Sadie had slipped away from their room while Arthur was still sleeping, as he often was these days, riding out from Las Hermanas to the tone of the bells and the soft sound of singing from the chapel. Christmas morning service, and she'd made the apologetic excuse that she didn't want to attend services on an important occasion like this without her bedridden husband. She'd instead offered to do her own part of appreciating Jesus by trying to feed folks. Not five thousand of them, and not loaves and fishes either, but she'd gone hunting for Christmas dinner.
They had to notice she didn't attend any services on Sunday or otherwise anyway, husband excuse or no, but nobody said anything, and she appreciated that. Perhaps they chalked it up to her probably not being Catholic, but it was kind. Aside from the rule to keep their hands--or intimate parts, more accurately--to themselves, the convent really wasn't too strict about expectations of behavior. Well, not going crazy and shooting up the place felt pretty much implied, but given she'd expected pretty strict regimentation and lectures about sin and guilt, and pressure to hew to Catholic religion besides, it was nice to not endure that. Whatever regimentation they had at Las Hermanas was mostly for the TB patients, and came from Garcia's fairly strict hand plan in looking out for their well-being and recovery.
About all they asked was that those not there for treatment try to contribute to the community in some way according to their skills, which was only fair given they weren't paying anything to stay here. So hunting she'd gone, even with no Baby Bunting involved. Three large jackrabbits and a mallard duck already to show for it, but now here, looking down from the ridge, was a real prize. A doe mule deer feeding on tender shoots, her head lowered, and Sadie carefully took the repeater from her shoulder. Lined up the shot, and whistled to catch the deer's attention, make it lift its head. One clean shot, and there it was, dropped right in its tracks. A perfect kill. It wasn't as though she hadn't had plenty of chances to hone her aim on fairly dangerous prey this year.
Field dressing was bloody, messy work, but far easier than trying to sling the whole carcass over Bob's back. Besides, to her mind there was something unseemly about the notion of doing all that butchering work in a convent anyway. She might have wandered far from the ideals Uncle Will would have preferred she stick with, but she still respected something of the idea of sanctity when it came to a house of God, and not wanting to stain it with blood from a life taken, even for a worthy cause. Though it wasn't completely blood free at Las Hermanas. The TB patients with their raw, lacerated lungs, and a whole bunch of women with their monthlies, which had to make the nuns handling laundry have a real fun time with bloodstained drawers, assured that. But that blood wasn't about death and violence and killing. It felt different.
She should head back soon, given raw meat would spoil in a hurry in this warm weather, and the folks in the kitchen would want to get going on the meal. But she let herself sit and eat a bit of late breakfast out here in the quiet of the desert. Not much--an orange, a chunk of bread, some cheese--washed down with water from her canteen, scrubbing her hands down with some water and some desert sand which she was at it to take away the stickiness from the orange juice. Christmas dinner would be big enough to make up for the light meal now. Bob got a sugar cube and some hay for his troubles.
Sitting there on a rock, enjoying the sun, she dug through her satchel for a peppermint to give him as a Christmas treat. Her fingers brushed the harmonica, its distinct shape in the pocket she'd sewn on the inside of the satchel making it easy to pick out by feel alone. She hesitated, as she always did, but still pulled it out. She was alone. It was fine to do this. She'd felt like a fool letting it slip to Arthur on that wagon ride to Rhodes that she'd played the harmonica, and he must have heard something in her tone about it, because he'd made it a point to find her one just because. He'd handed it over, made some offhanded remark about looking forward to hearing her play, and surprisingly, he hadn't gotten pissed off when she met that gift with rudeness, effectively telling him she'd never play for him, or anyone else for that matter.
She hated now that she'd been like that, making it seem like she didn't give a damn about the effort he'd put in, and the kindness he'd shown. But she couldn't play for him, and she couldn't let him anticipate it by not saying so. Playing music was something that had belonged to her old self, belonged to the woman who'd loved Jake, and she couldn't hand that over. Not when so much else had been taken from her. But she couldn't lose everything about music, and let the O'Driscolls have taken one more thing from her entirely. She'd decided that it was all right to play alone like this, trusting that a good soul like Jake had of course gone straight to heaven. That meant he could still hear her play for him as her only audience.
So she pulled the harmonica from its pocket, put it to her lips, and played. First up was "Silent Night," one of Jake's favorites. She could still remember him singing loudly and off-key way back when they were kids together in the Tumbleweed church, Uncle Will preaching about miracles and hope and joy. Singing it in that same church after he grew to manhood, but much quieter, more humming than anything. Singing it last Christmas in the cabin while she played the tune for him, because now that was the one time of year he'd let himself let loose and sing.
