up the cabin wall and darted headlong into the screen door to get at the light bulb in the kitchen ceiling. Lux settled back against the porch rail, holding out a tin of Copenhagen tobacco for his old man, taking a pinch for himself.
“There’s something I been meaning to talk to you about,” Lux said, staring at the darkening features of his old man in his slat-back rocker. Everett tugged at his cap, setting it back on his head, and reached out for the snuff. Lux waited several minutes for a response. “Ain’t that just how your ma used to talk,” Everett said, startling Lux, loneliness in his voice.
Lux rubbed the snuff between his lower lip and his gums, spit into a coffee can at his feet. It had come to this. “Truth be told, a few months back I got my heart stole by a girl,” Lux said. “I want to do it right, to ask consent and all.”
“Do ya, then?” Pa said. “So, you’ll be bringing her up here one of these days,” he said. It was a statement more than a question.
“I don’t know, I don’t know about that,” Lux said, caught a bit off guard, drawing out his words while he figured out his next thought. The tobacco put a sour taste in his mouth. He spat it into the tall grass. “I expect we’ll get us some land of our own, maybe work something out with her pa.”
In the waning light Lux couldn’t see his pa’s face well. It seemed like his eyes were shut, like he was only halfway listening. Lux wondered if his pa would ask for any more information, or if he was off in his own mind barely heeding Lux’s words. An owl hooted back in the woods, and a pair of bullfrogs called like the twangs of a banjo along the stream banks. Lux heard the creak of his father’s rocking chair on the planks of the porch.
“Well ain’t that something. Will you, then?” his pa said suddenly.
Lux nodded slowly. He stared at the tree line. He waited.
Pa spit into a Coke can. Then he cleared his throat. “Who’s the lucky girl?”
Lux winced. The air had darkened, the old man had taken his time closing in. He could walk off the porch, head out for the night, he could head for the Jeep and be gone. It could have gone like that. Lux’s legs would not let him move. His fingers gripped the porch rail beside him. His own body did not know how to dodge this question.
“Dessie, ah, Dorothy Price,” Lux said into the night air. His voice seemed too loud, like it had its own echo. He rubbed at his eyepatch.
“Taking up with that Price girl?” Everett reached down behind his chair for his knife and sharpening stone. “It’s a wonder she’ll have the likes of you.” Everett slid the old Bowie knife from its leather sheath. He stroked the edge of the thick blade with his thumb, then slid the blade along the stone, a practice so ingrained that he needed no light at all. “So that’s how it goes around here,” said Pa, his eyes cast down at the knife or possibly the round of oak he’d been resting his feet on, or maybe the planks on the porch. “Why you just go on then. You always did follow that son-a-bitch coach of yourn like a pup. You’re to be eighteen in a couple months. Ain’t nothing I can do about it.”
Some things do not change, Lux knew. Bertram had gotten the better of Pa, and the old man was never going to let it go. Lux had the sudden awareness that he had just stepped across the enemy lines, that both he and Dessie, and Bertram and Rose, too, would stand forever behind a closed a door in his old man’s thoughts. Lux had stepped through that door, he had chosen, and his old man had latched that door behind him. “Well, good riddance to all of you’ns,” his pa said, breaking the silence. Lux wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Reckon I can sell them horses once I’m shed of you for good.”
His old man never made anything easy. Lux shifted, started to speak, and held back. That ain’t how it is, he wanted to say. It don’t have to go like this. But then he thought, Yes, old man. There ain’t a damn thing you can do about it. Everett moved his feet. He sat forward in his chair, spat into the Coke can, and stabbed the thick-bladed knife into the oak log. A bat circled and wheeled just past the roofline. The steel blade and rivets on the smooth handle of the Bowie knife glinted in the darkness.
THOUGH HE did not speak of it that night to his old man, Lux had other plans for CJ and Dakota. There was a scrubby quarter-acre section of hayfield on the Price property that was too steep to cut with the tractor, and Lux had already mentioned to Bertram that he would sure appreciate it if he could bring his horses over and set them up on that strip of pasture. Dessie had added that she’d wanted to learn to ride, too. Bertram hadn’t considered keeping horses, but he suggested that if he and Lux made a paddock large enough maybe they could both make use of it, and that way he could also raise a calf for meat.
Lux gathered some men from A-1, and in no time they dropped off a truckload of locust posts and poplar boards from the mill. With the help of Alan Ray and Bertram, and Uncle Ron’s posthole digger, in a few weekends they built a corral with an open tack shed at the back of the Price property. The paddock was close to where Lux and Dessie soon would set their trailer, and it was easy to drive over to with a bale of hay in the back of the Jeep. The horses moved onto the Price homestead even before Lux did.
Dessie had taken to riding like a natural. Her long arms and legs made it easy for her to reach up to the pommel and hoist herself into a western saddle, and Calamity Jane responded to Dessie’s steady hands and the light pressure of her knees. Soon Dessie was cantering across her father’s hayfield, her hair in a ponytail flying out behind, one hand on the reins, one hand on the neck of the gray horse just at the base of her mane. Calamity Jane’s head lifted up, her neck arched, and her silver tail waved out as she picked up speed. They were a sight for anyone to behold.
One of those perfect October afternoons soon after their wedding, the idea came to Lux that he could buy the forty-acre piece of land at the head of the Goshen Road on a land contract from Bertram, and as soon as Dakota was old enough to ride, he and Dessie could spend their spare time on horseback, side by side, exploring the lay of the land and planning out a future homestead. Though he hadn’t discussed it yet with Bertram, he mentioned it to Dessie. All she said was “That’s fine, Lux,” with a nod and a wistful smile.
SO MUCH for those plans, Lux thought. So much for trail riding beside the prettiest girl on the prettiest horse, so much for warm summer nights. Autumn sneaked up on him. He had a sweet little baby daughter, another on the way any time now. He couldn’t ride both of the horses. Yet right away, the trade with Alan Ray began to needle him. Lux thought Dessie would’ve been tickled to have the garden tiller and to get him a good reliable hunting rifle, and happy that their money would stretch a bit further. But lately Dessie never seemed too happy about anything, especially this last month as she got closer to her due date, and she hadn’t even looked at the tiller or at the rifle. All she said was “That’s fine, Lux,” with the same reassuring nod. At least he’d held on to Dakota, Lux thought. The colt needed a firm hand and a training routine. By rigging a makeshift scabbard to his saddle, Lux could take the Remington along as he rode through the woods on old logging roads to the highlands above the farm, crisscrossing the overgrown fields at the head of the Goshen Road, scaring up grouse and turkey, looking for deer sign, and planning for gun-hunting season later in the fall.
IN THEIR trailer Dessie eased her pregnant body into the rocker, set her feet up on the milk crate they used for a coffee table, and took a few minutes to rest up before starting to put supper on. She placed her hands on her swollen belly, trying to figure out the position of the baby she was carrying. Little body parts, maybe elbows or feet, punched and kicked at her ribs. Each day, her skin felt more stretched and tight, the time closing in.
She hadn’t wanted to think about this, but she couldn’t keep the memory from flooding back, the strange, glaring white walls of the Fairchance General delivery room, a room of stainless-steel
