by Sharon
Picking a clover and tasting the honey, she let herself into the barn's side door. Her dad was inside, shoeing one of their road horses, her brothers and sisters busy around him in the shadowy spray of lantern light. Lamps brought everybody close by night. Chester and Levi, straw hats knocked awry, were pulling Whiskers out of his harness; the little folks had got the goat cart out. Norman, just turned five, was trying to teach his rollicking collie, Bess, to play dead. Jacob lay on the feed sacks with two puppies on his belly. Side by side on a straw pile, Freeman, Carolyn, and Mark were dreaming over a seed catalog, their dark hair tipped in golden light.
"Susan! My daughter who's a stranger! It's a good thing monsters chase you back from time to time or I'd only get a glimpse of you on Church Sunday." No matter how often she came, her father always said something like that. If she came every day, he would still tease her, that's what he'd do. She popped a kiss on his cheek.
"I'm here so much the path between our homes is worn to a trough. Anyway, I wouldn't miss today. Rumor has it Mom has made some gingerbread."
"You'd better eat some in a bit, then. Look how thin you've got, living on your own."
"Phoo."
"Thin enough to sleep in a straw." Glancing to the side, Dad observed one of his teenagers, Luke, carrying a shovel of feed. Luke wore his hat at a rakish angle, and her father tipped it straight as his son passed. To Freeman, munching raisins from a sticky palm, he said, "Hey, I told you there were Indians out tonight. Were you watching? Look, out the door! There goes one!"
Freeman looked quickly and Dad slyly stole a raisin. Secret smiles broke out on the faces of the other children.
In a minute or two, Dad halted work again. "There's another one!" He was able to steal another raisin. Jacob began to giggle.
After a bit, "There goes three of them!"
Instinct and.. the grins around him finally alerted Freeman, who pretended to check out the door, then swung back in time to catch his father in the act.
"Oh, Dad…"
Anna, who'd turned sixteen, and baby Katie ran in through the barn's back door with the wind fluttering in their skirts and their cheeks the color of strawberries.
"Susan! I didn't know you were coming tonight." Anna knelt and warmed her fingers in the collie's thick pelt. "I went to the marsh with Katie to show her the cowslips. I never saw so many, I'd guess! Did you happen to watch the sunset? There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the sun sank so low, just like a ball of fire."
"Be sunshine tomorrow, then," Levi said, walking to the tack room with a goat harness slung over his shoulder.
"No. It's going to rain." Jacob caught Katie as she toddled by and scooped her up beside him, his grip strong and steady for a seven-year-old. "Mother said so. Tonight sparks clung to the bottom of her pot"—he grew offended when he saw the superior smiles of his older brothers and sisters—"and the fire roared in her oven." Seeing their smiles grow: "And her feet burned! That's a sure sign!" He gave up with a disgusted sigh at the burst of heretical laughter around him.
Dark eyes gazing like a scholar's from wire-frame glasses, Mark came matter-of-factly to the aid of his hot-tempered twin. "Mother always knows. Friday last the potatoes boiled dry, and Mother said we'd have rain, and that night came a storm."
"We'll settle it." Levi, buoyant and merry at fifteen, swung back into the room. "Come outside once and— Katie, you mustn't knoatch the puppy so. Touch it gently, not so roughly as you do. There, now… Let's go out and look for storm signs. A ring around the moon—"
"Or water beading on a pail," Freeman said, grinning.
"Or a heavy evening dew…" Chester tinged his voice with mystery.
A smile that became somehow painful hovered on Susan's lips as she watched them spill like moonbeams into the night.
Levi paused by the door. "Aren't you coming, Susan?"
"In a bit. Would you leave Katie?"
Alone with her father, holding Katie on her knee, Susan enjoyed the quiet in the barn. It was so still and peaceful that she could hear the splash near the back door of the house when her mother emptied the dishpan.
