Bed of Roses

by Rebecca Paisley

  “Over the hill.”

  She wasn’t about to argue with him. Not when she had such a monumental favor to ask of him. “Over the hill? Yes, that is how it goes. You are right, and I was wrong.”

  Her quick admission of her error deepened his suspicion that she was up to no good. “Zafiro, what exactly are you getting at? I already know your men are old.”

  “Old, yes, but just because ice is all over the fire does not mean the roof’s cold. I mean…well, what I mean is that under their wrinkles they are still on fire.”

  “There may be snow on the roof, but inside the fire’s still burning?”

  “Yes, and my men still have much fire inside. Well, maybe not fire, but they still have embers that can be fanned into flames.”

  A long while passed before Sawyer finally understood what she was talking about. “You still want me to work with your men, don’t you? Turn them back into the skilled, able-bodied outlaws they used to be.”

  When she nodded and gave him another of her pretty smiles, he shook his head and gave her one of his terrible frowns. “No.”

  “Sawyer, let me explain why I need you to—”

  “I don’t care why! My answer is no!”

  “But you do not under—”

  “No, no, no, no, and no! I mean it, Zafiro. I only stayed to patch up this crumbling castle of yours.”

  “You are the filth of the world!”

  ‘'Or the scum of the earth. Take your pick. But either way I don’t want anything to do with those three bumbling bandits.”

  “All right!” With that, Zafiro stormed out of the woods and marched straight into the cabin, slamming the door behind her.

  And long hours later, when nighttime fell and Sawyer entered the cabin and trudged wearily toward his own room, too weary to even nibble at the supper Tia had prepared for him, he saw light seeping out from beneath Zafiro’s door.

  He stopped in front of the door and thought he heard a sniffling sound. Was she weeping? And if she was, had she been crying all day, ever since he yelled at her in the woods?

  He told himself to ignore her sad little sounds. Told himself that women always cried when they didn’t get their way.

  Told himself he didn’t care if she cried all damn night. He’d been working since dawn and was too tired and sore to bother with female tears.

  He told himself to open the door. And so he wrapped his hand around the knob.

  But what if she was indecent? What if she was naked?

  So what if she was? She’d seen him naked before, many times.

  She’d seen him naked, but he’d never seen her naked. He told himself that fair was fair.

  The wooden portal creaked softly as he swung it into the room. And there on the bed, with an array of miniature paintings spread all around her, sat Zafiro.

  Sawyer sucked in a breath so deep that his lungs ached.

  She wasn’t naked, but she might as well have been. Her wisp of a gown was so sheer, so delicate, that it made Sawyer think of a pretty blush upon a soft cheek.

  He could see straight through the pale pink gown. Could see the dark roundness of her nipples and the dusky shadow between her breasts. And her extraordinary sapphire blazed there too, its fiery beauty highlighting the perfect breasts upon which it shone.

  “I…” he said, still staring at her breasts, “I guess you’re trying to breast—I mean rest. Rest!” He drove his fingers through his hair, damning her breasts and his own slip of the tongue.

  He was acting like some adolescent confronting his first glimpse of female sensuality. “I guess you’re trying to rest. I’ll go, so you—”

  “You can stay if you want to.’’

  He didn’t want to. Well, yes, he did want to.

  But he couldn’t. Shouldn’t. It was getting late. She wasn’t wearing much more than a blush and a sapphire. If he stayed, there was no telling what might happen.

  No, he needed to leave. Needed to go, and that was that.

  He stayed. “So,” he said, shutting the door, “this is where you sleep.”

  Her room was as small as his own, maybe smaller, but more feminine. She’d filled numerous bottles and jars with small pine boughs and bloodred roses, and the plants’ potent scents suited her—reminded him of her pungent, fiery character.

  Mismatched throw rugs, yellow, red, blue, and green, splattered the wooden floor with wild splashes of color, and thin red-and-white striped curtains fluttered in the breeze that swept through the two windows. On one windowsill sat a tin candle holder coated with ivory wax.

