CHAPTER 23 #2
He says, "May I kiss you here, darlin'?"
I say, "Yes."
He puts his hand at the back of my neck.
His hand is warm. His thumb finds the small hollow at the base of my skull where my braided coil sits low against the nape and settles there without weight. His other hand comes up to my chest at the open of my coat and lies flat there for the length of one breath.
I lean into him. He kisses me.
The first touch of his mouth is closed-mouth — soft, the dry of the day on his lips and the warmth of him beneath the dry.
The second touch opens. The kiss is open the way a held window opens when the latch is undone, slow, without effort.
The taste of him is woodsmoke and a faint metal-tang of the hammer and the clean linen smell of the square in his coat pocket I have known since the night of the loft.
I put my right hand on his chest at his sternum — flat, palm to the bone, the small smooth stone in his coat pocket against the heel of my hand through the cloth — and I leave it there.
He does not move his hands below my shoulders. I do not move mine below his sternum.
He kisses me a long minute against the alkali-cracked bank.
He stops. He breathes. He puts his forehead against mine.
He says, "I am afraid of losing this."
I say, low against his mouth, "You will not."
He says, "Darlin'."
I press my right palm harder against the sternum.
I count one pulse beat at his throat where my thumb has come up under the line of his jaw.
Once. I do not promise the impossible. I promise only my presence in his arms at this minute, here, on the alkali, with the sun a copper coin above his shoulder.
I say it again. "You will not."
He kisses my temple. His left hand has come up off my chest and settled at my right shoulder; his right hand is still at the back of my neck. He holds my shoulder a long minute and does not move. We stay that way until the sun has shifted on the alkali.
The wind gusts twice while we stand. A small ash, the size of a snowflake, comes down out of the south wind and lands on his sleeve. It lifts off again at the next gust.
He says, into my hair, "All right, darlin'. We go up."
He takes his forehead off mine. He puts his left hand out, palm up. I put my right hand into it. He closes his hand around mine.
We walk back up the spring-trail hand-in-hand. His coat pocket against my hip carries the small smooth stone, warm through the wool. The spectacles are folded in Eliza's nightgown linen in the carved box on my dresser — mine to keep, the stone still his.
The wind gusts a third time and the gust is constant now, a long low pressure at the right shoulder. The basin has gone dim. We walk the last fifty yards hand-in-hand.
---
Beck is on the porch.
He has the kettle in his left hand and the doubled hand-towel folded twice on the handle.
The stove is lit; the kerosene lamp at the kitchen window is lit at four-thirty because the basin has gone too dim for kitchen work without it.
He sees us at the lower edge of the dooryard.
He does not say anything about the held hand.
He says, "In, you two. Levi. In."
Levi straightens at the corral gate, drops the lead-rope across the top rail, comes across the dooryard. Ardent watches him go.
We four come up the porch step. The canvas crackles against the porch beams. The wind at thirty knots is at it now and the pole-frame is straining; Beck has lashed it to the posts and the corner of the east wall with two coils of light rope.
The kitchen door closes behind Levi.
The kerosene lamp on the table is lit. The dry-water-protocol is on the table — Beck has taken it down off the inside of the pantry door where it has been pinned since May 1878.
Beside it he has set the carved birch dipper and three of the Mason jars and the small square of the wedding-ring quilt I have been piecing across August. The cream calico is at the center; the slate-blue and the gray and the red at the cardinal points.
The four of us sit. The lamp throws its thin ray across the cabin's east wall, the cracked-chimney ray we learned to know in the night of the loft.
Beck says, slow, "Tomorrow at first light the chickens go down-pass to Hattie. The horses to the upper pasture. The cattle to the upper pasture's lower edge. The wagon stays packed."
He sets his palms flat on the table on either side of the protocol. He looks at the three of us in turn.
He says, "Willa stays at the cabin with the iron pump and the rain barrel. Tate runs the chickens. Levi runs the horses and cattle. I stay at the assay shed with the gold dust and the patent papers. We have not moved them to Hattie's safe yet. I do it at first light."
Tate says, "The mules are ready. The crate is under the porch."
Levi says, "The horses are ready. Pie leads. Ardent will go up first; the others will follow."
I say, "The pump draws. The barrel is half. I will keep it wet."
Beck nods.
He says, "The marshal is a week out."
He closes his hand on the long pink crescent of his left palm. The thumbnail finds the silver web. The scratch is the slow short scratch I have learned to read at supper across the table for two months.
---
At nine the lamp goes low.
The men go to their beds. Tate goes up the outside stair of the freight stable to his loft. Levi closes the leather flap of his lean-to. Beck takes the rocker in the front room because the rocker is closer to the door if the wind shifts in the night.
I go to the big bedroom alone.
We have agreed it earlier at the table without speaking it — the four of us know how the four of us speak now — that tonight no one is in my bed.
The men need full sleep before the fire.
I know the difference between a night the men need me and a night the men need their rest. Tonight is the night they need their rest.
I lie down on the indigo-and-cream quilt. I do not undress past my chemise. I take the bone pin out of the braid and lay it on the dresser to the left of the carved box.
I lie on my back. I count pulse beats at the inside of my left wrist. I listen to the wind.
I think of the kiss at the dry creek — Tate's mouth at mine, his forehead at mine, his "I am afraid of losing this" and my own "You will not.
" I say it again at the back of my mouth to the rafter above the bed.
You will not. I do not promise the impossible.
I promise my presence in his arms when the smoke comes.
I think — and this is the thought I have come to in the long count of the wagon-up and the alkali bank and the four at the table — the country is signing the contract now.
In the first week of July I thought that we had signed for each other in writing and the country was signing for us.
The country is signing the contract this evening at thirty knots of wind and the sun a copper coin above the south ridge.
The cracked-chimney's thin ray reaches the threshold of the bedroom and stops at my dresser. The sun is gone behind the smoke and the basin is dim.
I press my right thumb to the cleft between my eyebrows once. I take it away.
The canvas crackles at the porch beams. The wind in the knothole holds the long note.
I lie in the big bedroom and do not yet sleep.