The Grass Widow (31 page)

I’m afraid—
An admission caught back, hanging between them like a horse thief caught in the act.

Of what, Joss? I felt it; I felt your fear as sharply as a blow.
Somewhere in the dark she was alone: tenacious, capable, cock-wild as her beloved Ethan, but still a slight and vulnerable being against the creatures of the night. In that dark were savages with two legs or four, and the appetites of animals who roamed

the night were more predaceous than those of the beings of the day; night creatures craved fresh meat, or dark excitement. She traced a finger over the cool steel of the Colt on the windowsill. If she stepped out the door and let go a round into that blackness, would Joss hear and come?

If she heard, she would come. With deep certainty, Aidan knew that...but only if she heard.

Just a mile away was the brook where Joss sometimes took her, always to the same lush-grassed spot; not too far from there was Marcus Jackson’s cobwebby claim shack, where they had spread a saddle blanket and held each other in the shadows of a dwindling Sunday afternoon, daring to kiss and then to touch—

her hiding places, Joss called them. Had she chosen one of those places tonight, where she might still hear a shot from the house?

Or had that simmering thing behind her eyes taken her farther?

Whatever it is, it’s in and of me, and I need to be alone with it.
She left the pistol where it was.

The baby kicked, protesting her position. She straightened up. She’d been on her feet most of the day, and her back ached mercilessly. Sitting on the hard counter wasn’t helping, she supposed. She got down carefully; Doc and Malin, in their zeal, had waxed the kitchen floor to slick perfection.

She sighed into her rocker on the porch. Nestling her Colt into the folds of her skirt, she settled in to wait. It was an old trail, familiar to them both; Joss gave Charley his go. He drifted through the darkness, his horse’s memory recalling the crispness of autumns past when he had carried Harmon or Ethan or Joss as they hunted the thin trail that led to Newtonville.

Too tired to stay awake, too wounded to sleep, Joss seethed a restless doze on his back. A rain-scented breeze rippled its fingers through her hair and she started awake, reaching for the hat that had been taken from her a few miles back by a low-sweeping tree; she had ducked, but not enough. That cedar had stolen her Stetson before; she knew where it was.

She remembered the day Slade had taught Aidan to shoot: how he had treated his horse in his departure, and her own suggestion that the pony take him under the sweeper at a dead run; she smiled hollowly. “Should’ve. Saved a lot o’ people a lot o’ trouble.”

She settled back into long journey looseness, groping for the reins before she remembered there were none. She wove her fingers into Charley’s thick mane, loving the generous smell of him, and let him pick his way.

You’re strong and fierce, and you’ve made me strong and fierce—

“You’re crazy, an’ you make me crazy.” It slurred out as if she were drunk; Charley shook his big head at her voice, his halter slapping gently against his cheeks. “Yuh, Charley. S’awright.”

There was a saloon in Newtonville, and a double eagle in the watch pocket of her jeans. She wanted to go there. She wanted to be mistaken for Ethan, to drink straight whiskey and play draw poker and monte; she wanted to be drunk enough to let a hardedged saloon woman take her upstairs and be surprised at what she found under the sweatstained shirt and trousers....

“Merciful Jesus,” she muttered. “You’re too stupid sober to be allowed to drink.”

She wanted to ride blind and trust Charley to take her home. She wanted to be home, curled with Aidan in their bed, breathing the scent of her, feeling the heavy warmth of her breast in one hand and the swelling roundness of the baby against the other. She wanted to rest her head there, to listen to the vibrant pulse of that blossoming life, to feel its nudging protest of her weight; she wanted to know her hands gentle with Aidan in the night. She remembered the coppery taste of the need to lash out, to spray the hurt away from her; she remembered why, and felt the bitterness again, and didn’t turn the horse.

She remembered how it felt to be fifteen, to have Hank Richland and Gideon Jackson pursuing her with dogged gentleness, Gid with wildflowers picked in the ditches, Hank with candy stolen from his father’s store. She remembered their shy smiles and tugs at her braids in school, and the righteous

retribution of their fists when the inevitable taunt
(bastard)
came her way. She remembered—

Charley shied at something and the Colt was in her hand, all her senses probing the darkness while her intellect tried to catch up. There came no sound or shadow; they both listened until Charley looked back at her as if in apology for the false alarm.

