We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part XIV)

Charles Hubbard was surprised to see me. He was agitated and distracted, but forced his most pleasant face.

"Good afternoon, Lucene. Your father's in the saloon."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Hubbard. Is everything all right?" Charles Hubbard had always been touched with the jitters, but his agitation was visible.

"Yes, yes, dear." He answered. "Its nothing that isn't plaguing us all. I'm simply recalculating a budget. I've lost another boarder."

"I'm sorry to hear that." I answered, trying to dampen my enthusiasm for meeting Daniel. "Isn't the saloon doing well? Pa says its a full house nearly every night."

"Yes, yes, dear." He answered again, this time rolling his eyes down to feast on the ledger in his hands. "The saloon is fine, and your father is doing a remarkable job, but the Inn is bleeding money." He said it more to himself than to me.

There was no end to the lives this drought would ruin.

"Well, I'm very sorry," I reasserted, "It'll rain soon. I'm sure of it. It has to. And when it does everything will go back to normal, just like it was before." He wasn't listening. Or maybe he was.

He looked up at me from the ledger and smiled grimly. "You're a sweet girl, Lucene, and smart." He paused. "Your father's in the Saloon." He added again.

"Actually, Mr. Hubbard, I came to see Daniel, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it to Pa."

Charles Hubbard blanched. "Lucene, are you in some sort of trouble?"

"No," I giggled, embarrassed for both of us. "No, I just need to speak with Daniel. If Pa finds out he'll tease me ragged over it. That's all."

Charles Hubbard's alarm did not diminish.

"Well then you're either very unlucky or very lucky. Daniel's gone. He's the boarder I just mentioned losing. He checked out almost an hour ago. And if you ask me Lucene," Hubbard lowered his voice sternly, "we're both better off for it. Now, I know I could use the rent, but there is something about that boy that is pure trouble."

"What do you mean he's checked out? And what do you mean by trouble? What kind of trouble?" My stomach churned  in sour rotations.

"I mean he's a drifter." he said to answer both of my questions. "Whatever you think you need with him, you may have just dodged the bullet of your life."

"Did he leave anything? A message? Anything?" Panic gripped at my throat with icy fingers. It pounded at my temples with pugnacious determination.

"Nothing." Hubbard said flatly.

Tar boiled underneath acrimonious skin. Ire slithered its serpent route up my spine and dripped scorn from its forked tongue. The desk lamp blazed rusty scarlet and dyed all I laid my eyes upon. The flesh of long interred corpses pulsed vital in comparison to my decayed resolution. Daniel was gone.

"Lucene, are you alright?" Charles Hubbard's thin voice came to me as if over miles.

"I'm fine." I spat.

"I think you better have a seat." He warned.

"I said I'm fine." My own voice was shattered glass. I wheeled around toward the door. "Don't say anything to Pa." I shot over my shoulder and I walked out into the street.

Morrison Station stood as it always had, an abject testimony to the chronic misery of its people. The slat board store fronts bore veneered faces propped up with illusion and irony. The place was a hole, a vacuum that sucked up all grace, all oxygen and left nothing, not even emptiness in its wake. It made dust and specters of us all. The phantoms on the street cast no shadows. The sky and all in it, the sun and the birds were erased.

Iron rage scalded my face fortified with the undying understanding that I did this. I mocked Daniel, criticized and belittled him. I forged my admiration of him in a kiln of insecurity until it was a lethal saber, and thrust it at him relentlessly. I constructed a fortress between us, then cried when he could not break through.

I was nearly home when I became aware that the sun was, in fact, not throwing its oblong shadows all around me. The sky was not erased, it was covered. A palpable cover of thick white clouds obliterated the sun. It wasn't that there were no shadows, but rather everything was in shadow. Irrational hope pricked at me. Rain. But all fools and scholars know that no rain falls from white clouds. I marched on spiteful steps the rest of the way.

I paused at the edge of the farm and prepared to greet Frank with an open heart. His kid's coat was no match for my daggers and he deserved none of them. I measured my breaths in counts of ten and steadied my hands, but the breath burned, white hot coals in my lungs when my eyes fell upon the great black draft stallion hitched to the barn door. The regal beast watched me earnestly  from dark pooling eyes. He capitulated a sighing snort and lowered his head. I sprinted for the door.

"Hiya!" Frank ran to me cheerfully. "You're friend is here."

Frank grabbed my hand with the innocent wonder that so often refreshed and restored me. Daniel stood dead center of the kitchen, Samson nestled in the crook of his chiseled arms.

"Hiya." He echoed with a wraith's rasp.

"Hiya yourself." I stood facing an apparition, conversing with the recently departed.

"Frank I and I were just getting acquainted." He said, the baritone returning to his voice. "He was telling me that you think he has your mama's smile and little Samson here has your pa's. Says he can't figure who's you got." His eyes penetrated mine, as straight and sharp as Tell's arrow.

"Is that so?" I asked giving Frank a sideways glance. His face beamed a bright imitation of the full moon. Pride and joy shot out of him in silvery rays. I floated there, sailing on Frank's intentions, pinned by Daniel's stare.

"Guess you got one all your own," Daniel said. An eternity passed between he and I as he watched me watch him. Above the tangled curls of his beard his mouth drew an impossibly straight line. No bend of grin or giggle betrayed him. A sobriety collected itself at the corners of his eyes and wrinkled the skin there. He said nothing more.

"Guess so," I answered meeting his intensity. Blood boiled in my cheeks. I waited on a high wire, swallowing the sensation that anything might happen. And then Samson gurgled out a high pitched and throaty laugh. It was a wet laugh and before long it was a laugh he choked on. Instinctively I dipped down and scooped him from Daniel. Balancing Samson on my shoulder I narrowed my eyes on Daniel. "Where did you learn to hold a baby?" I asked.

He gave a small shrug, shook his head and walked to the window. I watched him there for a while with silence stretching between us. He ran his hand through his thick hair as he had in the stables. A quiet sadness shrouded him.

"Frank, take Sam and give him a bottle, will you? You can put him in the highchair if your arms are tired. Daniel and I are gong to go outside for a while." I handed Frank the baby and beckoned Daniel to follow me.

I led us on a slow stroll toward the barn. Gesturing broadly toward the fields I explained, "that's where the wheat grew. It was mole hills for a while, but even they've moved on now." He looked, but said nothing. When we reached the barn I leaned against the door frame and beheld the great grey brown swatch of land that was our homestead. Daniel looked too.

"Why did you come here?" I asked.

"They're cute," he said, nodding toward the house and falling back into contemplative silence.

"Thanks," I offered, taking a wide berth around his mood so that it might grow and sprout a vocabulary.

"So that's it, huh?" He asked.

"That's what?" I was hungry to hear him speak, to know his meaning, to know why he was here, why he was leaving, why he ever came to Morrison in the first place.

"Frank told me about your ma," Without meaning to I bit down hard on my bottom lip. Daniel didn't look at me, didn't notice.

"I assumed you already knew all about that. Everybody knows." I wore my words like scabs and scars.

"Nah, I didn't know." He offered no apology or condolence, and it was refreshing. "I knew something was chaining you up here. Guess I just wanted to see it for myself. You think you gotta finish what she started." His observation was matter of fact, and he wasn't asking me.

"You don't know so much." I deflected. "Besides, just because your skeletons are buried better than mine doesn't mean you haven't got them for yourself."

He turned to me then. "Have I?" His expression married his tone to challenge my assertion. "Like what?"

"Like where did a cowboy from Abilene learn to speak with such proper English, for starters? And where did you learn to tame screaming Mustangs, and hold babies? And where is it you keep drifting to or from?And how come you can look at me the way you do without a moment of fear or hesitation?" The questions spilled from me as honest and clean as water.

