Bed of Roses

by Rebecca Paisley

  Trampled.

  Horror enveloped the house like a frosting of winter dew.

  The man with gray at his temples, the woman with silvery-white hair, and two of the children lay inside on the floor.

  Dead, and in pools of their own blood.

  An agonized scream awakened Sawyer immediately, and as soon as he opened his eyes he realized the scream was his own.

  Chapter Nine

  “Zafiro.”

  At the sound of Sawyer’s voice, Zafiro looked up from the carrot patch and saw him standing at the end of the row, the soft light of early morning glinting off his long, gold hair. He held a red rose in his hand, and she knew he’d picked it for her.

  Memories of the episode in the barn flamed through her mind, but she no longer felt the shame she had last night. After lying awake in her bed until dawn she finally realized the true reasons behind Sawyer’s reaction to her sensual performance.

  Poor Sawyer, she thought. Poor, poor Sawyer.

  With a nod of her head she acknowledged his presence, then returned her attention to the badly eaten carrot plants.

  “Zafiro, about last night,” Sawyer began, walking toward her. “I’m sorry I made you feel so ashamed. I—”

  “The shame is not mine. It is yours.”

  “What? Uh…All right, I’m ashamed of myself—”

  “I have to weed around these carrots,” she interrupted. “There are so many weeds. And the rabbits have—”

  “I shouldn’t have shouted at you the way I did.” Arriving beside her, Sawyer reached for her hand.

  She moved to the side, well away from him. “I have found eight small carrots, three tomatoes, and a long green squash. I am hoping to find a few onions and potatoes too. We will have vegetables and fried fish for dinner—”

  “Why won’t you listen to me? I’m trying to apologize for—”

  “I know what you are trying to do, Sawyer, and I am trying to save you what little pride you must have left. There is no reason for you to say you are sorry to me. What happened in the barn last night, it was not your fault.”

  “I’m a man who can apologize when I’m wrong, Zafiro. Saying I’m sorry to you doesn’t injure my pride. What happened in the barn last night wasn’t your fault either. It was—”

  “Of course it was not my fault.” She bent down and pulled a few weeds, tossing them over her shoulder. “I am not the abnormal one.”

  He felt sure he’d heard her incorrectly. “Excuse me? What did you say?”

  “I am normal, and you are not. The things that happened last night, they cannot be my fault because I am normal. But they cannot be your fault either, because abnormal people cannot be blamed for their actions. Do not forget that I have lived with Tia, Azucar, and Pedro for many years. All three of them are—how do you say it?—they should be in their rockers, but they got up. Maclovio and Lorenzo, their problems are only drunkenness and deafness, so they are not really like Tia, Azucar, and Pedro.”

  Again, he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “You’re saying I’m off my rocker? Comparing me to Mother Tia, Madame Azucar, and Saint Peter?”

  She walked down the vegetable row, stopping in front of a sad-looking patch of lettuce. Her sapphire swung and shone in the sunlight as she leaned over the vegetables. “Tia, Azucar, and Pedro, sweet and wonderful as they are, are never going to be normal again. But you, Sawyer…you might not be in your head right now, but—”

  “I’m out of my mind? Me? I'm not the one who nearly set the barn on fire last night! I’m not the one who smeared rotten lard all over my face and lips or wrapped a damn bouquet of thorns in my hair, or—”

  “Sawyer, please,” Zafiro entreated softly. “Do not do this to yourself. I know and understand the reasons why you acted the way you did with me last night. You do not have to hide your abnormality any longer. I am your friend, and I will accept your problem just the way I have the problems of Tia, Azucar, and Pedro.”

  He stormed down the row of vegetables, stopping so close to Zafiro that the tips of her breasts brushed his lower chest. “What problem is it that you think I have?” he shouted.

  He loomed above her, staring down at her face, and his hair fell across her cheeks and over her shoulders. He smelled of earth, she thought. And sun, and that musky, wonderful scent she now recognized as utterly male.

