Dream Country (4 page)

“Oh, no,” Hathaway said.

Daisy’s hand went to her mouth. She stared at the white stick. It was a home pregnancy test. She remembered as if it were yesterday. Daisy had used one herself, over sixteen years ago. Way out on that Tucker ranch, in the privacy of her bathroom, she had used the stick she’d bought at a drugstore in Dubois. Not wanting to get James’s hopes up, she had been positive her missed period was a false alarm, just wishful thinking—but she had taken the test anyway.

“She’s pregnant,” Hathaway whispered.

“I can’t think of that now.” Daisy sobbed. “Just let her come home to me.” She bowed her head, going back in time to Wyoming.

The way Daisy had found out she was pregnant with the twins had been by peeing on a white plastic stick, waiting for the little window to turn blue.

Blue as the big sky over the Wind River mountains, blue as the unknowable depths of James Tucker’s eyes, blue as the ocean she had missed back home.

And as blue as the window of this other pregnancy test, the one Sage must have taken, the one that told Daisy Tucker the reason her sixteen-year-old daughter had run away.

Chapter Three

J
ames Tucker rode down the fingerbone ridge, dust swirling up from beneath the horse’s hooves. A few stunted cedars clung to these red rocks, sloping down to the bare brown rangelands. The Wind River mountains rose around him, and he galloped through their purple shadows on his way home for supper.

He followed a dry creek bed over the barren desert-brown land. This was blood-soaked territory, the heart of Wyoming’s cowboy, Crow, Shoshone, and soldier history, and James had never lived anywhere else. His mind was on cattle and water: All summer they’d had the worst, longest-lasting drought he’d ever seen. Here it was the middle of October, and the streambeds were as dry as they’d been in August. It had been a long day riding the range, and he was hungry.

Thousand-foot cliffs rose to his left. He swung through the dark canyon, where it was cool and lonely. The setting sun turned the rock pinnacles bloodred, but down here in the shade the summer heat dissipated. The horse ran fast and steady. They clambered up an incline, the trail wriggling across a narrow pass, emerging into the river valley.

The land was different here. The slow river carved sharp red cliffs, flanked on both sides by huge cottonwood trees and dry pastures. James had six miles to go, but he felt the hot wind in his face and knew he was close to home—the DR Ranch, named for his parents, Dalton and Rosalind.

Getting close, James felt his breathing change. His horse knew it, too. This was how it was to understand a bit of land, to be just as much a part of it as the red rocks and riverbeds. Newcomers never got that. Like the sheep owners who’d come in when his father was a child, ignoring prior claims of cattlemen, nearly ruining the basin land for cattle grazing. His grandfather had barely held on.

In Tucker lore, cattle were good and sheep were bad. Instead of a teddy bear or woolly lamb, James’s father had given the twins toy brown cows the day they were born. James had told them bedtime stories about their great-grandpa slaughtering those overgrazing sheep, driving them straight over rimrock precipices. True tales: The Tuckers had defended this land against the sheepherding Rydells. His wife hadn’t liked those stories much.

Daisy was a New Englander. She had the deep blue sea in her blood, and she didn’t understand the measures people took to keep their land out here. James would take her on the most fantastic rides, showing her red rocks, searching for bones and gems to use in her jewelry. He had given her secret canyons, glowing skies, sagebrush trails, and ancient cave drawings. They’d given each other twins—Jake and Sage—and that had been enough to keep her out west awhile.

Some people were born home, James thought. They might move to the next valley or even another state, but it was another story to pick up and transplant themselves into a whole new landscape. Daisy had tried. She had found inspiration for her jewelry, and for a while she had seemed to find something larger—different or deeper—with James and his country.

But when the nightmare came, Daisy didn’t have enough comfort inside her to withstand the loss of Jake, and she had to leave. This was the country that took her son. James couldn’t blame her: New England was her home, just like Wyoming was his. Sometimes he imagined following her and Sage back east to the Connecticut shoreline, but that would be like trying to plant a cactus in an apple orchard. Wouldn’t take. Besides, there were other reasons why James couldn’t leave this land.

