by Lass Small
He said, “It’s a fresh wind.”
In shock, she retorted, “It’s a storm!”
He nodded very agreeably and added, “I’d noticed.”
It was roaring as if it was furious with all the land and it was rattling its war clubs and threatening. It was so huge and the winds were so strong in their gusting that it was intimidating for her. He didn’t seem to mind the storm at all.
Kyle went to the wind side of her and took her arm. His body would break the force of the gusting winds. She followed him outside onto the screened porch. She was glad for the boots he’d found that almost fit. The snow had come through the screens and was swirled on the floor of the porch.
It is shocking to a TEXAS woman to see such invading snow. Dust, a woman could understand, but snow? She looked beyond. The dark clouds were very low and visibility was limited. There was snow blown across in the distance between the house and the barn. The drifts were a surprise.
She asked, “Will the drifts be okay?”
And he replied easily, “They will for anybody worth their salt.”
That salt comment went clear back to the times of the Romans when the men in wars were paid in salt. It was that precious. Lauren supposed it was easier to send some men out to the salt mines than it was to share the captured gold.
Kyle went first, breaking the trail for her. That was only right. But the wind was wicked and invigorating! She kept her head ducked because the blowing snow was harsh. They got to the barn, and Kyle got the door open. They stumbled inside.
The two cows and the horses looked at the invaders with mild curiosity. Several dogs came with wagging tails.
“Who piled the hay?” she asked. For it was baled and stacked against the northwest wall.
“That’s a barrier for the wind in the wintertime. We have a long way to the northwest that is open and there’s nothing to stop the winds. We’ve a couple of groves that we’re getting started to slow it all down before it hits us thisaway.”
The hay was loose in the loft. And Lauren gasped because there were chickens up there!
She asked, “Chickens?”
Kyle was courteously greeting the barn animals, the gathered horses and the dogs. He replied to her question, with another question, “Where do you think I’d get fresh eggs?”
“The grocery?”
“It’s a way to there. This is handier.”
He took off his coat and hung it from a peg on one of the stalls. He had a gun.
That was sobering. Why a gun? So of course, she asked. And he said, “You just never know who’ll turn up. Best to be ready for it.”
“Have…you ever…shot anyone?”
He promised seriously, “No women.”
That wasn’t particularly soothing. “Why…did you…shoot anyone?”
“I found a guy trying to take my milk cow…this here is the one, her name is Sally.”
Pale faced and with quite large eyes, she asked, “Did you-kill-the rustler?”
“Almost.” He loved her serious word for the thieving man. “He’d hid a gun and gave me this.” Kyle lifted his Stetson and showed a white line on his scalp. Obviously the thief had tried to kill Kyle!
She was soberly silent. She moved around. She spoke kindly to the dogs but she didn’t touch them. They realized she didn’t want to so they allowed her room enough.
Lauren watched Kyle with the animals. They loved him. He petted the cows enough. They turned their heads to watch him. The horses came and pushed to be petted. And the dogs stood around laughing silently with opened mouths and wagging tails.
How strange it was to her that all those bodies responded to Kyle’s petting, to his touches, to being held and hugged. She understood. She liked his attention and touches, too. Did that mean she was also an animal? That she shared all the feelings of those speechless devotees? Probably.
So he loved the animals. He would be that way with children.
She was going rather rapidly down the mental road of knowing this man. She’d been with him for something over twenty-four hours. And she was considering what kind of daddy he’d be? It must be her age. She was ready to settle down and become a broody hen?
And she was amused by herself.
Kyle forked up the animal debris and spread clean straw on the barn’s dirt floor.
She watched, then she went into the loft and found the eggs.
Kyle bragged on her, and she laughed.
Although the chickens weren’t at all interested, the animals followed the pair to the barn door. None of them offered to follow the humans across the wind torn, snowy yard to the house. The animals nuzzled Kyle and the dogs put their heads under his hands.
Kyle rubbed them all. He talked to them and told them to keep warm and to protect the chickens. The dogs found that especially funny. The chickens never came out of the loft with the dogs down there.
So Kyle carried the pails of milk back to the house. He walked to her left to brunt the strong winds. And they got back okay.
He put the pails down on the porch and saw that she got inside the house all right. Then he went through another door to pour the milk into the big container. It would be collected by the next day if the roads were clear enough. In that room there was no heat and the milk was kept cold.
Kyle went back to the kitchen and shed his coat, muffler and hat. He put those on pegs by the door. Then he washed his hands. Drying them on a towel, he watched Lauren. He liked having her there.
Then he tried to remember any other woman he’d had there whom he’d wanted to stay with him. Not just be around for a while, but to stay. He wanted this one to stay.
It was dark by then. The winds kept it up. The whistling and moaning was interesting when one was inside and listening and not outside and coping. He wondered how the hands were doing. He wondered if they’d lost any of the beeves.
He was going to get the satellite cellular hookup. That would save a lot of wondering, worrying and time.
