Dark Matter: SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE

by Jessica Loft

And then, Wentworth made himself more clear, which is to say, he metaphorically tightened the shackles that already held me in an iron grip. “You misunderstand me, Sadie. It is not only I that will be visiting the West Indies for a year. You, my engaging wife, will attend me.”

  My father wasn’t surprised, which meant that he had been involved in this scheme. Mother, however, made small murmurs of protest on my behalf, which were quickly shut down by the men at the table. For me, the talking became a teeming, pulsing throng of white noise in my ears, stuffing my brain with cotton, rendering me unable to breathe.

  Once the wedding happened, I would be at Wentworth’s beck and call, and would be bound to him and whatever mad scheme the elder Wentworth thought of in order to corral his incompetent son somewhere. The West Indies could be exciting or could be treacherous; in any case, my prospective husband was the last person on earth with whom I wished to experience anything.

  Suddenly, the need to escape my home, my parents, my upcoming wedding, was much more imperative.

  CHAPTER 2

  There was entirely too much talk on the field that day. I had grown used to the quiet, looked forward to it, in fact. When the opportunity came to take the herd a few days down the trail, alone, I was always the first volunteer. After all, cattle didn’t prattle on about the weather or women or the price of beef. Horses didn’t ask me when I was going to move on with my life, or move out of the bunkhouse where the memories were thick. The herd seldom suggested that I take a wife, because a woman could certainly erase the skeins of pain that still held me in their loose grip.

  But finally, my boss, Mr. Smalley, tired of my brooding, sent me back out to the field with a dozen other chattering ranch hands. And the noise was unbearable.

  “Shane, are you planning on contributing to the conversation?” This was from Rex, the trail lead, who talked constantly and about very little. “You’ve been staring at your feet all day, man.”

  I sighed and opened my mouth to respond, but another voice cut in. “Aw, leave him alone, Rex. You know he hasn’t been himself in a while.” It came from behind me; that made it either Tom or Daniel, both decent men.

  “A while?” Rex huffed in the cool morning air. “You mean nine months. That’s a long time to not be yourself, Shane. Is this the new you?”

  “I’m fine, Rex. Just quiet.”

  “Quiet? Hell, you’re like a monk.”

  A chuckle rippled across the assembled ranch hands. There were ten of us, way too many to be assigned to a small group of heifers that needed some extra meat on their bones. The heifers were valuable, Mr. Smalley had said, and so a larger squad of hands was dispatched to ensure they made it out to the alfalfa patch and back. It was a boring job, watching heifers eat alfalfa, but the ranch put us all up in the bunkhouse and fed us three squares a day, so who could complain?

  Suddenly Tom, or maybe Daniel, noticed a heifer was missing. “Wait, fellas. There’s only twenty-four. Supposed to be twenty-five.”

  Rex’s head whipped around, his eyes scanning the cattle assembled in various positions in the surrounding forty yards of sweet alfalfa grass. “You sure?”

  “Sure as I can count,” was the response. I sat straight in the saddle and joined the others in scanning the area. Only twenty-four golden heifers to be sure.

  “Rex, I’ll scout around and look for her.” The opportunity to ride away from the idle chatter was too great to turn away.

  The boss’s shoulders fell. “Well, all right. Sure. Go ahead, but don’t dawdle just so you can have alone time, Shane.”

  “Sure thing, Rex.” The words whipped out of my mouth on the wind; I was already away from the men and cantering back down the path, hoping the missing heifer had wandered far away.

  ***

  Hours later, as we drove the ladies back to the stockyard, including the temporarily lost heifer, Tom drew alongside me and matched his horse’s pace with mine. “Really, though. How are you, Shane?”

  My shoulders lifted in a shrug. How was I, indeed?

  “I mean, we all know why you’re the way you are, man, but in a way Rex was right. Nine months is a long time.”

  The ranch appeared before us on the horizon, a neat assembly of limestone and broad-beamed dwellings. Behind the outcropping, the mountains stood tall as sentries, watching over their charges. It wasn’t perfect, but it was home. Had to be home now. Even without Seth.

  He continued in his good-natured way. “You know what you need, Shane?”

