XX
"Daggummit..."
It had always been a trifle difficult to do the string-tie up, nicely, but lately the bows were becoming so much more difficult, and to cast the knot on a tie was beyond his imagination. Elin had always been so much better in such things. This time, too, she approached him, settling the feud with the narrow cloth as easily as she would have calmed down a sleeping dog. Hoss was looking closer at her, as despite his tall figure that had made him almost a legend, time was a bad servant and had determinedly pulled his skeleton down. Not fast, that was for sure, but eventually as an ocean that smoothed mountains.
Elin raised her fingers up to tie the knot through loops that Hoss didn't follow so ardently, tucking it a few times to make sure it would land elegantly on top of the white shirt. She pulled the white collar a bit, fixed the highest button that had fallen loose even though Hoss had earnestly tried to button it up, and her hands travelled over his chest and his shoulders, when she dusted off the brown coat. 'Black is the color for funerals', she had said rather bluntly to the tailor, and picked an earthy brown wool to become his suit.
Streaks of gray had appeared in Elin's hair, dyeing swirling twilights around her temples and her forehead, when her hair was combed back in a respectable chignon. Freckles were faint by now, but the gold in her eyes had become more, and the corners of her eyes that turned upwards were casting cobwebs to reveal the emotion and affection that had passed through her life. She bit her lower lip, like her daughters used to do, too, and Hoss forgot his tie was throttling him and the cufflinks were still a mess.
He took a hold of the nape of her neck and let his fingers rest there, while his own blue eyes were examining her glimmering face that was about to break into a smile, and just looked. She let her hands rest above his shoulders, and like a thief, the other one started to sneak up to touch his chin and stroke by his face. Her eyes were from some distant place, maybe not from this earth at all. "Do you wanna know what I see in your eyes, Hoss?" she asked, and tucked his collar once more, gently.
"Tell me."
"The whole wide world."
He had heard the phrase before. A lump started to evolve in his throat, in a way that made it difficult for him to speak. His voice came out very coarse, and very distant; a stranger was talking, although he knew it was him. "After all these years, Elin?"
His wife pressed her lips together, and crossed her fingers behind the scruff of his neck, tickling the less dense frizzy curls of hair that were still surrounding his head around the portions of a more bald kind.
"Just because of them, kära Hoss." Cherié.
"Hoss, min Erik." My Eric. "How did you feel in our wedding day?"
His hands had moved, too, they held her upon his palms like a little fairy. "I didn't want the moment to come, because I was so dang afraid you'd say no."
Elin's laughter ran as a clang of crystal bells hung on the empty plain air. "And I couldn't wait for the time to pass quickly enough, to get to hear your yes", she said, and squeezed the tip of his nose.
She paused to look at him, her smile as young as in the day they had met. "Hoss, our children are waiting." She looked at Hoss, who raised his hand to pull the tie a bit looser, before he remembered the tightness came from something else.
How could one wedding that wasn't even his make him so nervous? He checked the handkerchief in his pocket, and Elin pressed a flower through the button hole.
Hoss offered his arm to Elin, and she twined her own arm around his arm like tendrils of their shared life.
"Let's go. We have a wedding to attend."
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The child was bent over to read the elaborate carvings on the stone, its old style and frills of calligraphy winning the trophy over the child's capability to interpret the signs.
"Bbbeeeen...j..e.. Cartwright." The surname, at least, was familiar.
"Yeah, that's your Great-Grandpa." Hoss blinked. Although he had felt so terribly sorry for so long, learning to accept the way of things, by now he only recalled at the memory of the common past, the understanding and the gift of the life lived together. Benjamin Cartwright had been a remarkable man, to many, but to Hoss he had been seen even as more. He chuckled at a long-passed memory. "Faffa Ben."
The child stood still. "Why does Grandma call you Farfar?"
"Comes from her language."
"She calls your Pa Farfar too."
Hoss smiled at the little kid, and put his large hand over the soft curls of the child. "Maybe we're getting so old with your Grandma that it gets too easy for her to mix."
The child was thinking, deeply. "Benjamin."
"Yes. Although, when I was your age, I thought his name was 'Yes, Sir, Pa'."
"You're just funning." The eyes of the child climbed up to his own faint blue ones, dubiously.
"Of course." He tousled the hair of the child and heard a disapproving grunt.
The child continued to read. "Mmmmm...aa..rr..."
"Marie, child." Hoss swallowed, lightly. The country was not always too generous. "She was our third Ma. We were given a lot of sorrow on behalf of our Mamas who all died too soon."
The child read the numbers, and frowned. "So many years for Faffa Benjamin, after Marie's years came to stop." Little shoulders shrunk. "He must have been lonely."
Hoss hung his head, in silence, and knelt down to look at the stones from the same angle as the child. "I reckon he was, sometimes, even if us boys were there."
For a moment, the child had looked very dubiously at the word 'boys' that came out of Hoss' mouth, but then the gray-blue eyes were focused at the graves again. "You would be lonely, too, if there were no Grandma, wouldn't you?"
Hoss thought of the smell of cardamom in her hair, and the twinkle of the eyes that surprised him at the times he least expected. He felt the scent of cinnamon coming from the heart of the house, her kitchen, and memorized the feel of the hot steam after the steam bath on the skin, and the breeze in the middle of the summer, when all of the linens were hung to dry. "Yeah. I'd be terrible, terrible lonely."
The child took his big hand and waited for him to say what he came for. They stood there together, in an unbroken silence.
When Hoss was ready, the child spoke. "Let's go home, Grandpa."
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The soft white linen was hemmed with small white stitches that created snowflakes, prancing deer which dueled with their horns and watched over the shrags of the pathway that was covered with leaves and stars of ice. It all felt so like at home, and Hoss imagined for a moment how the embroidery would feel under his fingers, even if his fingers were too weary to rise up and start following the figures on the sheet. The back of his head was resting over a pillow that had been padded with its friends, and he could see his dear Elin sitting beside the bed.
Elin, his love. She held his hand, and she put her hand over his forehead and around his cheek, where so much more bone had become touchable by now. Every breath he took felt to come more scarcely, but his body didn't need it so much, anymore. His lungs were filled with even small gasps; his chest was light and airy.
Even though he felt a trifle sorry to see that his body, so well known for its strength, had been taken to bed by a light fever that had not gone away, he was not so sad to let it rest so plain and naked in front of his God. Somehow, it was even a relief, to be so calm under the gray eyes of his wife, knowing, that although surrendering so easily to the little sickness of the lungs, his life had carried him through several battles, shootings, ordeals and tragedies as a winner.
There was dew in the eyes of Elin, but behind the moist that was clear as crystal glass, the familiar rays of sunlight of her gaze were mixed back to the rush of a mountain brook that ran free and oozing down from the mountains, where the snow had melt. Her hair opened up from the gray bun at her neck, starting to fall down her shoulders as the golden brown rivers that made the streaks of her face disappear and the freckles over the convex arch of the nose sparkle. She had become as young as she had been on the day they met, and Hoss could still smell the birch leaves and the scent of the steam bath, mixing to saffron and ginger at the same time as her pointy lips were curved to smile at him, reluctant for farewell.
She squeezed his fingers, and ran her fingers over his face and through to his gray hair, that only bordered the crown of his head. Her voice was composed of the silver bells and it chimed as soft as the song of the fairies that danced around the campfires when people fell asleep. "You'll wait for me, my love, you promise?"
"Promise."
And then, he was ready to let go.
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