"I'm not makin' demands on you," he said quietly.
"Yes, you are."
"No, I'm not. I've got eyes. I can see what kind of load you're carryin' and it kills me. Watchin' you try to—"
"Don't." She held her trembling hands to her ears. "Please, don't."
He stopped. A sickening sense of dread started in his belly. He shouldn't have pushed her. A couple of kids rounded the corner, yelling. They stopped short, eyes wide.
"You kids beat it," he snapped.
The kids ran off. Katie lowered her hands and shivered, pulling her coat tighter around her. She didn't look at him.
"What'd'you want me to do?" he asked, at last.
She met his gaze, her eyes dry and too big for her thin face. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. I don't want you to do anything. While I was sneaking around with you, someone I shouldn't have been with, doing things I shouldn't have done, I lied to my mom, and fought with her, and…she was dying, Gil." Her voice faded to a whisper. "And now…Dad like he is… How can I ever make up for that?"
"Katie, I wish I'd done things different, too, but we can't go back." He stepped closer. "We can start over, though. I love you. I'd do anything for you, just tell—"
"Stop." She backed away. "Don't tell me how you feel. I can't handle it. I…can't feel for you what you want me to anymore."
"Can't or don't?"
She held her shaking hand to her forehead and looked away.
He raised her chin, making her meet his gaze. "Which?"
She swallowed hard and her gaze slid away from his. "Don't."
"I don't believe you. You're throwin' me away because Lance is what your mom and dad wanted for you."
She met his gaze again, but didn't say anything.
"Do you let him kiss you?"
Her eyes slowly filled with tears.
"Well, how is it?" he asked roughly, driven by his jealous pain. "Pretty good?"
She didn't answer.
He tightened his grip on her chin. "Or is it really good? Like when we do it?"
No reaction. He fought himself not to take her by the shoulders and shake her until she woke up and lost that…dead look in her eyes. Car doors slammed. Motors started. The screaming ranks of children thinned.
"What makes me the only expendable one in this mess?" he asked tightly.
A long, silent minute passed. Her slender throat moved when she swallowed.
"There's me, too," she whispered.
He stared at her with a sudden terrifying suspicion. "Katie…" He urgently gripped her thin shoulders and gave them a shake. "Tell me you haven't made some stupid promise to God that you won't have nothin' else to do with me to make up for—"
"You'll find someone else and Lance is a good guy. He's loved me forever," she said tonelessly. "Everybody's always thought we'd get married someday."
No. Oh, God, no.
The smell of soap on her warm skin reached him. Her hair smelled like lightning. Just like it had that first night when she'd started breaking his heart. She'd never stop. He never should've…
He had to get out of there. He was sick. In two seconds he'd throw up.
Shoving his hands into his jacket pockets, he stepped back on legs like rubber.
"Okay, you've got it through my thick head. I won't bother you anymore." He backed another step. "If you ever decide you want me…I guess you know where to find me."
***
Later, the house slept, dark and silent. Like death. He reached for his clock. Two a.m.
He eased from his bed and dressed. Molly followed him downstairs. His grandfather didn't stir when he pulled on his boots by the living room door. In the chilly night air, Venus shone steadily in the sky over the cedar covered knob. The Big Dipper hung upside down over the mountains to the north.
Out of habit, he made for the corral where Lucky and Shorty lifted their heads. Lucky trotted to the fence with a deep whicker rumbling in his chest. The horse nudged him.
"Didn't bring you anything, Luck," he murmured absently. He rubbed the horse's chin.
Lucky seemed to sense his distress, laying his long head over the shoulder of his denim jacket. Chief and Molly sat close to his boots, silent. He leaned against the top corral pole, rocking back and forth as if in physical pain.
He was in pain. His head hurt. His stomach hurt. His chest hurt. Everything hurt, and he couldn't block the lifeless decision in Katie's eyes from his memory.
If she'd made a promise to God, they were over. She wouldn't break it, and he couldn't ask her to. It was all over. Forever.
He dropped his head to his arms. The dogs whined when a strange sound—a man weeping—filled his ears. For a moment, he didn't know who it was.
Then he figured it out.
It was him.