  Laying her hand over his heart, she felt a sharp stab of regret that she would not experience his lovemaking. For although her sensuous plans of last night had been carefully calculated toward gaining his consent to help her men, she’d also anticipated learning about and understanding the physical relationship that could be had between a man and a woman.

  But it was not to be.

  Raising her hand, she slid her fingers over the deep hollow beneath his cheekbone. “You do not know how to make love to a woman,” she told him, smiling tenderly. “Before you lost your memory you might have known, but you have forgotten, just as you have forgotten so many other things in your life. Your shouting at me last night… You were only covering up your own embarrassment, isn’t that right, Sawyer? So that I would not guess your secret problem, you only pretended to—”

  “Forgotten… Secret problem… No!”

  Still smiling tenderly, she patted his cheek. “Lie to me, but do not lie to yourself. You could not make love to me last night because you do not know how. You are the same as I am, Sawyer: a virgin. Maybe not physically as I am, but mentally, because you do not remember how to do it. Azucar said that men take great pride in their lovemaking abilities, and for such a thing to happen to a strong, young man like you… It is very sad.”

  When she walked down the row of vegetables away from him, calmly pulling weeds here and there, fury exploded inside Sawyer like a boulder blown to smithereens by a case of dynamite.

  He couldn’t talk to her. Couldn’t convince her how totally wrong she was.

  His rage was of such an extent that he could barely take his next breath, much less speak.

  He threw down the rose he’d picked for her, stormed out of the garden and straight into the woods. There he picked up his ax and began swinging at the trunk of an oak as if the poor tree were a bloodthirsty creature about to kill him.

  “I’m off my rocker, am I?” he shouted. Again his ax bit into the tree trunk.

  Fragments of wood flew into the air and around him like a swarm of angry insects. “I’m out of my mind, am I?”

  He continued to do battle with the tree, swinging the ax so quickly and with such strength that in only moments he’d cut clear into the core of the trunk.

  “A virgin! The wacky wench compared me to a virgin!” He hurled the ax into the woods, and pressing his broad shoulder against the tree, he began to push with every shred of might his body held.

  As its moist and supple fibers bent and twisted, the tree gave forth a loud splintering sound and crashed to the forest floor, a thing defeated and killed by one man’s potent anger.

  Sawyer made quick work of the slaughtered timber, scraping, hacking, and dissecting its woody meat as if it might somehow come back to life and attack him.

  He would complete every single repair he’d promised to make at La Escondida, and then he would leave, never setting foot near Zafiro’s mountain again. Damn the woman anyway! he fumed inwardly. Damn her, her crazy companions, and her maddening menagerie of animals!

  He labored clear through the morning and on into the afternoon, breaking only for water and the entire loaf of bread that Tia left on the table in the great room of the cabin. When night fell he did those chores that he could by moonlight, seeking sleep only when pure exhaustion forced him to it.

  The next day was the same, as was the following day. A week passed, and then another, during which time he painstakingly avoided Zafiro and all her charges. Each day he did the work of several men, and by the time stars twinkled in the sky he had only enough energy left to eat whatever scanty meal Tia left in his room. He would then fall fast asleep and awaken
long before Zafiro or the sun to begin the next day’s worth of work.

  He made steady progress with all the repairs. Not only did he build a new woodshed out of whole pine logs linked permanently together at all four corners by the dovetail notches he painstakingly carved, but he also figured out a way to keep rabbits out of the vegetable patch. By surrounding the garden with four high walls of tall, straight pine saplings, he created a barrier that could be entered only by means of a swinging door that closed with a wooden latch. Upon further thought he incarcerated Jengibre within the enclosure. The peevish hen so hated being penned that she squawked, cackled, and screeched continuously, making such never-ending racket that not a single rabbit dared attempt to breach the pine walls.

  The garden problem taken care of, he finished and laid out to dry the long, sturdy boards he would need to fix the side of the barn. After that he fashioned a new and sturdy chicken coop, restored the missing plank in the porch, and fixed the smashed porch step, all of which he accomplished nicely with old, rusty nails he’d found scattered among the pile of wood that used to be the wagon. He then began to replace the falling-down fences, working so quickly, so tirelessly, that it seemed to Zafiro that the fences had sprung out of the ground as if by sorcery.

