The Outsider (68 page)

He threw himself against her, stammering words she didn’t understand. She held him tight, pulling his head into her belly.

She looked up at Johnny Cain. “I want to go home, please. Take us home.”

They took the same road home, and when the Weaver farm was lost from sight and the sound of the hymnsong had long ago been swallowed up by the wind, Rachel took off her prayer cap. She held it up in the air a moment, and then she let it go. The wind snagged it and held it aloft a bit, sending it dipping and soaring, and then the cap fell to the ground and began to roll over and over the yellow grass like a tumbleweed.

THE CIRCUIT PREACHER WASN’T
due in Miawa City for another month yet, so they journeyed up to the Blackfoot Indian Reservation to be married by the missionary there. Standing in the small logwood church with two silent Indians for witnesses, Rachel and Johnny Cain spoke the vows that made them man and wife in the eyes of the Montana Territory, at least, if not in the eyes of God.

She hadn’t been able to stop herself from thinking how different this was from her wedding to Ben. It was the Plain tradition for the groom to help the bride prepare for the wedding feast by slaughtering the chickens for her. So that morning of their wedding, Ben had come to her door with a headless chicken in each hand, and wearing feathers on his head in place of his Plain hat and streaks of vermilion paint across his cheeks like a wild Indian. Oh, how they had laughed. Later, in the barn, after the preaching service, after the wedding hymn had been sung and their vows made, her father had put his hands over their clasped hands, and pronounced his blessing upon them.

She was given no such blessing now.

The vows were the same, though, then and now. To cherish each other, to care for each other rich or poor, ill or well, until death did them part. She and Ben had spent their wedding
night at her father’s house. She and Johnny Cain spent theirs in a borrowed tipi. And both times it was the same—then and now, there was love.

NOW, IT WAS THE
middle of the day and here they were in their bedroom, Mr. and Mrs. Johnny Cain just back from being married, and they both knew for what, although neither of them had spoken of it.

Rachel watched while her new husband took off his flashy new hat—it had a rattlesnake skin band around the crown of it—and tossed it at a wall hook.

He lay down on the bed, stacked his hands behind his head, and crossed his legs at the ankles. He wriggled his hips, settling in. She loved the look of his hips, lean and hard, she loved their strength when they made love. Her gaze traveled down the long length of his legs, to his . . . to his dusty boots on her star-patterned quilt.
Ach vell,
he had some things to learn. And she would have some things to learn, as they fit into the harmony of living as man and wife.

He caught her eyeing his boots. “I suppose,” he said, his voice sparked by his teasing smile, “we’re gonna be having our arguments as man and wife. But I’m telling you this right here and now, I’m never sleeping out in any barn or sheepwagon anymore.” His smile deepened, his eyes warmed. “Leastways, I won’t be doing it without you to share the misery.”

“Hunh. All this time I’ve been wondering why, and now I have the truth of it. You married me for my big wide bed.”

The way he was watching her, she felt as if a hot wind were blowing through her, right through her. It was a wild kind of feeling, and she rather liked it.

He could move so quick. One moment he was lying
there on the bed, all lazy and relaxed and with his boots leaving dust smudges on the quilt, and the next instant he was up and swinging her around with an arm at her waist, sitting down in the rocking chair and pulling her onto his lap.

“I won’t deny,” he said, the whisper of his breath brushing her throat, “that when the preacher was prattling on about bodies worshipping each other, I thought about that big bed of yours and what we’ll be doing in it most every night for the rest of our lives.”

He spanned the back of her head with his hand, tangling his fingers in her hair and pulling her mouth down to his. There was a wildness in his kiss this time, a greed, a violence that staggered and excited her.

It staggered and excited the chair as well. The rocker tipped back onto the points of its curved slats, knocking against the wall.

“Johnny,” she said into his open mouth, not quite able to let go of it. “Be careful. You’re going to—”

The chair rocked back again, harder this time. The headrail and spindles smacked against the wall, and the momentum sent the chair reeling forward to dump them onto the floor in a tangle of arms and legs and rocker slats. He laughed, a full-throated, wonderful laugh. And she was laughing, too.

They grew quiet, content for the moment to lie close, side by side, face to face, to hold each other in sight.

He gave the rocker a nudge with the pointed toe of his boot. “I’ve never known a chair to turn rogue on me like that before.”

She traced the shape of his mouth with her fingers. “You are the rogue.”

“Yeah, that’s me. I’m a naughty, naughty rogue, and you’ve always been hellbent on reformin’ me.” His breath
swept against her hair, his soft laugh wavered on her cheek. “It’s going to be a glory of a marriage.”

NOAH STOOD ON THE PORCH,
looking at the door and wondering what to do.

