Chapter 13
Freak
Seeing my pet again very nearly brought tears to my eyes. I have come so far. I have done so much. I have sacrificed everything I was to be with her. She does not remember me, of course. She can’t. The life she is inhabiting is one in which we never met.
But there is a little recognition inside her, I think. No matter how well events are erased from time, there’s always something left over. Vestiges of what was, things that are felt and understood for reasons that make no sense. Déjà vu. That sort of thing.
It is apparent that I am going to have to go through her father to get to her. I do not mind that. It gives me a clear path to claim her.
I have spent some time observing the man.
He is a dedicated businessman and father.
The two seem to hold equal importance to him, and one is not allowed to come before the other.
He keeps Mara close to him, insists she must work in his store, keeps the other males of the colony away from her.
She seems happy with the arrangement, and now I understand why she was prepared to give up so much to find him.
He is the emotional core of her world. He is the structure of everything.
And the affection between them is more than obvious.
Her father, himself, is an impressive man. He is tall, broad-shouldered, and strong, even though he is starting to come into the age that represents what should be the first decline. His hair is being allowed to both gray and grow, and it sits around his shoulders.
He receives plenty of attention from the single ladies of the colony, but I notice though he is polite, he does not give them much energy.
They bring him little offerings. A few eggs.
Some sugar. Another lady brings cocoa. He has all the ingredients for a cake, and I am sure Mara will make that for him.
I do not know whether to be jealous or impressed at the way the female parties of this little society band together to serve him, but I can tell that the other elders are indeed jealous.
The way they look at him indicates a viciousness that makes the original question of what happened to him much less of a mystery.
I have my doubts he ever left the planet.
I imagine that in the original timeline, some part of these vast, dry lands was graced with a shallow, dry grave.
Mara is different with him. He has her in hand in a way most would not.
She respects him. She loves him. She obviously has transferred all her loyalty to him.
But a father is not the only thing a young lady needs when she is of age, and Mara, as is pointed out through mutters and mumbles, is well past marrying age.
I approach her father at his shop. Mara is not home.
She is running errands, and though I am sad to miss her, I do want the time to speak with the man who made her.
Up close, I can see that he is graying to a near white at the temples, and a few long streaks of that same hue are starting to speckle his hair.
“Hello, sir,” I say as I step into the showroom.
The floor is polished to within an inch of its life, timbers sanded and stained and kept in top shape.
It’s all been done by hand. This is a careful man.
I imagine it must have taken quite a few of them to subdue him.
Or perhaps they simply made a well-placed shot while Mara was distracted.
He looks me in the face as I walk in, and I think I see a flicker of recognition. Strange, considering we have never met. I know who he is, but he should think of me as nothing but a complete stranger.
“What’s your name, stranger?” He asks the question on cue.
“Tasin,” I say. “Tasin Cawley.”
“You’ve got land?” That’s the question of a businessman. I’m wondering now if maybe what he saw and recognized in me was nothing more than my situation as it stands.
“I’m looking at a block out past the New River,” I tell him. “Paid the deposit, have to work off the balance, same as everyone else.”
“Colony’s been selling those blocks like wild,” he says. “But there’s no guarantee they’ll stay fertile if the rain doesn’t stick around.”
“I’m willing to bank on it,” I say.
“Well, my daughter’s not going to be living out on a block of land with no house on it,” he says. “So if you’re going to ask for her hand, you’d better see Morris Bones from the lumber mill. He’ll be able to float everything you need down river with help from Tim Gut.”
I stare at him for a moment. “Your daughter?”
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To lay claim to her?”
“Well, I…”
I have never, in any of my lives or any realm, been this lost for words.
“How…”
“It’s an easy bet. Clean-shaven man in a clean shirt, no mud on his boots comes in here, tells me he has land. I know it’s land he hasn’t worked. And I know he doesn’t need anything from me yet. There’s only one thing I have that a man like you wants, and that’s my daughter.”
“Very observant of you, sir,” I say. I don’t want to seem condescending. I very much mean it.
He pushes a pencil and paper across the counter.
“You’re going to want to make a note of the things I just told you,” he says.