Jake was here. He was three when James had lost him. They’d ridden down to the spring grazing lands on a roundup, father and son in the same saddle. Twelve cowboys altogether had ridden along, plenty of eyes to keep watch on one tiny kid. Sage had cried because Daisy had wanted Sage to stay home with her. James had felt so bad that day, hearing his daughter wail as they’d galloped off, but soon he felt grateful. At least he had one child left alive.

They had never found Jake’s body, so they’d never buried his bones. There wasn’t a grave to visit. His spirit dwelled in the canyon, near the rock where James had told him to sit, in the thirty seconds he’d left him alone while he’d ridden off to rope a steer. After all this time, James knew Jake wasn’t coming back, but he wasn’t going to abandon his son to the canyon, with no one to look after him, no matter what.

The ranch buildings were visible now. James had a log cabin out back, but wanting to check on his father, he rode up the trail toward the big gabled stone house. The land was bone dry. He’d spent the day watching the sky, thunderheads forming without letting out any rain. Riding to the headwaters of the creeks that fed his ranch, he’d seen rocks that hadn’t been above water in his lifetime. Tomorrow he’d go out to burn the irrigation ditches, ready to catch whatever rain might come.

Reining in his hard-ridden horse, he stepped down from the saddle and led him to the corral. He could smell Louisa’s cooking. She wasn’t quite his stepmother—she and Dalton had never seen fit to get married—but she’d lived with the old man for over twenty years. Louisa Rydell was as different from James’s mother, Rosalind Tucker, as any woman could be. James had never been happy about the idea of seeing his mother replaced, but with his father losing ground, lately he’d been almost glad of Louisa’s presence.

Slapping his hat back and forth across his chaps, he shook off the trail’s dust. It covered his clothes, his skin, the back of his throat. His hands were brown and dry, and his fingers ached from holding the reins, not a lick of moisture in the air. He’d paid to have water trucked in, so the troughs were full. Bending over, he scooped up a careful handful of water. He drank one, soaked his neck with another. Locusts hummed in the trees, and some bird was squawking.

James knew all the wildlife, and he hadn’t heard a bird like that before. It stopped him in his boots. Standing still, he looked around. Most birdsong came from the chaparral, and he turned to survey the dense, dry thicket of dwarf evergreens and cactus. But this song was coming from the ranch house, and it reminded James of an ancient sound, one he had rarely heard for over fifteen years.

After all this time, he still heard a baby crying every time he turned around. But two juncos flew out of the porch eaves, onto a cottonwood branch. They chattered noisily, dipping into the water hole, then flying back onto the porch. Shaking his head, James let out a big breath. Inside the house, he heard the radio playing and pans clattering. The cooking smells were strong.

“What the hell’s that noise?” Dalton Tucker asked, walking out onto the porch. Small-framed, he had a limping, pigeon-toed gait. He had had polio as a child, and it left him with one leg shorter than the other.

“Birds, Dad.”

“Building nests in the goddamn eaves? In October?”

“Beats me.”

“Snowbirds, at that. In the middle of a drought. We’re in for a bad winter. I’m telling you, son,” the old man said, shaking his head, “the birds know. This dry patch’ll look like child’s play compared to what’s coming. Snowbirds nesting on the porch . . . did you see the frost this morning?”

“I did.”

“No water in the streams, but frost on the pumpkins. And birds in the eaves. It’s gonna be a blizzard year. Mark my words—drifts up to the roof.” Dalton coughed and walked over to the rail to spit.

Standing there, he looked confused. His face was red and leathery, as dry as beef jerky, and James pictured his eyes lively and laughing. That image—his spirited cowboy father—was most often in his mind these days. Dalton spit into the dirt again, then turned around. Seeing James, he jumped.

“Jesus, you scared me,” Dalton said.

“Didn’t mean to,” James said slowly.

“What are you doing home?” Dalton Tucker asked, as if he was seeing James for the first time.

James just stood there. He was six inches taller than his father, his shoulders twice as wide. Dalton squinted his blue eyes, as if he was trying to remember something, attempting to weave together the facts of James riding home, the time of day, and the snowbirds in the eaves. The more he thought, the more frustrated his expression became. James saw the clouds in his eyes, wondered what was going on in there.

