Amelia left the barbecuing and wandered in that direction, looking idly at the scenery so as not to send Bobby elsewhere again. She drew a deep breath. She still felt a little light-headed, a light-headedness that increased the more she walked. This land was like a dreamscape, she decided, where mountains were mountains and trees were trees and yet they were unfamiliar. The sky was piercingly blue now, and the afternoon—at least it was afternoon to her—was as fresh and bright as a jewel in the sunshine. She could feel a cool breeze, and she could hear the dull melodic sounds of ceramic wind chimes somewhere on the rambling lean-to porch. She noted again the marked lack of grass, the kind she was used to in East Tennessee. At home when she looked out from the porch, she could see at least three shades of green, lush and ribbonlike before the green of the tree line at the edge of the property. Here everything was earth-tones, pink on brown on brown with the sprinkling of scrubby green not thick enough to cover the hillsides. The sharp right angles in the architecture she took for granted at home had somehow been transformed by the sharp contrast of light and shadow here, and the corners of the buildings were softened, rounded, tapered, adding to her feeling of dreamlike wrongness.
The band was playing again, a lively foot-stomping tune that had a number of people doing just that. She needed to find Mac, she told herself. She needed to be taken to wherever she was going to stay so she could decide what to do, so she could put on her own clothes and stop feeling like a bastard at the wedding.
Amelia gave a small smile. She’d heard that Tennessee back-country saying all her life, and now she finally understood exactly what it meant.
“Amelia, will you stop stalking Bobby?” Mac said behind her.
“I am not stalking Bobby,” she answered, forcing herself to look him in the eye. And even if she were, it was none of his business.
“Yes, you are. Now leave him alone, and come with me. Rita wants you to start it off.” And he was overwhelming her again with his presence and his superior strength and his maleness.
“I don’t want to start it off,” she said in annoyance, not having the slightest idea what he was talking about. Again.
“Well, you have to,” he said, taking her by the arm, then shifting that hand to her shoulder in a warm squeeze. “You’re the tender gringo. You have to go first so the rest of us can eat. You want this whole crowd to starve?”
“I don’t—”
“Amelia, don’t be rude,” he chided her.
“I’m never rude!”
“Is that a fact?” He grinned, shifting his cowboy hat back on his head. “Then come on,” he said pointedly.
Mac hurried her along whether she liked it or not—which she didn’t. She did, however, like the touch of that big hand as it slid to the middle of her back to escort her to the head of a long table that had been set up near the barbecuing. The table was covered with a red-checked cloth that flipped back and forth in the breeze, and the cloth was subsequently covered with every size and shape dish and platter she could imagine. They were all filled with food, and some of the barbecuers were bringing blue-speckled enameled pans filled with savory cooked meat.
Amelia found herself somehow the special guest who had to be teased and cajoled into tasting all of New Mexico’s fabled cuisine. Someone pushed a plate into her hands, and Mac held up a large rolled-up something from a yellow platter.
“What’s this?” he asked, beginning the trials.
Amelia looked at it closely. “I… don’t know,” she had to confess.
“Tamale,” Mac told her. “Remember that.”
“All right,” she said doubtfully. “Tamale. Is it hot?”
She didn’t miss the look that passed from one person to another or the slight smile that played at the corners of Mac’s mouth. She glanced at Bobby, who had dared to come closer. He was wearing that “gotcha” look with the rest of the crowd that was gathering.
“I see,” Amelia said when nobody answered her question. “Could I have a glass of water, please?” she asked politely, and everyone laughed.
“I got it right here, darlin’,” Pop said, producing a large beer mug filled to the brim with water and crushed ice.
Encouraged by the fact that while folks in New Mexico had every intention of setting her on fire, they were at least prepared to put out the flames, Amelia took the bite Mac offered.