"We both know I can't carry a tune in a bucket, Sadie. It's you who got all the gift when it comes to music. Christmas? That's my one exception. Especially up here where we got no church but God's own creation all around us, I might as well sing for that." He gave a sheepish shrug of his shoulders, throwing another log on the fire. "Besides, I expect there's something in every man who never wants to disappoint his daddy, no matter how old he gets."
"Ain't you such a good little preacher's boy," she teased him right back, laughing.
He'd looked at her with a knowing smile, a gleam in those bright blue eyes that she recognized. "Got you praying real hard last night, didn't I, to judge from how loudly you was calling out to God."
"Jake Adler!" She felt the blush rising in her cheeks in spite of herself, enjoying the memory all the same, and seeing from the smirk on his face that he was reliving it in loving detail as well. "Shut up and come help me with these potatoes, then."
She'd loved that man so much. She'd loved that life so much. Being honest now, she could admit that both of them realized soon after they got there how much they missed being a part of something bigger. They'd come from a community, even a dying one like Tumbleweed, and gone off on their own. There was a part of them made lonely by living so far away and so cut off from everything. But that was the price they'd paid for what felt like true freedom, and they had each other, so it was still mostly sweet. Joining the gang, that big boisterous family before it all fell apart, and now even this quieter and more serene life at Las Hermanas, it felt nice to be a part of something again. But it still hurt because she and Jake hadn't given up on their life in Pinetree Gulch to move south to be closer to people. They'd had it taken from them. If she'd had to give up on that dream, she would have wanted to choose it, because they hadn't been able to choose in New Austin either. Circumstances had forced their hand there too.
She sat there a few more long moments, harmonica clenched in her first, a lump in her throat, trying to fight down the tears. But there was no point and no need. She was alone. "Merry Christmas, Jake," she said, barely able to manage more than a scratchy whisper, unable to hold back the hot tears now sliding their way down her cheek. I miss you. I miss you so much. I miss the person that I was too. I keep hoping I'll wake up and be back there. Dashing the back of her hand across her eyes, she put the harmonica away, and headed for Bob. She'd had this span of private self-indulgence. Now things needed doing.
Back at Las Hermanas, she dropped the meat off in the kitchen, thanked by a very grateful Sister Ursula, who set right to work with it. She went and washed up as best she could from one of the rain barrels. She'd have to change clothes before dinner all the same, given the traces of blood on her shirt cuffs and sleeves.
She ended up helping Sister Juanita feeding the goats and chickens next. She didn't know Juanita all that well yet, but knew her as one of Arthur's Spanish teachers. She seemed like the sort with good humor, making jokes, singing to herself as she worked. Standing at the fence, strewing chicken feed, she turned to the black-clad woman at her side. "Don't mean nothing bad by it, but I noticed you don't seem much like a contemplative religious type. So how'd you end up here?"
"There's all types among the nuns, Señora Griffith," Juanita said. "Did you expect us to all be prune-faced and disapproving?"
"No." Juanita quirked an eyebrow, obviously calling out the lie, and Sadie felt strangely like when Uncle Will used to give her that knowing look. "Well, OK, maybe."
Juanita laughed at that, grabbing the sack of goat feed and heading for the goat pens, Sadie following her with the bucket of kitchen scraps Ursula always got together, all the peelings and trimmings. "The first Spanish lesson Pedro and I came to give him, that husband of yours looked like he expected me to damn him to hell on sight."
Somehow she didn't doubt that, knowing Arthur. "He's been through a lot, the TB and all. Guess it makes him a bit skittish towards some things." It wasn't like she could say that he was an ex-outlaw who'd had a five thousand dollar federal bounty on his head, and still couldn't accept the idea he actually wasn't a mean bastard automatically damned with no hope for anything else.
"Of course. Anyway, you had asked. I was sent here when I was eleven. My parents were campesinos. Didn't have money for raising two boys, and then three girls and their dowries. I was the youngest, so I was gifted to the Church as a novice."
"Gifted?" She shook her head, incredulous. "You ain't serious? Folk can't just...donate a kid like a sack of cornmeal." That wasn't much different than slavery, in her opinion. "Can they?"