Lauren asked, “What has distracted you?”
He grinned. She liked his attention. He’d been distracted…from her. He said, “I’m thinking about getting a satellite cellular hookup, so the men can call in. They’re trailing the herd and keeping the beeves from tumbling down or over anything. Rough work in this weather. It’s good for them. It tests them.”
“And you love it?”
He replied logically, “It’s all I know.”
“You went to school.”
“I studied doing this.” He lifted his hands out palm up to indicate what was around them.
“So you like this part of the world?”
She didn’t? “Yeah.” He said it soberly. So he asked, “You gonna marry me?” When she didn’t respond instantly, he added, “You’d save me from other women.”
She blinked. Then she smiled slightly and replied the ringer, “You’ll have to ask my daddy.”
“What if he says ‘No.’“
“You’ll have asked. I’ll decide.”
He smiled. He had a great smile. He said, “So you think it’s all up to you?”
Studying him, her eyes smiling, she explained, “I have to know you better.”
He was rather elaborately shocked. “How much better can you know me? I’ve shown, you what all I can do. I can roll you around on the bed, and I can cook pretty good. I can ride a horse, drive a car and wrestle down any recalcitrant creature there is around here, and I can milk cows.”
“We’ll see what else you can do.”
“Uh-oh, you’re planning on putting me through the wringer?”
She soothed with some sassiness, “I’ll try to keep you whole.”
Nine
Kyle built a perfect fire. It was in the fireplace, naturally, and it was just right. Lauren put pillows from the sofas on the floor, but he put them back on the closest sofa and sat her there.
He explained logically, “We have to be comfortable. We’re gonna watch the flames and decide what they mean and what
they look like.”
With interest, she said of her own family, “We never did that.”
So he told her, “It’s just a whole lot like being out on a hill and figuring out what the clouds look like.” Then in an aside he admitted, “Most of those I’ve seen are triple X-rated.”
“How shocking!” Really a fake exclamation. She needed practice.
He exclaimed, “Look! That tall flame? She’s naked and writhing in lust.”
Lauren stared. And she could see exactly what he meant! But she asked, “Where?”
“Over on the left. The tallest flame!”
She made a disbelieving sound quite well and retorted, “That’s a waterfall.”
He scoffed, “Nnn—Yeah! It is! It’s fiery water rolling down her naked body. Wow!”
“I’ll look for the man who’s making her behave that way.” She found a flame-toad sitting blunt and sleepy-eyed. “A toad. Not as big as the creature in the Star Wars series, but adequate.”
He couldn’t find it.
She looked for a dog. A big, dominating one. She found a man’s flickering form hovering over a burning log whose low flame was a supine woman.
Lauren thought how strange she’d never seen such porn in any of the other fires she’d sat and watched. She’d never really looked at them with salacious interest?
She was looking then at the fire the hot man, next to her, holding her, had concocted. She saw a baby squatted down and reaching. Its attention was riveted on something. And her lips parted in alarm that the flame-child would be harmed…by the fire.of which it was a part?
The crackling of the flames was soothing. Was it because, down through the ages, fire had been such a precious, needed part of human lives? Or was it because it was so comforting that there was the bonding with a controlled, deliberate fire?
Lauren asked, “Where do you get your wood for the fire?”
Kyle shrugged. “Debris—storms.”
“Trees are getting scarce.” She felt the need to inform him of that problem.
He knew. He said, “We have more mesquites than anybody needs.”
“They do survive,” she agreed. “Keep some.”
“Okay.”
She explained to him, “You can plant oaks and hackberry and pines.”
He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “We grow trees. We now fence off portions of our land to protect the trees when they’re young. It’ll be twenty years before they’re big enough that we open it back to the cattle. In that time, we’ll fence off other sections. We are very aware of how precious trees have become.”
When they could no longer hold their eyes open, Kyle said he had to check on the barn. He’d take the dog with him. He left the gun with Lauren. “Do you know how to use it?”
Lauren frowned as she looked at Kyle. “What all do you want me to shoot?”
So he took her out onto the back screened porch. There, he opened the far door. Then he came back beside her before he suggested, “Hit that nub on the bottom branch.”
She hit the branch next to it. She hadn’t considered the force of the wind on the bullet, at that distance.
He went to the barn after he admonished her to keep the door locked and gave her a signal that she would recognize as his. After a while, he knocked the three knocks they’d agreed on. Then he knocked once.
She let him inside.
“Well, I am certainly glad you allowed me back inside.” Kyle was so earnest. “The barn would be a lonely place to spend the night.”
She scoffed, “With all those animals?”
He slowly shook his head as he said very seriously, “None of them, not one of them. strips.”
She tilted back her head. “Neither do I. Not after today’s romps. Forget it.”
As they went up the stairs to bed, he asked Lauren, “Which room?”
She became very serious. He was going to let her sleep alone in that big house? So she soberly looked around, waiting for him to suggest she just sleep with him.
He waited…silently.
