Their romance was different from any Nick had previously experienced. They didn't make love or engage in the quick fumbling intercourse that so often sours clandestine romance into grimy, joyless affairs. Angela was too knowledgeable of the pains awaiting bastard mulatto children to allow what would have been a selfish indulgence on her part. Nick was less informed but not, as Angela thought, totally ignorant of how cruelly people punished children for a parent's sins. What he knew of Heath's childhood was always in the back of his mind.
The circumspection was not entirely voluntary; they were partially restrained by a lack of opportunity. Silas had not uttered a word but maintained a chilly disapproval. He kept Angela under a watchful gaze that limited both chance meetings and planned ones. Nick was also hampered from a different source. It seemed to him that no sooner would he begin contemplating a possible rendezvous then some unexpected problem with ranch or livestock would arise, or an employee would appear with pressing business that needed to be attended to in exactly the location he wished to meet Angela. Cowpunchers whom Nick would have sworn spent their days snoozing away in a corner became irritatingly conscientious about every chore. The ranch, once a source of pride and delight, had become a trap limiting his every move.
Only when he was alone with Angela did the sensation of slow suffocation slip away. Time eased painlessly past as he held her against his chest, feeling her heart beating next to his own. In the shadows of haylofts and under hanging branches their fingers ran over contours of cheek and jaw until each found the other's face more familiar than their own. Breathless kisses accompanied by a rush of blood warmed them until they had to pull away, lips bruised, skin tingling, bodies aching from pleasure promised but denied.
When the passion became too intense and threatened to overwhelm their fading control, they sated their thirst for intimacy with words, revealing untouched dreams and long buried pieces of the past. They whispered thoughts left unsaid to all others and delighted in the secret knowledge offered and accepted. Nick reveled in the sensuality of speech and the unexpected eroticism of restraint.
Journal Entry
Angela Barkley. Mrs. Angela Barkley. Angela and Nicholas Barkley invite you to the birthday of their son, Jonathon Thomas Barkely. ANGELA even the last part of her name sounds like a song. Ange-La la la
Alright, settle down. This is a journal; this is serious. This is not supposed to be a soppy love letter it just that I LOVE SAYING HER NAME! She's amazing. She's the most extraordinary woman I've ever known. She can't read, but she understands Tennyson better than I do. She's uneducated but she's smarter than most of the people I know. Her skin is caramel but she outshines Hester the way the sun outshines the stars.
Stop it. Get back to work. Write something serious. Write something that you've learned about yourself. I've learned that just talking to Angela is more exhilarating than dancing with the 10 most beautiful women in the valley. I love talking to her. I love listening to her. I love the way she tells me things and the way she listens when I tell her things. And somehow, and I can't figure how, somehow just holding her close for an hour is better than any night I've ever spent with any woman in my entire life. Come to think of it, ANYTHING with Angela is better than sleeping with any girl I've ever known
.
It's funny but I keep comparing her to Hester. Me and Hester…we were just instant…. Well bedmates to be honest. We were between the sheets the night we met and didn't slow down until we got to Stockton. Hester was incredible. She was passionate and inventive and Oh My what a kisser. I would have done anything for her. Hester had me by the short hairs.
I didn't realize it then, but the whole time I was with her I was jealous of every man she smiled at. When I went after Heath. Aw Hell. In my heart of hearts I knew he hadn't laid a hand on her. She'd been flirting with him and every other man in camp all night long and I was just looking for a reason to take it out on someone and… I guess I just seized the excuse.
Jesus I can be a stupid, cretinous SLUGHEAD! I could have killed him or maimed him and all for nothing! For my stupid stupid temper! And what did Heath do? He saved me from myself. He saved me from at the very least spending months in a wheelchair and at most from being crippled for life. I don't deserve a brother like Heath. I never even said "Thank You." My God I'm a selfish ingrate.
BVBVBVBVBVBVBV
"I need to do something for Heath."
"Wha?" Jarrod groggily struggled to determine what emergency had sent Nick bouncing into the room to jostle him awake in the middle of the night. "What's wrong with Heath?"
"Nothing. I just need to do something for him."
"Oh, for God's sake, Nick, it's the middle of the night. Buy him flowers, send him chocolates; just let me go back to sleep."
"Jarrod, this is important!" Nick emphasized his point by bouncing on the side of the bed.
Jarrod recognized the tone. It was Nickspeak for "i want an answer and you're not resting till i get one." Damn.
"All right, all right!" Jarrod turned up the light next to the bed. "Start at the beginning: What's wrong with Heath?"
"Nothing!" Nick was exasperated with his brother's slowness. "He's fine. He's great. He's a great brother."
