On Shifting Sand (2 page)

“I gave her an aspirin, and then she needed to rest.”

He turns to look at me, his grin accepting my explanation. I sink down into the water, shooing him away while I finish washing up.

“Ronnie needs to go.”

“He’s a boy,” I say, lathering up the washcloth. “He can go outside. Then put him to bed and tell him I’ll be in to kiss him good night in a bit.”

Russ leans against the doorjamb, then rises up on his toes to get a peek inside the tub. “You gonna have a kiss for me, too?”

I fold my arms, hiding myself against the tub’s wall. “Put away the supper dishes and set out his school clothes, and I just might.”

He considers it for a tick before grinning and backing away. Soon the radio is silenced, and instead I hear the clatter of dishes accompanied by Russ’s rich tenor singing “Jesus Is All the World to Me.” When he draws
out the long notes, I hear Ronnie laugh, and I know they’re cutting up in the kitchen, the way they do when they’re alone. Both of them too much a man to let on they can be silly.

By now the water is this close to cold, and I stand up, surprised as always at the displacement. There seems so little left in the tub, not nearly enough to have covered me, and I wonder if I haven’t soaked it all up, straight into my skin. The towel is scratchy from years of rough washing and wind-whipped sun, but it feels pleasantly warm wrapped around my body, and I tread carefully across the tile floor to the mirror above the sink, where I wipe the last of the steam away and lean in close for a look.

My hair is dark now, but when it dries, the color will be on the lighter side of brown, and will frame my face in limp, soft waves. They’d been such a surprise the first time I cut it short, right before my high school portrait. I remember telling Pa I didn’t want to look like a Chickasaw princess in the Troubadour yearbook, not caring how such a remark might be taken for an insult to my mother and her own. But Ma was long dead by then, and the sharpness of my cheekbones keeps her heritage fiercely alive.

Hearing Russ and Ronnie still occupied in the kitchen, I step across the hall to our bedroom and go to the dressing table, where my modest array of cosmetics waits. Nothing much, as Russ wouldn’t have me paint my face, but I do have a new set of Avon just delivered. Ariel, my favorite scent for as long as I can remember, so much a part of me that my daughter wears its name. I dab a drop of perfume at the base of my neck and behind each knee, like I read in a magazine to do. Then, my skin now dry, I dust the fat, powdered puff across my shoulders. Drop the towel and dust more before sliding a clean cotton gown over my shoulders in time to hear Russ’s voice leading Ronnie into his room.

Leaning my ear against the wall, I listen to the muffled sound of my son’s prayer, knowing in my heart he lifts up me and Russ, and his baby sister, and Paw-Paw’s farm, and all the people needing work and money. I owe him a kiss and want to be there for the
Amen
, as I am every night,
so I quickly move next door, stopping short at the sight of Russ kneeling at the bedside, his elbows on the well-worn quilt.

“And help our family be a good friend to Mr. Brace,” Ronnie prays. “And heal his arm in heaven. Amen.”

“Amen,” Russ and I echo, though my agreement is more than tinged with curiosity. I cross the room and bend low over the boy’s head, smoothing back the unruly curls that are so much like his father’s. Even in the dim light, I can tell he’s done a poor job of washing his face.

“Who’s Mr. Brace?” Our town, Featherling, is small, and the church even smaller, so to hear an unfamiliar name is rare indeed.

“Papa’s friend from before the war.” He speaks this last word with a yawn so broad I know he hasn’t cleaned his teeth, either.

I look over my shoulder at Russ.

“Just came to town,” he says. “You don’t know him.”

“He’s comin’ for dinner soon, though,” Ronnie says.

“Is he?” My words are meant for Ronnie, but I keep my eyes trained on Russ. “I guess we’ll talk more about that later.”

