Hummingbird (19 page)

"I'm sure you would like me to believe you, Mr Cameron."

"Would it hurt you to call me Jesse? It would make it more pleasant while we talk this way."

"I thought I'd made you understand that I live by rules of propriety."

"There's nobody here but you and me. I won't tell," he teased mischievously.

"No, you won't, because I shan't call you Jesse… ever. Now quit changing the subject and tell me about your occupation. Try to convince me that you are not a robber of trains."

He laughed, then said, "All right. I work for the railroad, photographing every phase of its construction, just like I said. I have free passage as long as I work for them, and I travel to the railhead—wherever that may be—to take most of my photographs. I live in camps and on trains most of the time. There's not much more to tell."

"Except why, if you have a decent job, you chose to steal from the very hand that feeds you."

"That was a mistake, Abbie."

"Miss Abigail," she corrected.

"Very well, Miss Abigail, then. Have you ever seen a railroad camp?"

"Hardly."

"No, you wouldn't have. Well, it's no Abigail McKenzie's house, I'll tell you that. It's wild out in the middle of nowhere, and the men who work there are not exactly parlor fare."

"Like you?" she couldn't resist saying. Again he laughed lightly, letting her think what she would.

"I'm a veritable goldmine of manners compared to the navvies who build the railroads. Their life is rough, their language is rougher, and anybody who crosses anybody else can expect a bullet between the eyes.

There's no law where they live, none at all. They settle their disputes with guns and fists and sometimes even with hammers—anything that's convenient. There not only is no law at the end of a railroad line, there's no town. No houses, stores, churches, depots—in other words, no shelter of any kind. A man who lives in the wilds like that won't survive long without a gun. There are bobcats in the mountains, wolves on the prairies, and everything that grows teeth in between. Naturally they all go to water, which is usually where bridges and trestles go up. About this time of day the animals always come to drink."

"What's your point, Mr. Cameron?"

"My point is that I carry a gun like every other smart fellow who expects to tame the West and live to see it. I'm not denying I had a gun on me on that train. I am denying I used it to pull a holdup."

"You're forgetting you were caught red-handed."

"Doing what? I had just taken it out, thinking I'd clean it, but before I got it unloaded, some nervous old biddy was screaming, and I found myself on the floor, shot, and the next thing I knew I woke up here in your house. That's all I know."

"A likely story. You would make a fine actor, Mr. Cameron."

"I don't need to be a fine actor—I'm a fine photographer. When I get my plates back, you'll see."

"You seem very confident about that."

"I am, wait and see."

"Oh, I shall wait, but I doubt that there will be anything to see."

"You're a hard woman to convince."

"I'm a woman who recognizes the truth when it's staring her in the face."

"But that's what I do as a photographer. Recognize the truth and record it permanently in pictures."

"The truth?"

He considered for a moment, then cocked his head to the side as if studying her. "Well, take last night for instance. You'd have made a very fetching subject last night when you sat in that rocker there, laughing.

The light fell on you at precisely the right angle to take all of the affected hardness away from your face and lend it a natural quality it was meant to reflect. Call it unpretentiousness, if you will. In that brief moment, if I'd had my camera I might have captured you as you really are, not as you pretend to be. I might have exposed you as a charlatan."

Faintly smarting at his words, denial sprang instantly to her lips. "I am no charlatan." Rather than argue, he studied her with cocked head, as if he could see into her depths and knew exactly what he was talking about. "If there is any charlatan here it is you. You have proven it by your own words. Any photographer knows that a subject could not be photographed rocking in a rocking chair. Even I know that subjects must be stiff, sometimes even braced into place in order to take successful photographs."

"You've missed my point completely, but on purpose, I think. However, if that's how you want it, it's all right with me. Let me only say that if you want stiff, braced-looking results, they're easy to obtain. My photographs lack such artifice. It's why I do what I do for the railroad. They want their history photographed as it happens, not as some fools see fit to pose and posture the real thing. It can be the same with people. Someday I'll take your picture and it will prove to you what I meant. It will show you what the real Abbie is like."

