Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels) (3 page)

Ethan shifted his gaze from the mourners and scanned the narrow stretch of bottomland. He spied the heifer standing in a little tree-shaded gully just below the cemetery. To reach her he would have to jump the fence or ride two miles to the next gate. He guided the mare back down the hill and stopped to determine the best place to jump. The fence wasn't high, but the ground was treacherous. Hidden underneath the smooth russet-colored bed of grass lay rock outcroppings and potholes: burrows, dens, things that could splinter a horse's leg like a matchstick, all of them obscured by the deceptive harmony of waving grasses. Ethan found a spot that looked safe but he got down off his horse and walked the approach, just to make sure. He spread apart the barbed wire and slipped through to check out the other side. When he got back up on his horse he glanced down at the cemetery again. He had hoped the woman and child would be gone, but they were still standing by the grave. He didn't like the idea of chasing the calf right past Emma Ferguson's gravesite while her family was still there. Nor did he like the idea of having an audience if his mare should balk and send him flying into the barbed wire. But he had to get on with his day, so he settled his mind and circled his horse, moving her into place for the jump; he paused to focus on the fence, then with a cry he dug his heels into her flanks and she thundered down the hill. At just the right moment, he felt her pull her forelegs underneath and with a mighty surge of strength from her powerful hind legs sail into the air.

* * *

The woman looked up just as the horse appeared in the sky and she started. It seemed frozen there in space for the longest time, a black, deep-chested horse outlined against the blue sky, and then hooves hit the ground with a thud, and the horse and rider thundered down the slope of the hill only a short distance from the cemetery fence.

"Maman!"
cried the child in awe.
"Tu as vu ça?"

The woman was still staring, speechless, when she heard her father call to her from where he stood by the limousine. "Annette!"

She turned around.

"Let's go," he ordered in a pinched voice. It was his annoyed voice. She'd kept him waiting. Over her mother's grave, she'd kept him waiting.

Annette took one last look at the black casket.
Good-bye, Mama. I won't be back. I'm sorry.
She clasped her daughter's hand and they walked together to the limousine.

Chapter 3

Often father Colt would say when we urged him to leave Kansas with us, "I had as lief lay my bones in Kansas as in any other place"; and so it has come to pass. But to think of a death in Kansas, in that wild though beautiful country—to be laid away in a rough box, in a grave marked only while the mound looks newly made, away from all kindred and friends who would drop on it a tear or plant on it a flower, seems to me horrible in the extreme.

—MIRIAM DAVIS COLT

Went to Kansas, Being a Thrilling Account of an Ill-Fated Expedition to That Fairy Land and Its Sad Results (1862)

The six-year-old had been following with fascination the horseman's pursuit of the fleeing calf. He'd roped and missed, and roped and missed again, and as the mortuary's limousine pulled out of the cemetery she squirmed around and got up on her knees to watch from the back window. She had a little girl's love of horses and she'd been riding in a pony club since she was five, but this was another world, a world she knew only from the pages of illustrated books and old American movies. When, on the third effort, the rider finally landed the rope around the calf's neck, she bubbled with excitement and poked her mother's shoulder.

"Maman! Il faut que tu regardes ça!"

"Sit back down and fasten your seat belt," thundered her grandfather.

The little girl turned baffled eyes to her mother, eyes suddenly extinguished of all joy, and with painful remembrance Annette recognized herself in those eyes.

"She's just excited, Dad. She's never seen a cowboy."

"Fasten her seat belt. It's the law."

"We're in a limo in the middle of nowhere. What can happen?"

"Don't argue with me, Annette."

That old anger surged up and began to consume her.
Mustn't let it,
she thought.
Let go of it. We'll be gone soon.
She gently resettled the little girl and tightened the belt, pinning her to the dreary boredom of the limousine's interior. Laughter banished, joy crushed.

"I wish you'd teach that child some English," grumbled the old man.

"She knows English, Dad."

"Then why don't you speak it with her? It's just plain rude, always talking in French like that."

"I'm sorry. It's habit." To Eliana she said, "Let's speak English, honey. So your grandpa can understand. Okay?"

"Okay," Eliana said.

Annette didn't like being alone with her father. She feared him. Her mother had always been there, protecting her from his rages and softening his rigid severity with her sweet smile, and now Annette instinctively put her arm around her daughter and drew her closer, and then she felt guilty because her father looked so profoundly sad and isolated on the other end of the wide backseat. So much tension between them. Impossible to ignore it. Coming back here always brought up disturbing emotions; she had thought that by fleeing, she would leave those feelings behind.

