What Once We Loved (39 page)

One night he'd stayed up at the fire while everyone else snored or tossed in their bedrolls around his feet. He just sat, whittling on a thin stick, “making toothpicks,” he said. Ruth had lain awake, watching his gentle face in the firelight.

“Would you mind company?” she asked, wrapping herself in a blanket.

“Never do,” he said.

She made her way quietly to sit across from him, her long braid falling over her shoulder, the plaid blanket pulled over under the opposite arm.

His features weren't really clear in the backlight of the fire so she wasn't sure how to read him. Finally she ventured, “We aren't, well, we're none of us married to each other,” she said. “We're just staying together until spring comes, and then Lura and Matthew and Mariah, their family, will be getting a place of their own.”

“Fortunate to have such friends who are willing to help out through a winter like this,” he said.

She didn't know why she felt the need to explain to him. “They would have gone on already. Matthew has a place picked out north of Jacksonville, near the Table Rocks. He found it when he took my mares on ahead, after my brother and all the other men died. But when Jessie took sick…they stayed. To help get me settled. Us.”

“Something looks like a tragedy turns out to be a good thing,” he said. “I always find that interesting. Bible's full of those instances.”

“Is it?”

“Take Joseph. Sold into slavery by his own kin, and it turns out he shows up being where he needs to be during a famine. Saves them all. What a celebration that must have been! Then after years in Egypt, his descendants end up living in exile, becomes a tragedy of its own as they're kept in slavery.” He brushed wood slivers from his jeans. “But God cares about people we don't always think are worthy of his care. Little people, I like to call them. God cares that intimately about our lives, Ruth.” She pulled the blanket tighter, suddenly chilled. “Then he
led the Jewish people out through a wilderness, and they celebrated again. That triumph turns into forty years of being powerfully turned around. Not lost, mind you. Just seems to be the story of living, making our way through wilderness places, making mistakes, getting back on the trail. We find a new way and celebrate together, seeking the Promised Land.”

“I suppose we do all long for Promised Land,” Ruth said. “I thought this place would be that for me. But here we are. My daughter is, well, whatever she is. No longer the spitfire she used to be. And a bull destroyed my stallion and robbed me of my best friend. My whole herd, whole future for that matter, could be wiped out with ice. And a friendship is strained. I'm not sure I'm meant for connecting with people. Something always happens.” She shook her head. “I must have done something terribly bad to have so much go wrong.”

“Not part of God's will that we suffer,” he said quietly. “Just part of his promise that he'll be there through it.” Burke put his whittling knife up, folded his hands, and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Do you have family other than your daughter and your nieces and nephews, Miss Martin?”

“Please. Call me Ruth. I had a child. Jessies twin. He…died. My husband…he served time for it. In jail.”

“I suspect you've served time too.” Burke said. He said it so softly, with such compassion draped across his words that they arrived as a warming cape. She fought back tears, nodded.

“Hardest thing we have to live with sometimes is being the one still living. Next hardest is accepting forgiveness for whatever it is we've done. Big orders for our little hearts. Couldn't do it without the love of God to stretch us. I know I couldn't. Most important relationship of my life,” he said. “Had the hardest time coming to accept that that's all God really wanted. The relationship. And for me to participate in it.”

“You don't seem to have any troubles,” Ruth said.

Burke smiled. She could feel it, even though she couldn't see it. “Ah,
little lady, that's where our human eyes deceive.” He leaned back. “The only difference between you and me is that I've found a way to accept what's been offered. I have to keep receiving day by day, but it's what makes living possible. Triumph is right over the hill from tragedy. Once you accept that, folks'll be saying things like that of you, too. Faith doesn't mean we have no problems. It only means we have someone who loves us just the way we are and will be there through the wilderness.” “As a friend of mine would say, I'll have to ponder on that.”