“Bones and Gut. Nothing happens in this colony without them, and I can promise you that you’re not the only young man putting a homestead together to attempt to win Mara’s heart.
She’s of a particular age, and I know she’s ready to leave home. ”
“I am not ready to leave home,” Mara says, bashing in through the shop door hard enough to make it bang. She cringes a little as she hears that noise. “Sorry,” she mutters.
“You’re going to have that door off its hinges one day,” he says. “This is Tasin Crawley. He’s setting up a homestead down the river.”
“Oh, yeah?” She cocks her head at me. “That’s nice. Are you going to get builders, or do it yourself?”
“I’ll be doing it myself,” I say.
She glances at her father, then back at me, the little smile on her lips turning into a full-blown smirk. “Be careful,” she says. “We had an off-worlder come in and try to build something himself and he ended up under a pile of logs, squished. You need to know what you’re doing.”
She walks past me and around behind the counter. She goes on tiptoe to kiss her father’s cheek. “I got the new hinges from the blacksmith,” she says. “He says they’re going to last even longer than the others.”
“Good,” he says. “Take them to the back, and make sure they’ve got their own carton label.”
She nods and picks the box up again, glancing over at me. “Hi,” she says, before disappearing into the back room.
“She likes you,” her father says to me.
“How can you tell?”
“She didn’t ignore you completely,” he says. “Most of the men in this colony cannot get so much as eye contact out of her. She treats them like they’re less than dust on her boots.”
“Is there a reason for that, sir?”
He presses his lips together, and I know there’s something he doesn’t want to say.
“Her mother passed when she was born, and I’ve been making sure she’s safe ever since.
Call it sheltered if you like. I don’t care.
That’s my baby. Last time a guy came sniffing around and wanted to touch her, he ended up with every bone in his fingers broken.
Had to wear a cast that kept them splayed like a frog for two months. ”
“I see,” I say. “Well. Seems to me like I’d best build my house before anything goes any further.”
He nods gruffly.
I take some notes on the piece of paper with the short pencil. “Thank you, sir,” I say offering the pencil back to him. He waves it back to me. “They’re branded,” he says. “Tax write-off.”
“Smart,” I say.
“Do you have the funds to get those materials?”
I do have some money, though it wasn’t obtained in a legal way.
Alara dropped me on the other side of the galaxy with nothing.
Not even a pair of underwear. I’ve been working my way toward Mara’s colony for weeks, laboring on ships and taking money fights.
I’ve got about enough to buy a patch of land, too.
From her father’s perspective, I’m just the same as every other pioneer-minded man who lands here.
“I reckon I do, sir, and if I don’t, I’ll work until I do.”
“You need some labor work, you can get in touch,” he says. “I know most of everyone around here. Just make sure you keep your hands off my girl until there’s wedding rings being exchanged.”
I cock my head to the side, and lift my tone so I sound curious in an innocent way.
“Why are you so sure I am interested in your daughter?”
He gives me a flat look. “I saw her walk you to the tractor, and I saw you all go behind it. Don’t do that again unless you’ve got a house to offer her.”
“Understood,” I say, giving him a small salute.
“There’s plenty of good men around here, and she’s a good woman. I won’t be giving her away to anybody who doesn’t deserve her. You can be sure of that.”
“I understand, sir,” I say.
“You’ve still got all your fingers too,” he says. “You should be grateful for that, because I’m not sure you deserve ‘em.”
“I will do my best to earn my fingers, sir,” I say. I am enjoying this exchange, even with its violent, threatening undertones. I like this man. I think he likes me too.
* * *
I think about that interaction as I leave.
He didn’t ask me a lot of questions about myself, really.
But he seemed to come to a decision anyway.
Interesting how that happened. A lot of human interaction is done in the spaces between words.
Especially where men are concerned. You get sized up in an instant.
I really thought that I was going to have a hard time dealing with the basics of the human experience, being surrounded by limited beings who do not know how to properly live.
But now that I find myself immersed in their world, I am surprised by their sophistication.
There is more in the subtleties of their communication than I would have ever imagined.