Kitabı oku: «Marry A Man Who Will Dance», sayfa 5

4

Its wings spread wide, a hawk circled low over Roque. Talons curling, the bird hurled itself at the highest branch of a tall live oak, stilling the roar of the cicadas’ night chorus. In that brief silence, the dark field felt warm. Then the humid wind licked his skin, bringing with it the sweet, familiar smells of grass and salt and sea, and the cicadas began to sing again.

Not that Roque noticed any of those things on a conscious level. The hot little daggers of pain that spiked up his arm were so fierce they dulled his awareness of all else. He couldn’t move his arm or feel his fingers.

The hollow beneath his right eye felt stretched and itchy. His temple throbbed. Half of him was numb; the other half burned. He wanted to twist and writhe and howl like a wolf at the bright sliver of moon hanging straight over him. But the ragged whisper he uttered cost him so dearly, he bit his lips.

“Roque? Did you say something?”

Had he? He tried to speak again.

He heard her gasp, felt her fingertips on his mouth. Then pain blurred everything into nightmare again. He was in the wire mesh round pen. Caleb was begging him to teach him to ride, and since their father was gone for the day he’d said yes. But suddenly his father, who’d looked shorter and squattier than usual in baggy jeans and custom-made boots and yet unreasonably terrifying, was stomping toward him, yelling and swearing nonsense that he was trying to kill Caleb again.

Pausing to grab a chain off the nail outside the tack room, he’d pushed Pablo and two cowboys out of his way.

“Nobody had better interfere with me—y’all hear!” When the cowboys lowered their heads, Benny raised the chain. “You trying to kill Sunny on that damn horse, you stupid Mexican son of a bitch!”

Mexican. The way his father said it, had made Roque writhe.

“I begged him to teach me, Daddy,” Caleb said.

“Every summer he comes, you want to race bulls or something else crazy!”

“No, Daddy—”

He slammed the chain down on Roque’s back.

Roque screamed. Caleb jumped as if he’d been hit. The next blow cut Roque’s thighs and sent him sprawling facedown into wood shavings. He hit the ground so hard he swallowed dust laced with horse dung.

As he spit and choked, Caleb hurled himself at his father’s knees.

“You idiot!” Benny yelled at Roque. “You won’t stop until you kill my good son—you, who never should have been born!”

Again the chain zinged, this time gouging out a hunk of flesh. Roque rolled into a ball, grabbed his knees.

“Say you won’t disobey….”

“You’re not my father!”

“Say you’re sorry!”

“Go to hell.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me, Daddy!” Caleb shouted. “He’s not stupid. He was teaching me horse and…and to ride.”

When Benny raised the chain again, Caleb let go of his father’s leg and threw himself on top of Roque. “He’s sorry, Daddy.”

Caleb’s thin body was hot, and he was crying as he circled Roque’s neck with his arms. “If you hurt him, I’ll…. I-I’ll run away to Mexico! I’ll be a Mexican, too!”

“Get off me, kid!” Roque whispered. “I don’t want you to hate him…or love me.”

“But I do…love you.”

Her soft voice cut through Roque’s anguish and pain. Her gentle fingers trailed his throat, soothed. He strangled a curse.

Dios. Pain stabbed him again.

“I’ll even give you Buttercup!” the girl said.

Chinga!

She was holding something and praying to St. Jude. Roque wasn’t religious. Still, he’d been brought up Catholic.

He hung on every syllable of the girl’s prayer and went still when she fastened her St. Jude medal around his neck. When her voice died, her hand skimmed along his throat and jawline. She lifted her medal and kissed it.

So, it had been her last night. Her. He’d wanted to hold this girl close and dance near the fire, to dance. Suddenly he wanted to feel those lips on his skin.

“So, you’re just scared there won’t be anybody to teach you horse if I die. I—I could teach you to kiss too,” he whispered.

She dropped the medal and jumped back.

Híjole!

He stole a peek. Big glasses. Smudged clothes. She wasn’t much to look at—at least, not yet. Better to keep his eyes closed. But she sure as hell had a pretty voice, especially when she prayed. Those low, husky tones shouldn’t belong to a bratty little girl with wires in her mouth. That voice went with a real woman.

Dios. She was just a kid. Younger than Caleb.

Her fingers came back, cautiously gliding along his skin as she prayed again, her comforting words and warm breath falling against his earlobe.

Uno. Dos. Tres… He never made it to ten. The pressure against his fly was too extreme.

Pervert. She was a kid. Fourteen. Not even pretty.