  “Are you going to say a dog? Tell me you’re not going to say that, man.”

  The horses slowed down as we reached the paddock. Rex leaped down first and opened the gate. Being a cow was easy. Being a man was harder.

  “Okay, okay. Not a dog,” Tom said from the saddle, his arms crossed on the pommel. “But you could obviously use a friend.”

  I waved my arm in a panorama around me. Smalley’s ranch was staffed by over fifty guys, most of them around my age. “I have tons of friends.”

  Tom swung his eyes at me. “You live with all of us, but who are you close to?”

  “I was close to Seth.”

  “Yeah,” Tom’s voice was muted. “We all were, Shane. Listen, I think if you even wrote down what you were thinking. Yes” —he spoke over my protests—“your feelings, as it were. Send some letters into the void. See if you feel better. Hell, maybe mail them. To a girl.”

  My eyes rolled to the pink sky. “I knew a girl was going to show up in this scenario.”

  “Hey, women make the world go round, Shane. And the East Coast is filled with lonely ladies, left alone by the war, who would love to start a new adventure.”

  Despite the flicker of interest, I forced a chuckle. “Who’d want to move out here and live on a ranch? With you lot?”

  Tom reached into his saddlebag and threw me a newspaper. The Western Times. “You’d be surprised, Shane. Think about it. Might be nice to have a new friend, a pretty one, even, but especially one who didn’t know your brother.”

  Dust kicked up under his horse’s legs as he turned and trotted towards the barn. He knew better than to stick around after saying what he did. Still, as I ran my finger over the ads—dozens, like Tom said, from women who were willing to move out west, just to be married—it seemed at least a little appealing to have a piece of my life that wasn’t wrapped in Seth’s memory.

  My horse nickered and stomped, bored that we’d stood still for so long. I could relate. “Looking for a change, buddy?” I asked him, running my hand down his speckled flank. “Maybe we could rent a room in town.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The days were trickling away, my wedding drawing near, and unlike any other girl that would be in my position, I was frantic.

  My mother appeared at my bedside with only two weeks to go, leaning over me and peering at my face through narrowed eyes. “You know, Sadie, you really don’t look well. I am worried for you, my dear.”

  Batting my hand at her, I turned my face to the wall. “Mother, let me be. Have you considered that your hovering and worrying over me has caused me to miss my sleep? That perhaps I am exhausted by you and Father and Wentworth and the wedding at large?”

  Mother’s hands twisted together as she stood straight and walked to the foot of the bed, a much better vantage point from which she could cast her disappointment. “Sadie, no! You shouldn’t say such things. Why, your father and Wentworth are working so hard on wedding plans.”

  “Too right, Mother. Wedding plans, and investments, and sugar cane shipments, and oh, yes, whatever horrid place Wentworth and I will be forced to live in when we move to the West Indies.”

  A sigh escaped her thin lips. “Yes, well, that is an unfortunate beginning to a marriage. But at least you’ll have each other.”

  At the thought of being marooned on an island in the Caribbean with only Wentworth for company, I pulled the coverlet over my head. “May I please stay here for another hour and not be forced to think of it?”

  Mother si
ghed again, heaping the guilt upon me with great generosity. “I suppose so, my dear. But please, when you rise from bed, please do so in a better mood. I declare you’re losing your looks over this.”

  “All the better for me,” I muttered as she took the maid and left the room. “Maybe Wentworth will lose interest in me.”

  I considered the many investments my father and my fiancé had together, and realized that such a hope was baseless, looks or not.

  When I was sure my mother had left the room, I reached under my pillow and pulled out my latest letter from Colorado. Its two partners were hidden in the folds of my mattress, and after reading the latest one again, it would join them. But I needed to pass my eyes over the words one last time.

