Rides a Stranger

by Bill Brooks

  I stripped out of my duds and walked in to where she stood and I was surprised that it felt warmer than the air. She said it was from the sun heating it all day.

  “You sure are white,” she said, laughing as she led me into the deepest part of the pool.

  I felt like being led.

  “You’ve done this before.”

  “All the time,” she said. “Only alone.”

  We naturally came together, her head inclined, and I kissed her wet mouth. She urged her body even closer to mine when I did, floated up against me, and everything after that just took its natural course. The weight of her was hardly anything at all, buoyed by the water as I held her, suspended, floating in my arms it seemed. She laughed and kissed my face and lips and neck. I did my best to please her.

  “Like that,” she whispered. “Just like that…”

  Later we used the soap to wash each other and it felt like we were children playing and the moon reflected itself in the pool all around us. Then we rinsed and climbed out onto the still warm rock and dried ourselves with the towels and dressed then walked back to the house.

  Tom was sitting up at the table, his swollen arm resting atop it, a cup of coffee near his good hand.

  “I wondered where you had gone,” he said, then looked at Maize, her hair still wet, and said, “Oh…”

  “How are you feeling?” I said.

  “Like I want you to cut my arm off.”

  “Least you’re not dead,” I said. “I’d think you would be by now if you were going to be.”

  “There’s worse things than death,” he said. “I know that now.”

  “You think you’ll be up to riding tomorrow?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m still feeling dizzy and sick.”

  Then he asked if I could help him lay down again. I did. And the house had gone quiet. And when Maize snuffed the lamp there by her bed, we lay in the darkness of moonlight.

  “I’d like to try that again,” she said. “What we did in the water. Only slower this time.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” I said.

  We could hear the silence of time shifting, and later I could hear her heart beating as steady as a good watch and it brought me peace.

  Chapter Eighteen

  From the diary of Maize Walker…

  July 17, 1881.

  Dirt, desert, wind, sky. Days all the same, except sometimes it rains in the summer months when the heat is at its zenith. Spence and me sometimes sit out in it just for relief as we did today. Spence believed it was as hot as it’s ever been.

  April 3, 1882.

  I watched a spider build its web. A construction so fine it seems unimaginable.

  May 11, 1882.

  Spence gone to town with sheep, am here alone. Sing all day so I can hear the sound of a human voice. In town he will take part of the sheep money and buy himself liquor, a woman. He never talks about it except sometimes in his sleep. Last time he cried out the name “Ismeralda” and I could hear him banging around in his room.

  October 22, 1882.

  Bleeding nine days now, unusual. No doctor near to consult. One at Consideration River—90 miles. No pain, but feeling weak.

  November 1, 1882.

  Have harvested the pumpkins. More than we need. Spence says he’ll take a load to Clancy’s Corners and try and sell them. The biggest took the two of us to lift in the cart. Spence wanted to know what I was feeding them. Sometimes he makes me laugh.

  She likes best writing at first light as Spence goes about his business, as the two dogs follow after him, as the world is still sleeping. On a shelf, the image of a man in a silver frame with a long tangled beard, his eyes staring into the lens like a man about to be executed. Hayes Walker, grandfather, who died grimly (found with several arrows in his body) seems to keep a watchful eye on her. In death, his face was more relaxed than in the photographer’s studio in Santa Fe.

  December 29, 1882.

  Would you believe it snowed? Went out in it, let the flakes fall upon my face, like cold kisses, so lightly they tickled.

  December 31, 1882.

  Last day of the year and have a cold & fever. Up all night sick. Spence agrees to go get doctor in Consideration River if I need him. Decide to wait another day.

  January 7, 1883.

  Saw a badger today near swimming rock drinking. Its eyes fierce. I told Spence & he went in search of it and tonight we’ll have badger stew instead of mutton. I’m not so sure it will taste as good, but a change nonetheless.

  Occasionally a rider or drummer would come by—men on their way to somewhere else—and they would give her knowing looks as if to say: “I know lonely when I see it in a woman and I’m available if you’re in need of a man.”

  Once it was a young rider whom she feared was on the dodge from trouble, his black shirt spanked with dust.

  April 19, 1883.

  A young man who calls himself Tate Harrison arrived at noon today, his horse all lathered. A blue-eyed boy of no small beauty with dark ringlets of hair cascading from under his hat to his shoulders. Hospitality assured he’d be invited to stay for dinner. I was tempted to invite him to my bed as I had done on one or two other occasions—the patient-medicine drummer the summer before, and Henry Stob, that time he came with a load of Hay and Spence was gone hunting. But something warned me about young Mr. Tate—that he was dangerous in the extreme. Not that he would do harm to me anywhere except the possible ruination of my heart. He was quiet and had the sweet soft mouth any girl would be jealous of. Now past midnight and I am still awake thinking about him, my skin crawling with the memory of his eyes looking at me across the table at supper. He rode away right after.