“Suppertime, Dad,” James said. The old man’s face registered the memory, and James looked away just as he started to look confused again. “Where’s Louisa?”

“Louisa?”

Again, James just waited. There’d been plenty of times he wished his father had forgotten all about Louisa Rydell, but right now it scared him. Dalton looked afraid, too. Fear always made him angry as a bear, flashing in his eyes and knotting his hands into fists. To cover himself, he always struck out.

“Why don’t you speak plain English,” Dalton snapped. “Don’t talk gibberish when you know I don’t understand. Start over, will you?”

“I asked you—” James began slowly.

“Goddamn it,” Dalton said, sniffing. Inside, the cornbread was burning. The odor was sharp and sweet, like sugar turning to caramel: James ran past him, found the kitchen filled with smoke. A pan in the oven was on fire: James grabbed a mitt, reached inside, threw a flaming brick of cornbread into the sink.

In the next room, a child began to fret. Louisa sometimes baby-sat her daughter Ruthie’s young girl, Emma. Swearing at himself, Dalton clomped out of the room to check on her. He must have been minding the stove, watching the girl, and forgotten both in the commotion of the bird.

“What’s this? Where’s Dalton?” Louisa Rydell asked, running in with an armful of sunflowers.

“Cornbread caught fire,” James said, “looks like to me. You left Dad in charge of cooking and Emma?”

Louisa looked from James to the black pan, and her face fell. Handing James the flowers, she began to scrape the charred and sodden bread into the garbage.

“You lose that tone with me, James Tucker,” Louisa said. “I just stepped out to pick some flowers.”

“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t let her out of your sight,” James said sharply. “Not for a minute. The house could have burned down.”

“You telling me how to be a grandmother?”

“My father can’t take care of himself, much less a baby.”

“Now listen, you—” Louisa began, her eyes blazing.

“Forgot, that’s what I did.” Dalton came to the door with Emma on his hip. She was a sweet little girl, all pink and blond. Smiling in Dalton’s arms, she seemed unperturbed by the fire and fight. “Goddamn it. Smelled the cornbread burning and forgot I had this little angel to look after.”

James didn’t say anything. His father had forgotten the sequence, but it hardly seemed important right now. Emma held Dalton’s ears, trying to look him straight in the eyes.
That’s how it used to be with Sage,
James thought. She had loved her grandfather, and he’d adored her.

“Don’t worry, darling,” Louisa said. She was still a fantastic-looking woman, tan and tall. She wore a full denim skirt, lavender washed-silk blouse, and purple boots. Silver earrings dangled, and turquoise beads hung around her neck. Her auburn hair hung in a long braid down her back. Raising her head, she flashed a big smile to reassure Dalton Tucker.

“No?” Dalton asked, enthralled by Emma. She was about two and a half, as fair as Sage had been dark, and James wondered whether he still missed his granddaughter. Whether he still remembered her . . .

“Don’t worry about a thing,” Louisa said, her voice full of love, throwing a hard look at James. “We’re all here. Emma’s fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine.”

“Could’ve been a disaster,” Dalton said, stroking Emma’s blond head. “The goddamn house could have burned down. This little one . . .”

James walked away. He had ten thousand head of cattle on the spring range, thirsty and in need of water. Why wait till tomorrow? Tonight he was going to ride back, start burning irrigation ditches. He liked Emma, but right now he didn’t want to watch his father pouring attention on someone else’s kid. The Tuckers had had two of their own, once upon a time. . . .

Maybe he could go out and catch some rain in areas he hadn’t gotten to yet. Ready new ditches, burn away the summer’s growth of briars and sagebrush to clear the way. Dig out more rocks, roll away bigger boulders, watch for the rattlesnakes that multiplied in drought summers. His irrigation shovel was sharp, and he hoped he’d hear the rattle before he felt the strike.

Ranchers lived in a perpetual state of hope. They hoped for rain during dust season, dry spells after deluges. They hoped for smart horses that didn’t need much spurring, good stock dogs to heel the cows. James knew something he hoped most men would never find out: Men who lost their sons didn’t have much left in the way of hope. Hope to James was scarcer than this season’s rain. But when the skies finally opened up, damned if he wouldn’t be prepared. Then he thought of what his father had said about blizzards coming, and shook his head.