  Dear Miss Sadie,

  You asked about the mountains, which I hear people are calling the Rockies for their great jagged tops. I suppose I could describe them to you. Where I live, on the eastern slope, there is a long, flat plain, yellow, really, with prairie grass—this is perfect for the cows, which stand around and eat all day. They are the laziest animals on God’s earth. I could sit on my horse and watch the cows eat, looking east for miles and miles and see nothing but a great expanse of yellow flatness. But if I turned around in a half circle, and looked behind me, I would see great brown triangles shooting straight out of the ground, high into the air. They look close enough to touch, but are really a day’s ride away. They look like they’re made from a painted box, flat and brown and covered in snow every winter. But as you ride close you realize they’re just the beginning of a hundred miles or more of great, rippling mountains.

  There. I hope I did them justice. Now write to me again and tell me of Charleston, South Carolina. Do you live on a cotton plantation? Does your family have foreigners working the land? Was your city ravaged by the war?

  I will tell you before I sign off, Miss Sadie, that letters from you are delightful. They give me a reason to get up every day. Your friendship is much appreciated.

  Sincerely,

  Shane T.

  I held the letter to my nose and inhaled deeply. It smelled of leather, earth, and sun. The ad I’d placed in the paper was my greatest secret; months ago, after Wentworth announced we’d sail for the Indies after our wedding, I had felt a desperation that greatly contrasted my rather idyllic childhood thus far. The ad simply asked for a way out of my current life, by employment or marriage to an honorable young man.

  Well, was Shane T. honorable? Who could tell? He certainly penned words like a wistful, sensitive man, but he could be any sort of old or lecherous, poor or ugly or ill-tempered—the list of what Shane T. could be went on and on.

  And yet, his letters carried such sadness, along with a hint of hope and often-expressed thankfulness at our letter writing, that I couldn’t help but think there was a good man at the other end of this paper.

  Could Shane T. be my savior? Was it possible that, if asked, Shane T. would consent to bring me out of my entrapment in Charleston to be his wife in Colorado? At the thought of leveling such a blow at my parents, I grew cold, and colder still at the idea of drawing the ire of a man as powerful as Wentworth. It was insane and hardly bore thinking.

  My eyes fell to the letter once more, the writing neat, the paper holding deep indentations from the pen nib, as if Shane T. pressed down very deliberately as he wrote. They give me a reason to get up every day, he’d written. My heart flipped a turn at the words.

  Before my courage could fail me, I leaped from my bed and, still in my bedclothes with my hair falling around me in its rag curls, I sat at my writing desk and took up a pen and paper.

  Dear Shane,

  I will tell you a story of Charleston, of a girl who is soon to be married against her will, and soon to be taken away from her home, to a horrid place, with a man she fears…

  CHAPTER 4

  “You’re going to town again?” Tom asked, his voice surprising me. Despite myself I jumped, spilling coffee down the front of my chambray shirt.

  “Thanks for that,” I said, moving to the long table where the ranch hands took their meals, my hands dripping with hot coffee and my pride itching. A quick glance around me put me at ease; it was just Tom and me within earshot. Tom displayed a streak of kind sensitivity that our fellow hands didn’t necessarily share.

  After mopping myself somewhat clean, I glanced at Tom again and found him ear to ear with mirth. “What’s funny?”

  His eyes narrowed on top of his grin. “You are. Ever since that talk we had a few months back, it seems like you’ve turned a corner.”

  A pleasant feeling blossomed in my gut. “Really?”

  Tom’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Don’t get all excited. You’re not cheery or anything, kid, but you do seem…hopeful.”

  “Huh.”

  “And,” Tom pointed a big finger in my face. “You ride into town an awful lot.”

  “Town” was little more than a spray of buildings: a feed store, a tiny millinery, and a post office. Fortunately positioned about thirty miles northwest of Denver, our small burg promised to grow, as long as the families kept flooding west, only to find themselves bogged down in the Colorado territory. The mountains tended to put a grinding halt to the wagon trains.

  I drained what was left of my coffee and swallowed my biscuit. “Speaking of which, I’m going to head to the post office. Do you need me to pick anything up for you?”

  “Sure,” Tom chuckled. “How about a silver claim?”

  “We all want those,” I returned the chuckle and left the drafty dining hall to fetch my horse, noticing, as Tom had, that I really was looking forward to each day, something that hadn’t happened since Seth died.

