One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow: A Novel

by Olivia Hawker

  Clyde and I didn’t stop meeting in secret. Knowing we might never see one another again—and if we did, it would only be in passing, on the streets of Paintrock—we slipped away every chance we got. He didn’t try to kiss me again. I would have liked for him to do it, but he seemed too sad now for kissing; Clyde was as melancholy as a story that has reached its end. Instead, we walked beside the river or climbed up into the ravine to visit the place where we had found our two-headed lamb. There we laid flowers and bright stones polished by the creek, and sat in silence, hand in hand, thinking over all we had found in one another, and all we seemed poised to lose.

  It don’t seem right, Clyde said. He moved the flowers this way and that on the lamb’s stone, rearranging them, then replacing them in their original position.

  I said, I know. It positively ain’t right. There’s nothing right about it.

  He said, Mother’s worried sick that I’ll court you, but what does a fella do when he turns seventeen?

  She wants you to wait till you’re eighteen, I guess.

  He said, Mother can’t keep me a boy forever.

  I didn’t say anything to that. I knew Nettie Mae had no real opposition to Clyde courting—at seventeen or any time thereafter. If he had chosen any other girl to court, she might have felt a trifle sad, just because her boy was growing up. But she would have accepted the inevitable, and she would have done it with good grace. No—I knew it was me she didn’t like. I was the cause of Nettie Mae’s endless vexation. She never had grown accustomed to my ways, my sense of the world. She had tried her level best to make peace with me over the winter, when she had given me her cloth scraps and taught me how to stitch. But Nettie Mae hadn’t shed that lingering sense of mistrust. Her quiet, simmering fear of all that I was.

  Clyde rose suddenly from the rock and dusted off his britches. He said, We should go for a ride. Whenever I’m troubled, Joe Buck makes me feel better. That horse has a knack, I guess. And I’d like to go up into the hills, up high where I can see our two farms.

  He wanted to look down on the whole of us—see the unity we had made before his mother’s whim tore it all asunder.

  I agreed, though I hadn’t ridden in a terrible long time, and that had been on Meg, the gentle gray mare who had never come back from Paintrock.

  I said, Tiger is a spirited horse, and I ain’t ridden him without my pa in the saddle behind me.

  Clyde said, Tiger’s a fine horse. I’ve ridden him a few times this spring—I guessed your pa would rather I rode him and kept him in shape than let him get too fat in the corral. He’s got a bit of ginger, but he listens real good. He’ll take care of you.

  When we returned to our land, we found that Nettie Mae had gone across the pasture to help my ma with the packing.

  The sooner your ma can be rid of me, the better, I said to Clyde. She’s even willing to pack up our things for us, if it means she’ll no longer need to trouble her mind over me.

  Clyde said, Never mind that. It’s a fine, sunny day. Let’s enjoy the time we have left.

  He sent me around to the front of the sod-brick house, where Nettie Mae wouldn’t see me if she looked out from my family’s porch. He saddled Joe Buck and Tiger himself, then led them around to the apple orchard. I met him there, in the dappled shade of the trees, among the last white blossoms hanging ragged from the branches. Clyde legged me up into the saddle, and Tiger danced and pawed at the ground and flexed his neck, but when I pulled on the reins and told him sharply to settle, he listened.

  I hadn’t set a horse’s back in well over a year. The feeling was strange to me now: the shifting weight, the swaying motion, my towering height above the earth. But I liked the feeling of understanding that flowed between Tiger and me. He was a fine horse, as Clyde had said; he knew his business, his place in the world, and tried to do right by the people who tended to his needs. But he could also taste the bright, rich air of springtime’s end. It made him eager to run. And, I’m afraid, he knew me for a girl—one of the smallest and weakest of humans. He settled when I told him sternly enough, but he stamped his hoof and snorted, and seemed to sauce me, saying, I’ll settle if I must, but you just mind the truth, miss: I could be off like a shot and you couldn’t do much about it, except hold on and pray.

