Chapter 17 #2
Until she comes a second time around me, and I let myself go and empty into her with my mouth on her throat saying her name.
We lie in the hay together after.
Dakota's hair is full of straw. There's a piece stuck to her cheek I'll get for her in a minute.
I kiss the top of her head—the same gesture the dead man put in a photograph six weeks ago, in the same place he stood when he did it.
"This place is ours now, baby."
"Yeah."
"He doesn't get any of it."
"No, Spur."
We stay in the hay until the sun is fully up.
Back at the cabin she takes the longest shower of her life while I make breakfast.
Eggs and bacon, biscuits warmed from Marlena's batch yesterday.
Simple. The kind of breakfast a man makes for the woman who's going to marry him and doesn't know it yet.
She comes out in clean jeans and a shirt with her hair wet and braided down her back. Sits at the small kitchen table. I put the plate in front of her.
"Spur."
"Yeah?"
"I still have hay in my hair."
"You can wash it again later."
She laughs. "What's the rest of the day, Spur?"
"You have lunch with Marlena and Grace. I need to run an errand."
"Where?"
"In town. Won't be long."
She doesn't ask what for. I love her for it.
"Okay."
"Be back by four. Then I want you in clean clothes and ready to walk somewhere with me at sunset."
"Where are we going?"
"Round pen."
She looks at me for a long second.
Her eyes get the look they get when she's working something out and choosing not to push. "Okay, Spur."
I lean across the table and kiss her, and she tastes like coffee.
* * *
Banshee meets me in the gravel drive at nine.
He's leaning against my truck with a coffee in his hand and that look on his face that says he knows.
"Spur."
"Banshee."
"Where we going?"
"Llano. There's an old man named Whitley. Did my grandmother's ring sixty years ago. I want him to clean it and resize it before I put it on Dakota."
Banshee takes a drink of his coffee and nods slowly. "Damn, brother."
"Yeah?"
"It's about goddamn time."
Some people would say it’s too soon, but I agree with him. "I know it is."
We get in the truck.
Banshee sits beside me in the passenger seat with his boots up on the dash while I drive.
The drive to Llano is forty minutes through the Hill Country on the back roads.
The bluebonnets are mostly gone from the fence lines. The Indian paintbrush is open red. The cattle are starting to move to the higher pastures the way they do this time of year. The Llano River flashes green and shallow when we cross the bridge at Kingsland.
I call Holt from the truck on the speakerphone in the dash. He picks up on the third ring.
"Spur," he says. There's wind on his end of the line. He's outside somewhere—on his porch in Abilene, probably.
"Holt."
"Tell me, brother."
"Tonight."
"Tonight what?"
I keep both hands on the wheel. "Tonight I'm asking her, Holt."
The line goes quiet a second. Then he laughs. Loud, real, the laugh that sounds like Phantom's would if Phantom let himself loose that way. "It's about goddamn time."
"That's what your brother said," I tell him.
Banshee, in the passenger seat, lifts his coffee in a small salute to the dashboard speaker.
"Banshee in the truck with you?" Holt asks.
"Yeah, he's right here."
"Hey, Holt," Banshee says toward the dash.
"You boys go get the ring?" Holt asks us.
"Have one, but getting it cleaned up in Llano," I say.
"You tell Phantom?"
"Last night."
"He say yes?"
"He said yes."
Holt laughs again, quieter this time. "Of course he did. He's been watching her watch you for years." He goes quiet for a beat, then comes back lower. "You call me when she says yes too. I want to be the second man you call after her father."
"You got it."
"And Spur?"
"Yeah?"
"Welcome to the family, son."
"Thank you, brother."
I hang up. The road in front of me has gone hot and shimmering with the late-morning sun. The Llano River a few miles ahead.
Banshee takes a long pull off his coffee, sets the cup back in the cup holder between us.
"Brother."
"Yeah?"
"I'm proud of you."
I don't answer right away because if I do I might get emotional, and Banshee is going to ride me about it for the next decade.
At least I’m man enough to own my emotions.
He sees the line on my face and laughs and bumps his fist against my shoulder.
The rest of the drive into Llano, I think about my grandmother.
I think about the day she gave me the ring in a cedar box six months before she died, and the way her hands shook when she set it in mine.
I think about her sitting on the porch of her own ranch in San Saba telling me a man knows when he's found the woman he's going to give it to.