  During the short ride from the ranch into Boulder, I took in great lungfuls of cool spring air and drank in the sight of the mountains rising up from the ground around me. My mind turned to the girl in Charleston; well, I thought she was a girl. Whoever sat at the other side of that pen could be a forty-year-old Chinese man, for all I could say. I chewed my lip, pondering this. No. She was a girl, a young, scared girl who made me feel happy for the first time in months. And if her letter bore the truth, she was about to be whisked away to the sea with a dodgy old man who worked for her father. I didn’t even know her and the whole thing bothered me.

  Her last letter shared words that pierced me.

  I do not blame my mother and father, or Wentworth, really. I am simply a person who doesn’t appreciate what my world wishes to give me. What I want from the world is different from what it’s offering. I wish to tell it no. I wish to force a change.

  With these words, I didn’t care if she was an old Chinese man. They resonated with me. Like this girl, the world had handed me a rotten hand: Typhoid took my parents, so that Seth and I had to travel west to find jobs. Hunger, sickness, all the things one would expect befell us one by one. In Denver we found work; for years we bounced around various ranches together before moving north, to Mr. Smalley’s outfit.

  The world had turned things around for me, I felt, until it took Seth. Like Sadie Collins, I wanted to tell the world no.

  Is it at all possible for you to provide a way out for me, Shane? You don’t have to love me or provide for me, but if I can secure a promise of marriage, at least, it could get me out of Charleston. It doesn’t have to be true love, but could you at least promise to marry me?

  The idea was preposterous, bringing a woman across the country to do what—hole up in the bunkhouse with me and the other ranch hands? I’d have to rent a room in Boulder for her. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. It was crazy to even consider it. She could be the most awful person I’d ever met in my life—rude, annoying, impatient, shallow. She could be riddled with faults.

  By the time I hobbled my horse in town I had done a fine job of listing all of the reasons in my head to refuse Sadie’s offbeat proposal. They were excellent in scope and depth. They made the best of sense. Which is why I walked directly to the bank and withdrew a small bit of money, eno
ugh to pay for a train ticket from Charleston to Denver. From the stationer I bought an open-ended ticket and followed the main street to the telegram office. As I walked my eyes scanned the upper row of buildings, hoping to see a sign that said “Room for Rent.”

  The telegram office was open; I dictated sparse words to the operator for Sadie:

  Miss Sadie: I say yes. Enclosed find a ticket from Charleston to Denver. Send telegram with your arrival date. Offer you marriage and whatever comes will come. I am trustworthy. Shane T.

  In my heart was a heady mixture of fear and delight as I watched the operator tap out the words. Was it possible that a batch of letters sent back and forth for the past three months had turned into this—me inviting a woman to live with me at the ranch? I felt crazy; I almost asked the operator to stop.

  While I was holding my breath the telegram was sent. It was gone, the words out there in the void somewhere, and I couldn’t pull them back. But I’d said no to the world and was changing the game, just as Sadie said. If things worked out, within a few weeks, a month, Miss Sadie Collins would step off the train in Denver and marry me.

  And then what?

  CHAPTER 5

  The house was a flurry of frenetic activity, all related to the wedding. Correspondence and gifts arrived daily. My mother was constantly on the move, rattling off orders to the maids and to my father, who grumbled at the mounting expenses. How, I mused, are we paying for the wedding, when the whole reason to marry me off was to ensure my father’s partnership with Wentworth’s firm?

  Well, none of that mattered to me anymore. My hand gripped Shane’s telegram, firm in its honorable promise of marriage, the words sparse and yet soothing to my heart. If Shane in person was even a small fraction of the force behind the words I’d been reading, I already preferred him to Wentworth.

  But I was getting ahead of myself. The first order of business was to manage my timely departure from my house, with or without the consent of my parents. As far as Wentworth was concerned, I didn’t give a damn about him. Some other Charleston family would have their young daughter offered up within days of the news. Thoughts of my parents did come with a slight twinge of regret, and I pondered the best way to deal with that. Head on, in which I told them of Shane, of my dissatisfaction not only with Wentworth but of our life in Charleston. Could they possibly understand what Shane and I both seemed to intrinsically grasp?