Dream Country (20 page)

She had covered the sofa and settees in elegant sage-green velvet. She had chosen green brocade drapes, floor-length and lined with cream. She had picked out brass lamps, crystal decanters, a funky mahogany bar from an old saloon in Lander. She had mounted Dalton’s father’s barbed-wire collection—a sample from every fence he’d ever strung. Louisa had done that without any pride whatsoever: The fences had been erected to keep out her family and their sheep.

Sighing, she realized what she was doing: looking for the will. She was full-blown nuts, all upset over zilch. Of course Dalton would take care of her. She knew the man, believed he loved her with all his heart. Calling her “Rosalind” was nothing more than drug-and-pain talk. Thinking of her own family, she picked up the phone and called Todd’s wife. Tammy was a nice girl, very loving and devoted to Todd.

“Well, hi, Mrs. Rydell,” Louisa said into the mouthpiece. “Mrs. Todd Rydell.”

“Hi, Aunt Louisa,” Tammy said, laughing at the pretend formality. She asked about Dalton, and they talked for a while about his condition and prognosis.

“Listen, your big, handsome husband told me your sister does health care, and I’m thinking about hiring her.”

“She’s good,” Tammy said. “She’s caring, and she needs the work.”

“Which sister’s this?” Louisa asked, trying to keep Tammy’s family straight. “The one with kids or without kids?”

“They both have children,” Tammy said, sounding confused.

Tammy gave Louisa her sister’s name: Alma Jackson. A wayward husband and two boys to support. She had worked in hospitals and nursing homes, and she did private duty work somewhere up north. Louisa thanked her niece-in-law and promptly dialed Alma’s number. The voice on the answering machine sounded plain but nice, and Louisa left a message.

Then Louisa tried her own daughter. With all those bellowing cows, she wanted to talk to her baby. She let the phone ring a long time, to no avail. That girl had a life and a half, Louisa thought, shaking her head. Just like her mama. Trouble from the get-go with a capital T. Hanging up, she looked around. The house felt strange without Dalton in it.

Almost as if it still belonged to Rosalind.

Kids run away all the time, every day of the week.
That’s what Detective LaRosa had told Daisy, and that’s what the police said in every department she called. Staring at a map of the United States, Daisy had been working her way across the country. She drew a line from the town in Iowa where Sage had gotten off the train, to the ranch. Choosing towns along the line, she’d call information and get the numbers for the local police departments. Some had received bulletins about Sage; most hadn’t. None had seen her.

She couldn’t get the sound of the cows out of her head. She telephoned police department after police department. It was nighttime now, and most of the places she called sounded quiet. No, everyone told her. We haven’t seen your daughter. Kids run away all the time.

Outside, the night was silent. The semis had pulled out, taking the calves to their deaths. The cows stood huddled in the corrals, their noisy grief subsided. Daisy felt washed out, as if she’d been crying for days. The snow had started again. Colder and drier than before, it tapped against the windows. Daisy cringed, thinking of Sage in the snow.

She called another police department. The dispatcher was rude and brief. She tried another, hung up when she heard the recording: “Due to the storm, all lines are temporarily out of service . . .” Shaking, she turned to her workbench. The wolf claws lay before her. Her carving was almost complete; the male and female faces nearly defined.

The howling started up again. Had she conjured it? Daisy felt powerful in her work: If she could bring love without intending to, perhaps she could call wolves down from the foothills. Worried about the mother cows—too distracted by missing their babies to take care of themselves—she wished she could drive the predators away instead.

When the knock came at the door, she nearly jumped out of her chair. The candles flickered as she crossed the room. Halfway to the door, thinking it might be news of Sage, she started to run.

Flinging open the door, she gasped.

James stood there, scraping snow off his boots. Daisy’s eyes flooded with tears. His stare was hard, and he didn’t smile.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“That’s what I want to ask you,” he said. “Can I come in?”

Daisy stood aside. Her arms hugging herself, she looked down at James’s feet. She saw his boots, one of them encrusted with mud, and she remembered how when he had ridden over to her at the corral, he’d had one bare foot. She hadn’t laughed then, and she didn’t laugh now.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“Right now?” she asked. “Calling police stations.” She showed him her map. Running her finger along the line she’d drawn, she pointed out the towns she had already called. Even if they hadn’t seen Sage, at least she could put them on alert. They’d be watching out for her.

“You can do that from home,” he said, interrupting her.