I kiss Ronnie’s cheek, and when I straighten myself, Russ brushes his hand across my back and settles right in the small of it, turning me to the open door. The boy mutters a final good night, but I expect he is sleeping before we leave the room. At twelve years old, he so often seems to teeter on the edge of being a man that I treasure the times when the activity of the day catches up and turns him into my sleepy boy again.

Together we walk to Ariel’s room, which is nothing more than a partitioned-off section of Ronnie’s. It isn’t much bigger than a closet and we can’t both stand in it without touching. Our girl sleeps soundly, her red hair a sea around her, and I lay the back of my fingers against her pale cheek.

“No fever?” Russ asks, his voice shy of serious.

“I’m telling you, she felt warm at supper.”

She takes a deep, startling breath right then, and we back away, hushing each other lest she wake.

Russ reaches for the switch to turn off the hallway light, and soon our
entire home plunges into near darkness, saved only by the lamp burning on my dressing table. He walks me to our bedroom door and takes me in his arms, like we are coming back from a date, and don’t have two children sleeping not much more than an arm’s length away. His kiss is like that, too. One of those kisses that comes along every so often in a marriage, like scales have fallen away from our very lips, and we’re seeing each other for the first time in new love.

I break away—“Russ—” wanting to say that he hasn’t even taken his boots off. That we haven’t checked to make sure the doors are locked, or that the milk bottles are out, or that—

“You feel beautiful—”

My bare feet touch the braided rug that runs along the side of our bed, and soon the springs creak below our weight.

“Russ.” I speak his name, stalling. Calculating as I always do. I brace my hands against his chest. “It’s not a good night.”

He nudges the strap of the nightgown off my shoulder. “Feels good enough to me.”

“You know what I mean.” I push him away. “Unless you’ve got it in your mind you want another baby.”

He stops, sighs, and rolls away. Sitting up, he removes his boots, tossing them into the large wicker basket in the corner of the room.

“Honey, I’m sorry.” I reach for him, but only manage to pinch my fingertips around the fabric of his sleeve as he stands, bringing the creaking once again. “A few more nights, maybe? It’ll be safer.”

He shrugs out of his suspenders, strips off his shirt, and lets it fall to the ground. I bite my lip to stop myself from telling him to pick it up and take it across the hall to the hamper.

“Funny.” He sends a smile sure to devastate my resolve. “I don’t remember you always being so careful.”

“And it’s a good thing, too. Else you might never have married me, Pa’s shotgun or not.”

“I never had a chance from the first I saw you. Not my fault you look every bit as lovely tonight.”

I scuttle up against the pillows and indulge myself in watching him. Russ Merrill is tall—taller than me, which was a rarity among my suitors. His shoulders are broad, his body imposing. A gentle giant of a man, with a head full of close-cropped curls, a wide, handsome face, and a voice that resonates with the kindness of his person. As a pastor, he is beloved by men for his overt masculinity, and by women for the undeniable gentle spirit beneath. I, too, love him for both these qualities, knowing the pinnacle and depth of each.

“Guess I need to send you off to church alone more often, if this is the treatment I’ll get when you come home. I’m thinking Ronnie might be coming down with a case of sniffles. Should be full-blown Sunday morning.”

With a quick flash of a wicked grin, he scoops up his shirt and takes himself off across the hall. I hear the water running for his washup and use that time to get up from the bed and take another peek in the mirror above my dressing table. The soft light makes his words true enough, though it helps that I rub my Pond’s in faithfully each night. It is the best I can do against the Oklahoma wind and sun. Lately, too, the dust has been so bad, with great dark storms rising up from the earth, though we’ve had a spell of sweet, clear days. Maybe that’s what has Russ in such a mood.

The water turns off, and I move quickly to the bed, easing in to keep it quiet, and bring the cover up around me. Turns out I didn’t need to rush, as I hear his steps take him into the kitchen, the rattle of the milk bottles, the closing and locking of the back door.

“Checked the kids one last time,” he says, walking into the room. “Sound asleep, both of them.”

