Deep in the Heart of Me (22 page)

"We're too young," Sobe says. "We're not even eighteen! Or sixteen even! You haven't even known me that long Tonio."

"Long enough."

"A month!"

"I won't change my mind," I insist. "Dad says…," well Shaun said it too, but I don't add Shaun's name, "when you find the girl…thee girl…you should marry her. Dad knew with Maman and Shaun knew with Peg," so there I said it, "and…maybe I know something too."

She puts her hands over her mouth for a minute, her eyes so dark and deep I could fall headfirst maybe, I don't know. I move close and pull her hands away. I hold one. She says, "But the girl…should be…she should be finished with school at least…right?"

"You can finish school," I say generously. Does she think marriage would end her life?

"She should also know, she should know you're 'thee boy'…and be ready…for marriage…for life!"

Now we do have a problem. "I'm not 'thee' boy?" I thought I was.

"I…think you are…."

"You 'think' I am?"

"I wasn't thinking about…husband. I was thinking…just thinking you were…my friend."

"Special friend," I remind her with disgust.

"You're twisting it. Like in the debate you're trying to be the best. I don't get to plan…just one day at a time, Dad says. Because anything can change. How can I plan such a thing as marriage?"

"I'm trying to keep you safe from gangsters and kidnappers," I say. "That's all."

She puts her hand on me. We're sitting up half in the hay and half out. I don't know how we moved so much, but she makes me crazy.

"But…that's not a proposal Tonio! Even I know that."

"Because of…love," I say, worn out already. "Why else?"

She takes in a breath, and I think she's going to cry. "If I didn't think so much of you Tonio, do you think I would have risked telling you about my father and me?"

"I guess not. No. No, I don't."

"Then it's love from me too. I love you Tonio."

She pulls me to earth. She rips me off my high horse, and she stays put and looks at me and bests me and wins me all in one.

"We have enough trouble without being mean to one another," she says.

Yes. Yes, we do. But I wasn't being mean, at all, but I know it's best to go along.

"All right," I say. I am giving over. I hope she understands I don't want to give over, but I do it because I am trying to…be 'thee boyo' I guess.

Then I wonder, "Would you rather be taken by those outlaws again before you'll marry me?" Maybe I want to be a sorehead.

"It's not like that," she says. "I would rather get to be a normal person and finish school and reach a marriageable age and not be the girl who married before she was even…well before she was a woman just because she was afraid."

"Sobe…you just confused me again. I thought we agreed that it's love. Is it or not?"

"It is. But this is so quick, Tonio. It's just…when it happened, I was a freak. I was the girl who was taken. Even before, I was the girl who had a detective follow her around. I couldn't go anywhere without the strangeness of a big man waiting in the foyer or on the porch. I've had this shadow on me. I don't want you to just feel sorry for me, you're…meant to do great things. If there's to be any hope for us it won't come out of you…protecting me like I'm something so…weak."

"Fragile," I say. I don't mean to, it just slips out.

"What?"

"Nothing. You get me mixed up."

"Fragile?"

"I didn't mean it. I meant gentle. You're gentle."

"Well, I've no idea but you don't even know if you'll stay on the farm."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"I don't know…if it can hold you, Tonio. The world is so big, and there might come a day when…maybe something will change…and what you thought…it's different then. You didn't know…or maybe want it even. You don't know Tonio is all I mean."

"Sobe I…."

"And…I love you because you are so wonderful and brave. But…you have to let me decide on things Tonio because they are things about what I must do and…."

I am shaking my head. She is a tornado of ideas, and she makes my head spin.

"Just a 'no' will do then," I say, and I get up, and I'm hitting the dust off my pants.

She stands as well rubbing one leg against the other as they must be itching. "It's not fair if you're angry," she says.

"I'm not," I say spanking my own behind as the dust flies.

"Well then I shall go on loving you," she says lifting that small pointy chin.

"And what shall I do, Sobe? You don't seem inclined to help me out so I'll be the new detective then, and I'll follow you around, and you can ignore me."

"The only thing I've done to break our code is tell you what you've wanted to know from the first," she says. "I did that for you because…I trust you. Do you know what that means? I don't trust anyone Tonio. Not ever or never even!"

"Well, you know what I want. I won't be saying it again."

"Oh?" she says, and I am hopeful as she sounds disappointed.

"Did you think I would? After…this?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Clannan, Tonio? Would we go to school like that?"

"Don't make fun," I warn.

"I'm not! I'm saying what it would really be! Even the teacher is not married, and she is thirty-two!"

"Then she's an old maid. She wasn't taken and nearly killed. She didn't watch her mother die, now did she? She doesn't have to run away and keep running. I don't know why, but your father knows. And he won't take me serious if I ask for you any other way, don't you understand?"

"Oh Tonio," she says, "you've thought so hard on this." Her hands touch my face. I fight not to close my eyes. I'm hurting.

Inside I'm hurting. I didn't keep Shaun alive, but I won't fail her. Does she know that? If Sobe Bell can be hurt in this world while I live, while I breathe, then I can't live. I can't live if such a thing is true.

But I can't say it. I wouldn't have the words to say out loud to release like birds these words, birds that would die without the cage…without me to hold them…to clip their wings while I figure it out…all of it…some of it…none of it…nothing.

"Tonio…if I thought you loved me so much…."

"I do."

She shakes her head. "So much?"

"I won't keep saying it so you can throw me off again."

"But…my dad would say…yours would say…and your mother…."

"We could go to St. Louis and get married. Then no one could take you from me Sobe. You could be normal then.

"I've got fifty dollars. We could hitch there come Saturday…we could leave while it's still dark on one of the trucks that come through to go to market and cross the river and stay in a boarding house even." But I have a better plan than that.

