Vows

by LaVyrle Spencer

  "Me?"

  "Why not you? It's the perfect place. Plenty of room."

  Tom shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

  "A dance, maybe, and invite the local merchants and their wives—a grand opening, if you will. It wouldn't be bad for business, you know."

  Upon further consideration, the idea took on merit. A dance. What trouble could he get into at a dance, especially with the older generation around? Hell, he wouldn't even have to dance with Emily Walcott, and Charles was right—it would be a wonderful goodwill gesture from the newest businessman in town. He'd need a band and refreshments, a few lanterns, little more.

  He found a fiddler who sometimes played at the Mint, and the fiddler knew a harmonica player, and the harmonica player knew a guitar player, and in no time at all, Tom had his band. They said they'd play for free beer, so on a Saturday night in mid-July the whole town turned out to christen Jeffcoat's Livery Stable.

  * * *

  Josephine insisted that Edwin take Fannie. "She's been in the house too much. She needs to get out and so do you."

  "But—"

  "Edwin, I won't take no for an answer, and you know how she loves dancing."

  "I can't take her to a—"

  "You can and you shall," Josephine stated with quiet authority.

  He did.

  They walked uptown together: Charles and Emily, Edwin and Fannie, through a molten summer sunset, through a windless violet evening, the older couple without touching, except for Fannie's skirts brushing Edwin's ankle like an intimate whisper. He felt young again, released, strolling along beside the woman who was vital and healthy and whose desirability had in no way diminished over the years. If anything, it had grown. He allowed this admission to surface while keeping his gaze locked on his daughter's back. If things had turned out differently Emily might have been theirs—his and Fannie's.

  "Oh, Edwin," Fannie declared, when they were halfway to their destination, "I'm so incredibly happy."

  Who but Fannie would be happy with this impossible situation?

  "You always are."

  Their gazes met and hers held a question: Shall I feel guilty because Josephine has shared you with me for the evening, or shall I make the most of it?

  They made the most of it. They danced the waltz and the varsovienne, the Turkish trot and the reel. Their hands learned the feel of one another—his as it lay on her waist, hers as it rested on his shoulder. They accepted these touches as a gift.

  They grew warm and drank beer to cool off. They laughed. They talked. They conversed and danced with others, distancing themselves to covertly admire one another from room's width. They learned that they could be happy with this and no more.

  * * *

  Tom hadn't intended to ask Emily to dance. He'd brought Tarsy, and Tarsy was enough to wear out any man on the dance floor. He danced with others, too, from his new circle of friends—Ardis and Tilda, Mary Ess, Lybee Ryker; the list had grown. And with many of their mothers, and, of course, with Fannie, who was sought as a partner by every man in the place, regardless of his age.

  Fannie brought it about, what Tom had been determined to avoid. She was waltzing with him, chattering about Frankie's capacity for molasses cookies, when Edwin danced past with his daughter.

  "Oh, Edwin, could I talk to you?" Fannie heralded, swinging out of Tom's arms. "I wonder if one of us shouldn't go home and check on Joey."

  While they carried on a brief conversation Emily and Tom stood by, trying not to look at each other. At length, Fannie touched their arms and said, "Excuse me, Tom, you don't mind finishing this one with Emily, do you?"

  And so it happened. Tom and Emily were left facing each other on a crowded dance floor. She wouldn't look at him. He couldn't help himself from looking at her. He saw the telltale hint of pink creeping up her cheeks and decided it was best to keep the mood convivial.

  "I guess we're stuck with each other." He grinned and opened his arms "I can bear it if you can."

  They moved toward each other gingerly and began waltzing, maintaining a careful distance but bound by unmerciful memories of the last evening they'd spent together.

  His fingertips learning the textures of her face.

  His hands and tongue on Tarsy.

  "I wasn't sure you'd come," he said, meeting the eyes of Charles, who watched from the edge of the floor.

  "Papa and Fannie and Charles wouldn't have missed it."

  "So you got roped into it."

  "You might say that."

