Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels) (31 page)

The notion began to stretch his mind, and his imagination put wild ideas into his head. He wanted to laugh at himself for such a crazy notion. He was a believer, for sure, but not in this sort of thing.

He stood up and brushed the grass off his back and smoothed down his hair, then he began walking back home, his eyes on the stars. He turned over his crazy idea in his head; if it was true, it helped him make sense of little things. Her behavior and subtle changes in attitude that had taken place over the months.

He didn't know how to talk to her about it. Or anybody, for that matter. She'd think he was crazy for sure. And maybe he was.

He felt a powerful desire for his home, something solid and real and grounded and comforting. For the first time he began to fully imagine his home without them. Without her music and her positive energy, without the new books piling up at her bedside and Eliana's growing mountain of toys. And he knew she was right, that he was making a dreadful mistake.

As he entered the pasture behind the ranch he saw the headlights of a vehicle speeding away down the county road, but it was only when he got to the house and saw her Jeep was gone that he wondered if it had been her.

There was no one home. In Eliana's bedroom he found the toy stable still standing in the middle of the floor, and all the toys strewn around it. But then he noticed that Cosette was gone. And her mother's violin.

He called Katie Anne's cell phone but she didn't answer, so he got in his truck and drove off to look for them, but he realized the only place she'd go would be to her parents' home, and so he turned back and decided he'd wait until morning.

He was up at dawn feeding the animals, and he waited until a reasonable hour to call; when she didn't answer her phone, he called Tom and Betty Sue.

"She's not here," Tom said. "She called last night and said she and Eliana were going to take a little trip together, but she didn't say where. She said not to worry. She'll keep in touch."

Two days later Tom Mackey called and said he had heard from her.

They were in Paris.

Chapter 31

Ethan rode his horses hard that summer, and he drove his cattle all over the Flint Hills like a fugitive looking for somewhere to hide out in the endless waves of prairie. Word gets around in a town like Cottonwood Falls, and everyone knew that Katie Anne had walked out on him and taken Eliana, but Ethan wouldn't talk about it to anyone. He never showed his face around the South Forty anymore, and unless he had some business in town, he stayed away from his office. He gave Bonnie a month's paid vacation and took his legal files out to the ranch and worked from his home office.

His absence was keenly felt in Cottonwood Falls. His kindliness and friendly banter were conspicuously missing from all the places he had frequented: Hannah's Café, the South Forty, the gas station opposite the courthouse where his truck was often found up on the rack. He bought himself a new truck that month, but he was such a frugal man, even that didn't lift his spirits.

Ethan had over ten thousand head of cattle to care for that summer, and he worked himself and his cowhands long hours, from dawn to dusk, mending fences, carrying out vet checks, vaccinating, rounding up strays and generally watching over the huge brutish babies like a mother while they doubled their weight and ate their way to a healthy profit. He was content as long as he was working, but the evenings spent alone at his ranch were unbearable. He took to sleeping out on the range with the wind and the rattlesnakes; sometimes Jer or one of the cowhands stayed with him, and once Tom Mackey drove out at dusk to join them. On those nights Ethan could pretend the world was a solid place, fortified by staunch male defenses. They talked cattle and cursed the politicians in Washington, and ate pan-fried steak and fried potatoes cooked over a Coleman stove, then they stretched out in their sleeping bags and gazed at the stars until they fell asleep. But even this ploy worked only temporarily; after a while the earth became hard under his back and the night sky unbearably bright, and one night at around midnight, when he was out there alone, he packed up his gear and drove back to his ranch.

His beloved hills had turned bleak and sullen on him. They appeared to him now in the dark light in which so many others had seen them. Impenetrable, they gave up so little of themselves. He recalled Willa Cather's words:
Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out.
His beloved hills. For the first time in his life they afforded him no peace.

For weeks he waited for a word from Katie Anne, but none came. No response to his emails, no calls. He could get nothing but vague answers out of Tom and Betty Sue. She had a phone number but they weren't giving it out. Yes, she was fine. She had called them just yesterday. They were in Paris. They were in Geneva. Katie Anne was having some cosmetic surgery done at a clinic in Switzerland; Eliana was planning a week at a summer camp in the mountains with some friends from her old school. Ethan didn't ask when she was coming home.

As soon as he had a mailing address, he sat down and wrote her a letter. It was the kind of letter one would expect of him, articulate and intelligent, full of wit and artful turns of phrase. But there was nothing to betray the terrifying loneliness he was living, nothing to betray the mortal dread that gripped his throat when he thought he might be losing her forever. Beneath his intellectualism, Ethan was a simple man. In his scholarly days he had flirted with philosophies and postures; he had gone through his existential period, his romantic period. But they were brief and very fanciful. Ethan was his father's son, a straightforward man of straightforward morals. He firmly believed that happiness was a state of mind, and it ranked up there in the pantheon of values alongside hard work and honesty. Happiness was his stalwart; it was his David that could bring down any Goliath. There was no tragedy so devastating that he could not overcome it with a certain state of mind. And so, when he wrote Katie Anne, he belied with every word the anguish he was feeling. He looked at the letter and prided himself on how it sounded, how happy, solid, unperturbed it sounded.
Attitude,
he said to himself.
Yes, attitude. If I just keep a good attitude about it all, the world won't come crashing in on me.
But his world had crashed in on him. He walked over the rubble every morning when he came into the kitchen to make his coffee; he kicked aside the debris every night when he sat down on his porch with a beer in his hand and looked out upon his beloved land. His house stood strong and tall around him, and yet his life was splintered timber. Still, he forced a smile in the letters to Katie Anne. He believed he could will her to come back with his happiness.

