“I know what the words mean, but surely you’re not saying that Steven’s—”
Lefty heaved to his feet, facing her with eyes flashing. “And I reckon you’d know, seeing as how you trailing him around like some camp-following whore.”
It sounded like something straight out of a B movie, and she stared at him in disbelief, unable to find a proper response. If she hadn’t been a little afraid of him, the situation would have been funny. From a distance she heard the roar of a bike and guessed Steven had found his Harley and got it running.
Lefty ignored it. “He’s too damned fragile for your kind. You’ll eat him alive, spit him out, and walk away.”
“Fragile? My kind?” Astounded, she faced him, once again stricken speechless.
Lefty’s dark eyes grew bright and hard, ominously threatening. He raised a fist. “Leave him be, or I tell you, you be one sorry whore.”
Unable to find an adequate reply, she could only stand there and stare in wonder at the hate on his face. Having dragged herself from a life of turning the other cheek, she was amazed at the urge that came over her to smack him one.
****
Steven found the Harley crammed so tightly in a stand of young persimmon sprouts that he could barely pry it loose. There seemed to be no damage to the tires or body, she just needed a little cleaning was all. Patiently he dried the wiring and firing system and checked the carburetor and engine. At last satisfied, he climbed aboard, fiddled with the choke, and kicked the starter. She refused to hit. Several more kicks left him panting, but he kept at it, grunting with the effort, until she finally roared to life. He cut a couple of doughnuts in the meadow to make sure everything was working right, then twisted the throttle and took off. Cutting new trails along the floor of the isolated valley, he rode with wild abandon, leaving behind the woman with tangled hair and smoky green eyes. He could not bear to think of what it meant to acknowledge his attraction to her. His path to destruction had been set, his goal in sight, when she showed up, part angel, part devil, tempting him.
Sunlight burned his bare back. Wind tore at his cheeks and fingered through his hair. Not having that long heavy braid down the center of his back still felt strange. When he thought back on it, that was when she had begun to change him. The day she took the shears to his hair. Like fucking Samson and Delilah. He still didn’t know whether to fear those changes or welcome them, and he couldn’t stop thinking terrible thoughts of killing and dying and betrayal, but worst of all, the agony of opening his heart and soul to loving. But she hadn’t asked him to do that, had she? In fact, had begged him not to. This idea of something going on between them was all in his mind and body, when you got right down to it. The knowing didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
So clouded was his vision he almost overrode a natural ramp at the edge of the meadow, swerved to a halt spewing bits of mud and clods of grass. After long and intent study, he inched the bike up the steep incline to a flattened crest. Eyed the drop to the far bank. Just the right angle, with enough room to approach the edge with some speed and take off into space. His heart stirred, his belly rolled. It was perfect, and could well be the best jump he would ever make. Just between him and the universe, out here in this bright Ozark morning with no witnesses to attest to his bravery, his daring, his death. This time, he could break his neck. So many rocks, a rough landing patch, the gap wide and dangerous. Only a bunch of chattering ground squirrels and a circling of buzzards in the white hot sky to watch him die, and they wouldn’t tell. Rolling to the rim of the high bank, he calculated the odds of leaping across the deep crevasse and landing wheels down on the other side. Missing rocks and stubs and not breaking his fool neck. Or breaking it.
He settled back for a moment, took in the green mountains bathed in sunlight, the meadow filled with a rainbow of wild flowers, the rising warmth in the air. It was a beautiful place to die.
A familiar, hair-raising adrenaline rush swarmed his vitals, egged him on. Go for it. Do it. Heels set, he rocked the heavy bike gently backward, forward, backward again, revved the engine, squinted against the sun and calculated the odds. Perspiration trickled through the hairs on his chest and down the small of his back. Still he rocked there. Waiting. Watching. Hauling in gulps of air. Feeling far down inside himself for courage that had always been there.