“S’okay,” she muttered. “I respond to threat like the tough an’

tenacious human bein’ I am. Any normal woman would do the same.” The horse danced a nervous sidestep, not accustomed to the harsh tones of sarcasm. Joss holstered the revolver, gave him a soothing pat on the neck, and in ten horse-steps was back in her dozing reverie.

—knowing if Hank hadn’t defended her, she could have defended herself, as good as any boy in a schoolyard brawl. But Gid...flowers. Buds

Budding breasts, so aware—and the afternoon Hank had tried to kiss her? He’d courted her for two years. She had known he would, hoped he would...and she had belted him, a solid right hook that had bloodied his nose, blacked his eye, broken his heart.

“Moment o’ truth,” she mumbled, and firmed her grip on Charley’s mane. Gideon had retreated, too, and no other boy had stepped in to woo her. One more called her a bastard; she broke his nose and jaw for his lack of discretion. The brawl had driven a wedge between herself and other girls her age; fighting at eleven was one thing, but at fifteen? She didn’t miss their company. All they talked about was boys and clothes and getting out of Washburn Station, and she cared for none of those things; if she looked into her future, she saw her life unfolding on that post road acreage, and she was content with the vision. She assumed some defect of her personality made her unattractive to boys, and uncomfortable to girls, and tried to accept her mother’s gentle wisdom that no one different is well-received by those who would wish themselves peers, that lack of acceptance didn’t mean she wasn’t a good and generous spirit, that the one she might love, and who might love her, would come along someday—

“An’ on your deathbed you call me your son? Ma, you might’ve died without sayin’ that.” She fished in her shirt pocket for her bag of makings and rolled a cigarette, and fired a match with her thumbnail, the small process easing her mind from the sharpness of the pain those words had caused her—bad enough it had been said at all, but for Doc to hear it! If that was how Ma thought of her, what would have been her reaction to her feelings for her cousin Aidan?

Aidan.
She closed her eyes, smelling smoke and impending rain, remembering whispered words:
and now I can’t let you go
—

and how the knowledge of love had squeezed into her, swelled around her, permeated her with the knowing that all she’d never wanted from Hank or Gid, she wanted from Aidan, an understanding that had consumed her with the want to return that offering.

It’s all I’ve been able to think of, Joss— how it felt when you kissed
me, how it felt when you stopped—because I didn’t want you to stop.
The memory could still ignite a slow fire in her, a heat rippling through her being the way ripe, heavy-headed grain rippled across the prairie. She felt that visceral surge, and the rhythm of the horse’s strong back between her legs, and the night breeze that cooled the tracks tears had left on her face, and sickly, she remembered riding the quivering verge of raising her hand—

All those thoughts—they’re like a unbroke horse, Joss, a Wyomin’

mustang an’ I’ve lost the reins, an’ it’s crazy to be free an’ there’s no
way to break the run. All I can do is let it run itself out.
The tormented Ethan by the spring, bruises from his last desperate race with his wildness not yet faded before he felt a new one coming on.
If I could just find the reins—

He had never admitted what those thoughts were about. Something made him that way; some hurt inside him started the churning; he started out hollow-eyed and aching with the pain before the anger rose around it, sending him boiling out to find the places where men spent their rages: saloons and whorehouses, card games and fistfights.

“What about me, Ethan?” Tautly, she asked the darkness.

“Where does somethin’ like me go when I can’t break the run?”

It’s because you’re a woman that I love you.

“Aidan, I know it’s you I should turn to but Lord! if ever I hurt you—” Ethan had slapped his mother once, a lashing response to her plea that he not leave. Jocelyn hadn’t told her husband, but Ethan, writhing with guilt, had told his father. Harmon hadn’t bothered with a strap in the woodshed; he took his son’s shirtfront in one fist and balled up the other and hit him as hard as he was able. Ethan’s knees buckled and his eyes rolled back, but he didn’t go under; Harmon drew his fist again, not hearing his wife’s protest, or Seth’s cracking plea of ’Papa no,’ not seeing Joss ready to put herself between them if it went too far—but he heard Ethan’s hoarse whisper.
Kill me, Pa. Please.
It was the only time Joss had ever seen her father cry. She’d never ridden the mustang then, to understand the awful deadness in her brother’s eyes when he whispered those chilling words, but she knew now. “If I ever—”

He hadn’t wanted, or meant, to hurt her. She had just been in the way of the rage. She had forgiven him; the mother’s love forgave her son before his hand was back at his side, but Ethan’s last words before he died were
I’m so sorry I struck you, Mama . . .
even though, rasping and shivering with sickness, he had helped Joss dig her grave.

