“Cig—of course I love you. You’re my sister.”
“Lots of sisters hate each other.”
“I do love you. I’d love you even if you weren’t my sister.”
Cig turned the light a bit more toward Grace. “Did you think Blackie and I were well suited?”
“Now how many times over the years have we talked about that?” A hint of impatience crept into the modulated voice. “No. You two weren’t the right two people. Maybe he wasn’t the right person. I don’t know.”
Cig switched the subject.
“I’d like to pick up the Deyhle papers, the ones you have, on my way home.”
“You can borrow whatever you want.” Grace wondered about Cig’s mental state. She had never been interested in such things before, and it was an abrupt request for a woman sitting up in a hospital bed.
“I’m acting weird? You’re looking at me as if I’m weird.”
“Someone near killed you. That would make me a little weird myself.”
“Do me a favor.” Cig felt exhausted. “Go home and gather up the Deyhle papers. I’ll stop by and pick them up. And if I’m strange or spacey—don’t worry about it.”
Worried, Grace said, “All right.”
Cig fell asleep. Grace put her hand on her sister’s forehead. She felt feverish. Grace checked her watch then reported to the nurse on duty that she thought Cig’s temperature was too high. The nurse came in, felt her forehead and said not to worry. She didn’t think it could be more than a degree above normal. Let her sleep.
Harleyetta came to work at seven A.M., popped her head in the room and saw Grace, fully clothed, stretched out in the bed next to Cig. She threw a blanket over Grace then quietly shut the door as she left the room.
39
“Mom, are you sure you’re okay?” Hunter anxiously asked as he kept his eyes on the road. The old Toyota truck rattled and bumped. He’d cut school to pick his mother up at the hospital, the only time she ever countenanced such behavior. He made Laura go to school though, and she vowed never to forgive or forget. Hunter figured she would forgive him fast enough if he double-dated with her and Parry Tetrick.
“A little shaky, honey.” She stared out the window, trying to get some perspective.
“Does your back hurt?”
“Stings.”
“Mom, I’ll find out who did this. I’1I kill the bastard.” His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
“Revenge is a waste of time. You won’t find them. Sometimes people literally get away with murder. What’s important is that I’m back. I mean I’m here, I’m healthy, and I’d just as soon forget the entire incident.”
“I don’t know if I could,” he said honestly.
“You’ll be amazed at what you can do in this life.” She turned and smiled at him and thought she’d never seen a young man more beautiful than her son. “And I’m here to see you do it.”
He swiveled to catch her eye for a second then looked back to the road. “Mom, are you keeping something from me? I mean are you sick or something?”
“Just at heart. I’m as healthy as Full Throttle.”
“What do you mean at heart? Dad?”
Her hand fluttered then returned to the Jesus strap over the passenger window. They always called it the Jesus strap because you usually said “Jesus” if you had to use it to hang on. “Yes and no. I think I’m having my midlife crisis. It’s like being an adolescent in reverse.”
“Buy a Porsche like Uncle Will.”
“If I had Uncle Will’s money I just might.” She inhaled. “If I’m a little out there these next few days or even weeks, cut me some slack, huh?”
“Yeah.” He pulled into Grace’s perfectly manicured driveway, stopping in front of the dark green door with a fan window above it and glass side panels as well. “You stay here, Mom, I’ll go in and get the papers.”
“Those old bound books are heavy as horseshoes. I’ll help.”
“No, Mom. You aren’t lifting anything. I’ll only be a minute.” He slid out, shutting the door behind him, then asked through the window, “Think Aunt Grace will be awake?”
“Tiptoe in, just in case.”
Hunter opened the front door. Grace had stacked the Deyhle papers in bankers’ boxes each marked with the dates. He carried four boxes, stacking two on the floor of the little truck. Cig had to put her feet up on them. One box sat between them and she held one on her lap.
“You doing research?”
“I need to know where I’ve been, or we’ve been, before I know where I’m going. Make sense?”
“Kinda.”
