Springwater Seasons

by Linda Lael Miller

  She stood frozen for what seemed a long time, trying to put herself back together. She watched like a detached spectator as Landry passed her, laid his rifle on the ground, and crouched down to inspect the dead boar. She began to weep, but silently, for she couldn’t seem to force out a sound—not a sob, a shriek, or even a hiccough.

  Landry rose to his full height again, rifle in hand once more, shaking his head and looking sadly down at the animal who had just attacked his wife. “That,” he said, “was a perfectly good hog.”

  The words loosed Miranda’s locked knees, and she turned, one hand pressed to her mouth, and fled into the cabin. All the rest of the day, while she preserved what seemed like an endless supply of pig meat, following the instructions in an old cookery book that had, of course, belonged to Caroline, she relived the whole episode, from the first fearsome comprehension that the boar meant to rip her apart where she stood, to the gunshot, to Landry’s words.

  That was a perfectly good hog.

  *

  Landry gazed ruefully down at the dead boar and wondered how the hell the miserable critter had gotten out of the holding pen. He’d planned to keep the animal for a long while, and use him for breeding, but now he wasn’t good for a whole lot more than ham and bacon. God knew, there’d be no head cheese from this one.

  He sighed. He still had yearlings, and a couple of them were boars. There were three young sows, too, which meant he’d have another crop of piglets in the spring. No sense in stewing over what couldn’t be helped; he was still in the hog business, after all.

  He glanced toward the house, where Miranda had fled just moments before. Only then did he allow himself to think of what could have happened to her, what would have happened, if he hadn’t seen her trying to face down that evil-natured pig. His stomach pitched, and he thought for a moment that he’d be sick, right there in the barnyard. However long he lived, he didn’t reckon he’d ever forget looking down the barrel of that rifle, so scared that his heart was jammed into his throat fit to cut off his wind, and pulling the trigger.

  He thought about going into the house and trying to soothe Miranda, maybe even taking her into his arms, the way he would have done with Caroline, but he felt strangely tongue-tied, and he had more than a day’s work yet to do and a lot less time to do it. Besides, he smelled like pig.

  With another sigh, he made for the barn, left the rifle leaning against an outside wall, and went in to hitch up Nicodemus, the strongest of his two plow horses. Then, using about equal portions of muscle and sweat, he and the horse dragged the boar behind one of the sheds, where Landry, cursing every now and again, skinned the hog, and cleaned it.

  He worked through the afternoon and well into the evening; only when he saw lamplight coming from the cabin windows did he realize it was dark. Resigned, exasperated, and hurting in every joint and sinew, he went down to the creek with a bar of soap and the clean clothes Miranda had at some point left for him by the smokehouse door, and gave himself a scrubbing in water cold enough to set his teeth to chattering.

  When he got inside the house, every inch of him covered in goosebumps, hungry as a bear in April, there was no sign of supper, and Miranda was seated at the table, bent over what looked like a reading primer. Little One-or-the-other was in the basket, waving and kicking and making baby sounds for all he was worth.

  Miranda had been so engrossed in the shabby little book that Landry’s entrance must have startled her, for she jumped half out of her skin when he shut the door. Then, almost guiltily, she slammed the volume shut and put it on her lap. Her cheeks were glowing with either embarrassment or indignation, maybe even both, and her eyes had a snap in them.

  Landry felt a muscle bunch in his jaw. He’d be damned if he understood women—he’d saved that milk-and-honey hide of hers, and killed the best pig he’d ever owned in the process, and despite all that, she was in a pet. He lowered the door latch with a thump meant to show that he wasn’t going to put up with any nonsense.

  “I’m hungry,” he said, hanging up his hat. “What’s for supper?”

  Her gaze cut toward the warming oven above the stove. “Pig,” she said.

  He wanted to laugh, all of the sudden, but he couldn’t figure why. He went to the stove, opened the door on the warming oven, and peered in to see a plate heaped with shredded pork, boiled to a thought-provoking shade of gray. Quick as that, his mirth dissipated. He was so irritated that he forgot to use a pot holder when he reached in to retrieve the plate and burned his fingers good.