She nestled back comfortably into the straw, watching her father work. She had always loved to watch him. He . seemed as tireless to her today as he had in the reaches of her childhood, when his deeply silver-threaded beard had been black and fleecy. His broad back was steady, each of his motions firm and economical. He had wonderful hands, big and sturdy, woven with a trellis of mature sinews and veins. She knew the strength in them. As though it were yesterday, she could remember how they had been able to toss her joyously in the air. These hands had been firm under hers, teaching her to drive his team of prize Belgians. These hands had grabbed the loose reins of the runaway hay wagon that carried her and Rachel, clinging until his daughters were safe, though the speed had thrown his body under the wagon and a metal-bound wheel had rolled over his back. These hands had lifted her young husband after his fall from the barn roof, cradling the slender broken body, surrounding him with loving arms.
"Pop?"
"Mm?" He might not sound like it, but she knew he was listening. Whenever one of his children was talking, you could bet he'd be listening good.
"School's out next week, you know? The kids will be helping in the fields, and there's no more teaching for me until fall. And, well, I thought I might take some extra work at Greyling." Her voice didn't tremble. A miracle. This would be the worst part, the half-lies. She had a vision of herself standing at the very edge of a plunging cliff, staring outward at the blackness.
He worked silently for a time before saying, "Why?"
"Got to shake the money tree, Pop."
"If you're hard up this month, Mother and I could—"
"No, please, Dad. Daniel and I still owe you on the vet bill for Muffin's milk fever." She was briefly queasy. It would be intolerable to siphon their money to Rachel without their knowing. "It'll be just temporary."
"You'd have yourself a savings if Daniel hadn't been so keen last spring to buy those registered heifers.. No set of fancy papers ever made a cow a better milker."
Daniel's ambitions were her father's favorite old grumble. She let it pass. After a bit, he said, "Are you figuring to work and farm at the same time?"
"I do it while school's on. And Daniel will have Luke and Anna over to help out."
"So you go off to work for somebody else so's you can afford to hire someone else to come and work for you. That's real good sense."
He was assuming, of course, that she'd found some domestic work for a short time, as Amish girls did on occasion. It wasn't forbidden, but you sure couldn't say it was encouraged any, either. Come ye out from among them and be ye separate…
She put Katie on her hip and went, to him, tugged gently on his beard. "You think I'll get myself in trouble in Greyling?"
"I just don't care to have you over there with the town slick with English. What about them from the movies, the monster men?"
"I don't suppose they'll be around long. They won't bother me any. And if they do, I'll jab them with a pitchfork."
"Oh, you will, will you?" He rubbed a hand through his beard. "See all the gray hairs I got here? This here's a special patch I got just from you."
She laughed. "Go on."
"Look here at the tip of my chin. That's where the first one came, about the time you was five years old. I come out and there you are way up in the catalpa tree with one end of a rope tied around your ankle and the other one around a tree branch, and you call out you're going to jump off to feel what it'd be like to fly like a bird. Three feet of girl, thirty foot of tree, and forty foot of rope."
She combed his beard with her fingers. "You've still got some dark Hairs, though."
"Yep. I guess there's room for a few new gray ones." He worked quietly, then looked into her face. "Are you still having those sad days, Susan?"
"No. I'm pretty good, mostly."
"You're a little restless, maybe?"
"Maybe."
By the end of the week, Wilde had flown in one of the best entertainment lawyers in the country to handle Susan Peachey's contract. Katelyn Fisher, attorney to the stars, entrepreneurial cavalier of the film-industry mega-projects, was eminently overqualified to handle Susan's relatively simple contract. Smooth, carefully charming, dressed to the teeth, Katelyn had given Alan her cool, Boston-bred smile and said, "I've worked out a nice little contract for her, Alan, if that makes you feel any better." She had walked toward the door and stopped. "Look, I know it's hardly politic to say anything—"
"I'd go with that instinct, Kate," he had said.
