High Country : A Novel (26 page)

He didn’t learn about Buck and Bernard until he came out of the woods, and he wasn’t sure Cody Jo ever found out. She’d already left the valley, and by then the fight was mostly just a matter of amusement.

From what he learned, Buck had been drinking happily with Jasper when something got under his skin. He’d walked over to Bernard and hit him, breaking his glasses and sending him backward through the dust.

Bernard had got right back up and knocked Buck down, though Jasper later made light of that, saying Buck was partway falling down from beer already. Jasper claimed Buck was lucky his first punch caught Bernard anywhere at all, much less right between the eyes.

As surprised as Buck had been to find himself on his back, he wasn’t so drunk he couldn’t get up and swing at Bernard again, missing entirely and winding up with Bernard in a headlock. The force of it had sent them both back down, where they rolled and punched at one another in the dust, ignoring everyone who tried to separate them until the Sister of Providence began hitting them with a broom handle.

“Get up,” she’d said, her voice still lovely as she poked at them. “Quit rolling around in all that dirt.”
Buck, whose parents had been Catholics, got up quickly, as did Bernard. They apologized, which surprised the sister as much as their stopping. They went off then, each in his separate direction as though their argument had settled with the dust.
Most of the people in the Swan thought it had too, that beer was what caused the fighting—beer and something that didn’t like to bend in Bernard. They laughed about it and consulted Jasper about the details, but to them it was over and done with.
It was only Ty who didn’t think so, who thought the anger would remain—in both of them. Ty and maybe Willie, who wouldn’t admit what she felt about it even to herself.

Jasper and Buck were impressed by how alert Ty was at night in the mountains. “He always keeps an ear on the lookout,” Jasper would brag. “Even after a big feed.”

It was a different matter when he was between clean sheets and in a bed, no worries about drifting horses or marauding bears. He didn’t realize Cody Jo was there until she was beside him, the warmth of her changing his sleep, changing his life, her hand sliding down his body.

“I need to be here.” Her voice was a breath in his ear. “Hold me. Let me touch you. Let me,” she breathed. “I need this.”
He felt himself lifting, felt her hand along the flat of his stomach, tracing the hairline and then taking him, flooded now, into her hand, stroking him, bending to kiss him there, her breath a long sigh. She moved onto him, held his hands away as she moved, not taking him inside her but rubbing her wet along his hardness, moving and moving until he heard her gasp.
She let him hold her now, bent to kiss him, moved her hips until he was inside her—wet and open with a warmth that sucked away his breath. She began moving again, moving and moving until she moaned, arched, her hips coming forward to take all of him, her eyes on him as she saw he could take no more. Coupled, they turned until she was under him, her fingers rimming his lips, her tongue moving into his mouth, her hips rising to his. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, oh yes” as he spent himself, as she was saying yes and yes and her hand was going across his mouth, quieting him.
They lay there, her hand still on his mouth, his want for her even greater than moments before when everything in him needed to fill her. He didn’t know how long they were there. He only knew how much more of her he wanted—her neck, her lips, the nipples that grew and lifted under his lips.
Everything seemed right about it. Nothing wrong. The only thing that seemed strange—he came to see later—was that it was so right. Even when she breathed into him, saying, “You see now. There are two loves of my life.You are the other.”
They waited to make love again. And did. Cody Jo moaning as she came to him. Cried out again, her face wild and fixed on his as she caught her breath again, then again. Once more he spent himself in her, wanting to put every part of him into her wetness—his heart, his senses, the tongue she seemed to drink from him. He wanted to turn himself inside out within her.
They slept then, though he knew he didn’t want to sleep, wanted to be awake with her forever, touching her forever, inside her forever.
And just before dawn they were dancing, naked, there in the still room. They swayed to her humming, feet hardly moving, their bodies one. He felt no awkwardness, nothing but the sweetness of being one with her, moving easily, sensually, as she hummed “I Got It Bad,”“Have Mercy,”“Moonglow.”
They made love still again. Old lovers now, savoring one another, Ty pacing himself for her, exhausting her until the end when he would lose everything in her. She saw it, wanted it too, wanted it for him, wanted it so she seemed to pull everything from him, milk him until he cried out, her breath matching his, her moans a muffled sob against his skin.
He must have slept then. He knew only that she was gone. There was the smell of coffee, bacon. A thin line of dawn was lifting above the Swan.

