Dream Country (16 page)

For the first time, it struck her as odd that six tiny kittens should be romping around the car like mad—sitting on the dogs’ backs, using their heads as springboards, while the dogs just lay still instead of chasing them. In fact, the only time the dogs had moved was when David had gotten out to help her.

“What’s wrong with the dogs?” she asked. “Why are they so quiet?”

“Their spirits are gone. That’s what happens to animals from those places.”

Sage swallowed. She didn’t know why the next thing was so hard to ask. “How do you know about them?”

“Nebraska and Wyoming have a lot of puppy farms,” he said, not quite answering the question. The moon had risen directly overhead, flooding the road with light. Sage stared at David’s face, the way he kept a cigarette in his mouth all the time as if he wanted to hide behind the smoke.

“They’re lucky to be with you,” Sage said. “Instead of the farms.”

David didn’t say anything.

“Why do you have them?” she asked after a long silence.

David just kept driving, staring at the moonlit road through the smoke. Sage usually didn’t like to be in closed spaces with people who smoked. Before Aunt Hathaway had quit, Sage would roll down every window in the car when they took rides together. But right now she didn’t mind it. The old car smelled of smoke, exhaust, damp fur, and cat pee, and she didn’t feel sick at all. She thought David had forgotten all about her question, or that he’d just decided not to answer it. But then he did.

“I save things,” he said. “It’s what I do.”

“You saved me,” Sage said. Her throat tightened up, and as she gazed across the long front seat, she saw David nod. He glanced over. She tried to smile, but he didn’t smile back. He looked angry, as if she’d said something to make him mad. Three of the kittens were striding back and forth across the front seat, meowing for food or affection. “That guy would have—” Sage began, but her teeth began chattering again.

“Some people are bad,” David said.

Sage nodded, biting the back of her knuckles. It began to sweep over her, the terror of being attacked by a normal-looking insurance salesman on a farm road in Nebraska.

“You okay?” David asked, glancing over.

Sage tried to nod.

“Don’t think about him,” David said. “If you can help it. Think about anything else. Here—” Picking up one of the kittens—a tiny one—he handed it across to her. Sage held the cat on her lap, stroking it gently. Then the kitten sprang away, onto David’s shoulder. All six kittens were surrounding him, meowing loudly.

“Food break,” he said.

He stopped the car. They were on the side of a long, empty road. Clouds seemed to be moving in from the west, hiding the moon. David opened the two car doors on his side and let out a long, eerie whistle. Sage huddled in her seat, watching all nine animals file out the open doors.

David opened the trunk of the car. Sage heard pellets of food being poured into metal bowls. The road was so empty, the sound clattered through the silence. Pale, filmy moonlight sifted through high clouds. Reluctant to leave the car’s safety, Sage felt too curious not to watch. She climbed out and walked back.

The Scottie and spaniel ate hungrily from separate bowls. David finished filling three more bowls with fresh water from a plastic jug. Then he separated Petal from her toy, allowing her to eat. Reaching into the trunk, he pulled out a shopping bag.

Shoving a stick of rolled fruit in his mouth, he handed another to Sage. She chewed, thinking of camping trips with her mother. He removed two toy baby bottles and a can of Enfamil. Sage watched as he filled the bottles with baby formula. Then he crouched down in the cornfield as the six kittens scrambled to be first to be fed.

“They like it warmed up,” he said, two kittens sucking noisily from the bottles. “But I didn’t feel like lighting the stove.”

“Can I help?” she asked.

“There are more bottles in there,” he said.

Sage felt him watching her as she opened the bag. He had enough bottles and formula to feed an army of hungry kittens. She filled two bottles and settled down on the cold ground beside him. Their breath billowed out, white and ghostly. Sage felt the remaining four kittens climb all over her, and as she started feeding two, she felt sorry for the two who were left out for the moment.

“We’ll get to them, don’t worry,” David said. “I’ll be glad when they’re ready for solid food.”

“What were you doing in that old barn?” Sage asked.

“Back there?”

She nodded. Surrounded by animals making noises of contentment, she felt safe enough to visit
back there
in her mind. “I didn’t think anyone would come,” she said. “I thought he was going to drag me into his car—”

“He would have,” David said without feeling in his voice, as if he was stating a simple fact.

