I took a seat across from them. “I’m glad, too. But I have to say I never heard—”
“Simon never mentioned me? No surprise. He’s off in his own world sometimes.” She shook her head at him affectionately. “You’re settling in, are you? At the farm?”
Before I could answer, a big man appeared, shirtsleeves hitched above his elbows.
“This the new one, is it?” His Irish accent was thick, and he was gesturing at me with a toothpick. “You can call me Mahenny. You like Italian food, do you?”
“I . . . adore Italian food,” I said.
“Lovely, then. I’m an old mick, but my wife’s from Firenze. She’s the cook. I recommend the lasagna.”
He glared, as if daring me to refuse.
“I’ll have that, then,” I said.
“Brilliant. I usually only take orders at the bar, but on this particular occasion, I’ll make an exception. Understand?”
No, I didn’t understand. But I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“I appreciate it,” I said.
“Now, for wine you got two choices: red or white.”
I was sure any pub owner—married to an Italian, no less—knew what to serve with lasagna. Mahenny was playing with me.
“Surprise me,” I said.
The glare softened. “That I will, darlin’. Lasagna all ’round, then?”
“Not for me,” said Meg. “I’m off to rejoin my husband.”
Husband? I smiled with relief.
Meg smiled back with what looked like—understanding? Apology?
“His name’s Will,” she said. “You can meet him later.”
Then Meg and Mahenny were gone, leaving me sitting across from Simon in an awkward silence. Simon broke it first, but not on the topic I’d hoped.
“He seems gruff, but he’s a sweetheart,” he said. “Not that he can’t toss a guy out on his ear if he has to. His wife—she’s the sister of Schiavone, the baker.”
“And Mahenny’s not from these parts, either.”
“County Armagh.”
I nodded. “Meg seems like a sweetheart, too,” I said lightly, trying to strike the right note of disinterest.
“We’ve known each other for years. She’s the kid sister of an old friend. Back then, she was just a tomboy, trailing me like a puppy. Then one day I turned around and the tomboy was all grown up.”
Mahenny swooped past, setting a wineglass in front of me. Then he was off again. I took a sip and smiled—Chianti. I focused on its rich red color, the better to avoid Simon’s eyes.
“A long time ago,” he continued, “Meg and I were sweet on each other, but . . . things didn’t work out. She and Will are very happy. Five kids.”
“Five?” I stared at him in disbelief. “With that figure? That has to be . . . physically impossible.”
He laughed. “You can meet them someday. Meg and Will are heading back to Colorado tomorrow.”
He reached for my poems, and I slapped the pages back on the table.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’d rather you didn’t. I can’t explain it—”
He didn’t seem offended, but amused. “Artistic temperament,” he said. “I can wait.”
Jessie and Olin joined us—Jessie already pink cheeked from the sherry in her hand, Olin nursing a bottle of Rio Grande beer. Lasagna arrived for the four of us; Mahenny was right—his wife was an excellent cook.
Soon, Jean stepped to the podium with her clipboard, tapping the microphone to test the sound, then introduced the first of the poets. One by one, they took the stage, reading from note cards, from paper or from memory.
A tense older executive type in horn-rimmed glasses went first, followed by an academic with white hair and precise diction. I was surprised to see Faro take the stage next. He closed his eyes and clasped his hands behind him, just as he’d done before he produced Laurel’s yellow boots, and let loose with a love poem that had Liz looking cross, then pleased. After him, Jean read three works—compact and clipped works that reminded me of Emily Dickinson. Then a young woman with multiple piercings on her pretty face read fierce free verse about an ill-fated love affair.
Then it was my turn.
Olin was beside me on the bench seat, and stood to let me out. He squeezed my shoulder encouragingly.
As I made my way to the podium, I was suddenly very grateful for the Chianti—I was sure it was giving me the courage to go through with this and not bolt for the exit. It nearly steadied my hand as I adjusted the microphone. I was grateful for the darkness of the room that blurred the faces all around me, and for the many brands of beer Mahenny stocked to loosen up the audience.
I stared down at my papers and cleared my throat.
“This is for a woman I met in the café,” I said. “Lula told me about a cemetery back home in Mississippi—a black cemetery, mostly forgotten now, being farmed over. It’s called ‘Brother Stones.’”
I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I drew a deep breath and began:
Brother stones rise to the plow,
crack the topsoil
in a catch of breath
audible only to the blue boneset
and the Quaker ladies.
A barren harvest of white stones,
then seed is thrown back:
soybean and cotton.
This gravel road between Dunleith
and Long Switch runs past
an empty space
where the Baptist church
once stood, dug up by its roots
twelve years ago to become
another wide load rumbling
across the Mississippi Delta,
a far piece from empty sockets
in the fractured earth where
uprooted metal markers lay,
one by one.
“There was no cemetery there.”
There was a child, seven,
cradled his head and rolled
to the kitchen floor
of the shotgun shack.
