“There was a young man named Ned …”
I could clearly see Lill.
“… and Lill he said he would wed …”
Her face growing pink, with pleasure perhaps.
“… take her away … write poems every day …”
But as she’d heard the horrifying final line—“forget that she’d shot a man dead”—paling to white.
The room bursting into laughter. Lill disappearing even as my head and heart whirled, not with horror but absolute disbelief. I hadn’t said that, had I? But why then was everyone laughing? Why did Buck pull me from the table and into a seat with that look of disgust? Where had Lill gone? What had I done?
“Avelina!” I yelled. She jerked aside my curtain. I put up a hand. “Not complaining. I want to know, have you seen Lill?”
She rolled her eyes. “That one’s all right. Stuck to Buck like glue, I hear.”
My heart sank, though I’d thought it was at rock bottom already. I stared at the ceiling, willing the tears forming at the corners of my eyes not to run off into my ears. Avelina waited. I finally choked out, “You think they’re in love?”
She sat down. “You don’t know things like that from looking at someone. Love is when nobody’s lookin’, Ned. Those two … maybe just puttin’ their pants together.”
I ignored her vulgarity. “You think Lill might still be in love with me, when no one’s looking?”
She sighed. “Ned. If she ever was … no more.”
“You just said you couldn’t know things like that from looking, and now you out and out proclaim she’s not in love with me?” I couldn’t keep the tears in any longer. In desperation I shouted, “Get out! Just leave me alone!”
Avelina slapped her knees in disgust and stood up. “Get dressed.”
“What?”
“If you don’t get out of bed now and get dressed, I’ll throw you out nekkid.”
“I’m sick. I feel terrible.”
“Well, you won’t feel worse outside, and it’ll be a great relief to me. Go!”
“Avelina!”
She grabbed hold of me by one arm and my neck and lifted me like a flour sack and stood me on my feet. I stood in my underwear, incredulous.
“Get dressed.”
“I pay rent on this squalid little corner.”
Avelina’s face went red; she dragged me to the front door and shoved me out into the yard and slammed the door behind me. I tried to get back in, but she had put the bar down. A moment later the bar was lifted, the door opened a crack, my clothes flew onto the dirt, and the bar slammed back in place.
“Avelina!” I pounded the door.
Tennessee came around the corner. “Well, looky there. Didn’t know western heroes came in pink.”
It was easily the worst week of my life. I wrote a despairing letter to Brill then ripped it up, not able to bear that he would feel not only that he’d been prescient in his worries but sorry for me on top of it. I had neither the spirit to look for Quillan’s fossils nor to work for Tilfert. I barely choked down food. I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed but for Avelina’s strong-arm insistence. And then I moped around the fort until the livery master collared me.
“Do something about that overgrown horse a yours before I put a bullet in ’er. She makes a godawful noise, spooks up the other horses. I run her off, but she’s right back agin.”
At least Chin was glad of my company. I hitched her to the wagon and we wandered the prairie. “Go where you want, Chin. Lunch all day long for all I care.” I let the reins loose and reclined in the wagon bed to watch clouds racing from one side of the huge blue bowl to the other—as if there were any means to escape.
My head in the hopeless sky and Chin in charge, of course we went to Martine’s. I sat bolt upright, at hearing my name called, and saw Lill. I had a weird hopeful feeling that all that had happened before was a nightmare, or that it had been erased by a benevolent God and I was back where I was two months ago. A close look at Lill told me this was not the case. She looked beautiful but tired, subdued as I’d never seen her. She crossed her arms. “Why are you here?”
She did not look like a woman in love. Perhaps the entire Buck–Lill romance was a subterfuge or, banning that, a short-lived mistake. I looked around the compound, no one to be seen. “Are you alone?”
“Always.” She shrugged. “I don’t remember inviting you to call.”
“We can’t leave things like this between us.”
“There’s no leaving. It’s the way they always were. You apparently didn’t know it.” She turned and spoke impatiently. “I told you no hard feelings. I said I forgave you. Respect me enough not to waste my time. I have other relationships to tender.”
