Where had he messed up with Katie? She had appeared genuinely happy at his baptism. When he'd taken her home that night, her kiss outside the kitchen door had been sweet. She'd even invited him for supper on the following Friday night.
He'd been almost drunk with his own happiness that day, though. Maybe he just hadn't been able to see—
It was probably that stupid letter. She'd got to thinking about it and decided she couldn't live with his past. Her mother's death couldn't have made her fall out of love with him. It had to be that letter.
He rolled out of his bed. On the hard boards of the floor, he bowed to his King without shame, wrestling his confusion and pain, trying to reconcile it with his new faith. Afterward, he flipped on his lamp and reached for his Bible, scouring its pages for answers. Finally, he fell asleep with it opened on his chest.
***
The New Year passed without a hangover, too. On January third, he sat in his pickup at the end of the lane as Katie's school bus materialized in the grey light just before sunrise. He hungrily scanned the windows for her. The kid with red hair sat in her seat.
He drove after the bus and passed it. From a window at the back, Tim gave him a puzzled frown and waved, but Katie wasn't on that side, either. He turned around and drove to the tree. The notes he'd put in every day were there, untouched. He added a new one and drove home.
That night he sat in his broken down chair with Molly standing on point at his feet, her gaze glued to a squeaky toy in his hand. He squeaked the bear and threw it into the hallway. Molly ran after it.
"Why wasn't Katie on the bus this mornin'?" he asked his grandfather.
The old man turned a page of his stockman's paper. "She says she's not goin' back to school."
"What?" He frowned. "Why not?"
"Said she needs to take care of things at home."
Molly brought back the bear, dropping it at his feet. He ignored it, staring at the old man in disbelief. "You're serious?"
His grandfather nodded.
"She's only got this last semester, Gramps. Can't you talk to her?"
"I did. I told her she should let Rachel help her until she graduates. She won't hear of it."
"Why?"
The old man eyed him over his reading glasses. "The Campbells are big on takin' care of their own, Son. She won't shove her people or their problems off on anybody even if she's just a girl herself."
He picked up Molly's bear then hurled it away, frowning. "Rachel is her people. She probably wants her to finish school."
"She does."
"Well then, why—"
"Katie's a little stubborn."
"You think?" he asked with heavy sarcasm. "It's her dad's kid caused all this. Why don't he—"
"Don't be too hard on him, Son. He's aware it's his kid caused it. I'll be surprised if he comes through this with his mind." His grandfather sighed. "Dave could take care of the baby while Katie's at school, but I think she's afraid to leave her dad."
His frown deepened. Katie had a valid worry. Her dad had aged into an old man overnight. Silent pain deepened the lines of his weathered face, dulling his sharp gaze. The energy that had once powered his wiry frame had disappeared and he dragged around with no apparent interest in the daily operations of his family or the ranch.
Molly squeaked her toy encouragingly. He tossed it away. She brought it back.
He cleared his throat. "Katie said her mom bled when she had kids. Is that what happened?"
His grandfather lowered his paper. "Not this time. The coroner said her heart just gave out." He removed his glasses, rubbing his eyes. "She had rheumatic fever when she was a kid, was always a little frail." His gaze took on a far-off look. "Your gramma was a midwife with Esther for years. They told Becky after Karl was born she shouldn't have any more babies."
"Why'd she keep doin' it, then?"
His grandfather shrugged. "She was an only child. Hated it. Wanted a big family." He lifted his paper. "Why don't you get out of here? I'm tired of you sittin' around here actin' like an old man and playin' with that little dog. Go see Will or somebody." He looked up, hesitating. "Just don't… You won't go to town, will you?"
He stared at the old man, scowling. "You mean to the bar?"
His grandfather nodded.
"I ain't Dad, Gramps."
The old man dropped his gaze. "I'm sorry, Son. I worry—"
"Well, don't. That ain't gonna happen."
