by Sacchi Green
“Hey,” the woman said, removing her cap. Slapping it against one thigh resulted in a little puff of dust. Even her voice sounded dusty. “How ya doing?” Her forehead was slightly pale compared to the lower areas of her face.
“Good,” Luce said. Bongo walked over and sniffed at the woman’s pant leg.
“Nice-looking horse you got there.”
“Eleanor Roosevelt’s pretty old,” Luce said.
“Not so young myself.” The woman grinned, and it was like someone had turned the sun up a notch. “Sometimes older can be an improvement. Me, for example. I’m not as stupid as I used to be.” Her eyes showed amusement; her face showed long hours outdoors and a history of laughter. As for age, it was hard to judge; Luce guessed that she might be in her mid-forties.
“There are compensations.” Luce took Eleanor’s halter and began to lead her back to the trailer.
“That there are.”
The woman stood still and quiet while Luce got the horse back into the trailer, checked the hay bag, and gave her a couple of scoops of grain. When Luce was latching the trailer, she saw that the woman was squatting and rubbing Bongo, who leaned contentedly into her.
“Real nice dog,” she said. “Bet he’s good around the cattle.”
“Yeah, Bongo’s not too bad.” Luce found a pack of gum in her front pocket and offered the woman a stick. She took it. Luce unwrapped one, popped it into her mouth, and began to chew. She waited.
“The thing is, I was wondering if you could give me a ride into town,” the woman finally said. Luce looked pointedly at the ATV. “It’s forty miles. My ass’d be dead in twenty on that. My truck’s in Mazurton getting fixed.”
“I’m Luce McCallister, coming from Wyoming. Going to New Mexico.” Luce held out a hand. “Happy to give you a lift.”
“Happy to get one. And hello Luce McCallister, my name’s Eileen Starling. I take care of some cows my brother owns.”
Luce explained her job of training horses and designing and building equine set-ups for yuppie New Westers.
“Sounds real interesting except for the people,” Eileen commented.
“They can be an issue. The horses never are,” Luce said, thinking of Janice, who couldn’t move past her money and sense of entitlement. Thinking of Janice naked and laughing in the loft with a view of the snowy Tetons.
“Bongo puked on the seat on your side, and it’s still a little damp.” Luce opened the passenger door, retrieved an old work jacket from behind the seat, and spread it out.
“That’ll work fine. I’ve had worse in my truck. Newborn calves with the scours,” Eileen said, and slid in, allowing Luce to shut the door for her. Luce saw the quick smile, mostly in the eyes. Amusement?
Once they were moving down the road, Bongo riding bright-eyed between them, Luce took the time to study the woman more closely. She was actually quite striking, beautiful even, with large green eyes that matched the Irishness of her name. This combined with prominent cheekbones and full, lipstick-free lips to give Luce a sudden rush of attraction. She could imagine kissing this woman. So different from Janice.
“What are you thinking about?” someone asked. It was Eileen, regarding her with those eyes. “Me, I was wondering if I could buy you lunch when we get to town. It’ll be that time of day when we get there.”
“Oh.” Luce felt a warmness move over her face. “That would be nice. Actually I didn’t have breakfast, only coffee.” And she had wanted to put some distance between herself and Janice, as if she felt her lover had the power to draw her back if the number of miles between them were not enough. She glanced at her own face in the rearview mirror. Thirty-eight years old, worn gray Stetson pulled tight over a short mop of coarse blonde hair. A plain face, she thought.
“So what were you thinking?” Eileen asked.
“Makeup. I was thinking about makeup,” Luce said. “How a lot of women feel like they have to put on a mask with all of it.” And how some women are perfect without it. How eye shadow could equal desecration.
“I’ve never thought too much about it,” Eileen said. An old Volkswagen Beetle passed them heading north, and she leaned out the window and waved. “Someone I know.”
“I have always resented it,” Luce said. A white-on-blue sign announced that trash on the next two miles of highway was being picked up by the Mazurton Community Methodist Church, a job she imagined didn’t have to be done very often.
