I jogged back downstairs to find Mathias drinking a beer at the table, grinning and amused as he watched Case, who sat holding the picture of Tish cupped in his palm; all of the boys, with the exception of Garth, were crowded behind him, listening respectfully as Case explained with awe in his tone, “This is my future wife, guys, see here.” He traced a fingertip over her face. “Her name is Patricia. She lives back east. Isn’t she just so beautiful? Look at her eyes. They’re like sapphires. Like the morning sky.” He seemed to be searching his mind. He grinned and concluded, “Like all the most beautiful blue things I’ve ever known.”
Mathias hid a snicker behind his knuckles. I knew he was thinking of how Tish would react to Case’s mooning. And, oh, how I wished my sister could see and hear it; she would flip out all over the place, snatch the picture back from Case, thump him over the head and give him a piece of her mind. This poor sweet guy had no idea what he would be getting into with my outspoken tomboy of a sister, and I giggled, unable to help it.
“Hi, honey,” Mathias said as I approached.
“You got any more sisters?” asked one of the middle Rawley brothers, possibly Quinn. The boys ranged in age from about eighteen to twelve, with the littlest Rawley brother being the youngest. He was probably only eight or nine.
“Yes, that’s my other sister, Ruthann,” I explained, indicating her; in the picture, Ruthie leaned on her elbows on the dock between Tish and Millie Jo, her long curls pinned up in a twist. I’d taken the picture in the middle of Ruthie laughing about something, her face turned slightly to the left, and her carefree joy was obvious even in this immobile image; she looked happy and lovely, the sun glinting on her soft bare shoulders and highlighting the gold in her irises.
“Maybe I can marry her,” Quinn said, but his enthusiasm was cut short as Marshall interjected succinctly, “Nope.”
Quinn punched at his brother’s arm, which Marshall neatly sidestepped; he explained to Quinn in no uncertain terms, “She’s mine, little bro. Someday.”
“Any others?” Quinn asked, undeterred, and I raised my eyebrows at Mathias, who hid another smile behind a sip of beer.
“You guys are animals,” Garth said, coming from around the corner carrying two six-packs of beer, one in each hand. “Those are ladies. Ladies wouldn’t give you bums the time of day!”
“Dad said you guys have a new singer,” one of the boys said to Garth.
“We wish,” Garth said, nodding at Mathias. “But these two have to be back in Minnesota. They can’t stay out here.”
“Shucks,” said the boy.
“Shucks is right,” Case mourned. “Maybe y’all can move to Jalesville one of these days. Is Patricia still in high school?”
“C’mon, let’s go sit at the fire,” Garth invited, and there was a thundering of bodies toward the door. I stepped closer to Mathias to avoid getting trampled in the crush of boys.
Outside, the stars were wild, riotous, despite the overshadowing power of the moon. I thought of last night, camping at Makoshika and making love while the sky seemed to explode with fiery brilliance. Mathias tucked me to his side, surely thinking the same thing; he slipped one palm over my belly and kissed my temple.
“Aw, let’s stop for a sec,” he said with hushed reverence as we passed the corral. The boys descended on the fire, where it appeared Clark had snacks waiting, but Mathias wanted to see the horses. We paused at the corral, resting our forearms along the top wooden beam. There were three horses in sight and more in the barn; I could hear muffled nickering and sighs, the occasional stomping of hooves. Mathias whistled, reaching out a hand, and was rewarded for this as one of the animals clomped our way and nudged at his palm with its long nose. I laughed, delighted, as the horse stuck its head over the fence and regarded us with somber eyes.
“Hi, Bluebell,” I teased, stroking her neck with tentative fingers; she didn’t shy away, instead scooting closer to my touch, the same way a dog would. In the moonlight I could not tell exactly what color she was (or if she was even female), though she was two distinctly different colors, light patches on a darker base color. Her hide was firm and warm, her hair short and bristly. She nickered at my continued scratching and I smiled, climbing onto the bottom rung so I could be closer to her face.
“Hi, pretty girl,” Mathias said, patting her back. “What a pretty girl.”