She had warily continued. "Strictly off the record, then. Friend to friend. She's a very bright girl, Alan, but she has only an eighth-grade education, thanks to her religion and the Supreme Court, which protects the right of these people to stunt their children. She hasn't got any idea of what it means to star in a movie. Do you know that before I explained it, she didn't understand that your film might be shown locally? She thought that because you were from Hollywood, the film would only show there. She didn't realize that it would be copied and distributed. Do you know what she makes teaching? Five bucks."
"An hour?"
"A day, Alan. Be very careful with this human being. She isn't like anyone you and I have ever met."
Chapter 7
"She's yours, Alan."
Kristi from wardrobe gestured in the grand manner toward the open trailer door where Susan stood framed by white corrugated siding. She looked like the engraving from Godey's Lady's Book that had given wardrobe the idea for her turquoise-blue gown. Even with a skirt tiered to the floor, bell sleeves that foamed lace, a ribbon-trimmed bonnet, still the eye was drawn straight to her face. Almost. Wilde corrected himself. There had been a slight detour over the tiny waist, the tender roundness of her breasts. Halt the shooting schedule. The director wants to carry off the star and make love to her until they burn every thought from their minds. Every thought…
She was thinking too much at the moment, that much he could see. Her dark-lashed eyes were magnificently bashful, doubt-ridden. One white-gloved hand made a fist that was pressing unknowingly into the flat part of her stomach as if to heal some suffering. There was something in the combination of her expression, her petrified stance, and the welter of antique detail that brought to mind a maiden missionary dropped into a cannibal's village.
"Hi again, Amish. What's today's word?"
She hesitated, obviously distracted, then said, "Growlery."
"Growlery?"
"It's jocularly meant as a place one goes to growl, some private spot."
"Ah. I can use a word like that. You look"—he considered her—"like a shot of sunlight. How do you feel?"
"Mr. Wilde…" Her tone was urgent. "You didn't tell me I couldn't wear my own clothing."
"Didn't I?" Add it to the growing list of the many things Susan didn't expect, that he hadn't anticipated. Something that obvious… "Gracious, I have been asleep at the wheel, haven't I? But if you think back, you might recall being measured. Do you remember the lady who came with the lawyer the day you signed your contract?"
"Well, yes. But I thought that was only for your— your records."
He wondered with amusement how the Screen Actor's Guild would react to a director who kept private files of his leading ladies' measurements. It spoke to the depths of illogic and obscurity his actions must nave for her. "No. It was for costuming."
He could feel the thrash of interest in the busy set around them, the slightly turned heads. She'd met many of the crew early that morning, before Sandy had dragged her into makeup. He had thought, she'll smile at them, and they'll be captivated. She did, and they were. He wondered how long it would take them to adopt her and begin to give her an earful about him.
"Walk with me," he said. "You can tell me everything that's on your mind."
He was beginning to like Greyling. At first it had been no more to him than another set, a place to fill film, an outdoor sound stage that he saw frame by frame, the delicate shades of bark or brick rethought in Eastman Kodak Color Stock. But it had begun to invade his awareness as a place that was real, as something that had been here before him and that would have a life afterward, and not to be struck, dismantled, returned to a studio back lot. Its permanence, and the thought that it was not something he could make and unmake, pleased him.
He strolled beside Susan down the modern red-brick walk that led through a grassy stretch dotted with mobile units, crew, and the blizzard of technical equipment, forcing himself to think about the day's filming, systematically presolving the many small problems that would rain on him before evening, distracting himself from Susan's closeness until he could do it no longer. Then he gave up and turned to watch her, devouring her with his thoughts.
A crinoline spread her skirt, lightly teasing the fabric against the side of his leg. Sable curls escaped the delicate curve of her hairline, wreathing angst-paled cheeks that had the texture of glazed porcelain. Color was breathtaking against her ivory flesh: black satin brows and lashes, delicious orchid-colored mouth, smears of deep pink emotion underlaying her cheekbones. Each part of her made an impact on his senses like some sweet, heart-tripping melody.
But for her, the day was an assault. The newness of this, the rush of strangers, strange scents, strange voices, strange hands touching her made her feel odd and sensitive. Her body felt fragile, as though it might shatter if it were bumped too hard. And she was aware of Alan's silence, so different from any silence she had ever known.
