Conor's Way

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  Her cheeks burned at his mockery of her naïveté. "But you didn't do what Vernon wanted you to do? Why?"

  "I've never been good at taking orders. Like I said before, I was an idiot. So, Vernon's boys decided to teach me a lesson. Sure, it was Vernon himself who told me, if I ever crossed his path again, he'd do worse. Much worse."

  She pressed clasped hands to her mouth. "Oh, Lord in heaven."

  He nodded approvingly. "When all else fails, pray. Good idea, that. While you're at it, ask Him if He might consider letting me out of this without getting the rest of my ribs broken, would you?"

  She made a distressed sound and turned away. "You should leave, then," she said in a low voice, staring at the straw around her feet. "I wouldn't want you to get hurt again because of my fight with Vernon."

  "Olivia, be sensible. If you sold your land to Vernon, you could take the money and buy yourself another farm someplace else, one that isn't too big for you to manage on your own. You can't win anyway."

  Slowly, she turned to face him, her shoulders square, her spine straight. "I've been refusing Vernon's offers to buy my land for nigh on four years now. I reckon I can keep on refusing them for a few more. Eventually, he'll get tired of asking and give up." She turned and grabbed the pitchfork. "I appreciate your advice, Mr. Branigan, but as you've so clearly pointed out, you're leaving. My land isn't your affair."

  So, he was Mr. Branigan again. Conor watched her for a few moments, but Olivia went on with her chores as if he wasn't there, and he knew the discussion was over.

  She was right, of course. This wasn't his land. It was none of his business. Leaving now would be the smartest thing he could do.

  Conor strode out of the barn. He paid no attention to the direction of his steps, but took the first path he came across. She was fighting a losing battle, but that was her choice. If she wanted to be so damn stubborn about some piece of land, who was he to interfere?

  He imagined her facing this alone, without him there to protect her. He knew the pressure on her would only increase. He imagined Joshua coming back around to threaten her, or worse, and his anger at the thought of it churned to the surface. It wasn't his business, he told himself again, firmly pushing that anger down deep inside. He was done with lost causes. He was leaving.

  "Mr. Conor!"

  Carrie's voice calling his name intruded on his thoughts. He didn't want to see the girls just now. He paused for an instant, then resumed walking as if he hadn't heard, quickening his pace.

  "Mr. Conor! Wait for us!"

  This time, it was Miranda's voice calling to him. He could hear running footsteps behind him on the hard- packed dirt of the path. "Damn," he muttered, raking a hand through his hair. He came to an abrupt halt and turned around, giving in to the inevitable.

  All three of them were coming toward him down the path, Carrie and Miranda at a flat-out run, Becky follow­ing at a slower pace, trying to act grown-up and dignified.

  Carrie was the first to reach him. "You're back!" she cried, as she hurled herself at him. "I knew you'd come back! I knew it!" She looked up at him, her eyes shining with absolute trust.

  "Did you, now?" he murmured, stunned by the child's unshakable faith in him. If only she knew how little he deserved it.

  Miranda followed her sister's lead, wrapping her arms around him with a cry of delight. "You came back! We were scared you'd left us."

  "I wasn't scared!" Carrie said and grabbed his hand. "I knew you wouldn't leave us."

  Oh, Christ. A sudden wrenching twisted his insides, and he felt like a heartless dog. His hand tightened around Carrie's much smaller one.

  "Where'd you go?" Carrie asked.

  "I went for a walk. I got lost," he lied.

  "Next time, we'll go with you," Miranda said, her arms tightening around his legs. "You won't get lost if we go along. 'Specially Becky. She never gets lost."

  "That's right," another voice added, and he looked up to find Becky standing in front of him. She smiled shyly. "I never get lost."

  He glanced from her to the other two faces that looked up at him. All he'd done was help birth a calf, play a few games of checkers, fix a roof, and tell a few stories—nothing to get excited about. But these girls insisted on looking at him like he was some kind of hero. They had missed him.

  So how are they going to feel, boyo, when you hit the road again? When you don't come back?