“Men are silly, and women encourage them,” Eileen said. “I used to drive my mother crazy. Now she’s given up and accepted that I’ll never be anything but what I am. A permanent tomboy. She should talk. Hell, she’s done the same stuff that I do her whole life, only she had to do it in a dress.”
“I guess I could be called that too. A tomboy. Tom-woman. A boisterous and immodest woman. I looked it up once. A woman that some men, and some women, don’t approve of.” Luce stroked Bongo and was startled to encounter Eileen’s hand. A couple of late season grasshoppers bounced off of the windshield. Janice couldn’t survive without blush and lipstick.
“A woman that doesn’t give a shit,” Eileen said, and laughed in a voice that sounded like singing. The two women rode along in a comfortable silence for a while, petting the dog, Luce enjoying the occasional touch of Eileen’s hand.
“It’s right up ahead, don’t drive on by.”
“What?” Luce said automatically, startled out of her personal quiet place.
“The town.” Eileen lifted a hand to the west where there was a line of trees, two white-painted water towers, grain elevators, and a discernible roofline or two.
Luce came to a near stop to make the turn onto the gravel road that led into town, going down into a shallow gully and underneath an old iron and concrete railroad bridge. Apparently Mazurton had been built along the tracks and the highway had come later. The trailer banged and rattled on the washboard surface.
The town could be taken in with a sweep of one’s vision, three long east-west streets bisected by a dozen or so shorter ones going north-south. The block-and-a-half-long business district was paved with asphalt but appeared to be the only street in town that had been blacktopped. It also had sidewalks. The open prairie was just a few hundred feet from any point within the little town.
“Welcome to the big city,” Eileen said. She waved her arm again, and Luce saw the café. “Breakfast and Lunch,” the lettering painted onto the storefront’s plate glass windows stated. There were three other vehicles, all pickups, parked in front of the café. Luce drove past the restaurant and parked the truck next to the curb. There were no parking spaces marked anywhere on the street.
Eileen got out quickly and came around to the driver’s door. “My truck’s right down the street at the garage. I’m going to walk over there and get it before he heads home for lunch. Go on in and get a table and order me an iced tea.”
“Yes, dear,” Luce said, an acid edge to her voice. She was immediately embarrassed. It had been an automatic response. She had spoken to a stranger as if she were the overbearing Janice.
“Darlin’,” Eileen said.
“What—” Luce could see only green eyes and those lips.
“In Kansas we say darlin’,” Eileen said, her hand on Luce’s bare arm. “Or maybe it’s just me that says that.” And she leaned in and kissed Luce on the mouth. The kiss was more than a peck and less than a sexual act; a soft, full contact that lasted just long enough to communicate something clearly. “Just so you know,” she said, and turned and walked away. It took a moment for Luce to gather herself enough to take her next breath.
Luce went into Breakfast and Lunch and ordered coffee with real cream and honey—and an iced tea. The flavor of the kiss hadn’t diminished. Darlin’.
The waitress was a robust woman in her early sixties. “There’ll be two of you then? You known Eileen for a while?” she inquired, delivering a pebbled plastic glass full of water and crushed ice. “I’ll get her iced tea and the coffee.”
“We
sort of belong to the same organization,” Luce said. She knew that the woman couldn’t have seen the kiss, had just seen them drive by together, so the information implied in her inquiry must be local knowledge.
“That’s real nice,” the woman said. “Eileen needs to have more friends come and visit. I worry about her, being out there by herself all the time. You gonna be here for a few days?” There were a half dozen other people in the restaurant, but they hadn’t interrupted their conversations when Luce had come in. Still, she had a suspicion, an almost knowing, that she was being focused on.
“Came to stay for a while. Maybe a month or two.” Luce lied easily as she saw a big four-wheel-drive Dodge pull up out front with Eileen at the wheel. “I even brought my horse and my dog.”
“Two useful things to have in this country,” the woman agreed, also seeing Eileen and going to get the tea and coffee.