  Sawyer worked like a man possessed, she thought one early evening while watching him rifle through the old wagon boards in search of more nails. She knew in her heart that he was plagued by the fact that she’d discovered he had forgotten his lovemaking skills and wished there were some way she could alleviate his anguish.

  Still, his abilities between the sheets would not save her and her people from Luis. How many times had she almost begun to tell Sawyer about her cousin? And now the man would not even come near her, ducking out of sight the second she came into his view. Some nights he didn’t even sleep in the house, but sought a place outside to bed down instead.

  “If things keep going the way they are going now, I will have to write everything down and send him a letter, Mariposa,” she told the cougar, who sat on the new porch step beside her. “Or maybe I should—”

  “Zafiro,” Tia called as she opened the cabin door and held out a small pail. “Take these apple peels and cores to Pancha, Rayo, and Mister, niña. I have used the last of the apples for applesauce, and we must not let a bit of the apples go to waste. The animals, they love apples. I only wish I had more to give to them.”

  Zafiro rose from the step and took the pail from Tia’s chubby brown hand. “I know where there is a big berry patch, Tia. It is not inside La Escondida, but it is not very far away. If we are careful to stay low, no one will see us while we gather the berries.”

  Tia nodded. “Francisco, he likes berry tarts almost as much as apple tarts. But we do not have much sugar either, chiquita. Or lard. But the garden, it has never given us so many vegetables! This morning I gathered enough potatoes to make mounds of potato cakes for dinner. And I have already started drying the peas and beans for winter. And have you seen the corn? Soon we will have enough corn to make sacks of masa for tortillas! My Francisco, he is a smart boy to think of putting a wall around the garden, isn’t he?”

  Zafiro glanced at the garden, her heart warming with pleasure and gratitude.

  “Go now, Zafiro,” Tia said. “Give the animals their treat.”

  Heading toward the barn, Zafiro continued to ponder the garden, but also wondered when the nuns would have supplies to share. It was all well and good that the vegetable garden was doing better, but the little patch did not grow sugar, salt, fresh meat, or other food items that Tia needed in order to keep everyone healthy and well-fed. Nor did the garden yield clothing, candles, lamp oil, fish hooks, hairbrushes, needles, thread, or other numerous necessities.

  What she wouldn’t do to be able to buy what she needed in Piedra Blanca. Unlike the sleepy villages that dotted the foothills, Piedra Blanca was a real town with a big store that sold everything a patron could imagine. The nuns had visited the town once two years ago to hear Mass in the town’s brand new church. When they returned, their stories about the town had filled Zafiro’s dreams for nearly a month.

  But Piedra Blanca was nearly a whole day’s ride away. And there was still a problem with money.

  She didn’t have any.

  It was just as well, she thought. Riding out in the open the way she would be forced to do to get to Piedra Blanca… What if someone spotted her during the trip or recognized her while she shopped? Someone who by some chance knew about Luis and the fact that her cousin had sworn to hunt her down?

  She couldn’t take the risk.

  Luis.

  Her mouth went dry; her heart raced. She couldn’t swallow, could barely think.

  Santa Maria, he was coming. When, she didn’t know, but he would come.

  She gazed at the mountaintops. Even now was Luis somewhere near.

  Taking deep breaths and forcing herself to concentrate on other matters, she managed to pull her emotions back together. A sigh gathering deep within her, she stopped beside Coraje’s corral. The stallion’s eyes filled with violence as soon as he noticed her.

  “Grandfather loved you, Coraje,” Zafiro whispered to him. “You were always spirited, but perhaps you are mean now because you miss him as much as we do.”

  She tossed several apple cores into the paddock, watched Coraje devour them, then entered the barn and divided the rest of the apple cores and peels between Pancha, Rayo, and Mister. When the gentle animals began chomping into the sweet treat, she wandered around the barn, noting the next-to-nothing mound of hay, the holes in one wall, and Sawyer’s trunk.