“And you came zooming out of the field . . . with your lights off . . . all I could hear was your engine . . . and I hoped . . . I prayed . . .” Sage gulped. Tears were running down her nose, but she couldn’t wipe them because both hands were busy feeding hungry kittens. “I prayed someone would save me.”

David didn’t speak. He just stared down at the two kittens in his lap. They had drunk their fill and were lazily tapping the baby bottles with their paws. Gently he laid them on the frosty ground and let the other two—ravenous now—climb onto his knees. The bottles were still half full.

“All I could think of was my father,” Sage said.

“Why?”

“That he’d somehow know. That he’d save me.”

“Parents aren’t God.”

“I know,” Sage agreed. “But I thought it anyway.”

“Sometimes parents can’t do shit. Sometimes they hurt more than they help.”

“And sometimes they don’t,” Sage said.

David fell silent again. Sage stared down at his hands. Blood was seeping through the bandage on his left hand. But the things she couldn’t stop staring at, couldn’t look away from, were the tattoos on his right forearm. They were beautiful, like works of art. The owl’s eyes were yellow—steady and alert. They looked alive, as if the bird might take off and fly into the night.

Sage had spent most of her life in the Connecticut suburbs, and had considered tattoos scary and gross. Whenever she saw girls at the mall with tattoos on their shoulders or ankles—even if they were of roses or butterflies—Sage thought of the girls as tough and hard. But for some reason, the pictures on David’s skin brought tears to her eyes, and she didn’t have a clue why.

“What were you doing back there,” Sage asked for the second time, “in that old barn?”

“Bedding down,” David said.

“Is it where you live?”

“No.”

“You were going to spend the night there?”

“Yeah. It’s not good for the dogs to spend too much time cooped up in the car,” he said. “Reminds them of their pens at the farms.”

Sage lifted her head. She saw that two of the dogs had finished eating, were slurping at the water bowls. Petal had picked up her toy again, and she was walking along the side of the road, looking for a place to relieve herself. She didn’t stray too far, continually glancing over her shoulder for David. More clouds obscured the moon, making it hard to see.

“It’s going to snow,” David said, staring up at the sky.

“It’s only October,” Sage said. “Or November.” What was the date, anyway? She’d been gone for a week now.

“November fourth,” David said. “Lots of winters start around now.”

“They don’t at home, in Connecticut.”

“I thought you said Wyoming was home.”

“They both are,” she said. “My mother’s east, my father’s west.” Sage stifled a yawn. It was getting late, and she hadn’t really slept in days.

“You’re going to your father?”

Sage nodded. Her two kittens had finished drinking. They started to purr, nuzzling the nipples of the toy bottles. Sage remembered having a baby doll when she was little, playing with a bottle exactly like this. “I can’t wait to see him.”

“That’s good,” David said. “What made you leave the other place? Where your mother lives?”

“I don’t know.” Sage felt the baby stirring inside her, but she felt too shy to tell David she was pregnant. Thinking of Ben, she tried to picture him feeding kittens with baby bottles. But the picture wouldn’t come to her: All she could imagine was him carrying his backpack through school, hanging around the playing fields with all his friends.

“Is this your car?” she asked.

“It was my uncle’s. It has four-wheel drive, goes through mud, snow, anything.”

“Did your uncle give it to you?”

“He gave it to my mother,” he said. Then, changing the subject, “We should find a place to sleep tonight, before it gets too much later.”

Sage nodded, yawning again. They looked around, but there were no barns in these fields—nothing but dry, chopped-off cornstalks. Her two kittens had fallen asleep on her lap, but the other four ran madcap through the field. The three dogs snuffed around in the milky moonlight, Petal keeping her toy gripped in her teeth.

“Aren’t you afraid the animals will run off?” she asked. “And you won’t be able to get them back?”

“No,” he said. “They won’t.”

Sage watched him rise slowly, stretch toward the sky. He was thin, with a long, narrow waist—she saw his ribs when his shirt untucked. His stomach was covered with tattoos, too. She could see the dark shapes, but she couldn’t make out what they were. The sight disturbed her somehow, but she found herself wanting to look at the pictures more closely.

David opened the car doors and let out that same long, unsettling whistle. It reminded Sage of a night owl hunting over the salt meadows on Pumpkin Lane, and she felt a pang of homesickness. The animals came charging back from their hunts, piling into the car as if they feared it might leave without them.