Eileen came in, making the pair of sheep bells hooked to the front door clang briskly. Several of the others, both men and women, greeted her by name as she passed. She sat down, putting her hat on an empty chair just as the beverages arrived.
“Hey, Jewel. Your timing’s always perfect,” she said.
“Morning, Eileen,” Jewel said, order pad in the palm of her hand. “Your friend was just telling me she was planning to stay a while.”
“Could you make us two chicken fries with mashed and the slaw? Extra gravy on the side.” Eileen took a swallow of iced tea and looked at Luce, who nodded. It was exactly what she would have ordered. “Hell, she even brought her horse,” Eileen drawled. “Lady shows up with her horse, you know she’s serious.” Jewel’s face looked a little flushed, and she took the order over to the open kitchen behind a long counter.
“She’s the waitress, the cook, and the owner,” Eileen said. “I sell her the beef she uses. We do the butchering right here in town.”
“You always kiss women traveling through?” Luce said.
“There ain’t that many traveling through. Fewer that stop.”
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t—until you didn’t slap me and drive away.” Eileen grinned, interlaced both hands behind the back of her head, and arched her back in an exaggerated stretch. “’Course naming your horse Eleanor Roosevelt was a pretty good clue.”
“Well, she sort of looks like Eleanor Roosevelt, more when she was a foal,” Luce said.
“Now you’re gonna have to come keep me company back at the ranch,” Eileen said.
“I am?” Luce’s breath was coming a little fast. Those green eyes.
“No choice now that you’ve told Jewel. Everyone in town will know you’ve come to do unspeakable stuff to poor defense-less me. Don’t want to be a liar do you?”
“No—” And it would put even more distance between herself and Janice. She imagined a letter she would write from New Mexico. The day I left Jackson, I met a wonderful woman in a little town in Kansas. I spent the night with her…
The little ranch house was surprising, a mix of passive and active solar design embedded into a gentle fold in the prairie. Limestone walls and south-facing glass, a roof covered with red ceramic half-pipe tile, and solar panels.
“I used to teach in the natural sciences at the university in Lawrence,” Eileen said as she opened a door. “After twenty years I decided to do instead of teach.”
Bongo led the way into the house, which was sun-filled and mostly one large space containing open sleeping loft, living area, and kitchen. The walls were almost entirely covered with bookshelves. Through the south-facing glass she could see Eleanor Roosevelt wandering around in the grassy paddock where they had put her, sharing the space with a dozen black Angus heifers.
“This is really something,” Luce said.
“And you thought I was inviting you to my hantavirus shack.” Eileen laughed, walking through the house and opening French doors onto a patio shaded by vine-covered framework and slats. “Welcome to Kansas, Dorothy.”
“Well, I was thinking something more rustic,” Luce said. “But I guess I can make do.”
“And now that we’re alone…” Eileen turned, unbuttoned her shirt, and took Luce’s hand. The second kiss was better, if less of a surprise, than the first.
The flesh on Eileen’s belly was brown and taut. In the leaf-mottled sunshine, Luce could make out the line of a scar a few inches to the right of her navel, just a faint white mark about the length of the width of her hand. Under the touch of Luce’s fingers a faint ridge could be felt. There was another, similar scar on her left breast. Luce kissed all along it, knowing that she was posing an unspoken question. Eileen stretched her arms to hold onto the sunshade supports above while she stepped out of jeans and panties.
“Long story,” she whispered as Luce knelt.
“We all have one or two,” Luce said, and kissed her stomach and the point of each hip. She massaged Eileen’s firm-feeling butt with the palms of her hands and ran her cheek down a length of smooth, muscular thigh.
“Yes—we do.” Eileen groaned, writhed, and stretched. “I’ll give a short version.”
“I’ll keep you motivated on the succinct part,” Luce said and kissed Eileen’s clit, which was flushed, engorged, and visibly offering itself.
“Here goes—” A gasp through clenched teeth. “I was married once, in Lawrence. Now I’m not.”
Luce slid her tongue inside.
“I didn’t love him, but I thought I did.”