Chapter Seventeen
April sun had dried the mud inside the breaking pen, a round, six foot high stockade of boards tilting slightly outward. The Roman-nosed black gelding Gil rode sidled across the pen, its long ears swiveling bad-temperedly, back humped beneath the saddle—a powder keg waiting for a match.
"Molly, no," his grandfather shouted from the direction of the house.
Gil jerked his head toward Molly's shrill yapping. An instant later, the five pound match shot through a gap in the bottom of the fence, zipping under the fourteen-hundred-pound powder keg beneath him.
The big horse launched into the air like a rocket, squealing with outrage. Then it dropped, back bowed, legs like fence posts, trying to stomp the black and white streak darting in and out between its hooves.
He thumped down hard on the saddle and the gelding began to buck with sheer, vicious enjoyment, slapping the seat of his jeans onto the saddle with every neck popping, spine jarring thrust of its powerful hindquarters.
Fifteen seconds later, he launched himself into the sandy middle of the pen away from the horse's flying hooves. He landed on his feet, but his bad knee buckled and he fell to his knees, gasping for air.
Molly continued to yap and dart. The black bucked around the pen again, grunting with concentrated glee. Finally, tired of the game, its big head snaked out and teeth bared, it chased Molly through the gap in the fence.
He staggered to his feet. His chaps fell down around his knees, tripping him. With an impatient scowl, he hauled them back onto his hips. The horse stopped on the far side of the pen to give a vigorous shake, beating the saddle stirrups in a dusty tattoo against its rough-haired rib cage. Then, unperturbed, it lowered its head and thrust its nose between two boards, straining to lip at a sprig of new grass outside the pen.
Snatching up his hat, he limped toward the gate where his grandfather stood holding Molly. Her furiously panting mouth grinned wide with satisfaction.
"I'm sorry, Son," his grandfather said. "She squeezed out the door before I knew she was there. You all right?"
"Will be in a minute."
He leaned against the top gate pole, his stomach heaving at the salty, metallic taste of blood from his tongue. Finally, he straightened to meet the old man's worried gaze on him.
"Gramps," he snapped, "I'd pay money for you to quit watchin' me like an old hen."
Hurt flashed across the worry in the old man's gaze.
His jaw tight, he turned away and leaned back on the gate. He eyed the black horse with little interest. The ugly brute's hairy fetlocks ended in big, round hooves like dinner plates. Some Percheron blood there. Belgian maybe. The horse had thrown him three times in the past week with great enjoyment. He was sick of it. Maybe he'd just haul the stupid sucker down to the livestock auction. With any luck, he'd at least get his money back. Why had he bought the mean bugger with his big, fat head in the first place?
Why'd he do anything he did? And who cared, anyway?
"Son, your problem ain't with me," his grandfather's voice, quieter than normal, broke into his thoughts.
He turned sharply. "What problem? I ain't got—"
"You go around with your eyes lookin' like tw
o holes burned in a blanket, your clothes fallin' off your skinny shanks, and mean as a snake, and I ain't supposed to be worried?"
"Gramps, I'm sick of you watchin' me all the time like I've got my ears laid back ready to blow up like that sorry horse." He jerked his chin toward the black gelding.
Another flicker of pain shadowed the old man's gaze.
He looked away, ashamed of himself, but too mad about…everything…to care.
A meadowlark perched on a fencepost. Outlined against the impossibly blue sky of springtime, the bird swelled out its yellow breast to warble—tones of clear, liquid gold. Scarcely aware of the birdsong through his brown misery, he pulled off his hat to rub his hand through his sweaty hair.
"I'm sick of it all," he muttered almost to himself. "Maybe it's time for me to clear out of here." He turned and walked away without waiting for his grandfather's reply.
He worked the rest of the buck out of the horse then opened the gate, spurring the gelding into a hard run. At sunset he returned to find his grandfather's pickup gone. The black, docile now, stood for its rubdown. He fed the rest of his horses then limped inside, his knee stiff.
He flipped on the kitchen light then opened the refrigerator, staring at the selection inside—eggs, bologna, and a jar of dill pickles. He shut the door. Dropping into a chair at the table, he held his head in his hands, too tired and dispirited to do anything else.
He hadn't seriously considered leaving until he'd said it out loud, but he'd thought about it all day. Maybe it was a good idea.
