CHAPTER 25
Willa
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I woke at the kitchen table with my cheek on the back of my hand and the kettle empty on the stove. I had not meant to sleep.
The lamp was burning down. The window-glass at the east edge was lighter than the lamp. I counted three at the inside of my own wrist. The pulse was steady. I had sat down at three because Tate had asked me to, and I had not stood since.
I rubbed my thumb across the cleft of my own eyebrows. The pink half-moon was there. It had been there two days. I had not refused to cry; I had refused to do anything but carry water. Tears used water. Tears would wait.
The bone pin was on the dresser in the southwest bedroom. I had braided my hair last night with a strip of leather lace because lace did not catch on a wet rag, and I had been moving water all night and all day.
I went to the back door.
The dooryard was dim. The sky at the east edge was a clean pale gray, not yet sun.
The smoke had thinned. The wind had come round on my left cheek at midnight and again at three and was now from the southwest, off the snowfield, cold and dry, pushing the fire-front off the basin's east shoulder onto the far side of the divide.
The pump-handle squeaked when I lifted it.
I did not laugh. The squeak was back. The wind-shift had brought the high-mountain seep through the gravel into the springbox overnight; the pump was drawing again, a small slow draw, but water.
I worked the handle and the water came in a clean cup-thick stream into the bucket.
I filled the first. I filled the second.
Two tin buckets. The weight pulled my shoulders down and the carrying was the thing my body had been built for this morning, which was a comfort.
I walked the buckets across the dooryard toward the barn.
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The barn was the freight stable. The east wall was the long planked wall.
The wood had cooled overnight from the long hot day of the spark-fall; the planks were cool to the brush of my fingers, and the ash had settled along the grain in a fine even velvet.
The cooled barn wall, and the ash settled into the planks like dust into linen.
I let my fingertips drag along it once. The ash smudged into the pad of my thumb. I did not wipe it.
I came round the south corner of the barn.
They were at the water-trough.
Levi was naked to the waist. He pulled his shirt over his head as I came round, and the shirt flopped over the trough rail; his copper-red hair was loose from the saddle-lace, the ash gray on copper.
The ash was on his collarbones in a long sift across the line of them.
The ash was in his beard at the right jaw where the singed side was — the side that had taken the heat at the windrow.
His sea-blue eyes were the only thing in him not ash.
Beck was behind him at the bucket. He had not undressed.
He had not slept in two nights; the line of his jaw was a man at the end of his second watch.
His sandy hair was ash-streaked. His scarred left palm was wet from the bucket.
His hazel-green eyes turned at the brush of my skirt on the corner-grass.
They saw me. Both at once.
I set the two tin buckets down in the dust.
I did not speak. They did not speak.
Old Brigham was not crowing; the chicken yard was empty. The horses were at the snowfield, all of them but Ardent, and Ardent was still at the upper pasture. The basin was as quiet as a basin gets.
Levi stepped off the trough rail.
He walked the four steps to me through the dust. His feet were bare. He put his two hands on my hips.
"Love. " His voice was low and ash-cracked. "Christ's teeth. You are alive."
Beck set the bucket down on the dust at the trough foot and came round to my other side. He put his scarred left palm at the back of my neck under the leather lace.
"Sweetheart. We are alive."
I said it into the front of Levi's chest, low into the cleft scar at his sternum. The only Christ I had in me. "Christ. The three of us."
They looked at each other once over my shoulder. The brother's nod. We have her. She has us. We are alive. Then both of them on me only.
"Are you with us, Willa. " Beck said it against my ear. "Yes or no."
"Yes. " I said it into Levi's chest. The ash on him was on my lip when I said it. I tasted ash on my own mouth. "Both of you. Yes."
Levi's ash-streaked thumbs came up to my jaw. He turned my face up to his.
"You are sure, love."
"I am sure."
The ash on his mouth went onto mine when he kissed me. I tasted it on his teeth, on his tongue, and under the ash the salt-sweet that was his own. The cooled barn wall was at my left shoulder where Beck's palm had moved me a careful inch; the ash was in the planks; the ash was on the men's mouths.
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Levi turned me. My back went to the rough planks; the wood was cool through the cotton of the bodice.
Levi was at my front, his trousers undone. Beck was behind me — his chest at my back, warm through the work shirt, the heat of him at the cool of the wall through me.