It was easy to tell from her expression that she had censured out of his words all she chose to disbelieve.

"The real me is inutterably weary," she said, rising from the trunk. "But not weary enough to fall for such a story as yours. I still believe you're a finer actor than either train robber or photographer."

"Have it your way, Miss Abigail," he said. "Charlatans usually do."

"You should know," she replied, but his eyes caught and held hers, making her wonder just what he'd meant by all he'd said. At last she glanced at his turbaned head and said, "I believe we can remove the oatmeal now." She went to the dressing table to get her brush.

"I can brush it myself," he offered, but she waved away his hand, removed the clothespins, stretched out the towel, and began brushing.

"You'd have it all over everything and oatmeal attracts mice," she said. "They are not as opposed to eating it secondhand as you are."

He closed his eyes and rolled his head this way and that when she told him to. What a Saturday night, he thought, getting oatmeal brushed out of my hair by a woman who dislikes me and mice. "I can't reach the back. Could you sit up and lean over the edge of the bed?" He sat up, hunched forward, elbows to knees, and she spread the towel carefully on the floor between his feet. He watched the oatmeal dust drifting down as she brushed from the nape of his neck forward in deft strokes. There were times when she could be quite appealing, like last night in the rocker, and now, doing a common thing like brushing his hair. It was seldom, though, that she did anything in a common way. She preferred, for some reason, to pose herself, taut, rigid, as inflexible as the everlasting restrictions she put upon her behavior. It was beyond him why he should try to make her see herself truthfully. If she was happy with the artifice, let her be, he thought. Still, it was hard for him to understand why anyone would set such a mold for themselves.

The brushing made goose pimples shiver up his arms. It was deliciously relaxing. In his drowsy thoughts he wondered about Abigail McKenzie, thought of other things he might say to her, but then he realized the brushing had stopped; she had gone as silently as she'd come, leaving the brush lying bristles-down on the back of his neck.

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She had left him relaxed and drowsy and lay now listening to the muffled sounds below. She heard the bedsprings twang beneath his weight, then the muted chiming of the brass headboard as he pulled against it. She visualized him turning on his side, sighing and falling asleep while she waited patiently. She fought drowsiness, listening to the occasional sounds from town petering out until all was as still as eternity. A dog barked, once, far away and lonely, but it made her flinch awake and sit up straighter, resisting slumber.

After an interminably long time she arose, quickly and lightly, creating only one little twank that was then gone. Again she waited, patient as a cat on the stalk, and when she moved, it was to the accompaniment of sheer soundlessness. She took the stairs barefoot, in a swift, gliding descent, knowing she risked less sound going that way than if she hesitated on each step. But once at the bottom, she waited again. She could hear his breathing in the stillness—long, rhythmic, somnolent. And she moved again, stopping not at the bedroom door, or the foot of his bed or to peer down to make sure he was sleeping; any of these hesitations, especially the last, might key some instinctual reaction and arouse him. Instead, surefooted and silent, she glided to the side of the bed and lay down on the floor half under it.

He breathed on as before while her breath came in short, scared spurts.

The shirt-wrapped gun was close to the outer edge of the mattress, where he could get at it without having to reach too far underneath. She touched it, exploring the fabric of the shirt, the hard lump inside, the ridges of the cartridge chamber, the sharp, crooked hammer, the butt, the barrel. She shivered. If she were to try to pull it through the rectangular spaces between the wires of the spring, it would undoubtedly get caught, for the gun was bigger than the holes. Instead, she studied the shape as a blind person might: using her fingertips, determining that it was so near the edge that no more than the slightest upward pressure on the mattress would free the gun so she could slip it out sideways.

The problem was raising the mattress an inch or so.

