Only Mine (34 page)

Caleb slanted Jessica a cool amber glance. “It will take longer than that to get over the divide. If we don’t camp here, we’ll be picking our way through a half-frozen marsh in the dark with no place to sleep but sitting up in the saddle.”

Jessica met Caleb’s glance, sighed, and looked uneasily over her shoulder. She thought she had caught movement behind them, but Caleb didn’t seemed concerned. When she looked back, he was watching her with an odd smile on his face.

“Don’t fret, Red,” Caleb said kindly. “I gave you enough lead on your man that he’ll work off the worst of his mad before he catches us.”

“Wolfe isn’t coming.”

“Horseshit.”

Jessica gave Caleb a startled look.

He smiled as gently as though she were Willow.

“Even if you’re right,” Jessica said with a catch in her voice, “Wolfe couldn’t get to us this quickly without riding a horse to death. He wouldn’t do that.”

“One horse couldn’t get the job done,” Caleb agreed. “Three could, though—Deuce, Trey, and Ishmael.”

“What?”

Caleb looked past Jessica at the open ground they had just covered.

“If I were you,” he said, “I’d spend the next few minutes thinking up ways to take the edge off Wolfe’s temper.”

The certainty in Caleb’s voice sent a stroke of unease through Jessica. She stood in her stirrups and looked past him.

Two big black horses and one smaller sorrel had broken from the cover of the forest and were running flat out toward her up the long sweep of the grassy divide. Only one horse carried a man. As she watched, the rider leaped from the back of one of the blacks to the sorrel without slowing the pace one bit.

“Dear God,” she breathed.

“Looks more like Wolfe Lonetree to me,” Caleb said dryly.

With watchful amber eyes, Caleb waited while the horses thundered closer. When he saw that Wolfe’s rifle was still in its scabbard, Caleb let out a silent breath of relief and gave Jessica a reassuring smile. Jessica didn’t notice. She sat on Two-Spot and waited, knowing her horse had no chance to outrun the Arabian stallion.

Wolfe didn’t even glance at Caleb when he galloped up and pulled Ishmael to a rearing, dancing halt. Wolfe had eyes only for the red-haired girl who was sitting astride Two-Spot with a spine as straight as a ramrod. Calmly, Wolfe dismounted, turned the hot horses over to Caleb, and then stood silently, watching Jessica.

“I’ll make camp in those trees,” Caleb said, gesturing toward a scattering of evergreens a mile back down the trail.

Wolfe nodded.

“You might keep in mind that she was only doing what she thought was best for you,” Caleb said as he took Ishmael’s reins. “The same as you were doing what you thought was best for her.”

“
Adios,
Cal,” Wolfe said flatly.

Without another word, Caleb reined his horse back toward the setting sun, taking with him all the horses but the one Jessica rode. Two-Spot stretched against the bit and whinnied at being left behind.

Without warning, Wolfe vaulted on behind Jessica, took the reins from her, and turned Two-Spot toward a nearby stand of aspens. Their delicate new leaves glowed an unearthly green in the slanting light. When the small breeze stirred, the leaves quivered as though alive and breathing.

Jessica felt as shaky as one of the leaves. She looked down at the dark, lean hand holding the reins, and at the arm that half-circled her without touching her. The temptation to trace the veins in the back of Wolfe’s hand with her fingertips was so great that she had to close her eyes against it. An almost hidden tremor went through her as she fought not to show her hunger and yearning to touch the life that beat so strongly beneath Wolfe’s controlled surface.

Wolfe dismounted and tied Two-Spot to a slender aspen. Then he stood and looked at Jessica for the longest minute of her life. She met his narrowed indigo eyes, refusing to show either the pain or the yearning that seethed beneath her outward calm.

“You looked surprised to see me when I rode up,” Wolfe said.

“Caleb wasn’t. He did everything but set fire to
trees so you could follow.”

“I would have found you if you’d gone barefoot over solid stone.”

“Why?”

The question put the match to Wolfe’s temper. “
You’re my wife.
”

“The marriage isn’t valid.”

“Like Hell it isn’t. I had you so deep and so hard it’s a bloody wonder either one of us could walk afterward.”

Scarlet flags burned on Jessica’s cheekbones, but she didn’t back down. “You said you would withhold your fertility from the union despite my wishes otherwise,” she said carefully. “That is grounds for annulment.”

“I was trying to spare you the risk of childbed!”

“So you say.” Jessica shrugged casually despite the tension that made her body feel brittle. “A magistrate might view your actions as less than noble.”

“That’s just it,” Wolfe shot back. “I’m not noble. You are!”