It might not be the Plain way to go knocking on doors, but he sure didn’t want to walk in on a perversion like what poor Fannie had witnessed not so long back. His hands curled into fists. If he had been the one to see her . . . to see his Rachel doing . . .
ach,
dear God, even to think of it filled him with such a gut-wrenching rage. If he had been the one to see her, he might have killed her for it. The thought filled him with horror, with guilt and shame, so profound it shook the roots of his soul. But he knew it to be true. Such was the depth of the hate he now felt for her, such was the depth of his love.

He sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Rachel, our Rachel, how could you do this, how could you leave us? How could you leave me?

He drew in another deep breath, sighing. He had his duty as deacon to perform now.
Ja,
he had his duty, he would speak to her one last time. And then her name would never pass his lips again.

As he raised his hand to knock, his gaze fell on his own knuckles, which were black and blue and scabbed still. Such a terrible thing, a Plain man with the marks of violence on his hands. Maybe we are all of us doomed and damned now, he thought. The outsider had brought his evil corruption to them all.

He had to knock twice, and the sight of her when she pulled open the door tore a choking gasp from his throat. She had on her Plain dress, but wore no apron, no shawl
over her breasts. Her dress was unpinned at the neck. He could see the pulse beating at the base of her throat. Her hair fell over her shoulders and arms in a dark red silken quilt, caressing her hips with wanton curls and tangles.

He swallowed, hard. For a moment he thought of what it would be like for a man to bury his face and his hands in such hair. It put the sun to shame, her hair.

She stood there, blinking against the light that poured through the door at his back, and then she gasped.

“Noah.” His name was a whisper on her lips, dark with sorrow.

For a moment he was blind to everything but her face. Her face was flushed, her mouth wet and swollen. But she looked agonized around the eyes. It both hurt and felt good to know that she was suffering.

He grabbed a breath, spoke through it. “Rachel Yoder . . .” He faltered, as he realized her name was Yoder no longer. But he would not give her an outsider’s name. The Plain church didn’t recognize her marriage anyway. She would die as Rachel Yoder. And she would die unforgiven as long as she cleaved to such a man. To an outsider.

He straightened his back and sought to put a spine into his words as well. “Rachel Yoder, you have been placed under the
Bann
by all members of the church of God. You will be shunned and avoided by us until the time of your repentance, according to the word of God. We will not share a table with you, or have discourse of any kind with you. Never will we speak your name. From this moment forth, until such time as you repent, or if you do not repent, then to us you are dead.”

He watched as her eyes misted with unshed tears. She looked down at her hands, which were twisted up into a knot with her skirt. With a deliberate effort she unclenched
her fingers, smoothing out the bunched material. When she raised her head again, looked at him again, her eyes were still tear-wet, but there was resolution there.

“You have done your duty, Deacon Weaver, and I have taken your words to my heart. But you should know . . . I’ll not be repenting, ever.”

Cloaked by dim shadows within the kitchen, the outsider had moved up behind Rachel. Noah saw that for once the man wasn’t smiling that devil’s smile. His hooded eyes, as always, were hard to read. He met Noah’s eyes with a relentlessness that forced the Plain man’s gaze to fall away.

“I don’t know why you have done this,” Noah said. “To seduce a Plain woman from her family, her life, her God—and for why? Weren’t there women enough of your own kind that you could have taken to your bed? I don’t believe it’s because you care for her. If she matters to you at all, why then did you choose to become her damnation?”

The outsider stirred. He brought his hand up and laid it on Rachel’s shoulder, pulling her back against him, as if claiming her, Noah thought, hating the man, hating the man with such force he shuddered with it and felt no shame for it.

“She isn’t damned,” the outsider said. “You know her. No God worth worshipping, no heaven worth striving for, would ever turn her away.”

Noah shook his head. He knew God, he knew what was truth, what was light. There was only one path to salvation, the straight and narrow way.

He swung his gaze back to Rachel. His Rachel, with her hair falling wantonly down her back and with her mouth kiss-swollen in the middle of the day. His Rachel whom he didn’t even know anymore, who was a stranger to him.

“Is he worth your soul, Rachel? Do you love him that much?”

She lifted her head. There was hurt in her eyes still, but there was that strength as well. “Yes. Yes, I do love him that much.”

Noah’s shoulders slumped. He turned, moving slowly, his legs and feet feeling as if they were dragging fifty-pound sacks of grain.

“Noah?”

He turned back.

She was crying now. Not a lot, just one or two tears that she probably hadn’t been able to help. “Will you tell Da, tell my family, that I still love them all so very much, and that I’m sorry, so sorry.”

Noah opened his mouth to speak, but his throat locked. He should have reminded her that he could no longer speak her name, that her family would be hearing no words purporting to come from the mouth of a daughter who was dead. He should have done that, it was his duty as Deacon to do that, but he still loved her too much.

So he only swallowed, nodded, and left her standing at the door of her house with the outsider at her back, claiming her with that hand on her shoulder. A hand that had killed and done all manner of foul deeds, and was now defiling his Rachel.