  He was cursing under his breath as he wadded up a flour-sack dish towel, got the plate out, and dumped everything on it into the scrap bucket. Then he went to the pantry to fetch some hard, dry bread and a hunk of even drier, harder cheese to appease his growling stomach.

  Miranda narrowed her eyes at him, but she didn’t say a single, solitary word. She just sat there, hiding that reading primer, or whatever it was, and glaring at him, like she was glad—glad he’d burned himself and was now reduced to eating victuals better suited to a flock of chickens than a full-grown man who’d just put in sixteen hours of dirty, back-breaking work.

  He slapped the bleak meal he’d scrounged from the pantry onto a blue spatterware plate, carried it to the table, and set it down with a crash before dropping into his chair. He had been unjustly used and he wanted her to know it.

  She didn’t back down an inch.

  The standoff continued until Landry had choked down enough food to ease his stomach pangs; after that, he couldn’t force another bite past his lips. “What’s in the book?” he snapped, because something had to be said or he was going to go crazy, and everything else he could think of was downright inflammatory.

  She blushed; even in the dim light, he could see that. Her jaw jutted out slightly, though just for a moment, then she lowered her eyes and her shoulders went slack. He’d won, after a fashion, but he didn’t feel especially good about it. He didn’t even feel vindicated.

  “You’ve got to promise not to make fun of me if I tell,” she said, after a long time. He nodded his agreement, then she laid the book on the table between them, still avoiding his gaze.

  It was a tattered, falling-apart copy of McGuffy’s Reader, which didn’t surprise him, of course, because he’d thought he recognized it. They were both silent. Miranda chewed on her lower lip, and Landry simply waited. He wished that he hadn’t challenged her, but there was no going back now.

  “I can read,” she protested. “Don’t you go thinking I can’t.”

  He simply watched her. There were a lot of people who struggled with the printed word; it came as no particular surprise that she might be one of them.

  “It’s just that it’s—hard for me.” Her eyes filled with tears of humiliation and of desperate dignity. “I’m bound to get real good at it, though,” she added, with determination.

  He reached across the table, laid a hand over hers. “I’m sorry, Miranda,” he said.

  She sniffled and jerked her hand back. “Don’t you dare feel pity for me, Landry Kildare!” she cried, and the baby, alarmed, began to fuss.

  Perhaps from old habit, Landry got to the basket before she did, picked up the infant, and held him the same way he’d held Jamie and Marcus, when they were little. “I didn’t say I felt sorry for you,” he told Miranda, patting the baby’s small, heaving back with one hand. “All I meant was, I wanted things to be all right between us again. That’s all.”

  She deflated a little, and there was something of softness, something of incredulity in her eyes as she watched him with her son. What was it, he wondered, that made women believe they were the only ones capable of holding a baby? It wasn’t like the little critters weighed anything at all.

  Miranda lifted the corner of her apron and dried her eyes with it. She was just standing there, sniffling and looking mournful, and for once, it seemed she had nothing to say.

  “Miranda, in the name of God, what is it?” Landry asked tightly. The baby fretted; he bounced
him a little. Settled him right down.

  For a moment there, it looked like she was going to come straight out and tell him, but in the end, she just walked over, took the baby from him, and disappeared into her bedroom. She came back only to fetch the basket, by which time Landry was back in the pantry, searching for something else to eat.

  Despite his exhaustion, he read far into the night, unable to settle his mind, and five minutes after he’d turned down the wick on his bedside lamp, Miranda started screaming fit to start up the resurrection of the saints ahead of schedule. By the time Landry pounded through her door, wearing nothing but his long Johns, the baby was howling too.

  Frankly, Landry had expected a band of renegade Indians or a bobcat, at the very least, but all he found was Miranda sitting up in bed, sucking in air in great, panicked gasps, and the baby yelling in sympathy.