"Who says I'm drifting?" His question was armor, meant to deflect my own.

"I went by the Inn."

"Ah," he said leaning in to the other side of the door frame. "Moving and drifting aren't the same. A man's got a handful of good reasons to move, but only one real reason to drift. A man moves when he's after something. When he's seeking. A man only drifts when he hasn't got any place to be."

"And which are you?" I asked.

"Not so sure about that at the moment," he answered sincerely, "but I aim to find out."

We stood muted for a long time. Frothy white clouds tumbled over one another seamlessly. They collided and contorted invisibly, but we watched just the same. Sweat pooled at the base of Daniel's neck and beads of it rolled down my back like tears. His breathing and mine fell into synchronized rhythm and persisted until a gathering wind deafened my ears to the subtlety of exhalation. I watched him secretly through stolen glances at the periphery of my field of vision. The wind cooled and dried his neck, and fluttered through my skirts.

"I'm sorry," I said abruptly. "I haven't been kind to you, and my hostility hasn't been honest. I didn't trust you." I didn't look at him when I spoke, and I evacuated the words like pebbles from my mouth.

"Didn't?" He was staring at me now. I could feel it, feel him, his heat burning through the very side of me, but still I didn't look. I thought briefly of a pillar of salt.

"I wanted to." I explained, "That's why I went to the Inn. I wanted to tell you everything. Mr. Hubbard told me you'd left. So I thought maybe I was right. Maybe I don't trust you, can't trust you. And now you're here. Why are you here? What is it you're seeking?"

"It's not your life Lucene. It was hers."

"Stop it. Stop saying that. Why won't you answer me?" Frustration furrowed my face into tight knots. I turned cold, hard, stone eyes on him. "It is my life and I wouldn't expect you to understand. But then you don't have to understand do you? You don't have to know sacrifice. You don't have to know commitment.You're not forced to bear witness to the pain caused by your love. You don't need to concern yourself with the expectations you see in the eyes of young children and grieving men. You can roam or drift or move or seek as easily as you see fit. You know the freedom of being unattached. You can hitch and unhitch yourself as you please. Well good for you, Daniel, but we don't all know such luxurious freedom. You have no idea what loss can do to a person, how it can bind." He was close, a matter of feet from me, a matter of degrees, a step away, but entirely unreachable.

"I know you don't belong here. And I know you know it too." He clenched his teeth so tightly the whiskers on his jaw jumped and danced, pulsed and shook over a coolness we wore like armor.

I stepped closer, so close I could feel the heat radiating from him. It was impossible to be unaffected by him. I tried and failed. His heat infused with my own, a furnace fueled by desperation and a pointed determination to penetrate that calculated exterior "Did you really come here with the notion of a solution? Did you think I was some broken toy you could fix and play with? You were right when you said I was like you. You could see instantly that I was tarnished and corroded because we are the same, bent, broken, useless creatures. You think if you can fix me, if you can save me then you can save yourself." I lowered my voice, almost to a whisper as I leaned in to his ear, "You can't save me. You can't save either of us."

He turned on me then with a terrifying force. With a squeezing grip on each of my shoulders he threw his weight into me. I stumbled backward until I was clamped between the wall of the barn and his thick chest and broad shoulders. His heart pounded frantically against my sternum. His fingers sank deep into the flesh of my arms. I craned my neck as far as I could, but still I could feel his hot, wet breath on my cheek. And though his lips didn't touch my skin, I felt them move when he spoke.

"You don't know half of what you think you do." He choked out hoarse words. I turned my face up at his. Less than an inch separated us then. At such proximity he was obvious. Sorrow glowed on him. Hope and fear and lust seized him and bent his features. Loneliness and the small promise that I might just understand him after all gripped him tighter than he gripped me.  "Do you want me to go?" he whispered. I stared at him, dumb. He rattled me in concussive convulsions. "Tell me!" he roared, "Tell me to let you go! Tell me to let you go and go away from here forever!" He trembled miserably. The skin on his arms and face twitched and grew goose flesh.

"I -" I stammered, shaken, "I - I can't. No."

When he pushed his mouth into mine, I pushed mine back.

We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part XIII)

I didn't see Aida during the picnic. I didn't expect to. A ranch full of young men no longer distracted with hard work would simply be too tempting for her. She couldn't resist commanding their collective attention. I didn't blame them. She radiated a golden charm. Hers was a magnetic quality that didn't require explanation. I didn't hold it against her either. It was just her nature. Nothing changed. Nothing ever changes much.

Henrietta handed me a plateful of pulled beef. A meal at the Bingham's was a rarity to those of in the employ of Andrew Bingham, and she served me with warmth.

"You can come sit with me." She said when she saw me scanning the yard. "No sense in you wasting this one special occasion we got sittin' off by yourself."

Henrietta was poor, but unlike most of the folks in town, the farmers especially, she had always been poor. She had always been what they called "servant class." She never had any schooling, but that didn't stop her from getting an education. I never could tell how old she was, and I never saved up enough nerve to ask. Some days, when the dawn sent tangerine light streaking across her face, cool blue shadows collected in etched lines surrounding her mouth and her eyes. At those times she may have sixty, maybe older. And now, in the grey shade of a tall thick oak, the breeze caught wisps of her hair and framed her face in salt and pepper curls. Her eyes were sharp and kind, and she barely seemed a day past forty, maybe younger. I think I preferred not knowing. The mystery gave her wisdom weight and the weight gave her wisdom substance.

"Oh," I smiled, embarrassed. I glanced around me one more time. My eyes darted across the yard, then back to Henrietta. They scanned the pasture, then returned to Henrietta. Daniel wasn't anywhere. His four followers, the other men in the horse collecting party sat contentedly, eating beef, dripping bar-be-que onto their clothes, laughing at stories from the hunt. I looked toward the stables from the corner of my eye, careful not to turn my head, and give myself away, but it was too late.

"Ah," Henrietta said with a broad grin. "It isn't exactly a seat you're looking for, is it?"

Daniel wasn't near the stables. He wasn't anywhere.

I blushed. "No ma'am. It sure isn't."

"Aw, honey, come and sit with me a while. He'll show up. And you won't hurt my feelings none if you get up and go running after him when he do." She put her wide arm across my stiff shoulders and pulled me deep into her soft fleshy self. Her embrace was convincing. Mama always told me you can't trust a skinny cook, and Henrietta was mighty trustworthy.

"Thanks," I said giving in. "And thanks for the bar-be-que. It smells incredible."

"Its nothing, girlie. Its just what I do."

I followed her to the pine laundry table. It had been converted into a picnic table for the occasion with the small addition of a red and white checkered cloth. Half way there I remembered how skinny Mama was. I let loose errant laugh. Henrietta turned to me inquisitively, one eyebrow arched high. The look she gave caused me to laugh again and harder. I passed her and sat down. She sat too.

"You wanna tell me what is so dern funny?" she asked.

"I'm sorry, Henny." I said. "I just remembered something Mama used to say."

Her smile was still warm, but her eyes sighed deeply.

"You're mama was a fine lady, and I 'spect she had many good jokes."

"That's true. She did. But this thing I just remembered, I didn't even know it was a joke until now. Even from beyond her grave she continues to surprise and impress me."

"Well, what was it, honey?"

I contorted my face into the very serious expression that Mama wore when she said it.

"Lucene," I took a deep breath to add emphasis like Mama had, "you can't never trust no skinny cook."