There was the child’s brother.
There was a young man, drowned
in the River, his great-grandmother,
dead of the “sugar.”
A hundred others or more
planted in this earth,
a quiet population
under a blowing field of cotton,
a disjunction of bones and teeth
rising like smooth stones
through the earth,
a terminable progress
from this place where they are not,
up toward the cotton in fruit,
toward the topsoil, sunbaked to fissures,
toward the vigorous light,
to break the fresh furrows finally
with a gasp.
I could hear murmuring as I switched papers, smoothing them under the bright podium light, still struggling for control.
“And this is for Keyes, an Englishman who passed through Morro with a raven named Gruffydd. I call this ‘Six Ravens at the Tower of London’”:
They are the darlings of the Yeoman Warders
who named them after regiments
of the Queen, who feed them
eggs and bread and meat,
who clip their wings, jealously pinch back
their bold growth
toward the sky.
They perch regal and wild and wary
on the wrought-iron gate, dwarfed
by the thousand-year stones
of the White Tower.
Here, a captive Welsh prince once leapt,
spread his arms and
did not fly.
If these creatures fly off,
England will fall.
By royal decree, then,
&n
bsp; they will never leave.
For four hundred years these stones
have been their keep.
Their black, bottomless eyes
stare at a silence worn smooth
by a river of centuries,
restless as the London mist,
tameless as Cuchulain’s
horses of the sea.
A thousand voices speak to them
each day in every tongue
but their own.
I gathered my papers. Without daring to look at the audience, I left the podium.
As I stepped from the stage, the applause began. The other readers had had their share of applause, of course, but this applause—this applause was for me.
This was mine.
And it felt . . . wondrous.
At the booth, Jessie and Olin hugged me in turn. Then Simon was standing in front of me, looking unsure. I laughed breathlessly. “I’d better sit before my knees buckle,” I said.
Back in the booth, Simon leaned across the table. “You were marvelous,” he said.
“I was okay. But I appreciate it.”
My head was spinning so fast I still can’t recall the last reader of the night—for all I knew, it could have been Yeats himself.
* * *
The readings didn’t close out the evening. Mahenny removed the podium, and three Irish musicians took the stage. The lead singer had ferocious red hair and a bird’s nest of a beard, and the three didn’t just sing their songs—they attacked them. Tables and chairs were pushed aside to clear a dance floor.
George threw off his jacket and swung Molly around in a bucking polka, and the young poet with the piercings paired off with a cowboy in a starched shirt and handlebar mustache.
Bree stopped by with Reuben. “Jo, you were terrific.” She had to shout to be heard above the reel blasting from the stage.
Reuben leaned close. “The family’s throwing a shindig in a few weeks for my brother’s birthday. You’re all invited.”
“How old’s he now?” asked Simon.
“Turning sixteen,” Reuben answered as Bree pulled him back to the dance floor.
Olin stood and offered his hand to his wife. “Honor me?”
Jessie’s smile as she took it dropped decades off her.
“You know,” I told Simon as I watched them on the floor, “they dance like this more nights than not. Turn on their old radio and off they go. I don’t know where they get the energy. I’m starting to wonder what he packs in that rolling paper of his.”
Then it was Simon who stood and stepped to my side. “May I?”
I stared at his open hand.
“Simon,” I said, “I haven’t danced in years. And I’ve never tried a reel in my life.”
He glanced toward the stage, then back at me. “This song’s about over. If the next is a slow one, will you dance?”
The Irishmen had been playing only jigs and reels. They could read the crowd, and the crowd wanted to move. I felt safe in agreeing.
“Sure,” I said.
Almost as soon as I said it, the reel was over. There was a pause, and the three musicians exchanged a look. Without a word, one of them took up a penny whistle, the second an electric guitar and the third an electric bass. The bass beat a deep, rhythmic thrum while the flute broke into a slow, melancholy tune.
“What are the odds?” I murmured.
Simon was gazing at me steadily now, arm outstretched.
I laid my hand in his and he pulled me gently to my feet.
Even after a decade, I still managed to remember whose arms went where. What I’d completely forgotten was the initial thrill of stepping into a man’s embrace—the feel of skin against skin, of warm breath against my temple.
I moved stiffly at first—for so long, physical contact with a man was something I’d tried very hard to avoid. And I was painfully aware that I was just as skittish as I’d been at my first junior high dance. But if Simon was aware of it, he didn’t show it.
He didn’t pull me tight or let his hand roam, nor could I ever imagine he would. Not like that. He pressed his palm lightly against the small of my back, and the warmth of it seemed to percolate through my clothes, through my skin, down to my core.
The music was almost primal—a minor bass chord, over and over, like the beat of a drum, the flute raveling against it like a keening voice, prickling every hair on my arms.
