The Diamond of the Rockies [03] The Tender Vine (36 page)

Lorenzo and Vittorio were staring. Flavio knew what they thought. He’d lost his mind. Reversed himself in the cheapest way. All his ideals, his philosophy, lost in a moment of petty rage. And inside he wasn’t sure he would have stopped until he’d stoned the man to death. Humiliated and terrified by what he had done without thinking, Flavio curled his lip. “Stupid Chinese,” he muttered. “Go back to China, old man!” He brushed off his sleeves, looked once more at the DiGratia brothers, and walked out.

He felt sick, as though something poisoned him. He had betrayed his nature, and still the strain was not relieved. The Chinaman wasn’t the source. The source and target of his rage was Quillan Shepard. He had told Carina he would destroy him. It had been words, bravado, to terrify her, to hurt her for saying she loved the man. But now he trembled. Now he believed he could actually do it. And in that thought, at last, the tearing inside him eased.

Carina stared in surprise as her brothers brought the old Chinese man into Papa’s medical room. They laid him, chattering and cringing, on the table. Tony raised a hand, pressing down against the air so the man would understand what he meant. “Stay here. Lie down.”

Carina saw the blood streaming from the old man’s ear. She couldn’t tell if it was all from the split at the top of it or if some came from inside, indicating injury to the brain and the inner ear. She looked from the Chinaman to her brothers.

Vittorio said, “Go get Papa. I’ll work on him, but I want Papa to have a look.”

Carina hurried out to find her papa. He was in the field, overseeing the removal of the vines. They should have been yanked out in the winter when they were completely dormant. It seemed crueler, somehow, to destroy them when they were making a weak, desperate attempt to grow.

“Papa—” she called—“Papa, Vittorio needs you. He has an injured Chinese.”

Her papa turned, started toward her. In a short time he reached her.

“A Chinese, you say?”

“Yes, Papa. He must have been struck with something.”

Papa shook his head and started for the house. “Where was he hit?”

“In the ear. There’s lots of blood, but I couldn’t see if it came from inside. He’s an old man, Papa. Who would do such a thing?”

“Who wouldn’t?” he said softly. “Was ever a people so despised?”

“They are strange, Papa. People don’t like what they don’t understand.” Papa frowned. “People understand less and less every day.”

They reached the house and went inside. Vittorio had cleaned the blood from the ear and was attempting to stitch the edges of the top together. He had been watching and learning from his papa for years. Now they worked together in both medicine and viticulture.

Carina saw a fresh trickle of fluid from inside the man’s ear. Trauma to the brain. There was swelling, too. She thought of D.C., Cain’s son, who’d been nearly killed by a head blow. But he had been silent and comatose. This old man chattered and shrieked in Chinese without end.

Papa approached him, laid a hand on his chest. The man became still, looking at Papa from his black almond eyes. “A candle, Carina,” was all Papa said.

Vittorio stitched furiously while the man lay still. Carina brought a candle, and Papa moved it across the old man’s vision. Then he handed it back to her and raised the man’s eyelids slightly with his thumb. Carina felt the familiar surge of pride and tenderness, watching her papa work. Only Papa could have eased the man’s terror with a touch.

She stepped back next to Tony. “What happened? Where did you find him?”

Tony glanced from her to their father. “He was sweeping up the lanes. Flavio got angry.”

Her mouth parted as she searched her brother’s face. “Flavio struck him?” Impossible. Flavio would never raise his hand to injure. He hated physical confrontation, scorned it.

“He lost his temper. Threw the ball.”

Her mind couldn’t argue with what Tony had seen with his eyes. Carina looked back at the old man. Flavio could do that? To a helpless old man doing his job? Then he was not the Flavio she knew. What had he become?

Tony took her arm, spoke close beside her head. “It’s not his fault. He’s powder, waiting to explode. You must do something before—”

“Before what?” She stared into his face.

“Before you lose them both.”

She swallowed the surge of fear and hissed, “Quillan is my husband.

What would you have me do?”

Tony shook his head. “I don’t know, Carina. I only know that when Flavio threw the balls, he was not—”Tony spread his hands—“he was not Flavio.”