Levi lifted me. He was lean and rangy and his hands under my thighs were the hands that had thrown a saddle a thousand times. My skirt rode up at my hips. The drawers were the everyday split-crotch white cotton; the slit opened around him.
He laid his cock at my cunt. I was slick already. I had been slick from the moment I came round the wall and saw their two faces.
"Tell me. Love."
"Now. Yes."
He pushed in.
The give of my own body was the small bright shock of it — that this was happening, that he was inside me, that my body had opened — and the cooled barn wall was at my back and the ash was on the planks and the ash was on his mouth.
He moved.
Quick. Hard. His face went in my throat — the jaw and the lips, never the hand — his beard at my collarbone, the singed side rough and the clean side soft.
Beck's body was holding me up where my feet were not on the floor.
Beck's scarred left palm went flat across my ribs to brace me.
His right hand came down between Levi's belly and mine, and his thumb found my clit through the slit of the drawers.
Beck's mouth was at my ear.
"Sweetheart. We have you. We have you."
The thumb at my clit was the thumb that had been at the corner of my mouth in the kitchen in July.
It knew the shape of what it was doing. The strokes were Levi's.
The pressure was Beck's. The wall was the cooled barn wall and the planks were rough at my shoulders and the ash was on the men's mouths.
I came with my forehead at Levi's throat and Beck's mouth at my ear. The orgasm was small and sharp — survival's orgasm, the body's I am here, I am here, the country has not killed me today — and my legs clenched at Levi's hips and I made a sound that was not a word.
Levi went three more strokes. His face came up out of my throat. His sea-blue eyes were on mine.
"Christ's teeth. Love. Alive. Alive."
He came inside me. I felt the hot pulse of it at the inside wall and the small clench of my own body taking it in; his fingers tightened under my thighs; his forehead came against mine and his breath stopped for one beat, and then he laughed once, soft, against my shoulder.
The laugh was the tell. The man who had been alone too long and was suddenly not alone.
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Levi pulled out of me slow.
He set me down. My feet went to the dust-pressed floor; the drawers fell closed at the slit; the skirt fell. He kissed me at the temple — ash off his lip onto my hairline — and stepped back.
He sat down on the saddle-blanket. He had pulled it down off the empty stall's rail before I came round; the wool-side was up, dark Hudson's Bay red with a black stripe. I had been on it in this barn once before, two months ago in July. The stake had been different.
His head went back against the planks. He was shaking — the small tremor of a man two nights ahead of the fire setting himself down.
Beck had me. His scarred left palm came round to the front of my hip and turned me. He guided me down onto the blanket.
I went to my hands and knees on it. The wool was warm-rough at my palms. Beck pushed my skirt up at the small of my back and the cotton folded into the curve. The slit at the drawers was open.
Beck knelt behind me. I heard the small careful work of his trousers — the button, the belt-buckle, the careful release. He pushed the front down only enough.
His cock was hard at my cunt. He was slick with what Levi had left in me.
"Sweetheart. May I."
"Yes, Beck. Yes."
He entered me slow — the long full stroke he had taught me on the kitchen table in July, head to root in one slow give. The difference now was the dust at my palms and the ash on the planks and the cooled barn wall above.
He bottomed out. He moved slow. The man had built his loving the way he built his fence-line, full stretches, each one priced.
"I have you. " He said it into the back of my shoulder.
His right hand came round under my belly.
His thumb found my clit through the slit of the drawers — the same thumb, the same place, the careful precision that was Beck's only register in the dark.
He moved his thumb the way a man moves a needle when the cloth is fine, on the give of his own slow stroke.
The orgasm built. It built long. It did not climb; it widened, across my belly and down the inside of both thighs and up into the back of my throat, and I said his name twice into the wool of the blanket.
"Beck. Beck."
His thumb pressed exactly. The orgasm widened a last time and closed. I clenched around him slow. He stayed inside me through it.
He held three breaths.
Then he finished. He did not pull out. He finished inside me with a low groan he buried in the back of my shoulder — a single unh into the bone of me — and I felt the give of him and the pulse of him at the inside wall.
"Sweetheart. Christ Almighty."
He stayed a long breath. He pulled out slow. He stayed on his knees behind me; his right hand went flat to the small of my back the way he rested it on the porch-rail in the dark.