Marathon Cowboys (16 page)

slow fingerpicking. After an hour, The Original came out and

brought us coffee, and we sat together, watching the stars,

rocking, listening to Jesse play, and watching the storm blow

in.

When the wind picked up and the coffee got cold, The

Original stood up, stretched his back, and said, “I believe I’ll

leave you boys to it.” He went into the house, and after a few

minutes, the light in his bedroom went out.

Jesse handed me the guitar, and I set it back in the

case, sat next to him on the top step. He leaned against me,

and my arm moved around him to hold him close against my

shoulder like it had been made for only this, my whole life.

There was a time my hands could fieldstrip an M-16 in their

sleep. Now they could draw cartoons in their sleep, but this

close to Jesse, they were learning a new skill.

“Come sleep with me. My bed’s big enough for both of us

to sleep together, and the old man already knows what I’m

up to with you. He warned me I was in over my head.”

“Are you?” He smiled up at me, honey-silk hair messy, a

piece blowing across his face in the wind that was kicking

up.

“I’ve never been in over my head. Does it always do this

to you, your painting?” I ran my fingers across the gray

under his eyes. His eyes were the dreamy fuzzy blue of real

exhaustion, so tired even focusing was too much.

“The good stuff. That’s when I know I’m on the right

track, when the work tries to suck the life right out of me.”

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“Then let’s just sleep together. Let our legs tangle in the

sheets, and you can put your head on my shoulder and I’ll

wrap you up and watch over you, all night.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you came strolling up through

the desert, walking right out of some sweet, old Western

movie. But it’s real with you, the cowboy thing.”

“I came via a fight in a cowboy bar in Alpine, Texas, and

the USMC. Oh, I talked to the bar owner when I was up

there getting groceries. I told him how sorry we both were.

And we’re going to make it up to him.”

“How?”

“As soon as I figure that out, I’ll let you know.”

“I never slept with anyone in The Original’s house

before. It was like a bridge I wasn’t ready to cross. This huge,

deep, wide, bridge.”

“If I’m not a person you plan on taking home to your

granddad, and saying, this is my partner, Lorenzo Maryboy,

then you better let me know pretty damn quick. Because

while I am the sort of man you can fuck around with out in

the studio, I’m also the kind of man you sleep with in your

granddad’s house. So cross that bridge and come on in,

Jesse. This storm’s getting ready to break.”

He looked up at me, a heartbreaking uncertainty in his

eyes, a bit of helpless confusion, then I stood up and held

my hand out to him, and he took it. “You’re such a Marine. If

I’m not sure about something, Mary, can I count on you to

tell me what I need to do?” He was laughing now, and I

pulled him close and kissed his pretty smiling mouth.

“You can count on it.”

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Sarah Black

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Chapter Ten

THE wind screamed and battered against the little house,

and Jesse and I fell into each other’s arms in the big bed,

crawled together and wrapped our arms and legs around

each other and held on. I’d never slept with anyone like that,

like we were clinging to each other, lost but for the feel of the

other’s hands and skin. I slept with Jesse’s hair against my

face, and something changed in me, through the long night.

When I woke up, I thought I was never going to rest easy

again, unless I had that silky hair against my cheek.

It was early, not quite six, but Jesse was already up. I

pulled on my shorts and T-shirt and carried my shoes into

the kitchen. He was on the phone, and he was upset.

Looking for Sadie, I thought.

“Look, just go over there, okay? Drive by and see if you

can see her or see his truck.” He listened for a moment. “No,

I don’t know what time it is. Do I sound like I give a shit?

You can’t do this for me, Sammy? It’s important or I wouldn’t

have called.” He sighed, closed his eyes, and rubbed across

his forehead. “Yeah, the first one’s almost done. Another

couple of days. No, don’t. Just let me work.” I tied my

shoestrings, stood up, and touched his cheek on my way out

the door. He didn’t need me listening in. “It’s complicated,

okay? I can’t explain right now. Just go check, and call me

back.”

There was a lot complicated in JC3’s life right now.

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I thought about
Devil Dogs at War
on my run. I’d save

the girl problem for a later narrative. I needed to get my

characters established first. I had an idea about the first

thread, and it was going to be a bit controversial. I had to get

my platoon off to war, through all the good-byes and weeping

and hugs from the kids. Then I wanted to show how they all

relaxed a bit, once they’d left their families behind. It was a

kind of unspoken thing, how men going off to war sort of

liked it. Looked forward to it. Not everybody, of course, and

you didn’t want to kiss the little missus good-bye and then

kick up your heels and pump your fist in the air too

obviously, but there you go. That’s what my boys were going

to do. It was telling the truth, and it wasn’t going to be

popular. I felt myself grinning at the crisp, cool air, the sky

as clear as a piece of blue ice after the storm. Yeah, I was

going to make myself real unpopular. But the devil dogs

would love it.

I cooked breakfast, bacon and fried egg sandwiches, and

then I walked out to the studio with Jesse. “What are you

going to listen to today?”

“Huh?” He looked like he was a million miles away. I

had my cotton balls all ready. “Oh, nothing. Carlos finished

us off, and now I’ve got to get all the fussy little detail work

done. You can pick the music.”