Ever since that night nearly a month before, he had avoided Katie. He hadn't put any more notes in the tree. He'd moved back to the unattached males' pew at church. He kept his gaze away from the pew behind her father where she and the kid now sat beside Lance. When she passed him on her way to the cry room with the kid, he kept his head down…but he always caught the faintest scent of lightning, and he could hardly endure it.
It was over.
Done.
She'd made up her mind. He had to face it.
So, why did her intense, unhappy presence press down on him every minute of the day and night? Why'd it feel like they struggled together, ignoring each other, in a net neither could escape?
What was the point in it? And a lifetime of it?
He had to get out.
Molly squeaked her toy at his feet.
"Molly, you little pain," he muttered, reaching for it. "One of these days I'm gonna get rid of you like she got rid of me. When I do, that's it. I'm done. No more Molly, no more Katie."
He tossed the toy across the room. Molly's claws scrambled for footing on the linoleum as she raced after it. He heaved himself out of his chair to eat a couple pieces of bologna and some Wheaties straight from the box then he showered and ascended to his room.
An unfamiliar picture album with crumbling leather edges lay on his bed. Frowning, he sat down with a shriek of bedsprings then opened the old folder.
The black paper of the first few pages held sepia-toned images of his grandfather and grandmother as children then as a bride and groom with joyful smiles and dancing eyes. The next page held photographs of a dark haired little girl labeled Sissy then one of her with his father as a child. He frowned. Sissy bore a marked resemblance to his father, but Roy had been an only child. He thumbed through a few more pages then froze.
Holding the album to the light, he looked closer. The pictures on the page weren't him and Katie although the couple in each of the black and white photos could easily have passed for the two of them.
The top photograph, labeled Becky Karlsson and Roy's new pickup, 1956, showed Katie's mother standing next to his father in front of a Cameo pickup, his arm circling her shoulders. The fragile looking young woman's hair in its old-fashioned style shone in the sunlight. Her quiet smile, so like Katie's, illuminated her dainty features, but it was his father who made him stare in disbelief at each of the photographs. Whether Roy's dark eyes focused on the girl beside him or met the camera lens, his father's lean-jawed face held a wide grin of simple, complete happiness.
Outside, his grandfather's pickup motor sounded. A minute later, the living room door opened and the old man's footsteps crossed to his chair.
He turned the album page. A single photograph showed his parents standing on courthouse steps on their wedding day. His mother, curvy and vibrantly pretty with her unruly, dark curls barely contained by a round hat with a wisp of veil, gazed adoringly up at his father—a complete opposite to Becky's quiet, self-contained fairness. His mother's black and white image clutching his father's arm almost vibrated with zest for life, but Roy stared at the camera with painfully bewildered eyes and a strained half-grin—a cardboard man.
He turned the page. A spidery hand had labeled faded color photographs, Deirdre and Gil. The hand had dated the last picture 1972—the year his grandmother died—then nothing but blank pages.
Downstairs, a loose board outside his grandfather's bedroom door squeaked. A moment later, the old man's voice rumbled indistinctly in his nightly prayer.
He turned back to the page of his father and Becky then to the one with his parents again. His folks had been married over twenty-five years, but the pain in his father's gaze a few weeks before in Idaho had been real…like the pain in the old picture.
His grandfather finished his long prayer then his mattress groaned when he lay down. The house settled into silence.
He lay slowly back on his bed to stare at the ceiling, the album opened across his bare chest.
Would that be him in twenty-five years? Still hurting the way he was now?
That couldn't happen.
Could it?
He rose and pulled on his jeans. Taking the album, he descended the stairs to his grandfather's door.
"Gramps, you still awake?"
The old man stirred. The bedside lamp clicked on. "Come in, Son."
"Why'd you want me to see this?"
His grandfather sat up and swung his legs, clad in long underwear, out of the bed. "So you'd know why I watch you like an old hen."
"Becky dumped him?"
The old man nodded.
"Why?"
His grandfather shrugged, the lines on his face deepening. "Don't know. He never said a word about it. All I know…he wasn't never the same after that. Me and Gramma couldn't reach him. Nobody could. Next thing we knew, he had your mama with a bun in the oven and her not knowin' anything about…anything." His eyes lost focus, preoccupied with old heartbreak.
