Chapter 3 Mara — Day 5 #2
“I can look,” he says. “I'm not a saddle-maker.”
“I didn't say you were.”
“I can tell you if the tree's cracked or just the wood on the cantle.”
“That's what I'm asking.”
He nods.
Rafe stands up. He wipes his nose on the back of his wrist in a way that is deeply nineteen years old, even though he's twenty-six, and I don't say anything about that either.
“Thank you,” he says. To me. To Beau. To both.
“Go dry off,” I tell him. “Put on a dry shirt. Come back in an hour. Beau can look at it once it's not dripping wet.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Rafe.”
“Yeah?”
“I told you last month.”
“I know.”
“I know you know.”
He half-laughs. It's a wet laugh, but it's a laugh, and I'll take it. He goes back out the person-door into the rain with his hat pulled down.
The door bangs shut behind him.
I stand there with my hand on the doorframe of the tack room. The rain's steadier now, one long note. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.
“That was kindness,” Beau says, quiet, behind me.
“That was practical. Fixing him is easier than fixing the saddle.”
“Still.”
I don't answer. I go over to the saddle and crouch down where Rafe was, and I put my hand on the split.
The wood is dry under the leather where the finish gave.
Old wood. Good wood, once, but old. Beau comes over and crouches beside me.
He's close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his shoulder through his wet shirt.
“May I?” he says.
“Go ahead.”
He touches the cantle with two fingers. Runs them along the split. Presses gently on either side. The wood gives a small amount, then holds.
“The tree's fine,” he says. “It's this piece.”
“You can fix it?”
“I can try. I'd need the leather off, see the shape of the crack. A couple of days. Clamps and glue, maybe a piece of new wood. If the tree were cracked I'd tell you to buy him a new one.”
“But it's not.”
“It's not.”
“Okay.”
He looks at me. Ocean-blue eyes, up close, in the low light of the tack room. Wet lashes.
“Okay?” he says.
“Okay. Fix it. When the weather clears.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Don't call me ma'am.”
“Yes.”
He smiles then, full and unguarded, and I have to look at my coffee.
I stand up too fast and the tack room does a small unwelcome tilt around me. I put my hand on the wall. Beau doesn't touch me but he's suddenly a little closer.
“Alright?”
“Stood up too fast. I'm fine.”
“When did you last eat?”
“This morning.”
“That was six hours ago.”
“I'm aware.”
“Opal made bread.”
“I know Opal made bread. Opal makes bread every Tuesday.”
“It's Saturday.”
“Opal makes bread when the weather turns ugly too.”
The smile stays with him. I look away because I have to.
The rain has eased. Not stopped. Eased. I push the tack-room door open a crack and look out.
The sky's still iron-colored but the wall of water has walked east. Puddles in the yard the size of small lakes.
The air smells clean the way it only smells after a hard rain here — wet stone and green things that aren't usually green.
“I'm going to walk to the house,” I say. “You coming?”
“After you.”
We step out into it. The rain is more mist now than rain. I walk with my head up and let it hit my face because it feels good. Beau walks beside me. Not touching. Not close enough to touch. There, an arm's length away.
Halfway to the house I glance at him.
I don't mean to. I'd told myself I wouldn't. I glance at him.
His shirt is stuck to him the way a wet shirt does.
His sleeves are rolled to below the elbow — they were at the elbow when we started, which I noticed and pretended not to.
His forearms are the color of pine where the sun's caught them, paler where it hasn't, and the muscle in them stands out from the tub and the wet leather.
A small pale scar on his left thumb. A vein runs down the inside of the arm to the wrist, standing up now the way veins do after work.
I look at his forearms.
I look at his forearms the way I have not looked at a man's forearms in a very long time.
Heat comes up my neck. I turn my face back to the ground in front of me before he catches me at it. My braid slaps once against my back. I pull it forward over my shoulder and pretend to be doing something to the tie.
I hate that I looked.
I don't hate that I looked. I hate that I liked looking. I hate that I turned away because I liked looking. I hate that I don't know which of those things I hate more.
We get to the porch. He stops at the step and I go up first and turn to face him from the porch boards. Above us, the porch roof is drumming with the last of the rain. Below us, out past the yard, the sky is starting to break to the west, a long line of gold showing under the iron.
“Thanks,” I say. “For the barn.”
“You'd have done it alone if I wasn't here.”
“I'd have done it. Would've taken twice as long.”
“Then I'm glad I was here.”
He says it plain. Not a line. A fact. He is glad he was here.
I look at him. His hair's drying in that same wrong way. His eyes are on me and they're steady. Not moving over me. On my face. Waiting for me to say something else, or not.
I don't say anything else.
He nods, small, and steps back off the step. “I'll be at the bunkhouse. Come get me for the saddle.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
He walks off toward the bunkhouse, boots slapping in the standing water. He doesn't look back. That's a discipline. I've never in my life not-looked-back at a man like I want to, and he doesn't do it, and I don't know if that means he isn't trying to or means he's better at it than I am.
I stand on the porch until he's inside.
Opal opens the screen door behind me.
“You gonna stand out there dripping, or you gonna come in and eat?”
“Coming.”
“Bread's warm.”
“Coming, Opal.”
I don't move.
Somewhere behind me, in the barn, Rafe's saddle sits on the tack-room floor with its split cantle, waiting to be fixed by a man who says he's from up north and works like he's been doing it since he was a boy and puts his hand on my horse the way you'd put your hand on somebody you loved once.
I don't know a thing about him.
That's the truth of it. Five days on my place. Fixes what he sees. Says please. Says ma'am, then stops when I tell him to. Has that scar on his thumb. Has those forearms. Has an accent under his voice that isn't quite Texas and isn't quite anywhere I can name. Comes from up north.
What I know is only a list, and the list keeps making room for more.
And the thing that scares me — standing here on the porch in a wet shirt with Opal calling me for supper and the last of the rain running off the eaves — the thing that scares me is that I don't know how much I want to know.