No matter how hard Jessica fought it, she couldn’t prevent a scalding tear from falling. The combination of grief and rage in her voice made it shake.

“And there it is,” she said, “the one thing I can’t change and you can’t forgive.”

“You’re not making sense.”

Her eyes focused on him. They were as pale and bleak as the streamside ice.

“I can learn to cook and clean and launder,” Jessica said. “I can burn in your arms and you in mine…but it’s not enough. It will never be enough. You despise the aristocracy, and my father was an earl.”

“That’s not—”

“You want me,” she continued relentlessly, “but not as a wife. I’m not fit to be the mother of your children. I’m a spoiled, cruel child. I’m a—”

“Jessi, that’s not what I—”

“—girl, not a woman, as useless as teats on a boar hog, the wrong—”

“Damn it, that’s not—”

“Yes it is!” she said harshly, talking over him. “You have never lied to me, no matter how much the truth hurt. Don’t begin now, when there is no more need. I trapped you, I’m setting you free. Go back to the wild land you love, the land for which you were born, the land I’m not worthy to inhabit and never will be. I am what I am and—”

“
Damnation.
Will you listen or do I have to—”

“—you are Tree That Stands Alone and lying with me was the worst mistake of your life!”

“Wrong,” Wolfe said furiously. “The worst mistake of my life was promising Willow I’d try talking with you first!”

With no warning, Wolfe yanked Jessica out of the saddle and fastened his mouth over hers. She twisted and thrashed against him, but he was much too strong. He absorbed her struggles until the wild urgency of his kiss reached her on a level deeper than words.

Unable to deny Wolfe and herself any longer, Jessica yielded to him the softness he had already taken, sharing the kiss with him. It was a long time before he lifted his head.

“This is the only truth that matters,” Wolfe said finally, brushing Jessica’s tears away. “You are mine, only mine. And I am yours.”

“You are Tree That Stands Alone.”

“And you are the sun in my sky. Don’t take the sun from me, Jessi.”

She tried to speak, but was too moved by what she saw in his eyes to say more than his name.

“Wolfe?”

“Stay with me, Jessi Lonetree,” he whispered. “Share the wild land with me. Love me as much as I love you.”

I
N
the following months, Wolfe showed Jessica his favorite places in the western land. Together they smelted the rain winds sweeping across the desert, wearing robes of lightning and bringing the miracle of water to a dry land. Together they stood among stone buttes anchored like great ships in a boundless sea of sand.

Together they saw a canyon so vast it could be crossed only by the sun, and at its bottom a river coiled like a silver medicine snake, untouched, untouchable. Together they stood in the sun-washed silence of cities built by men long dead. Ancient, enigmatic, set into sheer rock cliffs, nothing inhabited the stone cities but the wind. No paths led to the buildings and no paths came away, yet the cities remained, filled with mysteries and spirits of a time long past, unknown, unknowable.

Together they followed streams that had no name up the slopes of mountains that were also unnamed, climbing so high that angels sang in the ringing silence just before moonrise. Together they drank from lakes as blue as Wolfe’s eyes and fell asleep in each other’s arms, waking to find the aspens ablaze with winter’s first kiss.

Finally they followed the sunrise back to the San
Juans. An hour’s lazy ride from Willow and Caleb’s home, Wolfe and Jessica built their own home along the Columbine’s clear waters. There Wolfe talked to mustangs and Jessica stalked living rainbows through deep river pools. There beneath a sky as deep and wild as their love, they created new life where none had been before, boys with Wolfe’s fluid strength and girls with Jessica’s laughter and fire.

And through all the peace and storms of all their years, Jessica was the sun in Wolfe’s sky, bringing light and life to Tree That Stands Alone.

My life’s work has been
popular fiction. Writing alone and with Evan, I have published more than sixty books. They range from general fiction to historical and contemporary romances, from science fiction to mystery, from nonfiction to highly fictional thrillers.

Through the years, I’ve discovered that most publishers talk highly of literary fiction and make money on popular fiction; yet asking them to describe the difference between literary and popular fiction is like asking when white becomes gray becomes black.

Some people maintain that, by definition, literary fiction cannot be popular, because literary equals difficult and inaccessible. Rather like avant-garde art: if you can identify what it is, it ain’t art. Rather than argue such slippery issues as taste and fashion, I’ll simply say that there are exceptions to every rule; that’s how you recognize both the rule and the exceptions. As a rule, accessibility is one of the hallmarks of popular fiction.

