“There’s one more,” he said smoothly. “You forgot the last one.”
Leonora bit her lip, turned back to the shirt, pulled at the button above his belt until the shirt fell open. A line of dark hair grew between his muscles and thickened above his waistband, sending a wave of heat down the backs of her legs. He followed her gaze, looked at his stomach, his muscles rippling with the bend. “You’re a nurse.” He smiled. “Is the burn very bad?”
“I’m not a nurse,” she said, averting her gaze.
“Well, you spend enough time with them.” He peeled off the shirt and let it fall to the floor, his broad shoulders as disturbing as the chiseled chest.
She blushed hotly. “You’ll live.”
Alex finished dressing while she tapped her foot and tried to calm her pulse.
“All better, eh?” he said, moving close. Brushing an arm past hers, he opened the door and bowed. “Thank you for your assistance, Leonora.”
As they walked down the hall, he leaned a shoulder against her back and whispered in her ear, “And, for the record, if you ever have soup spilled on you, I’d be happy to reciprocate.”
CHAPTER 31
Work in the dry years exhausted James with infertile ground, sowing hope and despair in equal profits, but work in the wet years exhausted him with brute labor. For as soon as the sun exchanged spots with the moon and the tea was as dark as the sky, the work began, and did not finish until the dingoes howled. As a man, James was tall and lean, his muscles long hardened. Still his limbs ached until they quivered, and a dinner fork felt like lead between his fingers. But the growth, the life, was enough to raise weary eyes before the rooster’s call, gave the strength to work, and he was nearly disappointed when the day had called to a close. The land fed them, housed them and paved the future, and they drank the green like champagne.
From the woodpile James carried as many logs as would fit in his arms to the house. Tess was buried to her chin under quilts next to the stove. Her eyes lit bright at the sight of him and she stood, dropping the blankets to the floor and holding the chair for support.
“ ’Tis late.” Tess reached for one of the logs in his arms, but the weight was too much and the log slipped out of her fingers to the ground. Fumbling, she bent to retrieve it and brush the splinters between the floor cracks. “Clumsy tonight,” she said while keeping her eyes averted. “Here I am tryin’ to lighten yeer load an’ I’m makin’ more of a mess.”
“It’s all right.” James knelt, gently took the log from her hand, then opened the damper on the stove and added the new wood to the fire, stoked it with a poker. He wiped his forehead. Outside, the air was hot; inside, the room was an inferno.
Pots banged at the sink and he turned to see Tess wrestling with the wrought-iron skillet. “Shamus comin’ in soon?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level.
“Soon.” James picked up her blankets and folded them back on the chair. “Trying to work while the moon is full.” But the man worked whether it was light or dark, obsessed. To a man like Shamus, hard work healed all. He worked to keep from seeing Tess’s face, hoping his tilling would bring life back into his wife as it did to the plains.
From the pantry Tess found potatoes, and began shaving them with a small knife. “Shame on me, not havin’ dinner waitin’.” There were tears in her voice.
James came next to her. He was a full two heads taller now. He removed the knife from her fingers. “I’m not hungry.”
She hid her face. “Don’t lie t’me. Ye haven’t eaten all day.” A tear dripped on his hand.
James held her by the shoulders, the bony knobs round against his palms as he steered her back to the chair. He covered her with the blankets. “I’ll make tea.”
She grabbed his hand. “Ye’ll have one, too? Ye’ll sit with me?”
James smiled and turned to the stove, boiled a pan of water and brought the steaming tea with two scoops of sugar. He sat on the floor next to her slippered feet and sipped the boiling drink. Sweat leaked out of every pore, the tea hot and solitary in his stomach.
“Yeer so much like him,” Tess said quietly.
It was hard to focus on anything but the heat and gnawing hunger. “Who?”
“Yeer father.”
James peered into the black tea, his brows scrunching toward the bridge of his nose.
Tess’s fingers tucked his hair behind his ear with the lightness of a feather. “He’d be proud o’ ye.” She laughed softly then. “The way yeer forehead creases an’ yeer eyebrows knit when yeer thinkin’, it’s like he’s sittin’ here with me.”