  Abandoned, probably. Betrayed. Terribly hurt. He felt that irritating prick of conscience again, and he didn't like it one bit. He'd fancied himself a hero once; he'd had a cause to fight for; he'd felt courageous, noble, and all that rot. But it had all been a sham; his courage had crumbled at the crucial moment, and Conor knew he was no hero at all.

  This was not his home. These girls were not his daughters. Olivia was not his wife. They were not his responsibility. He had his own life, and there was no room in it for them. He wasn't going to feel guilty about leaving them here on their own. He wasn't.

  But he did. He felt guilty as hell.

  Conor said nothing more about Olivia's little war. During breakfast, he barely spoke at all; and right after the meal, he began working on her roof. He spent the entire day up there, coming down only for dinner, then again for sup­per. Right after supper, he went for a walk. Alone.

  He had not returned by the time she put the girls to bed. Olivia searched the first floor of the house, but she did not find him. She walked out onto the back porch and noticed light spilling through the open doorway of the barn.

  What on earth was he doing out there? She walked down to the barn and paused in the doorway, staring at Conor and the sack of oats that he had hung from a rafter with a length of rope. Stripped to the waist, he was standing in front of the sack, punching it with his fists.

  She watched, fascinated. His days of working out­side had darkened his skin, and the scars that criss­crossed his back stood out in stark contrast, vivid white against nut brown. The muscles of his arm bunched tight, then stretched taut with fluid, powerful grace as he hit the sack and sent it swinging away.

  A vision of the night before flashed through her mind, of how he had lashed out at Joshua with light­ning-quick strength, and of how, only moments later, his arms had wrapped around her like a shield, to keep her safe. She thought about that afternoon in her kitchen and the way he had touched her, with hands strong enough to break her in half and tender enough to caress her; and she wondered at the extraordinary dichotomy that made a man.

  He caught the sack as it came back toward him. Wrapping his arms around it, he clung to the sack as if too weary to stand on his own and caught sight of her in the doorway. He straightened with a stiff, abrupt movement. His rasping breaths mingled with the rhyth­mic chirp of crickets that floated through the open door of the barn. "What are you doing out here?"

  "I saw the light, and I didn't know . . . I didn't real­ize it was you."

  He shot her a pointed glance. "I came out here to be alone."

  She saw the fierceness in his expression; she heard the clear dismissal in his blunt words. "I didn't mean to intrude."

  Olivia knew she should leave, but her feet seemed rooted to the spot. She looked at him, one hand toying nervously with the high collar of her dress, and she yearned for him to hold her again.

  He exhaled sharply. "Olivia."

  He took a step toward her, then another, then another, until he was standing a foot away from her. She watched his eyes turn smoky. His lashes lowered. Instinctively, she swayed toward him, willing him to kiss her.

  But he made no move. The sound of the crickets ticked away the seconds as they looked at each other.

  "I'll stay until those peaches are in, because I promised

  I would," he said, breaking the silence between them, his voice suddenly harsh as a whip. "After that, I'm leaving."

  His words sliced through her, laid her open, and left pain in their wake—because they were nothing less than the truth. She reached up and touched the hard, unco
mpromising line of his mouth. "I know."

  He stepped back as if her touch burned him. "Go away, Olivia," he said, and she imagined that there was the tiny hint of a plea in his voice. "Just go away."

  She watched him walk back over to the sack. He slammed his fist into it with enough force to send it banging against the wall. Olivia turned and fled.

  His honest words followed her back to the house. I'm leaving.

  He'd said those words several times before. Why did it hurt to hear them now?

  Olivia stopped halfway across the yard and stared back over her shoulder at the light spilling through the open doorway of the barn. It hurt because she was in love with him.

  She wanted him to stop his wandering and stay with her. She wanted him to be there every morning when she woke and every night when she fell asleep. She wanted to hear him tell stories to the girls. She wanted him to touch her again, kiss her again. She wanted him to find solace here in her Louisiana hills, without won­dering what was over the next one.