And not finding it. Fear, or something else, crawled like a worm from his gut, wrapped itself around his heart. In his ears, he could hear the thump-thump-thump over the sound of the engine.
Between his legs, the hog growled, stirred. Ready to go. Stamping both feet down hard he squeezed the throttle, but couldn’t twist it. No use, he couldn’t do it. Not even with all the demons nipping at his heels. He just couldn’t do it. What in the hell was happening to him? She had him. Had him by the balls, goddamn it. And here he was, couldn’t even make a frigging little jump. Why? He thought about an answer. Because, because he didn’t want to die before he found out what it might be like to do what? Love her? Be loved by her? Seek and find forgiveness? And this was also a beautiful place to choose life over death.
Astonished at the revelations, he leaned backward in the saddle, dug both heels into the dirt, and stared up at the rain-washed sky so blue it made his eyes water.
With the wind in his face, the smell of heated grass and sweet flowers in his nostrils, he felt good. By God, he felt better than good. Magnificent. Spiritual, even. To breathe the clean, hot air, to see the jade green peaks, to feel the solid earth underfoot, to taste the salt of his own sweat and hear his heart beating and the song of birds. And know. Know, by God, that he was alive and it was good. And he had some things to do. It was way past time he did them. Cleaned up the mess he’d left trailing out behind himself. Made room in his soul for love to grow.
Without hesitation, he denied himself the right to go sailing off once again into the gaping jaws of infinity. Now that he had something to lose, he was no longer willing to tempt the fates. The Old Man had one hell of a sense of humor, that is, if he was up there watching.
Just in case He was, Steven threw Him a thumbs-up. But he still had his doubts, he sure as hell did. He found it easier to believe in himself than in some invisible, all-powerful deity.
“Well, how about that? How the fuckin’ hell about that?” He rolled the bike away from the precipice and headed back to camp, playing childish dodge-’em games with tufts of shrubbery and rocks. Laughing. Yes, by the grace of whoever. Laughing.
And rode right into the middle of a battle between Liz and Lefty. They were going at it. Not physically, yet, but they were on the verge. The air between them hung thick and blue with what must have gone before he showed up. The expressions on their faces was enough to tell the tale.
She had chopped off the legs of the jeans he’d washed for her, and wore them, showing off her nice long legs. He didn’t mind that at all, but he did mind Lefty coming up on his toes and yelling at her, one fist clenched like he might hit her. Damned cocky little banty rooster.
In one fluid motion, he kicked down the stand, piled off the bike, and waded into the fray. Pinned Lefty’s arms in a harsh grip. Tight little muscles bunched and trembled in his grasp.
“Lefty, cool down now. I thought we settled this.”
Lowering her own fist—for hadn’t she been about to pop that nasty little man?—Liz felt as if she were trapped in the midst of an adolescent gang fight. Furious and ashamed of her part in the ridiculous duel, she turned and ran. The encounter left her depleted, much like she always felt following one of Reudell’s unreasonable verbal attacks. Threatened, angry, debased and helpless, she ran until she reached the bank where she and Steven had been fishing the day before.
Lying in the grass was a foot-long bass, its mouth fastened around a hook, colors faded in death. The line ran back toward the depression where they had taken refuge from yesterday’s storm, where they had later made love. She must have carried the rod with her as they ran, pulling the bass along. Caught up in their ero
tic encounter in the attack of the ferocious storm, she’d forgotten about it.
She picked up the line, studied the fish a moment, then tossed it away. Sitting cross-legged on the bank, the wet ground making damp patches on her denim cutoffs, she took a deep breath of a sweet aroma wafting in the warming air. The sun’s rays splashed through the trees onto her back when she leaned forward. Yellow honeysuckle vined its way through exposed roots that curled from the rocky embankment below. A ruby-throated hummingbird worked at the blossoms, wings buzzing, blurring in the bright sunlight. The knot of anger in her throat slowly melted, and she lay on her stomach to watch the tiny bird at its meal.