“I’m okay with the peaceful sound of a West Texas

wind.”

“That storm was something, wasn’t it? Did you see

anybody’s roof off when you went out on your run?”

“No, but there was a big branch off that pecan tree down

by the gas station.”

“What are you going to do today?”

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“I thought I would draw the first strip and make lots of

women mad.”

“Sounds like fun.”

WE WORKED without speaking through the day. The

Original called us to come eat supper, and we both looked

up, surprised at how late it was. I had finished nearly a

month of cartoons, and my brain felt like it was an old

sponge, squeezed out and left in the sun to dry. After supper,

Jesse and I did the dishes, and I staggered off down the hall

and went to bed. I could hear him talking to his granddad,

and a couple of hours later he crawled into bed with me, let

me pull him into my arms.

“I love you.”

He curled up against me. “You really mean it, don’t

you?”

“I love you,” I said again, “for all your life. For all my

life.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Thank you, Mary. I think…

I’m going to try and be worthy of you.”

“Not something you have to earn, Jesse.”

“Yeah. It is. Listen, I need to talk to you. About the

Grievous Angel. I want to make sure you understand.”

“Can we do it in the morning? It makes me tired, trying

to keep up with you when you talk, and I think I pulled a

muscle in my brain.”

His hand slid down, wrapped a warm hand around my

cock. “As long as this muscle is okay.” And we were laughing

when we fell asleep.

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Sarah Black

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I woke up early and went for a long run. Marathon still

had the crisp cool air left by the storm passing through, and

the dogs got up from their porches and joined me as I went

through town. Dawn was still an hour away, but there was

an early train going through town, and its lonely whistle was

followed by bedroom lights coming on. The bread was

baking, and I ran by the tiny bakery just to smell it. It was a

small town, isolated and insular like all small towns, but I

was starting to feel at home here. I loved the desert, the

strange smells and stranger plants, the smell of desert air. I

was also finding that I really enjoyed The Original’s

company, the quiet hour we spent on the porch after supper,

the careful way he thought about what he was going to say,

like he had to pay a penny every time he used an extraneous

word.

And Jesse was like some gorgeous desert flower, filling

my sight with rare beauty. I couldn’t get enough of looking at

him.

I was moving faster than he was, I knew that. He wasn’t

the sort of man to play me for what he could get, then move

on, not unless we were both clear at the outset that was the

game. We were both clear now that we weren’t playing tag.

Maybe I wasn’t what he wanted or needed. I got the feeling

he was a bit startled to find himself sleeping in my bed, my

arms around him, me whispering
I love you
in his ear.

I hadn’t come here looking for that, either. But things

happened, and you just had to turn and run or incorporate

them into your reality pretty damn fast. I had a picture in my

head—walking with the guys on patrol through a small

village, coming to the mud brick square, and there was a

bomb, sitting in the middle, with Jesse’s face painted on the

side, smiling at me. He was so beautiful, and I walked right

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up to it, picked it up and gave it a kiss, even though my boys

were shouting and trying to pull me away. The scar on my

chest ached a little, and I rubbed it, made a loop in the road

and headed toward home. There was no way I could ignore

the fact that things could end badly. I couldn’t imagine my

beautiful new boots walking the streets of San Francisco.

When I got back to the house, Jesse was sitting on the

porch in his bare feet, eating a pastry out of a white bakery

bag. I sat down next to him on the steps. “How’d you get

Eden to open up early and give you that? I’ve been running

by there and smiling every morning, and all she’ll give me is

a wave.”

His face was sticky with strawberry and sugar, and I

leaned forward, got a taste off his smiling mouth.

“Well, Eden and me, we go way back.” He put the bag on

my lap. “I got you lemon. When we were fifteen, we kissed

each other, first kiss for us both. We’d been saving it up for

her birthday. She was my first girlfriend. Actually, my last

too.”

The pastry was warm and sweet, and Eden had been

generous with the butter. “I want her to be my girlfriend too.”

“I changed the title of the painting. I’m calling it
Death of

a Grievous Angel
.”

I sat there for a moment, wondering what I was

supposed to say. “Okay.”

“Mary,”—he turned to me, gave my knee a little shake—

“you do understand….” He tried to say something but just

looked at me, his eyes uncertain. I looked back, loving those

blue eyes. “Will you tell me you love me again?”

“I love you again.”

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“I ought to just let the great world turn, see what we

look like at the end of the day, but I’m starting to feel like

this is something precious. You and me, I mean. I don’t want

to break it.”

I stuffed the last of the pastry in my mouth. “What are

you talking about, Jesse?”

“Sammy’s on his way. He called from the airport. He’s

bringing Sadie home. And he’s going to take the painting

back with him.”

I didn’t say anything. I wondered if he really thought

Sadie was going to stay put this time any better than she did

last time. And I wondered how many times the old boyfriend

was going to use her to crawl back into Jesse’s bed.

“The thing is, I am not sure you’re going to understand

what I did with the painting. I wanted to sort of ease you into

it. Because it’s really good, zo-zo. It’s really, really good, it’s