Nick smiled, confident he had made his point.
Jarrod waited patiently until he realized no more information was forthcoming. "AND?" he nudged.
"EXACTLY!" Nick beamed. Jarrod groaned and contemplated the logistics involved in killing his brother and burying the body where it wouldn't be found.
"And what? What do you need from me?" Jarrod pondered the virtues of his mother's rose garden as a possible burial space before discarding the idea. Nickmulch would probably kill the flowers out of sheer perversity.
"I need to do something for him, something that would really mean a lot to him. Something to show him I'm glad he's my brother."
Jarrod signed, the last dregs of a very pleasant dream slipping sadly away. Alright, let me think." he mused. "What does he like? Let's see...there's horses-"
"He has Charger." Nick interrupted.
"..weapons-"
"You gave him a gun, already."
"..jewelry-"
"He hates Jewelry."
"..clothes-"
"Oh, another pair of tan pants; he'll be thrilled."
"Nick, would you shut up while I'm thinking?" Jarrod snapped.
"You're thinking of the wrong things." Nick pointed out. "It can't just be something. It has to be special; something that would mean a lot to him."
Jarrod's patience was exhausted. "Well then you figure it out and let me get back to sleep." He turned off the light and buried him head under the pillow.
"Jarrod?." It was the little brother tone that Jarrod could never quite ignore.
"If you want to give him something special, do something for him; something he'd like to do but can't for some reason." Jarrod mumbled from the downside of the pillow.
There was a long moment of silence, then Jarrod was seized from above and lifted a foot of the bed in an exuberant embrace.
"Jarrod, you're brilliant." Nick released his hold and Jarrod dropped to the mattress so hard his head hurt. "Tell everyone I'll be back in a few days!" Feet clattered across the floor and Jarrod wondered how Nick could make so much noise in his socks. "Sleep well!"
A hurled pillow hit the door as it closed.
"I was doing that when you woke me up!" Jarrod bellowed.
There was a thumping noise from the wall of Heath's room.
"Jarrod, I'm trying to sleep." Heath groused. "Show some consideration, will you!"
Jarrod groaned.
BVBVBVBVBVBVBVBV
Heath rode the neglected road to Strawberry, noticing a small colony of rabbits heading in the opposite direction.
Even the animals wanted to leave this town.
He was eager to get there and had left way before morning, in order to arrive after dark. He had worried he might have to delay the trip, which was timed to match his Mama's birthday since Nick had unexpectedly vanished a few days ago. At first Heath had been dismayed and a little more than angry, thinking it was sheer carelessness on Nick's part. He hadn't thought Nick was doing it on purpose, though. That just wasn't Nick's style.
Heath had made that mistake once before, right after he came to the ranch, about efowuns. Now Heath had been a hand long enough to do every job a cowhand could be put to. He had done a drag line, a wrangler, a line rider…you name it he had done it. So he had been taken aback when he had been assigning duties to the surly, suspicious ranch hands and seen a fellow around 40 feet away climb on a horse and ride away without getting any instructions first.
"Hey! Hey bub!" Heath had called after the man.
"Oh you don't need to bother with him. He's an efowun. He's already talked to Nick."
"An Efowun?"
"Yep."
"Oh."
"Nick takes care of 'em"
"I see." Actually Heath didn't see. He'd never once heard of an efowun. Apparently it was some special job that the Barkley ranch had. Heath figured he'd just wait for Nick to fill him in. Except that Nick didn't.
At least once a week or so Heath would come out to discover that the efowun was back, frequently was talking to Nick, and Nick himself wasn't bothering to explain. Not that Heath ever brought the subject up. About the third time he noticed an efowun without getting an explanation from Nick about what the man did, he gritted his teeth and decided he wasn't going to give Nick the satisfaction of being begged for information.
Worse yet, he started to notice that there wasn't just one efowun, there were several. Different men, different horses, often talking to Nick before they left in the morning to do whatever it was that an efowun did. None of them ever once asked Heath what he wanted them to do, and Nick never once explained what their exact function was.
It didn't take long for Heath to end up in a constant state of bubbling anger at Nick for withholding this information from him. It had finally built up close to a boiling point with Heath ready to punch Nick in the face for this stupid game when Heath went out early one morning and noticed an efowun he'd seen before saddling up by the gate and instantly decided to take the opportunity to find out what these mysterious hands did on the ranch.
"Hey You!" He called out, striding over with what he hoped was a "ranch foreman stride" he had noticed Nick use. It was somewhat disconcerting to have the hand turn with a large, friendly smile.