She gripped her daughter's hand and stared out the window at the wide expanse of sky and the swiftly scudding clouds, and tears stung her eyes. She couldn't deny the unique beauty of this land, but it also provoked an inexplicable anxiety in her. On the way to the cemetery they had driven past a few ranch houses built out of white limestone rock quarried nearby; these alone had withstood the violent elements throughout the past century. Everywhere else were signs of men and women who had struggled and failed, who had gone on, or back, or just died. Abandoned houses with their plaster walls caved in, their wooden beams splintered and decayed. Abandoned machinery and cars. Abandoned graves.

Two or three weeks, she reminded herself, that would be long enough. Just to make sure her father was squared away. Then they would be on a plane back to Paris. A city circumscribed and fortified, where children played and families strolled in formal fenced spaces; where broad-leaved chestnut trees and beds of lilies and purple wildflowers offered enclosure and security, far away from this terrifying empty space, where there was nothing but prairie forever and ever.

She was always drawn back to this part of the country, obligated and duty-bound because her family was here. Apart from her parents, she never kept in touch with any of them. When her first recordings had been released, she'd received all kinds of congratulatory notes from cousins and the like. Later, when her life had been shattered, when her fame had receded and she'd withdrawn from public view, no longer receiving the international accolades that had been flung at her during her performing years, her warm, well-wishing cousins no longer clamored to see her when she was home, and her family ties narrowed. Only her mother and father bound her to this Wonder Bread–land. And now her mother was dead. There was only her father. She had always hoped he would go first so she could have her mother back again. For years she'd held on to that hope. Now the loss of the illusion was beginning to dawn on her, and she felt like she was mourning something she had always yearned for and would never have.

Chapter 4

The reception at Nell Harshaw's was a strain on Charlie Ferguson. The death of his beloved wife, who had put him at the center of her world, had left him estranged from both man and God. He had never dealt particularly well with death. As a minister, the calls he was obliged to make to families of the deceased were always brief and terse, like Charlie, and buffered with scripture. He would leave them outdated pamphlets about dealing with death, promise his prayers, then hurry away. As a child, Annette assumed this was the way it was done. But when she grew older and moved out of the dark shadow of her father's influence into a world where men of God at times showed great compassion and mercy, she began to wonder why he had ever chosen such a profession. If Charlie was appreciated as a man of the cloth it was not for his sermons, which, like his house calls, were dry and short, or for his sense of humor (he was a sadly humorless man), and certainly not for his selflessness or warmth, but for his ability to raise and invest money for his church. Charlie liked to think of himself as God's business manager. When it came to the material world, Charlie worked miracles. He was a dedicated fund-raiser, an ingenious entrepreneur and a shrewd investor; he refurbished sanctuaries and expanded properties, and still the church coffers grew. The church members recognized this genius in him and so forgave him his inadequacies in the more traditional roles expected of him; they came to hear his dull sermons and prided themselves on how their church was financially sound.

But the people who surrounded him this afternoon were not Charlie's church members. Upon retirement, Annette's parents had left Wichita and moved to Cottonwood Falls, where her mother had been born and raised. The people there knew Charlie only as the man they had seen for the past five years, and so his genius escaped them, and Charlie Ferguson felt very, very alone.

Annette recognized this as she watched him try to mingle with the townsfolk. She saw how he struggled to hold himself together, how he fought back the tears that were so foreign to his eyes, how the muscles in his face were so contorted from the effort that he looked quite unlike himself. She saw how it upset him when Nell Harshaw took Eliana in tow and walked her around the house, introducing her to everyone. The friends and neighbors who gathered that day had never seen Emma Ferguson's one and only grandchild. Nell and the others fawned over her and their eyes followed her around the room. Charlie was ignored, thrown over in his crotchety old age by a little girl who did not at all worship him the way he had always wished his grandchildren would. Indeed, the child was shy and distant with him and always deferred to her mother. He had always been the center of attention, and the woman who had devoted her life to him was gone, and there was no one to replace her.

The entire town of Cottonwood Falls flowed through Nell's modest home that afternoon, bringing enough food to feed a tribe. Eliana fell asleep on Nell's bed, and at the end of the evening they laid her on the backseat of Charlie's car, next to the Pyrex dishes of tuna casserole and the pasta salads and chocolate chip cookies, and drove home.

Annette carried her daughter into the house, got her into her flannel nightgown and tucked her into bed. The room was poorly heated, and Annette removed her sable-collared coat and covered the child. The little girl shivered and pulled the fur collar up around her face.

"It smells like you," she murmured.

"Go back to sleep, precious," Annette said, and kissed her. Eliana opened her eyes.

"Everybody kept staring at it."

"Did they?"

"I heard a man in the kitchen at Nell's. He was making fun of it."

Annette smiled gently and smoothed back her daughter's hair. "I suppose I shouldn't have worn it here."

"Why?"

"It's out of place."

"You wear it all the time at home."

"Yes, but this isn't home. And I'm sorry that man made you feel uncomfortable. That was not very nice of him."