Someone spoke, and she must have been sleeping, though when she opened her eyes and saw Shadow she forgot the dream. Momentarily confused, she answered his smile with one of her own.
“I thought you were someone else. When did you get back? I must have slept.”
“Just got back. You laying kinda close to the edge there, could fall.”
She peered over into the swirling water below and scooted away a bit.
“Thought you might be hungry.” His voice sounded like velvet at midnight, all traces of the accents he liked to play with gone and in their place an educated Midwestern way of speaking. “I brought stuff for sandwiches so we could have something quick before we starved to death.”
She studied him, decided she liked him, maybe because he didn’t give her a hard time like Lefty. But then, he didn’t appear to give anyone a hard time.
“Lefty hates me. I think I should leave.”
“Ah, that one. He hates the world. You shouldn’t pay him any mind at all.”
“Steven does.”
“They’re close. That stuff that happened in the war, it’s like it tied them together for all time. You know how that is.”
She wished she did. The only time she’d come close to a genuine friendship was with her school buddy Pamela Dean, and soon after college they’d parted, going in absolutely different directions. She’d come so close to following Pam off to San Francisco when they graduated, and many times wished she had. How different things would have been. Still, she felt a need to say something to Shadow in reply.
“I guess.” A honeysuckle blossom brushed her hand and she plucked it, sucked the tiny drop of nectar from its center, and held it under her nose to inhale the heady, sweet fragrance.
“I could ask you something, but it might not be any of my business,” he said. “Or it might be like what Lefty asked that made you think he doesn't like you, and then you’d think I don’t like you, which isn’t true.”
The hesitancy with which he spoke the convoluted sentence, like he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to say, intrigued her. “You might as well. It can’t be any worse than the things he’s said to me. At least, I don’t think so.”
They chuckled together.
“He's having a rough time about you.”
“Lefty? I know. He’s jealous, I think.”
“Not him. Steven. He takes things harder than most. And you know, he’s easy to hurt. Has a shell like an egg.”
“Fragile?”
He cocked an eyebrow, regarded her closely.
“That’s what Lefty called him.”
Shadow picked at the honeysuckle. “Freaky word for that Cajun to use.” He looked squarely at her with eyes so dark the pupils were not visible. “It’s like he’s still waiting for someone to tell him what life’s all about, or leastways make everything okay again. He’s been messed up for so long. War ruined him for normal living.”
“Steven or Lefty? It seems to be true of all of you.”
“I mean Steven, but Lefty too. Not me, though. I wasn't in that war. Too young.”
“You all kind of float around, as if you’re waiting for the inevitable and too lazy to do anything constructive.” She sneaked a glance at him. “I don’t mean to belittle your lifestyle.”
“Maybe not, but that’s what you did.”
Again they laughed together.
“I suppose so. It’s the teacher in me, always trying to instruct.”
“Good, if it’s to help someone learn. Not so good if it’s to inflict your beliefs on them.”
His reply jarred her, and she couldn’t respond. How like her to do something she so despised in others.
“ ’Course, there are other things besides war that can bring a great hurt that makes living hard.” His eyes gathered moisture and he cleared his throat, went on in a hurry like it took some nerve to speak. “You won't settle for halfway, will you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah, you do too.”
And he was right, she did. “It wouldn’t be fair, to me or him.”
“I tried to tell you before, but sometimes my words don’t come out meaning what I’m saying. Steven, he just can't make the connection between the nothing he lives with and something worthwhile. Of all of us, he truly believes he needs to die, yet he thinks he can't, so he spends lots of time trying to get it done. That's dangerous. Bad for him, worse for you. He isn't quite sure what to do about being afraid he might just live forever despite all he does.”
She frowned. “I’m not really sure I understand that, but it sounds, I mean, it explains a lot of the things he does, doesn’t it? How do you figure this stuff out? And why?”
Shadow cocked his head. “I've just got a natural bent for seeing why people act like they do. What do you mean, why?”