  August 22, 1883.

  Henry Stob asked if I wanted to marry him. Wife dead not three months and already he is looking for a new one. Claims he can’t stand living alone and can’t cook nor clean house very good. Of course I told him no. He seemed so forlorn, wanted me to take him to my bed again. No, again. He wanted to know why not when I had once already. How does a woman explain to a man that what she does she doesn’t always do for love alone? Told him instead I hoped for a younger man who could give me children. He did not seem to understand, swore a vow his seed was still good. Went away dour.

  When the heat became too intense to work for long periods, she would go to the swimming rock and there remove her clothes and slip into the pool of water, letting it slide over her skin like cool silk. She would soak until her bones grew cool and think of a life unlived. She would like to have children before she grew too old. But where to find a proper man? And closed her eyes in wistfulness.

  Some days she did not write in her diary.

  Some nights she did not dream.

  Some hours she did not think of the children she did not have.

  September 30, 1885.

  Two riders rode up to the house today, one of them with a hurt arm—bitten by a snake. Arm and hand swollen something terrible. Spence did what he could by cutting and applying tobacco poultice but feels certain the fellow will not live.

  The other one is quite handsome and about the right age. Am considering asking him to go for a swim with me if opportunity presents itself. He seems likable.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Day broke. The woman slept beside me. Our lust less now that it had been spent, ardor cold as ashes. I rose from the bed without waking her and went in to check on Tom. He lay on his side with his face to the wall. It hit me then that he might be dead. But when I touched him he rolled over.

  “How you feeling?” I said.

  He looked at me standing with a blanket wrapped around me.

  “How you?” he said.

  “Fair to middling.”

  “I guess I’m about the same. Arm feels some better, not as tight.” I couldn’t see much difference when I looked.

  He said, “Help me sit up.” He held his ravished arm tenderly as I helped him.

  “Jesus,” he said. “I’m
so dizzy I can’t see straight.”

  “Just take it easy.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not planning on wrestling you.”

  “You want coffee?”

  He nodded.

  I shuffled over and found the tin of Arbuckle and then went out and pumped a pot of water and shuffled back in again. The morning was cool and bright and I didn’t see any sign of Spence having returned.

  I started a fire in the stove and set the coffee to boiling.

  “You think maybe you should put some clothes on before her husband gets home?” Tom said. He looked pale, like someone had scrubbed all the color out of him.

  “They’re brother and sister,” I said.

  “Well, that’s a positive note,” he said. “Still, do you think he might be a little upset, the two of you having just met?”

  “Point taken,” I said, and shuffled back into her room and began to dress as quietly as I could.

  My back was to the bed when she said, “You leaving, Jim?”

  I was pulling on a boot, trying to balance myself.

  “Just thought I’d get dressed. Get some coffee going and check on Tom.”

  She sat up, her long hair covering the dark buttons of her bare breasts, and I noticed again how well formed she really was—not one of those thin, fine-boned women like Antonia or Fannie, but of sturdier stock, like a woman who was built for hard and practical work all her life. I hadn’t been looking for that in her the night before, her beauty was of its own kind and not of the classical variety.

  “Nothing to hold you,” she said, “if you did want to leave. Certainly not me.” It felt awkward talking to a naked woman and me half dressed.

  “Never thought of you as the sort of woman to try and hold a man if he didn’t want to stay,” I said.

  “Something struck me as odd, Jim.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You never called me by my name—not once.”

  “Maize,” I said.

  “That’s better,” she said with a smile. “It would be nice if you kissed me good morning. Not required, but nice.”

  “I’m sorry, Maize. I guess I’m acting like a damn dote.” I bent and kissed her.

  “Thank you,” she said, and rose from the bed without trying to hide anything and began to dress and I had a hard time taking my eyes off her because she was so natural about herself and it wasn’t every day you saw that in a woman either.

  We went out together and Tom was still sitting there holding his arm and looking miserable.

  “Which way is your privy?” he said.

  “Out back and beyond the hill,” she said.

  “You need help getting to it?” I said.

  “Let me give it a go on my own. I’m not back in an hour, bring a shovel and bury me.”

  He rose unsteady and walked out barefoot.

  “I like him,” she said.

  “I do too.”

  “You brothers?”

  “No. Just friends.”

  “I didn’t think you were kin. You don’t look anything alike. He looks like butter and you look like hard rock.”

  “If that’s meant to be a compliment, thank you,” I said. She smiled at that.

  We ate breakfast of warm biscuits, honey, slabs of fried ham, hash, hot coffee. Jim didn’t eat much but he ate some. Said he was still feeling tenuous—tenuous!—from the poison.

  “I knew a woman once who killed three of her husbands by poisoning them,” he said. “Now I know what they must have felt like.”

  Maize looked amused.

  “You think you’re up to riding today?” I said.