In literary fiction, the author is often judged by critics on his or her grasp of the scope and nuance of the English language, and on the lack of predictability of the narrative itself. The amount of effort readers put into this fiction can be almost on a par with that of the authors themselves. In order for an author to be successful in literary fiction,
positive reviews from important critics are absolutely vital. Indeed, in a very real sense, the critics are the only audience that matters, which explains why literary fiction often pays badly: critics get their books for free.

In popular fiction, the only critics who really matter are the readers who pay money to buy books of their own choice. Reviews are irrelevant to sales. Readers of popular fiction judge an author by his or her ability to make the common language u

ncommonly meaningful, and to make an often-told tale freshly exciting. The amount of effort a reader puts into this fiction is minimal. That, after all, is the whole point: to entertain readers rather than to exercise them.

Critics are human. They don’t like being irrelevant. They dismiss popular fiction as “formulaic escapism” that has nothing to do with reality. From this, I’m forced to conclude that critics view life (and literary fiction) as a kind of nonlinear prison.

This would certainly explain why the underlying philosophy in much literary fiction is pessimistic: Marx, Freud, and Sartre are the Muses of modernism. Life is seen as fundamentally absurd. No matter how an individual strives, nothing significant will change. Or, in more accessible language, you can’t win for losing.

The underlying philosophy of much popular fiction is more optimistic: the human condition might indeed be deplorable, but individuals can make a positive difference in their own and others’ lives. The Muses of popular fiction are Zoroaster and Jung, the philosophy more classical than modern. Popular fiction is a continuation of and an embroidery upon ancient myths and archetypes; popular fiction is good against evil, Prometheus against the uncaring gods, Persephone emerging from hell with the seeds of spring in her hands, Adam discovering Eve.

In a word, popular fiction is heroic and transcendent at a time when heroism and transcendence are out of intellectual favor.
Publishers, whose job is to make money by predicting the size of the market for a piece of fiction, are constantly trying guess where a manuscript falls on the scale of white to gray to black. Publishers want to understand why readers read the books they do. Marketers give tests, conduct surveys, consult oracles, etc., and constantly rediscover a simple fact: people read fiction that reinforces their often inarticulate beliefs about society, life, and fate.

People who believe that life’s problems can be solved through intelligence and effort are often attracted to crime fiction, which centers around the logical solution of various problems. People who believe along with Shakespeare that there are more things on heaven and earth than we dream, are attracted to science fiction of various kinds.

People who believe that a good relationship between a man and a woman can be the core of life are attracted to romances.

People who believe that absolute evil lurks just beneath the surface of the ordinary are attracted to horror. And so on.

Think about that the next time you hear someone dismiss what they (or usually other folks!) read as “escapism.” Existentialists escape into their fictional world. We escape into ours. The fact that our world feels good and theirs feels bad doesn’t mean theirs is always more valuable, much less more intelligent: I have known many intelligent people who need to be reminded of the possibility of joy; I have known no intelligent people who need to be reminded of the reality of despair.

Some things are worth escaping from. Despair is definitely one of them.

So much for escapism. What about the charge that popular fiction is formulaic?

The concept of formula has an interesting history as first a literary device and then a literary putdown. The Greeks divided literature into tragedy and comedy. A tragedy had a political, masculine theme and ended in death. A comedy had a social, often feminine theme and
ended in marriage, the union of male and female from which all life comes. We have kept the scope of tragedy, of death and despair, but we have reduced the concept of comedy to a potty-mouthed nightclub act. Perhaps that is why critics of popular fiction reserve their most priapic scorn for the stories called romances. Romances follow the ancient Greek formula for comedy: they celebrate life rather than anticipate death. In addition to being almost exclusively female in their audience and authorship, romances address timeless female concerns of union and regeneration. The demand for romances is feminine, deep, and apparently universal. Harlequin/Silhouette has an enormously profitable romance publishing empire in which the majority of the money is earned outside of the American market, in more countries and languages than I can name.

Even worse than their roots in ancient feminine concerns, romances irritate critics because they often have a subtext of mythic archetypes rather than modernist, smaller-than-life characters.

I have heard mystery authors complain that they don’t get any respect from critics. As a mystery author, I agree. I have heard science fiction authors complain that they don’t get any respect. As a science fiction author, I agree. But as a romance author, I have experienced amazing intellectual bigotry.

For example, mysteries, like romances, were once scorned as badly written, formulaic, lurid escapist fare best read in closets. Then, about seventy years ago, the idea of class warfare came into intellectual vogue. Mysteries, particularly American mysteries, came to be viewed as politically correct (and therefore) well-written metaphors of class warfare: the down-and-out detective bringing justice to the little guy in a society that cares only for privilege and wealth.