Juanita's shoulders gave a small dip and shrug as she poured the feed into the goats' trough, indicating for Sadie to pass her the bucket, pitching that in too. "It happens. You and Arthur sound like you grew up right across the border by your accents, though his is stranger. But some things are different in Mexico. You'll learn that. It wasn't so bad. I took the vows in the end by my choice. I was grateful to the Church for caring for me. They meant that I had a home. A safe place to sleep. Food and an education I wouldn't have had otherwise. They gave me a life with dignity and purpose."
Sadie thought she heard a faint thread of wistfulness in Juanita's voice all the same, but decided it would be rude to press it just now off that single conversation. "I see." Taking back the bucket, she put it back in its place outside the kitchen door, reached down to scratch a ginger-furred cat rubbing against her legs, and headed inside, the cool shade of the adobe helping against the ferocious midday sun.
Heading upstairs, she paused at the door and knocked lightly enough that if Arthur were dozing he'd likely sleep through it, but if he was awake, he'd hear. God knew Arthur couldn't really get up to much craziness anyway, but not just barging in on him felt like a small courtesy. It also felt like it put the boundaries of things right. They might be living in the same room, but they weren't husband and wife to just come in without knocking, assured of that intimacy. Pushing open the door, she saw he was awake but reading in bed as usual, Dido snuggled in by his side. The kitten seemingly adopted him a few weeks ago, followed him to this room, and made herself at home. Sadie was fine with that. She and Jake had planned to get a dog that spring, as well as a cat to handle the cellar and barn with the inevitable mouse problem. She wondered now if they'd had a dog still with them that night if they wouldn't have been caught by surprise. It didn't matter. Six O'Driscolls against her and Jake--she could perhaps handle those odds now, no problem, but she was a different woman from the one she'd been back in May.
When it came to Dido, it felt nice to be able to lavish some affection on something small and cute and in need of some care. Dido was hers as well, in a way. But honestly, she felt better that he had some company during the long hours he was stuck in bed and she was busy doing things. "What's the reading?" She nodded towards the impressively thick book propped on his chest. "Shit, I expect you could kill someone with that, heavy as it is." He closed the book, turning his attention to her with the eagerness of a man used to being active and bored out of his whip-smart mind. Coming closer, she read the title. "'Les Miserables'? You reading French now?" Only teasing, because she knew the novel was in English.
He gave a wry smile. "Jesus, you rattle off that French like it weren't nothing."
"Read that one last year. I told the shopkeeper in Strawberry to give us the biggest novels he had to help get through the winter. That was one of them. Where'd you get it?" She should have figured he'd have long since gotten through the books they'd brought with them, given little else to do right now aside from read, sleep, eat, and learn Spanish.
He pushed up against the pillows a bit, not enough to be deemed sitting up and get yelled at by Garcia for it, but at least so he wasn't flat on his back and could better look at her. "I got it from Ramona Trujillo. We lungers, we got ourselves a nice little lending library out in the courtyard every Monday after breakfast." She couldn't help but note that nearly a month of constant rest now had done him a lot of good. She wouldn't say he looked anything like healthy yet, but he coughed a lot less. He'd gained a little weight, the deepest shadows of exhaustion had faded from around his eyes, and those eyes themselves looked a bit clearer and brighter, shining right now with good humor. "I got some miserable French folk from her, and swapped her 'Oliver Twist' and 'Tale of Two Cities' myself."
She couldn't help but smile in spite of herself. "That's a nice notion, doing book trading. And you folk looking out for each other like that." He nodded in reply, giving a brief hint of a smile. Dido woke up at the sound of their conversation, green eyes a striking contrast to her soot-black fur. She padded over to the edge of the bed, giving a leisurely stretch, and hopping down to the floor. Heading out the door for whatever adventure called to her, and Sadie almost felt the sheer longing intensity of Arthur's eyes watching her go, just like he watched Sadie go, every morning. This room with its two beds, one window, a table, and two nightstands, the courtyard with its cots and reclining chairs, the rooftop with the same, the latrine, Garcia's small clinic and a bath once a week down in the room next to the kitchen? That was his life right now.
She could understand the frustration. She and Jake had almost gone crazy sometimes over the winter, snowed in, their world more or less shrunk to the four walls of the small cabin and a path dug to the barn. Used to New Austin and wide open spaces as she was, that claustrophobic feeling had been new. Arthur had been a man who she'd seen could easily ride across more than one state to get a job done if need be. How much of a prisoner did he feel like right now, trapped not by the weather, but by his own body failing him? It must be hard for him to watch healthy people come and go as they pleased.