Sage tried to stand, but her legs were too stiff to move. Her baby felt heavy inside, and she rocked back and forth. Sage felt David watching her, and heard his boots crunching on sand as he came around the car. He put out his hand. Taking it, Sage pulled herself up.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

When they’d both climbed in, she counted the animals just to be sure. David didn’t even glance around—they were all there. Sage’s heart was pounding. David’s hand had felt rough and dry as leather, and it had brought back a memory Sage didn’t even know she had. Her father’s hand had felt that way, too: covered with scars and calluses from working the ranch.

From holding reins, raking out stalls, pulling rough rope, climbing red rocks, digging in dirt and dust. Western men’s hands were tough. When Sage was small, she held her mother’s hand, smooth from the work she did and the objects she handled: bones, stones, metal. And she asked her mother why men’s hands were rough and women’s hands were smooth.

“You’ll find out,” her mother had said. “As life goes along. But you might be surprised. Some girls are just as good at being cowboys as the boys are. Girls can have rough hands, too. You just never know.”

“You never know,” Sage said out loud now.

“What?” David asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Sage said.

He nodded, accepting her answer. He drove slowly along, down the straight road pointing into the dark night. The moon was gone, and the first snowflakes had started to fall. Were those mountains in the distance? Or were they driving into the low clouds of a storm? Sage snuggled deeper into her seat while David drove, watching the landscape for a barn where they could spend the night.

Chapter Sixteen

D
aisy’s third morning on the ranch, she pulled back the curtains to look outside. Snow had fallen during the night, and the ground was covered by a thin layer of white. Paul March, riding by, saw her and circled back to wave. Slowly, she opened the door.

“Howdy, Daisy,” he said. “Long time since . . .”

Daisy hugged herself, shivering in the cold.
Since she’d left the ranch, since Jake had been gone.

“Good to see you, Paul.”

“You too. Any news on Sage?”

“Not yet.” Her heart skipped, just saying the words. The ranch was still the same: News traveled fast.

“Don’t worry too much. She’ll be fine.”

Daisy tensed. How would he know? Glancing down to compose herself, she noticed a package on the front porch.

“Did you hear about Dalton?” Paul asked.

“No, what?” She looked up.

“He fell. Broke his leg or something—we don’t know yet. Louisa’s with him at the hospital.”

“Oh, no,” Daisy said, biting her lip.

“Sorry to bring you more bad news.” Paul sounded concerned, and for a minute she thought he might climb down off his horse to console her. She flashed back to the day after Jake’s disappearance, when she had cried against his shoulder more than once. He had been a good friend then, and she appreciated his kindness now.

“It’s not your fault,” she said, trying to smile.

“Hang in there, Daisy. If there’s anything I can do . . .”

“Thanks, Paul.”

Waving again, he kicked his horse and rode away, sending up clouds of snow. Daisy picked up the package at her feet and looked at the ground: Big footsteps led back toward the corrals. Shivering, she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

Untying the parcel—a square of old red cloth—she found a bundle of bones. She sat at the oak table to examine them more closely: the paw of something—a dog or fox, or a coyote or wolf. Someone else might have felt alarmed, frightened by the intent of whoever might leave a bag of bones on a woman’s doorstep, but not Daisy.

Seeing the bones calmed her down. She knew James had left the bones for her, and although she couldn’t have said why, she understood that they were his gift. She had passed a restless night, hearing snow tap against the windowpanes. Imagining her daughter somewhere
out there,
unprotected and all alone, almost drove her insane. She had paced the small house, stirring the fire, looking out the windows, trying to see through the snow to where the dark ridge and tall pines were supposed to be.

Daisy had thought about Sage’s future last night, dreading what it would be. Set apart in school, different from everyone else, having to endure the gossip and whispers? Daisy loved her own daughter so much, she already resented the tiny baby who was about to rob her of the rest of her childhood.

Eager suddenly to gather materials for a project, she pulled on boots and a jacket. She felt glad to be leaving the little house. Being cooped up inside with such intense memories couldn’t be good. The cottage’s four walls told stories that only James and she knew.

Wanting to see whether Louisa was back from the hospital, she veered up to the house. The big kitchen was empty, so Daisy dialed Hathaway.

“Any word from her?” Daisy asked as soon as her sister answered.

“No—nothing there?”

“No.”

“I thought you’d never call,” Hathaway said, exhaling.

“It’s only been three days.”

“Only three days! Wow, feels like longer. How’s James?”