She looked back at the old man in Papa’s hands.

Lorenzo leaned over, assisting. “He was also hit on his back. You might want to check him there.”

Carina looked back at the Chinaman as Papa eased his shoulder up from the table. She said, “Flavio struck him twice?”

“Before I stopped him.”

Carina chilled at the implication that Flavio might not have stopped himself. She couldn’t fathom it. Yes, Flavio was temperamental, introspective, and emotional, his moods unpredictable. But murder? She had warned Quillan but had not really believed it, not deep inside as she did now.
Signore,
is it possible?
She thought of Flavio as she knew him, as she had loved him, his hypnotic appeal due as much to his unpredictability as to his charm.

But there was no appeal to such lack of control. She thought how hard Quillan had tried to avoid violence, even toward the roughs who had terrorized Crystal. Quillan protected life, though no one had ever protected him. She ached inside for the man she loved.

And then she remembered begging for Flavio’s life.
“What if self-defense
becomes deadly force?”
And she had told him no. But now she saw what Flavio could do. What if Quillan couldn’t defend himself without killing Flavio? Or God forbid, what if he were killed? She pressed her palms to her head. “Tony, what do I do?”

He lowered his eyes, then said, “Annul the marriage.”

It was a hammer to her chest. Annul the marriage that was life to her? And what? Marry Flavio? To ease Papa’s guilt? To save Quillan’s life?

Did she love him enough to release him? For his life’s sake? She gripped a hand to her mouth and rushed outside.

Trembling and weeping, she ran out to the vineyard, stood among the vines ripped from the ground, their roots drying. She could almost hear them weeping with her.
Il Padre Eterno! Help me, please. How can I
give him up? How can I lose what you have given? Would you strip him from
me as you stripped the baby from my womb? Must I lose everything?

She looked at the dying vines. Just so would she wither and die without Quillan. He was her life.

I am sufficient
.

Spoken to her soul, the words reverberated. God had told her that before, but she had believed He added Quillan’s love to His. And, God forgive her, she had delighted more in Quillan’s. “Oh, Signore.” It was God she must love with all her being, Gesù she must love enough to surrender Quillan. She dropped, sobbing, to her knees. “I can’t do it.” Like Abraham she would hold the knife to Quillan’s heart if she rejected him now. God couldn’t ask it. Could He?

She dropped to the ground between the rows, her fists in the soil that had nourished but now killed the vines. She sobbed until she could cry no more, gripping the dirt into her hands, grinding it under her nails. “I can’t. I can’t.” But then she knew she must. If God asked it, she must do it. Her love for Quillan must be wrong, or God would not take it from her.

She slowly raised up, turned dull eyes to the hazy sky. Then closing her eyes, she said, “Signore, if you require it, I will obey.” There was no joy in that surrender, only pain and obedience. But obedience would have to be enough.

She dragged herself up from the dirt, turned, and trudged toward the house. A man stood at the gate to the courtyard, his natty dress and posture somehow familiar. He tapped a newspaper against his arm, seemingly unsure whether to open the gate and admit himself or wait to be acknowledged. He turned as she approached. “Mrs. Shepard!”

And now she recognized him. The man from the train, Roderick Pierce of the
Rocky Mountain News
. She sighed.

“Mrs. Shepard.” He said less confidently when he drew close enough to see her condition. “Are you . . . is everything . . .”

“What do you want, Mr. Pierce?”

He held up the paper. “I brought the article.”

Carina looked at the headline, entitled
A Hero for Today?
, feeling a sick ache in her stomach. An article about Quillan’s heroism, as if she didn’t know enough. “Could you not have sent it in the post?”

“I could have.” He smiled. “But, well the short of it is, the article has sparked some good things. I’ve sold
Harper’s Monthly
on a series of biographical sketches featuring your husband. I say, from what I learned in Crystal, it’s as good as Wild Bill Hickok. They’re crazy for it.”

Carina could do nothing but stare through tear-streaked eyes in a face smudged with dirt. The sight was not lost on Mr. Pierce.

“But perhaps now is not a good time?”