"Morning!" The man said. "I'm Bill Clay. I've seen you from a distance. You're Heath, right?"
"That's right." Heath hadn't expected the man to be so friendly. "I saw ya over here and I figured I find out what you're instructions are for today."
"Instructions?" The Bill seemed puzzled. "I'm heading to the Sully ranch near Sacramento."
"Nick's send you to Sacramento?" Heath asked.
"Nick? No, Nick's not sending me anywhere. I work there."
Heath felt like a rug had been pulled from under his feet.
"You don't work here? But I've seen you here before."
"Well, yeah. Nick said anytime I was passing by I could stay for a bit."
"So….you're not an efowun?"
"Son, what in God's name is an efowun? I'm just an old friend of Nicks-are you all right, son?"
To which the honest answer from Heath would have been "NO, I'm not alright, I'm a blithering idiot who has spent weeks getting all riled about about mysteriously named employees that didn't exist because there weren't no such thing as an efowun there were F-O-N's-Friends of Nick's and here I've been in a sulking around thinking that Nick was hiding something that he wasn't."
Heath didn't actually say any of that, he just apologized for delaying the man, wished him well and left, hoping the humiliated blush on his face wasn't too obvious. Which it turned out it actually was since Nick passed him a moment later and asked him if he was having trouble with the heat and maybe he should sit down for a while.
The upside of this had been an important lesson: Nick wasn't going to do anything malicious to trip him up. That didn't mean Nick wouldn't be careless, or demanding or just plain thoughtless but he wouldn't maliciously hold back information or do anything else on purpose that he thought would hurt Heath
So, while a small part of Heath had wondered for a while if Nick would be gone long enough to disrupt his trip, he was mostly confident that his brother would return in time for Heath to pack up Gal with his gear. He always rode the Indian pony for these visits; it seemed appropriate somehow to return to his mother's grave on the same pony he had ridden away from it after her death. Plus, he loved riding her, enjoying her gentle paces.
Not that Heath didn't love Charger. Charger was the kind of ride Heath had never dared dream of owning. The stallion was like Gods' perfect horse and every time Heath saw a new foal with his mount's perfect bloodline he glowed with pride. It was all the more sweet for being a surprise. Heath had ridden the stud when he searched out Nick's hiding place during that whole dreadful rabies incident, wanting to show him how well the horse was coming along.
"You've done a great job, Heath. How much longer do you think it'll before he's ready to work?" Nick had asked.
"Another month, maybe two and you should have your new horse."
"My new horse? That's not my new horse that's your horse."
"Mine? I thought you were buying him to replace Cocoa."
Heath gaped in disbelief.
Nick was indignant. "Coco doesn't need replacing! But you need a horse in addition to Gal for long drives and the moment I saw this fella I knew he was yours. He's gonna be the fastest runner and best cutting horse in the valley. He's perfect for you."
"Mine?" Heath could scarcely believe it.
Nick rolled his eyes. "Good Lord, Heath, look at the bill of sale. It shows you're the new owner."
Heath had been astonished and delighted and overwhelmed It had been the best gift anyone ever gave him, and Nick hadn't given it in a 'Thanks for covering for me Heath, why don't you take the horse as payment' kind of way. It had been in a 'This is my brother and he's going to have the best horse on the ranch-maybe the whole valley' kinda way.
It was one of things that Nick just did...like finding out Heath had wanted toy trains as a boy and buying him an entire set that took up a whole room even before they spent hours together building props, like small houses and hills and trees and tiny little people waiting at the stations. Or discovering Heath was embarrassed at his lack of pool skills and paying a pool shark to give him lessons. Or buying him a ridiculously oversize pair of spurs that jingled loudly and matching it with a bell covered cowboy hat that jingled along and giving it to Heath at Christmas, something so preposterous that Heath had simply burst into laughter. He thought about those things and felt ashamed for even thinking Nick would delay Heaths' visit.
He followed a regular pattern on these visits. He spent around a day clearing the small graveyard where his mother and a few others were buried, pulling on the long, tangled weeds and yanking up dandelions, then collecting flowers on the second day and eating lunch there with a fragile Hannah.
He had tried planting flowers on Mama's grave only to have them die since they required ongoing care that he wasn't able to provide, much to his frustration. So, he satisfied himself with putting a new collection of flowers each time. For a few, passing days it became the only bright spot in Strawberry before the weeds recovered the land.
After he had been accepted as a Barkley, he had toyed with the idea of having a whole mausoleum built before realizing it would look ridiculous. His Mama would have been embarrassed at such a display. He had a proper headstone marker placed for her and came buy twice a year to provide upkeep on her grave. It was the only thing he could do for her now.