So she tried to cheer him up with a joke. "Couple hours till dinner. Quite the deluxe life you got here, I know folk that would envy you! All your reading time, got your meals delivered up to you--your pillows need some fluffing too, sir?"
Seeing the shamed and stricken look on his face, as if she'd slapped him, she cursed herself. She'd misjudged, and opened her big mouth besides. "I ain't lazy," the words said in a soft, small voice, Arthur looking away from her to stare out the window. She saw how his fingers clenched around the spine of the book, but anger in a big man was easy enough to pick out. That wasn't it. There was a jittery air of something more like fear here. "I'll be back on my feet and helping folk out as soon as I can."
She'd been there for six months. Seen him riding in, often past dark, dropping off things to Pearson, dropping cash or stuff in the camp's donation box, dropping onto his cot for a few hours of sleep, grabbing some stew or coffee, talking to people for a little while, then usually riding back out again by noon. If he stayed a day or two to rest, spent time with people in camp and relax a little, Dutch would put an end to it, telling him to go do something, go be a "man of action". She hadn't questioned it then, caught up in her own business. She wished she had. She'd watched him haranguing an already-tired Arthur to do even more of the heavy lifting, all the while letting others loaf around camp for several days before kicking them out again, and what about Dutch himself? What had he done aside from sitting on his ass reading his books and bickering with Molly, and Dutch sure as shit didn't have TB as an excuse for being a man of such leisure.
She had the sad, angry suspicion that was the way it had been for years and years, that the standard had always been different for Arthur, and that Dutch had known how to get to him. Just how much did that man make you think all the worth you got is in the things you can do for folk? But she'd hurt him, even unknowingly. She carefully tried to pick her way through it and somehow take the sting from her mistake, feeling stupidly on the edge of tears again and hating that too. "Of course you ain't lazy," she told him. "Nobody seeing how much you done for everyone in that camp could believe that for a single second." She sat down carefully on the edge of his bed, but didn't reach out to touch him. "But you got to take the proper time to rest, Arthur. Your job is getting better. We'll be fine here without you hauling flour sacks for six months, or whatever it takes. But if you let this kill you by pushing too hard too soon, then I assure you, I ain't gonna be fine."
It felt like the wrong hook still, somehow, to tell him she needed him to do it for her, rather than because he simply deserved to take the time he needed to recover. But she couldn't see yet how to get that through to him, and make him believe it. Though she wasn't wrong to say it either. Whenever it had been he'd become such a part of her life, she couldn't say for sure, but she'd caught a glimpse of what his absence was like when she'd thought him dead on that mountain, and she wasn't sure she could bear it. She wasn't sure she could bear the person she'd become if the world proved its cruelty in taking him too.
He gave a small nod at that, and looked back at her, eyes thoughtful. The moment passed. "All right, then. If that's what you need." Stretching an arm out past her, he grabbed something off the nightstand, handing it to her. "Here. It ain't much, but then, I ain't got much to call my own right now. All my stuff's with John, wherever he is by now." He held out a hand, index finger up in warning to stop. "I implore you, do not say 'Tahiti'. But--Merry Christmas, anyway."
She unrolled the sheet of paper, seeing the pencil sketch there. Herself, with Dido snuggled up against her shoulder. That had been just last night. Dido had been purring up a storm, and she'd been laughing at it. She hadn't known she'd been smiling like that. She hadn't known she could still smile like that. "You drew this?" Stupid question. It wasn't like anyone else was there to see her with Dido, and they'd all seen him writing and sketching in that journal of his. But nobody ever saw any of his art or writing. He must have remembered that scene from last night clearly enough to draw it this morning. "This is…real fine. You've got a true gift for it. Thank you." He gave one of those little smiles of his, and seeing the way he'd captured her look, she wondered what he'd look like if he let himself truly smile, rather than that shy, tentative expression or a gruff smirk. She rolled the drawing back up carefully. "Shit, I ain't got nothing much to give you though."
He gave a snort of amusement. "You saved my life, Sadie. Ain't a much bigger gift than that. I'm pretty sure that covers any and all gifts for the rest of my life."
