Under the Wide and Starry Sky (10 page)

“Well, foolish enough to marry a man who went off to find gold. I didn't know he was going to do that when I married him. “

“So you followed him.”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“And then there were snakes and angry Indians and raw winds whistling through the boards of the shack, and I learned to live with it all. I could have stood anything, I think, except his philandering.”

“Even there?”

“There were prostitutes in the camp. Whether it was going on there or not, I'm not sure. But when he gave up on the claim in Austin, when we moved to Virginia City, there was no doubt about it.”

Louis studied her. “You stayed with him. You had more children.”

“Always after a reconciliation.” Fanny sighed. “He swore he had changed …” She shook her head. “On my forgiving days, I think it's a sickness with Sam. There are times, though, when I wish he were dead.”

She bit her upper lip, regretting those last words. No one should say such a hideous thing about anyone. Louis certainly wouldn't. She remembered him walking around taking up a collection a few weeks ago for a couple of stranded minstrels. He was above such remarks.

Something Bob had said about Louis popped into her mind: “He makes everyone around him a little better, a little brighter.”

Watching Louis peel an apple, Fanny realized she was glad he had come back.

In the morning, he was waiting for her when she appeared in the dining room.

“Would you like to take a walk?”

“I'm wary of walks in the woods with you Stevenson men,” she said. “Anyway, Sammy is still asleep.”

“It's going to be a warm day. I think it would be good for you.”

Fanny finished her cup of coffee, stepped into the kitchen to confer with the cook, then went upstairs. She thought about the walk and felt an odd little palpitation. Stopping at the mirror in her bedroom, she pinched her cheeks for color, tied a red kerchief around her neck, then turned sideways to study her figure. She was surprised her that looks had not gone down, given the past year. She pulled her heavy boots out of the closet, the flat-soled ones she wore for walking. On the floor of the closet lay a small case. Impulsively, she opened it and removed the revolver Sam had given her back in Nevada. It was heavier than her pistol and did not fit in her pocket. She put the gun into a cloth bag, threw in a handful of bullets, pulled the drawstring, and slung the thing over her shoulder.

“Where are you going?” Sammy appeared in the bedroom doorway in his nightshirt.

“Louis and I are going for a walk.”

“May I go?”

“Ernestine said she would make you an omelet while we are gone.” Fanny hugged the boy. “If I know Louis, he will want to fish with you this afternoon.”

Downstairs, Fanny collected the lunch the cook had prepared and put it in a knapsack for Louis to carry. “Sam will be all right here for a couple of hours. He just woke up.”

“The chicken we had last night?” Louis asked, patting the bag.

“And croissants.”

“You're brilliant.”

“I'm hungry.”

They walked from the inn toward the path into the forest. There were a couple of dogs waiting at the opening. She had noticed before that they didn't go into the forest on their own, but they would follow people in. “Come on, then,” she said to a mutt, and two followed. Louis went ahead of Fanny, moving along confidently, like an explorer. He stopped now and then to hold back branches that hung over the trail. They walked for a half hour without saying much, the dogs trotting along behind them.

It was a path neither of them had walked before. When Louis stopped, they were in a clearing near a stream. Fanny found a rock on which to lay out the picnic food. She used her small knife to cut up the chicken and put it on the bread. Louis had brought a goatskin of water. They ate quickly. It was nothing but bread, chicken, and water; still, they were content.

Louis sat on the ground against a rock and tilted back his head. Suddenly, he shouted out, “I love this forest! I love France!”

The echo of Fanny's laughter reverberated in the clearing. She sat upright and surveyed the ground around them. Soon she was on her feet, collecting pinecones, four of which she placed in a row atop a flat rock near the base of a tree. Next she came back to where Louis was and sat down, reached into her bag, and pulled out the smooth-handled gun.

His face registered the desired effect: The cigarette nearly fell from his lips. “I didn't know I had come among revolvers,” he said.

Fanny emptied the bag of bullets into her lap and loaded the gun. She stood up and took her position, about twenty yards from the rock. With her back straight and both eyes open, Fanny blasted four shots, hitting each of the cones.

The air smelled of gunpowder. Her ears rang. When she turned around she saw that the dogs had run off and Louis was on his feet, his expression registering something between alarm and marvel. She offered him the handle of the gun.

“Not my forte,” he said, holding up his hands, as if in surrender. He lit a cigarette for her. “Do all the girls in Indianapolis carry guns?”