Henrietta mirrored my solemn expression. Her eyebrows furrowed into a knot low over her eyes. I was afraid I might have hurt her feelings, and I hated to think she might hold it against Mama. I was just about to apologize when the corner of her mouth cracked betraying her. I pursed my lips taught. I bit them to keep them straight. She squinted her eyes down into tight little slits, but her chest heaved. From deep within me, the laughter gurgled up, a low base tuned giggle. When she heard it Henrietta pivot her head far back on her neck and opened her mouth wide. Laughter peeled out of her as sure and as high as steam shoots out of a geyser. I doubled over to hold my cramping stomach as round after round of laughter erupted between us.

"Your mama couldn't never have weighed no more'n a hundred pounds!" She squealed.

"I know!" I wheezed.

Tears streamed down our faces. I crossed my legs to control my bladder. Henrietta planted her hand deep into my shoulder to brace herself as she struggled to catch her breath, her diaphragm still tremoring. I wiped tears from my chin and eyes with the backs of my fingers. Through the clearer vision I saw Daniel standing in the door of the stables. He leaned heavily, his shoulder pressed against the wood frame.  He held his Stetson in one hand, and ran the other through his hair and over his beard as thought it ached. I ached.

He watched us, watched me with patient concentration. His eyes were distant, buried deep under the weight of his private thoughts, but he wore the slightest of smiles. It was a departure from his usual deliberate and wicked grin, and it gave him a queer look of bewilderment.

The joy dissolved from my face as I looked back at him. His smile evaporated. Henrietta continued to chuckle unperturbed, but Daniel's face grew dark. He ripped himself from the door frame like a scab and blended into the shadow of the stable.

"Did I ever tell you I met your mama her first day in Morrison? She'd just come in that morning with your pa." Henrietta asked, but I didn't notice. "Honey can you hear me?" She followed my gaze out toward the empty doorway. "Did your fella show up? Which one is he?"

I shook my head and looked at my feet. "No. He didn't show. What were you saying?"

"Don't worry, child. He will."

I wanted to believe her. I wanted painfully to trust that she knew and spoke truth. But Henrietta always spoke from the heart, and the heart isn't always very frank. And the thing about my fella was he wasn't my fella. He was a crazed, poker playing, punch swinging, horse charming, wild eyed stranger. I had no idea what he might do next, what he was capable of.

"I asked if I ever told you how I met your mama the day she came to town with your pa."

"Came?" I asked. "What do you mean came? Weren't they always from here?"

"From here?" she asked with surprise, "No, no, girlie. Your mama came here." She stretched the word "came" far enough to break it. "She came with your pa when she was, I don't know, just about your age, I 'spose. I met her the day they moved in to your place. My brother Thomas used to work up at the Wilson stead just up the road from y'all. I happened to being walking him to work that morning when the craziest little white lady came running down the path at us. She was hollering to heavens and waving her arms all about. I'd like to have thunk she on fire 'cept I didn't smell no smoke. When she reached us at the road she was all raven curls and wide eyes. She wasn't no more than the merest sliver of a thing! But she wound around with the force of a twister.

'Excuse me!' she wailed at us. 'Excuse me!'

We stopped, Thomas, my brother, and I of course cause she was making quite the spectacle.

'Thanks for stopping' she said. She was pantin' just like an old hound, but she looked us straight in the eye. Don't everybody do that.

'I'm Rosalie, and we just moved here, today actually, and wouldn't you know it, but our pump just doesn't want to cooperate,' and that's just what she said, like the pump might have its own mind to make up.

'Could you take a look at it? Maybe tell me what I'm doing wrong here?' she asked us. So Thomas, my brother, went up and looked at it for her."

"Wait," I said. "Hold it for one hot minute. You're trying to tell me that Mama didn't know how to use a well pump?"

"Well, not on that day she didn't." Henrietta answered.

"Mama? My Mama?" I asked dumbfounded. The farm had been her home, her whole life.

"Yes, child your mama." Henrietta said patiently. "Wasn't really nothing wrong with it, 'cept one of the washers was rusted on tight. So Thomas, my brother, loosed it up for her and we was on our way. I ain't never had much occasion to talk with your mama after that, but do you believe that in all these years since then, she ain't never seen me once without stopping to say hello and ask after me and my brother, Thomas."

Questions roiled in my brain. Henrietta must have seen it in my eyes darting back and forth, jumping around like fleas. She took my hand softly.

"Your mama was a fine lady," she said.

"Henny?" I asked. "Do you know where they came from?"

"Not for certain, no, but I heard it once upon a time they might have come here from New York City. The way they struggled on up there, its a wonder they didn't go back to New York whether they came from there or not. But I guess it wasn't no time really 'til she was 'specting you. After that they just found a way to make it work, I guess."

"New York," I repeated barely audible.

"Frankly I'm surprised you never knowed. You's always the one who knows so much about everybody in town."

"I just like to talk to people is all," I explained absently. "Do you know why they came?"

Henrietta looked away from me quickly and bristled. "Maybe that's some'n you oughta talk to your pa about."

"No," I muttered. "If he wanted me to know, he'd have told me by now."

"Well if he don't want you knowin' then it ain't my place to be tellin'. Besides, I don't know much about it anyhow, and some'n tells me I done gone and told you too much already. My brother Thomas always said I got too big a mouth and it ain't no good for nothing but cacthin' flies in."

Worry settled over her like a damp sheet.

"Its ok," I assured her. "I won't say anything to Pa. That's a sweet story about Mama. Thanks for sharing it with me."

"I guess I just thought you could use to hear how good a lady she was."

We sat quiet for a moment. I watched the stable. The door frame yawned hollow.

"Henny, I have to go." I said. "Thanks for the beef and the laugh."

"Sure, honey, sure," she said. "You go see about that fella of yours."

"Yeah," I said. "Right."

I walked across the sprawling lawn through the thick easy laughter of the others, swirling sonorous. Mama came here. She came from New York. She left New York. She left a home, a family, a life. Daniel came here. He left Abilene, and where ever he had been before that, he'd left there too. Independently, each made a choice. They held firmly to a faith in themselves, in the world around them and in their places in it. My faith was a hollow myth. From a tended distance I latched a misdirected fantasy to Philip's impotent vision. He had never seen me and never threatened to. I hoped he would take me away, and I slept easily knowing he never would. It was nothing more than a charade.  

The stable was empty. I looked in every stall expecting to see Daniel, back hunched, painfully focused on measuring a hoof or brushing a knot out of a tail, but each horse was alone in its stall. I walked down the corridor peaking in at and under each creature as I went. He wasn't anywhere. The closer I came to the last stall the slower I stepped. Dry straw crunched under my boots and echoed down from the rafters, like secrets whispered by ghosts. Daniel's grand draft stallion was housed in the far stall, nearest the opening to the pasture. Daniel might be able to tame the beast, but I had little desire to be left alone with it. A chill crawled over my flesh in spite of the dark heat. I could see nothing of the black giant from the aisle. I timidly put one foot out and pulled myself another half a step closer. Still the high wooden wall blocked my view. My feet frozen, refusing to move another inch, I bent from my waist and leaned my head far forward. My eyes stretched around the wall and into the stall. It was empty. No beast. No Daniel.

He must have gone for a ride. He must have needed some time, some air, some light. Mr. Bingham offered Daniel liberal use of the stallion. "You're the only one who can ride him anyway," he'd said. "Use him until we can break him in." Bingham liked the word "we." Nobody would concern himself with their mutual absence. No one would even notice they were missing. No one but me.

The hay in the stall was fresh and soft. It beckoned to me to come in and lay my head down, to wait and to rest. The high worn walls offered up their sanctuary and promised to hide me as long as I'd like. He could find me here when he returned. He could speak to me softly, tenderly as he had with the mare. I could try to allow and embrace it. If his eyes fell upon me here, there would be no more hiding, no more pretending. He would know the truth. He would see everything, all of the fear and the hope, all of the desire and the grief. He would see me.  The thought pressed its leaden hand down onto my chest. I could give in and give it all up. I could gift these things to him, bundle them up and hand them over. I could be honest and exposed and lay my self and my soul at the mercy of dark cowboy.