“Could we marry?” he asked. “I never knew ...,” he sat there, lost for a way to say it, “. . . this could be.”
“I know.You are my love, Ty.You are.” She seemed sad and happy at once. She had never looked so beautiful, her hair loose, the color lifting in her face, her eyes on him—as though there were not enough of him.
And then the Haslams were there. She was feeding them too.
“Will you come to the corrals?” Ty asked. “See us off?”
“I will. With lunch. Cookies for the trail.”
“I’ll be saddled and packed before the sun hits the meadow.” Ty put his hat on and stood in the door, looking back at her. “Maybe sooner.” His eyes took her in. “I’m already hungry for that lunch.”
He was waiting for them. The horses saddled, the packs balanced, hitches tight.
“A special lunch for Ty.” Cody buckled sandwiches into his saddlebags.
“What about us?” Thomas was tying Alice’s slicker behind her cantle. “For us it’s scary, an adventure. For Ty it’s all in a day’s work.”
“He might be tired,” Cody Jo said. “Packers get tired too.” She looked at Ty, her eyes alive, her cheeks flushed. “Saving lives.”
“ Yo u’ve made mine,” Ty whispered to her before he swung up on Smoky. “I never . . .”
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
“One week. I’ll be out in one week....”
“ Ye s.” She smiled up at him, her eyes wet. “One week.”

Fenton’s ashes weren’t on Ty’s mind now. Cody Jo was. No matter how much thinking he did, nothing made it as simple as it had seemed that night, her needs pushing everything else aside. Now she was everywhere with him, in the streams and meadows, on the passes and along the lifting canyon walls. He even thought of her when he went below the big rock, saw the fresh tracks, knew the bear had come back, knew that Fenton’s ashes would soon be drifting across them. It was a thing he couldn’t tell Cody Jo, who had wanted no part of these ashes, but it wouldn’t leave him, didn’t leave him even as he and Thomas Haslam spread them, listened as Alice read the poem she’d chosen.

And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea.

In that late sun Ty found himself thinking not so much about Fenton’s being gone as Fenton’s being there—how much Fenton had given the bear, these woods, him. The words in the poem caught none of it. Nor could he. He wondered if anything could.

Alice closed her book and they stood in quiet, Ty watching a last dusting of ash settle across the bear’s track. They walked back to the camp together, shadows growing long, cool coming in, a fire needed. “Didn’t she say why? Where she was going?”
“Said she was headed for Chicago. Left you a letter with Angie.”

Gus was deliberate, careful, sensing something he didn’t want to know. “She gave me a hug at the station, but she looked forlorn—or scared.” The mill’s big belts were busy behind him. “You look that way now.”

Gus leaned in the window. “People think I got this scar from a bear.” It was so unexpected that Ty stopped, his hand on the key. “I didn’t. I got it because I was crazy over a woman. Which can hurt a lot more than a damned bear.”

Ty puzzled over it as he drove to Murphy’s store. There was no way Gus could know what was eating at him. No way anyone could. Who could know how Cody Jo was that night? He could hardly believe it himself.

Angie, looking worried, gave him the letter. “You look discombobulated, Ty. Can’t you give a smile?”
She hugged him and he left her there in the doorway, driving only a little way before pulling over and reading the letter and feeling his legs go weak, his stomach queasy. He drove to the house and sat down to read it again, his hands shaking.

I love you, Ty. You’ll be with me forever. In my waking and my sleeping.
I told you there were two loves in my life. And a part of me knows your love is closer, even stronger than Fenton’s— so fresh in me it hurts.
But I know that it can’t survive. It tears me apart to say it. My legs are jelly. I can barely hold this pen.
It’s not our ages. The same years separated me from Fenton. But Fenton and I could fill each other’s days. I can’t do that for you. You have some hollow place I can’t reach. It would kill me to watch you, day after day, needing what I can’t give.
You are whole in your mountains. In time you will find a woman who doesn’t pull you from them. She will give you the children I can’t. I will be jealous. But I’ll know that is the woman you should have.
Fenton would understand. He would want me to love you, but he wouldn’t want me to hurt you. I won’t. I can’t. I love you too much.
I’m falling apart inside, Ty. Your love, our love, is all that holds me together.
Cody Jo

Ty saw that her hand had been shaking when she signed it. He went into the guest room where they’d made love, went into her room, put a pair of boots she’d left into the empty closet. He went out into the sun and stood by the corral, tried to read the letter again, but found he couldn’t.