She laughed bleakly. “Now is certainly not a good time, Mr. Pierce. But as for the sketches, you’ll have to ask Quillan.”

“Is he . . . Forgive me, Mrs. Shepard, are you in trouble? Can I assist you?”

She looked into his earnest face. “I’m such a sight, am I?”

“Please don’t think me untoward.”

Again she formed a weak smile. “At this time my husband . . .” How much longer could she use that word to describe Quillan Shepard? How could he ever be anything else? “My husband will be at Schocken’s quarry.”

Waving her arms, she told him how to get to the quarry.

“Shall I leave this?” He held out the paper. “I have another copy.”

She looked at the extended paper, slowly took it in her hands.

“Thank you.”

He tipped his hat. “Until next time, ma’am. I hope it will be soon and under better circumstances.”

She smiled. A likeable man, though he did show up at the worst of times.

Quillan eased the wagon into the shade of the rock bowl, from which they blasted and cut the basalt cobbles. He set the brake and jumped down. His right shoulder sent a twinge from having been slept on without moving—the sleep of emotional exhaustion. He had awoken missing Carina with everything in him, but almost as strong was the sense that he didn’t suffer it alone.

The verses he had read that morning from the prophet Isaiah left him no doubt that God knew, that Jesus understood personally all his grief.
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted
with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and
we esteemed him not
. Quillan had dropped to his knees, thinking of his own rebellion, his own rejection of the Jesus Cain had tried to make him see. Then he’d read on.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem
him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted
. Just as everyone had assumed Quillan’s guilt, imagined wickedness where there was only want.

But He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities
. Quillan didn’t want to think how many wounds he had personally added to the Savior’s pain. The hateful thoughts, the bitter self-absorption. He was all too aware of his failings.
The chastisement of our peace was upon
him
. The chastisement of our peace. Quillan pondered those words. He had felt the peace of God’s presence, an inner trust of complete abandonment he’d never known before. Because Christ had borne the chastisement.

And with his stripes we are healed
. That verse had brought tears. Again. Why would God himself take the whippings Quillan deserved upon himself? Why would Jesus succumb for the likes of him? Before, Quillan had felt he owed nothing to anyone. He went his own way, living by what conscience he had, with a fierce ingrained need to protect the weak, the mistreated. But for himself he’d refused redemption. Now he basked in it. God understood his failings and suffered with him. An awesome and incomprehensible thought.

That was the vine to which he clung, the vine that gave him life. He needed nothing more, yet . . . human weakness still made him ache with thoughts of Carina. Would that ever end? Surely even a branch shuddered at the pruning knife.

Quillan had already watered the horses, so he took the feed bags from the bed and hooked them over each animal’s head in turn, with a soft word and stroke to their necks. Jock nuzzled him affectionately, and Quillan held the horse’s muzzle to his face, then gave him his feed. He reached up to the box for the flat leather bag that held his own bread and cheese and his journal.

He perched on a gray heap of basalt, away from where the others ate, talked, and sent him dark looks. It mattered less today than it had before.
He is despised and rejected of men
. At least he was in good company. Quillan wasn’t even sure why he had shown up at the quarry, except that he had taken the job, and until he was certain he should leave it, he meant to do it.

He was a man of action. Sitting around undirected would make him crazy. At least at the quarry he could work the strain away, something he’d learned early and employed nearly every day of his life. Others might long for empty time, but that was Quillan’s enemy. His body was strong, his mind active. Both required work. He suddenly thought of Mae telling him he must learn to be still. Not likely. He bit hard into his bread.

He was halfway through the bite when he saw Flavio. The instant tightening in his chest quelled any thoughts that he was delivered from this present strife. There was the man who stood between him and his wife. If not for Flavio, Dr. DiGratia might think more kindly on him.

More than that, it was Carina’s own lingering connection Quillan fretted over as he looked at the figure Flavio Caldrone cut.

There was something fine in both build and manner that made him starkly out of place among the sharp hewn rocks and rough hewn men. But Flavio walked among them with an easy grace, confident of both their acceptance and respect. What was his story, Quillan wondered. A rich aristocratic family? Plenty to eat, plenty to wear, all the blessings of God and man at his disposal?