I tell the woman I’ve lost someone, too. My sister. I tell her I held my sister’s hand while she died.
I don’t share these details of my life with many people, but here with this grieving woman, it feels okay to be vulnerable. We know sharp loss; we know each other.
The woman puts her rough hand on my cheek and shakes her head.
“Girl,” she says in a pitying tone. “You don’t understand. I lost my child.”
I start to mutter a weak apology, but the woman cuts me off.
“It was no accident. The bees, their coming. My son, falling.” The woman takes a swig from a flask and then glares into the glowing coals of the old fire. “You spend more time with that girl than the rest of us. You know what she can do.”
It should come across as completely random: the association of Bell—that girl—with the deterioration of camp and the arrival of the bees, but in that drunken moment, it doesn’t. It makes sense.
That girl. Not Farrah, as Odette thought. Bell.
“What do you know?” I ask.
“There are no accidents here,” the woman repeats. “Years ago that girl was angry with her mother, something childish about not being given a horse of her own. The mother rode out, ignoring the fit her daughter was throwing, and almost instantly a clear day turned dark. Out in the distance, a wall of dust crashed down from the sky. We all watched from the fields as the woman’s body was carried up, spinning.” The old woman lifts her hand and twirls her index finger. “At first the wind was so strong, it ripped off bits of cloth from her dress, but then, all of a sudden, it stopped. The dust cloud disappeared. The woman hung there for a moment, suspended, her mouth open in shock. Then, she fell. For three days after, pieces of her torn dress were carried on the wind, drifting across the maguey.”
This woman is not trying to convince me that her story is real. She is not gripping my hands in hers and pleading with her voice and her eyes. They all watched Bell’s mother get swept up into the sky. Just like that. Simple. Bell and Bell’s petty anger caused a freak windstorm. Not even a week ago, I would’ve scoffed at this woman and what I would’ve thought was her inability to grasp reality and responsibility.
But tonight. The stars in the night sky are overwhelming in number and in their random pattern. Some are glowing. Some are dim. Some are clustered, and others seem to stand apart. Someone has to be the first to point out how they connect. Constellations aren’t obvious until the moment they are. Then you wonder how you hadn’t been able to see them before when the pictures are all so clearly there, telling a story.
Bell was angry. Bell brought the wind that killed her mother. Bell was worried about her sister. Bell ruined the cornmeal. Bell made that mastiff attack Rosa. She brought the bees. Is this logic?
The woman hands over her flask. I tip my head back to take a drink, but keep my eyes closed so I can’t see the stars. When I open them, I notice Odette, standing at the edge of a crowd of girls, staring at the ranch house.
I stand, wobbling. The old woman grasps my hand until I find my balance. Suddenly, it is crucial that I get to Odette and tell her she was wrong. It’s not Farrah casting spells. It’s Bell.
I’m giddy with the news as I stumble over to her. She turns as she senses me coming. Her head tilts; her brows shove together. She’s peering at me like I’m some curious creature. I realize I’m smiling. That must look so strange to her.
“Hey.” I grab her wrist and pull her away from the others. “Remember what you were saying the other night . . .” I lower my voice. “About Farrah?”
Without all her waves of blond hair, Odette’s large deer eyes appear even larger. She grips my hand, and again I’m startled by how strong this skin-and-bones girl is.
“What did she do?” she asks. “We should go up there, Sarah Jac. Tonight. I know which room is hers. I’ve seen her standing in her window before. I even know where we can get a knife. We have to find the evil and cut it out. We’ll be heroes.”
I balk. This isn’t how I wanted this secret-sharing to go. How did I want it to go?
There’s a buzzing in my ears. It sounds like the bee swarm, but I know it’s from drinking too much. I sway a bit to one side, but Odette’s iron grip holds me steady.