“Oh, here comes another one,” I said, caught up in the excitement of it. The second animal, all one color, perhaps dark brown, joined us at the fence, nudging its head against the first horse’s side to displace her from our attention.
Mathias laughed as the second horse bumped its nose lightly against his chest, as though searching for an apple. He rubbed its neck and addressed the animal with the tone of voice normally used for toddlers and puppies. “You want a belly rub, huh? You want a nice belly rub, huh, boy?”
“Yes, please,” I teased, sliding a little closer to him.
Case yelled from the fire, “You two coming, or what?”
The fire pit was ringed with round stones, each roughly the size of snowballs we would roll for the base of a snowman, back home. There were frayed lawn chairs placed all around and Mathias and I claimed two of these. In the leaping flames, the tribe of boys reminded me of the kid from Where the Wild Things Are, or maybe Peter Pan’s Lost Boys. They all looked a little ragged, and in need of a mother. I recalled that Clark said his wife had passed away and felt a sharp pang of sympathy. I thought of the way Grandma and Aunt Ellen would start packing them all up in preparation to haul them home to Landon, where they would be summarily spoiled within an inch of their lives.
“So, is your sister still in school, or what?” Case asked from across the fire, determined to get some answers. He looked so eager that I giggled again.
“She graduated this past spring. She’s going to college in Minneapolis this fall, to start a pre-law program.”
“She’s smart,” he understood. “Smart and beautiful. She would never see anything in me.”
Everyone laughed at his words. Case was still cradling the picture in his palm. Beside him, Marshall punched his shoulder and demanded, “Let me hold it for a second,” but Case would not relinquish it.
“You guys up for a few songs?” Garth asked. He settled his guitar over his thighs and plucked out a minor chord, a slightly mournful note, inspiring a shiver along my spine.
“Are you cold, honey?” Mathias asked, opening his arms. “Come here.”
I moved to his lap and the lawn chair creaked in protest beneath our combined weight.
“Let’s hear some old-timey stuff,” Case requested, slurring a little. He was halfway into his countless beer of the night.
Garth responded accordingly. I didn’t recognize the melody; it was a song that had not been written in this century. After a second Mathias began to sing, low and sweet, and then I realized I knew the song after all. The boys all joined in on the chorus and “O Susanna” was lifted up into the Montana sky by our combined voices. Tears stung my eyes. I was just so happy to be here, singing with them. I looked around at the faces of people unknown to us before this afternoon, and again felt a sense of belonging, a knowing. Clearly, Mathias and I were meant to be here on this night. I only wished that my sisters were at the fire with us; I suddenly missed them both so much that my ribs ached. I looked across the fire at Case, his red-gold hair gleaming in the orange light, and Marshall, lean as a heron and with such pretty, dark gray eyes, the two of them all but fighting over the picture of Tish and Ruthie, and I felt a shifting, deep inside.
Something had changed, tonight.
“That’s such a sad song, I always forget,” Mathias murmured when it was over.
Case sat with his guitar braced against his chair and drunk as he was, still managed (after carefully tucking the picture of Tish into the neck of his t-shirt, no hopes of getting it back now) to maneuver the instrument onto his lap, strumming with no hesitation. Eyes half-closed, he ordered, “I want all of you to s
ing again. I liked it. ‘Red River Valley,’ here we go.”
We sang and sang, connected by the old melodies (even though I only knew the chorus of most of the songs), the fire a reflective central focus, its orange, leaping light so conducive to speculation. I studied the flames, held close to Mathias, and pretended that we were sitting around a fire in another century—a century that belonged to Malcolm and Cora, a time period in which they’d been alive. Mathias traced patterns on the backs of my hands, or softly stroked the length of my hair, hanging over my left shoulder. Clark joined us as the final chords of “Shenandoah” rippled away across the midnight landscape. The air was cold and expectant, too quiet without the music; Clark carried a small, yellowed envelope, soft and worn from the passage of time. He hunkered down and placed it in my hands. “I found it.”