I'm just showing her the possibilities.

"Fifty dollars? Are you rich or something?"

I feel proud of that. She is coming my way I think.

"But I can't run off. He'd die. He'd think all kinds of things. I can't run off."

"We'll leave a note so he won't worry. But we have to get a head start on him. But once we do it…get married, you belong with me…not him."

She is staring at me, forgetting to close her mouth, her tongue so pink. "You would do this," she whispers.

I make a sound, like a wit's end sound that just comes out.

"I would do…anything," I say.

"And he can…he can visit?"

"All he wants," I say. But I wish he'd go away, him and his problems.

More staring. "Do you…do you reach under your pillow and…touch my…handkerchief…at night?" she continues.

I see myself doing that. I do it all the time. I hold it against my lips. But I'm not telling her any of it.

"Do you…Tonio?"

I swallow. "Yes." I clear my throat.

"I will think about it then. I will Tonio." She smiles at me.

I keep my smile inside. It's there. But I'm not ready to give it until she's certain.

I look solidly at her. I am sure about this. About me. I hold what I must, I do what I must. I'm fourteen, and I'm a man. She doesn't realize. She doesn't see me yet. Not all of me. But then I don't show it. A man doesn't show what would hurt, or worry, or frighten. He moves it around so the woman can feel safe. Can be safe. Her father does that. You can bet on it.

She doesn't know half is my guess. Someone is still looking for them.

And my own Dad doesn't share every worry with Mom. He is careful what he says and does. I've seen that. And I will be careful with Sobe. She is right about her father. He will take this badly. I could go to him, sure, and get laughed out of the room while he packs them up and moves them off knowing she's told me. But married. He can't break that. Marriage is until the grave.

And my dad, I won't worry it. He told me about 'thee one.' And Maman, that hurts some. Granma. But they will accept it in time. Sobe will be a daughter, and they already love her. She is nothing but gains for us.

"We will leave Friday night…if you say yes," I say.

She is looking at me like finally, finally she knows. There is no stopping me.

On Thursday, I hurry through milking. Tonight, after the work, I shall go into town and see Sobe, and I'm thinking of that and how she went back to her father yesterday. I think she went home due to guilt. She knows she is leaving him.

But my dad looks at me. "Let's get the rifles and go walking," he says.

That means hunting. That means long silent times and him waiting for me to say what's on my mind. But I don't want that. And he won't ask, he'll wait for me to open up. I don't want to open up.

So we get the guns, and we are walking, and our boots cover ground same distance and time, same crunch on the ground, and I think of how I used to walk wide and quick to keep up but not now. I can go wider than him, and that's a fact.

Barrels pointed to the ground and shadows stretched long on the choppy earth and the same silence in us, but different words building.

Stubborn? It is the cloth we're cut from. I didn't know it was in me, I didn't know what it was.

He shoots the pheasant, and we don't have a dog, not since he had to put down Sally, and I go for the bird, and he is with me, and it is a beauty, and he holds it in his hands, and we look at how fine the breast is, and he puts it in the basket that hangs at his side.

We walk some more, and I shoot next, and I bring down my bird. We are the same, and we are not the same. I find my bird, tossed in the weeds like an old lady's hat. The feathers are fine, and I'll save them for Sobe.

I hang it from my belt by its feet.

So we walk some more and cover ground, and he points here and there, and I look where he says and see it like he does, and the love for it is in me, like him.

We get far as Shaun's old house. It sits there with the front door flapping. It will attract vagrants is all. We go there, and Dad enters slow, with me behind. He walks through, and that just means he looks in the bedroom cause there's nothing else not open to itself. I can stand in one place and see it all.

I have known it needs to be righted and cleared and locked up, and I have not been inclined to face it. But neither has Dad though he's spoken of it to Mom.

I give Dad my bird and tell him I'll be along. I want to put it to rights here. I can do it now. Just now. Maybe not later. Or ever.

There is a lamp to light, and I do that. It's dark in here, even with the door open and the front windows.

But Dad sits at the table there.

He just looks at everything. I know his knees hurt and maybe his back. One day it appeared he did not move extra without resting.

I lay a blanket on the floor and look for what to keep to send to Arkansas maybe.

There is the picture taken on their wedding day. I lay it careful. But it is a mess in here. There is not much. His clothes.

Pegs are long gone, burned with the baby's things. Shaun, drunk, bonfire. He was a bugger sometimes. Ornery like I said.

He doesn't have much. Buried him in the good suit he got married in. I put his coat on the floor, and I throw his clothes on top of it. I take these out, and I empty one of Shaun's nearly empty bottles over the goods and strike a match and land it there, and it burns and flames get going, and Dad comes to the door and watches.

I move around him, and I gather whatever will burn. Last I drag out the tick from the bed, where Peg and the baby died. It nearly snuffs the fire, but the flames fight back and lick and spit and grow and then it burns so bright until it consumes the mattress and whatever else I find to feed it with.

He has a Bible. I put this in the blanket. But almost everything else that can burn…does.

"Feel better?" Dad finally says as we are walking toward the house. I carry the pack of Shaun's things on my back. I carry his rifle.

I don't feel better, but it had to be done, and I did it. Dad didn't have to help. But his being with me gave me the spine.

The house is empty now. The house is ready.

"So, this Sobe…," Dad says.

I look at him. "She's the one," I say.

"The one?"

"Like you said with Maman."

He pulls a face.

We walk some more.

"If you were sixteen," he says. "Seventeen better."

"There won't be another," I say.

And we do not say more after that. Not until we are at the house.

"We'll butcher next week," he says.

And I will be married.