"Yeah, well, you saved mine, so--" But she did have something, though it didn't feel like much of a gift. She had that little pink flower in its jar, had put it on a spot on the roof to try to make sure it survived, making sure it got sun and water, not wanting Arthur to see if it died. He had enough on his mind with his own struggle to survive. But it had flourished again, so she'd brought it down here today to give it to him, seeing it was OK and thinking it would cheer him up. Though she'd forgotten about the bag shoved underneath her bed with the rest of his stuff, buried under heavier clothing from Wapiti. Yeah, things had been busy, but no real excuse for that. "Hold on." She got off his bed, digging under her own cot, finding the bag. Coming back, she handed it to him. "Still not sure it's much of a gift giving you your own stuff. But it's what I got. Sorry I forgot about it." She fished in the drawer and plucked out the flower in its jar, where she'd put it last night while he'd been sleeping.
Brow furrowed in confusion, he took the jar in his hand, looking it over carefully. She heard him take in a swift breath of recognition. "You have this? I don't know how you managed that--"
"I went to our camp first, in case John got it wrong and you'd come on back there in the end. Place was on fire. Pinkertons must have torched it. But I got some of my things. And some of yours. I..." She swallowed hard. She didn't want to say it, but better to be honest than have him think she'd done some kind of creepy ransacking of his things the minute he was supposedly dead. "I didn't do that with a mind towards keeping any of it myself, Arthur. I would have…once I found you..." Now the words failed. It felt cruel to remind him how narrowly he'd escaped dying only a month ago.
He said it for her, for which she was eternally grateful. "I see. You meant to bury my stuff with me." He opened the bag next and started unpacking, pulling out the horseshoe, then the pictures. She'd only glanced at them, in a hurry as she was, but now she looked closer as he laid them out on the bed. The dog, obviously a beloved former pet that it hadn't been around. Himself as a fresh-faced kid, maybe eighteen, with Hosea, younger and stronger, and Dutch. A man--his father, from the name "Lyle Morgan" on the board he held up denoting he'd been arrested for larceny, and him wearing a familiar hat that she'd last seen on John Marston's head. A woman, probably his mother, to judge from her light eyes and some similarity of features to Arthur.
Her curiosity sparked at that, and she wondered if she could press, albeit gently. But he, and apparently one of the older nuns he'd known back in St. Denis and who'd apparently been some kind of outlaw herself in her youth, were the only ones where she could safely talk about all of it. And she was of no mind to spill her guts to the nun. She tried to start it off with some humor. "Seems like you and me ran off to get married in such a rush, Mr. Griffith. I know I can trust you with my life, and I know some of your taste in horses and guns," and women to judge from the gossip about the girl who'd jilted him, "but honestly, I don't even know how old you are." She knew some of the biggest things, like that he was a man who truly would die for those he loved, that he genuinely couldn't see the goodness in himself, that he had a fine sense of humor and a fine sense of honor. But in other ways, so many of the little day to day things, she felt like she hardly knew him. His being confined to bed rest and sleeping so much had prevented some of that familiarity growing, for all that they'd shared this room for a month.
Propping himself up better against the pillows now, he eyed her with something like quiet amusement, not suspicion. "We do seem to have skipped that whole stage of things. I'm thirty-six. I was born on July 3rd of '63."
The first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, given she'd grown up hearing about that whole experience from both her mother and father. It also made him four months younger than Jake. But she didn't want to remark on either of those facts, and maybe derail him from talking about himself. This was the first tentative crack of the door, so she'd keep at it. "I was born in '68. I'll be thirty-two on the 23rd of April next year."
"Well, at least you didn't have to spend your birthday this year with us miscreants." He meant it as a joke, but come April 23rd of 1900, she'd be without Jake all the same. In some ways, she'd as soon have gotten that first birthday without him out of the way earlier. Because she'd remember next April. He'd kept her present hidden all winter. New ankle boots, pretty black-and-white leather with a row of shiny black buttons. Impractical for their day-to-day life, especially since it wasn't like she was paying social calls or going to church. But she'd adored him for buying them, for giving her something pretty to wear here and there. He must have seen her wistfully looking at them at Chip's store in Strawberry the fall before.
"You probably didn't even have anyone remember your birthday. Nobody remarked anything about it."
He gave a dismissive half-shrug. "I was out hunting around then for a few days. So there was more important things for me and everyone else to worry about. Besides, once you get past twenty-five or so, it all gets sort of depressing, don't it?"
"Not if you're with folk who care about you."
"Hosea did give me a book when I got back. Said he wished I'd get the time to read it."
That sounded like Hosea, all right. "You sound like a New Austin man, mostly, but that ain't all of your accent. Plus you wasn't raised out near Tumbleweed. Hosea said they found you about twenty years back, but I'd have remembered you being there before that."
"Oh, a Tumbleweed gal, huh? Nah. My family was near Armadillo back when I was real young."