  The doors of her armoire were open; two tattered skirts, three worn blouses, and a red-and-yellow serape hung inside. The only other furniture in the room were a battered rocking chair with an equally old guitar resting on the seat, a wooden stand with a blue pitcher on it, a bedside table, and Zafiro’s bed, which was covered with a spread that looked to be made of the same coarse, brown fabric that the nuns’ habits were made of.

  Store signs—the kind of circulars that shopkeepers posted in their mercantile windows—covered one entire wall of the room. The creased, yellowing posters advertised crackers, tobacco, saddle soap, weapons, and ammunition, flour, sugar, cornmeal, coffee, and additional dry goods. Other signs publicized a county fair, free kittens, a church social, and work for hire.

  More circulars were in Spanish, and Sawyer couldn’t read what they said, but all the fliers had been folded and unfolded numerous times before being pinned to the wall.

  He looked at Zafiro again and saw that she was gathering up all the little framed paintings and depositing them into an iron box that said Whistle Canyon Bank on the lid.

  “What are those?” he asked, walking toward her bed. Glancing down, he noticed that every small painting was of a woman.

  “They are paintings.” She dropped the last one into the box. “Do you want some tea?” She pointed toward a half-empty cup of pale yellow liquid. “It is lemon tea.”

  He wondered how she could be so nice to him after he’d yelled at her the way he had earlier in the woods. “No, thanks.” Sitting down at the foot of her bed, he allowed himself another glance at the absolutely gorgeous visage of her breasts, then looked at the pile of small paintings in her box. “I heard you crying. Were you crying over those little portraits?”

  She closed the box’s lid. “Yes. Sometimes when I look at them, I only look at them and wonder. Other times, when my mouth is down, I cry.”

  When her mouth was down, he repeated silently. “When you’re down in the mouth.”

  “However the saying goes, I mean that when I am in a sad mood the paintings sometimes make me cry. Today I am in a sad mood because you will not—”

  “You were crying over women you don’t know?” he interjected, unwilling to discuss her men.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She brought her knees up to her chest and circled her arms around her legs. “Because I do not know who they are.”

  “I don’t know who they are either, but they don’t make me cry.”

  She rested her chin on her left knee. “They do not make you cry because they do not mean anything to you.”

  “Well, how can they mean anything to you if you don’t know who they—”

  “I do not want to talk about the paintings.” Quickly, she slipped off the bed, crossed to her armoire, and shut its doors. “What did you get done today, Sawyer? Without the help of my men?” she added snippily.

  He chose to ignore her irritation because reacting to it would only cause an argument. And bickering with her was the last thing he wanted to do tonight.

  He studied her breasts again, then drew his gaze down lower. Now that she was standing up he could also see the patch of darkness between her thighs.

  “Sawyer,” Zafiro said, “you have been staring at my breasts since you came in here, and now you are looking at my—”

  “Well, it isn’t easy not to, Zafiro, especially since I can see straight through your nigh
t—”

  “This used to belong to Azucar,” Zafiro interrupted, totally unconcerned as she looked down at her gown and then picked up the sides to show Sawyer how full the skirt was. “One of her lovers gave it to her as a gift. I think its age has made it see-through.”

  He managed to lift his gaze back up to her face. “You really don’t mind when I look at you, do you?”

  “As I told you before, you cannot help giving your eyes a lot of food because you are a man.”

  “Giving my eyes… Oh, you mean I’m feasting my eyes on you.”

  “Yes, that is what I said.” She ambled away from the armoire, stopping by the window. There, she looked down at the yard, trying to see the work Sawyer had accomplished that day.

  She saw nothing but the falling-down fences, the shabby woodshed… “You did not do anything today!”

  Every muscle in his body hurt, and she claimed he hadn’t done anything? “For your information I got a few boards done, and—”

  “A few boards?” She turned from the window, swiping at her hair as the night breeze rustled through it. “Then you have not even put a dent in the surface!”