She smoothed down the quilt across her knees. “Wish I had known him better. I was just a girl when he went off. But I remember watchin’ him with his books an’ his writing. How serious he was, how smart! At night, he’d sneak out to his meetings, dressed in his wool coat, tall an’ swift on his horse. Like this gallant Irish knight! I was in awe of him. We all were.”
James’s throat burned. A question stuck. “Was he a good man?”
Her eyes saddened as she searched James’s face. She put her fingers through his hair. “Aye, James.” She nodded fiercely. “He was a great man. Don’t ever think fur a minute he wasn’t.”
He turned away, but she knew what was in his mind. “James, men were arrested in Ireland for stealin’ bread. Boys even! Takin’ from their mum’s side, fur poachin’ a little cow’s milk fur a dyin’ baby. Yeer father never stole. He was arrested for his words, James. That’s all. Fur his words that he spoke an’ fur the words that he wrote an’ distributed. He spent his last days defendin’ the ones who couldn’t speak fur themselves.” Tess lowered her voice. “Or were ye askin’ ’bout he an’ yeer mother?”
James held tight to his cup, the heat spreading.
“He loved yeer mother, James. Sometimes love doesn’t come bundled neatly.” She took his chin in her hand. “Take no shame in it.”
The door banged. A hard shadow fell across Shamus’s expression as he saw Tess and James so close. Tess dropped her hand.
“Sippin’ tea while I’m slavin’, are ye?” he snapped at James.
Tess stood up, quivered. “Don’t speak to ’im like that! Poor boy hasn’t even eaten.”
“Makes two of us.” Shamus peeled off his shirt to his singlet, pried off his boots and chucked them outside. “It’s bloody roastin’ in ’ere.”
James went to the sink and started peeling the potato left on the counter. Tess’s eyes followed him in apology.
Shamus leaned back in the chair, his mood calming. “Tess, ye should see the bales! Goin’ t’need a team just to get ’em all to market.”
Tess sat down at the table and patted her husband’s arm. His eyes fell to the bony fingers; he looked away. “Think we might get a second harvest, too. What d’ye think, James?”
James plopped the lard into the pan and began frying the potatoes. He added the side meat, the grease hopping into the air. “Shelbys starting a second, won’t be as big, though. Tom said they’re selling the east corner. Hundred and fifty acres.”
“That right? Why they sellin’?”
“Didn’t say.” James didn’t know why he lied. But he remembered the expression on Tom’s face about selling the property; looked like it nearly killed him. James wasn’t going to share the Shelby money problems with Shamus.
“That’s what happens when ye leave a woman t’run a business. Sells the best parcel just when the land is givin’ back.”
James and Tess exchanged a glance. Only Shamus didn’t see the wisdom in the Shelby logic. James handed a plate to Tess, but she pushed it away. “No, thank you, James.”
Shamus’s face fell. “Ye got t’eat, Tess. Please!” he begged. “Just a bite or two.”
She poked at the potato, took a few bites into her mouth. She turned away with tears in her eyes and pushed the plate. “I can’t.” She got up and slipped to her room.
James brought his plate to the table. “She needs a doctor.”
T
he man swallowed and cut into his meat. “Doctor don’t know a bloody thing. Ye heard what he said last time. Not goin’ to pay t’hear a man’s lies.”
James lost his appetite and the food grew cold. “She’s sick, Shamus.”
Shamus stopped chewing and growled, “Course she’s sick!” Then he sighed and chewed slowly again. “That’s why we’re goin’ t’take care o’ her till she’s all better.”
Days passed filled with harvest. And when clothes and hair smelled of cut grass and the kookaburras drowned the night with their lulling cackle, James would read to Tess from books borrowed from the Shelby library. With green eyes glowing, Tess drank the words, carried them into her dreams and slept pale with lips upturned. Shamus listened, too, but his eyes darted with the jealousy of the illiterate, his posture sagging with disgruntled admiration.
The last week of October brought sun till supper and rain till breakfast. Boots sank ankle deep into morning red mud and dried stiff by noon. Wheat bowed their tips with the weight of rain, their stalks bent as willows, then slowly rose rigid with the tug of the sun. At times, the wheat seemed to unbend right in front of a man while he watched.