I was younger than I am now, and Dakota wasn't but a young woman, and I drove home from my grandmother's that afternoon knowing I'd found her years too early.
I pull into a metered spot on Main Street in Llano and shake Banshee out of the nap he fell into ten miles back.
Whitley's shop is on the corner of Main and Fifth in Llano in a building that's been there since the 1890s.
The bell over the door rings when we come in. Whitley is at the back counter with a magnifying loupe up to one eye. He's eighty-three years old, and he has been doing fine jewelry in Llano County since he was seventeen.
He looks up when he sees me. His face does the thing old men's faces do when they see a man whose grandmother they loved.
"Spur," he says.
"Mr. Whitley."
"Son. It's been too long."
"Yes, sir."
He nods at Banshee over my shoulder. Banshee nods back and hangs at the front of the shop with his hands in his pockets.
I set the cedar box on the counter and open it.
Mr. Whitley leans over and looks at the ring. He doesn't speak for a second.
His old hand reaches out and turns the box a quarter rotation under the light. Then he smiles—soft, slow, the smile of a man recognizing an old friend.
"I'd know this from anywhere. Margaret's ring."
"Yes, sir."
"Whose finger?"
"A very special woman's, sir. Harlan Lyle's little girl. Dakota."
He looks up at me. Old man's eyes, watery, sharp underneath the watery. He nods slowly. "You waited a while, son."
"Yes, sir."
"What's her size?"
"Six and a half. I measured a ring she leaves on her dresser when she works horses."
"Smart man." He picks the ring out of the cedar box with the careful old hands of a man who has been holding small precious things since before I was born.
He holds it under the lamp on his counter and turns it. "We'll size it down a quarter. Clean the prongs. Polish her up. Have her for you by two."
"Thank you, sir."
"You go get yourself a coffee at Cooper's. Take your friend." He nods toward Banshee. "Come back just after two."
"Yes, sir."
I leave the cedar box on the counter. Banshee follows me out the door. The bell rings again behind us.
We walk down Main Street to Cooper's diner two blocks down. Get coffee. Sit at a table by the window. The Llano River is visible through the glass two blocks down past Cooper's, green and shallow under the May sun.
Banshee, across the table, watches me look at my watch every five minutes. Doesn't comment. Just drinks his coffee and lets me figure my own nerves out.
Around one-thirty he finally speaks up, "She's going to say yes, brother. I don’t know why you’re so fucking nervous."
"I know she is."
"Then drink your coffee and relax. This is a damn good day."
I drink my coffee.
At two-fifteen, Mr. Whitley hands me the ring in a small velvet box. He's polished it to a soft warm gold. The Texas turquoise looks like a piece of pale sky in the afternoon light coming through his front window.
He sets the box in my palm and folds my fingers over it with both his old hands. "Tell Margaret I said hello, son."
I go still. "Mr. Whitley. She died eight years ago."
He's quiet a long second. His face changes—the way an old man's face changes when he hears something he should have known and didn't. He looks down at our hands together over the velvet box.
"Oh." His voice has gone smaller. "I'm sorry, Spur. I hadn't heard. Your grandmother was a great friend to me. We lost touch some years back."
"She thought a lot of you, sir."
"Did she now?"
"She did. She told me about my grandfather buying that ring from you in 1967 maybe a hundred times in my life."
He nods slowly. His old hands let go of mine. He pulls a handkerchief from his back pocket, touches it to the corner of one eye, and tucks it back away.
"You go put Margaret's ring on that girl, son. You make her happy."
"Yes, sir. I will."
"And you bring her in to meet me sometime when this is all settled."
"I will, Mr. Whitley."
"Go on now."
Banshee and I walk out of the shop. The bell over the door rings behind us.
We get back in the truck. I drive back through with the velvet box on the dash, and Banshee in the passenger seat.
I pull through the gate of Sharp around three-fifty.
Marlena is on the back porch when I come up the steps.
She has a tea towel in her hand and she's drying it slowly, the way she does when she's pretending she's not waiting for somebody.
"Spur."
"Marlena."
Her eyes go to the small bulge in the pocket of my cut where the velvet box is. She doesn't ask. She just smiles. Small. Real.
"She's at the round pen with Cinch. Went out twenty minutes ago. Said she felt like brushing a horse."
"Everybody here?"
"Phantom’s in the living room. Grace and Shadow are up at their cabin. Banshee told Bex about an hour ago and she's already on the swing crying."