I wanted to be cool about it, but it spilled out. “So where is Buck?”
She smiled at me. “Buck left for New York this morning. I told you: He’s starring in a Western drama.”
I grinned back. “Forever?”
Lill frowned. “He’ll be gone a couple of weeks, this time. Then, if it’s a going concern, who knows?”
I shook my head. “I suppose you’ll be going with him.”
She turned away. I took this to be a hopeful sign. I jumped from the wagon and took her hand. “Come with me. I love you, Lill, I want you in my life. I could never go to New York without you. You are my life.”
Lill smiled a pitying smile. “Ned. I am in love with Buck, and he did ask me to go with him to New York. He’d like me to perform with him.”
I’d thought I’d bounced to the bottom of the well, but hearing her proclaim her love for Buck hove my poor heart deeper into black hopelessness. I, only by clenching my fists until my nails bit my palm, managed to stop from throwing myself at her feet and begging.
She looked to the horizon with a dreamy air. Did she imagine herself in a sequined dress and red boots? Gloves with mile-high fringe and an audience screaming her name as she shot glass balls from the air? That son of a bitch Mason waiting in the wings?
The wan look returned. “Of course I wouldn’t go.” Then I understood. Lill Martine couldn’t risk being revived as Lyllith Hayes. She’d been deluding herself with the India and Omar show. If she’d thought anyone would forget, or she’d be allowed to leave the past behind, thanks to me she now knew better. I mumbled miserably, “You couldn’t.”
“Nonsense,” she snapped. “But I am a lady, ladies do not indulge in theatricals. I will wait for Buck’s return.”
“Are you … betrothed?”
“We have discussed it.” She smiled coyly and would say no more.
She crossed her arms once again and asked if there was anything else. I invented a reason to leave, climbed back into the wagon, and departed, the weight of my lost happiness bowing my back.
Chin wandered back toward the fort, and at some point I became aware of more than my aching heart. I was terribly thirsty and hungry. I’d hardly eaten for days. A desperate need for sustenance assailed me. I couldn’t think, couldn’t plan, couldn’t hatch possibilities between me and Lill until I had food. Did I have a fight in me? I was too hungry to know. I slapped the reins, hoping to encourage Chin to some speed.
Chin veered to the west. I pulled at her head. “No! To the fort!” Chin was the only horse I ever knew that could walk west while her head pointed south. It slowed her down only a little. “Chin! I have no patience left!”
I knew better than to pit myself against her, but I’d been through enough the last few days, both good and bad, that the steam of both went to my head. I got off the wagon and pushed at her, slapped her backside, tried to lead her in the right direction, but she would have none of it, ignoring me as completely as the rest of the world had. I was sick to death of it. She passed a plum thicket and I jumped out and grabbed a switch. When I caught up with the big horse, I struck her with it.
“Damn you, Chin! Can’t anything go my way? Take me back to the fort, do you hear me, you stupid moronic horse! I am the boss!” She flinched at the b
ite and I hit her again. “That’s right, back to the fort.” She shied and whinnied. I hit her again and again. She reared and neighed, but I didn’t stop whaling away until both Chin and I were trembling. I wiped my face and eyes then threw the stick like a javelin as far as I could make it go. I got into the wagon, and she plodded toward the fort.
The morning of Avelina’s wedding, the sky was a soft blue and the temperature a limpid 85 degrees, even at an early hour. She pushed me out the door at dawn and closed her house to everyone. Not even the captain’s wife would be allowed in to help the bride dress.
I imagined Avelina didn’t want anyone to know she plucked hairs from her chin and ears. For such an unattractive woman she was astonishingly vain. I milled around outside with the other members of the fort community. The preacher had set up a box dais by which to officiate. Tilfert already stood beaming beside it, as happy a man as I’d ever seen and, as predicted by Avelina, dressed in his buffalo coat even in the August heat.
I had not seen Lill except from across the way, when she came to the fort to mail a stack of perfumed letters to Buck, and that took what little wind I had out of my sails. I knew those letters would smell of violets, could imagine the tender crackle of their paper.
