Forbidden Spirits

by Patricia Watters

  Tyler shook his head. "I wanted you to check her first and make sure there isn't a fracture."

  After a close examination of Gypsy's hoof, Rick said, "I don't see any lumps, ridges, dents, cracks, discoloration, or signs of injury to the coronary band. Stone bruises can create mysterious lameness, but diagnosing a bruise means eliminating all leg lameness symptoms and assuming the lameness is in the hoof."

  "What about a hoof abscess?" Rose asked. "My gelding went lame not too long ago and no one knew what it was until we found a hole where an abscess had drained."

  "It's a possibility since abscesses are always suspect with sudden and severe lameness," Rick replied. "If we don't find anything else, we'll soak her foot in Epsom salts and if she doesn't want to leave the warm water it's likely because of an abscess. I have my portable x-ray unit with me so I'll do some preliminary x-rays here. If they don't show any sign of fracture or dislocation, we'll put her on the lunge line."

  Rick made several trips to his truck to get his x-ray equipment, and after setting up a laptop and connecting it to the x-ray unit, he said to Rose, "If you can take over for Tyler, I can use him to point the machine at specific parts of the leg while I hold the plate."

  Tyler stepped aside for Rose to move to where he'd been standing, taking a moment to stroke her cheek with the back of his knuckles before turning away, only to find Rick catching the gesture and responding with a quiet look of support and understanding.

  While Tyler held the x-ray unit, Rick went back and forth between Gypsy and the computer, but after examining a series of images, he said, "The x-rays show nothing distressful in her leg so we might put her on a joint supplement and see what happens. If she's not better in a week or so you should bring her to the clinic for an ultrasound scan and an MRI. Meanwhile, I want to work her on the lunge line."

  "Tundra's in the corral," Rose said. "If you don't need me I'll take him home."

  "No, stay here," Tyler replied. "You can take him to my place. There's a rawhide bone on the kitchen counter for him."

  "Are you sure?" Rose asked.

  Tyler kissed her lightly, and replied, "I'm sure."

  ***

  Rose closed the door to Tyler's quarters, and after Tundra settled down to chew on the bone, she took a little time to get familiar with Tyler's world. It was uncluttered, and very orderly, as if he put things away in a methodical, systematic manner—the couch, the recliner and a side chair at perfect right angles to each other with a rectangular coffee table positioned squarely in between, magazines neatly arranged on the coffee table, a container with pencils off to the side. And on one wall was a bookshelf with books in descending order of size instead of subject, which varied from books on magic tricks, to living off the land, to several on geology and the sciences, and at the far end of one shelf was a series of small paperbacks that appeared to be a collection of Shakespearean plays, which she found both surprising, and baffling.

  Trying to understand Shakespeare in high school English was a challenge for her, so she had no idea why Tyler would want to read it. But looking around at his orderly surroundings, she understood perfectly why his place was as it was.

  What she hadn't noticed before was a small drafting table in the corner of the room. Stacked on a shelf behind it were several spiral-bound drawing tablets. She walked over and took the top tablet off the pile, and on flipping it open, was surprised so see a full length pencil drawing of herself, standing outside the cavern, with her incense pot in one hand and her lantern in the other. Most of the drawing was a quick sketch, like Tyler had put it down on paper quickly, except for her face, hands and what she was holding, which were drawn in detail, with shadows and highlights bringing them into high relief. She had a shocked look on her face because she'd just discovered a long-haired man standing outside. The next picture was the same pose, but she was angry, so it was obvious she'd learned what he planned to do with the hammer and chisel.

  As she flipped the pages she found numerous close-ups of her face with different expressions. Other pages included drawings of her standing with Tundra in front of the plankhouse the day she and her mother stepped outside and she saw Tyler looking at her, and several pictures of her with Tundra, the day she came upon Tyler working his horses in the meadow. It wasn't only that the pictures were masterfully drawn that astounded her, but that Tyler had drawn them from memory.

