A trembling started deep inside her. She tried to still it by crossing her arms and gripping her elbows.
He dried his face, slicked back his hair with his hands, and swung around. Their eyes met and parted in the same breath.
He plucked an apple—they came fresh now on the train from Washington—out of the milk-glass bowl that sat in the middle of her table. He bit into the red fruit with a snap. Juice dribbled out the corner of his mouth and he licked it off. Clementine watched and thought how it would be to press her lips there, where his tongue had just been.
She jerked around and picked up the coffee pot, almost dropping it, knocking it with a loud clang against the pump handle.
She scooped a handful of ground beans out of the box mill and put the coffee on the stove. He prowled her kitchen, crunching on the apple. The sound was too loud in the quiet room, the smell of it too pungently sweet. He looked at the photographs displayed on shelves along the far wall. Gus had built the shelves to store tinned food and jars of preserves. She had put her latest photographs there not to irritate her husband or to defy him, but to make a statement: this is who I am.
Rafferty studied the photographs, a frown tugging at his mouth. Like Gus, he resented this other love of hers, but not for the same reason. He was possessively jealous of what she photographed, jealous of the wild and raw land that he thought of as his. He didn't want to share it with others. Those others who came with saws to cut down the larches and the pines, with repeater rifles to pick off the last of the bighorn and the buffalo, with giant powder to pockmark the rugged buttes with mine shafts and defile them with black heaps of slag.
"You caught an eagle in flight," he said, and she warmed to the awe she heard in his voice.
She came up next to him, closer than she should have.
"I took it from the cliff that overlooks the buffalo canyon." In the photograph the cliff cast deep shadows on the light, wind-flattened grass. Yet the sunshine limned each feather on the eagle's magnificent wingspan. A bird silhouetted in lonely splendor against the emptiness of the sky. "They've built a nest near there," she said. She could feel the man beside her as if he were giving off a heat.
"I know, Boston." He turned his head, spearing her heart with his gaze.
They both fell silent as their memories joined hands. In the four years she had known him, she could count on her fingers the times she had been truly alone with him. Yet the most piercing memory to her was that day at the buffalo canyon when she had seen Montana through his eyes and understood a little why he loved it so fiercely.
She babbled now, making noise, piling up words like stones, building a levee against the tide of emotion that surged between them. "There's a marvelous new photographic invention that makes it possible to capture images in motion. It's a gelatin emulsion so sensitive to light that it takes only an instant to expose the plate. And one doesn't need to develop the plates right away; so it saves having to lug that blasted dark tent everywhere..."
Her voice trailed off. The tension thickened between them, hot and heavy as a chinook wind. "L-look," she said, pointing blindly at another photograph. "Here's one of, uh... a calf, just born." The calf stood on wobbling legs, his mouth open in a bawl. "And one of Gus busting a bronc for the spring roundup."
He laughed. "You gotta be quick to have caught my brother still in the saddle."
As he reached for the photograph, his arm brushed the side of her breast. He went utterly still, except for his breath, which she felt on her neck, warm and caressing. She could not remember how she had come to be standing so close to him. Her breast burned where he had touched her.
A cloud smothered the sun, and the kitchen darkened. The coffee began to burp on the stove. The wind gusted through the cottonwoods, making them moan.
His arm fell and he took a step back. He was breathing fast, his chest rising and falling. Unconsciously she pressed her fingers to the side of her breast where he had touched her. His gaze followed the movement of her hand, then came up to meet hers. She stared into eyes that were wild and dangerous. The percolating coffee and the gusting wind faded until all she could hear was the sough of their breath rushing through the kitchen like a summer storm.
A great whoop split the air like the clang of a fire bell.
"Gus," Clementine said. "He... he must have just seen your horse in the corral."
She jerked around and went to the window. Early that morning Gus had gone to the south hay meadow with the sorrel team and the mower. Now he was back, leading one limping horse and riding the other, with no mower. He rode bareback with their son, Charlie, perched before him on the horse's withers.
