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Authors: LaVyrle Spencer

Tags: #Fiction

Hummingbird (25 page)

BOOK: Hummingbird
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"How long ago?"

But she didn't answer She was afraid to confide in him. Yet he urged her to speak of things which no other person had ever cared enough to ask about.

"Thirteen years ago?" he prompted. Still she didn't reply, and he thought long and hard before finally admitting, "I know about Richard, Abbie."

He heard her breath catch in her throat before she turned startled eyes to him. "How could you know about Richard?"

"Doc Dougherty told me."

Her nostrils distended and her lips tightened. "Doctor Dougherty talks too much for his own good."

"And you talk too little for yours."

She hugged herself and turned away. "I keep my private affairs to myself. That is exactly how it should be."

"Is it? Then why did you bring up Richard?"

"I don't know. His name slipped out inadvertently. I've never talked about him since he left and I assure you I am not about to start now."

"Why? Is he taboo, just like everything else?"

"You talk like a fool."

"No, I suspect somebody did that long before I came along, or you wouldn't be so tied up in knots over letting go a little bit."

"I don't even know why I listen to you—a completely impulsive person like you. You have no notion of restraint or self-control of any kind. You… you charge through life as if to give it a shock so it will remember you've been there. That may work well for you, but I assure you it is not my way. I live by strict standards."

"Has it occurred to you, Abbie, that maybe you set your standards too high, or that somebody else may have done it for you?"

"That is impossible for any living person to do."

"Then tell me why you're sitting out here five miles from civilization yet you wouldn't take your hat off if it grew tentacles or even unbutton the cuffs mat are probably chafing you raw right now. But worst of all you won't talk about something that caused you pain, because some fool said a lady shouldn't? Nor does she show regret or anger, is that right? A lady just doesn't spill her guts. She sits instead with them all tied in neat, prim knots. Of course talking would make you human, and maybe you prefer to think you're above being human." He knew he was making her angry, but knew too that was the only time she truly opened up.

"I was taught, sir, that it is both ill-mannered and—yes—unladylike to wail out one's dissatisfactions with life. It simply is not done."

"Who said so, your mother?"

"Yes, if you must know!"

"Humph!" He could just about picture her mother "The best thing in the world for you would be to come right out and say, 'I loved a man named Richard once but he jilted me and it makes me mad as hell.'"

Her fists knotted and she spun to face him, eyes dangerously glistening. "You have no right!"

"No, but you do, Abbie, don't you see?" He sat straighter, intense now.

"All I see is that I should never have come up here with you today. You have succeeded again in making me so angry that I should like to… to slap your hateful face!"

"It'd be the second time today you slapped my face for making you feel something. Is it that frightful to you to feel? If slapping me would make you feel good, why don't you come over here and do it? How mad do I have to make you before you'll break out? Why can't you just cuss or laugh or cry when something inside Abbie says she should?"

"What is it you want of me!"

"Just to teach you that what comes natural shouldn't be forbidden."

"Oh, certainly! Slapping, crying… and… and that… that little scene on the rocker this morning! Why, if you had your way you would turn me into a wanton!" Tears brimmed at the rims of her eyes.

"Those things aren't wanton, but you can't see it because of all the silly rules your mother made you live by."

"You leave my mother out of this! Ever since you came to my house you've been contrary and fault-finding. I will not let you attack my mother when your own could have taught you a few manners!"

"Listen to yourself, Abbie. Why is it you can call me names and get angry with me when the ones you really blame are your mother and father and Richard for what they did to you?"

"I said leave them out of this! What they were to me is none of your business!" Her eyes blazed as she jumped to her feet.

"Why so belligerent, Abbie? Because I hit on the truth? Because it's them you blame when you think you're not supposed to? Doc Dougherty didn't have to tell me much to fit the pieces together Correct me if I'm wrong. Your mother taught you that a good daughter honors her father and mother, even if it means sacrificing her own joy. She taught you that virtue is natural and carnality isn't, when actually it's the other way around."

"How dare you sit there and pour acerbations on innocent people who wanted only the best for me?"

"They had no idea of what was best for you—all except Richard, I suspect, and he was smart enough to know he couldn't fight your dead mother's code of ethics, so he got out!"

