Someone you can own, Drew thought, but he still said nothing. If he had to sell himself to get out of the mines and secure a pension for Jere, then he would sell himself.
He smiled at the super as he held a match to the end of the cigar. He sucked in his cheeks, drawing deeply. He thought the expensive smoke would burn the bitter taste out of his mouth, and it did. Somewhat.
She had cleaned up the mess he'd made of the tea, and then she'd left the room. But not the house. He heard the clatter of china and her singsong voice muttering to herself in Chinese, probably cursing him to hell and back, he thought. "To hell with you too!" he shouted.
She answered him by dropping a lid back on the stove with a loud clatter.
If she came in here again, he'd knock over the slop jar. Aye, he thought, that would make her good and sorry. Except that she might not do the cleaning up this time, and he'd have to live with the stink until Drew came home, since he was bloody useless at doing anything for himself. Could barely find his poker to pee with without fumbling. Bloody useless...
He heard the shuffle of her feet moving across the floor, coming toward him, and he stiffened. She stopped in front of him. At least he thought she was in front of him. Maybe if he reached out and grabbed her, she'd scream and run off and leave him alone.
He kept his hands clenched in his lap and stared into the thick, soughing ocean of blackness that was all he could see and all he would ever see again.
He heard the rustle of her clothing and felt a subtle shift in the air, and he thought she might have knelt on the floor next to his chair. Her lilting voice came up at him out of the black ocean, although the words were not sweet.
"You grow fat and petulant like an imperial eunuch, and you are disturbing the virtuous harmony of this house. Instead of tea, I ought to give you a snake potion to cleanse your bowels of their ill humors."
She pressed the hot cup against the backs of his fingers as she had the last time, to let him know it was there. "If you spill it again, there is a whole pot of it on the stove, and I will empty it all onto your head. You need a bath anyway. You stink."
"Get... out."
She took his hands and wrapped them around the steam-wet porcelain. "Empty the cup."
Silence gripped the room like a fist. He could taste the foulness of his bitter rage on the back of his throat. His hands trembled. He wanted to hurl the cup into the bloody black void before his eyes... before where his eyes used to be.
He waited for her to leave. He strained his ears listening for the rustle of her clothes, her shuffling footsteps. For the sigh of her breath, the beat of her heart. He almost jumped when she spoke.
"I know what you are thinking."
"Do you, then?"
"You are wailing at the moon over the unfairness of a fate that would take your eyes. But what foolish god promised you life would be fair? Ask the legless beggar in the market square if life is fair. Ask the barren wife who burns seven ris of incense day after day beseeching the gods for a child, only to be cast aside by her husband instead... ask her if life is fair. Ask the starving peasant's daughter who is sold into slavery for fifty coppers if life is fair."
He curled his mouth into a sneer. "And that's supposed to make me feel better?"
"No. But such is the way of life's treacheries. You must come to accept what has happened, because it cannot be undone."
He gripped the cup so hard that the scalding tea sloshed onto his hands. "And if I won't bloody well accept it?"
"It still cannot be undone."
For a moment the horror of it almost choked him. He was a blind man, maimed and useless. Blind. He would never be able to put things back the way they were before, the way they were supposed to be. Blind, blind, blind... Oh, God, he was drowning in the horror of it and he wanted to reach out and cling to her. He could never have her now, now that he was so bloody useless as a man. Now that he was blind. Still he wanted to cling to her, to the dreams he'd once had for them.
Suddenly he wanted desperately to talk with her, simply talk with her and keep her with him for a while. "Were you sold, Lily?" he said, and the words came out rusty, raw. "'Tes that how you came to be here?"
"Yes."
He lifted his chin, stretching out his neck, trying to ease the tightness in his throat. "'Tes sorry I am."
"Why are you sorry? If my father had not sold me, we never would have come to know each other in this life."
He took a swallow of the tea, grimacing at its bitter taste. He felt with his elbow for the table beside his chair, then set the cup down. "And if your da hadn't sold you, if you'd stayed in China to be marrying some rich man, would you have felt still 'twere something missing? Would you've awoken in the silence of the night and wondered why your soul was always empty, your heart always sore?"
He didn't breathe while he waited in the darkness for her answer.
"Yes," she finally said. So softly he barely heard her.
"And would you've consoled yourself with the thought that 'twas just another one of life's treacheries?"
She punched him hard on the thigh. "How dare you mock me through the back door, you blithering baboon?"
She startled a laugh out of him. And he startled himself with the sound of it. He felt a rushing sensation against his ears and a fierce pressure in his chest, as if he were hurtling headfirst down a shaft.
She struck him again and he grabbed her wrist, hauling her into his lap with a force that punched the air from her lungs. He gripped the sides of her head and slammed his mouth down onto hers, not even getting that right, so that his teeth grated roughly across her lips. She gasped and pulled free of him. But she didn't leave him. He could feel her hovering just beyond the edge of the darkness.