  But then she found several pages of a little girl, not more than a year old, and following those were some drawings of a woman holding the little girl, and a few of a rodeo clown holding her, and more close-ups of the little girl's face, most of them smiling. But there was one where the little girl had her hands raised, which looked as if they were holding clumps of hair, yet the subject with the hair wasn't in the picture, only the back of the head, which she knew was Tyler's head. In the background of some of the drawings were light sketches of what was obviously a rodeo setting, so she assumed they were a family he met at the rodeo in Wyoming because also in the background was a billboard with the words Cody Stampede.

  She continued flipping pages and saw one of her leaning against his truck with her arms folded, the day she drove his truck to his place, and one of her standing across the room from him, staring at him, like she was baffled, which she was at the time. After seeing several more, mostly close-ups of her face, the pages were blank. She was about to close the back cover when she found a few more drawings, but on the back sides of the last pages in the book.

  She turned the drawing tablet around so she was looking at it, back to front, and was surprised to see a drawing of her sitting in the pool in the cavern with her bare back to him. The cavern was penciled in darkness, with light from her lantern glancing off her shoulders and back and highlighting a sizeable portion of her breast. So he had seen her that way.

  But when she turned that page, she was stunned to find a drawing of her standing in the cavern in a full-length pose, similar to the pose on the first page of the tablet where she was holding the incense pot and lantern, but in this drawing her hands held nothing and they were palms up, giving the impression that she wanted him to come to her, and she was completely nude. She had no idea how he could have seen her that way because she'd purposely kept her back to the cavern entrance when she dried off, in the event someone might come. But unlike the other full-length drawings, which were sketches, except for her face, this drawing showed the shadows and highlights of her entire body in full relief…

  The door swept open and Tyler entered. "Rick just left," he said, shutting the door.

  "What did he say about Gypsy?" Rose asked, while clutching the tablet in her hand.

  "He doesn't know what's wrong," Tyler replied. "Assuming it's an abscess, I'll be soaking her foot a couple of times a day and we'll wait and see what happens." His gaze dropped to Rose's hand and the tablet, which was open to the nude picture.

  It was awkward because she'd found the tablet on a shelf and she had no business looking through it, but now she wanted an explanation. Holding up the picture, she said, "You told me you didn't see me like this."

  "I didn't," Tyler replied. "I drew it because that's what kept going through my mind and I needed to get my thoughts organized." He walked up to her, and looking at the picture, he said in a thoughtful voice, "Did I get it right?" The way he said it wasn't suggestive in any way, but simply a man wanting to know if his thoughts had been accurate.

  "Mostly," Rose replied. "The proportions up top might be a little exaggerated."

  "They're not," Tyler replied. "You can tear it out and throw it away if you want. It was just something I wanted to draw because I wanted to get to know all of you, but I didn't think I ever would because I figured when you found out about my problem you wouldn't want to go any further."

  "It's a beautiful drawing," Rose said, "and I already told you your so-called problem doesn't matter. As for the picture, I don't want everyone around here to know what I look like, or to think I posed for you, so maybe you could keep it o
ut of sight."

  "It was out of sight," Tyler pointed out.

  Rose found her face growing hot. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been looking through your things, but I wanted to know more about you." She turned the tablet around and flipped the pages until she came to the pictures of the little girl and what she assumed were her mother and father, and said, "Who's the little girl? You've drawn a lot of pictures of her."

  "My niece, Amy," Tyler replied.

  "Why so many of her?" Rose asked.

  Tyler got a kind of wistful look on his face as he stared at the drawing. "She's… special," he replied. "I held her and she smiled."

  "Of course she did," Rose said. "You make females smile. I see it all the time on your mares faces, and you definitely make me smile." She turned the pages to a picture of the clown holding the little girl. "Then this must be your brother Josh, the rodeo clown."

