by Merry Farmer
“Perhaps not.” Mrs. Weingarten shrugged. “But do you find yourself developing feelings for him?”
More strangled awkwardness. “We’ve had a lot of time together recently. We’ve become friends.”
“How lovely, dear. Friendship is the first stop along the journey to love.”
“But I didn’t enter this marriage asking for love.”
“What were you asking then, dearie?”
She blinked. “Protection. Help. I don’t know, maybe companionship down the line, once we’re settled in Denver City. I’m no romantic idealist full of fanciful notions.”
“But they are lovely now and then, those fanciful ideals.” She smiled at Callie with motherly affection. “Haven’t you had just a few daydreams about your husband in the last week?”
“I don’t think so.” She shrugged, wondering if she was lying.
“Not even a little?”
Callie didn’t answer. The further the conversation continued, the less Callie wanted to be having it. She was just getting used to the idea of sleeping in her own bedroll next to John every night. Thinking about falling in love with him was a long, long way off. But she supposed it was possible. They had made the decision to live out the rest of their lives together when they’d married. That naturally meant forming some sort of deep attachment, getting as used to each other as their own skin. She supposed that some day when they were old, with children and grandchildren, if he were to die first, she would feel the same sort of hole in her life that was left when Greg died.
Imagining all that felt like imagining the plot of a novel. The John Rye she knew in the reality of the present was a quiet, grieving, enigmatic man, who she got on well with. That was it. How strange to have that assessment of her own husband.
Mrs. Weingarten wasn’t the only one who had some sort of an opinion on her marriage. Elton rode his horse up beside them as Callie struggled with her thoughts.
“Would you care to ride, Mrs. Rye?” he asked with his usual bold smile.
“No thank you, Mr. Finch,” Callie replied, as polite as she could be.
“We wouldn’t want your feet to get sore now, would we?”
“They’re fine.”
Mrs. Weingarten tossed her a sideways look. Callie answered her with a wary smile.
“Alright then.” Elton grinned, kicking his horse and moving on.
As soon as he was out of earshot Mrs. Weingarten asked, “What was that all about?”
Callie frowned. “I haven’t been able to figure that one out yet. It’s almost as if he is waiting for me to change my mind.”
“Are you going to change your mind?”
“No,” she answered with a sharp sigh. All of her irritation at John and her own confusing emotions shifted to Elton and grew tenfold. “He should know that. I think I’ve made it clear.”
Mrs. Weingarten shook her head. “There’s no understanding what goes on in the mind of young men, dear.”
Truer words had never been spoken, but that didn’t change the fact that Elton’s behavior was inappropriate. When they stopped and made camp for the night, Callie was in a cranky mood from thinking about it. She helped with dinner preparations, then took a plate for herself and one for John, who sat leaning against the wagon wheel, without saying anything.
She joined him with a silent frown. Her gaze kept drifting across the circle of wagons to the camp that Elton shared with his brother and family. Some of the young women from other families were eating with them. The girls that crowded around Elton were just under the age that she would have considered appropriate for marriage, but people were married at much younger ages. Callie couldn’t understand why he didn’t just pick one of them instead of continuing to pester her. Even Reverend Joseph appeared to be enjoying the young ladies’ company. He was telling some sort of story with large animated hand gestures.
“I’m sorry,” John interrupted Callie’s frustrating train of thought. “I never thought to ask if you wanted to spend time with the other people your age.”
In her moodiness, Callie was tempted to take some sort of offense at his comment. “Just because they’re my age doesn’t mean I want anything to do with them.” Her words were harsher than they should have been. Knowing she shouldn’t be upset only aggravated her more.
John chewed his dinner thoughtfully before answering. “Did something happen?”
She tore her glance away from the group of young people and looked at him, his eyes weary and cautious behind his glasses.
“No.” She sighed. “Not really. It’s just….” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. She didn’t know why her soul felt like a swarm of bees.
He shifted, his expression changing to curiosity. “Does it bother you that I’m so much older than you?”
His question was a surprise.
“You’re not that much older than me.” Her eyebrows shot up.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-four. How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
She blinked and thought about his answer. He was thirteen years older than her.
“Women marry older men all the time,” she reasoned out loud. She couldn’t help but glance across the circle of wagons to the others again. “And I don’t think I would fit in with that lot.”
“Why?” he shrugged. “What’s wrong with them?”
Her irritation flared. “Nothing’s wrong with them. What’s wrong with you?”
His expression turned blank but his cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to make conversation.”
“Oh, now you’re trying to make conversation?” She didn’t want to fight, but for some reason she couldn’t stop herself. It was as if a dragon had been sitting on her heart for weeks and had only now awoken to breathe fire.
“Forgive me. I have difficulty talking to people,” John said.
“You should practice.”
“I was trying to practice.” He was upset now too. Callie could tell because his voice had no emotion to it at all. “Maybe you should go be with them instead of me.”
“I don’t want to be with him,” she ground through a clenched jaw.