Maybe Daisy had known what she was doing, leaving. Wyoming was one goddamned hard place to try to live.

Chapter Four

T
he train jolted along the tracks, making Sage feel as if she was going to throw up again. It took all her concentration not to. Staring at Ben helped. Ben loved her, and they were going to be together forever. He had said so, and he kept saying so. Sage loved Ben so much. She could hardly believe he was her boyfriend. So many girls at school liked him, but it was Sage he wanted to be with.

Their hands were touching. Well, their fingers, actually. The tips of their index fingers. Ben was asleep, lying in his bedroll on the hard wood floor, facing Sage. The boxcar was dark and cold. It wasn’t heated, and last night the temperature had been so low they could see their breath. Sage stared at their fingertips, as if she could actually see the connection she had with Ben, keep it as solid as it was in that moment, preserve it forever.

“Oh!” The word just popped out of her mouth as a terrible wave of nausea went through her.

“Huh?” Ben asked, waking right up. He rubbed his eyes with one fist, just like a very small boy. “What’s wrong—you sick again?”

Sage nodded miserably.

Ben linked his fingers with hers, his eyes filled with sympathy. Sage knew he was concerned about her, but there were so many other things to be worried about, too: their mothers, missing school, having to ration their water, being cold, being railroad stowaways.

“If only the train wasn’t so bouncy,” she said.

“It’s pretty weird without windows,” he said. “Even I feel kind of sick.”

“Bet you wish you were safe and warm at home,” she said, afraid he’d say yes.

“Coming was my idea,” he reminded her.

Sage wanted to smile, but she felt too sick. Ben amazed her. When she had tried to say good-bye to him, he had refused to let her go alone. She had never thought she was very pretty, wonderful, the kind of girl someone would want to be with. Her mother always praised her, told her to be confident, but no matter how much Sage wanted to believe her, she couldn’t. If she was so great, why would her father stay so far away?

“Oh,” she moaned again, holding her stomach.

“Hang on.” Ben stood up. “I’ll see where we are.”

She nodded, watching him go to the door. He couldn’t help her nausea, but she could feel him wanting to do something. They were in the seventeenth car of a freight train, chugging west through New York State. Their car was carrying bins of machine parts manufactured in New London, Connecticut, and bound for Boise, Idaho. Sage had checked and rechecked the destination labels, and she could smell the grease the parts were packed in, heavy and sweet as old perfume.

Sage and Ben were heading for Wyoming, to see Sage’s father. They had to go somewhere. Sage had vague memories of the ranch being huge, endless, with barns and cabins everywhere. Even if her father didn’t want any part of her, he could let her and Ben stay in a cabin hidden off in the mountains till the baby was born.

“Can’t see too much,” Ben called, peering through the narrow gap in the sliding door. The car was old, made of wood and iron. People had carved their initials in the panels. “Fields and trees covered with a little snow, or maybe just frost. Looks like farm country, haystacks everywhere.”

“Are we still heading west?”

“Yep. Following the sun,” Ben said, coming back to hold her. He was an Eagle Scout with many badges, as knowledgeable and comfortable in nature as anyone Sage knew.

“Good.” Sage leaned against his thin chest.

It had been her idea to jump this train. When she was little, after she and her mother had moved back to Connecticut, her mother had told her stories of the Old West. Even though Sage was so young, she had noticed that all her mother ever talked about was the place they’d just left. But the stories had made her feel closer to her father, so she’d never said a word. They were about cattle drives, roundups, square dances, and powwows. They told of cowboys, cowgirls, medicine men, very good guys and very bad guys, and hoboes who rode the rails.

This train line ran all along the shoreline, right through Silver Bay, and from the time Sage could remember, she had imagined becoming a hobo, hopping a freight back to Wyoming to see her father. If people could do it in the olden days, why not now? Sage had dreamed of going so many times over the years, not because she didn’t love her mother, but because she needed her father: hearing that long train whistle leaving Silver Bay in the middle of the night, holding on to the ancient dream of being her father’s daughter again.