Clementine felt the rush of relief she got whenever Gus took her son away from her and returned him unharmed. She knew Gus was careful with the boy, but she never quite trusted him to watch Charlie as closely as she would. So much danger lurked in the Montana wilderness: rabid wolves and rattlesnakes and black bears and coyotes. He could so easily become lost in the tall grass or fall into the river. The Grahams' youngest child had died last spring in just that way. The river was her greatest fear.
Gus set Charlie on the ground and he hopped around on his sturdy three-and-a-half-year-old legs, chattering loudly. Clementine's breath caught as the sorrel mare shifted her weight and barely missed planting her hoof on Charlie's foot. These dangers were a constant thing, yet he was her baby no longer, and as Gus was always telling her, she couldn't coddle and protect him forever. Already she was losing him. To Montana, the land he was growing up to love as naturally as he breathed the wind-tossed air and ran through the tall grass and laughed beneath the big sky.
And she was losing him to his father, into that male world where cayuses were broken and rustlers hanged and calves branded. That masculine dimension that was so much a part of this place and that was still such an enigma to her, even after four years of dwelling uneasily within it.
She would lose him someday to that world, was losing him already. Yet she thought of the eagles that roamed the sky above the buffalo canyon. Her son would not grow up yearning to fly, yet afraid to try.
"He's growing up fast on us, Boston."
Rafferty's words, an echo of her own thoughts, pulled her gaze away from the window. He leaned in the open doorway again, his hat shadowing his face. But it couldn't hide the taut set to his mouth or the pulse that throbbed in his neck above the knot of his bandanna.
And she had heard the pain in his voice. He didn't leave only her; he left the land he loved and a brother he loved, and a little boy who meant as much to him as any son of his own loins.
Unable to bear it, she turned back to the window. Gus was leading the sorrel team down to the barn. Charlie pointed toward the house and said something that made Gus's head fall back in laughter. He bent over and swung his son up into the air. The sunlight glinted off two heads of caramel colored hair.
Something broke inside of Clementine in a terrible gush of guilt and pain. She wondered what kind of woman it was who loved her husband most when she was betraying him in her heart.
Gus always touched her so sweetly. His whispers to her in the night were of love and were lovely to hear; they soothed her heart. In his arms it was easy to let the strength of his feelings carry her along. To convince herself that it was enough. He needed her, and she wanted to be needed, needed to be needed. In return she gave him all she could. Her body, willingly and with joy, and her love. But there were degrees, so many degrees, of love. He would never make her burn.
She pushed words out of her throat, not even sure what she was saying. "That Charlie. He's gotten to where he can't sit still a minute. I've taken to tying a sheep bell around his waist when I'm at my chores, to keep him from wandering off when my back is turned. And he's talking lots more since you last saw him. Wears your ears out, he does, with all his questions. Do you know how a fish's gills work? And why the larches lose their needles in the fall and the pines don't...?" Her voice trailed off. There was only silence behind her.
She turned quickly and slammed into his chest. He steadied her with both hands on her shoulders. A stillness came into the room, a sense of breathless waiting and yearning. His eyes focused on her face and she held his stare, not daring to breathe, as the pressure in her chest built and built and built until it became unbearable.
His hands clenched hard, once, and he thrust her away from him. He looked seared by a fever, the skin pulled too tight over the bones of his face. His shirt fluttered with his heavy breathing. A crushing pain now filled the silence.
"You see why I got to go," he said, his voice raw. "Why I should've stayed gone for good this time."
"No!" She lifted her hand and he recoiled violently.
She let her hand fall. She snatched a half breath, feeling as if her lungs would burst. "Don't do this, Rafferty, please. It hurts me so much when you do this."
"Yeah, well I'm glad it hurts you, Clementine."
He took a step, not away from her but toward her, and her breath stopped again. His hand stole up to grip her chin. He brought his face so close to hers the moist heat of his harsh breath was like steam on her mouth. Her lips felt thick and hot, as if he had already kissed them.