The tamale was wonderful—hot, but no hotter than her late Uncle Charlie’s super-hot homemade sausage. She ate two, holding off the water until the end and passing her initiation with flying colors and a round of applause. Amelia accepted the praise graciously, noting the pleased look in Mac’s eyes. She led the line of hungry people around the table, Mac at one elbow with the food commercial, and Pop at the other with her mug of cold water. She tried everything—arroz español, chiles rellenos, rollos de ropolla, so-paipillas, enchiladas. Her favorite was the New Mexico chili—not the brown stuff with the beans she was expecting, but a sharp, spicy purée of green chili peppers she found delicious. She ate until she had to let out a notch on Mac’s cowboy belt, and she still “stalked” Bobby, unable to get close to him because Rita found a woman in a flashy black satin shirt embroidered with roses and seed pearls, who wanted to talk about the Orton reading method and “hi-lo” books for reluctant readers. And all the while, Amelia was completely aware of Mac’s whereabouts. He was a gracious host, talking to everyone, lingering with an especially attractive blonde in an off-the-shoulder white cotton dress. He seemed to be hanging on her every word, and she kept reaching out to touch his bare arm below his rolled-up sleeve. It caused in Amelia a feeling she could describe only as acute jealousy.
I have got to get out of here, she thought. What in the world was wrong with her? Houston McDade was nothing to her, nor she to him. She didn’t want to be with him or see him or anything else. She had her brother to worry about—if she could ever catch him.
Amelia moved to a different spot near the adobe wall, where she could hear the cowboy band. It was no wonder that cowboys were so notoriously non-talkative; they had song lyrics to cover every life situation. She could see Bobby and one of the same young women he had been with earlier. The girl was wearing jeans and a red and black western shirt, and she was sitting on the tailgate of a white pickup truck.
“Will you leave Bobby alone?” Mac whispered suddenly at her elbow.
“Will you butt out?” Amelia said in exasperation, finding that she did want to be with him after all, but the discovery only made her surly.
“Nope,” he answered matter-of-factly. Then he grinned.
She didn’t grin back, and he rolled his eyes at her. She looked in another direction.
“Okay,” he said, “you’re coming with me—no, wait, wait,” he added before she could take exception to his announcement. “I said it wrong, didn’t I? How’s this? Are you coming with me?”
“No,” Amelia assured him.
“Now, see?” he explained, putting his hand on her shoulder again. “It’s all a waste of time. I say it right, and you tell me no, so what’s the point? It’s a whole lot simpler if we do it my way.”
His way was to lead her in a direction away from her brother.
“No, you wait!” Amelia said, holding herself rigid to keep him from moving her along any farther.
“You want your luggage, don’t you?” he asked, that poker-game look on his face again. “And you want to talk about Bobby?”
“Yes, but—” He’s doing it again! she suddenly thought. Every time she tried to stand her ground, he gave her some logical reason why she had to do whatever he wanted. It was making her crazy.
“Then what’s the problem?” He gave her a brief interval to think of one, pulling her along with him again toward the back of the house when she couldn’t. A chestnut horse with a white blaze that extended into a soft pink blotch on its nose trotted to the corral fence.
“This is Willard,” Mac said by way of introduction, reaching for a bridle that hung on a fence post. “Pop tra
ined him. Best damned quarter horse this side of the mountains. Do you ride?”
“No,” Amelia said with some alarm as he slid the bridle on. She had endured the back of a truck and a single-engine plane. She had no intention of tackling a horse.
“That’s okay,” Mac said. “Come around here where he can see you better.” He led the horse out of the gate. “He’s afraid of you.”
“He’s afraid of me?” Amelia repeated, thinking she’d misunderstood.
“Well, come here,” Mac insisted, making her come closer to Willard’s head. The horse gave a low rumble and a small sidestep that threw her into a panic. “Sure he’s afraid of you,” Mac said. “For all he knows, you’re a scout for a dog-food company. Now just stand there, and let him check you out.”