“What?”

“You can call every goddamn podunk police department from back east. From your own house. Go home, Daisy.”

She held herself tighter, staring up into his face. The lines were sharp and deep, his jaw square and set. He looked like the land, she thought: all rock. His cheekbones were angular, his eyes dark and sunken. Oh, the color, she thought. Those eyes were hazel, the shade of sagebrush in October sun. Blinking, she tried to look away, but he grabbed her wrist.

“You don’t belong here,” he said.

“It’s where I have to be.” She tried to pull away.

“I heard you today, we all heard you.”

“Crying? So what?”

“This is a ranch, Daisy. It’s not a zoo. It’s not a park, where you take the kids to pet a calf, play with the ducks. You know? Jesus, you’ve never let it be. You always wanted it to be something it’s not.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The calves,” he said. “They went off to slaughter today. You heard their mothers.”

“So did you,” Daisy said.

James exhaled. He paced around the small room. Seeing him in here, the first place they had made love, was almost too much for Daisy. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, unable to take her eyes off James.

“Fuck it, Daisy,” he said. “Go home.”

“I’m waiting for Sage.”

The fire sputtered, and James stared at it. He shook his head, opened his mouth, closed it. “I don’t want to be mean,” he said. “But you don’t belong here.”

“Sage is coming—I belong here.”

“Shit goes on here,” he said. “You can’t believe. You can’t take it, and I don’t even think you should. What good does it do you, hearing the cows cry?”

Daisy felt something happening. Sometimes when she sat down to work, when she passed her hands over the bones, she could feel the creature’s spirit enter her fingertips. Ready, willing to take it on, Daisy would open her heart; the ghost of whatever love the dead had ever felt would flood inside her. Oh, she felt it now. Staring at James, hearing the venom in his voice, she felt the rock inside her break like a dam.

“What good does it do you?” she asked.

Surprised by the gentleness of her tone, he looked up. He wiped some imaginary dust from his cheek, the corner of his eye. His gaze was bitter, but for one moment it looked desperate—as if something was hanging in the balance, as though he had some secret life-and-death conflict going on inside.

“Sending those babies off to get killed,” she said. “It hurts you, James. And don’t give me that stuff about being a rancher.”

“I’m a cattle rancher,” he said. “It’s the biggest part of what I do.”

“No,” Daisy said, her throat aching. “The biggest part is taking their temperature when they get sick. Feeding them from bottles when their mothers die. Riding onto thin ice when you think one’s going to fall through. Giving them your last water when the drought’s too bad and you find them thirsty—”

“I have to keep them alive,” James said. “Till they’re old enough to die.”

“And you love and care about them.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“It’s torn you up,” Daisy said. She wanted to touch his cheek. She wished she could take him to a healer, see if what was broken inside him could be fixed. For a long time, back when Jake had first disappeared, Daisy had wanted to be that healer herself. Now she knew she didn’t have that much power.

“I’m fine,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, you’re not.”

He stared at her, but nothing about him softened. His expression was just as hard. He looked straight through her, as if he hated her, as though nothing would make him smile until she was gone. Yet she had come upon him brushing Scout—currying that old horse till she gleamed like fine gold.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “I’ll get Sage home to you. Don’t you believe me?”

“I believe you.”

“You don’t,” he said. “You can’t, after what went on with Jake. You think it’s the same.”

“It’s not—”

“But you think it is. It must feel that way—”

“Kids run away all the time,” Daisy said. She couldn’t believe it, how easily those policemen’s palliative words tripped off her tongue. Wanting to strangle whoever said them to her, she now said them as if they made the most sense in the world. Sage had run away; suddenly, the facts seemed clear and comforting. That’s all—she was sixteen, a dauntless rebel, pregnant and scared. She wanted her father, and she had run away to be with him. Nothing about this was James’s fault.

“I don’t blame you,” she said quietly. “For any of it.”

“Fuck.
I
do,” James said.

“I know.” She wanted to take his hand, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She felt electricity under her skin, and she was afraid he’d feel it. “You always have.”

“You said kids run away all the time,” James said. “What if they do? What if it’s the most normal thing in the world? You can’t stop bad things from happening to them.”

“I know. I’m trying to have faith.”

“Faith,” he said, somewhere between a snort and an outright spit.

“And hope.”

“That’s even worse,” he said. “Hope. I saw you at the corral. You know better than anyone how it feels to lose hope. That’s why you were crying for the cows.”