"Marlena."
"Yeah, honey?"
"Thank you for stepping up after Jolene."
She puts the tea towel down. Crosses the porch and pulls me into her chest the way she pulls Dakota into her chest.
I let her and close my eyes for a second.
If my own mother were alive, I know she’d be hugging me right now too.
Marlena smells like the kitchen and like a mother and I haven't had one in eleven years.
"Go ask that girl to marry you, Spur."
"I sure plan on it."
"Come back inside after. We're cooking dinner."
I smile and she lets me go.
I walk down off the porch and across the property toward the round pen.
Dakota is at the rail of the round pen with Cinch on the other side, brushing him in long slow strokes the way she's been brushing horses since she was a kid.
The mustang is standing easily under her hand.
The sun is most of the way down and the light is going gold across the western fence of Sharp.
She looks up when she hears my boots on the gravel. "Spur, you're back!"
"I'm back."
"Gosh, what time is it? I feel like you’ve been gone for a while."
"Yeah, I was. It’s nearly sunset."
She sets the curry comb on the fence rail. Climbs through and walks over to me. Cinch follows her on his side because I taught him to follow humans like that.
She stops in front of me.
"You ready, baby?"
"For what?"
"For the thing I'm about to do."
She puts her hand on the side of my face. "Spur, I’ve been ready for this."
I take her hand. Lead her into the round pen. Close the gate behind us. Cinch comes over and stands at my shoulder.
The Lyle family is on the back porch of the main house a hundred yards away. I can see Marlena with her dish towel, Grace with Waylon on her hip, Shadow next to her, Bex on the swing, Banshee on the porch rail, Phantom in the doorway with a coffee in his hand.
Far enough away they can't hear me. But they made sure they’re damn close enough to see.
I take Dakota's hand in both of mine. The mustang at my shoulder. The dust of the round pen under our boots.
"Dakota."
"Spur."
"I’ve loved you for a long damn time, baby. Longer than I had any right to. I waited because you weren't ready, and I would have waited the rest of my life if I had to. But I don't have to anymore, do I?"
"No, Spur."
I let go of her hand. Reach into the pocket of my cut. Pull the velvet box out and drop down on one knee in the dust of the round pen.
Cinch shifts beside me, but he doesn't move.
I open the box.
"This was my grandmother's. My grandfather put it on her hand outside a courthouse in San Saba in 1967 and she didn't take it off until she gave it to me. I have had it in a cedar box in my cabin for years waiting for the woman it belonged to. The woman is you."
Dakota is crying. Quietly. Just tears.
"Marry me, Dakota Lyle. Be my ol’ lady. Take my name. Have my babies. Let me ride to your funeral when we're both eighty years old."
She drops to her knees in the dust in front of me. "Yes, Spur."
"Say it again."
"Yes, I’ll marry you!"
"Again."
"Yes. Yes. Yes."
I take the ring out of the box. Hold her left hand. Slide my grandmother's ring onto her finger. Whitley's resize is perfect. The turquoise catches the last gold of the sunset.
I pull her to me. Kiss her. Long.
When we pull back, her forehead is against mine and we're both crying and laughing at the same time the way people cry and laugh when they finally get the thing they spent their whole life waiting for.
"Take me home, Spur."
"Yes, ma'am."
I stand and pull her up. Cinch follows us to the gate. I open it, walk Dakota out, and the mustang stays at the rail.
The family is already on their feet on the back porch.
Dakota holds her left hand up as we come up the gravel. The turquoise catches the last of the sunset.
Marlena comes off the porch first. Hits Dakota at the bottom of the steps and pulls her into her chest the way a mother would pull her daughter into her chest, saying things into Dakota's hair I can't hear, and Dakota's crying into Marlena's shoulder.
But, even now, I know she’s wishing Jolene were here. And, if Jolene weren’t a batshit crazy bitch who lost her damn mind, she would be.
She goes to Grace next, then Bex.
Then Phantom. He comes off the porch slowly and walks up to me.
He looks at me for a long second, then he pulls me into a hug. "If anyone was going to be a new son of mine, I’m glad it was you."
The Lyle family closes around us in the gravel as the sun goes down behind the western fence of Sharp Shooter Ranch.
She said yes. The threat is dead, and my grandmother's ring is on her hand. Everything is finally starting to settle down.
This is the rest of my life.