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CHAPTER 15

After Midnight

      SHE WOKE suddenly. What was happening?

      The whole outdoors looked as bright as daylight. At first, confused with sleep, she felt afraid, as if there were something unnatural happening, but then she realized that it was still night, and the light was from car headlights coming up the road. The eerie quality came from the light's diffusion in the cold, white air. The world was opaque with mist.

      The car made almost no noise, so it must have been creeping along very slowly, feeling its way forward like a blind person through the concealing white fog. When it reached the driveway of the house, it slowed still more and turned in.

      "It's Bobby," Lucy thought with a rush of gladness. "He's come home!"

      For years, whenever Bobby had been into some mischief, and was afraid he was going to catch it, he'd decide not to come home and spend the night with Tagg. But then, after talking to Tagg and thinking about it half the night, he'd walk home and she'd find him in his own bed when they all got up next morning.

      Lucy sat up, feeling happy. She remembered how sometimes, when he'd come in so late, he'd be hungry. She'd wake up and slip down to the kitchen and make him a glass of milk and a piece of cake, or some cookies. And they'd sit together in the kitchen in the middle of the night, while he told her what deviltry he and Tagg had been up to.

      It had been a long time since they'd done that.

      The night after they lost Mama, they'd sat together in the kitchen all night, comforting each other.

      The truck stopped in back of the house and its lights went out.

      Lucy remembered that there was a big chunk of cake sitting under the cake-keeper in the kitchen. And she thought, "I'll go talk to him and tell him there's cake. He'll like that."

      She got out of bed and wrapped herself in the quilt. Then, in her cotton nightgown and her bare feet, she went through the cold house into the kitchen to offer that piece of cake to Bobby.

      In the kitchen she relit the candle and put the cake-keeper on the table. Beside it she laid a knife to cut it with, and a plate to put it on. She poured a big glass of milk and put it down beside the plate. "I'll be waiting for him with cake," she thought, "Like old times."

      And she waited.

      But Bobby didn't come in.

      Lucy thought, "It's been a long time since we did that." And then she thought, "After all, it's Normalade he's come home to — not me. I'm being silly."

      She looked at the cake knife, and the angel cake, and the milk. She thought, "Rosana's right. I've got to let him go."

      For the first time, she noticed how cold it was. "If I go back to bed now, he'll never know."

      So before she could change her mind, Lucy blew out the candle and turned to go away again.

      In the darkness, she saw him standing outside the door.

      Only it was too thin and too tall to be Bobby.

      Too thin and tall to be anybody but . . .

      Oh! It was Gallatin!

      Of course it was Gallatin. She'd recognized him just as the candle went out. He was standing outside in the snow. And without any thought at all, Lucy ran to the kitchen door and flung it open. He stood there in his shirt sleeves, holding something in his arms, something wrapped up in a blanket with his denim jacket over it.

      She brought him in out of the snow, and he was so cold. Not even able to speak at first. Lucy led him right to the table and sat him down and lit the oven and put on the kettle to make tea to warm him. Then, quick as a wink, she whipped the quilt off her own shoulders and put it round him, because he was cold as death, an unnatural deadly color, and hardly seeming to know where he was.

      While the kettle heated, she crouched down by him and chafed his hands to warm them. Then, as soon as the kettle boiled, she made him hot tea with plenty of milk and sweetened with three spoons of sugar. At first she had to hold it for him because his hands were too stiff. On the second cup he did take it for himself, cupping both palms around the warm bowl, but he could do that only because she had very gently taken from his arms the thing he was carrying.

      As she took it, she had the strange fear that it was a dead baby he was carrying. But when she unwrapped it, she discovered it was a battered old guitar. And of course, it had been the wrong shape to be a child.

      He didn't want to let it go. Held out his arms for it as she took it away, making a noise that was almost a whimper. It was the first sound he'd made since she'd brought him in.

      "It's all right now. All right," Lucy said to him, in the same tender voice she'd have used to talk to a child. "I'll look after it while you drink your tea."

      "Need . . ." he whispered. ". . . needs to be warm." His voice was raspy. Hoarse, as if it hurt him to make the sound.

      Lucy understood at once that it was the guitar he was worried about, not himself. In all this cold he'd wrapped it in his threadbare blanket, and then he'd taken off his own jacket to wrap around it to keep it warm. Almost frozen himself to death in that cold, old pickup by keeping it wrapped in his jacket. That's how precious it was to him.