“I do have hope, James,” Daisy said quietly. “I wish . . .” You did too, she wanted to say. She wished she could give it to him—put her arms around him, feel their hearts beating together the way it used to be. He was so handsome, the man she’d fallen in love with. But she was frightened by the hardness in his eyes. She and he had lost faith over Jake, but she never would—never—over Sage. “Sage is on her way, and she’s going to be safe. Wherever she is tonight, she’s out of the snow. She’s safe and dry, and she’s going to make it to the ranch—”

Alive.
The word hung in the air between them, and it took flight like a bird. Daisy felt it go. This night felt like a séance: She was calling up all sorts of creatures and ghosts, filling the air with them. Closing her eyes, she felt tears running down her cheeks. She heard birds’ wings beating, and she moved to the window.

Outside, the night was full of yellow eyes. They peered from every branch, every fencepost. They crisscrossed the ranch, flying on their wild hunt. Owls had come down from their nests and burrows, scouring the snow-covered ranch land for mice. Daisy gasped. She stared out, wanting James to come look. But she couldn’t speak.

“I’m going to say it again,” he said, his voice breaking. “Leave, Daisy. Go home. I know you believe Sage is safe, and so do I. I have to. But what happens when she gets to the ranch? This is where things happen, not out there.”

“We’re here,” Daisy whispered. “Her parents.”

“What good did we do before?” James asked, like a man whose life was over, whose life had been over for a good long time.

“Our best,” Daisy whispered back.

She turned to face James Tucker, and their eyes met and held. She watched his expression soften—his muscles were so taut, it looked unbearable. He had to let go, she knew. She wanted to help him, to rub his tense shoulders and back, to whisper the things she said to the bones. Daisy felt herself wanting to love him again, and that scared her even more than the hardness in his eyes. Instead, she pointed out the window, wanting him to see the owls.

But they were gone. The night was dark and empty; not a creature stirred. A wolf called from the hills. The cows were silent. The owls had disappeared, and Sage was nowhere in sight.

But the magic was still in Daisy’s heart, and so was the hope. She closed her eyes, wishing that James would take her in his arms. Her heart was pounding, and her skin tingled. She needed comfort from her babies’ father, but she didn’t know how to ask. With James standing at her side, their arms close but not touching, Daisy’s hands began to shake. The night was dark, and Sage was out there alone.

Chapter Twenty

A
fter the snow stopped, the stars came out. They showed through cloud scraps, sparks in the night. James sat on the fence rail, staring at the sky. The cows were just across the corral, so quiet he almost didn’t know they were there. Night birds called, and owls flew low above the chaparral.

James felt torn down the middle. What was happening to him? Standing so close to Daisy, he’d had to hold himself back from holding her tight. She still smelled like lemon spice, her skin still glowed from within, she was still the same girl he’d fallen in love with long ago.

Especially there, in that little house. That was where they’d made love the first time, after days of kissing on the range and along the stream. He had been so crazy by then, so ready to undress her, touch her, ravage her, be part of her—the desire had come flooding back tonight.

But his mind knew better. James felt in his pocket for the charred Polaroids. He had almost shown them to Daisy, to shake some sense into her and chase her off the ranch. Didn’t she understand that evil things happened in this world? After all this time, what did she tell herself about Jake? Whether accident of nature or malice of humans, it didn’t matter: James didn’t want it to happen again. He wanted Daisy and Sage far away from here.

That night, after he’d left Daisy alone in her cabin, he’d ridden the inner perimeter of the ranch—the fenced-in part around the houses. Looking for footprints—any prints that didn’t belong—he had wanted to reassure himself that he was wrong. The pictures didn’t mean someone was planning more harm to his family; Paul was right, they’d been taken by some tourist wanting souvenirs of Wyoming ranch land. Those tracks in the canyon had been brushed out by wind and blowing leaves.

He’d kept his eyes peeled, but he hadn’t found anything. His chest hurt now, breathing in the cold air. He kept staring at the cabin, where he’d left Daisy an hour ago, and that wasn’t doing him any good at all. Her lights were off, but he could see the fire glow. Candlelight flickered on the ceiling, driving him wild.

James jumped off the fence and headed up to the main house. He was ready to walk in, wake up his father, and show him the pictures, before he remembered Dalton was in the hospital. The roundup and weaning had kept James from going to see him—a little blessing, considering how much he hated the thought of seeing his father in the hospital.