But not here, not at Bingham's ranch. When it was all over I would be known or alone, and I would not tolerate either here. I determined to intercept him at the Inn.









.

We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part XII)

Bingham's ranch swarmed with agitated excitement. A scout had appeared at dawn to announce the return of the party and the harras of Mustangs they were dragging back from some distant edge of the Western plains. For all of his money, Bingham preferred his horses free and wild, and he had deployed five men for his purpose six days prior. Daniel had been among them. Since the scout's breathless arrival, neighbors, friends and debtors began collecting in clusters around the ranch, waiting to see the team in. 

For six days I was cast away, lost awash a foreign ocean tide, and drifting further every day. For six days I avoided Philip with a fear that seized me in a vice's grip. For six days I succumbed to the insatiable turbulence that would only be quieted when I could see that devilish stranger, when I could see Daniel again. Six days was an eternity.

I slipped unnoticed into the yard. At least I thought I did. Aida sidled silently up to me. She waited for me to notice her before she spoke. 

"They're bringing the new Mustangs in," she said. 

"So I heard," I answered coldly. I had no room in my mind for Aida at that moment and I knew it would drive her mad. I don't know why I derived so much pleasure from driving her mad. 

She stood there without a word for some time, but she didn't move. We both watched the horizon. 

"He likes you, you know," she finally said sheepishly. "You shouldn't be so mean with him." 

"Who?" I asked, pretending not to know.

"You know who," she answered calling my bluff. "I've tried to get his attention. I've tried hard, harder than I have with most men. But he doesn't have eyes for me at all. He just clams up and works around me. It's only when you come around that he gets any color in his face, any vitality to him at all. Be kinder to him, even if you don't like him. Its hard enough to be in love alone without being humiliated for it."

I took a deep breath and let out a sigh. She was speaking from experience, from her heart. She was showing more insight than I had ever known her to have. She didn't love Daniel, not really. But she thought she did, and that was enough to give her a new perspective. I wondered if the irony might be lost on her, if she could stomach it. I softened and consented to take my chances.

"I guess we all know that too well." I said. 

"What do you mean?" she asked. 

"Adia," I said turning to her and regarding her with more respect than I ever had, "There's a lot more love and loss being bandied about than you know."

She looked at me blankly. 

"Philip loves you," I added plainly, "always has."

She closed her eyes heavily and nodded. "But you love Philip," she said softly.

"No," I answered. "Not really. Not anymore."

She opened her eyes and looked deep into my face, searching. When she found the answer she was seeking, that for everything she and I are the same, that we're both fortunate and jealous and stubborn, that we all have our hidden demons, and that we will all survive them just the same, when she understood me and I understood her, she turned her eyes back to the horizon.

"They'll be here soon," she said. "You won't be able to get any work done today anyway. Wanna come watch from the fence with me?"

"Yeah," I said. "I do." and I meant it.  

We walked to the coral without a word and climbed the planks. I looked back at the Bingham home and wondered what my life might have felt like if Aida and I had remained friends. I imagined us looking out across the fields that were such shades of viridian, emerald and jade when we were young. I could almost see too small heads peering out from the upstairs window, one light, one dark. We might have played hide and seek in the rafters of the attic, or read to each other well into the latest hours during overnight visits. Perhaps with more direct access to her, Philip might have made his love for Aida known sooner, and saved us all so much time and pain. I was ripped from this alternate past when Aida stood suddenly on her beam, pointing and crying, "There! There they come!"

And indeed, balanced there between the earth and the sky bounced several of the tiniest, happiest black specs you ever saw. My throat tightened and my blood rushed as the anticipation on the ranch bubbled and percolated. 

Henrietta, the Bingham's cook, lit the fire under the vat of grease and water for the bar-be-que before rushing inside to boil pot after pot of strong, dark coffee. By mid morning there would be a great feast to welcome the men back and honor their efforts, but first hard work was to be done. Room would have to be made for the 16 mustangs the scout reported. The harem would have to be sorted, branded and stabled. Then, in the coming weeks Daniel would have to break those to be used for riding and work. One stud would be pastured with several mares, reserved for siring. 

Bingham's crew of temporary help numbered nearly twenty, and with the five returning, there would be only one, maybe two men for each horse.  The cacophony shrank down into a concentrated, silent electricity. The party galloped closer. The crew stood, poised as soldiers, to move into action. Aida and I held steady to our place on the fence, stiff and silent. Thunder grew up from the ground, sprouting defining pulses as the party galloped closer. Hooves stomped, sending roaring reverberations past us. My breathing grew heavy. All five faces were screwed up in gritty determination, staring dead ahead. Daniel led them. His expression was the fiercest of them all. 

He looked at no one thing specifically, but he concentrated ferociously just the same. This was the first thing I noticed. In the next instant I saw the beast underneath him. The rest of them saw it too. My chest heaved as I panted. Jaws dropped in awe. The massive draft stallion was as much a stranger to us as Daniel had been. It snorted through nostrils bigger than walnuts as it propelled them both over strides spanning fifteen feet. His onyx coat glowed indigo under the sun. The beast was majestic. 

"Aida!" Mr. Bingham called. "Come over here and hold these stable doors open." She slid down the fence like rain.

"Wait here," she said. "I'll be back." She ran to the stable never taking her eyes from the team. 

As they reached the edge of the property Daniel pulled ahead, pushing the purplish monster headlong into a sprint. He glided over the ground as if he had wings, covering twenty feet in a bound. The party broke right, herding the mustangs directly into the coral. Men leaped in every direction, grasping for ropes and lariats and manes, anything they could get their hands firmly on to direct and redirect the wild animals. Cries flew out in all manner of tones and volumes as the men struggled to work in conjunction with one another. 

Still Daniel persisted forward, gaining speed by the second. Leaving the others he steered the giant brute dead for me and the place where I sat frozen to the fence. His mouth broke into a fiendish snarl. The stallion's eyes grew wide and rolled with terror, but still faster they came. The horse's thick shoulders bulged as it lunged forward. Faster. Sunlight gleamed off the sweat on Daniel's arms as he gripped the reigns tighter, his forearms flexing and contracting. Mucus and saliva flew from the horse's nostrils and lips. 

My own eyes grew wide and rolled in terror. In one more breath man and horse, fused into one, would be upon me, plow through me, smash us all into unholy oblivion. My heart froze. My pulse stopped. My eyes remained wide. Daniel clenched every muscle in his body. His arms and neck rippled. His thighs collapsed in on the ribs of the beast. His sternum contracted, pulling him into a tight ball upon the stallion's back. In a fluid flash, the centaur bounded, soared through the sky, clear over my head, and landed thirty feet behind me and behind the fence with sickening grace. 

Daniel slowed the steed and turned to face me. The creature reared in protest, determined to rid himself of the psychopath in his back. On that point the magical monster and I stood in solidarity. But Daniel casually stroked the beast down its long, regal neck and face. The stallion acquiesced. I would not. 

I exhaled, and trembled as the blood rushed back into my face and my brain. Daniel merely grinned his lopsided grin and winked. 

"Was that meant to impress me?" I hissed, finding my voice absent, my throat dry. I clutched the fence post for support, my nerves shattered.

He chuckled, a little out of breath himself.

"Why? Were you impressed?" 

"A little, yes" I admitted watching him warily. "But mostly terrified."

He laughed outright this time, deep and from his belly. 

"Then it was a little meant to." He turned a circle on his compatriot, tipped his hat to me, and galloped off toward the stables. I remained there, melting and bristling and alone for quite some time.