His fingers tightened, hurting her. He brought his mouth closer still, almost touching hers. That close, but no closer. "Because loving you is killing me," he said.
And then he was gone and she was left standing in the middle of her kitchen floor, feeling shattered.
She heard the low rumble of the brothers' voices, Gus's laugh, and Charlie's piercing shrieks. "Raff'ty! Raff'ty! I was gonna help Papa mow the hay. But that stupid Daisy stepped in a gopher hole and hurt her foot. Papa's been teaching me how to rope, but he says you do it better. Will you show me now, Raff'ty? Now, now, now! Show me now!"
Her gaze focused on the kitchen table where a half-eaten apple lay, turning brown in the summer heat. She pressed her lips together hard to stop their trembling.
The hens ran squawking across the yard, their wings cocked, heads bobbing. Rafferty placed his hand beneath Charlie's upraised arm, adding his man's strength to the boy's, teaching him the rhythm of the swinging rope. The miniature lasso twirled above the bright gold head.
A fat bantam hen broke away from the flock, and Rafferty guided the boy's aim. "Okay, now let her fly."
The rope floated through the air and landed in the dirt with a splat and a puff of dust. The hen flapped madly, and the air rained red feathers.
"Oh, shit," Rafferty muttered under his breath. The damn bird was molting in her fright. She'd probably never lay another egg as long as she lived.
"I missed." Charlie's lower lip pouched out in a pout. "I always miss."
"It only takes practice, is all. Come on, reel in the rope. Let me see you build a loop and then we'll try again."
The boy watched the man gather up the short reata. He kept his eyes on the man's every move, mimicking his saunter and the way he cocked his hip, the way he tugged at his hat brim and squinted into the sun, the way he simply was, for he was pure cowboy.
Rafferty heard the crunch of footsteps behind him and he turned. Clementine came toward them from the house, walking with such purpose her heels kicked up her skirt. The sun gilded her hair, and she was as slim and graceful as the willows that shaded the river. The sight of her hurt so much he flinched.
"Just what do you two think you are doing?" she called out, an odd tightness in her voice.
"Watch me, Mama!"
Charlie let fly with the reata on his own and by some incredible chance the lasso snagged the fat, and now partly bald, bantam hen as she raced across the yard. Her neck snapped with a loud crack.
The other hens stopped their squawking and flapping all at once, as if shock had frozen their wings and wattles. Rafferty and the boy stared at the bird lying suddenly dead in the dirt among corn feed and red feathers.
"Oh, shit!" Charlie said, his voice piping loud in the silence.
Clementine's gaze flew up to Rafferty. The tightness he'd heard in her voice was reflected in her eyes, which were wide and dark, like a mountain lake beneath a stormy sky.
He grinned at her and shrugged. "I forgot how little pitchers got big ears."
"You forgot..." She planted her hands on her hips and stuck her nose in the air. She breathed out a thick sigh, puffing her lips, and Rafferty's gaze settled hard on her mouth. "You're back home less than an hour and already you have turned my son into a cocky, strutting, foulmouthed... cowboy."
"You ain't gonna raise him up to be no tight-assed Boston gentleman out here, Clementine."
"Nor will I raise him up to be a barbarian, Mr. Rafferty."
His eyes narrowed at her. He really didn't like her much when she put on Boston airs, but that hadn't yet stopped him from loving her, wanting her.
Charlie tugged at his pant leg. "Mama's angry."
Rafferty's hand rested on the boy's head. His hair was down-soft, a darker shade of yellow than hers. "Not angry with you, button. With me."
"Were you a naughty boy?"
"Yeah, I was naughty." His lips curled into a smile that held just a tinge of meanness. He spoke to the boy, but his eyes were on her face. "But I'll let you in on a little secret: she likes me that way."
They stared at each other, he and Clementine, and he was reminded of the way a prairie fire could start up in the heat of summer—one spark and the world turned into a raging conflagration. When the hunger was like this between them, at the flash point, they could strike sparks off each other with just a look.