  He jiggled the basket, somewhat hurriedly, on his way to Miranda. “There now, little fella,” he said, wishing the kid had a manageable name, “it’ll be all right.” He had barely sat down on the edge of the spare room bed—he hadn’t realized it was so narrow and so hard—when Miranda flung both arms around his neck and clung to him like a swimmer about to go under. He hesitated only a fraction of a moment before enfolding her in a cautious embrace of his own.

  “That pig,” she sputtered into the curve between his neck and shoulder, “that awful pig was after me—”

  “Shhh,” he said, and brushed his lips across her temple. It wasn’t really a kiss, he told himself. “It was just a dream. Nothing’s going to hurt you.” He was struck by the emphasis he’d put on that assurance—the desire to protect Miranda from anything and any-one meaning her harm was almost overwhelming. Even there, in what had always been Caroline’s sanctuary, he found he couldn’t quite remember his first wife’s face. Her image was fading from his mind, like thin ink on an old letter.

  It shamed him, this forgetting of a woman he’d sworn to remember unto death and beyond, and yet he couldn’t seem to put Miranda from him. She was so warm, so soft, so sweet. And she was weeping into his shoulder.

  “Shhh,” he said again, and smoothed her tangle of silky hair with one hand. The baby, at least, was settling down a little, just hiccoughing now and again.

  “B-because of me,” Miranda wailed, “a pig is d-dead!”

  Landry might have smiled, under other circumstances, but this, of course, was not the time. Besides, he was too stricken by the discovery that he couldn’t call Caroline to mind the way he always had before. He held Miranda away so he could look into her face. It was awash in moonlight and tears, and unbelievably beautiful.

  “Hush,” he said, with a sort of tender sternness. “There’ll be other boars.”

  She snuffled, her small shoulders moving in the effort to calm herself. Her eyes sought Landry in the gloom, still opaque with fear and bright as buttons, “I-I was so scared,” she confessed, and he knew she wasn’t talking about the dream, now, but about the actual confrontation with that devil’s whelp of a hog. “I’ve heard so many stories—”

  Landry kissed her forehead; he wasn’t sure why. It was a light kiss, a kiss in passing, but it left him troubled all the same, first because he did it in the place that had been Caroline’s refuge, and second because it only left him wanting more. So much more.

  “You’ve got to let that go,” he counseled, and he wondered if he was talking to himself in some ways as well as to Miranda. “There’s nothing to be gained by going over what happened today, either waking or sleeping. The important thing is, you’re alive.” Dear God, wasn’t she, though? Holding her like that made Landry feel things he didn’t remember feeling before, ever. Not even with Caroline, who was the only other woman he’d ever been intimate with.

  “He’ll come back—he’ll be right there in my head, soon as I close my eyes—”

  “No,” Landry said. “I won’t let that happen.” With that, he lay down beside her on that skinny bed, he in his underwear, she in her nightdress, and kept his arms wrapped around her. “Go to sleep now, Miranda,” he said, though he didn’t figure he’d close his own eyes all night. “We’ll have to be up early to get the chores done before it’s time to leave for the preaching.”

  She allowed him to hold her, even settled comfortably into his arms. It was torture for him, though; he was as engorged as a stallion mounting a mare, but with no honorable way to relieve the agony. He wondered what she’d do if he made love to her, slowly and tenderly, but he made no move to find out. He’d given his word, after all, and he meant to keep it, whatever the cost to his own sanity.

  *

  Miranda awakened just before dawn and saw Landry through her lashes, sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. It was a moment or two before she remembered her nightmare, and how he had come to her, and held her, and lay down beside her just so she’d feel safe. She’d known he wanted her; she’d felt that, what with the two of them lying so close together and all, and she would not have refused him. All the same, he hadn’t made her his real wife, perhaps because this room was a reminder of Caroline.