So James went to wake up Paul. Told his wife it was an emergency, waited in their living room for Paul to get dressed. Glancing around the room, James realized he hadn’t been inside the March house in years. It was smaller than he remembered, not much larger than the cabin where Daisy was staying. Long ago he had dropped the twins here for the Marches to baby-sit. Ancient history.

Pictures of the four March kids—born after Daisy had taken Sage back east—stood on top of the upright piano. James was staring at them when Paul finally came down.

“What’s wrong?” Paul asked. “Is it Sage?”

“No,” James said, taken aback by the question.

“Then what?”

“The pictures,” James said. “Who’d take pictures of a bunch of cows?”

“Come on,” Paul said. “Let’s walk.”

They went outside, and the clouds had cleared a little more. The moon had risen, cresting over the mountain. On their way across the yard, James laid out all his arguments for why the pictures were weird, why there was danger on the ranch. He wanted Daisy gone tomorrow.

“There’s no danger,” Paul said. “It’s campers.”

“She shouldn’t be here,” James said, glaring at the cottage.

“That’s for her to decide.”

James scowled, shaking his head.

“You want me to take your side,” Paul said, grabbing his arm. “And I am. You just can’t see it.”

“My side?”

“I’m on your side, James. She’s here because she needs something,” Paul said. “Something she lost a long time ago.”

“Something I took away,” James said, thinking of Jake.

“No, you’re wrong. You did nothing to hurt her or anyone. I was there, remember? You searched till . . .”

James hardly heard him anymore. An owl swooped down, feet thrust out, talons extended. It grabbed a gopher from the snow, flew off toward the moon. But James wasn’t watching. All he could see was Daisy thirteen years ago, rolling in the dust where Jake had last been seen.

“Talk to her,” Paul said gently. “She needs you while she waits for Sage to get here.”

James closed his eyes.

“You’re not listening to me, are you?”

“You make it sound like there’s something I’m not doing for her,” James said. He glanced at Daisy’s cabin.

“Maybe there is.”

“We’re on our own now. You don’t just undo divorce.”

“Hey.” Paul gave James a friendly chuck on the shoulder. “The next time you want to wake me up at midnight, at least pretend you care about my words of wisdom.”

Kids run away all the time,
Daisy had said.

“You okay?” Paul asked.

“My kid’s on the way here,” James said.

“Where do you think Sage is?” Paul looked around as if he could actually see anything in the dark.

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

“Me, too,” Paul said.

“Once we find her, Daisy can go.”

“If you’re from Wyoming,” Sage said, “what are
you
doing driving through Nebraska?”

“If you’re from Connecticut, what are you doing driving through Nebraska?” David retorted with a devilish grin. He lit a cigarette and threw the match out the window.

“I told you. I’m on my way—”

“To the Emerald City,” David said.

“And you’re the tin man.” Sage was feeding one of the kittens as they drove along. “I’m going to look for a father, and you’re going to look for a heart.”

“You think I’m mean?”

“Only to me.” Sage smiled. “By not telling me why you’re driving through Nebraska.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you,” David said. “I’m on a mission.”

“Wow! Big revelation!” Sage said. “No kidding!”

“You figured that out?”

“Well, yeah!” Sage laughed. That kitten fed, she placed it on the seat between her and David. She let the next hungriest kitten scramble into her lap, start sucking air before it could get to the baby bottle nipple. “The fact you’re a teenager and driving a car full of animals instead of going to school is a dead giveaway.”

“How old do you think I am?” David asked.

“Seventeen? Sixteen?”

“Well, sixteen,” he said. “But most people think I look a lot older.”

“You look older,” Sage said. “Slightly. Like seventeen.”

David blew out a long, authoritative stream of smoke. “Slightly, no way. I get served in bars. I can buy . . . started driving when I was fourteen, and I never got stopped. I cruised right by troopers, and they never gave me a second look.”

“Troopers? Where are they when people need them?” Sage said. “Nothing but crows and cornstalks and rusted-out cars and perverted insurance salesmen. I think you really are a tin man.”

“Don’t get disrespectful,” David warned.

“It’s your tattoos,” Sage said. “They’d make anyone look older.”

Sage’s heart felt light. Joking with David made her feel better than she had in a long time. The snow was piled high along the sides of the road, the shorn-off cornstalks poking through, looking like stubble on a man’s chin. The sight made Sage laugh harder, but when she told David, he just scowled.