Tension thickened the air until he couldn't breathe. Then her hands were sliding up his thighs, and her breasts were thrusting against his chest, and her lips were pressing against his, but gently. He opened his mouth, thinking he would die from the sweet taste of her, wanting to die so that his life would end now with this moment, this ecstasy. Her lips slipped apart and he traced their shape with his tongue. He swallowed her sigh.
He realized he wasn't touching her, except with his lips. The blood pulsed in his fingertips, and his hand shook as he pressed it against her chest. He could feel the swell of her breast beneath the thick quilted material of her jacket. She breathed and his hand lifted with the filling of her lungs.
He tore his mouth from hers. "Lily, I want..."
"Yes!" she said fiercely. And then gently, "Yes, my anjing juren. Please."
But now he couldn't move. He didn't think he should even be breathing, because he wanted to pant and moan like some great hungry beast, and yet he didn't want to frighten her away. If she left him now he would not be able to bear it.
So he sat stiff in the chair, one hand gripping the armrest, the other still pressed flat against her breast. His breath whistled in and out of his clenched teeth.
She took his hand and, linking her fingers with his, slowly rose, bringing him up with her. She tugged gently on his hand, and he followed her. He felt like a shuffling old man, clumsy, too big for his skin. His thighs bumped against the bed and he tumbled onto it awkwardly. But she fell with him, and they were in each other's arms, lying on a bed, and this was Lily, Lily, Lily, and he'd wanted her for so long, wanted her so desperately.
Her breath bathed his cheek and he turned his head, seeking her mouth. The coarse muslin pillowcase scraped across the back of his neck. Silk... She should be lying on a bed covered with silk, on a down mattress, not one stuffed with horsehair and straw. He wanted to tell her he was sorry he couldn't give her silk and feathers, and a man who could at least see her face to know if he was pleasuring her, but he didn't want to let go of her mouth.
They kissed for a long time and when he eased his lips from hers, it was only to slide his tongue along her jaw and down to the pulse in her throat. It leaped and throbbed against his open mouth, pumping to the hard rush of his
own blood.
She leaned over him, unbuttoning his shirt, and her hair fell into his face. It was as soft as he had known it would be. As it had been so many nights in his dreams. Ah, God, if pity had brought her to this, he didn't care.
The mattress rustled as she pulled away from him. "Lily!" he cried, panicking when he reached for her and got nothing but air.
She pressed her fingers against his mouth, then they drifted over his face, stroking his beard. "Your beard is so soft. I thought it would be prickly, but it is soft, like a kitten's fur. I am only going to undress so that you may touch me. I want you to touch me everywhere."
A sob of anguish and glory rose in his throat and he almost choked on it.
He listened to the sounds she made as she undressed, whispering sounds, seductive sounds. He tried to imagine what she would look like naked. She would be small-breasted, with copper-colored nipples. Her hips would be slim, her belly concave, of a perfect shape to cradle his head once he was done loving her. The down between her legs would be the same dense black as her hair.
She lay back down beside him and he turned his head, burying his mouth in the softness of her throat. The crisp green-apple smell of her came in sweet bits and snatches. He touched her everywhere, and the feel of her beneath his hands and lips spread through his body until he ached.
He opened his trousers, desperate to fill her hands with the heavy swell of his erection, and she held him, stroked him, brought him to a quivering, shuddering ecstasy. Then she straddled him, sliding his penis into the opening between her legs. She was wet and hot and hungry like a mouth. She sucked him deep inside her.
He bucked and she rode him. Her hands caressed the taut muscles of his belly, her silky hair slapped his chest. God, he wanted to see her, to see her... She was kissing him, her mouth urgent and frantic and hot. He could feel the helpless tremors coursing through her body. He heard the blood roaring in his head. Every muscle tightened violently and he felt his seed explode within her.
She collapsed on top of him. Her breath struck his face in hot gusts. He kissed the damp tangle of her hair.
He waited for her to leave him. She sighed long and soft, her breath fluttering over his throat. It seemed he could still feel her hands in his hair.
If he'd had eyes and still been a man, he would have thrown her words in her face again. All that blather about acceptance, the way of life's treacheries. If she believed all that, then she would quit thinking she had to go back to her damn Flowery Land. She would understand that her fate had brought her here because he was here, and from the beginning of time they were meant to be together. But he had wanted so much to give her more, show her more, promise her more. And now he never would.
He touched the scarred flesh that covered the empty sockets of bone.
If he had eyes...
CHAPTER 29
In later years folk would come to speak of what happened that winter as the Great Die-Up. It was a time when the cattle dropped out on the snow-choked range like leaves after a frost.
Range horses could survive a bad winter by eating the bark off trees. But cattle would rub their noses blood-raw in a vain attempt to break through the crusty snow-ice to get at the stubby dead grass underneath. And when a norther blew in, they turned their tails to the snow and wind and drifted until they hit something that stopped them—hillsides, coulees, fences. And there they stacked up to freeze and starve to death.
That winter did seem to be one long, hard snowstorm. But on this particular day, six more inches of fresh snow had fallen in the night and blown into drifts. Gus had ridden out as soon as it was light to chop through the ice crust at the water holes and to herd what cattle he could find to those places where the wind had scoured down the snow to the brittle gray grass.