“Just the ones who like to shoot things.” She put the revolver back into her sack. “I like to shoot things.”

“Was that some sort of warning?”

“Take it as you wish,” she said in an imperious way, but she couldn't sustain the pose. She put her head back and laughed. “I was trying to impress you.”

“You did that. Where the devil
is
Indiana?”

“It doesn't matter. I don't know where home is anymore. We leave in a week for Paris, but we can't stay
there
forever.”

“Don't think about it,” he said.

Outside, the days were growing cooler. The last flowers of summer were fading and the horse chestnut was dropping its spiky green balls. In the river, red berries fallen from bushes on the shore drifted in lines with the water's ripples and collected along the banks.

There were things she did need to think about. Getting Sammy a tutor in Paris was one, but the bigger worry was money. She dreaded the prospect of another threadbare winter in Paris, never knowing if Sam would send support or not. All the years they lived together, he made her ask for the week's household money; he would never give her the allowance outright. First he would demand an accounting for the last amount he'd given her, then look in her purse to see if she had some money left. He said it was only fair. But it made her furious to remember the humiliations. Sam had taken her dowry, along with money borrowed from her father, and thrown it down a mineshaft that he eventually walked away from. Where was the fairness in that?

I mustn't think out loud about Sam anymore
. That couldn't be what Louis wanted to hear. As the days at the inn wore on, she found herself withholding stories if they involved Sam. Was Louis keeping to himself such stories of his own?

Now she woke every morning feeling calm, knowing she would see him first thing. They'd meet at the breakfast table, where he would concoct some adventure for the three of them. They paddled the river and fished, mostly tangling their lines in the thick sedge. Out in the woods, Louis reverted to eight—Sammy's age. They chased around playing hide-and-seek among the trees. “What was that about living inside your skin?” Louis asked her, pulling her into the game.

In the afternoons, Fanny and Louis sat beside the dining room stove. He told her about the lighthouses his father and grandfather had built. She told him about her own father's lumber business. Louis talked about how he had known at fourteen that he would be a writer. She told him about the art school in San Francisco where the creative impulses she'd always had veered toward painting.

She felt herself softening. Over the years she had made a near art of listening to men, no matter how boring; she perfected the interested gaze. But Louis was not boring, not ever; he was an extraordinary talker. And the pleasure was, he listened to her. Closely enough that after a time he seemed to be reading her mind, anticipating what she would say next. They came from entirely different worlds, yet they shared a surprising number of common experiences.

One night while she was mending stockings next to the stove, Louis and Sammy sat on the floor nearby and sculpted wads of wax into small human figures.

“This is a Confederate lieutenant who lost his boots in the last battle,” Louis said to the boy. He had retrieved a matchstick and stuck it in the wax man's hand. “He may be barefoot, but he still has his trusty sword.” He held up the soldier for Sammy to see. “What do ye think of this fella, mannie?”

The boy was on his belly, molding something. “He's perfect, Luly. I've got his horse right here.”

Luly
.
Sammy has already given Louis a new name.

He read to the boy from
The Pilgrim's Progress
and
Tales of a Grandfather
and deftly spun stories out of his head. There wasn't a drip of condescension in his voice when he addressed Sammy. One night Louis led both of them down to the river. They gathered dry sticks from along the bank and built a fire, where they cooked apples over the flames.

“We're Crusoe-ing now!” Louis shouted. “If it weren't so blasted cold, mates, I'd say we should sleep outside tonight.”

It had been hard to get the boy to bed after that. Once Sam's eyes finally closed, Fanny returned to the dining room, where Louis was clutching a stack of papers.

“‘The Suicide Club,'” he said.

“You finished the story?”

“Close enough. Would you have a listen?”

“I'd be thrilled.”

As Louis read, she realized he had taken Bob's idea and transmuted it into something entirely new. It was now the tale of a penniless young man without prospects who resembled Bob quite a bit. He had spent the end of his money to buy tarts and pass them out as a last act of generosity before he headed over to the suicide club. By the end of the story, the young man was saved from death, and the club closed down.

“I love happy endings,” Fanny said, lifting her wineglass to him. “Bravo! You are a fine writer, and I am not just saying that because you wear a velvet jacket and a red sash. You are very good. Truly.”