“Where’d you get that cool knife?” Hunter noticed the Indian knife in the small pile of Cig’s riding gear. “And I don’t remember a silk stock tie.”
“Long story. I’ll save it for a rainy day.”
When Hunter drove up to the house and Woodrow and Peachpaws scampered out, Cig threw open the door, hopped out juggling the box, putting it back on the seat, and scooped up the rotund kitty, hugging the dog as she knelt down. “Woodrow, oh, Woodrow, you don’t know how happy I am to see you.”
Hunter laughed. “Mom, you’d think you’d been gone for years.”
“Feels like it,” she said simply, hugging the violently purring animal. She thought of Smudge, Nell Gwyn, and Highness, Margaret’s cats. She thought of Margaret with a sadness so profound she thought she would perish from the pain. Margaret was dust.
She walked into the kitchen followed by her brood. Hunter toted in the bankers’ boxes. A pink stack of phone messages festered on her hole-in-the-wall desk. Papers spilled out of the fax machine. Hunter placed the books on the table and picked up the fax papers.
Cig threw them back on the floor to her son’s surprise. “I doubt there’s one damn thing of significance.”
“Guess not.” He opened the refrigerator, taking out a Coke.
“Oh God.” She leaped for the refrigerator grabbing a cold can. “You don’t know how badly I’ve wanted one of these.”
“No Coke in the hospital?”
“Pepsi.” It was a white lie but how do you tell your son you’ve been on a jaunt of nearly three hundred years?
“I’m going to the stable.”
“I’ll come with you. I can pick stalls. I’m not helpless.”
“No, no, you rest. You had a shock, Mom. It won’t kill you to take it easy for one day.”
“I’m not an invalid.”
“Only mentally,” he teased.
“All right, smartass.” She sat down in the kitchen chair, marveling at how familiar yet miraculous the place seemed. Electric lights, a big oil-burning furnace to keep every room, well, almost every room, cozy. A refrigerator and a gas stove, the flame pulsating like a blue daisy when she got up to turn it on for the pleasure of seeing it.
She glanced out the window. Hunter headed for the barn. His shoulders had doubled in width, it seemed. His step was light and quick, energy dancing off his young body. Tears filled her eyes as she gave thanks for her son and daughter.
She returned her attention to the blue flame, filling the whistling teapot from the tap and putting it on the stove.
“It’s magic,” she said out loud.
Woodrow circled the table, changed direction for a moment, and then settled down on the table for a nap.
“Woodrow, is there such a creature as a twentieth-century cat or are cats eternal in a way I’m not?”
He blinked his deep green eyes as if to say, “Only a human would ask such a question.”
“Think about it, Woodrow. Your ancestors, whom I met, had to worry about horses and cattle just as you do but they didn’t have to hurry out of the way of trucks and cars. They certainly didn’t watch television, which you do, and I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your assaulting the screen during football games. Most unseemly.” Cig laughed and then suddenly grew somber. “Woodrow, I’m afraid my mind is slipping like a faulty jack under a car.”
She joined hi
m at the table to drink her tea. Returning here was easier than being cast backward into 1699 but she supposed it would naturally be easier to return to one’s own time. If Fitz, Tom, and Margaret could join her they’d have a hell of an adjustment.
Fitz. She opened the bankers’ boxes. She grabbed a red moroccan-bound book. 1800-1860. That was yesterday. With trembling hands she opened each volume to check the dates. She finally found the right one, which had been rebound at least once. The handwritten note in the cover, her great-grandmother’s handwriting, said that the deeds and letters had been bound to preserve them.
The bulk of the letters were from Ruppert Deyhle to his mother. A thirty-year-old man in the Continental Army, he described Cornwallis’s depradations from North Carolina to Virginia.
A Bill of lading for one desk of the latest fashion, 1711, to Margaret deVries jolted her.
One other letter, with bits of the old wax seal still clinging to the envelope, was from Charles Deyhle to Ernest Shackelford, another lawyer, describing the disposition of his estate in the event of his death. Dated July 17, 1695, it bequeathed four thousand acres and all his personal effects to his wife for the duration of her life. Upon Elizabeth’s death or in the event that she predeceased him, the property would pass to the twins, Thomas and Pryor, born 1671.