  She didn't want him to stay because of her battle with Vernon. She didn't want him to stay because he felt obligated by a promise.

  She wanted him to stay because he loved her. But he did not. Perhaps he felt a bit of affection for her, but no more. That realization was what hurt her the most.

  19

  Conor began avoiding her. During the two weeks that followed, he found any number of excuses to stay as far away from her as possible. He finished with her roof and started making repairs to her porch, spending all his time on the task. When he finished that, he cut down all the underbrush that choked the gardens around the house, then he began making repairs to the outbuildings.

  Their nightly reading lessons stopped. He knew how to read well enough now to manage on his own, but she missed their nightly lessons; she missed the companion­ship of sitting with him at the kitchen table, sipping tea, and talking.

  There wasn't much time left before he would leave, and she wanted nothing more than to spend the few pre­cious days that remained with him. She wanted just to look at him, listen to his voice, be near him, until he was burned into her memory; for, after he left, the memory of him would be all she had. But he didn't want her company. The only time she saw him was at meals, or when she could watch him unobserved as he worked.

  Olivia set the iron on the stove and walked over to the kitchen window. She pressed her nose to the pane of glass and stared out at the lamplight that came from the doorway of the barn. He went out there every night, but she never followed him again. He had made it very clear that he wanted to be left alone. Nonetheless, she found excuses to stay awake, working on those dresses for the harvest dance, doing ironing, or cleaning out cupboards—anything to keep her in the kitchen until he came in. She never went to bed until he did, but he always walked past her with a murmured good-night and went straight to his room without another word.

  Olivia stared down at the shirt she was ironing for him, a shirt that had belonged to Stuart, who bad also gone away. Mama, Stuart, Charles, Daddy. All gone.

  In a different way, Conor was going to leave her, too. She thought of all the days that lay ahead, and they seemed very empty. The thought of his departure filled her with a loneliness that made her chest ache. A tear rolled down her cheek and plopped on the white linen.

  She heard the sound of his step on the back porch and she brushed away her useless tears with a hasty swipe of her hand. She grabbed the iron and she did not look up when he walked in. She kept her back straight and her eyes on her task.

  "Good night, Olivia," he said as he passed.

  "Good night, Conor."

  But tears blurred her eyes again as she watched him walk out of the kitchen. He rejected all that she held dear, he carried wounds she could never heal.

  Make him stay. Please find a way to make him stay.

  It was a futile prayer. There was nothing here that could make him stay. Nothing at all.

  * * *

  When Olivia went to fetch the water the following morning, she found a dead cat beside the well. She stared down at the poor creature, which had obviously been shot and placed there deliberately. Another mes­sage from Vernon, a very clear one. He could have had his boys drop the dead animal in her well, he could have poisoned her water, but he had not. Instead, he had simply let her know how easy it would be to do so, should she continue being so stubborn.

  Olivia's lips tightened to a thin line as she stared down at the stiff, bloody carcass of the dead cat, and she was furious. She thought of Joshua's threat to burn down her orchard and his swaggering attempts at intimidation. She wondered how many other people had given up their land to Vernon because of threats such as these.

  Olivia went to the barn to get a shovel and her long, thick leather gloves. She buried the cat in the woods then went back to the house. She marched up the stairs to the attic and rummaged through the trunks until she found the one that contained all the rifles, pistols, and ammunition of her father and brothers. She chose Stuart's army rifle, thinking that it looked more intimi­dating than any of the others, then she slammed down the lid on the trunk and took the rifle downstairs.

  When Conor awakened and went out to the kitchen, he found Olivia standing on the back porch with the rifle in her hands. She turned at the sound of his foot­steps across the kitchen and looked at him through the open doorway. He saw her resolute face, and he knew something had happened.

  "I found a dead cat beside the well," she said, as if she could hear his unspoken question. "It was shot."

  "Jaysus." Conor knew what that meant, and he could tell that Olivia knew it, too. He glanced at the rifle in her hands. "So, it's to be a war, then, Olivia?"

  "I'm just taking precautions, that's all."

