy time before the situation got out of control. She scanned the shoreline to identify the quickest escape route with the most cover available. Unfortunately, Logan and Joe were oc
cupying the bank with the most shrubbery; the rest of the pond
was surrounded by cattails which would do little to shield her from their avid eyes. The cattails would, however, offer minimum coverage until she could reach the trees beyond, and she was not above
sacrificing her modesty to save her dignity.