I can’t possibly tell her about Bell. Bell is just a child. I can’t bear the thought of Odette creeping into her room to carve her up with some rusty knife. Maybe she’s not a witch. That old woman—maybe she was lying. Maybe she made it up. I wasn’t there the day Bell’s mother supposedly got swept up into the air. I didn’t see it.
“What did Farrah do, Sarah Jac?” Odette urges.
I shake my head, but I can’t for the life of me get my thoughts straight. I’m not thinking right. I’m thinking, Protect Bell.
“She killed her mother,” I blurt. “That old lady over there told me. When she was a little girl, Farrah got mad at her mother for not letting her get her own horse so she cast a spell. The mother was tossed off her horse by a freak storm. They say Farrah caused it.”
Odette releases my hand and takes a step back.
“But we can’t go up there,” I say. “No one would think we’re heroes. They’d execute us.”
“We have to save James,” she whispers, placing her hand at her heart. “We have to get him out of there.”
“We will. Just give me some time to make a plan.”
I’M ON MY way to the bunkhouse when a figure emerges from the darkness between two buildings. My reaction time is slow. I stumble back just as a hand reaches out to catch me. It takes me a second to realize that the hand belongs to James. He’s still wearing the clothes of an upper-class stranger, but the two top buttons of his shirt are undone, and I can see the sheen of sweat across his face and throat. Our hands clasp together, automatic, but his for some reason feels different. He leads me around the perimeter of camp to our spot behind the mess building, the same dark place where he first introduced me to Britain.
We haven’t even reached a full stop before James brings his mouth to mine. He’s also been drinking. His lips are laced with the sweet smoke of tequila.
He pulls away too soon and studies me. His fingers dance gently across the fading welts on my face and collarbone. That’s what’s different: his hands. They’re not rough anymore. The callouses are gone, sloughed off. His skin is soft; his touch, gentle—like he’s sorry.
I don’t want gentle. Or sorry. I press my mouth against his, desperately.
“You’re different,” I rasp. “More . . . put together.”
James responds by grabbing a fistful of my shirt, pulling it up to expose my bare stomach. “Ruin me, then, Sarah. Pull me apart.”
My hands grope at his face and his neck. What’s happening isn’t pretty, but it’s what we both need. As always, we speak to each other best without words, through our bodies, the way they crash and intertwine.
Tonight our bodies say: Thank you, thank you. They say: I thought you were gone, but now you’re back. They say: I’ve missed your heat. They say: I want you. Just you. We will always be together. It must be this way.
TWENTY-THREE
The next morning, as I’m waiting in the coa line and grinning to myself despite a raging pulque headache that even Farrah’s medicine won’t fix, Ortiz comes to tell me that Bell is ready to resume her lessons.
“So, she’s better now?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I’ll leave that for you to decide.”
IN THE YARD, the two white horses are saddled and ready. Bell is there, but also Farrah, and they’re both dressed in riding clothes. Bell is staring at the ground, sucking absently on a piece of hair. She couldn’t be less of a threat. She’s all innocence, not a witch of the wind. I’m disappointed in myself that I even entertained the thought.
Even mostly covered by her hat, Farrah’s hair shines. James stands near the stables, talking to Ortiz and pretending like I’m not here. His hands are stuffed in the front pockets of a different—also new—pair of pants.
<
br /> I miss those hands already, even if they’re different now.
“Bell said she’s enjoyed her time with you,” Farrah says, tugging on her ivory-colored riding gloves and securing her hat. “I thought it might be nice if the three of us could go out together.”
A command, not a suggestion. Farrah heads over to mount the new white horse and motions for Bell to go to King.
“We won’t be gone long,” she adds. “We’re expected back in time for a late breakfast with our father.”
I help Bell into the saddle and glance back at James. He’s staring at me with eyes that are rimmed red from lack of sleep. He doesn’t lift a hand to wave good-bye.
IT’S HOT. EVERY morning is hot, but this one is particularly punishing. Farrah, naturally, seems unaffected. There are no little lines of sweat streaming down from where her head meets her hat. She’s not wilting. She keeps her posture straight and her eyes focused on the mountainous horizon.