But even Sage had been shocked by how simple getting aboard actually was. Six cars had been standing behind the old depot. With Ben hiding behind the station, Sage had watched men loading crates with forklifts, and she’d asked straight out which ones were heading west.

“This one, little lady.” One old codger had laughed, spitting tobacco juice. “Why, you want to make your way to Hollywood?”

“No, I’m just doing a report for social studies,” Sage had replied.

“Good for you,” the man had said, nodding encouragingly. “What on?”

“Freight trains,” she’d answered. “Where they go, how long it takes.”

“Well, this car you asked about,” he began, “heading out to Boise, Idaho, with a load of engine parts. Later today the old 4:52 is gonna swing down from Worcester, and these cars are gonna hook aboard. It’ll take around a week, going straight through Chicago and over the Great Plains, through the Rockies . . . engine parts, limestone, traprock, and fish meal. Wish I was going for the ride.”

Sage had been leaning on her bike, her hair in braids, trying to look younger than sixteen so he wouldn’t guess her motives. She knew the man was about her grandfather’s age, and she listened to him tell her to work hard in school, that trains were ten times better than trucks, that if she wanted a lesson on cross-country transport, he was her man. He said he’d come right to her school and lecture to her whole class. Thanking him, Sage had ridden away.

She had circled back, and while the men were taking their coffee break, she and Ben had wheeled their bikes right up the ramp they’d left in place. They had knapsacks full of supplies, bedrolls, Ben’s tent, and their bikes. Stowing everything had been no problem: The boxes were stacked four high, creating instant hiding places. She and Ben had curled up in the dark, listening to the men talk when they finished loading the car, waiting until 4:52, feeling the ground shudder as the train started to move.

“Third period,” Ben said now, checking his watch. “I’m missing history. Good.”

“We’ll see more history than you can imagine,” Sage said, trying to make him feel better. She knew he liked school, but she was thinking of the tales about cowboy and Shoshone battles fought right on her family’s land. Her father sent her arrowheads he found on the ranch, rising through the soil in the paddocks and corrals like ghosts with stories to tell.

“Yeah?” Ben asked, kissing her lightly on the lips.

“Yeah.” Sage closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see them fill with tears. She didn’t know what she was doing. Sixteen and six months pregnant: This seemed to be someone else’s life. Just three years ago she’d gotten her first period, and here she was ruining two futures.

“Do you think our mothers got the letters yet?” she asked.

“They will today.”

“I’m sorry I made you leave home,” she said. “Leave school.”

“I don’t want you to go alone,” he said. “And I wasn’t going to stick around to hear my mother’s shit about you being pregnant. My dad got his girlfriend pregnant, and that’s why they had to get married so fast, why I had to go to Boston in August for their wedding. My mom talks about it so much, you’d think it was her about to have the baby. I don’t want to lay this on her, too.”

Sage nodded, wishing he hadn’t said “lay this on her, too.” She let him kiss her some more, even though she still felt sick. She didn’t want him to notice the panic in her eyes, certain it must show.

He loves me, she told herself. She wished he’d say it again. He hadn’t spoken the words enough that day. Sometimes he didn’t need to: Sage just knew. They had met during Sage’s freshman year, but they had fallen in love thirteen months ago, when they had crossed paths on a mountain hike. Ben had slipped away from his friends to follow her.

It was meant to be,
Sage told herself, then and now.
We were made in heaven
. Way up on that mountaintop, that very day, they had kissed. Ben had taken her hand, and their fingers had interlocked. Their hands had been a perfect fit, and so had their hearts. Ben joked that they had never once had a date. Although they went many places together, there had never been the usual nervous phone-calling, waiting and wondering, awkward silences. Their time together flowed naturally; it was the hours spent apart that felt unreal.

“Touch me,” she whispered now, her eyes filling with tears.

“Sage,” he whispered back, taking her in his arms. The embrace unlocked her heart, and Sage started to sob.

“I’m sorry,” she cried. “So sorry, Ben.”

“For what?” he asked. “I love trains.”

She laughed, choking on her tears.

“I do,” he continued. “My cousin had this whole model train setup when we were little, and I was so jealous, I took a big section of his track and hid it in his garage.”