Amelia stood doubtfully while Willard breathed on her. It wasn’t that she didn’t like animals. She did. But she found it difficult to trust one that weighed half a ton and could still be frightened by a piece of blowing paper or a strolling chicken. “So,” she said finally, “you’re Willard the Wonder Horse.” She put a hand up for him to nibble. “Why is his name Willard?”
“Because that’s where I bought him,” Mac answered, throwing a saddle blanket over the horse’s back. “What do you think of him?”
“I think he’s darned lucky you didn’t buy him in Charlotte,” Amelia replied, and Mac gave a soft laugh. He finished the saddling and mounted the horse easily.
“Well, come on,” he said, offering her his hand.
Amelia hesitated, torn by the knowledge that she was letting him have his own way again, and by the need to know about Bobby. Clearly, if she wanted to know about her brother, she was going to have to fall in line.
“Amelia, just this once will you do what I ask you to do?”
“Just this once?” she said incredulously. “I’ve been letting you order me around all day, McDade.”
“Never mind that. Get up here.”
“I’m not that athletic.”
“You’re not scared of horses too, are you?”
“How should I know? The only horse I ever rode was a pony named Bossy.”
“You named a pony Bossy?”
“No, I didn’t name a pony Bossy,” she answered him. “But even if I did, somebody who names a horse Willard would do well to keep his remarks to himself.”
She glanced up at him. He was grinning broadly.
“Get up here,” he said again, holding out his hand.
“Let me stand over there on the wall,” she said, moving to the low adobe wall and climbing up on it, waiting until Mac brought Willard close enough for her to get on.
It was a rocky beginning, and Amelia couldn’t keep her balance without holding on to Mac. She didn’t trust herself to do it.
“Here,” Mac said in much the same way he had on the plane. “Put this hand here and this hand here.” He firmly pressed her hands on either side of his hips. “How come Tennessee women don’t know where to put their hands?” he asked over his shoulder, his hazel eyes twinkling with mischief. Amelia gave him her best false smile and didn’t answer.
Mac didn’t bother with the road or the driveway, making his own path away from the house.
“Aren’t you going to tell somebody where you’re going?” she asked.
“Pop knows,” Mac answered. “And Bobby. He knows we’re going to talk about him.”
There was a woman calling him—the woman in the white dress. “Mac! Can I come along?”
“No,” he answered, giving no reasons and urging Willard into a trot. Amelia felt as if every tooth she had was in danger of being jarred out of her head, and she held on to Mac’s belt—the one he was wearing—for dear life.
“Wasn’t that a little rude?” she asked carefully to keep from biting her tongue.
“What?” he said obtusely, glancing back at her over his shoulder.
“The woman back there. She wanted to come along.”
“What she wants, Amelia, is for me to park my boots under her bed some night when her old man is gone to a stock auction. I’m not interested, okay?”
She didn’t answer him.
“It’s pretty quiet back there,” he said as her silence lengthened. He was letting Willard walk now, and Amelia relaxed her grip on the belt. She could smell his clean, masculine scent again, and she could see close up the way his hair curled on the back of his neck.
“Yo! Amelia!” he suddenly called, startling both her and Willard.
“I was just thinking about the arrogance of the male of the species!” she snapped. “How do you know she wants your boots parked? Maybe she’s just friendly.”
“Now, Amelia, don’t go taking up for Marlene. She knows what she wants, and so do I. What did you think of Bobby?”
“I don’t know what I think of him. I didn’t get to talk to him very long,” she said pointedly. The ground was rough and rocky and slanting upward, and Amelia was having to hold on to him more tightly, her hands moving to his waist and feeling his firm, warm body through his chambray shirt. The air was cool now as the shadows began to lengthen. She could hear the music from the McDade gathering—a chorus of women singing something about a Texas trail. She took a deep breath and asked what she wanted to ask.
“Just what have you got to do with my brother?”
“Bobby’s in the hospital because I did everything I could to get him there.”
“You what?”
Mac looked over his shoulder. “You heard me. And quit frowning. And don’t interrupt me either,” he said when she was about to do just that. “Listen—and then you get to ask your questions.”