We ride in unsettling silence. There are questions I could ask: How was your trip? How are you feeling? Or things I could say: Thank you for the medicine; it really helped. Odette—a girl you’ve never met—wants to kill you. But I stay silent. Farrah might think I’m rude, or she might not think of me at all.
Our already short ride is cut even shorter because Bell starts complaining of a headache and claims she needs water. She’s grumpy today, more so than usual. We’re headed back to the house before we’ve even gone two miles.
“My sister tells me you know how to play the violin,” Farrah eventually says.
“I used to. It’s been a while.”
“Was this back on the farm?”
“Yes.” I pause. “My mother taught me the basics.”
Something to the east catches Farrah’s eye. “Look at that,” she says, jutting her chin.
I swivel to the side, and sure enough, there in the distance, a tall, thin funnel shimmies across the plain. It’s a dust devil. James once told me they form when hot air rises up quickly and smacks against a pocket of cold air. This is the desert. Hot air and cold air smack against each other all the time. So why does this far-off dust devil suddenly seem like some kind of omen?
“Bad luck,” Bell mumbles, as if reading my thoughts.
Farrah ignores her sister. “So, anyway, Sarah Jac . . .” The horses pick up their pace. They see their yard up ahead and anticipate shade and water. “I just wanted to let you know that you’re welcome to stay at the Real Marvelous as long as you see fit, and I hope we can become friends. You won’t have to work in the fields anymore, and Papá has already started on the plans to build you your own comfortable outbuilding so that you can be in close proximity to us and the horses.”
Farrah’s talking in that particular way of hers again, using too many words, sounding too formal and neat.
“I’m sorry,” I say, unable to hide my confusion. “I don’t have to work?”
Farrah smiles, bigger this time, revealing a set of white, straight teeth. I realize then that her eyes are also whiter, not so yellowed like they were before. Or maybe it’s just a trick of the light. “James mentioned that you’re very . . . oh, how did he put it? Industrious. He said you weren’t really an idle person, which is why we thought you would enjoy continuing to help Ortiz with the horses. We’re expecting a few more to arrive soon, and we’ll need to expand the stables and practice yard. We just wouldn’t want a member of James’ family to be a common field hand. That was one of James’ requests, and I agree completely.”
I can see the yard up ahead and James standing at the gate, waiting for us to return. Farrah waves to him, but he doesn’t wave back. His hands are still in his pockets.
“James is making requests?” I ask.
Farrah scans my face, her smile faltering. Doubt flickers in her now-healthy eyes. She recovers quickly, though, and snaps her smile back into place.
“Of course,” she says cheerfully. “We’ll talk more about it at breakfast. I’m sure you’re hungry.”
Farrah kicks her horse into a trot. Once she reaches the yard, she stops, dismounts, and hands the reins to Ortiz. She runs up to James, gives him a kiss on the cheek, and threads an arm through his. I watch them make their way toward the house, their steps matching in time, their heads bowed together.
Finally, James takes his left hand out from his pocket, and there, on his ring finger, is a metal band that gleams like fire in the morning sun.
I’M SEATED AT a long table in the Gonzales house.
There’s talking and the clinking of silverware. Gonzales is there, at the head, and next to him is his overseer. Bell is to my left. Across from her is Farrah. Across from me is James, my cousin. In my mind, I’m circling him like a hawk. I hope he can feel my sharp gaze tearing deep gashes into his skin.
Everyone is eating. There are eggs and fried potatoes, rolls and fresh coffee. Bacon, even. My plate is full, but I’m just moving food around with my fork. I don’t eat breakfast.
Bell is not happy. She’s glaring at James, hawk-like, just like I am.
“She’ll need a bit of time to get used to the idea of having new members of the family,” Farrah says, reading her sister’s expression. “It’s been just the three of us for such a long time now.”