      And understanding all that, Lucy hugged the guitar in her arms, putting her cheek against it as if had been a dog or a child. "Nothing's going to hurt it here. Don't you worry," she said. "I'll look out for it."

      Then she stood it gently against the wall and came back to made him some more hot tea, while he watched her, huddled in her quilt, grateful as a dog.

      She fed him all the rest of the angel cake. Then, seeing how hungry he was, she began to get things out of the icebox. She cut him a thick slab of ham and made him a sandwich. And while he ate that, she poured him a glass of milk to wash it down.

      By the time he was all done, the candle was almost gone. He looked at her over his empty plate. There was a cake-crumb on his cheek, endearingly like a little boy. "You been real good to me," he said.

      His voice was still hoarse, but his color was better now, and his eyes were clear and soft, and for some reason, Lucy was not at ease looking at him, and she glanced away, hardly knowing what to answer.

      So she didn't say anything at all. She got up and began clearing the table, taking the dishes to the sink to wash and put them away.

      Behind her, she heard the chair scrape. When she glanced around, she saw he'd stood up and was trying to fold up the quilt. Folding it awkwardly, the way a man folds things. "Better give this back now," he said.

      She took pity on his clumsiness and held out her hands to take the quilt. "Don't do that — it goes right back on my bed."

      "You gave me your covers?"

      "You were so cold." For a minute, she just looked at him. Then she said, "You can sleep in here tonight, if you want to. The barn's too cold."

      He nodded, and she thought of leaving the quilt with him, but then she thought that was too bold. So she got him the afghan off the sofa, and he thanked her.

      She went out to the porch, to bed, and out there, it seemed as if the moon had come into the house and the screened porch was all white with snow.

      . . . As she stood there, looking, he followed her. He took the quilt away and put his arms around her, wrapping her in it. Wrapping them both inside . . . and — he was so strong. Arms hard as iron.

      With those hard arms around her, she felt herself soft and gentle against him. After that, did he carry her away? Or was that a dream she had . . . that they lay down on her bed out there in the snow on the screened-in porch, naked together under Lucy's quilt. Warm in her bed together.

      She'd seen him naked in the dark that other night, too beautiful to be real, and she'd thought he was like some remote, perfect statue from antiquity, too perfect. But that perfect body was not marble at all. His hands on her flesh were warm, and those long, strong legs — she felt the electric-shock contact of warm flesh against her untried body.

      She could just barely see him in the mooney dark, and he was so beautiful.

      He was touching her, touching her.

      Oh. . . beautiful.

      Then, at the moment, at the very moment when she felt herself falling through the sun and out through the center of a star . . . she cried out to him "Don't go!" and begun sobbing as if her heart would break. Because she knew at that moment — for certain — that he was going to leave her. That he was leaving her even as she fell through the stars with him. What a strange thing for her to have known at that transcendent moment.

      But he hushed her and comforted her, saying, "No, I'm here. I'm here." And at last they fell asleep together, warm on the narrow bed. Together under Lucy's quilt.

      Then there was another dream, about something that had happened long ago, when she was a tiny child.

      She was looking out the kitchen door, when she realized very suddenly that there was a puma standing in the yard under the tall cottonwood tree.

      It was late afternoon, and the shadows were getting long, and the sunlight lay across his gray sides and moved with him.

      Little as she was, she knew that he was beautiful. Long, perfect body, sleek as gray silk. Paws too big for the rest of him. He turned his narrow, exquisite head and took one step . . . and it was as if he were moving to the sound of music — music he made real by being there.

      The Puma looked her in the face, and she was captivated. She wanted to go to him and embrace him, put her arms around his soft sides, and lay her cheek against his shoulder and hold his paws in her hands. She wanted to kiss his paws and lay their softness against her cheek.

      She wanted him for her own.

      She was out the screened door and halfway across the yard when she heard mama scream, and in almost the same moment Mama ran up behind her and snatched her up and ran back into the house with her — with Lucy crying and struggling all the way.

      The Puma had stood there and watched it all without moving. Until, through her tears, while Mama held her, she saw him turn and walk away, and she knew she would never see him again.

      She cried all day, inconsolable. Mama kept saying, "No, Baby, he was deadly. Deadly! And if you ever see him again, you must never, ever go by him, because he'll harm you."

      That was the only time Lucy had ever known Mama to lie. Because she knew that the Puma would not have harmed her. He would have loved her. But they had sent him away, and he would never come back to her. And she could never be comforted for that loss.

      That was her dream of Gallatin on that cold, cold night, in the mist that came after the snow.

     


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