While I recovered, bedlam unfolded in the coral. The hands were leading the mares from the coral into the stable. One by one the girls had followed the men's prompts with little more than a fuss. Now and again, one horse or another would stiffen or whinny out her complaint, but sooner or later they all accepted their directive. Eventually, only one mare remained, a beautiful painted girl.She was a rusted out sunset. Her coat was bronze flame, flecked with gold and black on her flank. Her legs were beveled, and her coat flared royally into wide golden hooves. As her hand attempted to lead her in she began to resist. The harder he yanked at her ropes the more violently she reared. She twisted her long neck and flung her vermilion mane about. The man began to shout and spit at her. He whipped at her hind quarters. Time after time he lashed at her. My spine jolted with every crack. She threw her ears back and bared her large square teeth. It promised to be her last warning. More men came and together they yanked at her with ropes, lashed at her, prodded her with sharpened sticks. Her warnings came to an end. She bucked and she kicked and she clamped her great jaw down on any flesh in her way. They swarmed around her like flies, desperately whaling on her back and face. Finally, she arched her enormous back, threw her head high into the air like a wolf, and as she reared and let out a blood chilling scream. 

The cruelty was too much, the men too vicious. I sprang from the fence, and bolted into the stable. Daniel was serenely putting the black stallion into a stall, looking proud as a papa. 

"You have to come!" I panted clutching his elbow. Sweat beaded on my face, rolled down my neck and pooled in my collar. 

"Lucene, what is it?" he asked with more sincerity than I had ever before seen in him. 

"The mare, the painted one! Can't you hear her screaming?" 

He dashed through the stable. I followed closely behind. Once in the coral he broke through the mob, pushing men aside. The first man still stood holding the rope and yanking hard on the mare's face. Daniel gripped him by the wrist and pinwheeled the man's arm high up against his back until he groaned.

"How do you like it?" He held his face close to his captive's, breathing hard. His words dripped venom. The man squinted and gasped in pain. Daniel released his hand and shoved him away. 

"What in the goddamned hell is going on out here?" He shouted at rest. Several of them had been out with him in the party. They deferred to him immediately. He had become a sort of leader, a hero to them.

"She won't come in," one of them said. 

"Course she won't, not like that, you damned fools!" Daniel answered. 

"We was just trying to do like you did with that stallion, show her who's boss is all," another man answered. 

"That ain't gonna work on that mare, you idiots, and she's trying to tell you so. Stallions are easy. They're used to being bossed most of the time. You show 'em who's boss and they just say, 'ok, I guess you's boss now' but you know who usually does the tellin? The lead mare. Right here's your lead mare, and she can't be convinced by bossin'."

The men stood stupidly holding their ropes and saying nothing. 

"Go on, now," Daniel said. "There's plenty else to be done this mornin'. I'll take care of this little filly."

The men dispersed, leaving Daniel alone in the coral with the painted beauty. She continued to snort and circle and stomp. But she stopped screaming. He stood still as a post in that coral for more than an hour, watching the horse from the corner of his eye while she slowly settled down. His hat sat so low on his brow I could hardly see his face. He forgot me entirely, but I watched him as silently still as he watched her. 

When he did move, he stepped slowly, deliberately, toward her. He kept his head bent low as he approached. She shook. He stopped and waited. Then, again he moved slowly, gently. When he came to her, he came to her side, not to her front or her back. With his head bent, he carefully placed one hand on her flank and one on her neck. The two stood there still, but for their breathing. Neither stirred. They were communicating, becoming acquainted without word or motion. He began to pet at her flank and at her neck. Nothing changed. He continued to pet and pat at her. Her ears loosened and came up from her head. He leaned his face close to hers like he did with the hand, but this time he dropped his forehead into her jaw and gave himself to her completely. She snorted, or rather sighed her consent. He loosely fingered a loop in the lariat around her neck, and stepped toward the stable. She followed him.  

"I didn't know you had it in you," I said softly.

"Yeah, well, I guess there's a lot of things about me you don't know," he answered just as softly. 

"Mr. Bingham's gonna want you to break her. She's the prettiest one. He'll want her for Aida," I said. 

"You're probably right," he answered, "but he might just have to be settling for that stallion."

"No one can ride that stallion but you, and you know it," I said. 

"You're probably right about that too." 

"Don't you think you can break her?" I asked. 

"I know I can," he answered. "but I don't know if I will. Some creatures just aren't meant to be tamed."

He walked out of the stable without looking at me.  

We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part XI)

I am alone. I am walking, slowly, but not aimlessly. I am numb. I am alone. Thank heavens I am alone. The blood on my cheek has hardened to a black scab. I would doubtless give a grievous fright to any person who may chance upon me. The road leading home is empty and I am alone. I am alone with myself and my voice and my memories, new and old. My steps are slow and mindless as I traipse through the dust. My mind is saturated. I am overcome.

I see Philip's face contorted in rage, twisted with desperation. I cycle through my reactions, my emotions - shock, terror, sorrow, loss of respect, pitiless apathy. It felt like hours I watched him there. But the sun is still so high. I couldn't have been in the apothecary for more than a quarter hour. My entire life, my identity was mutilated within one quarter of one hour, disfigured with broken glass, shattered at the hand of painful clarity. Shock. Terror. Sorrow. Disrespect. Pitiless apathy. Unapologetic disgust.

My disgust owes Philip nothing, I understand. It, however, owes me. It has robbed me of dreams and direction. It has robbed me of my sadly misplaced hope. It refuses to apologize. It threw open the shutters in my head, cracked them under its heat, bombarded me, trampled me, picked me up and possessed me until it was all I could be, unrepentant and without guilt.

On the horizon, beyond the wet fume mirage, young Philip stands waiting for me. He is earnest, still dreaming expansive, bombastic fantasies. He is waiting for me to join him, to embellish his world with detail. He is waiting for me to make it real for him. And how I have waited so long for him to come and make our childhood dreams real for me. His flaxen hair will not lie flat. It catches the radiant sun and produces a golden corona. He is my creation, and my creation is all I will leave, there on the edge of my mind.

Philip is behind me, following. He is tracking me. He is tethered to me. He has just returned from Europe. He has grown ever more handsome. His intellect is astounding, and I am embarrassed to speak with him until he laughs and asks me what books I've read since he's gone. His wit is dry and reserved. His smile betrays him. He knows something and I want to know it too. His experience, his manner collects and pools in the gaps and cracks in my own. Through him I can be complete. But, when I turn back, he is not there. He never was. He is an illusion I created and imposed upon the distracted shell of an old friend, a friend I lost the day he sailed for France. I hitched my star to a phantom, and as I release it now, my night is very dark.

It was no accident. Philip escaped. I wanted to escape too. The rest of the illusion aligned itself conveniently. It is not real. He is not real. Leaving is not real. I cannot leave Pa alone. I cannot leave Frank to fend for himself and for Samson. They need me to cover the windows when the dust comes and to sweep the dust after the storms. They need me to soothe them and care for them. They need me to cook and to clean and to sew. They need me to be silent and strong and support them. I need to stay in order to prevent life from disassembling all that Mama and Pa worked so long and so hard to build. I am not selfish and I am no fool. Philip said Daniel was a cyclone, but he was wrong. One must be connected to the lives that one destroys. I am the cyclone. I am the vacuum.

When I reach my front door I am hollow. I enter anyway. Franks stands there holding Samson against his shoulder. He turns to me and smiles. My mind is instantly quiet, a tomb.

"Hi," he says, and it is all he needs to say. He has no idea how much he resembles Mama. He has no idea that his smile can heal exactly as hers could.

"Whoa, what happened to your face?" he asks.

"Nothing, Frog," I answer, using his nickname. "Just a little accident. Hungry?"