  "You're still angry about that silly game." He turned his back to Charles and glanced down at her compressed lips as she stared over his shoulder "I'm sorry if it embarrassed you." His glance slipped lower, to her chest, tinted by a charming if unladylike vee of sunburned skin shaped like the neck opening of her brother's shirt. There, again, he detected a blush behind a peppering of freckles.

  "Could we talk about something else, please?"

  "Certainly. Any subject you like."

  "You have a fine barn," she offered dutifully.

  "I picked out the rest of my horses last week. I can get them any time."

  With the subject of horses she was comfortable; she risked meeting his eyes. "From Liberty?"

  "Yes. One mare is in foal." She relaxed further as Tom continued with her favorite subject. And I went down to Buffalo and ordered carriages and wagons from Munkers and Mathers. I'll get them as soon as my hay is delivered."

  "Dams?"

  "Yup."

  "They're good, sturdy wagons. Good axles. They'll last you. What brand of carriages?"

  "Studebakers."

  "Studebakers … good."

  "I thought I'd need the best, what with these damned washboard roads out here—where there are roads. I ordered my hay from McKenzie, too. As soon as it comes I'll be open for business."

  They danced on in a more comfortable silence after the interpersonal talk still careful not to stray too close.

  "So what have you been doing?" he inquired, implying casual disinterest when actually he was avid to know everything that had affected her life since they'd seen each other.

  "Not much."

  "Charles tells me you removed a hairball and a rotten tooth. Got paid for it too."

  "I removed the tooth, not the hairball. That I took care of with epsom salts and a little raw linseed oil. Distasteful but effective."

  "But you did get paid."

  He watched her face for signs of satisfaction and found them as she answered, "Yes."

  "I guess that makes you a real doc now, huh?"

  "Not really. Not until spring."

  Silence again while they moved to the music, still separated by a body's width, searching for a new distraction. At length she remarked, "Charles says you've picked out blueprints for your house."

  "I have."

  "Two stories and an L-shaped porch."

  "It seems to be the going thing. Tarsy says everybody's got a porch these days."

  Their gazes collided and they danced in a web of confused feelings.

  You're building it for her?

  The tension between them became palpable.

  Hoping to remind them both of their obligations, Emily commented, "Charles will do a good job for you. He does everything well."

  "Yes," Tom replied, "I imagine he does."

  Somewhere a harmonica wailed and a fiddle scraped, but neither of them heard. Their feet continued shuffling while they grew lost in one another's eyes.

  Stop looking at me like that.

  You stop looking at me like that.

  This was impossible, dangerous.

  The tension built until Emily felt a sharp pain between her shoulder blades and she lost her will to keep the conversation impersonal. "You didn't come to the party last week," she lamented in a breathy voice.

  "No, I … I worked on the barn." It was an obvious lie.

  "After dark?"

  "I used a lantern."

  "Oh."

  At that
moment someone bumped Emily, throwing her against Tom. Her breasts hit his chest and his arms tightened for the briefest moment. But it took no longer for their hearts to race out of control. She jumped back and began prattling to cover her discomposure. "I never did care much for dancing, I mean some girls were born to ride horses and some were born to dance but I don't think many of them were born to do both but just put me on a saddle and watch—"

  "Emily!" Tom caught her hand and squeezed it mercilessly. "Enough! Charles is watching."

  Her inane chatter stopped mid-word.

  They stood before one another feeling helpless beneath the grip of a growing attraction neither of them had sought or wanted. When she had regained some semblance of poise he said sensibly, "Thank you for the dance," then turned her by an arm and delivered her back to Charles.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  «^»

  Later that night, Emily lay beside a sleeping Fannie, recreating Tom Jeffcoat in thought—gestures and expressions that became disconcertingly attractive in the deep of night. His blue, teasing eyes. His disarming sense of humor. His lips, crooking up to make light of something that felt heavy and treacherous within her. She wrapped herself in both arms and coiled into a ball facing away from Fanny.

  I scarcely know him. But it didn't matter.