  After a long stretch of silence, Tyler replied, "No, that's my brother, Jeremy."

  Rose looked at him, baffled. "Then two of your brothers are rodeo clowns?"

  After another long pause, Tyler replied, "Jeremy was just dressed that way."

  "He's obviously at a rodeo, so why was he dressed like a clown if he isn't one?" Rose asked.

  Tyler drew in a long breath, and said, "Jeremy and his family are in Witness Protection and no one knows where they are."

  "Except you," Rose said. "You just saw him in Wyoming, didn't you?" When Tyler didn't respond," she said, "I'll never say anything, but why are they hiding?"

  "Here's the thing…"

  After Tyler gave Rose the background story that included the mafia ties of Billy's brother-in-law, and his role as an informant, Rose said, "So then, Jeremy went into hiding with Billy, knowing he might never see your parents or any of you ever again, including his twin?"

  Tyler nodded. "It was either that or chance never seeing Billy again. It never made sense to me before I met you, but now I understand."

  Rose was touched by Tyler's admittance, but she was also tempted to ask if he'd ever leave his mares behind to follow her, but knowing she'd never put him in that position, she touched her fingers to the drawing, and said, "How did you learn to draw the way you do?"

  "From Josh," Tyler replied. "He was always sketching everything around when we were growing up, but after watching him draw a series of pictures of a bull rider, first sitting on the bull in the chute, then hanging on, then being bucked off, it dawned on me that I could use pictures in sequences to memorize things, so I came up with a kind of picture language that translated words and concepts into pictures, and I was able to memorize things that way. I had to work three times as hard as everyone else in my class, but it got me through all the homework and tests that required memorization. Now I use it for note taking and memorizing lists."

  "That's not only resourceful, it's ingenious," Rose said. "But these aren't just simple pictures like cartoons, they're works of art. No wonder you worked three times as hard as the other kids when you were in school."

  Tyler laughed. "You were right the first time. In school the pictures were more like cartoons, but when I write in my journal, that's how I do it."

  "A journal," Rose mused. "I never would have thought that's what this is all about, but then your entire thinking process is hard to understand, just as the mind of a genius would be. But you did all these from memory, yet you claim you have a problem memorizing things."

  "I don't have a problem memorizing what I see, it's what's written that's the problem," Tyler explained. "What's around me comes back in detail, like I've snapped a picture of it with my mind, and when I draw it later the details are still there."

  "Like this one?" Rose turned the tablet over and opened it to the picture of her in the cavern in the pool. "How soon after you saw me sitting like this did you draw this picture?"

  "That same day, around midnight," Tyler replied. "It had been in my head all day and I needed to put it in my journal."

  "But all the details are there, even the 'S' curve handle on my little incense pot, along with the curl of smoke coming from it. You even have the light from the lantern coming from the right direction on my back and shoulder and my… well, the rest of what you saw."

  "Okay, that isn't exactly how I saw you," Tyler replied. "I added what was missing from view that I wanted to see, and when you stepped outside the cavern and your white T-shirt was damp and sticking to you, it wasn't hard to picture what was under it. That's the pose in the nude picture. I put you in the cavern because that's the way I wanted to see you, stepping out of the pool and looking at me and not feeling embarrassed because you felt natural being with me like that, and I was naked too and you wanted me to come to you and hold you. I'm visualizing it now, like it's stuck in my head, and I haven't even seen you undressed."

  "When you do see me that way, will you remember all the details forever?" Rose asked.

  Tyler looked at her, thoughtfully. "You said when, not if, I see you, so it sounds certain."

  "I don't know," Rose replied. "But would you see… all the details?"

  "Maybe. Some details last longer than others."

  Rose flipped the page to the nude one, and said, "What if we were married and I got old and wrinkly. Would you see me like this, or the way I'd be then?"

  Tyler looked reflectively at the picture, and said, "I'd see you the way you'd be then because I wouldn't have any reason to hold on to the old memory because, however you'd be would be beautiful to me. Time and age would never change that."