Oh, but I don’t want to be in this family. This family is nothing like me, and it’s nothing like James. This family eats its breakfast off porcelain dishes using matching silver utensils in a house that’s cool and breezy and smells of piñon pine. No one in this family is concerned with their body stink or parasites or if they’re getting enough protein each day or with the fact that their shirt has a hole in the elbow that has needed patching for weeks.
Farrah is chattering on about how charming and kind James is and about the heartfelt vows he wrote himself and read aloud at the courthouse in El Paso just a handful of days ago. She fiddles with her ring, a simple silver band. She’s so proud. She clasps on to James’ arm and gifts him with a dazzling smile, bright like a diamond.
I catch Gonzales’ gaze, and he raises an eyebrow. He knows things are being left unsaid, and it seems to trouble him. I can’t imagine why he’d let a field hand marry his precious daughter, unless maybe he caught them in some kind of compromising position. My stomach lurches at the thought.
James is avoiding me. He takes a sip of coffee, as if everything at this family breakfast is just as it should be. That little sip is my breaking point.
“What is this?” I snap. “We never talked about this.”
“Sarah Jac.” James reaches over to give Farrah a reassuring squeeze on her knee. “I don’t have to run every single detail of my life past you.”
“Since when?”
James laughs, tensely, like he’s embarrassed of me, like I’m the one making everyone uncomfortable here. “I realize this is sudden, but we’ll have to talk later. Why don’t you just eat some breakfast now, huh?”
I’m imagining creative ways to tear James to shreds as Bell quietly excuses herself to go to the bathroom. Gonzales launches into a gripe about how the mail seems to be getting more and more unreliable, and the worker standing behind him makes a promise to look into it. Another worker comes by and refills coffee from a silver urn. James thanks the man and stirs in two lumps of sugar.
Only now does he look up at me, holding my gaze as he takes another sip of coffee.
What are you doing? I ask silently. What happened? Are you under a spell?
But then, I wonder: Are we still working the ruse? Did James actually go so far as to marry a girl who is about to die in order to take over her fortune? Talk about hard hearts.
“Really Sarah, you should eat something,” James says, lowering his cup to his saucer with a delicate clink. “I hear you haven’t been feeling well.”
I push my chair back from the table and mutter some excuse about forgetting something in the stables. Really I’m hoping to find some corner of the house and that James will follow me to it. I’m in the far hall when I hear the s
craping of a chair. I cough, as a signal. Sure enough James finds me, like he always does. He takes my elbow and leads me around a corner, and then around another. We end up in a corridor near Bell’s white bedroom. James spins me around to face him, and his expression is an unreadable knot.
“I can’t believe you actually married her,” I say. “So, what’s the plan now?”
“There isn’t any plan.” James smells clean. I always want to be the one to touch him when he’s clean. That scent, it dulls me a little, takes away my focus.
Ruin me, then, Sarah. Pull me apart.
“Listen to me,” he commands, giving me a little shake. “This isn’t part of any ruse. You can’t be here anymore.”
Silence hangs between us; from the other room, the silverware clinks.
“I don’t get it,” I finally say.
But, I do get it. I just don’t want to admit it. I’ve lost James. I’ve always thought I would, but I never thought it would happen like this. I’ve always thought he’d start to feel like I was weighing him down—that I was a burden—and that he’d come to realize he’d be better off alone. I’ve never thought, though, that he would trade me for someone else.
I’m ashamed of myself for asking my next question because it’s so sad, so last-ditch, but I ask it anyway. “Is this because I lost our money?”
“It’s not . . .” James stops, frustrated. He takes a quick glance over his shoulder and then lowers his voice. “I can’t explain this to you right now. You have to go.”
“Go where?” My shame flips to anger. “Go East? Where there’s water and boats and trees to climb? I gave Lane’s necklace away so I could get you that pendant.”
All the Wind in the World Page 15