  “I have so made a dent in it and scratched the surface! Don’t forget that I also felled the trees, stripped them, split them—”

  “You—”

  “The work is going to take me longer than a day or two, Zafiro.”

  “It wouldn’t if you would let my men help.”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “Where did you get all those store signs?”

  When he abruptly changed the subject she gave a loud huff and glared at the wall papered with the circulars. “I collected them.”

  “From where?”

  She watched him stretch out on her bed and slip his hands behind his head. Never having seen a man on her bed before, she took a bit of time to savor the sight.

  “Is it your turn to stare at me, Zafiro?”

  “You’re the first man who’s ever been in my bed.”

  A shame she wasn’t in it with him, he mused. He looked at her breasts again. They weren’t large, but they weren’t overly small either.

  They were the perfect kind. Two perfect handfuls of softness, just right for holding, for tasting—

  “Sawyer?”

  He frowned, realizing she’d been talking to him and that he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “You look like you are not on this planet.”

  “I look like I’m in another world,” he translated. “I was just thinking. About…about your signs.”

  “I got them from all the little stores that were in all the towns the gang and I visited.” She studied the circulars again, her gaze touching each of them. “Well, I did not go to some of those towns,” she admitted softly. “The men, they stole many of the signs and brought them to me.”

  “What do you mean, they brought them to you?”

  She left the window and walked to the sign-papered wall. “Grandfather would not let me go to the towns if he and the men were going to steal there. I had to wait far away from the town with Tia and Azucar.”

  Sawyer watched her touch a circular that publicized a cure for warts. “The infamous Quintana Gang is wanted in two countries for stealing mercantile advertisements?”

  His ridiculous question coerced her to smile at him. “No, but before they robbed the banks, jewelry stores, or the various wealthy citizens, they took the signs for me. You see…I never knew what it was like to live in a real town. We were always moving. Escaping, staying as far ahead of the law as we could.

  “But how I loved those towns, Sawyer,” she continued, looking at her signs again. “I saw children playing in the streets with their friends and puppies, and I wanted to be a part of their games. Only one time did a few children invite me to join them. We sat in a circle in front of the church and took turns secretly picking out something in our surroundings. When we had picked it we would tell the others what color the thing was that we had spied. Then the others would try to guess what specific thing we’d seen by looking for the color we had named. I won the game by picking something green. The children guessed at every green thing they saw, but no one noticed the green circle around one girl’s throat. Her necklace was of cheap metal and had made a green circle on her skin.

  “I had never played that game before, and I liked it very much. I also liked to watch the storekeepers sweep their porches, the townspeople greet each other as they passed each other on the boardwalk, and I even liked to spy on the harlots who flirted with the men in the saloons.”

  “And that’s where you heard the expressions you like to use, huh? In those little towns.”

  “Yes.”

  Sawyer decided she collected the colorful expressions the way she collected her signs. Since she’d probably heard the sayings only once or twice, that explained why she could never remember them correctly.

  “I watched ladies pick out hats and gloves and handbags,” Zafiro went on. “Their children grabbed great handfuls of candy out of big jars that sat on the counters in the mercantiles. Old men sometimes sat outside the barbershops, playing checkers or sitting in rocking chairs, talking about the weather or the last sermon they’d heard at church. I watched some sweethearts once too. It was almost nighttime, and there was a swing hanging from a tree in the shadows near a small cafe. The sweethearts sat in the swing, swinging, holding hands, laughing, and whispering to each other.”

  Sawyer watched her look toward the window with a faraway look in her eyes, and he realized she was remembering the happy times she’d spent in the little towns.

  Her memories were familiar to him. Had he lived in a town like those she’d described? Or had he only visited various towns the way she had?

  “And sometimes,” Zafiro said, “when classes were over for the day I would watch the children come out of the little schoolhouse—”

  “You never went to school?”