“Him?” he arched one eyebrow. “Is Mr. Finch still bothering you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She slumped, tossing her half-eaten dinner aside.
“I thought you wanted to talk,” he shot quickly back.
Callie wasn’t ready with a come-back.
“Don’t waste your food,” he scolded her.
“I’ll waste whatever I want to,” she grumbled, crossing her arms and deliberately not looking at him.
“Not when we have a limited amount of supplies.”
“Are you my husband or my father?” she snapped at him.
“I’m sorry,” he clipped, cold as winter. “I assumed you would want to be friends with the wrong group. The little girls are playing with their dolls over there.”
Callie’s temper flared to boiling. She crossed her arms tighter, lip quivering with anger that was on the verge of spilling into tears. John must have seen how upset she was, how alone and sad she felt, but he wasn’t rushing to apologize.
He leaned across her, picked up the plate she had discarded, and plunked it back on her lap. She was furious. Without thinking, she swatted the plate at him. It flew off her lap, spilling the chicken and beans in a messy pile between them and across the side of his leg. A flash of guilt flared in her gut to match her anger, but somehow both suddenly felt more like grief catching up to her than anything else.
John didn’t react, hardly flinched. Instead he stared hard at his own dinner as he finished it. His hand shook almost imperceptibly as he lifted each fork to his mouth. Callie could feel the indignation rolling off of him. Let him be angry, it served him right.
Only, as Callie continued to sit there, arms crossed, wallowing in frustration, her storm of emotions gave way to a depressing, gloomy embarrassment. It only got worse when a peal of laughter went up from the o
ther group and Reverend Joseph got out a guitar and started playing a tune. Someone else had a harmonica. Once the song got started, a man from a nearby campfire pulled out an accordion and joined in. One of the men asked his wife to dance, and before long people were forming couples and dancing and clapping to the cheerful song.
Elton glanced Callie’s way invitingly. Callie jerked her head to the side, deliberately looking away, eyes stinging with misery.
“Would you like to dance?” John threw down the challenge.
“No.”
He left it there. As soon as he finished his dinner he stood, taking Callie’s plate and cup as well, and went to clean off the dishes, put them away, and clean off his pants. He moved off to do something else as well, Callie didn’t see what.
She’d never felt so alone in her life. The happy music and shouts of laughter were an insult. No one should be happy when she felt like she did—deserted, thrown into the wilderness with nothing. She wanted to go home. She wanted to feel the shade of the maple trees around her house, swim in the pond. She wanted to watch squirrels playing, run across the soft green grass catching fireflies as the night settled. She wanted to hike up the rolling hills and stare out over lush, green valleys filled with lazy towns, buildings and church spires. She wanted to sit on her back porch, listening to Greg tell great whopping tales of his fishing trips or pranks he’d played at school.
She just wanted Greg to be there. She wanted it so badly that she lost the battle not to cry. She should have worn out her weeping when he first died. Why was it worse now? Hot tears dripped down her cheeks and she lowered her head in shame. So what if it made her a child? She wanted her brother, wanted to go home. Death was cruel to those who were left behind.
John sat beside her again, on the side she hadn’t spilled dinner all over, facing her, his back to the revelers. She didn’t look at him. He handed her a handkerchief. Grudgingly, she took it and wiped her eyes. But the tears kept coming, more now because of his kindness. He was angry with her, she knew, but he was still being kind. She couldn’t stand up in the face of that generosity. She’d behaved abominably. He had every right to be furious with her. But he sat there with her.
“I suppose grief strikes people in its own time and its own way,” he said with far more tenderness than she deserved. “I’m sorry.”
“I… I want to go home.” She sniffled pathetically, feeling every bit the child he’d accused her of being.
He was silent for a long time before sighing, “I know.”
That further kindness only made Callie shed more tears. “I miss real trees, maple trees.”
“Me too.”
“I hate this flat, endless prairie.”
“So do I.”
“Stop agreeing with me!”
She pouted, glaring up at him, but her anger was burnt out. He stared back at her, a frown etching lines between his large, doleful eyes. He was studying her, trying to figure her out. As much as Callie didn’t want to be figured out right then, there was an awful sort of camaraderie in their shared misery.
Deep in her mind, something clicked. She didn’t want to play with the others because they didn’t know what it was like to be completely and utterly sad. The kind of sadness that aged you ten years each time you stopped to contemplate it. None of them knew a thing about that sort of grief. John knew, maybe better than she did.
“I’m tired,” she sighed. “I want to go to bed.”
The sun hadn’t fully set yet. Warm streaks of orange and red blanketed the sky to the west, while in the east blue was fading to deep purple and black. The stars were only barely blinking. She didn’t care. Every bone in her body was aching for sleep.
She used every last ounce of effort to stand. John stood and helped her to her feet, helped her find her bedroll. He fished his out of the back of the wagon as she found hers and unrolled the long bolt of canvas they’d been tacking to the sides of the wagon at night to provide a hint of privacy. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she laid out her bedroll and climbed into it, limp with misery.