“I haven’t seen him yet. Everyone’s protecting us from each other.”

“Probably an excellent bet,” Hathaway said. “Call me the minute you need me.”

“I always need you,” Daisy said.

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Hathaway said quietly.

The bracing air felt good as Daisy hurried across the field. Smoke swirled into the white sky from chimneys in every building. She kept her head down against the wind, hands deep in her pockets. Seeing hoofprints in the snow, she knew the men had gone out to the range—this weather wouldn’t keep them in. She’d visit Scout in the barn, clip some strands from her tail. Brushing her yesterday, Daisy had been happy to see some of the old sheen return to her yellow coat.

Sliding the barn door slightly open, Daisy slipped inside. She stamped her feet, closed the door behind her. The horses tossed their heads at her approach. Used to the darkness now, Daisy worked her way down the row. She said hello to every horse, scratching their noses as she passed.

The barn felt cold. Her breath showed in the air. Music played in the distance, and Daisy recognized it as country western. Just like Louisa, she thought, smiling, to pipe Patsy Cline into the barns to make the horses happy. The stable was shaped like a cathedral, like a cross. When Daisy reached the transept, she felt the heat. Someone was working around the corner with the kerosene heater going.

Scout was clipped to the tie-offs. She stood in the center of the north aisle, a long line holding each side of her halter to opposite walls, exactly where Daisy had groomed her yesterday. It hardly seemed possible that this was the same horse: She glistened yellow as butter, and her mane and tail were flowing creamy white. Daisy hung back, standing in the shadows.

James stood with his back to her. Currying Scout’s coat, he had both arms spread along her flanks. He wore tight blue jeans under dusty chaps, and he’d worked up a serious sweat from vigorously brushing the horse in the heated space. His plaid shirt was thrown on the straw-covered floor, and his muscles strained under his faded black T-shirt. Daisy stared at his broad back, and she gazed at his bare arms.

He had held her, once upon a time. James was grooming the horse he had given her when she’d come to live on his ranch. He was brushing the yellow coat with intensity and—Daisy could see—love. He was making right what he should have kept up all along.

“Pretty horse,” Daisy said.

There was a moment of silence.

“Palomino mare,” James said finally, without turning around. “Registered quarter horse.”

“Strong.” Daisy took a step closer. “She sure is strong.”

“I know,” James said.

Daisy went to stand beside him, to stroke the horse’s thick neck. Scout whinnied and bent her head. Daisy rubbed her ear. She picked up a brush from the tack bucket, and James caught her wrist.

“I had to come,” she said, staring into his eyes.

“I can’t believe I’m seeing you.” He kept holding her wrist. He shook his head once—hard—as if he thought he might be dreaming.

“I can’t, either,” Daisy said, forcing her voice to be steady. “James Tucker.”

“Daisy Tucker,” he said. “It’s sure good to see you.”

“Scout’s so old . . .” Daisy gently pulled her arm away, petting the horse.

“She’s going to be okay. She’s going to make it out of this fine,” James said, and Daisy knew he wasn’t talking about Scout.

“Sage,” Daisy said, her voice cracking. She kept brushing Scout, and then she stopped.

“You said the horse is strong? Sage is strong. She sends me pictures, letters. She’s an outdoor person. Camping, canoeing.” Talking about his daughter, he looked proud, his eyes brighter. “She’s taking care of herself.”

“She’s only sixteen.”

“Daisy . . .”

Daisy’s chest was caving in, like a hill after a landslide, and she had to step back. As he touched the side of her cheek, she flinched.

“This is on me,” he said. “That’s what you’re thinking?”

“I’m not thinking anything,” Daisy said. “I just want her back safe.”

“Well, it’s what I’m thinking.”

They stood there, face-to-face. Daisy saw the lines in his tan face, the slashes of worry around his blue eyes. His hair was shot with gray. She looked for the young man, the brash young rancher she had once loved, but he wasn’t there.

“Sage.” He whispered the name.

“Oh, James.” She shook her head.

He pulled her tight and close in an embrace so hard every bone in her body ached. She cried out, and he hugged her tighter. She knew he meant to comfort her, to give her solace, but all she could feel right now was hate for herself, for failing to forgive after all these thirteen years.

“I thought . . .” she tried to say. “I thought . . .”

“What?”

“I thought time softened things,” she said into his hard chest.