“You’re in a good mood today,” he said.

“Getting closer to home.”

“Right. The
ranch.
”

“I already know you’re not going to kick me out,” Sage said, “so quit putting down my dad.”

“Whatever you say.”

They drove along, stopping to let the dogs and kittens—and Sage—relieve themselves. None of the animals had ever seen snow before, and they stepped with caution and trepidation through the cold and fluffy substance under their paws. They all kept stopping to sniff every few feet.

“First snow,” Sage said, making a snowball with her bare hands.

“First everything,” David said. “You should have seen Gelsey the first time she set foot on solid ground. After living in a cage her whole life, when she got free she thought she was on another planet.”

Sage watched the dogs walk along the road. They all had curved spines, bowed legs. Life in cages had crippled their bodies. When David said this was like another planet, Sage could only imagine their time without space and light. Sage loved how much David cared about them: He had called the Scottie “Gelsey” because it sounded Scottish, the spaniel “River” because the breed loved water.

“What happened to River’s face?” Sage asked.

“She stopped breeding—wouldn’t let the sire mount her. The owner got pissed and threw hot water at her. That’s when I took her away.”

“You put the bandages on?” Sage asked.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me how you know where the puppy farms are.”

“I have a list,” David said. “The owners all know about each other. I took the list from my mother’s desk.”

“Is that your mission?”

“Let’s drop it,” David said.

Sage nodded. She was curious, she wanted to know, but she also wanted to maintain the good feeling she had inside. After being snowbound in a cow barn for ten hours straight, the fresh air made her feel free and light. She sensed David watching her.

“This time next year,” David said, nodding toward Sage’s belly, “it’ll be first snow for him or her.”

“Him,” Sage said. “I’m having a boy, and I’m naming him Jake.”

“When’s he going to be born?”

“End of January,” she said.

“Then he won’t have to wait a whole year for his first snow.”

“He’ll see it in three months,” Sage said.

David nodded. He threw his cigarette down; it burned a hole into the snow. The animals must have sensed that it was time to get in the car, because they all turned at once. Sage watched them bound back, thronging around David’s feet as he opened the door. They weren’t going to let him get out of their sight, not for a minute. Neither was Sage.

Louisa met Alma Jackson at the kitchen door and thanked her for driving all the way to the ranch in the snow.

“It was bad,” Alma said woodenly.

Louisa didn’t know quite how to respond to that.

“Well, I guess we could have postponed our meeting. Dalton’s not even home!”

“Dalton?”

“Mr. Dalton Tucker. The man you’d be taking care of. Good care, from what your sister says.”

“Well,” Alma said, not corroborating the accolade one little bit. She licked her lips and looked around, seeming very nervous.

Louisa tried to smile at the woman standing before her, but her lips got stuck in a straight line. Could Alma have replied with one iota less enthusiasm? Was it possible that this little mouse could actually be related to Todd’s Tammy—of the warm smile and twinkling eyes? Did she want the position or was she just wasting everyone’s time?

“You have done home care before?” Louisa asked, getting down to business.

“Oh, yes.”

“Why don’t you tell me a little about your résumé?”

They sat at the kitchen table. Louisa gave Alma the hard once-over. She looked about forty, forty-one, with pasty-pale skin and a burnt-umber dye job: neither brown nor red, but somewhere in between—just a serviceable rinse to cover the gray. Didn’t she have a husband, someone whose eye she wanted to catch and please? Alma mentioned working at hospitals in Laramie and Lander, rest homes in Cheyenne, Dubois, and Three Peaks. She listed six private home-owners she had cared for after strokes, heart attacks, a broken hip, and frostbite.

“So you see,” she said, “I’m very qualified.”

“You sure sound it,” Louisa said, feeling somewhat reassured.

“Nice of Todd to recommend me.” Alma looked around the kitchen. “This seems like a nice place to work.”

“I drive my help hard,” Louisa said. “Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s how it’d be. I pay well, but I expect a lot.”

“A lot?”

“Yes. I’m a roll-up-your-sleeves kind of person. If you’re on my nickel, I want my money’s worth. Besides which, you’ll be taking care of my sweetheart. All the gold in Fort Knox wouldn’t cover . . .” To her dismay, Louisa felt herself choking up. She couldn’t express to this stranger or anyone else how she felt about Dalton.