She was surprised when John kicked off his shoes, put away his glasses, and spread out his bedroll beside her. She was even more surprised when he put his arm around her and pulled her close, her back to his chest.
“Aren’t you angry with me?” she said, limp as she fit against him, a wall of clothes and blankets between them.
“I’m seriously annoyed with you.” His tone of voice confirmed his words, but with the same hopeless exhaustion she felt. “But I understand.”
He hadn’t held her close like this since their wedding night.
“Why are you holding me?” She freed one arm from the blanket and slid it down his forearm to his hand as it rested over her stomach.
“Because I miss my wife.”
The last wisp of anger in Callie snuffed. She threaded her fingers into his and closed her eyes. He had nothing more to say.
The music from the rest of the camp turned into singing. Callie listened to it, tears dried up. She listened to the sound of John breathing just behind her. She could feel the steady rise and fall of his chest, the beat of his heart, even through the blankets. She could feel the heat of his breath on the back of her neck. Close, very close.
He shifted against her, cradling the length of her body more fully into his. His hand splayed across her stomach. She had to force her breath to remain even and shallow. He held her the way a man holds his wife in bed. If not for the layers of blankets and clothing, his touch would be inappropriate
But how inappropriate could it be? She was his wife.
He brought his head closer to her neck, making a pillow of her hair. Callie could feel the warmth of his lips only a heartbeat away from the tender skin behind her ear. An urgent voice deep inside her willed him to slip forward that last little bit to lay his lips against her. She closed her eyes and imagined it happening, focusing on the weight of him behind her, of his arm around her.
Maybe Mrs. Weingarten was right. There was something there, something warm and wild and unknown. Something she wanted to know about. It was agony just to stay still, to not writhe with the restlessness he was somehow making her feel.
In the end, the only thing that kept Callie from flipping over to face him was the sudden thudding realization that he’d just said he was holding her like that because he missed his wife. He missed Shannon. She was stealing another woman’s heated emotions. The truth of the matter was that she was still alone.
She let out a deep breath, body unwinding from the tension that had built up so quickly. Gloom rushed in to take its place. Sleep was the only thing that was going to make her feel any better. She sighed and welcomed it. Her last dismal, fading thoughts were that it would have been nice if John had been trying to make her feel warm and alive instead of Shannon.
Chapter Nine
He dreamed of the ocean, of waves crashing madly over rocks, swirling in frothy pools and roaring against the sand. He was searching for something, for someone. His search took him into the ocean, out past the shallows to the point where the waves broke. They beat against his chest with force that should have knocked him over, but he stayed on his feet. He wanted to call out for whomever he was searching for, but he had no voice, no name.
A towering wave slammed into him, knocking him over. He flailed, no longer sure which way was up. Then the waves spoke to him, saying, “If you want to come away, we’ll take you right now. We’ll end this today.”
His flailing arms caught something warm and soft, a woman. He embraced her, pulling her close against him. Her name. What was her name?
He awoke with a start, his arms still around a woman. He sucked in a breath. The dream was gone, but the dark, unsettled emotion remained. The promise of the waves hung in the stuffy air under the wagon. If he wanted to leave this world, he could go today.
Callie stirred. Callie. That was who was in his arms. She stretched as sleep rushed away from her. John was fully aware of her body mov
ing against his, the scent of her close to him, the warmth she radiated. His dream melted away and reality settled back over him.
She had been inexplicably angry with him the night before, and in return, he had been irrationally irritated at her. They had bickered. Her grief had caught up with her, just as his had tried to drag him down beside the stream while she was doing laundry. She had been there for him when he needed her, and he? He had his arms around her now.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Morning,” he mumbled in reply, still unsettled.
“Did you sleep well?” she asked, still groggy from sleep, and pulled away from him.
“I guess.” He should tell her about his dream, share that bit of himself with her. Then again, he had confessed his attempt to take his own life. What would she think if she knew he was still dreaming about it?
The waves had promised to take him today, if he wanted to go.
“I’m thirsty,” Callie mumbled as she inched to the edge of the space under the wagon and lifted the covering.
Outside, the sky was gray and heavy with rain. Like the swirling waters of a stormy sea. Prickles raced down John’s back as he rolled out from under the wagon to face it.
They packed away their bedrolls and readied the wagon to move on without talking about the night before. Callie made some tea and breakfast for the two of them, John saw to the animals. All traces of anger and argument were gone. Callie even smiled at him as she handed him eggs and bacon and a biscuit. But the sky was still dark and John’s dream whispered to him.
By the time Pete called for everyone to hitch up and move out, John was ready to leave that part of the trail. Callie climbed up into the wagon’s seat, fixing Greg’s hat tightly on her head, brim pulled low.
“You’re not going to walk with Mrs. Weingarten today?” he asked as they waited for the train to start moving.
“No.”
He watched her for a few moments. Was it Callie he had been searching for in his dream? Was she the one he had caught?
“I’m sorry.” She spoke at last, eyes lowered, a flush coming to her cheeks. “I don’t know what came over me yesterday.”