  She put a hand out, touched his warm, solid back. He was wearing long Johns, and he managed to make even those look good. “It’s all right,” she said, very softly. She didn’t know what made her choose those particular words; maybe it was just that he’d used them to reassure her the night before, after that terrible dream.

  He didn’t answer, not directly, at any rate. From his words, you’d have thought she hadn’t said anything at all. “I’ll get the stove going,” he said. “You stay in bed a little while.”

  She didn’t want to let him go. “Landry,” she said softly.

  The muscles in his back hardened beneath her hand. Maybe he thought she was about to try and seduce him, and had set himself to resist. “In a quarter of an hour or so, you might get up and start break’ fast. I’ll see to the chores and get the buckboard ready for the drive to Springwater.”

  They were going to the preaching, she recalled, with a little swell of joy. She had forgotten that. She bit her lower lip to keep from leaning forward and kissing the curve of his shoulder. “Landry,” she repeated, with a sort of gentle insistence.

  He turned his head, at long last, and looked down into her eyes.

  She cupped his cheek with her hand, felt the rough stubble of a new beard, the strong bones of his face. “Thank you.”

  He looked puzzled.

  “For shooting a perfectly good hog yesterday, to save me. For coming in here when I had a nightmare, and for staying so I could sleep without being afraid. The McCaffreys have been good to me and little Isaiah-or-Ezekiel, and so have the other folks at Springwater, but nobody’s ever, well, looked after me the way you do.”

  “Miranda?” There was a light in his eyes again, and the faintest hint of a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

  “What?”

  “Give that baby one name or the other. Sometime soon, he’s going to start wondering who the heck he is.”

  She smiled, and it was hard not to put her arms around him again, and kiss him on that square chin of his, or that wonderful mouth. “I reckon you’re right,” she said. “I had a mind to get him named proper by now, but more’s happened to me in the last few days than in my whole life put together, it seems like. I haven’t had time to think which I ought to call him.”

  He touched the tip of her nose with a work-callused index finger, and she thought, out of the blue, of that carving he’d made for Caroline’s grave. It turned the moment sober again, the remembrance of that exquisite marker. It was a monument to an even more exquisite love, Miranda knew, and if she wanted to get her heart broken right in two, all she needed to do was forget that.

  Landry had been about to say something, but now he frowned slightly. “What are you thinking?”

  She couldn’t tell him, not then. Nor did she want him to leave her just yet, even though she had more of a sense than ever that she had no right to this man. He still
belonged to Caroline, a loving and faithful husband in death as well as life.

  “I’d like you to help me,” she said. “Think up a proper name for the baby, I mean. What would you call him if he was yours?”

  “He is mine,” Landry said, flooding her heart with light just like that. “I reckon of the two names—both of them are good, right out of the Old Testament and all—I favor Isaiah. I like the sound of it, and Isaiah is the book I like best.”

  Miranda felt a mixture of sadness and joy—it was, for those few moments, as though she and Landry truly had conceived this baby together. As though Landry were her own, and not Caroline’s. “All right, then,” she agreed, “it’s Isaiah, then.”

  He smiled. “Isaiah it is,” he said. Then he stood to leave the room. “I’d better get to those chores of mine.”

  “I’ll have breakfast made when you come in,” she said. It felt good, having someone to say simple, homey things like that to, Caroline or no Caroline.

  “You’ll need to gather the eggs first,” he told her. “I’ll milk the cow.”

  She nodded, and then he was gone. She heard him enter his room, leave it again after a few minutes, heard the stove lids clattering as he built up the fire.

  Miranda fed Isaiah—it sounded big on such a little baby, that lofty name, but she knew her son would grow into it in time—bathed and changed him, and carried him with her in the improvised sling while she fetched the eggs. She was at the stove, fixing bacon, of course, and eggs, when Landry came in, wearing his work clothes and carrying a bucket of fresh milk.

  He set the bucket on the small worktable next to the stove, and Miranda was painfully aware of him, even though she tried not to let it show. Every time he got close to her, it seemed, she started melting inside, like a honeycomb abandoned to the summer sun.