  Rose set the tablet on the drafting table, and curving her arms around Tyler's neck, she said, "You told me you had trouble expressing yourself, but that's the most romantic thing anyone's ever told me."

  "It's only the truth," Tyler replied. In an instant his mouth covered hers and his arms closed around her, and in that moment Rose felt a combination of passion… and longing… and needing… and affection… and infatuation… and a touch of anger because the issue with the spring was still unresolved. But all the other feelings quickly overpowered that one negative, and she was again on a euphoric high, while wanting to stay where she was forever.

  But when Tyler's hands began tracing the contours of her sides, and his thumbs followed the curve of her breasts, she broke the kiss and said, "We're about to get carried away again, so we need to get back to where we were."

  "Which was looking at a picture of you the way I imagine you when I'm alone in my bed at night," Tyler said.

  "Then we need to switch to another subject." Rose turned out of his arms and walked over to the bookcase. "While I was looking around I noticed your books, and now I'm curious." Brushing her finger over the spines, she said, while stopping at a particular book, "Why a book on magic?"

  Tyler looked at the book she was pointing to. "My mom knew I wanted to learn some magic tricks so she got me the book, figuring I'd be interested enough to read it, and I was, cover to cover, and even learned some basic magic tricks. So Mom decided, if she could find books on subjects I was interested in, I'd read more, and she was right. I still read at a snail's pace, but I like learning things so I read every day."

  "And Shakespeare?" Rose asked, while running her finger over the spines of the collection.

  "I did a lot of pretending when I was a kid, which was my way of dealing with the fact that I didn't fit in, so when high school drama class was auditioning students for Hamlet, I figured if I could get a part in a play that other students found difficult, I'd prove I wasn't as stupid as they thought. So I put together picture sequences for the first act, but when it came time to recite some lines I couldn't focus, I couldn't speak, and I went totally blank, which proved to everyone I was exactly what they thought. The school idiot. So, I decided to get the play and memorize the entire thing at home, and when I did, it was a huge personal victory." He laughed. "Hamlet knew what he was talking about when he said, 'Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in his own house.' Now I recite Shakespeare to relax, a
nd when I recite it to my mares, they relax too."

  Rose couldn't help smiling when she visualized Tyler standing surrounded by his mares while reciting Shakespeare. "Can you recite something for me?" she asked. When she looked up from the bookcase and turned to face Tyler, in that moment she thought he was the most striking man she'd ever seen, with his beautiful raised cheekbones, and sensual male mouth, and his dark perceptive eyes, soulful eyes that were fixed on her.

  "Especially for you," he said.

  Walking up to her, he tucked a finger beneath her chin and lifted, so she had to look directly at him, and said in a voice that was solely for her, "Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love."

  Rose blinked rapidly, while trying to grasp this completely unexpected side of Tyler, like there was no end to discovering new facets of him, a complex man who saw disabilities where she saw gifts. "That was beautiful," she said. "I assume it was from Hamlet."

  "It was. Act 2, Scene 2."

  "How did you know that?"

  Tyler shrugged. "My problem is getting the words off the page and into my head, but once they're there, I simply open a page in my mind and find it. It's the same with movies. The scenes stick in my head and I remember them in sequence. It's inconsistent though. I can recount every detail of a place I might go, like a rodeo, but I can't recall what someone might tell me about a place they went because I wasn't there and don't have the visual images to connect the words to."

  "So you must remember everything about the times we’re together," Rose said.

  Tyler gave her a wry smile. "Pretty much. But it's not just visual images I hold in my head. My senses have memory too. My body remembers the way your body feels against it, and my hands remember where they've been and what they held, and my tongue remembers the details of your mouth, and odors have a special place in my mind that I can pull up, so when I smell roses I'm thrown into a world with you where it's like you're part of me. It's hard to describe."