  “No. But the gang taught me to read and figure numbers.”

  “But when you were in those towns watching the schoolchildren, you wished you could go to school with them.”

  “Yes. I’d even pretend I was one of them. I’d admire the little girls’ pretty dresses and pretend that I had a whole closetful in my own house—a house that I always imagined was at the end of Main Street. I did have one dress though.”

  She paused a moment to remember the fancy frock that Lorenzo had gotten for her. “Lorenzo stole a dress off a clothesline once. He said he saw it blowing in the breeze and knew it would be just my size. It was a white dress with tiny pink ribbons going down the front, and the bottom of the skirt was edged with pink lace. I wore it to church whenever Grandfather thought it was safe enough for us to stop someplace on Sundays. But I grew out of the dress very quickly, and I did not get another dress until we came here and met the nuns. Grandfather, he was a very good man and he usually gave me everything I wanted. But he could not understand why I wanted dresses. Dresses, he said, were not made for riding. And we were always riding, so I wore breeches all the time.”

  Sawyer glanced at her armoire. Zafiro still didn’t have many feminine clothes. Only a few ragged skirts.

  She’d be beautiful in a fancy dress, he mused. A yellow one, or maybe a blue one—sapphire blue like her eyes. “Can’t you sew yourself a dress?”

  “Not without fabric.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you know that I still remember the town where Lorenzo stole that dress off the clothesline? I sat on a porch step in front of a doctor’s office in that town, and a fat woman with a flowered hat on stopped and asked me if I had heard the latest news. When I told her that I had not, she looked up and down the street, bent down to me, and told me that Maggie O’Donald—who was an Irish Catholic—had run off and married Wade Simms, the son of the Baptist preacher. The lady tried to act very upset, but I could tell she was happy to tell me the news. Later, Lorenzo told me that every town had a tow
n gossip and that the fat lady who had spoken to me was that town’s gossip. After that I always wondered if Maggie and Wade Simms were happy together. I did not know who Maggie and Wade were, but I still hoped that they were doing well together.”

  Sawyer pondered her story for a long while before speaking. “So the signs reminded you of all the things you liked seeing in the towns. That’s why you collected and kept them.”

  Folding her arms across her chest, Zafiro returned to the bed and sat down beside Sawyer’s feet. “Yes, and I would take them out of my satchel all the time to look at them and to think about what it would be like to go to school and play with other children. I wanted to buy and eat candy out of the big jars at the stores and hear town gossip from fat ladies with flowered hats on. Since I could not do any of those things, the signs helped me to pretend that I was doing them. Sometimes the gang would pretend with me. Tia would be the fat town gossip, Azucar would be herself, Lorenzo would be a shopkeeper and sell me candy that he’d bought especially for our pretend times, and Maclovio and Pedro would sit around and play checkers while talking about the weather and church sermons. Grandfather, he would be the swing I saw near the cafe. He’d clasp his hands together, have me sit in his palms, and then he would swing his arms back and forth, just like a real swing.”

  The Quintana Gang had been good to Zafiro, Sawyer realized. Good as the gold they stole.

  Newborn respect for the old people welled within him. Whatever they were now, however eccentric they acted, ceased to matter.

  Maclovio, Lorenzo, Pedro, Azucar, and Tia had loved Zafiro as if she’d been their own daughter. They still did, he realized, and that fact did much to sway his feelings toward them.

  Tomorrow perhaps he could find some odd job for the men to do. Something simple that wouldn’t be dangerous to them. “You still think about life in a town, don’t you, Zafiro?” he asked quietly.

  She nodded. “Most nights I fall asleep looking at my signs and thinking about how nice it would be to live in a town.”

  When she fell into pensive silence Sawyer did the same, thinking about how much she missed out on as a little girl. Always traveling around, fleeing from the law, and camping out in forests or deserts or mountain coves with the gang, she’d never had the opportunity to enjoy a social life. Not as a child, a young girl, or even now as a full-grown woman.