“I’d like to know who you think you are?”
“Well, that’s good, because I’m about to tell you. When I was in the Marines, I was a corpsman—a hospital assistant. No, don’t interrupt, I said. So I never got over the habit of looking for wounds. I do some volunteer work for the VAOO—that’s a veteran’s group. I do outreach work for them. I’m sort of a combination Judas-goat-mother-figure-recruiting sergeant. I try to talk any veteran who needs it into the program. Bobby needs it. I go and lecture when they call me—one-to-one and group sessions.” He glanced over his shoulder to see if she was listening. She had slid too far back on the horse’s rump, and he reached back to pull her up closer, his strong hand warm on her thigh for a moment. “Hold on, Amelia, before you fall off. Anyway, that’s what I do, and I’ll admit I don’t always go by the book. They get pretty nervous when I lecture. I dropped my pants once when some guy in the back of the room asked me where I read about what it was like over there.” He glanced back at her again. “What’s the matter? Don’t you think a dumb cowpuncher can handle group counseling? I know what it’s like because I’ve been through it, all right? And I took all the courses on therapeutic communication techniques and group dynamics the VAOO wanted me to take.”
Amelia stared at him, thinking how good he must be at recruiting with that forceful personality he had. He’d gotten Bobby into a hospital, and her into a plane. She gave a short sigh. “When I’m angry I say incredibly stupid things, all right?”
He smiled. “So do I—do stupid things too. Like showing my war wounds. You should see what the guys at the hospital gave me as a Christmas present. It’s a belt with a padlock on it.” He was looking over his shoulder again, but this time she made a point of not looking back.
‘Tell me about Bobby,” she said. “Tell me why you didn’t bother to let him know I was coming.”
“I’m getting there,” Mac said. “And don’t be mad at Rita and Pop.”
“I’m not mad at anybody! I just want to understand.”
“All right then. I didn’t tell Bobby because I thought he’d run. That was the one thing he was dreading: burdening you with another problem when you’ve already got plenty of your own.”
Amelia made an impatient gesture. “I told you the other night when you called. I’m not a basket case—”
“I know you’re not, Amelia, but Bobby
thinks he’s responsible for you. You’re his kid sister. Bobby started coming out here on a regular basis about a year ago—when you were so upset about Daniel—”
“I didn’t run to Bobby with my troubles,” Amelia interrupted, feeling defensive again. The land had flattened somewhat now, and Mac headed them toward a random scattering of odd-looking pines.
“That may have been the problem, Amelia,” Mac said, glancing over his shoulder. “You protected him. It’s been a long time since Bobby let himself feel anything—not anger or sadness or happiness. And you were getting to him—not because you asked anything of him,” Mac insisted when she would have interrupted again. “He knew you needed his support whether you asked for it or not. You’re all the family he has, and he cares about you. But he’d shut himself off from his feelings—and there you were. Bobby didn’t know he’d shut his emotions away, Amelia. He couldn’t give you anything, but it was the first time he ever knew that he couldn’t. You see?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. She did see. She saw that she was the only person who really knew how much Bobby’s war experiences had changed him; yet, she’d let it go on. She had done nothing but favor it by helping him hide from himself.
Mac turned in the saddle to look at her. “You’re not going to cry or anything, are you?” he asked, his eyes searching her face. Amelia shook her head, and he turned back around, but her eyes were already filling. She had nothing more to say, and Mac rode them into the spotty shade of the pine trees. The pine smell was familiar even if the shape of the pines was not, making her nostalgic for home, for the safe haven of a place where she’d been young and happy once. She wanted so badly just to rest her head against Mac, but she kept herself rigid, their only body contact the stiff awkwardness of her hands on his waist. Mac suddenly reached behind him to touch her, his big hand in the middle of her back in a sort of a backwards hug.
“Now, don’t you go feeling guilty because you didn’t see it, Amelia. You were too close to him, and his problem isn’t all that obvious.”
Such Rough Splendor Page 6