When her gaze drifted down his body, he broke into a sweat. Then he slitted his good eye wider. Even though he was partially color blind, his vision at night was extraordinary. Like a cat, he could see shapes and figures that were invisible to anyone with normal eyesight.

Like now. Every freckle on her pert, slightly upturned nose stood out. Her tears glistened like diamonds. More than a hundred yards away, he saw Buttercup grooming herself.

A sliver of moon in a vast black sky peppered with stars enveloped them. Cicadas were buzzing louder than ever. In the moonlight her ugly glasses glimmered on her thin, unsmiling face. If only she’d been pretty like her friend with the big boobs.

It was hard to imagine her ever growing a figure or ever being beautiful. But she’d spied on him last night and today she’d stood up to him. She’d flown with him. He’d had fun with her before he’d fallen and hit his head. With her he didn’t feel homesick.

Nobody here, except for Caleb, ever made him feel as if he belonged.

But she did. Maybe she was a Keller, but she was an innocent, shy and sweet. As sweet as Mamacita when he’d had the mumps.

Chinga!

She was sweeter than Ana and Carmela, his sisters, when they were in good moods and hovered over him.

I can’t like you, girl! You’re the high and mighty Keller princess!

“Don’t die.” She squeezed his hand.

“I’m just a Mexican,” he growled. “You couldn’t care less whether I live or die.”

She ripped her silky fingers that had his groin in an uproar from his throat.

“Be…be careful,” she said in that supersweet voice. “I think your arm…. It’s all funny and twisted.”

“It’s broken. What’s it to you?”

She shoved her ugly wire-rimmed glasses up her nose. “Nothing. I’m only waiting for your father to come back. He’s sending an ambulance.”

“So, how come you didn’t take your horse and run when you could, little girl?”

“’Cause… ’cause my knee got hurt.”

“Aren’t you scared of being out here all alone in the dark? You ran last night….”

She hesitated and then shook her head. “I didn’t want to run. I wanted to dance.”

“You’re all alone with me,” he whispered, “in the dark. I could make you kiss me.”

She was slower to answer. “I’d stomp on your broken arm if you did.”

He laughed. Then he puckered his mouth and leaned toward her. “Last chance to get your kissing lesson from the best kisser in Mexico.”

“No…” Holding her knee, she scooted a few inches away from him.

He lay beside her, silent, wondering what to say to make her come back, but he couldn’t think of anything. All too soon he heard his daddy’s pickup roaring along the caliche road even before he saw his lights. Finally it stopped. The headlights went out.

Flashlights bobbed. Dogs yapped. Benny Blackstone shouted above their frenzied barks. Then an ambulance screamed on a distant ranch road.

“Over here,” Ritz called.

His father waved his flashlight.

Suddenly everything dimmed—their voices, her plain, skinny face—even the barking dogs racing toward him.

“I don’t feel too good,” he whispered right before he began to shake. “Kiss me.” When she still hesitated, he said. “If I die, you’ll never get to—”

She put her arms around him and kissed his cheek really fast. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“I came to this pond hating life here, hating—I…I…” He stopped himself before he blurted something really stupid. On a different track, he said, “I don’t want you scared of me. And…and…. Hey, there’s a key to the gate in my left pocket. Get it. Take your old horse.”

“Where is she?”

“Over there.” He pointed. “I don’t want her. I never did. I was just teasing you because I wanted to meet your sexy friend.”

“Jet?” Her voice quavered.

“You’re okay…for a skinny kid.”

“But you wish I was Jet?”

“I’ll decide later…when you’re older. You might be pretty. Not that it would matter. You’re a Keller, so you’ll have to hate me.”

“So, you think I…I might be pretty someday?”

He stared at her face as if it were very difficult to imagine her pretty. “We’ll have to wait and see about that, now won’t we?”

The fierce hope that shone in her eyes cut him somehow. He closed his eyes to shut her out.

To his surprise he felt her lips, soft and warm and yet fervent somehow hesitantly graze his.

He kept his eyes closed long after the kiss was over, savoring the taste of her innocence. All this from a girl who’d been scared to dance.

He had to forget her.

Somehow he knew he never would.

“Did that boy put his hands in your pants and feel you up?”

“Daddy!” Ritz squealed, her fingers closing around the key Roque had given her. “How could you think that?”

Irish was sitting behind her in the back seat.

Mortified, she covered her eyes. It was an old habit, something she’d done as a child when she’d felt shy and needed to shut out someone or something that was suddenly too much.

“I know his type,” her father said.

“Easy, Art,” Irish mumbled behind her.