In desperation she lifted out the enormous family Bible, turning to the birth and death entries written in a variety of strong cursive hands.
She scanned to find the names:
Thomas Deyhle, born February 6, 1671,
married Margaret Woodson May 12, 1697,
murdered by Monacans December 30, 1699.
One son, Thomas Deyhle II, born to Margaret
Deyhle deVries, September 2, 1700.
She found herself whispering thanks to God that Margaret’s child by Tom survived.
Pryor Deyhle, born February 6, 1671, disappeared December 30, 1699.
Believed murdered by Indians. No issue.
Thomas Deyhle II, born September 2, 1700.
Died March 29, 1782.
Margaret Woodson Deyhle, born November 11,
1674. Widowed. Married Lionel deVries May
29, 1701. Died in childbirth April 12, 1715.
Cig gasped. “He got what he wanted! Oh Margaret, were you happy with him?”
She studied the handwriting again. The entries for Tom’s and Pryor’s deaths, and Tom II’s birth were in Margaret’s hand. Eight subsequent births, some of the babies dying in infancy, were also in Margaret’s hand. Tom II’s death date was written in a different hand.
“Poor Margaret, dead at forty.”
Cig wiped her eyes and got up for a tissue, she was crying so hard. She made another cup of tea to settle herself then sat down to read more. Lionel was shot in front of the House of Burgesses in 1717, so he survived Margaret by only two years. Thomas Deyhle II married Isabeau Venable. His first daughter was named Pryor; the second, Sophia, in honor of his wife’s mother; and the son born much later was Ruppert.
Stuck inside the Bible at various favorite passages were lists filled with tobacco tonnages and prices… and peanut prices.
A folded piece of parchment wedged in First Corinthians read, “Today, April 12, 1715, our mother, Margaret Woodson Deyhle deVries passed from this earthly realm to another, better one. She caused no harm, and did a great deal of good. Industry, prudence, and kindness were her natural virtues. In her final moments her mind took flight and she imagined she was with her first beloved husband, my father, and his sister. This fancy gave her great happiness.”
Signed this day by Thomas Deyhle II.
Cig put her head on her crossed arms and cried until she felt nauseated.
The back door swung open and Laura, home from school, surprised her mother. She raced over and put her arms around Cig. “Are you okay? Can I do anything?”
Cig lifted her head and patted Laura’s hands. “Just love me and know that I love you.”
40
A warm wind swept up from the Gulf, bathing the reds, oranges, yellows, and deep russets in a magnifying haze. Full Throttle, ears forward, trotted down the winding dirt road to the back acres. Cig posted without thinking about it.
“Are you sure you should be riding?” Roberta asked, the mascara on her eyes caked up. “You just got out of the hospital yesterday.” Much as Roberta wanted her lesson and much as she needed it, she worried about Cig, who was unusually distant and preoccupied.
“Can you think of anything better to do than to ride on a day like this?”
“One or two.”
“Ah, Roberta, the soul of romance.”
“You don’t know if that’s what I was thinking”—Roberta loosened her reins when she observed Cig’s gaze move in that direction—“but I wouldn’t mind a little hot romance.”
“Speak to my sister, she’s the expert.”
Roberta frowned. “When you’re that pretty it’s easy.”
Cig twisted in the saddle. “You know something, Roberta, maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with pretty. Maybe some women send off a scent and men pick it up.”
“Maybe.” Roberta wasn’t buying it.
“You think it’s all looks?”
“A lot of it. Men don’t care about substance or intellect. It’s an animal thing with them,” said the lady who had a lot of substance but little else.
“It’s an animal thing with us, too.”
They trotted over to three big tree trunks lashed together to make a jump. Cig made Roberta go first.
“Talk to him, Roberta, he’s got a mind, you know.”