"Yes," he answers. Samson giggles and my heart is full. The feeling returns in my arms and in my legs. I am free here to smile and to laugh and to love unconditionally. This is my home.

There is the slightest, softest feeling, deep in the most unreachable place within me, an itch. I almost don't notice it. I can't exactly feel it, but I am certain it is there.

The sun goes down. A chill takes hold of the dry night air. Frank lays Samson in his crib and returns to my side before the fire. Dry wood is abundant.

"I started reading one of your books," he says. Frank has never been to school, but I taught him to read as early as I could. "I hope you don't mind."

"I don't mind," I answer. "Which one?"

"Great Expectations," he says, and it strikes me an wholly appropriate. It seems so to him too. "I like it. Pip reminds me of me. Though you are a much nicer sister than his."

I put my arm around him and kiss the top of his head. It smells like dust and dry sweat and little boy smell. I hold him there for a long time. When he begins to snore I wrap him in a blanket, add a log to the fire and tip toe to my bed.

From my knees I can reach deep under the bed, into an old hole in the pine floor. It is one of my very few secrets. From it, I unearth an old tin jewelry box. It belonged to Mama. She used to say it was the fanciest thing she owned. I don't think it ever bothered her that she had no jewelry to keep in it. For her it was enough. I grew up loving it too, but I keep treasure in it.

I opened the lid, fingering the turquoise, pink and gold fleur de lis printed there. Swirling vines creep gracefully around its corners and evoke reverence. Tucked within the folds of its red satin lining rests my photographic postcard of the Eiffel Tower. What wonder I felt when I first laid eyes on the many hundred twinkling electric lights. In the years since then many stores in Morrison have adopted electricity, but the magic of that tower never resigns. How often I held this card in the middle of the night to see Philip standing in or near the tower. He isn't there now, and he won't be back. The tower is empty, glowing in its own glory. The weight of the tower is on my chest.

The itch grows more acute. I could swear I hear a voice whisper,

"go..."

but when I listen closely only silence rings in my ears.

We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part X)

The door clicked softly shut behind me. My eyes struggled against the dim light. While I could not see a thing, the smells fell upon me, a sharp tonic. The musk of the talc powders converged on the mint in the muscle creams. The sting of the cleaning alcohol twisted around and through the spicy scents of the drying herbs. The medicinal cocktail floated over low smoky hints at charred wooden crates and burning wax. And the air was thick and heavy, old.

"Hello, Lucene." Philip was not yet visible to me. I closed my eyes and imagined his voice itself could heal. I imagined I could swallow the sound, that his voice could be transformed into white light inside me, that the light could expand from my head to my feet and coat me in brilliant benediction, illumination, heal me from the inside out, might mend every crack, stitch every tear, soothe every ache. I imagined Philip's voice didn't sound so strained.

"Are you just coming from the ranch?" he asked. His words were tight, but listless as he offered me the damp replica of a greeting.

I cracked my eyes to the relief that my vision was returning. Revealed there before me was strange incarnation of my old friend. He sat perched upon a high stool close to the low counter. He was hunched down far over some journal or ledger, so that the whole of his back resembled a spiny candy cane. Without sitting up he wrenched his head high upon his neck to look at me. A candle burning on the counter reflected in his glasses so that I could not see his eyes, but rather two glowing flat discs. On the whole he looked remarkably like some fabled sea monster dragged to shore and made to parade about as a human druggist.

"I - well - I came - well - yes, " I stammered. "Yes, I've just come from the ranch." I barely recognized my oldest friend and love there in that dim apothecary. He bent his head back down, much to my surprised relief, and continued scribbling chaotically in his book.

I walked to the counter. He said nothing. I leaned down to look at his book, clearly a ledger, when he slammed it shut and jumped from his stool.

"Have you come here to read over my shoulder, Lucene?" He snapped uncharacteristically.

"No." I answered stepping back and looking away. From his standing position I could clearly see his eyes again, and they were burning a small hot fire. "No. I came to have a conversation with my friend. I've had a rather trying morning, and I could use the company. But if you're too busy, or not in the mood, I can go."

His face softened at its edges. "I'm sorry. I've had a trying time of it lately myself. I shouldn't have barked at you like that. I could use a friend right about now too, I suppose," he confessed.

"What's eating at you?" I asked with growing concern.

"Its my finances," he gestured at the ledger. "They're in a quite messy state."

"Ah," I answered. "No wonder you don't want anyone nosing around in your book. What about your uncle's inheritance?" A thin layer of jealousy wrapped tightly around me. I had no inheritance, no promise of one, and no chance of squandering one.

"I used some of it to open this place. Business has been slow and getting slower. The whole town's living on credit. I have a little left, but I've been trying to save some, well, save a lot actually." The thin layer of jealousy hardened into a veneer of resentment. Less than half the town was earning any money or enough to survive, including Pa and me. My concern for Philip vanished. His frustration with not saving enough reminded me more of a cruel joke than a valid ailment.

"What are you saving for? Are you going on another trip?" I asked coolly. A vision of Paris flashed in my mind. I was sitting in a cafe, happily sipping red wine, alone.

"No. Not a trip exactly. The problem is I've been distracted lately and I haven't been paying close enough mind to what I'm putting into my account. If anyone were to look they might not get the right idea about my solvency."

I wondered momentarily who might be looking into Philip's finances. No one came to mind. I moved on.

"Distracted by what?" I asked.

"Honestly?"

I nodded my head.

"This Daniel character." The old familiar pit rose darkly in my throat. I swallowed hard.

"What about him?" I asked.

"We're waiting on word from the Sheriff in Abilene. We think he may be up to some trouble."

"We?" I asked.

"Sheriff Chaney, really, but Curtis Hembrey and I too."

"Since when are you close with the Sheriff or Curtis?" An edge curled into my voice and sharpened my words.

"Since this con artist came cheating and fighting his way into my town." Philip answered growing an edge of his own. His hands were trembling. I had not ever noticed until then how fragile and delicate he seemed.

"What do you mean cheating?" I asked.

"Oh, you haven't heard? Our dear little stranger cheated Curtis at a poker game. That's how they came to fight in front of the station. Seems after several hours of whiskey and losing hand after hand, this Daniel goes in for one last round and puts everything he's got out there on the table; money, a knife, an old locket, everything. Well wouldn't you know it, by some great miracle, Daniel gets dealt  four of a kind, aces high."  Philip tipped his head low and added darkly, "That kind of luck is truly unbelievable."

He let his pause fill the room. He let this moment of quiet reflection pull him a great distance from me, form the world. From that distance he continued without ceremony.

"Daniel takes Curtis for everything he has, but when he stands up to walk away Curtis calls him out, calls him a cheater and demands his money back. And that's when the stranger really put on a show. He puffed up his chest and bellowed at Curtis that he'd never cheated a game in his life.  Then he insulted Curtis by adding he had never embarked upon an unfair fight either, and that to make matters fair Curtis should take the first swing. And swing Curtis did. Infuriated, he clocked Daniel square on the mouth, liberating him of one of his teeth. Next thing anyone knew they're knocking each other around in the street. The man is a cyclone, Lucene. He's going to leave disaster in his wake. He's going to ruin everything."

His words dripped a venom that evaporated, but clung to the air. The poison choked me and burned my lungs. The candle on the counter sputtered and died. The shop grew even more dim. Briefly, Philip was obscured by the smoke from the wick and my own dizziness.

Nothing was adding up. The facts were plain. I heard them and I believed them, but the more I heard, the more certain I felt that nothing was certain. Daniel was and wasn't these things he stood accused of. A stranger. A cheater. A fighter. A con artist. A cattle wrangler. A liar. Information was missing. Only part of the story was being told. I needed to hear the rest, the part that reconciled with a different truth, a truth I rather more suspected, that this gap toothed grinning idiot had a deeper and more noble purpose than even he was letting show. A savior.