Irish had come along to check her knee. He said it was a ruptured ACL, and he’d stabilized it with an old knee brace he’d brought along.

“But you don’t know him,” Ritz said.

Her father grunted.

“Have you ever spoken to him—even once?”

“He wants to kill his own brother. Last year they caught him half-naked in the back seat of Natasha’s car with his hands down her pants.”

“Jet said Natasha had her hands in his—”

“What would you—a fourteen-year-old girl—know about trash like that?”

Irish kicked the back of the seat and then said, “Sorry.”

Art slammed the fist holding his cigarette against the dash and shot sparks everywhere. Ritz had to brush at her clothing frantically.

“You planning to be his next slut, girl?”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Irish admonished.

“Well, are you?” Art thundered. “Did you know he’s been seen riding around with Chainsaw Hernandez, that no-good ex-con?”

You don’t know everything, Daddy!

The rebellious thought crystallized into one of those life-changing epiphanies. Her father was used to giving commands, used to being the last authority on every subject.

“Talk to me.” When she didn’t, her father fumed. “What’s gotten into you?”

Roque Moya, that’s what!

He’d made her braver somehow, and even though she was in more trouble than she’d ever been in before—she wasn’t as scared.

The truck hurled itself down the rutted ranch road like a stampeding bull. For once Ritz was glad her daddy was smoking. The acrid fumes gave her an excuse to cough and sputter and wave her hands. Her eyes teared. Her throat burned.

“You’re just fourteen. I guess that makes you prime for the pickin’ for a low-down Mexican cur like Moya.”

Ritz didn’t dare defend him out loud again, so she coughed and waved her hands.

Her father, who was usually so careful never to smoke around her, took another long drag. Irish opened his window.

Smoke spewed out of her father’s flaring nostrils and spiraled up from the cigarette’s tip. Another coughing spasm had Ritz leaning forward and clenching the dash. Through tears she made out the blur of red ambulance lights.

“Roque…”

“You’re to stay away from that boy—you hear me, girl?”

“Yes, Daddy.” Her voice sounded so weird and small and unreal.

“You should see yourself! Staring after those lights like a boy-crazy fool! He’s no damned good, I tell you! And if you mess around with him, he’ll bring you down to his level! You’re not to think about him—ever.”

Her father yanked the steering wheel to the left. When the truck rumbled over a cattle guard, she whirled around to see if the lights were still there, but Irish’s broad frame blocked her view. By the time she moved, the black night had swallowed the lights whole.

Ritz placed a hand over her heart. “What if he dies?”

Her daddy’s cigarette flamed brighter than an infected boil. “You should be worrying about your mother. She’s frantic about you. Ever since you threw the kitchen rugs on the porch without even shaking them and ran off, she’s been driving the roads and calling everybody.”

“Did Jet put you up to this?” Irish asked softly.

“No!”

Art squashed out his cigarette. Then he rolled down his window. He sighed heavily and pulled another cigarette out of his pocket.

“Boss—”

“Don’t nag, Irish!” But Art didn’t light it. They were nearly home, and Mother didn’t like him smoking because of his high blood pressure.

Ritz glanced his way. In the flying darkness, all she could make out was his white hair and his rigid black shape. She hoped his neck wasn’t that awful bright red—his fighting color, as Mother and Irish called it.

At six feet four, her daddy towered over every man on the ranch except Irish. Her father’s eyes were the same violet shade as Ritz’s. Only his were hard and piercing and had an indomitable quality while hers were soft and vulnerable. His yellow hair had turned white the day Buster had died. Not that he looked old. No, on him it was distinguished.

If you’d been casting a movie, he would have been pure, vintage, cowboy hero. A man of his word, if the boss said a horse was sound, it was. Once he’d run into a burning building to save Ritz’s puny foal, Buttercup. Despite his good qualities, he was feared. Nobody wanted him as an enemy.

The narrow ranch road was bumpy. But her daddy knew it like the back of his hand. Hardly glancing at the blacktop, he swerved from side to side to avoid the potholes and rough patches.

Instead of the tension between them lessening, it thickened, the closer they got to home and to Mother.

Ritz rolled down her window and set her rigid chin against the edge. Not that breathing in the fresh, stinging wildness of the night air helped.

She felt like a prisoner.

“So you think I…I might be pretty some day?”

She clasped her arms around her waist and hugged herself shyly.

Would you care?

I didn’t ask him that! I didn’t!

“We’ll have to wait and see, now won’t we?” The memory of his body swaying to the music last night lit her up inside. If he ever asked her to dance again, she would.