He dressed Molly in her sweater—Sara might like to play with her—and became a regular visitor at Will's. He found an unexpected ally and confidant in Katie's Aunt Rachel, too. One day after Sunday dinner, he sat with her at the kitchen table while Dan snored in his living room chair.
"I don't understand any of this," he said. "Dave gettin' hurt. Katie's mom. The kid."
Rachel created a pattern of circles on the tablecloth with the condensation on the bottom of her glass. "I don't, either."
He regarded her in surprise. "You don't?"
"No. Same way I don't understand God allowin' the Holocaust. Or babies left in dumpsters when there's women like me that want babies and can't have them. Or an innocent Christ crucified on a cross for mean people that live for a hundred years while good people die young."
"I thought it didn't make any sense because I don't know much about God yet."
Rachel shrugged. "There's just things we're not meant to understand this side of the grave, Gil. That's where our faith comes in."
In the other room, Dan drew a long shuddering breath then released it with a gurgling wheeze. Rachel's wire haired mutt sleeping on his lap jerked up its head with a startled expression.
He turned back to Rachel. "I won't have to get to the other side of the grave to understand this thing with Katie, will I?"
"She's so young," Rachel said gently. "She's got more on her plate right now than most grown women could handle. If she had only that old house to run she'd have a big job. That kitchen stove was in there when my grandma lived there." The sad lines around her eyes deepened. "Jon always wanted to remodel the house for Becky, but there wasn't ever enough money. He hates that." She stared down at her glass then sighed. "Katie's stubborn as a mule, too. She'll hardly let me help her at all, and there's nothin' I'd love more than gettin' my hands on that baby."
"Katie stubborn?" He chuckled mirthlessly. "C'mon."
Rachel smiled, patting his hand. "You'll have to be patient. Everybody grieves different. It can take a long time."
"Maybe it's not just grief. Maybe it's all the stuff I said in that letter." He searched Rachel's clear, hazel eyes. "Has she said?"
"No. She don't say anything about what's goin' on in her head. I wish she would."
"Maybe she talks to Lance. He's over there all the time."
"He's been her friend all her life, Gil."
He held her gaze defiantly. "She don't love him."
Rachel said nothing, but the doubt on her face spoke for her.
"She don't," he said, insisting.
Her gaze slid away. "You'll just have to wait and see."
"You think she's done with me forever?"
Rachel regarded him gently then she smiled. "Well, she'd be pretty silly if she was done with you forever." She patted his cheek, rising to clear the table. "And Katie's not silly, whatever else she might be."
That night while he tossed restlessly, he thought of Darlene's father. For some reason, the memory of the little man crying at her grave troubled him more often those days. He rose and descended the stairs to the phone, but Darlene's father made a weepy drunk. After a few minutes, he cut the conversation short.
The words he had wanted to say, words of apology from the new man inside him, stuck in his throat. He returned to bed even more depressed.
A few evenings later, his grandfather received an emergency call to Sister Helen's. He attended the call with the old man to help in place of Irvin who had gone out of town. Helen lived in an overheated, smelly house with her mother, a wooden fa
ced woman with a wild mop of white hair and wary eyes. Cats carpeted every surface in the room. Helen had tripped over one of them.
Reluctantly, he held Helen's pudgy foot with its long toe hairs—she didn't shave her legs, either—while his grandfather bandaged her ankle. Afterward, her round face glowed while she scraped a cat or two from the piano bench and played an enthusiastic piece on the piano. Then she hopped up to bustle into the kitchen without a trace of limp. His grandfather, familiar with the routine, followed her.
He dragged into the kitchen behind them rather than staying in the room alone with the wild looking old woman in front of a tv blaring a wrestling event. Helen slopped milk into two glasses then sawed away at brownies in a pan with a butter knife. Two cats on the table licked up the spilled milk.
Beaming expectantly, she placed a brownie in front of him. A tuft of grey cat hair stuck to it. The blood drained from his face as he eyed it. He glanced at his grandfather in alarm. The old man winked at him then bit into his own brownie without looking at it.