“If ever I—” It was a sick, hollow protest; it hurt too much to think it, let alone say the words. She forced them out. “If ever I struck her—”

I’ve never been so loved, or so respected—

“No! Not if! If you allow the if, it’ll turn into a when—” The shudder came deep in her belly, an orgasm of pain racing through her like Ethan’s lunatic mustang, tearing the strength from her; she slipped in barely-controlled collapse from the horse to her knees and elbows on the trail, almost choking on the sobs. “No!

No ifs! Aidan, I promise you—”

You feel things—you understand things—as a woman, and that
makes the difference. You can cry, where a man wouldn’t allow himself
to admit the pain.

0

Ethan hadn’t cried the day his father had hit him, that only day Harmon Bodett had wept for his alien son. He had allowed that anguished man to hold him; he allowed his mother’s tearful forgiving, and his sister’s ministrations to his broken nose—

Ethan, can’t you cry? Jesus, can’t you let it go? There’s places you
can go where no one would see—

It doesn’t matter if anyone sees, Joss. I’d see. I’d know I was weak.
You need a daddy to teach you how to be a better man than your
brother was.

She choked a laugh into the hard-packed dirt of the trail. No one but Ethan could have taught her about being a man; they were too much alike for anyone else to have taught her that. “It’s not a man I need learn to be! I know that well enough an’ too much!”

While she cried, it started to rain.

Aidan jerked awake, barely choking back a near-scream of Joss’s name; unreleased, it echoed wildly in her mind, and her heart tripped and stuttered in her and her blood roared in her ears. It was long before she could sit back, and much longer before she could rest her senses from their probe of the night.
Joss, come home. Damn you, just come home! This is—

The easterly skies were gray with impending dawn when the rooster made his announcement; she struggled awake to see Fritz in the pasture looking around as if he wondered where Charley was. Charley was still absent. Aidan shivered in the dewy morning chill and felt an irate kick from the baby. She rose stiffly from the rocker, scanning the close hills. “Oh, Joss,” she whispered wearily, and heard her voice leaden with the beginnings of grief. She started the fire and sat at the kitchen table to wait for the kettle; she awoke an hour later with the kitchen steam-muggy and the kettle boiled dry. She set it on the tank to cool before she refilled it, and knew by sensing that she was still alone. She went to check the pasture anyway.

No Charley. Fritz came to visit worriedly with her; she stroked his velvet nose. “What good are you to me, handsome

horse?” she whispered. “You lazy son of a snake. Oh, Fritz—”

Joss had lifted her to him bareback for a gentle ride to the branch one day, but there had been less baby then; now, she didn’t think she could mount him, let alone stay on him bareback for the ride to town, and she knew she didn’t have the height to swing the saddle to his back, nor did she know how to adapt a double wagon harness to one horse.

Fritz shook his head and nudged her shoulder with his nose, and lowered his head to poke it through the fence, stretching for the greener grass on her side. “Wait?” she asked helplessly.

“Fritz, I can’t! What can I do?”

She checked the clock when she went back into the house; it was just past six. She made a cup of tea and drank it cautiously, making sure one sip would stay down before she took another. She walked to the top of the first hill on the trail Joss had taken with Charley, carrying her Colt, her apron pocket heavy with bullets; she sent three rounds into the air, protecting her ears with her shooting shoulder and her other hand, and waited, straining to hear answering shots. None came and she repeated, and listened, reloading in slow silence, remembering to pick up the brass; Malin gave them a penny a dozen for spent casings. Even covering her ears, after twelve shots her head rang and she knew she couldn’t have heard a distant response. She trudged back to the house and sat in the porch rocker. The clock struck seven.