"Was there any mention of women?" I asked.

"What women?" Philip's voice was a snapping twig.

"Myself, perhaps," I let the words meander and carry with them, "or Aida Bingham," like a caboose.

Philip breathed heavily through his nostrils.

"Why would there be any mention of Aida Bingham?" he asked softly through clenched teeth.

"Well, I happened to have heard another version of this story, from Daniel himself, at the ranch this morning. The way he tells it there was a matter of defending the honor of a young lady. Does that sound at all familiar to you?"

Philip's voice sank impossibly lower and his words took a heavy and metered cadence.

"What...was...he...doing...at...the...ranch?"

"He's working. Breaking horses and wrangling cattle." I met Philip's intensity with antagonistic nonchalance.

I came here to forget Daniel, to fall further in love with Philip, but everything was wrong. Philip wasn't Philip anymore. I was struck dumb by the realization that he had only been home for a handful of weeks, really. When he returned I had expected the old Philip, assumed this was the old Philip. I hadn't actually seen more than a glimpse of the old Philip since he'd been back. This was a man changed, by Europe, by time, perhaps. Perhaps I was changed too then. Perhaps our mutual changes severed us beyond repair. Perhaps the chemistry in our bodies was simply no longer compatible. Whatever the reasoning, the darker and more inflamed he grew, the more compelled I was to press him.

Philip stared out the shop window as he asked, "Do you think he's handsome?"

"I do." I answered honestly, without stopping to think.

"And Miss Bingham? Does she think he's handsome?" The question confused me, but I answered it too honestly and without thinking.

"I believe so. I believe she thinks every man is handsome to one degree or another."

Philip looked down at his ledger and for a moment it appeared as though he stopped breathing. Without looking up, the muscles in his arms tensed. He let out a choked grunt as he flung the heavy tome into the shelf of small glass bottles lining the wall. The bottles exploded. Chips and chunks of green and brown and yellow glass threw kaleidoscopic fragmented light against the walls and ceiling. Shards and slivers rained down over our faces and hands. Thick, sticky blood dripped down my cheek.

Philip bounded over the counter and was in instant on top of me. He dug his long fingers into each of my arms and shook me violently. His eyes were frenzied and feral and terrified me. He shouted as he shook.

"He is a con artist! He is not there to break any horses! What does he want with her? What do you know? What  do you know?"

"It isn't her he's after!" I screamed.

Philip's hands went dead. I pried my fingers underneath his and wrenched myself free from his grip. He fell backward against the counter and slumped on to the floor. Cradling his head in his hands he released deep and labored sobs. I ran to the door, but turned to look back at him. He was a pathetic and pitiful mess, more a stranger to me now than Daniel.

"Philip what has happened to you?" I hissed.

"Lucene," he cried, "I'm sorry Lucene." He didn't look up at me, and were it not for the use of my name I wouldn't have known he was speaking to me at all. "None of this is your fault. I didn't mean to hurt you. I tried to tell you before, but we were interrupted. I have a secret, such a burdensome secret. I am in love, desperately, painfully in love. I have carried my love like a cross, worn it, a crown of thorns since we were children. It has been a dagger I carry in my side all day everyday. I dared never to speak of it, not even to you. I am consumed with Aida Bingham. She is in the air I breath, the water I drink. She is my sleep my life, and my death."

What looked pathetic before now seemed one hundred times more so. All of this over Aida Bingham. Such agony, such frenzy, such panic for a woman who easily spent more time thinking about herself, than even poor Philip did.

He looked up at me now. Fat tears welled in his eyes and streaked across his face, mixing with the blood from his own cuts, such that he had the look of a creature that has been toyed with and ultimately discarded by a fiercer predator. This is what Aida could do to a person.

"I thought if I went to France, got an education, I could maybe win her attention. When Uncle John died, I opened the shop. I hoped if I was a successful entrepreneur with money of my own, I might impress her father and they would both see that I am worthy of her. But my love has caused such agony within me that I am left paralyzed to her. I cannot speak to her or even look directly upon her. I vowed this week I would ask her father for her hand. I will marry her. I cannot have Daniel interjecting and prolonging my suffering. I am infected with her."

My arms and legs grew numb as I stood there. My heart grew numb. I stared at Philip for a long time trying to recognize him and failing time after time. He dropped his head back into his hands and wept.

"Philip, you needn't worry yourself over Daniel, believe me. It isn't Aida he's after." As I said it, I knew it was true.

I opened the apothecary door and stepped out into the light.

We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part IX.V)

I smoldered away the morning, trapped in an inferno of blazing thoughts that crashed in and upon one another. Visions of Daniel's lopsided grin collided with the sound of Pa's laughter and the rich smell of Aida's cream soap. The vein in Philip's neck twitched. Frank coughed up black, dusty phlegm. Samson giggled. Mama laid bleeding in her bed. My own voice seared through all of this, burning a hole from the inside out.

             If I chose to burn my own damned hands off with lye then that is precisely what I will do, and if I choose to run away I will do that too, and I don't need some foul stranger to take me. I will go right on sticking my head in mounds of dust if I so choose, and I will pull it out and use it when I feel inclined to do so. And if I choose to spend the rest of my days wasting away in my shabby clapboard house dreaming of Philip and Paris and rain, so be that too. Maybe I am the prettiest girl in town and maybe I ain't, but it doesn't make one wit of difference to me what some slithering horse lover has to say about it. And if that little blonde twit wants to call me names she can just go right on ahead, 'cause ain't a soul in town what validates her opinion anyway. 


The denim of Mr. Bingham's trousers slapped furiously upon the washboard while I scrubbed and fumed.

        Ain't none of this up to no one but me. No ghosts or ghouls or strangers are gonna stop or start me. And who needs any of them?

Daniel's lopsided grin flashed in my mind and the cycle started over again.

I hung the clothes haphazardly on the line, not caring whether the dust would kick up and leave them filthy again by nightfall.

I walked away, not looking at Daniel in the pasture or Aida watching him from her perch on the fence, its paint just now beginning to curl and peel at the mercy of the dry wind.

I walked around the house and down the road. My steps clicked in time to the words firing off from within my brain.

Twit, step step, liar, step step, fool, step step, damn fool, step, leave, step, me, step, alone, step step.

I had to see Philip.

Philip would calm me down, bring me some peace, some perspective and comfort. My feet were carrying me to him before I made my choice. Good Philip with his high intellect and his silver tongue; his mild manner would soothe me. His soft voice would heal me, relieve me of this childish preoccupation. What a fool I was to have ever let my attention wander from so worthy a subject to so low a scoundrel. But I would make this right. With Philip before me, I could restore my fancies to their safe and truest place.

Daniel's lopsided grin flashed in my mind.

I shook my head and broke into a run toward the apothecary.

We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part IX)

I avoided the Inn on my walk to the Binghams, but it did me no good. I thought I saw Daniel everywhere I looked. It was as if his ghost jumped out of my dream and followed me into my day. I felt him beside me and behind me, but when I turned, I saw I was alone. A man crossed the street in front of me and I swear he had Daniel's stagger. I paused, held my breath until the man turned and I could clearly see it was Jacob Turner.

"Mornin' Lucene." he said.

"Morning Jacob." I answered mindlessly.

Attempting to retrain my thoughts, I focused on Philip. I imagined it was he, instead of Daniel that hovered over me in my dream. I imagined I could feel his breath on my face, see his golden hair a glowing halo in the sun. I visualized being blinded by a reflection from his spectacles rather than spurs. I felt Philip's gentleness juxtaposed to Daniel's harsh frankness. But Philip was an ether in my mind. When I closed my eyes he evaporated instantly, replaced with the hard eyes of a stranger that could already see too clearly into me. Further, I made a new and unsettling discovery. Every time I saw Daniel's face, his drawn, hollow cheeks, the sharp angle of his jaw, the way his beard bulged over it when he clenched his teeth, I began to salivate. I felt compelled to touch him, to kiss him and to punch him equally. I shook my head forcibly hoping to clear away all thoughts when I reached the kitchen door at the Binghams.