Funny, how the night bugs sounded just the same on Keller land as they had when she’d been with Roque.

Only with him she’d felt wild and free and so alive.

She clenched her hands in her lap. “I just wish I could float out this window into the black night sky.”

“If you’re gonna say stupid stuff like that, just be quiet.”

“How come I have to hate him just because he’s a Blackstone?”

“Did you get yourself a crush on that boy, girl?”

She pushed her glasses up her nose. “How come I have to hate him?”

“Because I hate his father, and you’re my daughter.”

“But, Daddy, you started this silly old feud! Not me!”

Irish coughed.

“Silly!” Art hit the brakes hard. For a long moment her father stared straight ahead. He gripped the steering wheel, his shoulders tightening.

“You weren’t with me at the funeral home when I identified Buster—were you, girl? I won’t forget that day—ever. My big brother’s brains all over that buttery beige leather seat of Pamela’s brand-new Cadillac.”

Behind her, Irish groaned. Ritz whirled. His craggy face was so stricken, she turned back without saying anything. She wasn’t sure how or where exactly Irish had known Buster, but her daddy had told her they’d been good friends when they were young, which was the main reason he’d hired Irish.

“I’ll see that on my dying day,” her father muttered. “Buster was so smart. He wanted to be a doctor. Did you know that? From the time he was little, he was always taking care of sick animals just like you do. If they died, he’d cut them up to try to understand what killed them. He even went to medical school for three years. Did you know that, girl?”

Irish slammed the windows behind him shut again. All of a sudden, she felt as if she wasn’t Daddy’s only prisoner in the pickup. Irish heaved a furious breath.

The back seat had to be tight for someone his size. He kept shifting his weight, kicking her seat.

Not that Art paid him any attention. “Then Daddy got sick and said Buster had to forget medicine and come home and be a rancher…that I was too young to take over. Buster held things together until I grew up. I owe Buster everything. When he reapplied to medical school, they said he was too old and there wasn’t space. He would have been one fine doctor. That’s all he ever wanted to be.”

“Oh, God—” Irish’s gravelly voice died on a breath.

“Sorry, Irish,” her father muttered.

Ritz squeezed herself tightly as Art hit the accelerator. “Uncle Buster’s death wasn’t Roque’s fault.”

“You’re not listening. Your father never said it was,” Irish said.

Nobody said another word. Not even when the truck rattled over the last cattle guard and her father swerved onto the driveway that led to the clapboard sprawl of rambling additions that was their home.

Maybe the old three-story house had been the ranch’s headquarters for more than a hundred years. Maybe it was a historical landmark. But to Ritz, it was simply home. For the first time ever she dreaded going inside.

The screen door opened, and her mother ran out onto the porch and then froze in the yellow light at the top of the steps.

Her daddy turned off the ignition. “You’re not to worry her with talk about that boy—you hear me? She’s been through enough today.”

“He was hurt. I had to stay with him.”

“I won’t ask you what you were doing over there in the first place.”

Remembering Irish, Ritz couldn’t say Jet had locked her inside.

“You’re to stay away from those people from now on. Until I say different, you’re grounded! Every step I take, you take. Your mother says this isn’t the first time you’ve run off with Jet without doing your chores. Watch yourself! You don’t know as much as you think you do.”

“Well, maybe you don’t, either, Daddy.”

He slammed his fists against the steering wheel. “You never used to act like this.”

“You can’t just lock me up.” Her hand closed over the gate key she’d removed from Roque’s pocket.

When they didn’t get out of the truck her mother flew down the steps. Her daddy got out and flung his door shut. Ritz and Irish hopped out, too.

“Art, you’re that awful shade of red! Ritz, you look like a boiled lobster!”

Ritz and her father glared at each other.

“Irish, what’s going on?”

Irish headed silently toward his own truck.

“It’s late, Fiona,” her daddy said.

“Ritz! Where’s your hat? I’ve told you and told you…”

Instead of running up the porch stairs, Ritz lingered by her mother’s prize roses. The yellow porch light made them look sickly. Blood-red petals splattered the clay earth.

“Ritz! Are you coming inside?” Her mother stood at the door, holding it open until Ritz climbed the stairs.

She went to bed without eating. The next morning her parents had a long talk about her. Two days later the tabloids ran pictures of Benny along with photos of Blanca Moya showing off Roque’s back and broken arm. She accused her ex-husband of abuse.

Every morning her parents talked about the trashy Blackstones. As Ritz listened to her father’s unfair judgments and speculations about Roque through the kitchen door, her fears and distrust mounted.