  He's Papa's competition. But noble about it.

  He's Tarsy beau. It carried little weight.

  He's Charles' friend.

  Ah, that one stopped her every time.

  What kind of woman would drive a wedge between friends?

  Stay away from me, Tom Jeffcoat. Just stay away!

  He did. Religiously. For two full weeks while his livery stable opened up for business. And while the framework of his house went up. And while word came back to Emily that he was seeing Tarsy with growing regularity. And while Emily thought, good, be with Tarsy—it's best that way. And while Jerome Berryman hosted a party which Tom again avoided. And while Charles grew more randy and began pressuring Emily to advance the date of their wedding. And while full summer stole over the valley and parched it to a sere yellow, bringing daytime temperatures in the high eighties. The heat made work in a livery barn less enjoyable than at any other time of year. Flies abounded, skin itched from the slightest contact with chaff, and the horses tended to get collar galls from sweating beneath their harnesses.

  One morning Edwin took Sergeant across the street to have him shod and in the late afternoon asked Emily to go get him.

  Her head snapped up and her heart leapt to her throat. She blurted out the first excuse that came to mind. "I'm busy."

  "Busy? Doing what, scratching that cat?"

  "Well, I … I was studying." His impatient glance fell to her hip where a book rested, facedown.

  It was a beastly hot day and her father was fractious, not only from the heat. Mother was worse again, someone had returned a landau with a rip in the seat, and he'd had a set-to with Frankie over cleaning the corral. When Emily balked at collecting Sergeant, Edwin displayed a rare fit of temper.

  "All right!" He threw down a bucket with a clang. "I'll go get the damn horse myself!"

  He stomped out of the office and Emily shot after him, calling, "Papa, wait!"

  He brought himself up short, heaved a deep sigh, and turned to her, the picture of forced patience. "It's been a long day, Emily."

  "I know. I'm sorry. Of course I'll go get Sergeant."

  "Thanks, honey." He kissed her forehead and left her standing in the great south doorway with doubts amassing as she pondered Jeffcoat's place of business a half block away. In all the time it was going up, and since it had been open for business, she had never been in it alone with him, and now she knew why. She stepped outside and hesitated, telling her pulse to calm, concentrating on the newly painted sign above his door: JEFFCOAT'S LIVERY STABLE—HORSES BOARDED & SHOD, RIGS FOR RENT. A new pair of hitching rails stood out front, their posts of freshly peeled pine shining white in the sun. The line of windows along the west side of his building reflected the blue sky, and in one the afternoon sun formed a blinding golden blaze. In a corral on the near side of the building his new string of horses stood dozing with their tails twitching desultorily at flies.

  So, go get Sergeant. Two minutes and you can be in and out.

  She drew a deep breath, blew it out slowly, and headed down the street, unconsciously stepping to the rhythmic beat of a hammer on steel.

  At his open door she stopped. The sound came from inside: pang-pang-pang. Sergeant stood at the opposite end of the building, cross-tied near the smithy door. She walked toward the stallion, skirting the wooden turntable in the center of the wide corridor without removing her eyes from the far doorway.

  Pang-pang-pang! It rang through the building, shimmered off the beams overhead and skimmed along the brick floor, as if repeating the rhythm of her heart.

  Pang-pang-pang!

  She approached Sergeant silently and gave him an affectionate if distracted scratch, whispering, "Hi, boy, how y' doin'?" The hammering stopped. She waited for Jeffcoat to appear, but when he didn't she stepped to the smithy door and peered inside.

  The room was hot as hell itself, and very dark, but for the ruddy glow from the forge, which was set in the opposite wall: a waist-high fireplace of brick, with an arched top and deep, deep hearth, ringed with tools—hammers, tongs, chisels, and Punches—hung neatly on the surrounding brick skirt. To the right stood a crude wooden table scattered with more tools, to the left a slake trough, and in the center of the room a scarred steel anvil, mounted on a pyramid of thick wooden slabs. Above the forge hung a double-chambered bellows with its tube feeding the fire. Working the bellows, with his back to the door, stood Jeffcoat.