He wears blue striped pajama trousers and a clean undershirt, and I have a moment of doubt in my calculations. If I get up now, I might have enough time to run across the hall and come back, better prepared. But he climbs in beside me, the weight of him tipping me toward the center of the mattress, and folds his hands behind his head on the pillow. I’m held, even if he’s not touching me at all.

“Peaceful end to a beautiful day,” I say. And it has been, clear and cloudless, the perfect kind of warm, and not a bit of wind. More than that, not a bit of dust, which means the windows are open, letting the cool night air seep through the curtains. The room feels fresh and alive, and a glance down at Russ’s face tells me he appreciates it too.

“Too peaceful, if you ask me.”

“How can a home be too peaceful?”

“Too quiet. What would be the harm of bringing in a bit of noise?”

“And what kind of noise would that be?” Though I know what he’s getting at.

“Maybe a little one, cooin’ in the corner.” He says it with an affected accent, as if that will speak to my rancher’s daughter’s heart.

“More like cryin’,” I say, steeling my resolve. “’Cause he’s hungry. You taken a look at the ledger books lately? I don’t know how I’m going to feed the four of us in the next months. Let alone five.”

“We can leave those worries off for a time, don’t you think?”

He runs his knuckle, the one on his first finger, up the length of my arm, catching my heartbeat up with its travel, and that’s all it takes.

Later, after, while Russ rests in slack-jawed sleep, I climb out of bed, put on my nightgown, and creep to the bathroom for a washup before checking on the children. They, too, sleep with the peace that comes from innocence. Satisfied to be every inch alone, I make my way through the dark of the kitchen to the door that leads downstairs to the feed and hardware store below. It is ours now. My brother, Greg, and I own the property, but it’s been up to Russ and me to run it since Uncle Glen died ten years ago, and that’s just about the last time it turned a profit big enough to live on. The little it brings in supplements Russ’s church salary, and minding the store gives us all something to do during these long days of drought.

Streetlight streams through the big glass window, casting the letters
Merrill’s Tools and Feed
in shadow across the floor. Around a sharp corner at the bottom of the steps is a small storeroom, dwindled to empty these days, as we can barely move the inventory we have on the shelves. The storeroom has a door that opens out to a platform where the trucks backed up to unload pallets of cattle feed in the days when local farmers had the wherewithal to buy such a thing. On a hook beside it is my ratty gray cardigan sweater, a gift from my mother to my father that did nothing but baffle him from the minute she finished the last stitch.

I dig into the pocket of the sweater and find what I’m looking for—a half-crumpled pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. With deft fingers, I slip one out of the pack and another one into my pocket and strike a match against the darkness. I touch the flame to the tip of the cigarette and inhale until it glows red, then shake the match and drop it between the slats of the loading dock.

Peaceful,
Russ had said. Not so peaceful, perhaps, if he finds me here, and I briefly wonder if I wouldn’t have been safer staying inside the storeroom closet. But our bedroom window is on the side of the building, meaning we never have complete darkness for sleeping, but also assuring me that the smoke from my cigarette isn’t going to drift in past the starched white curtains.

I take another drag, determined not to be wasteful and let the cigarette burn to nothing of its own accord. I only get one a day, and not even every day—only those nights when Russ falls asleep first. Otherwise, he is always
there
. Working in the store while I clean the house upstairs. Sitting beside me on the sofa, across from me at the table. Staring down at me from behind the pulpit while I sit with the children in the pew at church.

Another drag. I hear the burning of the paper and tobacco. Half-gone already, and I touch the one in my pocket, counting. Calculating, again, just how many are left, wondering when I’ll have another perfect night like this one.

Clear and cool and clean.

“Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

The voice startles me so, I fumble the cigarette before stubbing it
out on the railing and dropping the butt to the platform, using my toe to nudge it between the planks.

“Good heavens, Mrs. Brown. I didn’t expect to see you out at this hour.”