"Oh! And you know what's best for me, I suppose!"

He assessed her dispassionately. "Maybe."

She assessed him passionately. "And maybe you'll sprout wings and fly away from the law when they come to get you!" She waggled a finger in the direction of town.

Comprehension dawned in his eyes. "Ah, now we're getting down to the truth here, aren't we?" He reached for his crutches without taking his menacing eyes from her. "It baffles you how some common, no-good train robber like me could possibly hit on the truth about you, doesn't it?"

"Exactly!" she spit, facing him, fists clenched angrily at her sides. "A common, no-good train robber!"

"Well, let this common, no-good train robber tell you a few things about yourself, Miss Abigail McKenzie, that you've been denying ever since you laid eyes on me." He struggled to his feet, advancing upon her. "It is precisely
because
I'm an outlaw that you have, on several occasions, ventured forth from your righteous ways and lost control. With me you did things you never dared do before—you sneaked a peek at life. And do you know why you tried it? Because afterward you could wipe your conscience clean and blame me for goading you into it. After all, I'm the bad one anyway, right?"

"You talk in circles!" she scoffed, quaking now because he'd hit upon the truth and that truth was too awful for her to admit.

"Are you denying that it's because I'm a… a criminal that you dared to bend your holy bylaws around me a little?" They were nose to nose now.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said prissily, and turned away, crossing her arms tightly across her breasts.

He reached out to grab her upper arm and try to make her turn to face him. "Oh, pull your head out of the sand, Miss Abigail Ostrich, and admit it!" She yanked herself free of his grip, but he moved in close behind her, pursuing her with his relentless accusations. "You slammed doors and threw bedpans and kissed me and hollered at me and even got yourself a little sexually excited, and you found out it all felt pretty damn fun at times. But you could blame all those forbidden things on me, right? Because I'm the nasty one here, not you. But what would happen to all your grand illusions if I turned out to be something other than the brigand you think I am?" Again he got her by the arm. "Come on, talk to me. Tell me all your well-guarded secret guilts! You can tell me—what the hell, I'll be gone soon enough and take them all with me!"

At last she spun on him, whacking his hand off her arm. "I have no secret guilts!" she shouted angrily.

His eyes bored into hers as he shouted back, with ferocity equal to hers, "Now
that's
what I've been trying to make you see all this time!"

Silence fell like a hundred-year oak. Their eyes locked. She struggled to understand what it was he was saying, and when the truth came to her at last, she was stricken by her own comprehension, and she turned away.

"Don't keep turning away from me, Abbie," he said, making his way to her on the clumsy crutches, touching her arm more gently now, trying to make her face him willingly, which she stubbornly refused to do. "Do I have to say it for you, Abbie?" he asked softly.

Tears began gathering in her throat.

"I… I don't know what it is you want me to…to say."

In the quietest tones he had ever used with her, Jesse spoke. "Why not start by admitting that Richard was a randy youth, that something happened between you and him that made him leave." Jesse paused a long moment, then added even softer, while with his thumb he stroked the arm he still held, "That it had nothing to do with your father."

"No, no… it's not true!" She covered her face with her palms. "Why do you goad me like this?"

"Because I think Richard was exactly like me and it's got you scared to death."

She whirled then and hit him once with her pathetic little fist in the center of his bare chest. It send him hobbling backward, but he didn't quite fall. "Wasn't he?" Jesse persisted.

She looked into his relentless eyes like a demented woodland nymph, shaken, tears now streaming down her cheeks. "Leave me alone!" she begged miserably.

"Admit it, Abbie," he said softly.

"Damn you!" she cried, sobbing now, and raised a hand to strike him again. He did not cringe or back away as the blow, and another and another rained upon his shoulders and chest. "Damn you… R…

Richard!" she choked, but Jesse stood sturdy as she hit the side of his neck and her nails scraped two red welts upon it.

He did not fight her, did not block her swing, only said very gently, "I'm not Richard, Abbie. I'm Jesse."

"I know… I kn… I know," she sobbed into her hands, ashamed now of having sunk to such depths.

