The Four Winds(32)
He surprised her by taking her hand and pulling her into his arms.
“You remember that first night of ours, out in the truck in front of Steward’s barn?”
Elsa nodded uncertainly. These were things they didn’t speak of.
“You said you wanted to be brave. I just wanted . . . to be somewhere else.”
Elsa stared up at him, saw his pain, and it hurt her, too. “Oh, Rafe—”
He kissed her on the lips, long and slow and deep, letting his tongue taste hers. “You were my first kiss,” he whispered, drawing back just enough to look at her. “Remember me then?”
It was the most romantic thing he’d ever said to her, and it filled her with hope. “Always,” she whispered.
Tony’s music stopped, leaving a heavy silence behind. Insects sang their staccato songs. The geldings moved listlessly in the corral, bumping the fencing with their noses, reminding them that they were hungry.
The night around them was black, the huge sky bright with stars. Maybe those were other universes she saw up there.
It felt beautiful and romantic, and just now, the two of them could be alone on the planet, attended to only by the sounds of the night.
“You’re thinking about California,” she began, trying to find the right words to begin a new conversation.
“Yeah. Ant walking one thousand miles on bad shoes. Us in a breadline somewhere. You were right. We can’t go.”
“Maybe in the spring—”
Rafe silenced her with a kiss. “Go to bed,” he murmured. “I’ll be there soon.”
Elsa felt him pulling away, releasing her. “Rafe, I think we should talk about—”
“Don’t fret, Els,” he said. “I’ll come to bed shortly. We can talk then. I just need to water the animals.”
Elsa wanted to stop him and make him listen, but such boldness was beyond her. Deep down, she was always afraid of how flimsy her hold on him was. She couldn’t test it.
But she would reach for him tonight, touch him with the kind of intimacy she dreamed of. She would overcome whatever was wrong with her and finally please him.
She would. And when they were finished making love, she would talk to him about leaving, talk seriously. More important, she would listen.
She returned to their room and paced. Finally, she went to the window and peeled away the dirt-crusted rags and newspaper that covered the sill and pane.
She could see the windmill, a slash of black lines, a flower almost, silhouetted against the bejeweled night sky.
Rafe was there, leaning against the frame, almost indistinguishable from the windmill. He was smoking.
She climbed into bed and pulled the quilt up around her and waited for her husband.
THE NEXT THING ELSA knew, it was daylight and she smelled coffee. The rich, bitter aroma drew her out of the comfort of her bed. She finger-combed her hair and slipped into a housedress, trying not to be hurt that Rafe hadn’t come to their bed again last night.
She rebraided her hair and wrapped it in a coil at the back of her head, pinning it in place and then covering it with the kerchief.
She checked on her children—letting them sleep in on this Saturday morning—and headed to the kitchen, where a pot full of last night’s potato water had been saved to make bread.
All they had for breakfast was wheat cereal, so she got it started. Thank God they had one cow that was still producing milk.
Loreda was the first to stumble out of her small second-floor bedroom. Her black bob was a rat’s nest of tangles and curls. A sunburn peeled in patches across her cheeks. “Wheat cereal. Yum,” she said, heading to the icebox. Opening it, she took out the yellow crockery pitcher that held a bit of precious cream and carried it over to the oilcloth-draped table, where the speckled bowls and plates were already in place, upside down to protect from dust. She turned over three bowls.
Ant came out next, climbed up into the chair beside his sister. “I want pancakes,” he grumbled.
“I’ll put some corn syrup in your cereal,” Elsa said.
Elsa served up the cereal, doctored it with cream and added a little corn syrup to each bowl, and then set down two glasses of cold buttermilk.
As the children ate—silently—Elsa headed for the barn. Wind and shifting sand had changed the landscape overnight again, filled in much of the giant crack that had cut through their property.
As she passed the hog pen, she saw their only remaining hog kneeling lethargically on the hard-packed earth, and the John Deere one-horse seed drill, unused now, half buried in sand. Beyond that, she saw Rose in the orchard, looking for apples on the cracked ground.
In the pen, their two cows stood side by side, heads down, mooing pathetically. Their ribs stood out, their bellies shrunken, their hides blistered with sores. Elsa couldn’t help but remember a few years ago, when the younger of the two cows, Bella, had been born. Elsa had fed her by bottle because the cow’s mother hadn’t survived the birth. Rose had taught Elsa how to make the bottle and get the unsteady calf to take it. Sometimes Bella still followed Elsa around the yard like a pet.
“Hey, Bella,” Elsa said, stroking the cow’s sunken side.
Bella looked up, her big brown eyes blinded by dirt, and mooed plaintively.
“I know,” Elsa said, taking a bucket from the fence post.
Elsa led Bella into the relative coolness of the barn, tied her to the center post, and pulled out the milking stool. She couldn’t help glancing up into the hayloft—nearly empty now of hay. She was pretty sure Rafe had slept there last night. Again.