  He shook his head. “I think it would be better if I waited another day.” Then he turned and looked at Maize and said, “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you, miss?”

  She looked at me with an unsettled smile.

  “No, no trouble at all.”

  Tom said he’d like to sit out in the sun, that he felt cold in his blood. We took a chair out and placed it where the sun was best and he sat in it and closed his eyes and lifted his face and said, “That feels a lot better.”

  Maize went inside and I stayed with Tom.

  “I’m sorry I’m dragging you down,” he said. “I know you want to get to Coffin Flats and save that woman.”

  “Another day isn’t going to matter,” I said.

  “You don’t have to wait for me,” he said.

  “I know I don’t.”

  He closed his eyes again. Parts of his arm were black and red like overripe fruit, like a plum split open. He hadn’t died, but he could still lose his arm. I didn’t know what was worse for a man, to die or lose a part of himself. I hoped I’d never have to face that choice.

  I thought I’d give it another day or two and then if he still wasn’t up to going with me I’d go on alone. I didn’t want to abandon him after he’d thrown his lot in with me, but I didn’t want to abandon Antonia either. I couldn’t even imagine what she might be going through at the hands of Johnny Waco, especially after she’d run off from him a second time. I hoped he wouldn’t be son of a bitch enough to break her hands like he had Chalk Bronson’s.

  There were plenty of worse things I imagined a man like him could think to do to punish her.

  I passed the morning currying the horses and splitting large pieces of cottonwood Maize said her brother had sawn and dragged up to the house and left there to cure. Working the ax felt good to my muscles but reminded me too of the broken rib that hadn’t healed all the way and still pinched when I didn’t swing just right.

  The air was pleasant and a man could work up a hell of an appetite in no time at all. Maize worked in her pumpkin patch and I walked out and did some hoeing with her.

  “Did you know that Geronimo raised pumpkins?” she said.

  “Interesting.”

  “The Apaches owned all this at one time, Lipans, Chiracahuas.”

  “Your brother told me all about his old man and Grandpa fighting them for it.”

  “They killed Grandpa over it. Father found his body in a canyon shot so full of arrows he looked like a porcupine. That’s his photograph inside the house.”

  She wiped her face with the hem of her apron.

  “The funny thing is, we got some Indian in us too, Spence and me, and all us Walkers, going way back. Cherokee, I think.”

  “I was wondering,” I said.

  She leaned on her hoe handle.

  “Look at all of it,” she said. “All this land. You’d think there’s enough for everybody to live on, but it doesn’t seem there ever is. Seems like folks are always fighting over it, wanting to fence off their portion and keep others off. Even Spence, when it comes down to it. He doesn’t want Clancy to cross it with his cattle and Clancy doesn’t want us on it with our sheep. And nobody wanted the Indians on it…”

  I glanced to where Tom was sitting, his head down now, no doubt dozing, his arm lying in his lap like a useless thing.

  “I guess it’s just something in folks,” I said. “To fight over what they believe is theirs—whether it’s land or a woman or whatever.”

  “You ever fight over a woman?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Land?”

  “Never owned any.”

  “I thought not. You don’t seem the type to fight over a woman, but let a woman fight over you.”

  I smiled at that.

  “I don’t know of any women who’s ever fought over me, or if they have I sure never knew about it.”

  She laughed and I did too.

  “And you sure don’t look the kind who would own something he’d plant his feet in.”

  “Just never came across anything I thought was worth owning,” I said.

  We worked till noon and took a break for lunch and then she said, “Spence should have been back by now.” There wasn’t any real alarm in her voice, but there was a dark thread running through it.

  “Maybe he got a bigger drunk on than usual,” I said.
r />   “Maybe.”

  We ate dinner outdoors, our plates resting on our laps, the sun angled straight overhead. Afterward Tom said he was tired and would like to lie down and he went inside the house.

  “Want to take a walk with me, Jim?”

  We walked down to the waterhole. In the sunlight the water looked green around the edges, darker in the center where it was deepest. We sat on the warm rock and kissed and leaned back and held each other.

  “I could get used to this,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “My time’s running out, Jim.”

  “For what?”

  “Children.”

  Again I didn’t say anything.

  She sat staring into the water and I didn’t know what to make about her comment but I had an idea where she might be headed.

  “That what you want, children?”

  “It’s been something on my mind. But without a proper man…”

  “I wouldn’t be him, Maize.”

  “Oh, of course you wouldn’t, Jim.”

  “I don’t even know who I am,” I said. “Don’t know how I’d be able to let someone else know me enough to trust me with such responsibility. Kids need someone they can count on. I’ve never worked steady in my life or stayed too long in one place. It isn’t something I plan, just something that has worked out that way.”

  She smiled.

  “It was just a thought that come to me is all,” she said. “I didn’t mean to imply nothing by it. I’m sorry.”