She would simply have to wait until he decided to roll over. Maybe when the springs squeaked she could yank the gun out quickly and he'd never know the difference. The floor grew as hard as an anvil. She grew chilled and needed badly to fidget, and still he slept on peacefully. She heard the dog again, far off, and the answering call of a wolf even farther, and in spite of the hard floor, began to get sleepy. To keep awake she reached out a hand and it touched something cold and fleshy. She recoiled in fear, then realized it was only the pig bladder. The memory of his long, strong fingers squeezing it came back to haunt her, and she pinched her eyes shut to blot out the picture. But just then Jesse snuffled, sighed, and shifted onto his side, causing the bedsprings to creak. At that exact moment, she pushed with one hand through the open spaces of the bedspring while with her other she pulled the shirt free, gun and all. It landed in the small of her chest, thudding heavily, and she checked the impulse to gasp at the weight of it.

She lay absolutely motionless, repulsed by the thing weighing her down. But she had the ominous weapon at last! Slowly she unwrapped it. The shirt lay upon her stomach and breasts and she could smell the smell of him in it. She shuddered. Then she slowly rolled the shirt into a tight ball, making sure not so much as a button clicked on the floor. While she waited with the cold steel upon her chest, she imagined what kind of a person it took to draw it, raise it, and aim it at another human being. She saw herself at the other end of it as she'd been this morning, and once again told herself it would take an animal to do such a thing.

He was breathing evenly again. She held her breath, shivering at the thought of getting caught. But the hardest part was done—the rest was easy. Be patient, be patient, she admonished herself. He was snoring lightly now. With the gun in one hand and his shirt in the other she sat up, alert, poised to spring should he move, almost startled to see how near she'd actually been to his head all this time. He faced the wall so she raised herself further, soundlessly as ever, and the moment her soles touched the floor she hit for safety.

She had taken less than one full step when an arm lashed out, caught her, and flipped her over backward, somersaulting her across a lumpy hipbone till her toes cracked high against the wall. As she slithered down into a heap, a horrible weight settled upon her chest. In the next moment she was sure she was dying, for he'd knocked the wind out of her The small of her back where it had bumped across him felt like there were two boulders beneath it and she reached to knead the pain, but just that fast he pinned the arm beneath him and pinioned the other one against the mattress over her head, the gun still tight in her grasp.

"All right, lady, you want to sneak around under my bed, this is what you get!" he snarled. "Give me the goddamn gun! Now!" He pushed her wrist into the mattress, trying to wrest the pistol from her fingers.

But it was useless. They were clenched in a death-grip, locked in mid-motion when he'd flattened the breath from hen The pain in her chest grew to a choking, hammering, crushing insistence while she struggled for air that refused her He pummeled her wrist against the bed, leaning on her, adding stress to her lungs until she felt her eyes would pop from their sockets.

"Give me the gun, you asinine woman! Did you think I was fool enough to let you get away with it?" Still no breath came and her fear swelled and swelled and she panicked, unable to tell him what was wrong.

And just when she knew more certainly than ever that she was starting to die, a rattling issued from her throat and her hand went lax, loosing the gun. He heard the hissing and gasping as she fought for breath.

Then suddenly her knees pulled up fetally.

He jumped off her chest, exclaiming, "Christ, Abbie!" She curled up like an armadillo, half crying, half gasping, and rolled from side to side, grasping her knees. He tried to make her straighten out so the air could get in, but she only curled tighter.

Finally he flung her onto her belly like a rag doll, the gun flying to the wall, then clunking to the floor in the corner behind the bed. With her forehead now screwing itself into the mattress, she clutched her stomach, writhing, her hind side hoisted up by nature trying to renew her life force. Jesse got her by the hips, his giant hands holding her up, trying to help her breathe again.

"I didn't mean to knock the wind out of you." Still her breath came hoarse and rasping. She could feel her posterior shimmed up against something warm. "Abbie, are you okay?" But his thumb pressed a spot that had been brusied by his hipbone. Heaving, gasping, crying all at once, she tried to break free.

"Put me…" But her voice wasn't working yet and he held her in that ignominious position against his pajama-clad body.