By the last day of the month, the rain fell early and dampened the stalks so that the sickle only dented and could not cut fully. Still, Shamus pressed on through the hanging rows with stubborn slashing and cursing. But the rain pelted and landed so hard in the mud that drops bounced back up so both the sky and ground seemed to rain at once. The horse moved each hoof out of the mud with a long sucking sound and the wagon wheels sank with each step.
“Furget it, James!” Shamus finally hollered, his face slick with water. “Mud’s too deep. Call it a day!”
James unhooked the harness and led the horse back to the barn. A stream of water poured from the center crease of his hat. His skin was soaked even under the oilskin coat, the rain dripping down the collar. On the verandah James kicked his boots off and threw the coat and hat on top, then walked into the house shaking the water out of his hair.
“Shhhh.” Shamus put a finger to his lips and motioned toward Tess asleep on the bed in the next room. The two men sat across from each other at the table in silence as they ate the leftover stew both were too tired to reheat.
The bed creaked. Tess sat up, her face contorted with fresh pain, her gaunt cheekbones angled with shadows. Shamus turned away, swallowed a chunk of lamb without chewing.
“James”—Tess tried to clear her voice—“will ye come sit with me? Read t’me a little.”
Shamus’s dark eyes leveled and his mouth twisted to the side. “Ye heard ’er.” He stabbed a potato in half with his fork.
James sat on the spindled chair and picked the thick volume off the night table. Emily Brontë. Tess leaned into the thin pillows and pulled the quilt to her chin, the material dwarfing her in its folds. Her black hair and green eyes stood out too boldly, magnified against the white of her skin while everything else seemed to be fading away.
“Read the one ’bout the earth is still,” she said lazily. “Ye know which one I mean?”
“ ‘How beautiful the earth is still’?” he asked.
“Aye! ’Tis the one.” Her breath came rapidly, the few words heaving her chest. She lay back down and spoke calmly. “Please.”
James read the black lettering on nearly translucent paper. From the corner of his eye he saw Tess writhe. “I’ll get Shamus.” He stood, but she grabbed his arm.
“No, please. Just stay with me. Please.” She closed her eyes for a moment, sank into the pillow. “ ’Tis passing.”
James glanced past the door, saw the back of Shamus’s head, his elbow moving food from plate to mouth. When James looked back to Tess’s face, she was staring at him. Tears began to spill from her eyes, shining them until they looked like giant green emeralds.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Fire shot through his chest. She reached for his hand and squeezed tightly. “I’m so sorry t’leave ye.” Her voice broke. “Will ye forgive me?”
“Don’t say—” James balled his hands into fists, trying to force his nails through his palms, anything to stop the fire from spreading.
“I need ye t’promise me something,” she begged.
James turned away and tightened his mouth, but she grabbed his chin, forced him to look at her. “Promise me ye’ll remember that ye were loved. Ye are loved. Always.”
A tear escaped his eye and dripped hot down his cheek, the very burn of it angering him.
She stroked his cheek, brushed away the trail of the tear and smiled weakly. “Now.” She leaned back into the pillow and patted the top of his hand, closed her eyes. “Read to me.”
Through the fire, he opened the book, the weight pressing into his numb hands, almost too heavy to hold. He began to read, one sentence at a time, his own shaking voice unfamiliar.
“ ‘A thoughtful Spirit taught me soon, / That we must long till life be done; . . .’”
Tess’s nails dug into his hand, her body arched.
“ ‘That every phase of earthly joy / Must always fade, and always cloy: . . .’ ”
Her hand untightened, rested limp against his. James’s eyes lowered to the end of the poem, the lettering stretching with blurred vision. He choked and read:
“ ‘The more unjust seems present fate, / The more my Spirit springs elate, . . .’ ”
Her hand slid from his and hung over the bed.
“ ‘Strong in thy strength, to anticipate / Rewarding destiny.’ ”
James closed the book, his breathing lone in the room. He rose and did not look down at the woman—there was no need.
James stood in the doorway. Shamus still sat at the table, his back turned. His plate was clean of food and pushed to the center of the table, in wait for someone to clean it. His arm moved back and forth as he scrubbed an oiled cloth over a rusty gear. He glanced back at James quickly before turning back to his work.