Because her parents resented her sullen attitude, they supervised her closely. Thus, it was several weeks before Ritz could sneak away. First chance she got, she galloped Buttercup to the Blackstone pond a little before five.

But Roque wasn’t there. She sat on a wide flat stone on the bank. Never before had the pond seemed so bleak and wild. The patchy grass was brown and so thin rocks and dirt showed through. Even the prickly pear and reeds along the bank seemed stunted.

For seven days straight, she returned to sit on that rock at the pond’s edge. Clasping her knees to her thin chest, she always stared up at the vast sky until she got too hot and had to seek shade.

On the eighth, she found Caleb sitting on her big, flat rock, skimming stones, making ducks fly up and circle. Every time they landed again, he threw another rock.

She tiptoed up behind him, picked a warm stone from his pile, tossed it carelessly, and it sank at the water’s edge.

“You’re not very good.” Caleb laughed, pleased. Then he notched his pointed chin so that it was higher than hers.

“Better than you!” she said, growing competitive.

His smoldering green eyes jeered her. Just for a second they reminded her a little of his handsome brother’s, and her stomach turned over.

Very carefully she selected a rock that was as flat and thin and yet as round as a quarter.

“Get your own,” Caleb said, cupping his hands around his pile like a miser hoarding gold.

With a deft flick of her wrist, she sent the rock hopping all the way across the pond to the opposite shore. “Eight skips!”

Caleb pitched a stone that sank near her first one in the muddy soup near the bank.

“See! I am too better!” she cried.

“Who cares?” Caleb threw all his rocks into the water at once. “He’s gone!” Caleb sprang to his feet and jammed his hands into his pockets. “He won’t be back, either. I hate you!”

His voice was harsh and trembly, and his eyes were red. She hoped fiercely that he wouldn’t cry because then the tears that pricked at her own eyes would fall, too.

“He won’t be back! Not ever.” Caleb stared at her. “Because of you!”

“Me?”

“His mother, Blanca, came to the hospital with Roque’s uncles. She took one look at Roque’s black eye and started shouting at Daddy. When she saw Roque’s back, she freaked. Next thing, she starts calling lawyers and reporters. The only reason she ever shut up was ’cause Daddy paid her off. She dropped all charges and hauled Roque off to Mexico. Right before he left, Roque asked me to come here and tell you goodbye.”

“He did?”

“I didn’t want to, only he got mad and forced me to swear I’d come every day until…” Caleb frowned. “Only you never came, so I stopped for a while. You weren’t really his friend. You’re just a Keller.”

“I was grounded, stupid. I—I came the first chance I got.”

Their gazes locked.

“I think the feud is stupid,” she said. “But my daddy doesn’t care what I think! If he finds out I saw you today, he’ll ground me forever.”

“My daddy thinks Roque’s mean and jealous and that he wants to kill me,” was all Caleb could think to say. “But he’s not. He’s nice.”

They both threw a few rocks that went flying across the pond.

“Thanks…for coming to tell me today, Caleb.”

He grinned sheepishly.

She paused, uncertain, too. “Well, it’s getting late. I’d better go.”

“If you gotta go—” But his grin broadened a little. “Roque liked it here. He liked this pond. He liked me. He was going to teach me caballo, too. Caballo is Spanish for horse….”

“I—I used to play here with my cousins,” she said. “All the time.”

“My daddy says I have to forget Roque,” Caleb said.

“Mine, too!”

“But I won’t. He’s my brother.”

“Well, he’s nothing to me,” she lied, staring up at a cloud until her neck started hurting. “I-I’d better go.”

“You said that already.”

Still, she lingered, digging her toe into the dirt.

Here, not so long ago, the wind had ruffled her hair, and Roque’s hands had circled her waist. He’d held her while Buttercup’s hooves had thudded as wildly as her own heartbeats.

“Do you…do you think Roque will forget us?” Ritz whispered.

“He said he would. He said I wasn’t his brother anymore. And if he won’t remember his own brother, why would he remember a dumb girl who broke his arm?”

“He charged your daddy! Not me—”

“He won’t remember you….”

“He’d remember Jet I bet.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Caleb lowered his eyes. “She’s really something.”

“And I’m not?”

“I didn’t say that. Forget Roque.” He hesitated. “Could you come over some time…I mean…just to see me? Nobody would ever have to know. We could ride together, maybe get that book Roque had and try to teach ourselves caballo—”

“It wouldn’t be the same without Roque—”