He reached out and encircled her shaking shoulders, gathering her near, pulling her forehead against his hard chest. Her tears scalded his bare skin and brought some wholly new and disturbing stinging behind his eyes. A crutch dropped to the ground, but he steadied himself and let it fall. Her hat had gone askew and he reached to pull the pin from it.

Her hands flew up and she choked, "Wh… what are y… you doing?"

"Just something you wouldn't do for yourself—taking your hat off. Nothing more, okay?" He stuck the filigreed pin through the straw, tossed it behind him onto the creek bank, then pulled her again into his arms, circling her neck with one large hand, rubbing a thumb across the hair pulled so prudishly taut behind her ear.

She cried against him with her elbows folded tightly between them, comforted more than she'd thought possible by the feel of his forearm spanning her narrow shoulders and his palm stroking her sleeve. He touched her soft earlobe. He laid his cheek against her hair, and she felt a queer sense of security, staying within his arms that way.

Abbie, Abbie
, he thought,
my little hummingbird, what are you doing to me
?

He smelled different than her father—better He felt different than David—harden She reminded herself who he was, what he was, but for the moment it didn't matter. He was here, and warm, and real, and the beat of his heart was firm and sure beneath her cheek upon his chest. And she needed so terribly badly to talk about everything at last.

When her crying eased, he leaned back, taking her face in both hands, wiping at the wetness beneath her eyes with his thumbs.

"Come on, Abbie, let's sit down and talk. Don't you see you've got to talk about it?"

She nodded limply, then he drew her by the hand toward the creek bank, and she followed docilely, exhausted now from her fit of tears.

A blackbird sang in the willows. The creek rushed past with its whispered accompaniment as Abbie began to speak. Jesse did not touch her again, but let her talk it all out, drawing from her the truths which he'd guessed days ago. He pieced together the picture of a pathetic, retiring husband and the single child, both of whom the mother had wronged with her narrow version of love. A rigid woman of stern discipline who taught her daughter that duty was more important than the urgings of her own body. And Richard, the man who made Abbie aware of those urgings, but could not free her from the stringent laws laid down by her mother And Abbie, hiding all these years behind the delusion that Richard had deserted her because of the invalid father.

But Jesse now saw the imprisoned Abbie escape, as the bullfrogs set up their late-day chorus. He watched the woman on the creek bank change into a mellow, human entity, with fears, misgivings, frailties, and regrets. And it was this transformed Abbie of whom Jesse knew he'd best be careful.

Things were infinitely different between them by the time they started back to town. The myths were shattered. The truth now rode like a passenger on the seat, intimately, between them. There was a disturbing ease, born of a deeper understanding, and far more threatening than the animosities which had earlier riddled their relationship.

For she had learned he could be kind.

And he had learned she could be human.

They rode in silence, aware of each brush of elbow and knee. White moths of evening came out and the song of the cicada ceased. The shadows of the trees grew to long-stretching tendrils then disappeared in the cease of sun. The leaves whispered their last hushed vespers. The mare quickened her step toward home, her voice the only one heard as she nickered to the growing twilight. Abbie's sleeve brushed Jesse's shoulder and he leaned forward, away from it, staring straight ahead, elbows to knees and the reins limp in his hands. He had helped her break down many barriers today, but she was still bound by propriety. She was not at all his kind of woman. Yet he looked back over his shoulder and caught her watching him, her eyes quite the color of the evening sky, her piquant little face showing signs of confusion, but her hands again in white gloves, glowing almost purple now as dusk came on.

Her eyes strayed, then came back to meet his, and she knew the swift, intimidating yearning of the woman who feels herself drawn to the wrong man. The wheels hushed along, the riders rocked in unison, their eyes locked. At last her troubled gaze drifted aside, as did his. She thought of a gun in his hand on that train and her eyes slid shut, not wanting to picture it yet unable to keep the image at bay. She opened her eyes again and studied his broad shoulders with blue cotton pulled taut against rippling muscle, black hair curling down over his collar, thick sideburns curving low on a crisp jaw, sleeves rolled to elbows upon arms limned with dark hair, the limp wrist, those long fingers. She remembered them upon her, then looked away, distracted.

BOOK: Hummingbird
12.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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