  It sat in a corner of the stable, its top coated with dust and bits of straw. She ran her fingers over the lock, wondering over and over again what the trunk contained.

  She understood why Sawyer wouldn’t open it. Understood that its contents were somehow connected with the memories he was loath to remember.

  But her understanding did nothing to quell her curiosity. She stared down at the trunk for a few moments longer, then looked around the barn again and spied a row of tack that her men had once used on their mounts.

  A wave of nostalgia surged through her. One of her earliest memories was that of her grandfather and his men cleaning and oiling their tack to keep it soft, supple, and gleaming.

  But now rust coated the bridle bits and the stirrups. Cobwebs and thick layers of dust covered the stiff leather of the reins and saddles. As she examined the riding equipment, Zafiro knew a sharp stab of sadness.

  Suddenly, it didn’t matter to her that the bridles and saddles would never be used again. They were treasures from the past, the same as Tia, Azucar, and the men. As such, they deserved whatever special care she could give them.

  She hurried back to the house and gathered supplies: a bit of lard, some vinegar, a bucket of water with a small measure of soap in it, and several freshly washed rags. Armed with the cleaning supplies, she returned to the barn and sat in the middle of the floor with all the old, dirty tack spread around her.

  By the light of the two old lanterns she’d lit, she wiped away all traces of dust and cobwebs from the riding equipment. Vigorous rubbing with the vinegar removed the rust from the bridle bits and other iron trappings. She then set about cleaning the dirty leather with the soapy water. A while later, when the tack had dried, an application of the lard gave the leather a luxurious gleam.

  Tired, but pleased with her work, Zafiro sat back against Rayo’s stall door. As she relaxed she looked at other objects in the barn: an old shovel, a few empty barrels, a stack of discarded burlap bags, and several wooden boxes.

  She rose from her seat on the barn floor and opened the wooden containers. Inside them she found a handful of old bullets, a belt buckle, a dented tin cup, a wadded-up red kerchief, a deteriorated piece of dynamite, a coiled black whip, and a pair of handcuffs.

  She shut the boxes, then spied another, a long wooden crate that sat in a pool of shadows next to the barn wall.

  Her gaze
rested on the crate. Years had passed since she’d last looked at its contents. Lingering nostalgia compelled her to look at them now.

  The hinges on the wooden box creaked as she lifted the lid. Inside, cloaked in the bloodstained serape he’d died in, lay her father’s guns, two pistols and a rifle.

  Wrapped and boxed though they’d been, the heavy weapons were still badly rusted. Zafiro seriously doubted they were even serviceable. But it didn’t matter. They’d belonged to her father, and she handled them as though they were wrought of pure gold and studded with diamonds.

  Lost in her reverie, she started when Sawyer’s heavy footsteps broke through the musty silence of the barn. “Sawyer!”

  He didn’t even acknowledge her presence with a glance, but merely walked to the back wall of the barn and placed his ax and his saw on the shelf where he’d found them weeks ago.

  “Sawyer, wait,” Zafiro called when he headed toward the barn doors to leave. Quickly, she laid her father’s guns back in the wooden crate. “I have been trying to tell you something very important for weeks, but—”

  “I’m busy,” he flared, stopping for a moment to turn and glare at her. “Busy rebuilding your home. I’m nearly through now, Zafiro. All I have left to do is fix this barn wall and fence in two pastures—”

  “Yes, and I am very thankful for everything you have—”

  “Consider it a promise kept.” He growled the words at her, then proceeded toward the barn doors again.

  “For more than two weeks you have evaded me, disappearing the second you see me, and now you are trying to escape me again. You do this because you are ashamed. But, Sawyer, I have not and will not tell anyone that you have forgotten the sexual talents you might have possessed before losing your memories. The loss of your lovemaking abilities, it does not matter to me, because that is not the reason why I need you.”

  He felt a muscle in his jaw begin to twitch. Renewed anger narrowed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and balled his fists.

  He raked his gaze down the length of her body, not missing the way her breasts pushed at the thin fabric of her blouse, the way her skirt clung to her rounded hips and lean legs…