"If Dad had done the right thing instead of what he did, would Becky have come back to him?"
His grandfather raised his gaze. "I don't know, Son." He hesitated. "Probably not."
He stared down at the album. "It's nothin' to do with you, Gramps, but I don't think I can stay here anymore with it in my face every day and no hope of anything ever…" He shrugged.
"You don't have to stop hopin', but it's like I've told you. With Katie, or without her, your hope's in the Lord. Give Him time to do what He does best."
"I don't know what that is." He met the old man's gaze with an edge of desperation. "I just feel like I've been dumped in the deep end of the pond and I'm thrashin' around about to drown."
"Jesus has been where you're at, Son. He knows what you need. He knows what Katie needs. His business is makin' beauty from ashes. Mendin' broken hearts. Doin' impossible things."
He stood, slowly turning the album in his hands. "I guess…I just don't know what to do with myself, now."
"I understand, Son. Believe me, I do. Just don't make no big decisions while you're hurtin'."
Outside, Chief barked at a pack of coyotes yipping on the hill east of the house. The skunk under the bathroom floor rustled around…probably uneasy about its nightly foray to the hens' ramshackle fortress, deep within enemy territory and already heavily patrolled.
He laid the album on the foot of his grandfather's bed. "I'll think about it."
"That's all I'm askin'."
; He turned to go, but then stopped. "Who's the little girl in the pictures with Dad?"
A flinch of pain passed over the old man's face. He rasped his hand over his grey whisker stubble. "My little daughter."
He stared at his grandfather in disbelief. "Dad has a sister?"
"Had. She was killed when she was nine."
"Dad's never…" He stared at the old man. "I didn't know."
"A lot of people don't know about her, now," his grandfather said, his voice unnaturally quiet. "It was a long time ago." Leaning his elbows on his knees, he stared down at his hands. "After church one Sunday, had a houseful of folks for dinner. Kids all runnin' around in the yard playin' hide and seek. One of the fellas needed to move his car. Sissy was hidin' behind it." He shrugged, his eyes fixed and bleak. "Your dad and Becky seen it. They was just little shavers. Couldn't do anything. Happened too fast."
He struggled to make sense of the quiet words. "I'm sorry, Gramps," he said, finally, "That's awful."
"Feller that killed her. Chris. Just went to pieces," the old man said as if he hadn't heard. "Me and Missy begged him not to blame hisself. Accident. Could've happened to anybody. He never got over it, though. Started drinkin', killed hisself. Left a wife. Little daughter."
Something in his grandfather's tone made his heart sink. "Becky's dad?"
The old man nodded. "Me and Chris grew up together. When we lost Sissy, I lost a good friend, too. Don't know which was worse. Seein' Sissy like that…or watchin' Chris die before he was dead." His big-knuckled hands rubbed slowly together like sandpaper. "Karl minds me of Chris. Big, blond-headed feller, strong as an ox. Never had much to say. Steady as a rock, but…he couldn't stand it."
He stood silent, unsettled by his grandfather staring down at his hands, lost in carefully guarded heartbreak.
Finally, the old man shook his head. "Those were some hard times. The winter after Sissy died, it didn't snow. Come spring there wasn't no snowmelt, no water in the reservoirs for irrigation. Summer came, hotter'n a pistol. It didn't rain. No pasture for the cows. My hay and crops burned up in the field. We headed into the winter without enough hay then it wouldn't quit snowin'. And so bitter cold. Snow got so deep I couldn't get to my cows to take 'em to sell. Half of 'em died. Looked like for sure we'd lose the ranch." Face drawn and grey, he cleared his throat. "All that time, your dad hadn't never said a word about what happened to Sissy. Me and Gramma were worried about him. We tried to act natural for him, but I thought I'd have a breakdown. Every night I thought God had forgot me. Every day I got up and tried to act fine. Went through the motions. Took care of my duties to the church, preached at everybody to have faith in God, but I'd lost mine. Biggest lie I ever lived. Even preached over Chris after he killed hisself. Hardest thing I ever did in my life…" His grandfather's deep voice trailed into a long silence.
The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) Page 23