By the twelfth day, they'd had to enter the cold silver world to tend to animals in earnest. The mares didn t like the iciness any more than Ruth did. Puff, the one Mariah had taken to, whinnied when anyone stood on the porch, but the rest of the herd was afraid to venture out even to the feed trough. So the boys skated in their manner, chipped ice from the haystack, then stacked flakes onto a makeshift sled Matthew rigged.

The animals ate little. Nervous, Ruth thought. And just when they needed to be bulking up to be ready for the spring deliveries, to fight off the bone-chilling cold. She hoped the one they lost earlier was already off her feed before this started. Now, looking at the others, she wasn't so sure.

Matthew had already put another mare down after she'd slipped and cracked her leg, the limb dangling like a broken branch. Ruth had stood in the cabin, heard the shot, then held Jessie who panted and screamed. Later, calmed, Jessie let Ruth slip her way outside to help cut the meat they'd be having for supper. Ruth broke off a two foot long icicle hanging at the roof when she walked by.

But by day fifteen, with the thermometer threatening to stay below freezing again, with the last of the haystack fed and gone, Ruth felt her brain would explode. The sameness of a sky as dark as a duck's bottom, the heaviness of watching tree limbs thicker than tree trunks finally
crack with the load of ice, the agony of listening to her horses whinny and scream and lick at the corral poles, all pressed against her. And then the low moaning began through the night, of horses in pain, too weak to eat, with nothing to feed them now, nothing at all.

“If only we could find a way to get them to move into the grassy area. Couldn't they stomp it down, so they could eat, get some of the moisture from the blades of grass?” Ruth asked.

“Don't see how we could do that,” Matthew said.

“They need rubber shoes,” Jason said.

Matthew grunted. “Even if we had enough rubber to make up shoes, I doubt it would work. Might make it a short distance without a break, but…”

“Can't go on much longer,” Burke said. “I've ridden these trails for a couple of years now, and it's never stayed on for more than a week. This is unusual.”

“I…just…want us to think of a plan,” Ruth said. She was sounding like Mazy with her talk of plans.

That night as she lay on the cot next to Jessie, she thought of what Burke had said, about tragedy being the other side of triumph. What could that mean for this ice storm, this struggle with watching horses starve or break bones or lose foals?

She thought she heard something outside, decided it wasn't likely. The silence of the storm proved eerie. No birds chirped during the day, no rabbits or rats or coyotes scurried, not even the squirrels. Wait! Maybe a thaw was starting, and the sound was ice dropping!

She stood up, made her way to the door, and opened it. Nothing had changed. Everything stood frozen stiff. Then the sound again—a distant braying? Could that be Carmine, still alive somewhere?

In the morning she got up just at dawn and while she made her way to the door for the wood, she heard the sound again. It came from the ridge. She couldn't see anything, just fog like old pewter. It did sound like a mule. Or perhaps an elk? Maybe, but it wasn't the same braying tone. There it was again! She was sure it must be Carmine.

“Matthew,” she said, shaking his shoulder. “Matthew. Carmines back.”

“What? We cant bring him in now anyway,” he mumbled. “Less the thaws started.” He sat up. “Has it?”

“No. But I have a feeling about something. I'm getting dressed, and I'm going to make my way up to that ridge.”

“You're crazy, Woman.”

“Coming with me or not?” she said. She turned her back to spill the heavy wool poncho over her head, and tucked her nightdress into her pants. Living here was like being in one huge family, Ruth thought. Modesty would just have to be put in its place.

Matthew groaned but he rolled out, pulled on his clothes, and grabbed at his coat. He slipped on his rubber boots as Ruth draped a square of canvas over her head to hold off the misting ice. “Guess we can try to bring some water in while we're out there,” he said.

“Need help?” Burke asked sleepily.

“Just stay, pardner,” Matthew said. “I've got a woman here with a wild idea. No sense having more than one man iced on this jack chase.”