His letters and emails went unanswered. The fear that she might never return began to grow as the days passed and he had not heard from her. His cynicism faded. Her departure was no ploy, no elaborate scheme to win his heart back. Ethan knew that now. Betty Sue had shared one of her letters with him; she had stopped by one evening when Tom was gone and brought it for him to read. She did this against her husband's wishes, for although Tom loved Ethan Brown like a son, he loved his daughter much more, and he felt that his child must have been deeply wounded to run so far away, to a place she had never aspired to, with a little girl that was not even her own.

Dearest Mom and Dad,

I know I just called, but I find I actually enjoy writing to you with pen and paper. I haven't written real letters in years, but I like that it takes time, and that when you get it, you can touch it and feel it, and maybe tuck it away in a drawer.

I'm learning a little French but my pronunciation is dreadful. I'm afraid I have no aptitude for languages. Eliana does much of the talking for us. I have long since given up trying to explain who I am. So now she just introduces me as her step-mother, which I don't mind.

I'm trying to come up with a solution for our lodging here in Paris. I've enrolled Eliana in her old school for the fall. I don't know how long she will attend, but I don't want her to fall behind.

I was glad to locate her friends. She was growing very bored with me, although her affection for me (if I'm not mistaken) seems to grow stronger. She's very protective of me. When people stop and stare at me in the street, she presses my hand more tightly. The French are very rude. It's amazing how long they can stare. I tried it once, on the bus with Eliana, to hold the gaze of a stranger. A girl. She was only about eighteen. But she stared me down. Just this straight, impassive stare. Of course, even though the plastic surgery has done wonders, I still feel like a walking curio. But it doesn't bother me so much anymore. Not like it did back home. I don't know why, but I feel immensely protected. I know that sounds absurd. Here I am, so far away from all I cherish, but I feel safe. Walls rise up around me and I feel safe. Can you imagine that? I have always hated the city. But this city is different. It's nothing like anything I have ever known or imagined. It has made an overwhelming impression on me with its grandness and its misery. There are holes gouged out of the huge stone blocks, from machine-gun fire during World War II. I think I could find anything here.

Betty Sue waited quietly while Ethan finished the letter. He handed it back to her. He had grown very solemn. "I never knew she could write like that."

"Oh, I did," said Betty Sue as she very carefully folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. "When she was in high school she used to write the most beautiful poetry. At least I thought it was beautiful. It wasn't really poetry, I guess, it was... like this. We were surprised that she wanted us to read it. That isn't what teenagers are like." She slipped the envelope into her purse. "But I guess it was just a phase. When she got out of school she lost interest in it." She hesitated for a moment. "Ethan, we've spoken to her since this letter. They've rented an apartment. I think she intends to stay for a while." She shook her head. "It breaks my heart to have her so far away." Her voice began to tremble and she broke off. "But she seems so much happier than she did here. I was really worried about her. I'm not so worried now." She smiled brightly. "Besides, Tom and I are going to visit her in October. I'm excited about it. I've never been to Paris."

Several days later, in the middle of the night, Ethan got up, took a piece of his business stationery with "Wordsworth" at the top, and wrote:

Dear Katie Anne,

I'm a mess. Please come home.

Love,

Ethan

He sealed it, put five stamps on it, and wrote
AIR MAIL
in large print on the envelope, and in the middle of the night, with Traveler sitting next to him on the front seat of his truck, he drove into Cottonwood Falls and dropped it into the mailbox at the post office. Then he drove back home and went to sleep. For the next few days he was happy. He called Jer and they met for a beer, and he told him things were going to be okay. But when three weeks had gone by and he still hadn't received an answer, he called Betty Sue and asked for Katie Anne's telephone number.

"She got your letter, Ethan."

"She did?"

"Yes."

He was silent.

"Ethan, she asked us not to give you her number. She doesn't want to talk to you."

* * *

The next week Ethan received the notice that the annulment was final. It had been plodding along the paper trail, working its way from desk to desk, waiting for the thudding stamp or the scraping pen before it was decree. Now it sat on his desk, reminding him of what he had done.

* * *

The night before Tom and Betty Sue left for Paris, Ethan stopped by. These days he knocked instead of walking in.

"Evenin'," he said when Tom opened the door.

"Ethan. Come on in."

Ethan stepped inside and stood self-consciously with his hat in one hand and the package in the other.

"Hope I'm not disturbing your dinner."

"Just finished."

There was no invitation to sit or to have coffee. He heard Betty Sue in the kitchen.

"I won't keep you. Just wanted to bring this by. It's something for Katie Anne. A book I thought she might like to have."

Ethan had wrapped it neatly in a sober blue gift-wrapping paper. He'd spent a long time deliberating over that paper. Choosing the color. In the gift card section of the supermarket with the endless selection of festive paper and ribbons. It wasn't a festive sort of gift.