It seemed to cut and soothe at once, to penetrate inside the overtender shell that he was examining so closely.
She made a soft "ahem," trying to anchor herself to a calm center somewhere inside. Glancing around, she allowed her curiosity to emerge, like a swimmer battling through sun-drenched water to an oxygen-rich surface.
"So many people. What are they all doing?"
He was growing more accustomed to the somewhat massive quality of her questions: Explain the operation of a large movie-production company in fifty words or less. "Nothing you have to worry about. They're preparing things… the set where we're going to film, the equipment that's going to catch your image and your voice. The better to see you with, my dear. The better to hear you." Rounding an electrical truck, stepping around a pile of cable, he recognized from her expression that she was finding him obscure again. "Are you acquainted with Little Red Riding Hood? No. I see. You don't have stories about animals that talk." Gazing into her upturned face, desire stung with fresh insistence within him, and he reached out to tap her cheek with a gentle finger. "Red Riding Hood is carrying a basketful of goodies to her grandmother, but, you see, to get to Grandmother's house, she has to walk through a dark woods—wolf-infested, on top of that. She stops on the way to talk to this wolf. Now the wolf knows where she's off to, so he runs ahead to Grandmother's house, stuffs Grandmother in the closet, and jumps into Grandmother's bed, wearing her spectacles and cap. Red Riding Hood shows up, and she notices there's something amiss, but she can't quite put her finger on it. She says, 'Grandmother, what big eyes you have!' And the wolf answers, 'All the better to see you with, my—' What's the matter?"
"It's foolish. Why would the wolf go to so much trouble? Why not eat her right there in the woods?"
"He never ate people in the woods. This wolf had class. Either he did the thing genteelly or he didn't do it at all."
He watched her stop, her chestnut-brown eyes searching his, the chimera of an intoxicating smile on her mouth.
"Anyway, even in spectacles and a cap, I would immediately know a wolf from my grandmother."
A cluster of trucks surrounded them like sheds, a pretense of seclusion. Smiling down at her lazily, with a pretense
of menace, he backed her against a rental trailer, his palms resting on either side of her shoulders, the turquoise satin rubbing his inner wrists. She was half-laughing but very startled, her breath quickening in a series of bright little gasps that made his pulse race.
"Don't get cocky," he said, freeing one hand, running the back of his fingers lightly, lightly down the line of her throat. "Wolves can be clever."
Her eyes opened wide. Drawing a sharp breath, she gave him an inquiring look and said, "Which makes it all the more absurd that she would have been in a wolf-infested woods to begin with. Who would do such a—?" The word perished in her tightened throat. A bubbly sensation that she couldn't interpret quivered through her. "Is that what I'm doing, Mr. Wilde? Communing with wolves?"
With unhurried grace, he bent toward her, a long, sleepy motion. One of his knees was slightly flexed, his forearms eased upward to cradle her head, and the peculiar sensation inside her took on jewellike clarity. Heat spread in her, catching hurtfully in her stomach, prickling like the glowing quills of a sparkler. No more could she deny the strength of his physical image, of the gentle knowing movements of his hands as his thumbs followed the curve of her hairline, disturbing the scattered curls there. In all ways, he overwhelmed her: the suggestion in his hedonist's smile; the warm, fresh-bathed scent of him that drifted through the crisp fibers of his gray-flecked wool sweater; the water-brightness of his eyes, with their light,- black-ringed irises.
"Yes." He said the word as a breath, bringing his body inch by inch against hers.
If it had been a game for her at first, it ceased to be one abruptly. She pressed herself backward against the trailer, trying to escape the coaxing presence of his thigh against her legs and the unexpected hardness of alien muscle against her stomach and breasts. His body felt so good, so unfamiliar and so lush with voluptuous promise, that she could feel pleasure tears behind her eyelids as they drifted closed. The warmth of tears and desire tickled through her until she was weak, light-headed, throbbing.