  "Do you know how to use that thing?" he asked.

  She shook her head. "Do you?"

  He stared at the gun, thinking of Sean and his American rifles. "Aye," he said heavily. "I know."

  "Will you teach me how to shoot?"

  "Why don't you just sell them the land? It's not worth a fight, Olivia. It's just not worth it."

  She set her jaw. "If you don't teach me, I'll just have to teach myself."

  He watched as she turned her back to him and hefted the rifle experimentally in her hands, then lifted it as if to take aim. It was plain as a pikestaff she didn't know the first thing about guns. If he didn't teach her how to handle the thing, she'd probably end up hurting herself.

  "Bloody hell," he muttered, and walked out onto the porch. He reached over her shoulder and wrapped his hand over the rifle, pushing down until the barrel pointed toward the plank floor.

  She turned her head to give him an inquiring glance.

  "Are you prepared to shoot somebody, maybe kill him?" he asked. "Do you think you can?"

  "If I have to."

  He studied her serious face for a moment, then he nodded. "All right, then. You'd best learn how it's done."

  He pulled the rifle from her hands and studied it. It was a Henry .44, not great for long-distance shooting, and a bit heavy for a woman to use, but a fine weapon nonetheless. "When's the last time this rifle was used?"

  "Sixty-three. It belonged to my brother Stuart."

  He verified that there was no cartridge in the cham­ber or magazine, then he lifted the gun. He cocked it, took a bead on the right pole of the clothesline, and pulled the trigger.

  The hammer fell with a hesitant click. "Needs a good cleaning first," he told her, lowering the gun. "I'll need some rags, a bucket of boiling hot water, and a ramrod. Have you any oil to lubricate it?"

  "Sweet oil."

  "That'll do. Have you any cartridges?"

  "Yes, a whole box of them."

  "Bring that, too."

  She nodded and went into the house.

  Conor stared down at the gun in his hands. He shouldn't do this. The smartest thing Olivia could do would be to sell her land, take the money and her girls, and start fresh someplace else. But he knew she wo
uldn't do the smartest thing.

  A few more weeks, and he wouldn't be here to res­cue her if men came at her out of the dark. The least he could do was provide her with some means to protect herself. "Damn," he muttered.

  After breakfast, Conor took Olivia out to one of the fields that used to grow cotton but now lay fallow with weeds as their only crop. The girls, who had only been told that she wanted to learn how to shoot, insisted on watching her first lesson. She wasn't sure that was such a good idea, but Conor pointed out it was best if they knew exactly where the girls were while they were hav­ing target practice.

  He had brought along an armful of tin cans, and he set them up in a line on the fence. He instructed the girls to stand about two dozen feet behind them, and he pro­ceeded to give them a lecture on the dangers of guns. "You're not to be thinking this is a toy," he told them sternly. "It's not."

  He reached up one hand to unfasten the top button of his shirt, and he bent down so that Carrie and Miranda could see the round scar at his shoulder. "That came from a bullet, lasses, and your man here almost died because of it. Guns can be very dangerous."

  Olivia watched him, and she thought wistfully that he'd make a fine father—even if he hadn't taken Becky's kissing episode with Jeremiah as seriously as he should have—a thought which reminded her of her own first experience with that particular activity and sent a tingle clear down to her toes.

  "How'd it happen?" Carrie asked, reaching out to touch the scar on Conor's shoulder with her finger.

  "A wee lad who thought a gun was a toy shot me by accident." He straightened and buttoned his shirt. "You're not to touch this rifle at all, for any reason. Is that understood?"

  "Yes, sir," they answered in unison, wide-eyed.

  "Good girls."

  He walked back to Olivia's side and took the box of cartridges out of her hand, then bent down to dump them in a pile on the ground nearby. "This is a forty- four caliber, fifteen-shot, repeating rifle," he told her. Grabbing a handful of the shells, he straightened. "That means it will fire up to sixteen 44-caliber shells, fifteen in the magazine and one in the chamber. You load the shells through the magazine here."