There was a name scrawled on the back of the envelope in faded black ink: Grantley W. Rawley. I felt a jagged-edged jolt at the sight, thrown suddenly back to the winter morning I had first found the picture of Malcolm and Aces, in the Davis family trunk from our attic. With great care I withdrew the telegram, which looked just like the one Bull had found for me back in Landon. Pausing at the word STOP written on the old paper, rather than speaking it aloud, I read, “Back by spring thaw STOP no answers STOP God help me Grant STOP Regards, old friend STOP Malcolm A. Carter.” It was dated December 24, 1876. Tears gushed over my cheeks as I spoke Malcolm’s name. I didn’t care if they all thought I was crazy as I choked, “Oh Malcolm. Oh, my God…”
Mathias hugged me close. I couldn’t stop crying, even though everyone was staring with open stun on their faces. Clark reached and cupped my knee. “What does this mean to you? Tell me. Please, I must know.”
“We hardly know most of it,” Mathias answered softly, as I buried my face in both hands. “We have a letter and another telegram, back home, along with a photograph. My relatives in Bozeman have a few more letters, which we were on the way to pick up. But what we’ve pieced together is that Malcolm was searching for a woman, a woman named—”
“Cora,” I said. “Her name was Cora.”
Garth moved so swiftly around the fire that he seemed like a ghost. He crouched at our knees, staring intently at my tear-streaked face. He asked in a low voice, “Was she in the photo you found? Do you know what she looked like?”
“No,” I whispered. But then I realized I did—and said, “Wait, her eyes…”
Garth finished immediately, “Are two different colors.” We stared at each other, partly in disbelief, partly in simple relief that someone else understood; surely we weren’t both crazy. Garth closed his eyes and confessed, “When I was a little boy, I used to dream about a girl named Cora. Dad, you remember?”
Clark nodded. “Used to scare you to pieces. Your ma and I were at our wits’ end.”
Case said, “I remember you talking about her.”
“What did you dream?” Mathias asked.
Garth said, “At least, I thought it was a dream. It was too scary to think that she was a ghost. I remember that her eyes scared me to the bone. She would flicker at the foot of my bed and all I could see were her eyes, two different colors. One green and one—”
“Black,” I whispered, and Garth nodded.
“Oh God, I saw her just last night,” I said, trembling with restless energy.
“She wants us to find her,” Mathias said. “But we don’t know how… we don’t have any idea where to start.”
“Did she ever tell you anything?” I asked Garth.
“She never spoke, she just appeared. I was so young and it scared me so much. Shit, I haven’t thought of her in a long time, to be honest. Once she seemed to be crying. I thought I was batshit crazy. She never even told me her name, I just knew it.”
“Are you magic?” the littlest Rawley brother asked me. There was a certain amount of awe in his tone.
“Can we contact her somehow?” Marshall asked.
“I wish I was magic enough to find her,” I said. “I wish there was some way to control when she appeared.”
“By late 1876, Malcolm was back in Minnesota,” Mathias noted, reexamining the telegram. “But your relative, this Grantley, was out here.”
“How did they know each other?” Garth wondered. “How were they connected?”
“Dad, don’t we have that whole trunk of stuff?” Marshall asked, his fingers drumming along on the arms of his lawn chair.
Clark sighed a little. “Most of those things were divided up when Dad passed. I wish I had saved more. I don’t recall any additional communications, I swear. There were a couple of tintypes, clothes and quilts, a census report from the 1880s, but not much else that would help us now.”
“This is the most exciting night we’ve had in a long time,” reflected one of the brothers.
“Are you all right now, ma’am?” asked the littlest one.
“Yes,” I assured him, offering a smile.
“We’ll help,” said another. “What can we do, Garth?”
Garth leaned and ruffled his brother’s hair. “I wish I had a plan.” He said to Mathias, “Our ancestors were old friends. What do you know about that?”
“That’s too crazy to be a coincidence,” Mathias said.
“I told you I thought I knew you,” Garth said, with a grin.
“We were meant to meet you guys,” Marshall added.
“We never even would’ve met if I hadn’t hit Camille in the head with my guitar,” Case said. “It was meant to be. Shit, you guys.”