“Good boy, slow, slow.” Roberta spoke to Reebok who flicked his ears back then carefully snapped his front legs up over the jump like the good boy he was.
“See. Now pat him on the neck. He deserves it Wish I had twenty more like Reebok in the hunt field.”
“It’s good of you to ride with me today,” Roberta said. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“I needed to get out and he needs light exercise. He’d been run so damn hard that he was tucked up when I rejoined you all.”
“Cig, what did happen out there?”
“I don’t know—guess I never will.”
Suddenly animated, the normally timid Roberta rejoined, “They say that a near-death experience crystallizes your direction and that people change after something like that.”
“I don’t know if I had a near-death experience, more like near-life.”
“Billy Dominquez said that if the arrow had pierced you from the side instead of across your back it might well have hit your heart. Whoever shot at you was behind you but off to the side. I just can’t imagine someone doing something like that. This is a sick society.”
“Violence is part of life.”
“When you’re primitive. This is 1995. There’s no reason for anyone to shoot anyone else. No reason.”
“I suppose as long as A wants what B has, and B doesn’t want to give it up or negotiate, there is reason enough.”
“Whoever loosed that arrow at you had to be doing it purely for the thrill. They couldn’t get anything by killing you.”
Cig wanted to argue, to say the times had been different then. The struggle for sovereignty over America was just beginning in earnest. “You know what, I’m not sure I even care. I’m just glad to be here.”
“You’re a better woman than I’d be under the circumstances.”
Cig shrugged, turned Throttle, and they cantered back to the barn.
“Mom, Harleyetta called,” Laura told her as Cig and Roberta walked their horses into the clean center aisle.
“Give her the fixture time?”
“No, she said she wants to catch up with you. She said to call on the car phone,” Laura said.
“Catch up with me? She saw me day before yesterday.”
“Binky’s on the warpath again, most likely,” Roberta said, leading Reebok into the wash stall, not realizing the true meaning of the word warpath. Cig now knew wha
t it meant.
“Sometimes I think Binky West is living proof that the Indian fucked the buffalo.” Cig’s hand flew to her mouth. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You should hear what Hunter calls him.” Laura giggled at her mother’s uncharacteristic blast.
“What’s that?” Roberta called out from the wash stall.
“Antimatter,” Laura replied.
“That’s good. That’s why your brother will be a star at William and Mary.” Cig smiled.
Laura brushed down Throttle as Cig picked up the phone in the tackroom and dialed Harleyetta.
“Hi, Harley. Cig.”
“Cig, how are you feeling?”
“Fine, thank you. Ready to hunt. How about you?”
“Always. Could I come by in a little bit?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. See you later.”
The phone clicked.
Cig filled the water buckets in each stall and then walked back up to the house. A contract came through on the fax machine, which was a bright sign. Although the sale was small, any commission was better than no commission. A beep, beep alerted her to the fact that another sheet of paper was coming through the machine. She glared as it slowly squeezed through the aperture like a white tongue. She yanked it out.
Cig—
Staff meeting Tuesday. Don’t forget you’re in charge of breakfast. Hope you’re feeling okay.
Max
“Goddamned fax. Goddamned Max.” She crumpled the paper and threw it on the floor, which delighted Woodrow who skidded to attack it.
As the cat batted the paper around the kitchen, Harley clumped in through the mud room door.
“Cig.”
“Keep walking. I’m in the kitchen.”
The door flung open and Harleyetta, her eyebrows well drawn today, wide bronze arches, walked through it, her flats squeaking on the floor. “I’m so glad to see you starting to look like yourself again.”
“Thank you. Coffee, tea, Coke, spirits?”
“Tea. I’m on the wagon.”
As Cig fixed a pot of tea Harleyetta plopped at the table. “I am. Really. I know you don’t believe me. Nobody does. But I am. I’m bloated. I say things I shouldn’t say when I’m drinking. I fight with Binky, that worthless bucket of guts. I don’t like me much. So I’m signing off.” She made a cutting motion with her left hand and her bangle bracelets clanged.
Riding Shotgun Page 27