  The man she'd been avoiding.

  His left hand pumped rhythmically, sending up a steady hiss and a soft thump from the accordion-pleated leather; his right held a long bar of iron, black at one end, glowing at the other, nearly as red as the coals themselves. He worked bare-handed, bare-armed, wearing the familiar blue shirt, shorn of sleeves, and over it a soot-smudged leather apron.

  He stood foursquare to the forge, his silhouette framed dead-center in the glowing arch, limned by the scarlet radiance of the coals, which brightened as the current of forced air hit them. A roar lifted up the chimney. The sound buffeted Emily's ears, and as the fireglow intensified it seemed to expand Jeffcoat's periphery. Sparks flew from the coals and landed at his feet, unheeded. The acrid odor of smoke mingled with that of heated iron—a singeing, bitter perfume.

  Seeing him at his labor for the first time, her perception of him again changed. He became permanent; he was here to stay. Tens and tens of times in her life she would step to this door and find him standing just so, working. Would the sight make her breath catch every time?

  She watched him move—each motion enlarged by his hovering vermilion halo. He flipped the iron bar over—it chimed like a brass bell against the brick hearth—and watched it heat. When it glowed a yellowish-white he reached out for a chisel, cut it, and picked it up with a pair of heavy tongs.

  He turned to the anvil.

  And found her watching from the doorway.

  They stood as still as shadows, remaining motionless for so long that the perfect yellow-whiteness of the hot iron began to fade to ochre. He came to his senses first and said, "Well, hello."

  "I came to get Sergeant," she announced uneasily.

  "He's not quite ready." Jeffcoat lifted the hot iron in explanation. "One more shoe."

  "Oh."

  Silence again while the bar cooled even more.

  "You can wait if you want. It shouldn't take long."

  "Do you mind?"

  "Not at all."

  He turned back to the forge to reheat the bar and she moved farther inside, across a crunching layer of cinders that covered the floor, stopping with the tool table between herself and Jeffcoat. She studied his profile keenly, somehow feeling safe doing so in the darkness of the r
oom. He wore a red bandana tied around his brow. Above it, his hair fell onto his forehead in damp tangles; below it, sweat painted gleaming tracks down his temples. Radiant red light lit the hair on his arms, and that which showed above the bib of his apron. She studied him until it became necessary to invent a distraction. Lifting her eyes to the dark thick-beamed ceiling and shadowed walls, she scanned them as a hunter might the sky.

  "Did you run out of windows?" she inquired.

  He glanced at her and grinned, then returned his attention to the forge. "Did you come to give me a hard time again?"

  "No. I'm curious, that's all."

  He turned the bar over and made more music. "You know as well as I do why blacksmiths work in the dark. It helps them gauge how hot the metal is." He brandished the bar, which was brightening to white again. "Color, you see?"

  "Oh." And after a moment's silence: "Shouldn't you wear gloves?"

  "I caught a cinder down one one time, so now I work without them."

  Glancing down, she scuffed a boot against the cinders. "Your floor could use sweeping."

  "You did come to pester me."

  "No. I only came to get Sergeant, honest. Papa sent me."

  He considered her askance for a long stretch, then shifted his gaze to his work and decided to enlighten her further. "The cinders keep the floor cool in the summer and warm in the winter."

  "This is cool?" She spread her hands in the torpid air.

  "As cool as it gets. You can wait outside if you want."

  But she waited where she was, watching another bead of sweat trail down Tom Jeffcoat's jaw. He shrugged and caught it with a shoulder. His face held absolutely no shadow, and his eyes looked like two red coals themselves, so intense was the heat from the forge. Yet he pumped the bellows regularly and stood in the blast of heat as if it were little more than a warm chinook wind drifting over the Big Horns.

  Time and again she glanced away, but her eyes had a will of their own. She didn't want to find him handsome, but there was no arguing the fact. Or masculine, but he was. Or any of the thousand indefinable things that drew her to him, but she was drawn just the same, against her will.