Louis looked as if he had just won a boxing match. They spent the next hour taking apart the story, with Louis asking her questions about whether a particular line worked or if a scene made sense. Now and then, he made note of her responses with rapt attention, saying softly, “You have a wonderful ear.”

When they said good night outside her room, he kissed her on the cheek. Fanny was surprised he had not pressed himself upon her more, despite her initial warning. Most men would have made stronger overtures. She was grateful for that; she didn't know if she wanted him to. With Sam Osbourne, there had never been a question. This slender, cerebral young man with the soft white hands confused her. She wondered if Louis was hankering after some idealized notion of a woman but, in the presence of a real one, lost his nerve.

“I have started writing again,” Fanny said one afternoon as they stood on the stone bridge near the inn. A cool wind from upstream blew against her face.

Louis was tossing orange peels to cackling mallards below. “Since you got to Grez?”

“Yes. Only in the past few weeks have I been able to put words together again.”

“Why did you wait so long to tell me that?”

“I'm not like you, I'm a novice. I have sent stories in to some journals,” she said sheepishly. “I still like stories of the supernatural.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of. Scots have a weakness for ghosts and dungeons and blood. That we do.”

“I've only managed to get one small thing published—not the least bit mystical—in a magazine you've never heard of. “

Louis shook his head. “It's very hard to get published.”

She shrugged. “Everything has been hard.”

He touched her shoulder. Below them, the river headed toward the little rapids where they had taken canoes a few weeks before to shoot over its edge.

“As sick as he was, I refused to believe Hervey would die,” she said. “He suffered for five hideous months but never complained. My boy never complained.” Fanny leaned on the bridge rail with her face in her hands. “I keep thinking, if I hadn't brought Hervey to Europe, his health would not have broken. Or maybe if I had taken him back to the States from Antwerp, he might have made it. My brain won't stop asking, what if?”

“I'm so sorry, Fanny.”

She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. “My boy will never have the chance to canoe down a river or discover if he likes to paint or to write. Why should I be happy? How dare I?”

Louis took her in his arms and rocked her there on the bridge. Peasants returning from the fields stared as they clomped past in their wooden shoes, with hoes and shovels resting on their shoulders.

That night, when the inn was silent, they lingered near the stove. The coals spilled a circle of light on the floor.

“What is it you want, Louis?”

“I want to travel and have real adventures. And when death comes, I want to be wearing my boots.” He leaned forward in his chair, gazing intently into the fire, and after a pause admitted, “The bigger truth? I desperately want to go in for literature! I don't want to waste any more time, and certainly not on the law.”

“Well, you have a gift with words.”

“My father doesn't think I can survive on writing.”

“Hmm. I don't know about surviving on it, but when you have a gift, it isn't yours to keep to yourself. It's the reason you're here. It's your purpose.”

Louis studied her face. His eyes were the most disarming thing about him. Often he seemed to be noticing something just beneath one's epidermis.

“Have you been eavesdropping at the door of my heart? Because that is what I believe with every chamber of it. You
understand,
Fanny Osbourne. You're good, and wise, and flaming courageous.” He took hold of her hands. “Can you fault me for falling in love with you?”

She did not venture another word. She rose to her feet and went with him up the dark staircase and past her room where Sammy slept. In his room, Louis eased her down on the bed. He held her for a good while, moving his lips from time to time to her ear to kiss it. The warmth of his breath, the comfort of a man's arms, caused her nearly to weep. When her hand brushed against his belt, he took it as a sign. She let him unbutton and unlace her, and when her garments were a pile on the floor next to his bed, she welcomed his body to hers. She felt his hipbone press against hers as he whispered how he had wanted her so desperately that day in the woods. His caressing accent was foreign and lovely. The way he whispered her name made it sound like a secret.

Fanny found herself a little stunned afterward. Louis was not the boy she had first taken him to be. He was a confident, generous, hungry lover. Clearly experienced. The past hour was not like any time in her life before.

Lying next to Louis, she remembered herself as a young bride. What had she known about love at seventeen? It was a wordless, crazy attraction that had flung her from stilts into adulthood. Sam had never talked to her about her spirit. He had devoured her in bed; hatched big plans about their future; impregnated her; been jealous when other men showed interest. He had given her the big revolver to protect herself, and bragged of her skill as a marksman. He had bragged, too, that she was the best-looking woman in Nevada and could cook beef fifteen different ways. But had Sam Osbourne ever really liked her? She didn't know.