“But you didn’t want to quit school just to take a train ride.”

“No, but I wanted to be with you,” he whispered into her ear. The feeling of his warm breath made her shiver, and she pressed harder into his chest. He stroked her back, making all her fear drain away.

They had been virgins when they met. Sage had always wanted to save herself for marriage, to wait until she and the love of her life made promises to be together forever. Ben had felt the same way. They told each other last Christmas, lying in each other’s arms on an old mattress in the attic of Ben’s house.

“But you’re the love of my life,” Ben had said, smoothing Sage’s hair back from her eyes.

“And you’re mine,” she had whispered.

Even now, feeling him push the hair back from her face as he kissed her forehead, cheeks, and nose, she knew those words were true. Last Christmas, knowing they were years too young to get married, they had decided to make love. Their love was real. It was building so fast, they couldn’t keep up with it.

The time came: during school vacation, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. They were so excited, so positive of their love. Taking off their clothes in Ben’s attic, with his mother at work, they had all the time in the world. Sage had loved the way their skin felt, so hot under the thick quilt, as if their bodies had been born to be together.

Ben had bought condoms. Ripping open the foil package, unrolling the latex sheath, had made them laugh. What business did foil and latex have under the covers of their magic bed? Sage and Ben loved nature, and the coming together of their bodies seemed pure and right. Condoms got in the way.

They used them for a while. Ben bought them at the drugstore. He kept them in his wallet, along with his driver’s license and high school ID. Other boys in school carried them as badges, proof of having sex. Not Ben. He considered condoms private, personal, rude but necessary. And then, one day last spring, he and Sage had made love without putting one on. The sensation had been incredible, intense, so different from anything they had ever felt before: heat, skin, dark wetness, passion.

“Too many clothes,” Sage whispered now, jolting along in the train, wishing she and Ben could be under the covers of their magic bed, skin touching everywhere, their hearts beating together.

“I know,” Ben said.

“I want to feel you closer,” she said.

“Me, too,” he said. Unzipping her jacket slightly, he slid his arms inside. She still had on layers of shirts and sweaters, but it was better than nothing. Sage craved more contact, just as she needed to hear him say he loved her. More and more, she needed his reassurance, his closeness, his words, his body.

“Do you—” she started to ask.

“Do I what?”

Love me?
she wanted to whisper, but she stopped herself. She felt needy and pathetic. Hadn’t he just told her that morning? How many times did he have to say the words in order for her to be convinced?

It was so hard to believe that people’s love for each other could last. Just look at her parents—they had been so madly in love. She could tell by the pictures, the way her mother talked, the secrets her aunt had told her—and for the past thirteen years, they’d been apart for good.

Surreptitiously, she touched the spot between her collarbones. Slipping her fingers under her shirt, she felt for her two-faced necklace. There was love in the stones and bone; there was power in all the jewelry her mother made. Her mother said she didn’t know why, but she couldn’t deny it. She had taught Sage never to be falsely modest. If you had a gift, you had to bring it forth, not pretend it didn’t exist. And her mother had told her there was more power and love in Sage’s necklace than any other she’d ever made.

Sage wondered. With all her problems, she couldn’t deny that she had love. Ben was with her, wasn’t he? She had a wonderful aunt, a grandfather and step-grandmother in Wyoming, but what about her father? Cards and letters and boxes of arrowheads were one thing, but why wasn’t he sending her plane tickets, begging her to come out? And all Sage and her mother did these days was fight. The sudden thought of her mother was so strong, so vivid, Sage actually swooned.

She nearly passed out, but instead she knew she was going to be sick. Tearing herself from Ben’s arms, she flew across the car. She retched, holding her stomach, throwing up into another plastic bag, one from a roll she had in her knapsack, being as totally prepared as a Girl Scout on the run was supposed to be. Sage couldn’t stop the tears rolling down her face.

Mom,
she thought. This was the first time in her entire life that Sage had ever gotten sick without her mother there to hold her head. Why couldn’t it be simple like before? Why couldn’t she have stayed a child? Couldn’t she be her mother’s little girl and have Ben at the same time?