“It’s late,” Clark reflected. “I’ll see what I can find in the morning, but I suggest we all turn in for now. What do you say, boys?”
“Do you and your brother live here, too?” I asked Case in the bustle of everyone heading inside.
“We stay here a lot,” he said, indicating his little brother, Gus.
“Does your family live nearby?” I asked.
Case shifted as though uncomfortable, not meeting my eyes. “Something like that.”
We said good-night and everyone headed for the house; only Garth remained around the fire, almost motionless, staring at the flames. At the foot of the stairs, Clark kissed my hand. “It’s been a darn long time since I’ve had a woman to cook breakfast for. I’ll spoil you, doll, just you wait.”
Minutes later Mathias and I snuggled beneath the black bear-patterned covers in the guest room; he was blissfully naked and warm, while I wore his t-shirt, hesitant to sleep in the nude in a full house not our own. Mathias rolled to one elbow and regarded me in the moonlight spilling over us through the tall, rectangular window beside the bed. The telegram was centered on the nightstand, within arm’s reach.
“That telegram about breaks my heart,” he whispered.
I shifted closer, latching a thigh around his hip.
He murmured, “If you could only see the way your eyes look in the moonlight. Don’t cry, honey, that truly breaks my heart.”
I gulped and he gently wiped tears from my cheek. I moaned, “I can’t bear to think about Malcolm alone and hurting, without her. He obviously loved Cora, Thias, and somehow they got separated. How? What happened?” There were too many possibilities to consider, a world’s worth of potential tragedy.
“I wish I knew. Come here, honey, let me hold you.” Stroking my hair, he murmured, “It’s so wild that Malcolm knew the Rawleys. Knew their family, anyway. Talk about fate.”
“I knew that our being here was right. Besides, you make everywhere home. You know what I mean?” My eyes drifted closed as I explained, “Wherever we are together, I feel like I’m home.”
His chest bounced with a quiet laugh. “If I can smell your hair and your breath, then I know I’m home. And feel you beside me. That was so hard last winter before we lived together, to go back to the apartment and think about you in a bed without me.”
I nodded agreement, kissing his bare chest, my eyes still closed. “That night we watched the aurora for the first time, last Christmas, I wanted to ask you to m
arry me right then,” he said softly. “But I didn’t want to scare you away.”
“I would have said ‘yes’ that night,” I whispered.
“We’ll have to invite these guys to the wedding,” he murmured against my hair.
Though I was nearly asleep, I nodded agreement of this; I wanted all of them in Minnesota. I wanted my sisters to meet them—especially Case and Marshall.
“Sleep, love,” he whispered. “I’ll be right here.”
Right here…
I want you to wait right here, do you hear me? I’ll be back by dawn’s light, I swear to you.
I knew that voice to the depths of my being. Hearing it now was akin to the striking of a finely-wrought tuning fork within my soul—a piercing need for the owner of that voice, whose life I had once come to depend upon far beyond my own existence. I’d heard it warm with laughter and tender murmurings, rife with joy, husky with the low, hushed sounds of lovemaking. Too had I heard it rasping through fear and disbelief, shouted fury and angry intensity; it was the voice of a man of strong passion and deep emotion.
Everything within me strained frantically toward him, but he was just beyond my reach.
Let me come with you, please let me come with you. I won’t slow you down.
The desperate concern in his eyes stabbed a hole through my gut. The scar on my ribs seemed to burn.
It’s too dangerous. Do you hear me?
Don’t go without me. Please, I beg of you.
I love you with all of my heart. I will not put you in danger. Do you hear me?
Desperation sucked all breath from my lungs, clouded the air about our heads, the sickening tension of an impossible decision. From behind him, in the darkness, another voice called intently, Carter! We’ll lose them!
I love you, too. You’re mine. Don’t go away from me.
There is no other choice.
There’s always another choice!
Not this time, and his voice was broken with emotion. It will be all right, love. It will. I will come back for you. I swear I will come back here for you.
Wild Flower Page 23