  Clyde swung up into Joe Buck’s saddle with all his usual confidence and grace. He understood horses about as well as I understood the prairie, and it always pleased me to watch him ride—to see Clyde in his element, sure of his worth. He took the lead, riding out through the orchard, making for the cottonwoods well south of the river trail so no one would see us from the little gray farmhouse and catch us in our mischief. I was glad to ride behind, for it gave me more opportunity to watch Clyde doing what he did best: becoming as one with his horse, merging with the buckskin gelding, reacting to every sight and sound in perfect union, so there seemed no difference between man and animal—no difference that mattered. I stared at Clyde with a kind of desperate hunger, willing myself to memorize every movement, every second that passed. The way the shadows of the cottonwoods fell in long blue bars across his shoulders, the way he lifted a hand to steady his hat when a hard wind threatened to blow it away. If Nettie Mae had her druthers after all, and we were sent off to Paintrock the following day, I intended to carry these memories of Clyde with me, and keep them close all the years of my life.

  We rode along the river, peaceful and cool, with no need for either of us to speak. The cottonwoods shielded us from Nettie Mae’s view as we made our way up the slope toward the foothills. Where the trail yielded to a narrow deer track—the rocky path we’d taken up into the ravine, searching for the black-legged ewe—Clyde turned west and led the way along the hill’s open face. A strong yellow sun beat down on our shoulders; I could feel its warmth through the cloth of my bonnet and under my arms, my calico dress dampened with sweat. The summer was making ready to take its rightful place in the turning of the year.

  From the vantage of the foothills, we could see the two farms spread below us, small but distinct. The tracks of our routines—our daily lives—were beaten deep into the earth. We had made a permanent mark upon the land, but if a stranger were to look down from where we rode, he would never have known where one farm ended and the other began. The months we had lived since Substance’s death had consumed all our boundaries. We had made of our two worlds one shared and thriving reality.

  Hard to believe your house will soon be empty, Clyde said.

  I didn’t answer, for I still couldn’t countenance Nettie Mae’s plan.

  Clyde said, Come on; there’s something up here I been meaning to show you.

  He reined his horse away from the view.

  I followed Clyde along the slope and into a depression, those long tracks of shady green that branch like veins up the faces of foothills. The ground there was stony, as it was everywhere, and dotted with sage. But in the lee of a great red boulder, down in the lowest and dampest part of the depression, a tree rested sideways along the earth. It wasn’t a terribly large tree, but it was old—I could tell by the bark, fissured and gray, and by the gnarled curves of its branches. The trunk had long since fallen, succumbed to lightning or wind. The tree should have died long ago, for its roots had torn free of the shallow, rocky soil and now hung suspended near the boulder, sun dried and tortured by the weather. But as I rode closer, I could see that a few slender roots had remained in their rightful place. New branches were reaching out along the earth, twisting and twining, splitting their rough bark to expose the soft, living wood underneath. The branches that survived held aloft their banners of fresh green leaves. And now, in the final days of spring, the ends of those branches were jeweled with late flowers. The still air at the heart of the gully held their delicate perfume.

  A tree may fall, but if even one root remains in the soil, it will live.

  Clyde said, I found it a couple years back. It’s a pear tree, of all things. Lord knows how it got up here. Some rider must have spat a pear s
eed from his saddle years ago, and it sprouted. I’ve ridden up here at the end of every summer and eaten so many pears I’m fit to bust. You never tasted anything so sweet.

  I saw Clyde in that way I had, my special sense of knowing—saw him as a younger boy, riding alone to this place. I watched him slide out of his saddle and step up onto the felled trunk, reach up among the vertical new branches, the life ongoing, and pick the green fruit till his hat overflowed with it, till he couldn’t hold any more. I saw him bite into the flesh, but the fruit wasn’t ripe after all. He had come early that year, and the pears were still tannic, almost bitter. He licked the bitten surface, the grainy white flesh, and considered the taste of the fruit. Though the pears hadn’t been sweet that summer, still he ate them all.

  I said, Wish there were pears on the branches now. I don’t think I ever tasted a pear, but I’d like to.

  They’re delicious, Clyde said. Then he added, Well—they’re delicious if you get them when they’re ripe.