Helen was smiling joyfully, like a child with a mustache. An unfamiliar surge of kindness filled the new man inside him and…he couldn't hurt her. He picked off the hair, ate the brownie, and drank the milk.
A few minutes later at the living room door, Helen seized him around the waist, hugging him, her slightly tilted eyes glowing with adoration.
"I love you, Brudder Gil," she said in her husky, overloud voice.
He stared in wide-eyed dismay at the wiry, greying hair against his chest.
"Helen," called a gruff voice from the afghan covered chair in front of the television, "leave that boy alone."
"He's not my cousin, Mudder," Helen said defiantly.
"Yes, he is. Just like all the other boys," her mother said. "Leave him alone."
Helen's stout arms tightened. She burst into noisy tears.
For no apparent reason, his panic drained away and he awkwardly patted Helen's rounded shoulder. "It's okay, ma'am, she's not—" He stopped short. "botherin' me," he said, finishing his startling, but true, statement.
***
The new man inside him might be kinder, but he wasn't blind. Katie's infant brother, Chris, had to be the ugliest little kid he'd ever seen.
In church, he had a clear view of the baby from his and Katie's old seat on the girls' pew. She sat next to her father, now, the kid's tiny, wizened face grimacing over her shoulder like one of those monkeys with the rubbery red faces. The baby's head bobbed around like a little drunk, and he screamed like a fire siren. Even his grandfather's booming voice from the pulpit proved no match for the kid's leather lungs. Katie usually tried to stuff one of those plugs in his mouth, but she always ended up hustling the baby to the room at the back of the church where all the mothers hauled their little kids.
He got a good look at her every time she passed. She had lost weight and unfamiliar hollows under her cheekbones accented the strained inexperience and near desperation of her expression. Her appearance hurt him, but not as much as the longing for even a glance from her that never came.
Annie, carrying her small son on her hip, sometimes headed for the back room after Katie. A curious role reversal had taken place between Annie and Karl—the young woman's dark eyes sought Karl on the back pew, now, but he never raised his head to look at her.
Odd, the Campbell siblings’ tendency toward blowing hot and cold.
After church one Wednesday night, he stood in the foyer with the unattached males, his gaze on Katie as she gathered the kid's things from their pew.
"I ran a set of Firestone tires for fifty-thousand miles one time," he replied absently to one of the males. "That ain't bad for the way I drive."
Just then, Sister Helen seized him in an exuberant embrace, squeezing off his air and pinning his arms, cast and all, to his sides. Since his visit to her house, she spent most church services craned around in her seat at the front, beaming at him instead of his grandfather. She always made her way to him after church like a homing pigeon, her mustache bristling flirtatiously.
"I love you, Brudder Gil," she yelled hopefully. "I will marry you."
A general snicker rippled through the males.
He pulled his arm loose to hug her thick shoulder. "I love you, too, Sister Helen." Glancing up, he met a surprised flash from Katie's eyes.
She flushed. Looking away, she moved quickly, squeezing through the crowd toward him.
"I can't marry you, though—" he raised his voice as she passed—"because I'm engaged to somebody else."
She paused for the flicker of an instant then vanished between Sister Maggie's well-padded backside and Sister Susan who had shoulders like a linebacker.
That night in bed, he stared at the ceiling, new hope kindled by the flash from Katie's eyes. The next morning he helped Karl feed the cattle then stepped into the warmth of the Campbell ranch house.
Katie stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes, her hair hanging in a disheveled braid down the back of her plaid robe even though the clock showed eleven o'clock.
"Karl," she said without turning, "Chris needs some more formula."
"It's me, Katie."
She whirled to face him. Her eyes filled with panic. "I thought you were Karl," she whispered, darting a look toward the hallway. She edged along the counter.
"Katie, wait." He stepped toward her. "Don't go. Please. I just wanna talk to you for a second."
She bolted for the hall and disappeared.
The blood drained from his heart, leaving him cold and sick with disappointment. And mad. What had he done to deserve that?