Finally, she gestured minimally to the last room upstairs. He walked to the doorway and looked at it. Then he shook his head and said, “No sheets.”
“You only have one pair of sheets?” She was unbelieving.
“How many do we need?”
She smiled a little. “Choose a room for me.”
“We’ll try this one.”
With his comment on no sheets, she inquired, “Are there sheets?”
And he bobbed his head seriously. “I changed them when you were showering.”
She nodded slowly. They would sleep together. How could her sated body be so pleased? He was warm. He’d keep her from freezing? The furnace was back working. It was cool but not cold in the house. She didn’t need him to warm her.
She wouldn’t mention that.
* * *
It was just a good thing they’d gone to bed fairly early. He was greedy. She laughed the first time. The second she murmured and nuzzled him. The third time she asked, “Been alone a lot lately?”
But that last time, at dawn, she never really wakened enough to help with her seduction. He didn’t need any help. Her night was cozy and loving. And she was warm.
When she wakened in the silence the next morning, she couldn’t sort out what was different. He was gone. That’s what was different.
How could thirty some hours, glued to a man, make that normal? She was alone. No. The dog was on the bottom of the bed.
With stern censor, she asked the dog, “Are you supposed to be on the bed?”
He stretched and sighed in a tired way. Then he closed his eyes.
She watched him. He opened his eyes a little to see what she was doing.
She said, “Get off the bed.”
The dog lay back and sighed mightily. Then he heaved up as if he weighed three hundred pounds and couldn’t possibly move, but he was trying.
She didn’t deter him. He stood like the statue of the last Indian’s horse, head down, exhausted, but she said no more than, “Get off the bed.”
He was a ham bone. He went carefully to the edge of the bed and looked into the abyss.
Again, she said, “Get off the bed.”
He tried to find a careful way. He was brilliant.
She said, “Git!”
He stretched one foot down and tested the strength of the floor, then he carefully put down the other front foot and stayed that way, half on and half off, but she said, “Git!” again.
The dog allowed his back feet to join the front ones on the floor and he stayed bent up that way with all fours on a very small portion of the floor, like it was an ice floe on an ice-clogged, rushing river.
Lauren’s eyes looked up to see Kyle in the doorway, watching. She asked, “Is he a movie dog?”
“No. He does all that from his own imagination. He is entertaining. That’s why I brought him into the house. I figured when you got bored with me and lost interest, he’d distract you and entertain you all the while when I was using your body.”
“You’ve sure enough done that. How come you could walk clear over there?”
“Homer let me get out of bed. You’ve worn him to a nub. I ought to be able to control my own life now for a couple of hours—while he recoups.”
“Do all men name their—their—uh…”
“Sex?”
She blushed.
He bit his grin and replied, “The guys I know did. Sex has a mind of its own. We males struggle against it for civilized control.”
“You’re not sixteen.”
“Yeah. I thought I was passing that stage just recently, but then I met you and Homer just-took over.” Kyle spread out his arms in a manner that revealed all his tribulations.
She laughed.
He came over to the bed, pushing the oddly positioned dog away on the floor, and he took over the bed and its squealing-laughing occupant.
Eventually, he swatted her bottom in a very satisfied manner an
d told her, “Get up and greet the day! I’m gonna make tortillas for breakfast.”
For…breakfast. She again tried to remember if she’d ever before eaten tortillas for breakfast. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. She got up.
Kyle wanted to shower with her. She was wobbled. Shower? So she was washed selectively and her hair was a mess!
He dried her hair with a strange and reluctant blower one of his sisters had thrown away. He assured Lauren, “It works. It’s just a little eccentric.”
It didn’t blow any fuses.
He put a soft, feather pillow on her chair. It was a good move. She sat and he made the tortillas from scratch. The were results were a little odd but actually delicious. She knew they were because she got one of the first ones to “test” it.
He’d watched her eat the tortilla. She had been rather elaborately studying and contemplative. She had tilted her head and squinted her eyes as she chewed. She’d finally nodded her head in acceptance.
And he laughed. He mussed her hair, and she protested. He said he’d curry it. She replied, no, thanks, anyway. He said she was selfish. How else was he to do something in order to understand horses’ tails?
She threw the morning paper at him.
The morning paper? She looked around and listened. The sounds of the storm were gone.
She got up from the chair quite slowly and quietly went to the west kitchen window. All was peaceful. The western sky was coming on as blue. The storm was over. She turned and just looked at Kyle. It was over. The storm, being isolated with Kyle-that magical interlude was finished.
He instantly told her, “We have snowdrifts.”
“Does the phone work?”
He didn’t reply for several long seconds, then he said, “I’ll check it.”
“I need to call Goldilocks. How long before I can get out of here?”
His face went past serious and became sad. “Pretty soon. I’ll have to check it.”
“My car—”
“I called to have it towed.” He had just admitted the phone had worked. He held his breath. “I called almost right away when you got here.” There, she would believe that he hadn’t tried the phone since.