Lips kissed inner thighs; three entering fingers, and then four, bunched. Luce’s breath warmed Eileen’s navel. “I thought that he was a good person. He wasn’t.”
Luce slowly stood while keeping her fingers in place, deep inside and moving. She kissed and nibbled as she moved upward, nudging aside the chambray shirt, pausing to sample the flavors of Eileen’s flesh. Salt and passion. She smelled like earth, the prairie—sage and a breeze from the southwest.
“There was someone else—a student—a girl—a bad idea.” Eileen was shaking by the time Luce reached her breasts, bra lifted above them. They were beautiful, moon-round with nipples framed by wide scarlet-sienna areola. Luce drew the whole of one into her mouth and held it temporary prisoner between her teeth while her tongue caressed the apex.
“He discovered it, and instead of just feeling betrayed, he had to have revenge.” The breast scar again. The slash had been deep and clean. Luce felt her own breasts ache in sympathy. There was a second, smaller scar on the right breast, barely visible, about an inch wide, the width of a narrow plunging blade.
Eileen’s nipples were erect and a fine network of veins was visible, pulsing below the surface of pale sun-protected skin.
“He had a knife and he cut me.”
“Oh, my God,” Luce whispered, and kissed her neck, moving from left to right. She covered Eileen’s mouth with her own while the fingers of her right hand continued their penetration. Her other hand held the base of the long braid like a traveling staff, or a rope that anchored her need. When Eileen came she pushed away, and with the knuckles of one hand between her exposed teeth, she sank to her knees and keened. Luce followed her down, keeping one vibrating hand cupped over her sex through the second wave. After a while Eileen staggered to a chaise lounge and sprawled on her back.
“Oh, my God is right, darlin’,” she gasped. “I think She may have just dropped in for a visit.” Luce sat down next to her on the flagstone and laid her head on Eileen’s stomach. “But his attacking me changed my life for the better.”
“Made you meaner and stronger?” Luce murmured into Eileen’s navel.
“No, it made me realize how dumb and cautious I was. And I decided that for the rest of my life I was going to do exactly what I wanted to do.”
“Which is live alone forty miles from town in the middle of nowhere?”
“Yes, ma’am. Just down the road from where I grew up,” Eileen said, stroking Luce’s hair. “And after a ride, dinner—probably just a salad after that late lunch—and a shower, wha
t I’ll want to do is eat you until you say my name like you mean it. Really fucking loud.”
An hour before sunset on the prairie was a gorgeous time. It was a stage-set riot of sepia tints, blood reds, and flaming siennas and ochres contrasting with blue-purple shadows. Luce rode Eleanor Roosevelt, who uncharacteristically kept attempting to break into a gallop, while Eileen rode a gelding, seeming almost a part of her mount. Luce watched her closely and guessed that she must be controlling the horse through pressure from her pelvis and calves, but it was undetectable; there wasn’t much use of the reins. It was as though horse and woman had become a gestalt, transforming into a single woman-horse entity.
They rode a mile or two out from the house to an old buffalo wallow that was now a bentonite-sealed pond, shaded by a trio of young Fremont cottonwoods and circled by tracks of not just horses and cattle, but many deer and antelope.
They dismounted and sat, listening to frogs and crickets, and Luce told Eileen about Janice. The woman she had thought she loved, did love, but who would not accept love without submission. Without possession. Who was so damaged as to be incapable of believing that anyone cared about her separately from the wealth.
“And I had to learn the difference between generous and controlling,” Luce said. “I was ashamed that it took hard effort to pack my truck and just drive away. I still am.”
“What are you, twelve?” Eileen had taken a joint from her shirt pocket and lit it with a kitchen match ignited by a flick of her thumbnail. “Didn’t you state your own terms? Define the borders?”
“Janice is hard to talk to, but she knew she was making me miserable. I cried all the time,” Luce said defensively. “And I never cry.” Bongo laid his head in her lap and looked concerned.
“So you took it and took it until one day you decided that you weren’t gonna take it any more,” Eileen said, blowing an arrow of smoke and passing the joint.