“Daisy . . .” he whispered. “No, you didn’t.”

“I did.”

“You couldn’t think that,” he said. “You know time only makes things harder. Bones and stones, Daisy. You work with them every day. That’s the truth, and I know it. Don’t think I’m fooling myself. I know why you’re here.”

“Our daughter,” Daisy said, clutching the front of James’s old T-shirt. “That’s all.”

“I know,” James said.

James rode across the range, shouting to the herd. He, Paul, and the others were driving them all toward home. This was his money-making time of year, and usually the most fun. Fall was when a cowboy knew why he wanted to be a cowboy. With the weather they’d had the last few days, the ground was all mud and snow. The feisty cows tried to run away; the horses reared up and knew they were kings of it all.

Trying to dodge a stubborn straggler, James fell with his horse and banged his thigh against a rock. It tore the outer edge of his chaps like the merest flick of a knife, but the mud was so soft and deep, no real harm was done. They just clambered up and started riding again. Distracted by thoughts of Daisy and Sage, by the fact that his father was in the hospital, James forced himself to concentrate. Cows pressed against them from all sides. Paul zigzagged through the herd, the adrenaline in his veins taking ten years off his face.

“You okay?” Paul asked.

“Fine,” James said, putting the old “What are you talking about?” look in his eyes.

“Daisy looks good.”

“You saw her?” James snapped his head up. Then he caught himself and squinted back toward the cattle.

“Snow squalls up ahead,” Paul said, pointing toward the mist-shrouded purple mountains.

“Make this a little more fun,” James said.

“Three feet by tomorrow,” Paul said. “That’s my prediction.”

“You and my father.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he’s been saying ‘early winter’ for a month now. Good—we can truck these guys away in a blizzard. Up the ante a little.”

“Dalton’s saying ‘told you so,’ ” Paul said. “Looking out the hospital window, watching the snow clouds build. He’s laughing because he knows we’re gonna go snow-blind before this herd gets shipped.”

A steer took off from the herd; the stock dogs saw it before James. They took off barking, and James just rode away without another word to Paul. He thought of his father, lying in bed with shattered bones, and he kicked his horse into a gallop. Fall roundups had been Dalton’s favorite time. He had taught James everything he knew about ranching, and James had never shipped a herd without him. James could feel his father with him now.

The aspen and cottonwoods had turned pure gold, their leaves shaking in the wind like coins: branches full of money. The leaves fell and blew. Migrating herds of elk crossed the land. The fields up north had been cut for the third time that year, but not baled yet. The hay lay in the mud, waiting to be snowed on. James didn’t think of the wet hay, and he didn’t think of his father lying in a hospital bed. Ranchers weren’t supposed to fall down, standing on a solid floor. They weren’t supposed to be motionless, unable to help themselves, lying in a sterile white room with windows that didn’t open.

James chased the steer hard, his eyes streaming in the wind. Every muscle was working, and he lost track of where he ended and the black horse beneath him began; he felt as if he was the horse. They pounded over wet ground, quarterback and tackle in a close game. Someone was going to go down hard, and James didn’t care who it was. This was the ranching he’d grown up with. He didn’t want to think anymore. Daisy was home, keeping another vigil: He couldn’t get away from the fact even if he wanted to.

He chased the steer into canyon land. The animal veered around the corner, a truck on two wheels. James had his rope ready, arm back and prepared to throw. His horse wasn’t even breathing hard, but James was. The canyon was wide at first, but it narrowed down into a hundred skinny ravines. James had been here just yesterday, cutting the foot off a dead wolf. The steer was going to get caught, or it was going to get lost.

The canyon was empty.

The steer had disappeared. James stopped his horse, looking around. He felt the tenseness of muscle fiber flooded with adrenaline. The thrill of the roundup, he told himself. But he knew he was lying to himself—it was the canyon itself. Creatures disappeared here. The rock walls ate them up. Cattle, children . . .

Sitting stock-still in his saddle, James listened hard. Far up the east rim, a hawk took flight, beating the air with sharp wings. Then nothing but eerie, brooding silence. James swore he heard his own blood pounding. Steers didn’t vanish. The canyon was just a place—it wasn’t evil. James had spent years surrounded by people who believed in spirits—Louis Shoulderblade and his family. And Daisy, the way she coaxed something spiritual out of things she found on the ground. Although James was just a simple rancher, he couldn’t deny the shiver down his spine.