If I had thought I might visit Lill again, my brutish conduct with Chin put that out of the question. Chin would not allow me to ride her, or even to harness her to the wagon. I knew the equine chastisement was just. I was relieved she would even keep company with me as I paced the prairie.
Lill arrived for the wedding with her parents, wearing a yellow and blue dress, fresh as a prairie flower. She took leave of her family and brushed her skirt free of creases; then, holding her head high, she walked across the packed dirt to where I stood. I shuddered at how smitten with her I still was.
She spoke gaily. “Are you yet deserting us for Connecticut?”
I smiled sadly at her. “I’d throw Connecticut over in an instant if you’d marry me.” I motioned toward the box, hopeful. “We could have a double ceremony, you’re dressed pretty as a bride. I’d find a jacket.”
She laughed, though she didn’t sound happy. “And what would I tell Buck?”
Avelina squeezed out the door of her house, looking less like an ornament for the top of a cake than a gigantic cake itself. Her heavily ruffled muslin dress pouffed from her body, making her look twice her usual estimable size. The veil she’d made from flour sacks by pulling every other thread from the weave struck from the top of her head like a haystack. She clasped a bouquet of lupine in one hand, and when she lifted her skirt to walk with the other, you could see her army-issue boots underneath.
There was a gasp of disbelief. Tilfert’s mouth went slack. He moaned. “Wouldja look at her? She’s a beaut.”
We all stood our places in a semicircle around the bride and groom. The minister intoned the ceremony, and everyone cheered when the lovers kissed. I tried not to envy their happiness, but if I could have yanked the adoration off Avelina’s face, as she looked at Tilfert, and make Lill wear it looking at me, I would’ve cheated Tilfert in a second. Instead, Avelina threw her bouquet into the air, and Lill leapt, catching the nosegay as neatly as a cat playing with a mouse.
There were oohs and ahs.
Tennessee elbowed Lill. “You ’n Buck will throw another wedding before we know it.”
Lill smiled coyly. I was sick.
Avelina and Tilfert danced a rollicking ground-shaking waltz. Anyone who played an instrument had been called on to join the wedding band, which therefore consisted of a fiddle, four mouth harps, bagpipe, washboard and two jugs, and a bugler who played reveille no matter what anyone else was playing. After the bride’s dance, Tilfert threw off his buffalo coat and shouted, “Everyone shake yer sticks!” The men, taking turns with skirt duty, stomped square dances and waltzes for hours, which resembled shoving matches more than anything. The revelers ate the mountain of food that Avelina had taken a week to prepare and washed it down with barrels of yeast-clotted beer.
A good time was had by all—but for me. I slumped at the table, nursing my heartache with a mug of ale, and tried not to resent the happiness of others, especially Lill. She seemed in extraordinarily high spirits, dancing from one female-starved soldier to the next. She laughed loudly and often and even sang with the horrible band.
Finally she took pity and sat beside me, fanning herself with a slender hand. She tilted her head. “Oh, Neddy, cheer up.”
I nodded morosely. “You want me to be happy for Buck?”
She took my hand. “Be glad for me. I love him.” I looked away from her and she pressed my fingers. “You promised we’d always care for each other. I expect you to keep that promise.” I said nothing. She pulled her hand away. “I still wish you wouldn’t go. We’ll all miss you terribly if you do.” She paused. “I’ll miss you terribly, Edward. I miss you now.”
My heart leapt but I could find no words. She looked away—“Well”—and got up from the bench. “Mope if you must. I’d rather dance.” She flung herself back into the melee, leaving my heart to twang and anguish.
Temperatures had peaked by this time, vests and shirts wilted across the backs of chairs as if they and not their owners had been exerting themselves. The last barrels were tapped, and hilarity tipped into vulgarity. Bottle-brave men played the ragtag instruments for the first time, replacing the fatigued musicians. Half a dozen good-natured fistfights resulted in a full dozen bloodied noses, lips and a possible broken bone. Tilfert had just thrown up behind the dais when the train sounded a sad wail and pulled up on the tracks. Tilfert demanded another drink, shouted to me, “Do we got some new customers debarking, Turp?”