“Well…” She wet her lips, tasting the sweetness of the nectar. “Lefty treats you awful, Steven not much better, and you just keep hanging around with the two of them. What do you get out of it? Why don’t you do something worthwhile with your life? You could be something. A counselor or a teacher.”
Again, that velvety smooth laugh. “You think I could? I don’t know. Seems like I've come too far down this road to turn back.” But he didn’t answer her questions, nor explain himself further.
Instead, he climbed to his feet and stuck out his hand. She took it and rose.
“You gotta know, he can't accept the whole ball of wax. Not right now. He's got things to figure out first.”
“You know what? Neither can I. I’ve got places to be, things to do, before I’m ready for anything. I have a life back there I’m not sure I can fully reject. And I’m not going to get myself all tangled up in some cheap affair.” She flushed, thinking how far she’d gone already. Almost too far to make that statement true.
“Here I thought we were talking about what Steven can do, and we're suddenly talking about what you can’t do, like your lives are all tied up together. Amazin', ain’t it?” He drawled out the question in his best down-south manner.
The statement rocked her to the soles of her feet, made her consider that he just might be right.
The roar of motorcycles filled the still afternoon, and he didn’t wait for a reply. “We better get back, help unpack and stow all that stuff them two bringing back on they bikes. They’ll be made up from the tussle and good friends again. You don’t need to worry yourself about that crazy Cajun. He ain’t doing nothin’ put him on the outs with Steven.” Intriguing how he lapsed back into his “character” so easily.
Shadow was right. That evening, sitting around the campfire following a delicious meal that included steaks, potatoes baked in hot coals and slathered in butter, and chunks of French bread, Lefty attempted to redeem himself. At least, as much as he ever could.
Steven, of course, started it. It was, after all, clearly his doing. “Liz, Lefty has something to say to you.”
The object of his statement stirred at the fire. “I’m sorry. Sorry I hurt your feelings.” Not said, exactly, more like mumbled, only looking at her when he'd finished.
But he wasn’t sorry at all, and she saw that when he held her gaze overlong. The eyes told an entirely different story, and one that frightened her. Something about Lefty made her fear not only for herself but for Steven, more so after the apology than before.
All the same, she nodded curtly. He was like a child made to apologize for a wrong he absolutely knew he hadn’t committed, and if he had he certainly wasn’t sorry about it. Furthermore, given the chance, he’d go farther the next time. A chill surged through her, and she turned away to find Steven gazing at her with enough warmth to take away the fright. The expression, one that said he’d put things right again, stirred her heart. He too was no more than a child struggling to make his way back into an adult world. But there was a simplicity and honesty there. His pleasure became hers, and she returned his tender look, at the same time releasing Lefty.
“It’s quite all right,” she told him. “It’s forgotten.”
With a nod, Lefty rose and wandered away.
Shadow stood. “I think I’m going down to wash up, if that’s all right with everyone.” Without waiting for a reply, he too left.
Steven stirred in the fire with a stick, then moved around to perch beside her as if he might move away if she didn’t welcome the advance. She looked up at him, examined the emotions flowing through her, and smiled.
Taking that as an invitation, he relaxed. “Beautiful night.”
“Yes, beautiful. Quiet.”
“Dark.”
“Yes, dark.”
He said her name at the moment she said his, and they both stopped, chuckled.
“You first,” he said.
“Why do they call you S’n’M?”
“They don’t, not anymore.”
“I know, but—”
“It’s not something I like to talk about. It’s just a name, not because I... I mean, I never went in for that stuff, or anything.”
“Lefty said you enjoyed maiming and killing.”
“And he called you a whore. Come on, you can’t take anything Lefty says for the truth.”
She wanted to believe his denial, but it was a bit too cryptic and the tone of his voice didn’t ring quite true. He wasn’t so sure himself that part of him hadn’t enjoyed what he’d done in the war. But she didn’t want to upset him, either.
“S’n’M. That stands for…?”
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