He fumbled for the kitchen door, and then in his truck, he gunned the motor, spinning gravel from the tires. At the crossroads he stopped at the cedar tree and raked the useless scraps of paper out of the hollow, hurling them into the cold wind. Then with a yell, he drove his fist against the stringy bark of the tree.
The cedar hadn't yielded to the elements of a hundred years, and it didn't yield to his fist, either. Pain jolted all the way to his shoulder. He slumped against the tree, his bleeding fist over his head.
What was she doing to him? Why? He'd never done anything to her except love her. He couldn't go on like he'd been. Every day. Every night. For…for how long?
Not forever. Oh, God, not forever.
It took a while to gather all the damp, muddy notes and shove them into the hollow again. At home, his grandfather had already sat at the kitchen table to eat. He crossed to the sink without speaking.
"You all right, Son?" the old man asked.
"Yep." He ran cold water over his throbbing knuckles then dried his hand on his jeans.
His grandfather leaned back in his chair, studying him. "What happened?"
"Nothin'."
"Where you been?"
"Nowhere."
"Uh-huh. What'd you do to your hand?"
"I want this cast off today," he said, ignoring the question. "Jim said I can haul some calves to La Junta tomorrow."
"If I cut that cast off before time you'll be sorry."
"I'll be careful with it."
"No, you won't."
He yanked out his chair and sat down, jerking the pan of chili toward him.
The old man eyed him. "You see Katie this mornin'?"
He stuffed a bite of canned chili into his mouth and didn't answer.
"Son, you're gonna have to be patient about this deal."
"Well, Gramps, the funny thing about this deal—" he bit out the words sarcastically—"is the only reaction I've got out of her since her mom died came from me huggin' a retarded lady old enough to be my mother. Today she won't even—" He jammed another bite of chili in his mouth.
His grandfather frowned. "She say somethin' about it?"
"What'd'you think?" With a scornful snort, he reached for the sleeve of saltines and ground a handful over his chili. "Last night, Sister Helen came up and hugged me, wantin' me to marry her like she always does. Katie heard. She actually looked at me, so I ha
d this stupid idea she might talk to me today."
The old man leaned back in his chair and reached in his shirt pocket for a toothpick.
"Gramps, I've gotta take these calves." Molly scratched at his jeans, whining. He flipped a piece of cracker to her. "I need the money, and I need more to do."
"Yeah, 'bout like you need a hole in your head," his grandfather muttered. "If I cut that cast off, the first thing you'll do is get out there on a buckin' horse and break your arm again. Just hold onto your drawers. It's only five or six days more."
He waited until the old man left the house then he cut off the cast himself with a pair of tin snips. The next morning, he drove a pot load of calves to a feed yard near La Junta. He had underestimated the strength in the atrophied muscles of his arm and the trip took twice as long as it should have, but he made it.
The next day he got on a bucking horse. Unable to maintain his grip, he launched off the gelding. Twisting at the last moment to protect his weak arm, he crashed to the frozen ground on his right side.
That night, he lay on his bed staring at the ceiling again. His body ached from the fall he'd taken and his thoughts still circled the same worn path.
How could he keep groping around in the dark like he had been? He and Katie weren't over. They'd never be over. He just needed to talk to her, get her to tell him what he'd done wrong.
He rose and padded across the cold room to flip the pages on the Ranchers' Co-op calendar on his wall.
Rachel had said Katie needed time. Okay. A month? Two months? That should be plenty. She might come to him on her own before then. If she didn't, somehow he'd make her tell him what he'd done.
He made a mark through a date at the end of March. By then, she'd be more herself. They'd get it worked out.
Relieved to have a plan, he returned to bed and slept.
***
On a Sunday afternoon in February, rain turned to sleet, pelting down in icy sheets. Jon Campbell's Massey Ferguson tractor hitched to a half-loaded hay trailer, hunkered like a sulking child in knee-deep ruts of mud. Gil and Karl worked to free it, but the tractor stubbornly resisted their efforts. Finally, the two of them started unloading the hay bales from the trailer onto his pickup.
The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) Page 20