But no dudes emerged from the train. Buck Mason took the first step off, not in his usual buckskin but dignified and dashing in a dark suit. Lill caught her breath beside me and, with an expectant glow on her face, took a step forward.
Buck offered his hand to a figure inside the train and helped a woman to the platform. She was tall, exotic, hair piled high on her head, olive complexion warm against a blue dress. The makeshift band stopped playing as Buck turned and, as if to answer all questions, kissed the woman on the mouth.
CHAPTER 8
Dear Mother,
Why do I still write?
How do you bear loneliness?
Buck had married her in New York, an actress by the name of Reta Valentine. Having finished a wildly successful vaudeville run on Broadway in which she played an Indian rani, riveted in sapphires and wound seaworthy into an azure sari, she was introduced to the romantically fringed and booted Mason. They swept each other off their feet and had posthaste written a play together in which they’d cast themselves in the romantic leads. It was to be produced instead of Buck’s Western drama.
It was a terrible thing to see Lill’s face, the pain and betrayal sweeping across like a hurricane, but she regained her composure in a tremor and stepped forward to put Valentine’s Broadway success to shame. Lill enthusiastically hugged both Buck and Reta, singing congratulations. I took Lill’s arm and asked her if she was all right.
Lill glared at me and shook free. “If you will excuse us, Ned. I so seldom have a woman of culture to speak with.” She brought the new Mrs. Mason a drink and chatted about the East, the West, theater, and art, a nonstop storm of chatter that cleared only when Reta went in to lie down.
Lill looked more than a little desperate then. I walked across the dance plat to rescue her, but she’d taken hold of one of the newly arrived Norwegian farmers, Rhylander Osterlund, blond, blue-eyed, and stocky. His head went straight to shoulder, which barely tapered to ankles, so stiff he might have been carved from a block of birch. He stood in virtually the same place he had since morning, looking so awkward and uncomfortable I’d wondered why he didn’t take pity on himself and just go home.
“Mr. Osterlund, would you do me the favor?” Lill gave him her hand.
Osterlund pinked up like he’d been boiled. He and Lill shuffled back and fort
h for the remainder of the song. It turned out to be a great concession on his part; Rhylander’s religion did not allow for dancing. I suspect a great deal of praying went on to remove the blot from his card. Lill, however, keeping a firm grip on the farmer’s calloused hands, nudged them toward the edge of the crowd during the ensuing dance and managed to bump into Buck. Lill spun around and laughed. “Oh, my. I am so sorry, Mr. Mason. Do you know Ry? Rhylander Osterlund. He owns the acreage out by the Little Wolf.”
Ry extended his hand and Buck shook it. Lill immediately shooed Buck away. “Enough. I do not take kindly to sharing Ry with anyone. You two can talk some other time.” Ry inclined his head, took Lill back into the yoke of his arms, and they shuffled away.
Lill camouflaged herself with Rhylander for the remainder of the party, chirping and fluttering with the stolid man like a bird flirting with a tree. She sent her parents home and stayed on, claiming she was having too fine a time to curtail. I remained on her periphery, listening to her one-sided conversations, worrying over what I should do to lessen her pain. Lill waved me off several times; then finally, as the afternoon lost its brilliance and she sent Ry to get the horses, she turned. “What are you doing? It’s like having a hungry dog trailing me!”
“Lill?”
“I’m right as rain, Ned. You think my world was wrapped up in that man? I am more than right, I am relieved. I could have wasted years on that skunk, and now I’ve been set free with little more to mourn than an afternoon or two.”
“I know better than that.”
“Ned. Leave me be.”
“Lill, you have me. I love you. I would never leave you. I have prospects, a job offer, my inheritance.”
She lost the gay facade and choked out, “You have nothing. You are a boy who thinks the world was made for him. A prospect is nothing, an offer is nothing, and don’t delude yourself: Your mother is lost, the money is gone. What you have is a rough road ahead of you, Mr. Bayard. And I am done with that kind of road. I don’t want your love, and, believe me, you don’t want to love me. Love is nothing anyone should wish for.”
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