"How young we talking? Before you would have gone to school?"
He paused, cleared his throat and said with an awkward patience, "Sadie, I never did go to school. I didn't learn to read until I was fourteen when Hosea taught me."
She cursed herself again for a fool, so blithely assuming his life had been anything like hers. She tried her best to chase that ashamed look off his face by offering humor again. "Armadillo? Oh, it's like that. You're from that blasted town got the railroad, and that's what killed Tumbleweed." But she said it playfully all the same, not meaning it to start a fight.
"Hey, don't go blaming me, not like I got some loyalty there. We left Armadillo when I was only about six."
"Still picked up the accent pretty good for leaving that young, huh?"
Something within him went strangely still at that, and she cringed, expecting she'd accidentally hit another sore point. This wasn't going well. He sighed, reaching up and rubbing his chin in a nervous-looking gesture. "Yeah, I had reason. Even that little, I knew it was better than sounding like my momma and daddy. Truth? I wasn't born in Armadillo. Not even in America. We came over from Wales when I was two, after the war ended. I was born there in the Rhondda Valley." She heard the instinctive lilt Arthur gave the name in a different accent from his own, a familiar sound she'd heard from her Grandpa Owen, and which made her heart ache with its familiarity. He'd almost never spoken Welsh, given his Scottish wife, but even his English had that lilt that sounded so musical to her ear. "Coal country, that was, where folk usually died young of black lung." He gave her a bleak smile. "Something real funny about it. We leave all that behind when I ain't even old enough to remember clearly, there I am not six weeks ago now, living in coal country with my lungs failing on me. Like that's some damn Greek tragedy that was there waiting for me all this time."
"Coincidence, that's all," she told him, knowing full well by now he was a man who'd let things haunt him, given half a chance. She wouldn't let him dwell on that. "Ain't no divine retribution about that. As for me, I was born in America, but we moved when I was about a year old from our farm west of Hanover. Not the German one, the one that's in the south part of Pennsylvania. We went to Tumbleweed. Bad call in the end, but back in '69, guess it sounded promising. And your people being from Wales, I guessed it from 'Morgan', but I never did ask. 'Griffith' is Welsh, you know."
"I know. Was that you trying to give me a last name sort of like mine? It was kind of you."
"No. Just the first thing that came to mind when that ticket agent asked for a name." At his confused look, she explained it further. "Griffith? That was my maiden name. My grandpa on my daddy's side was Welsh. Owen Griffith."
He let out a loud bark of laughter at that, which turned into a few short, sharp coughs, and he stuffed his fist over his mouth to stifle it. Held up a hand to tell her to stand off, that he had it, and she couldn't help the relief that it didn't turn into a total coughing fit like it probably would have weeks ago. "So I took on your name in marrying you? There's an interesting reverse of the normal order of business."
"Well, you can have 'Morgan' back if your pride thinks it's so unnatural."
He gave her a lazy grin at that, and she breathed a sigh of relief at seeing it, knowing she'd chased the darkness away from his mind. "Oh, it ain't nothing about pride. I like Arthur Griffith just fine. Think he'll be a much better man than Arthur Morgan ever was, or so I got to hope. But good for you sticking to your guns and making me take your name. Them suffragettes would approve, I expect."
She laughed, shaking her head. "It ain't like you're the only immigrant in America, but but yeah, given how some folk treat them, I suppose you was smart to make yourself sound more American. Grandpa Owen came over from Wales. Sheep farmers in Carmarthenshire, his folk was. My Grandma Rosie came over from Scotland. They encouraged my daddy to sound American too. But they sounded like they was from Europe. He spoke a few words of Welsh here and there to us. Pretty sounding, it is. I didn't know much of it, but I still remember Grandpa Owen calling Grandma Rosie cariad."
"It's pretty sounding, but that means it don't do menacing very well," he said dryly. "I remember my daddy robbing someone on the road in Oregon, and this fella, he said with a sing-song accent like that, it was like getting held up by a vaudeville act, and he could only take the gun in his face seriously rather than the man behind it."
Given Lyle Morgan's picture was obviously an arrest photograph, she wasn't surprised to hear he'd been a robber himself, but Jesus, doing it in front of his son? He said it so casually, like it was no big thing, even amused at the comment about the accent. She'd been able to recall a happy memory of her grandparents, and all he had was his father robbing people? "You and your daddy were close?"