The rubber boots did help give a grip, and the ash bucket they took with them allowed them slight traction as they threw the gray powder onto the frozen mud before them. “I bet you didn't even see him,” Matthew said. “Can't figure what he'd be doing. He can't get around any better than the mares can. Ewald sure hasn't ventured but a step or two.”

“Just trust me in this,” she said.

Her breathing came in short gasps. She was probably weaker than she realized from the sparse diet. She'd have to take a good look at the boys when she got back, make sure they weren't overdoing.

They ran out of ashes and set the tin beside the zigzag trail Ruth followed up into the timber. She was on hands and knees for some of it, able to stand upright when rocks broke through the ice if only for a foot or two. Her knees were bleeding and her gloves wet when she halted Matthew. “Listen,” she said. “Hear it?”

“Yeah. But what is it? Doesn't sound like a mad jack to me.”

“No, it doesn't. It sounds like water, Matthew.
Running
water. Not two-foot thick ice. Flowing stuff.”

“You see the ice were standing on, Woman? There's some trick being played on us,” Matthew said. “Just cant be water.”

But a few feet farther, and Ruth no longer crawled. She stood, then started to run.

“Hey!” Mathew said. “Careful!”

“Oh, Matthew, you have to see this, you have to!”

He pushed his way beside her and squinted.

“The sun is out up here. Its actually…warm,” she said, pulling off the scarf that held her felt hat and had surrounded her throat. “Its warm. There's no ice. The water, it's a spring! Look over there. Carmine. He's been here all along, that stupid jack!” She was laughing now and crying at the same time.

“That stupid jack. He must have known something, tried to get the mares up here before the storm blew in.” Matthew shook his head. “Not possible, it's just not.”

“But it is. Look. Plenty of grass. Out of the wind. Water flowing. It's actually balmy. All we have to do is get them up here.”

“They'll follow that stupid jack,” Matthew said. “If we can get them across that ice field.”

“Okay. Let's think on that. There's got to be a way. It's so close. So very close.”

He turned around. “Look, Ruth.”

Her eyes followed where he pointed. Below them lay a lake of fog, covering everything. Who could guess that beneath that fog stood mares and geldings and people with dreams and cabins and plowed fields, and wildflowers waiting, all frozen, not knowing that just yards beyond them, up higher, the sun shone. Water flowed.

“It's breathtaking,” Ruth said.

“Yes, it is.”

Matthew pulled Ruth to him then, and she startled, looked up into those azure eyes.

He kissed her.

It was as soft as a lambs ear, as sweet as Mei-Ling's honey. Ruth Martin had never been kissed like that, not in all her twenty-five years. His lips lingered on hers at first, tentative, like a colt just learning to stand. His hands on either side of her face felt warm, his fingers soft dragonflies at her ears. She smelled leather, and then his tentativeness moved to something firmer, something safe and as strong as the log corrals that bound her horses. She drifted like a leaf caught in the backwater of a stream. A sound of surrender gathered at her throat, stopped the air that flowed. With the fingers of her free hand, she touched at the knot of hair caught beneath the brim of her wide hat. She felt rattled, uncertain. She pulled away, then rubbed at the back of her neck, swallowed, gathered her breath, her thoughts, her senses. “You're much too… This isn't…”

He put his finger to her lips, quieted her, and she looked at him again, for the first time. She saw goodness in that face, more experience than she'd believed. Wisdom. And strength.

“My Irish grandmother, on my ma's side, used to say, ‘Better one good thing that is, than two good things that were, or three good things that might never come to pass.' This is a good thing, Ruth. Something rising from all the bad. We don't know what'll come of it or if it'll wipe out what's gone before.” He kissed the back of her hand as he held it. “But we can accept this, just as it is.”

She nodded and smiled up at him, feeling young and inexperienced, not the mother of one child, living, the auntie of three.

“Come on, let's go get us a drink,” he said and pulled on her, a gentle bear, leading. “Nothing more refreshing than spring water.”