  I didn’t look at him then, but I said, I know.

  Clyde didn’t ask me how I knew. He held his tongue and accepted my words. He was remembering, just then—the taste, the solitude, the way the underripe fruit had left a funny feeling in his mouth, a tightness and tang.

  Impulsively, I swung down from my saddle—sore from the long ride—and handed the reins to Clyde. Then I climbed up onto the sideways trunk, just where Clyde had stood years before to gather his pears, and I sat down among the rustle of leaves and blossoms. The prairie stretched out below the foothills—below the two of us, Clyde and me—far off into a living eternity. I knew even if the next morning saw me taken off to Paintrock, I would still be part of this land, as it was part of me. I whispered to the tree, I wish I’d found you before today. I might never see you again. And then I looked at Clyde, who was looking steadily back at me, unblinking, and I thought, You’ll still be part of me, too. There’s no separating us now, no matter what tomorrow brings. My roots are forever in your soil.

  After a spell, Clyde said, I’m awful tempted to join you there, in the shade. But to look at the sun, my mother’ll start fixing supper soon. We should go home.

  Not together, I said, or your ma will be sore.

  No, I guess not. I’ll go back first and distract her—keep her mind fixed on me. That way she won’t see you putting Tiger back in the corral. Be sure you brush him down real good, or he’ll get saddle sores the next time he’s ridden.

  All right, I said. I know the way back. You go on home; I’ll follow in half an hour or so.

  And I thought, I’ll always know the way back home. If I do find myself holed up in Paintrock tomorrow, what of it? Someday I’ll be old enough to strike out on my own. I’ll find my way back to this place. If fate is kind to me, then Clyde will still be here, and he’ll still be looking out for me.

  I stepped down from the tree and used the boulder to get myself back up into Tiger’s saddle. Clyde urged Joe Buck to step a little closer. Then he reached across the space between us and took my hand. The earth seemed a long way down; we rode high atop the world, high above everything, just for that afternoon.

  CLYDE

  It was a long way down from the foothills to the river trail, but Clyde had taken the route countless times before. He made good time, choosing the easiest route along the great rocky slope almost by feel, and returned to the sod-brick house while the yard was still empty.

  As Clyde stripped the saddle and blanket from Joe Buck’s sweat-darkened back, Nettie Mae appeared between the barn and the long shed, returning from the Bemis farm at a leisurely pace. Clyde watched her approach over Joe Buck’s withers. Guilt and wariness warred inside him. Nettie Mae moved with pronounced ease, a swinging gait Clyde had seldom seen her use, as if the stitches of her soul had come unpicked—as if everything that had once been bound so tightly within had loosened. But the nearer she came, the better Clyde could make out her face. It wore a pinched, thoughtful expression, at odds with her buoyant step. Something about the day’s work had troubled her.

  Nettie Mae caught his eye; Clyde nodded a greeting, working over Joe Buck with a hog’s-hair brush, hoping he looked too busy for conversation. But Nettie Mae diverted from her course and approached the horse’s far shoulder. She lingered there in silence, stroking the yellow hide.

  “Work go well over at the Bemis place?” Clyde asked, hoping he sounded nonchalant.

  Nettie Mae’s only answer was to frown more deeply. She went on petting the horse as if she hadn’t heard Clyde at all.

  Clyde had seldom seen his mother so distracted. The phenomenon would have made him uneasy even if he didn’t feel the sting of urgency, a need to hustle her into the house before Beulah could return to the corral.

  He finished grooming his horse as quickly as he dared, then said, “Guess I better put him back with the rest of the herd now.”

  Clyde avoided glancing toward the river as he led Joe Buck to the gate. All the while, his stomach churned with anxiety. What would he do—what would he say to his mother—if Beulah showed herself among the cottonwoods just then, astride her horse, waving all the guilt she and Clyde bore together like a flag overhead? Come to that, what could he say if his mother noticed that Tiger was missing from the paddock?

  But when he returned to Nettie Mae, Clyde found her still sunk in her distraction, wearing that far-off expression of vague distress.