He let Gal set the pace, and entered the small, grubby town as evening fell. He stabled his horse and knocked on Hannah's door.
"Heath!" She held her arms out and he hugged her, pleased to see she had put on some weight. He made there were regular deliveries of food for her, deliveries that included yarn and anything else she needed to keep busy.
"Sit down child. I was just going to start dinner. I made your favorite, rabbit stew and collard greens with fresh bread. You sit down and tell me everything."
"Not much to tell. Everything is going along."
She peered at him with sharp eyes.
"I don't believe that. You look like a man with troubles, son. You having trouble with the Barkley's."
"No, that's fine. You should see the horse Nick gave me; next time I come I'll bring him."
"Well what is it then?"
"I guess you could say it's troubles IN the Barkley's."
And he told her; told her about Jarrod's mock court martial and how it had disastrously affected Nick. Told about Jarrod making a point of staying around the ranch to help but how he only ended up clashing with Nick over a domain that had always been Nick's alone. How Nick was getting angry over having his plans and ideas voted down by the Jarrod/Victoria/Audra voting block as he called it while being forced to enact ideas he hated.
How Nick seemed to be less and less interested in the ranch, and spent all that time talking to Doctor Marten, which angered and irritated Jarrod for reasons Heath couldn't understand. He explained that all through dinner and afterwards as he repaired Hannah's rocking chair and she sat quietly and listened.
Hannah thought for a long moment.
"Does Jarrod realize what's happening?"
Heath sighed.
"I don't think so. I think Jarrod is trying to help, but he's doing it the wrong way. He's trying to get closer to Nick and he's only pushing him away and that makes Jarrod angry. And Jarrod's smart; I don't think he would normally...He's just too close to see it. And he can get tunnel vision as bad as Nick can; I've tried to explain it to him and he and just can't seem to understand he needs to give Nick some breathing room and stop interfering in ranch business."
Hannah nodded.
"What do you think Nick will do if things stay like this?"
Heath turned over the question unhappily. "I don't know. You know, I never thought Nick might leave the ranch but lately I wonder." He thought for a moment. "Hannah, I don't wanna lose one of my brothers."
bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvb
Heath took the usual tools- rake, digging shovel and weed puller-as he went to his mother's grave the next morning, prepared for a long hot day. As he approached the headstones he was awash in first surprise, then confusion. The graveyard didn't need work, it was perfect, with no weeds, no dandelions, nothing overgrown. And his mama's grave was covered with a blanket of flowers, newly planted but watered and thriving in the summer sun. He was still taking in the sight when he heard light footsteps behind him. A small, solemn boy stood there with much more battered version of the tools Heath was carrying.
"You here to mess up ever'thin?" He asked worriedly.
"Nope. I came here to take care of things."
A distressed look crossed the boys' face.
"But I been taking care of ever'thin real keerful like that man told me! I come up ever day, un water them flowers un pull the weeds jest like he said. He don' have no cause to take my job away." He looked almost tearful.
"Stop. Wait a minute. I'm not here to take your job." Heath reassured the boy. The kid reminded him of himself at that age. Nothing would have been worse than to lose a job that helped feed the family. "I promise. I've been coming up here every year to take care of my Mama's grave." He pointed at the flowers. "Did you do that?"
"The boy nodded. "Me an Nick. We spent a whole day finding the prettiest flowers and moving 'em here. I'm supposed to water 'em ever day and keep 'em pretty. You can see, they're real pretty."
"They sure are. So, Nick was here?"
"You noam? He were up here last week an' we spent all day cleanin ever'thin up. We even washed down all them stones an' got the moss offer 'em. I werked real hard 'un he even said so. That's why he giv me a job. Pay's me $30 a month. My Mama says most adults don't get that much."
"What's the job?" Heath asked curiously.
"I'm supposed to come up here ever day an take care of ever'thn and make it look all nice an' pretty and not let them flowers die 'cause someone special is bury'd thar. "
Heath sat down. 'Someone special is buried there,' that's what Nick had told the boy. He'd said that about Heath's Mama, and the thought put a huge lump in his throat. Heath looked at the flowers and the clean lines of the graveyard and wondered why he hadn't thought of this himself.
"Mister, you gonna set there long? I got werk ta do."
Heath pull himself together.
"I'll help you. And then we can split the best picnic lunch in the valley"
"Nick took me ta dinner when he was here. Fed me breakfast, too. I was skeered though, when I seen ya that he'd jest up an fired me without tellin me fust."
"Oh, that wouldn't happen." Heath reassured the boy. "He wouldn't do that to an efowun."