Something closed off in his expression in a hurry, like a slammed window. "No. That bastard would have done the world a favor by dying sooner. He called my momma plenty of things, but cariad weren't one of them. Big man, like me. Beat the shit out of me when she wasn't quick enough to get in his way so he'd focus on her instead. He got mean when the robbing didn't go well, when the whiskey ran out, when the cards didn't go his way, when her or me got too loud, too annoying, too in his way. Any damn reason at all, really. Beat her black and blue all the time, and her just a little thing compared to him. She died when I was seven, up in Oregon. I expect he had something to do with it." He reached for the picture of the woman, tracing the frame gently with one finger, then nodded towards the flower in its jar, now sitting on his nightstand. "She loved them flowers. Always tried to keep one on our wagon. She said it was something 'just for pretty', some kind of lucky charm. I don't know where she's buried. I was too young. So when Dutch and Hosea and Bessie and Susan and me went into Oregon when I was sixteen, I picked one for her and kept it. I kept losing them over the years moving around or running from the law, so I'd always have to get another next time we was out that way."
God, what an awful childhood. She pitied the boy he'd been, for all her upbringing had been tough in its constant toil and poverty. But she'd been loved, so deeply. She almost hated to ask about his father any further. But given she'd gotten him talking freely, and that was a rare thing, she figured she'd dare to press him. She could make no sense of it, but perhaps he could make her see. "If you hate him so much, why was you keeping his picture right where you could see it every morning? And his hat, at that?"
"Cause it did me good to remind myself of the kind of man he was. They took that picture two weeks before they hanged him in San Francisco for thieving horses." She gazed down at the picture. December 7th, 1874. The picture of his early life just got worse and worse. She knew Hosea and Dutch had found him when he was still a kid, but he'd been on his own at age eleven? Jesus, he might have joked that his life was some kind of Greek tragedy, but maybe he wasn't wrong on that. "Cause I was a bad man, but I liked telling myself there was degrees of being bad. Daddy, he was a criminal. Never gave a shit for anyone but himself. A pretty mediocre criminal at that. We came to America only cause he was running from the law. Me, I kept telling myself I was an outlaw. That I might be breaking the law, but I stood for something, and I looked after my own. So that picture? It reminded me about lines I didn't want to cross, a man I didn't want to be, and how I needed to be careful of all that." He let out a low sigh, looking at his father's picture again. "And for all that--he still was my father. He gave me that hat the last time I seen him. Told me I was on my own, and at least he'd given me a trade to survive by."
"What trade?" But she had her suspicions.
He gave another of those humorless smiles. "He put me to work learning pickpocketing a week after burying my mother. Said it was high time I learned something useful. Didn't learn to read or write, since both of them were illiterate, and we was never settled down, so that's why I never went to school. But I did learn that from him. I'm grateful, in a way. He was a miserable piece of work, but what he taught me, that was the only thing kept me alive those next years in San Francisco, until Hosea and Dutch found me. And I suppose it was the only thing he had to teach me. So maybe he did care, in some fashion. I don't know. I expect I never will know."
A curious thing, feeling the desire to murder a man dead for twenty-five years. No wonder he'd turned out as he had. No wonder he'd come to being the good man he wanted to be so late. Nobody had given him any chance at all before that. Something within her ached for that poor little boy who'd seen all his chances slip through his fingers before he even had the opportunity for a choice.
After all of that, her life once again seemed so easy, so safe, so kind, and it hit her with a stab of guilt again. He'd become what he had because the world had been nothing but harsh to him all of his life. But when he had the chance to choose, look who he'd chosen to be. She'd instead had all those advantages he hadn't, and she'd chosen to lower herself to savagery. He obviously noticed the silence that had grown between them, because of course she should tell him about her life in return, but so much of it was entwined with Jake. She was trying to figure out what to say and how. "You didn't ever say much about Jake," he observed, voice oddly soft. "Was that you not wanting to talk about him, or thinking you couldn't?"
Some of both, probably, but all the same, she felt like she owed him honesty for him being willing to be so open about that kind of pain only because she'd asked about him. "I can't remember a time Jake wasn't there. He was five years older than me, so I looked up to him when we was little. All of us kids did. That changed later, sure, once we was grown. But...he was always there." She heard the plaintive note in her vote saying that, because now he wasn't there. "Our mommas, they was best friends. Our families went to New Austin together. His daddy was a preacher, became the preacher in the Tumbleweed church."
She felt the touch of his hand on her wrist, just a moment to let her know he was there, then he took it back. "Sounds like you got your own Greek tragedy going. Married a preacher's boy who you loved, and here you're stuck pretending you're married to a criminal's boy you don't. I'm...Jesus, what a mess."