  “Just about everything is packed up now,” she said. “Everything they mean to take with them to Paintrock.”

  Clyde nodded again.

  “You’ll set off tomorrow morning, won’t you?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  Nettie Mae sighed, pressing two fingers to the bridge of her nose. The skin there went white; she was pressing hard, trying to do away with some lingering tension. “It’s for the best. I must believe that. Yes—the time has come for Cora to move on.”

  Clyde risked one more surreptitious glance toward the cottonwoods. The dark line of the trees remained undisturbed. “Come inside, Mother.” He put his arm around her shoulders, guiding her gently toward the house. “You wore yourself out. Lie down on the sofa and let me fix you a cup of something. Do we have any coffee left? No? Tea, then. Or chicory root if there ain’t no tea.”

  Nettie Mae took a few dragging steps toward the kitchen door, but she stopped again. She turned and stared over her shoulder, looking back at the Bemis home. The moment stretched and lingered. Clyde could feel the heaviness of her spirit.

  He wanted to say, You know this ain’t right. It ain’t what either of you want—not you nor Cora Bemis. And all this because you think you can keep me a boy forever. Let me go, Mother. Let me grow up; let me become the man I was meant to be.

  But he couldn’t make himself speak those words, couldn’t force himself to confront his mother. He guessed he wasn’t much of a man yet, if he couldn’t speak his mind when it mattered most.

  Clyde pushed gently on Nettie Mae’s back, urging her to move. Time was running short. Beulah might appear at any moment, and if Nettie Mae caught wind of how Clyde had defied her, she would be so sore that she might force him to haul out the wagon and load it up that very minute. He almost laughed with reckless tension when she moved again. He hustled her up the steps into the kitchen and shut the door, shivering with relief.

  Nettie Mae drifted into the sitting room. Clyde heard the springs creak within the sofa as she lay down, just as he had suggested. Alone in the kitchen, he set about brewing a cup of hyssop tea. He dropped a healthy pinch of the dried candy-scented leaves into a cup and stood in despondent silence, watching the steam rise much too slowly from the teakettle spout, a thin white curl of insubstantial nothingness. Even the house around him seemed unreal, unimportant, though it had been the center of his world almost as far back as he could remember. The only image that seemed solid and bright to him now was the memory of Beulah in the pear tree, illuminated by patterned sunlight, haloed by a gathering of blossoms that had formed, by c
hance, an arch above her tawny head.

  Nettie Mae had said, on the morning when she’d told Clyde that the Bemises must go north, that she intended to hire a fellow or two, to help him work the land. The company of other young men was enticing, but Clyde missed Beulah already. He tried to imagine going through his routines with Wilbur or one of the other boys from town. Shearing, lambing, culling the flock. Planting peas in the damp bite of spring. But the scenes he tested were as formless as the steam. They fell apart before they could make any sense, and Clyde knew the only way this world would ever be real to him—the only way his land would remain whole and living—was if Beulah worked at his side.

  Clyde carried the hyssop tea to his mother. She sat up to take the cup, but didn’t drink. Instead, she blew on the steam—a long, slow exhalation—and watched it dissipate before her.

  “We’ll see them again.” Nettie Mae sounded as if she was trying to convince herself, not Clyde. “When we go to town. We may visit, may call on the family, and—”

  She cut off abruptly, turning toward the window, her dark brows raised in a curious arch. Hoofbeats pounded outside—a horse running fast. A bolt cold as ice struck Clyde in his chest; before he could move, Nettie Mae lurched to her feet and hurried to the window. Clyde could only scuttle in her wake. They reached the glass in time to see Tiger streak through the orchard, galloping toward the corral. His saddle was empty.

  “Beulah!” Clyde flew to the front door out into the yard before he could think.

  He pelted after the big bay horse, every breath already a fire in his throat. Tiger circled the paddock, throwing up dust. The empty stirrups beat his ribs with the rhythm of his stride, urging him on to greater speed. The reins had been knotted and remained at his withers, thank God, for in such a state, the horse could have stepped on a trail of leather and flipped himself end over end, breaking his own neck.