I set up the wash bin on the old large pine table in the yard, and concentrated hard to think about nothing. I learned how feeble this attempt would prove as one by one random questions creeped uninvited into my mind. What was Philip's great secret and why had he acted so strangely when I mentioned the ranch? Who was Daniel and what did he want with me? Why was I so drawn to and repulsed by him? What did Pa see in him? When would it rain? I pumped water into the basin, let my hands rest in its cool comfort and closed my eyes. Mama used to tell me to slow down. "You're gonna have to learn to quiet your mind, girl, or you'll make yourself crazy," she'd say. When I let myself think of her, I missed her enough to give me a deep and lasting pain in my stomach. Her death left a hunger that could never be fed. I often avoided remembering her,  the simple way she could explain anything, how her skin smelled like lavender in the spring and cinnamon in the fall, but her face came to me then just as it had in my dream. "Slow down, Lucene."

A voice cut through the quiet of my memory and agony. It grazed my ear. I startled, splashing water across the table.

"Did you dream of me?" Daniel's hot voice rang in my ears. I spun around to face him. My heart raced. "I dreamed of you," he added. He stood there, very real, with his brown Stetson in his rough hands.

"What are you doing here?" I hissed. "You have to leave, now." My question hit him in the chest, a poisoned dart. He stood strong, but wounded.

"You'd turn me away so soon?" he asked calmly. His cologne was a mixture of the pomade in his beard and mustache, Inn soap on his skin, leather, smoke, and sweat. He stood so close it was overwhelming.

"I don't know who you think you are, but they'll have your head if they find you here." An unexplained panic seized me.

"Would you cry for me then? If they took my head?" Chaos swelled within me. A hurricane of confusion and satisfaction overcame me. All at once he was my challenger and my charge.

"We don't have time for your senseless games! You have to go, or it'll be my job along with your head!"

"That wouldn't be so bad for you would it, really? Not to have to do some rich family's laundry?" What was this way he had of assuming authority over me?

"Contrary to your warped misconception, you really wouldn't know anything about what's good or bad for me."

He propped his hat on the crown of his skull and hooked his thumbs into his belt. He then, tipped his head back slowly. He wasn't grinning now, but the contemplative expression he wore meant to show me I was wrong. Very wrong. To my surprise, and his apparent expectation, I was, in fact, pleased to see him, and irrationally comfortable with him. His steadiness eased me. I shook my head and chuckled.

"Who are you anyway?" I asked. His broad, square shoulders bounced as he laughed.

"I'm the new horse hand," he answered. "Hired on yesterday."

"Of course you were," I said rolling my eyes. But he tipped his hat at me all the same.

"Looks like we'll be seeing a lot of one another." The evenness in his voice gave the impression this was no accident.

"And how did you come by the Bingham ranch?" I asked, knowing there was much more to his story than coincidence.

"When I got to town, I started to ask around. I asked who the prettiest girl in town was and where she might be found, and I got sent here by one Curtis Hembrey. I think you know him. He was right but he didn't know it. He had me out looking at some little blonde thing. Waste of time. I almost left the ranch, left town all together, but just then I saw the prettiest little raven, meanest looking girl I ever saw come out to do the wash, and I thought, well alright, maybe all is not lost. You saw me there in front of the station with him, but you didn't know I'd seen you first. So I went back to tell him how wrong he'd been, but thanks anyway 'cause I found what I was looking for. He asked what he was wrong about and I told him the blonde. Well he must carry quite a torch for that young lady, 'cause next thing I knew we was fighting over who was prettier. I said you, he said her, and neither of us felt compelled to give in on the merits of our respective ladies. Of course I didn't know you then, but when you lit into me last night, I knew I was right. You got a fire in you girl I coulda made out from a mile out."

"You're a liar."

"I am not a liar, and I don't much appreciate being called one. Not especially after I went to all the trouble of defending your honor and paying you the compliment of telling you so."

"There isn't a man alive who doesn't believe that Aida Bingham is the most beautiful girl in town."

"On that point, I'm afraid you're quite wrong." His eyes pierced my thin veil of incredulity.

I smiled in spite of myself. The bearded stranger was not entirely without his charm.

"If you're not a liar, you may just be flat out crazy. I don't know what kind of designs you got, boy, but I'll be damned if you'll find whatever it is you're after in Morrison Station, or in me for that matter."

"I don't mind telling you, Miss, I don't plan to be in Morrision Station for long."

"Is that so? Do tell."

"Well, since you asked, I only plan to stay for long enough to convince you to run away with me. Then I intend to take you and shake the dust of this place off our boots."

"And you don't think that'll take you long? Interesting. You've got quite the confidence. I'll hand that to you." He had my attention, had had it really, but with the words "run away" he struck something loose inside of me. I didn't dare let on. "And where will we go?"

"Anywhere you want."

"My, that is convenient. I'll have to consider it."

"I hope that you do. You don't belong here, and you know it."

I really wished he would stop reading my mind.

"Daniel!" Adia was running out from the house. "Lucene, have you met Daniel? He's our new horse breaker."

"Yes, we were just becoming acquainted. Just now, this very minute." I addressed Daniel. "We are just getting to know one another."

"Isn't he wonderful?" She asked me openly.

"He's something," I said not taking my eyes from him. "I think he may be a bit touched by the sun though."

Aida growled. "You just don't like any boy that isn't Philip."

"And you like every boy." I snapped.

"Who's Philip?" Daniel asked.

"Just some skinny little book worm that Lucene has been in love with since grade school."

"Really?" Daniel asked, thick with cynicism of his own.

My face flushed, smoldered red with embarrassment and anger.

"Philip is not the concern of either of you."

"Relax Lucene. No one cares who you have a crush on. Daniel, will you take me out for a ride later?"

"Sure thing, Miss. It isn't everyday I find myself in the presence of such beauty." He said looking at me. She didn't notice. He turned and smiled at her. I wanted to crush them, both of them. I wanted scream and stomp, and run. Instead I tried on Daniel's calculated tone.

"Careful Aida," I warned staring straight at him. "He may have a screw or two loose."

"You are always such a petty, jealous thing," she railed. "Daniel, you shouldn't even bother talking to her. Its a waste of your breath. I know I won't waste another minute of my time. I will see you this afternoon, after she's gone."

She stormed back into the house huffing, slamming the screen door. Daniel laughed.

"What is wrong with you?" I asked through clenched teeth.

"With me?" he asked surprised. "I compliment you and you insult me."

"You stroll into town picking fights and laying out plans to run off with young ladies. You insult Aida behind her back then compliment her to her face, and now you stand their laughing at her outrage. You are crazy."

"You're the one she's outraged with, not me. You really should learn to control that temper. That shade of red is not as flattering as you may think. And you really are so pretty otherwise."

"Stop it! Stop saying that!I don't believe you mean a word of it, of anything you say. I can already tell you're nothing but trouble. Go away. Leave me to my work."

His breathing grew heavy and the register of his voice lost its cool edge. "If you would rather stick your hands in that acid bath for that spoiled witch and her daddy, than come away with me, than you're the one that's crazy!" he shouted.

"Keep your voice down," I warned.

"You keep your voice down," he taunted as he stomped away. I arched my eyebrow at him, but he never looked back.

"Well that was two in ten minutes." I said to myself. Must be some sort of record. I turned to finish the wash in my isolation.