And then Shamus stopped. His body stilled, his elbow poised above the gear in suspended motion. With barely a shift of his neck, his face turned, his chin fell, his lips quivered. In that instant, his face morphed from that of a man to that of wild agony.
The gear slipped from his hand and landed with a hollow ding on the floor, spinning around and around and around until it fell flat. Shamus tried to stand, gripped the table while his chair fell to the ground with a bang. He pushed past James into the bedroom.
Behind James, the face of agony turned into the sound of agony—pleading snorts into hair, light slaps against skin, shaking flaccid limbs: the heart-stabbing sounds of a burning man trying to wake a corpse.
A moment of silence, then howls of pain, and James ran from it, ran from the house, ran into the wall of rain to the fields, his feet splashing and sinking. He burst into the rows of wheat, the soggy pedicels whipping across his face and arms, and ran blind until the mud held him by the calf. He slumped down and held his scalp with his hands, clutched through flooded hair, and still he could hear the cries stuck between his ears . . . cries that seemed to rise from the very earth.
The months following Tess’s death passed in horror. War raged across foreign battlefields, across the home front. There are men who die of wounds and there are men who live with wounds. Tess died and Shamus bled from every pore.
The round table was cleared of plates, of food and tools, the worn wood noticeably smooth with use, the dark grain spreading from one end to the other. And, in the middle of this table, the brown bottle stood. Red wax circled the top and hung in hardened drips along the neck, the seal cracked. The bottle was amber almost to the bottom, where it darkened with an inch or so of liquid. James picked up the bottle, swayed it so the liquid sloshed, the light of the lantern reflecting in spurts. And there it was, in his hands, the war, and he would remember the details of the bottle as if it were an event, not an object.
Shamus emerged from the bedroom, his chin wet and quivering, his eyes red and swollen. James set the bottle down, glass again
st wood, the sound stamping a memory that would last a life. And then he waited.
The hit came quickly to his jaw, twisted his head with snapping force, painting the world black. Something broke inside that was not made of bone or cartilage or blood. The second hit landed on his temple and knocked him out cold to the hard ground. And so the war came and beat him senseless.
The first hit was the worst but not the last. James never hit back, never ran from it, took it until the blackness ended it. And he would have stayed if Mrs. Shelby hadn’t forced him otherwise.
For Shamus, that day brought a late binge and a readied fist, not a knockout punch but a near one. James was at the table still cleaning his dripping nose when Mrs. Shelby barged in unannounced. “Brought yeh some dinner!”
A haunted silence hung in the kitchen among the three. Shamus stood at the counter, his knuckles bloody. Mrs. Shelby turned to James and her eyes bulged, her face as red as the tomatoes in her basket. “You son of a bitch,” she snarled at Shamus.
Shamus took a swig of whiskey. “Mind ye business.”
Mrs. Shelby gritted her teeth, angry tears welling in her eyes. “Yer wife be rollin’ in ’er grave at the sight of yeh!”
The mention of Tess brought his eyes to black. “Ye don’t mention me wife! Not ’ere! Ye hear me! Ye all killed ’er with this land, just like James did by draggin’ her ’ere!”
Mrs. Shelby plucked the bottle out of Shamus’s hand and whacked him across the head, breaking glass over his skull, cutting his skin with razored shreds. She grabbed James’s hand with vise strength. “You won’t ever lay another hand on him again, Shamus O’Reilly!”
As Mrs. Shelby pulled James down the steps, Shamus flung open the screen, banging it hard against the side. He held his hand against the bleeding side of his head. “Ye leave ’ere, ye never come back! Do ye hear me? Murderers! All of ye!”
Mrs. Shelby dragged James to the buggy and yanked him to the seat. “Close yer ears to it, James.” She tried to stay heard over Shamus’s threats. “The rantin’ of a madman. You pay him no heed!” With one hand she found a handkerchief and pressed it against James’s nose, and with the other she picked up the reins and beat the horse to a gallop. And even above the clatter of hooves on stones, harness buckles flapping and old buggy wheels grinding, they could still hear Shamus’s curses, even as the house disappeared in the swallowing twilight.
Daughter of Australia Page 17