After awhile he drove back to his horses, put out feed and went through his duffle to find the music box. He put the letter in and got things ready for the next trip, working steadily but without much plan, surprised when he turned to do something to see he’d done it already.

He slept at the corrals that night, used the lake to wash away the dust. But sleep didn’t come, his mind playing over where Cody Jo might be, how he could get an address, where he could set out looking for her when the season was over. He thought about their night together too, the things she’d said, the songs she’d hummed, what she’d told him with her body. He tossed and turned with it, watching the cool stars.

The guests were from Atlanta, the men clean shaven and boyish, the women pretty. They teased Angie and Buck with their soft accents as Buck balanced out their duffles. They’d spent the night at the big house, Angie and Buck telling them stories about Ty and Fenton and the backcountry. They grew quiet around Ty as he chose their horses, sent them off toward the pass with Angie so he could finish packing with Buck.

Buck worked quietly for awhile, then said it: “Quit actin’ like somebody pissed in your boot. It ain’t that bad. She just wants you to run things. She set it all up with that banker.”

“Then he must know where to reach her.”
“Well, he knows where that aunt is.” Buck tightened a rope. “Then he must know where she is.” Ty pulled the rope still tighter, a

part of him wanting to start for her right now, another part saying wait—let things settle in Cody Jo. Get his own legs under him. When they pulled the string away from the corrals, he was calmer, quiet and steady—concentrating on his mules.

Except for his quietness it was a wonderful trip, the fishing better than good, the days long and sunny. The guests were drawn to the tall packer, liking it when he would stop to talk with them, point out things along the trail. But none of their schemes could draw him out. The men would smile, watch their wives use their southern ways to engage him. But not even the drinking worked, Buck and Angie getting entertaining and garrulous while Ty grew more private, pensive.

The rest of the season went the same way, Ty never busier, never more efficient, concentrating on his packing in a way that mystified Buck—and drove Angie to distraction.

“Can’t you see? He’s pinin’ away. It breaks my heart.”
“Hell, I try to keep up with him,” Buck would say. “But he’s on the go all the damn time, sometimes packin’ for two parties at once, and takin’ care of the fire crews too. I’m commencin’ to think he likes it alone.”
“He does, you dummy. And it’s wreckin’ him.”
“Might perk him up if I got him into town.”
“Stay the hell out of that place.” Angie whacked him. “You got enough to handle right here.”

When hunting season came Jasper took over the cooking, his fretting about bears lifting Ty’s spirits a little.
“I wouldn’t go sleepin’ under that saddle rack,” he’d say to Ty. “Somethin’ might carry you off.” Ty would smile as he muttered about bears. But the amusement wouldn’t last long. Even Jasper worried about how often he’d come across Ty looking off across the country as though he didn’t know what he’d lost.
When they pulled the hunting camps out and the snows closed the passes, Ty went in to see the banker, a man as mystified by packers as he was by Indians. He did all he could to help Ty, explaining that Cody Jo was in Europe on a walking trip with her aunt, the university in Chicago handling their mail. He explained how the bank was taking care of the accounts too, but Ty didn’t hear that part. All he wanted to do was reach Cody Jo.
He went back out to the Swan and took care of the gear, finally writing a letter, asking the university to forward it. That winter a letter showed up, Cody Jo writing from Spain about the places they’d been, the things they’d done. At the end she wrote, “I think about you at night, Ty. I think about you always when we are in the mountains, wondering about you in yours—if you think of me, if you are dancing with someone new, if your life is good. I hope so. I love you so deeply.” Ty read the words again and again, relieved to have them, lost about what to do with them.
He spent his days working in his saddle shop or helping out the lumberjacks and the ranchers. He got organized for the next year’s packing too, signing Forest Service contracts, scheduling trips. He wanted the packing to go well. That was something he could do for Cody Jo.
And night after night he sat on the big couch, reading a little but mostly just looking into the fire.