"Hey, little brother!" Gus shouted. He came toward them from the direction of the barn, where he'd gone to put up the sorrel team. A bright smile creased his face.
Clementine flushed and made a sudden jerking movement like a hooked trout. She snatched up the dead hen. She spoke softly, to Rafferty alone, and her voice sounded clogged with suppressed tears. "He's going to seduce my son away from me, isn't he? Damn Montana. He won't let me have even the smallest part of you, and now he's going to take my son as well."
"Who? Gus? What the hell are you talking about?" Rafferty said, but her heels were kicking up her skirts again as she took long strides back to the house.
Gus watched her go, wagging his head as if at a joke. "You two going at it again already? You're like two cats in a sack. Aren't you ever going to see your way toward getting along?"
Rafferty turned his face away from his brother. He saw where Clementine had tried to plant a vegetable garden on this side of the snake fence—carrots and some beans and squash. But most of it had been beaten to pieces by the wind, and what was left was wilting in the burning sun. Grasshoppers rasped in the encroaching weeds. Only featherlike wisps of clouds drifted overhead, offering no relief in the thin blue air.
He thought sometimes that Gus was so stupid blind he couldn't track a fat sow through a snowdrift. He wanted to grab his brother by the scruff of his neck and shout into his face: You big, dumb son of a bitch. I want to fuck your wife. I eat, breathe, sleep, and fuck thoughts of fucking your wife, and if you weren't such a big, dumb son of a bitch you'd see it.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Christ, he hated himself for even thinking like that. It dirtied what he felt for her. He loved her with an emotion that was to him akin to worship. He wanted to make love to her, not fuck her. There was a difference even in his own saloon-and-spittoon-dirty mind.
A small, grimy hand took hold of his. "Raff'ty, are we gonna throw the rope some more?"
He looked down into a pale, delicate-boned face with wide-spaced, slightly protruding eyes the shadowy green of a pine in winter. Her face, her eyes. The boy was all Clementine's.
Rafferty continued to avoid looking at his brother as he collected the reata and pointed Clementine's son toward the house. "Practice swinging it at the hitching post," he said, his voice a hoarse rasp. "You don't want to go killing any more of your mama's chickens."
Rafferty walked off then with no particular destination in mind, but Gus followed after him
so that they wound up standing side by side with their forearms planted on the top rail of the snake fence and looking out over their land. Red-and-white cattle dotted the buff hills, the prints of the branding iron still showing fresh on the young hides of the calves. His brother smelled of hard-work sweat and sickle oil. It blended with the other scents of June, of sweet clover and mown hay.
"You're home just in time to help mow, buck, stack, and fence that hay," Gus said into the taut silence.
Rafferty made a face, and his brother laughed, too loud. Home... He was seized by the sick restlessness he'd felt so often as a boy. He remembered how he had felt it most sharply when he walked down country lanes and the sun-baked streets of southern towns, peering in the windows of the farmhouses and shanties that weren't his. They'd been mostly poor houses, poor families, but not in his memories. In his memories velvet-draped windows framed a father sitting in a wing chair before a fire, a pipe clenched between his teeth, the evening newspaper rustling in his hands, and a boy sitting cross-legged at the father's feet, chewing on the end of a pen as he puzzled over his lessons. In his memories a woman came into the room and trailed a loving hand across the man's shoulders and bent over to ruffle the boy's hair, and Zach would think that he had never been touched like that. And then the yearning to possess everything in that room, from the lush fern on its stand to the feel of a mother's hand in his hair, would become so powerful he could taste it, and it was bittersweet, like a lemon dusted with sugar.
Rafferty pulled himself back to the moment with a wrench that was physical. He turned his back on the cattle-grazed hills and on memories that were not even real memories, only memories of dreams. He leaned against the fence and looked at another house that wasn't his. The sun struck the tin roof, blinding him, and he blinked.
Clementine's son swung the rope at the hitching post and missed. There would come a day though, Rafferty thought, when the boy would never miss, and he felt the restlessness deepen into pain because he knew he would likely never see it.
Heart of the West Page 43