That’s a pretty heavy load to lay on Lew Archer’s modernist shoulders, but I suspect the male academic types were tired of getting their
thrills reading by flashlight in a closet. The fact that mysteries at the time were written by men for men did not hurt the genre’s status at all.

Yet many authors continued to write mysteries in which brains, bravery and brawn mattered more than political commentary; these books were roundly disdained by critics…and avidly bought by readers. The division between mythic and politically correct mysteries still exists. You can usually tell which is which by the tone of the review.

Science fiction, like romance, was once scorned as badly written, formulaic, lurid escapist fare best read in closets. Then, in the nineteen fifties, there was a rash of After-the-Bomb science fiction books. Either directly or indirectly, these books criticized the course of modern civilization. Their stories predicted disaster for the human race. Endlessly.

Voila. The genre of science fiction became politically and intellectually correct, a well-written body of literature with a proper appreciation of man’s raging greed, stupidity, and futility. Gone were the garish covers of little green men hauling busty blondes off to far corners of the galaxy for an eternity of slap and tickle. Gone were the heroic rescuers of said blondes. In their place were caring and despairing antiheroes who tried and tried and tried to make things right, only to finally fail, going down the tubes with a suitable Existential whimper.

The critics loved it.

The fact that science fiction at that time was largely written by men for men did not hurt the genre’s status one bit. The retrograde authors who continued to write rousing galactic adventures in which bravery, brains and brawn saved the day were roundly disdained by critics…and avidly purchased by readers. Again, the tone of the reviews told you which was which.

Westerns were once scorned as badly written, formulaic, lurid escapist fare best read in closets. Westerns are still often viewed that way, despite valiant efforts on the part of a few academics to push
politically correct westerns (antiheroes, disease, cruelty, bigotry, degradation, despair and death). The readers were not fooled. They avoided these academic Westerns in droves. The heart of the Western’s appeal is larger-than-life; it is heroism; it is people who transcend their own problems and limitations and make a positive difference in their own time and life. That is what made Louis L’Amour one of the bestselling authors in the English language—or any other language, for that matter. That is what readers pay to read.

That is what critics disdain: Heroism. Transcendence.

Romances were once scorned as badly written, formulaic, lurid escapist fare best read in closets. They still are. I suspect they always will be. Their appeal is to the transcendent, not to the political. Their characters, through love, transcend the ordinary and partake of the extraordinary.

That, not bulging muscles or magic weapons, is the essence of heroic myth: humans touching transcendence. It is an important point that is often misunderstood. The essence of myth is that it is a bridge from the ordinary to the extraordinary. As Joseph Campbell said many times, through myth we all touch, if only for a few moments, something larger than ourselves, something transcendent.

Unfortunately, transcendence has been out of intellectual favor for several generations. Thus the war between optimism and pessimism rages on, and popular culture is its battlefield. Universities and newspapers are heavily stocked with people who believe that pessimism is the only intelligent philosophy of life; therefore, optimists are dumb as rocks.

How many times have you read a review that disdains a book because it has a constructive resolution of the central conflict—also known as a happy ending? The same reviewer will then praise another book for its relentless portrayal of the bleakness of everyday life.

This is propaganda, not criticism. What the critics are actually talking about is their own intellectual bias, their own chosen myth: pessimism. They aren’t offering an intelligent analysis of an author’s ability to construct and execute a novel.

Contrary to what the critics tell us, popular fiction is not a swamp of barely literate escapism; popular fiction is composed of ancient myths newly reborn, telling and retelling a simple truth: ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Jack can plant a beanstalk that will provide endless food; a Tom Clancy character can successfully unravel a conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions. A knight can slay a dragon; a Stephen King character can defeat the massed forces of evil. Cinderella can attract the prince through her own innate decency rather than through family connections; a Nora Roberts heroine can, through her own strength, rise above a savagely unhappy past and bring happiness to herself and others.

The next time you hear a work of popular fiction being scorned as foolish, formulaic, or badly written, ask yourself if it is truly badly written, foolish, and formulaic, or is it simply speaking to a transcendent tradition that emphasizes ancient hope rather than modernist despair?

In our society, popular fiction is story after story told around urban campfires, stories which point out that life is not a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. There is more to life than defeat and despair. Life is full of possibilities. Victory is one of them. Joy is another.

And that’s why people read popular fiction. To be reminded that life is worth the pain.

—Elizabeth Lowell

(This essay was originally published at www.elizabethlowell.com, a partner of www.writerspace.com.)