I closed my eyes and there were images of landscapes I’d never seen before—immense, ragged mountain ridges carved by receding glaciers. Deep valleys exploding with yellow gorse and purple thyme. Lush lowlands sweeping down to the North Sea, waves pounding against the rocky coast, so close you could breathe in the cold salt spray . . .
The scenes were so intense, so vivid, that when I opened my eyes again it was disorienting not to see the surf crashing on the rocks right in front of me . . . to feel the salt water on my face, or taste it on my tongue . . .
And there was Simon, watching me with the slightest smile, and those knowing, careful, hooded eyes.
Climbing a Mountain
It took a while to identify what I was feeling lately. I ran through the usual roster, but nothing fit.
At last, I put my finger on it: I was happy.
It had been so long. Jim had taken so much—lopping away bits and pieces until there was nothing of the essentials left. Till Joanna was gone, boiled down to baser elements.
Now here she was again in the mirror, gazing back at me. Not quite what she had been, not yet. But no longer the lump of potter’s clay on Jim’s wheel, either.
The feeling persisted until I filled up the notebook, then started another. I had so much to say, and every word on every page felt like a victory. A battle won. I reveled in it.
But there was a part of me that didn’t trust it. A part that knew better.
And she wasn’t wrong.
Late one afternoon I stepped out back to call Laurel in for supper. I heard nothing in return but the cluck of hens and sheets snapping on the line.
It was a peculiar, yawning silence, and I could feel the skin on my arms prickling to gooseflesh.
I called again.
Olin appeared in the open barn door, wiping his hands on a red bandanna. He was alone. He latched the door behind him and headed toward the house.
The sun was close to setting, shadows slanting low.
My heart skipped a beat. An alarm was clanging in my brain.
“Where’s Laurel?” I demanded. “Not with you?”
Olin shook his head. “Not for a good while. Said she was headin’ inside to help with supper.”
I swallowed hard. “When was that?”
“Oh, nigh on a couple hours.”
I swiveled and started to round the house at a fast clip, scouting the landscape for signs of her. Not by the creek. Not in the fields. She wouldn’t have gone so far as the foothills, would she?
I turned one corner, then another, till I’d nearly circled the house, calling her name over and over.
Jessie swept through the front door onto the porch. “Somethin’ wrong?” she asked.
I turned and stared, incapable of speech.
Wrong?
There were lots of reasons a curious seven-year-old might slip off and disappear for a while. None of them meant a thing to me in that cold-blooded moment.
By then, Jim had finally shrunk down from monster-sized to something more manageable—a toothless jackal prowling the perimeter. I could go entire days without his name, his face invading my thoughts. Weeks without sitting sentinel on the porch, watching the road.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I ran up the porch steps, pushing past Jessie into the house. I took the stairs by twos up to the second floor and Laurel’s room at the end of the hall. Empty. I ran to min
e. Empty, too. The bathroom, Jessie and Olin’s room, back downstairs to the den, the kitchen, calling Laurel’s name in a ragged voice.
I pulled up in the middle of the living room, my heart thumping so hard it made my chest ache. Jessie was back inside by then, watching me gravely as I began to tick off Laurel’s movements like a trail of bread crumbs that would end with her smiling up at me as I reached the last one.
“She came home from school . . . then with Olin in the fields . . . then heading inside . . .”
Then what? Then Jim intercepted her? Bundled her up, threw her in his Expedition? Drove back to Wheeler? Daring me to come get her?
Is that even possible?
Laurel’s nightmare came back to me: He’s coming . . . He’s coming . . . Daddy . . .
Olin was inside now, too.
“I need your truck keys,” I said, brushing past him to the cabinet where he kept his ammunition. I slid open a drawer and grabbed two boxes of shotgun shells.
“What on earth?” Jessie murmured.
“I’ll need your 12-gauge, too.”
I didn’t wait for permission. The shotgun was still mounted on the far wall of his den, next to the pair of Winchesters and the antique carbine. I took it down, broke open the breech, mastered my trembling hands long enough to slide a cartridge into each barrel, then snapped it to.
Olin was watching from the doorway. “Keep the safety on.”
“Not for long,” I said, pocketing the boxes of shells.
He followed me as I made for the barn and his truck sitting inside. It might be old, but it sure as hell would get me three miles over the break of hills and thirty miles due west.
In the barn, I opened the driver’s door and slid the shotgun behind the seat. Finally I turned to Olin, my hand out for the keys.
But Olin was looking toward the far wall of the barn, at the row of horse stalls. They were empty—the horses were still pastured outside.
“Hold on . . .” he said, moving away.
“Olin, there’s no time to waste,” I said.
“Hold on now,” he repeated, more firmly this time.
Then he was standing by the tack, eyeing bridles, halters, reins, martingales hanging from wall hooks, leather saddles slung side by side over a broad beam.
“Olin,” I barked.
“Her saddle’s gone,” he said. “Looks like she tacked up.”
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