As Clementine stood on the porch that morning and watched him ride out of the yard, she thought of how like life itself a marriage was—with droughts and raging storms coming in between long sunny days filled with love and laughter.
Like on that hot, dry day last summer, when she had given him the sachet of money, and she thought he might have hated her. She would not have been surprised to return from Rainbow Springs that day to find him gone. But it was not Gus's way to quit on his dreams, to quit on her.
He had been in the corral, trying to train a yearling to the hackamore, when she drove back into the yard. She got off the wagon and went right up to the corral fence. He kept his back to her.
She had intended only to tell him about what had happened in town, about the mob blowing up the mercantile and Sam Woo's death. Instead other words came out of her mouth, words that broke with the desperation she was feeling. With the fear that she had irrevocably lost him.
"I do love you, Gus," she said.
He swung around. His mouth was tight, his eyes wary. "So you keep saying."
Tears built in her eyes. She had to blink hard to keep them from falling. "I'm sorry for... for everything."
He stared at her a long time, and then he came to her. But only as far as the corral fence that still separated them.
His gaze broke from hers. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his bandanna. "It isn't that, Clementine. It isn't a matter of who's sorry or which of us was wrong. Maybe... maybe it's just a matter of you deciding what you want."
She knew what he was trying to say: that no matter what he did for her, no matter how much he loved her, he could no longer believe she was ever going to give him all of herself in return.
She looked at him, at the way the corners of his mustache didn't quite hide the bitter curve of his mouth, at the way his eyes were more hard and brittle than the sun-baked sky. She wanted to reach through the fence and touch him. She wanted to tell him that even though he didn't have all of her, already he had more than she could almost bear to give. She loved him. She loved him enough that, for him, she had given up the only man on this earth she would ever love more.
He wrapped one of his hands around the fence rail, gripping the wood so tightly the veins and sinews of his wrist stood out. "Maybe you'd like your money back," he said, "so's you can be quit of this place. And quit of me."
Her breath shuddered in her throat. "Oh, Gus... you know I'll never leave you."
Again he stared at her hard, trying to read her thoughts, trying to see down into her soul. "I don't know whether I do know it," he finally said, "but I guess I have to believe it. If I'm going to go on."
She reached up and laid her hand on top of his. The fence was still between them, but they were touching. A drought, she thought, doesn't end with a single drop of rain. But when that one drop is joined by another and another and another, they can become enough water to turn the land green again.
"We are going to have another baby," she said.
She watched the emotions cross his face: surprise, and then that wariness again. And finally a warm and gentle joy.
For him, for his joy, she smiled. And then she realized that she was smiling for herself as well. It would be good to have another child, she thought, and she would not let herself be afraid. She would try not to let her heart dwell so often on that grave beneath the cottonwoods.
Gus slid his hand out from beneath hers to cup her face. Slowly, he lowered his head and kissed her. And although the fence was still between them, neither of them noticed it.
The rain never did come that summer to feed the land, but the drought in their marriage had ended that day. Each touch, each word spoken since, had been like so many raindrops nurturing the life they shared.
She thought of that now as she watched her husband ride off to rescue their dying cattle. She thought that in spite of the bad winter and the failing ranch, she and Gus had at last found happiness and an ease with each other.
And they had found love.
Later, Clementine was alone in the kitchen baking bread when she heard the jangle of sleigh bells. She narrowed her eyes against the snow glare. A cutter was turning off from the road into town. The driver was
dressed richly, in a beaver bowler and a dark plaid woolen greatcoat. He lifted his head and turned his face toward the house.
"What is that old polecat up to now?" she said aloud to herself.
Gus was in the yard, having just come in from the range. She watched the two men meet and disappear into the barn together, then she banged out the door and set off after them without even bothering to put on a coat.
The frigid wind drove itself right to her bones and she shivered, hugging herself. Her shoes crunched over a path already cobbled with frozen footprints. The cottonwoods were popping with the cold.
The barn smelled of wet horse, old hay, and manure. A coal-oil lantern that hung on a hook just inside the door cast a murky light, glinting off scythes, oiled harnesses, and old spiderwebs. Clementine walked into a silence that was as thick as winter molasses. Gus was leading his horse into its stall and he looked up at her, but she could tell nothing from the expression on his face.
One-Eyed Jack McQueen flashed her his beguiling smile. "It is always a pleasure to find you looking so pretty, daughter-in-law." His gaze dropped to her belly, now five months swollen with child. "And you're increasing again, I see. 'Be fruitful and multiply.'" A knowing look glinted in his eye. "Yes, indeed. Pretty and fruitful, and yet faithful and virtuous as well. 'A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.' Is she a crown to you, Gustavus?"
Gus slung his bridle over a peg and swung his saddle up onto an empty stall door. "What do you want?"
Clementine produced for her father-in-law a most virtuous smile. "'He that hideth hatred with lying lips,'" she said, "'and he that uttereth a slander, is a fool.'"
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