"Yeah." She couldn't come up with pretty words right then to make it better, to tell him that it was all right, because it wasn't all right at all. He was a good man, but he wasn't Jake, and she was a shattered and ruined thing. It probably never would be all right. But the fact that he saw it and understood the silent pain of it made her feel not so alone with the burden of it. "It was hard living. The farms never was good ones, so it was a struggle every year. But I can't complain. I had folk who loved me. I had a home."
"That don't mean it wasn't hard all the same. As tough as you are, I figure you didn't grow up with tea parties and lacy dresses."
"No." She wanted to say she was sorry he'd had none of that, but it might come across as pity rather than sympathy. She felt like things were too fragile, especially with his pride and sense of self so damaged by being bedridden by his TB. So she held back, judging that the wiser course.
"Well, anytime you meet a good fella you do want to be with, you let me know. I'll be happy to give you a divorce. Or an annulment. Or whatever the hell it needs when you're two friends who wasn't ever really married anyway except as a ruse. I ain't a lawyer, so don't ask me about the particulars."
That helped, because awkward as the joke was, it still made her laugh, and that helped seal away the tears. "No, I think I'm done with husbands, Arthur. I had a real good one, and I don't need another." Who she'd become was someone she could barely live with, Sadie Griffith who'd believed in God and Jesus and mercy and love, and this blood-soaked and angry Sadie Adler who didn't believe in much of anything aside from the need for a gun in her hand to keep herself from being just another victim of bastards ever again. So how the hell would she ever find someone who could love all that? Even if that could happen, how could she marry again, knowing Jake would see her betraying him like that? "But thank you, all the same. That's sweet of you."
"Sure. That's me, all right. Sweet as peppermints."
She felt compelled to keep going, to tell him more, and to remember Jake to someone who would listen. "I had an older brother, Henry, but he died when a horse threw him. My younger sister Caroline--"
"Ah, Uncle Tacitus' dear niece?"
"The very same. She ran off with a fella to Oregon. We ain't written each other in years. So she weren't around to help with anything. Jake's folks was both dead by the time he was sixteen, so my folks took him in. We wasn't in love then, too close to each other to see how it was changing, I guess. But once we figured that out, we both knew. He asked me to marry him when I was twenty, and he was twenty-five. We had to wait, though. Couldn't afford marriage, children, any of it. Tumbleweed was failing out, but we was still trying to keep my parents' farm going, and the Adler place besides."
"You got married when?"
"September of '96. September 7th." Another date that would be full of nothing but sorrow for her now.
She remembered hearing Arthur's voice above her head while she cowered in the cellar, unsure of what was going on, and exactly what these new voices meant. He'd been talking about the man of the house being married, obviously having found the wedding picture, but clearly he hadn't turned the picture over to read the back. He did the math almost instantly, and she saw the look of pained astonishment on his face. "You waited eight years to marry?"
She shut her eyes for a moment at the astonished tone in his voice. "Yeah. Eight years." He'd been worth the wait, but it had been so long, so frustrating, all the same, and then. "And only then because we finally given up on the land and left. Got married in Blackwater, searched the papers while we was there. Found an advertisement for cheap land in the northern Grizzlies. Figured we'd make our lives there, away from all of it. Government, railroads, all of it. So we headed up there, and well, the rest you know." Though he'd never know so much of it, all the memories she had of Jake and their time together that she would hold privately and close to her heart.
She dared to look at him then, wanting to see how he'd taken that. He looked calm, but there was clear sadness in his eyes. "I know he loved you, which means he was smart enough to know a good woman when he saw one, and brave enough to let you be and not try to fence you in. And I see how much you loved him, so he must have been one hell of a man to deserve it."
"I ain't much of a good woman now, Arthur, but I appreciate the kindness all the same."
"In the spirit of Christmas, how about you just accept that notion, at least for today?" His green-blue eyes lit now with the warmth of humor, like sunlight dancing across the San Luis River. "Now, we can argue it tomorrow if you like. But hell, the idea might grow on you if you let it."
She found herself smiling all the same, reaching out and giving his shoulder a squeeze. "Fine, so long as you don't argue me saying you're being a good man. In the spirit of Christmas and all, you got to accept that too."
Now she thought she saw a genuine smile from him, an easy and happy expression, and thought how fine it looked on him. "Fair enough," he answered her. "We'll call it a bargain."