Soul of a Crow (44 page)

I felt time running out; there was no chance to question my grandfather's words; I said only, “I love you all.”

“We never doubted that,” Jere said. “Aw, Sawyer.”

“They's waiting on you,” Ethan told me. “You tell Boyd I still have it in me to whup him!”

“Go to her, son,” Daddy said.

I turned and everything within me surged violently towards my wife, who had appeared between us and the far horizon. She was sitting with her head bent over her arms, and my soul constricted at this evidence of her pain—the connection that bound us pulsed and throbbed, itself alive.

“Good-bye, brother,” Jere said, growing fainter at every passing second.

“We'll see you again someday, never you fear,” Ethan whispered.

It was full dark then and I was left suddenly alone. Even with my limited, lopsided view, I observed in stun as the heavens above were at once gloriously ablaze with stars, riotous with every color I had ever witnessed and many I had not, and could not have named. Ruby and emerald, fiery oranges and yellows, searing azure, blinding in their intensity…

Lorie!
I cried out, as my need for her seemed to wrench my physical body inside-out. I spun through wildly-swirling colors, sweating profusely, in motion and yet completely still, inexplicably, drawn by the force of my angel, my woman, waiting for me in the world somewhere beyond.

- 32 -

When I woke
to darkness, blinking wildly to regain a shred of sight, I knew that something had altered. I swallowed drily, the sound thunderous in my head, and then lurched abruptly upright, arms flailing, bumping Sawyer as he lay beside me.

“Oh!” I cried, as I inadvertently struck his shoulder. I huddled protectively over his form and found his face with my palms, cupping tenderly. Unexpectedly, my fingers slipped along his skin and I gasped, “You're sweating.”

“Water,” he whispered, so faintly I could scarcely discern, but I leaped as though prodded, using my heels to drag myself over the foot of the bed; my knees gave out as I touched the floor and a hoarse sound of alarm rose from Sawyer's throat as I promptly crumpled. He rasped, “
Lorie
…”

I crawled around to the basin, as it seemed faster than attempting to walk on my stinging feet. I eased upwards so that I could kneel and dipped a cup from the basin, filled with fresh water as of an hour ago, and then I stood, however painfully, and brought the cup to Sawyer's lips. It was not until his hand touched my wrist that sobs struck at me like clenched fists.

“Saw…” A gasp sliced in two my attempt at his name. A simultaneous swell of relief rendered me nearly without breath. I cupped his shorn head and helped him to drink; the sound of his swallows was as music to my ears. He held fast to my wrist and when he could take no more water, I set aside the cup and all but crawled atop him, mindful of his healing body. I whispered intently, “You are safe. I am here, and you are safe.”

“Lorie,” he whispered. No lantern burned in the bedroom this night, leaving us cloaked in dim grays; without hesitation, he reached and slipped the binding from his eyes.

I held his face, putting my lips to his forehead. He had been restored to me and I was dizzy with the respite of this knowledge. My hair swung around us as it did when we made love and I could feel his breath against my collarbones. I had to explain to him, though I struggled desperately for words. At last I whispered brokenly, “Your eye…”

I thought he said, “Ethan told me.”

Certain my weight was hurting him in some way, I shifted immediately, but he curled an arm over my waist and kept me near.

“Stay close to me,” he whispered, understanding why I had moved. “I need to feel you. You are not hurting me, darlin'.”

His words, the sweet endearment, stroked over my skin and served to crack the dam restraining uncontrollable tears. I wept, bending my face to his neck, and he held me. I spoke in wild bursts, choked by fitful sobs, and Sawyer held me and stroked my hair. He was wet with sweat, and now my tears, but I could not catch hold of myself.

“You were burning…
you were burning on that pyre
…I thought you were dead…oh Jesus,
he shot at you
…I was so scared,
I was so scared
…
oh Sawyer
…”

“Lorie,” he soothed, his mouth near my ear. I despised that I was unable to gather a handle on this outpouring of emotion. I had to tell him what had happened, coherently. He had not asked about his eye, and was instead offering me comfort. He murmured, “Lorie-love.”

For a time we held fast in the darkness, until the rapid beating of my heart calmed—until we had at least partially sated ourselves upon the feel of one another. I lifted my head. My sight had adjusted to the darkness and Sawyer lay beneath me, studying my face. The pale blot of the poultice remained in place over his missing left eye. The lack of hair upon his scalp threw the shapes of his beautiful cheek and jaw bones into sharp relief; the curve of his mouth was slightly darker than the rest of his face.

“I have missed you so much,” I whispered, my lips trembling, and tears continued to roll from my chin, splashing upon him.

“I had the strangest dream, just now,” he whispered roughly.

“Tell me,” I said, kissing his lips with utmost care, caressing his face.

Before he could respond, Malcolm whooped, “Sawyer's awake, you-all!” and bounded into the bedroom, knocking over the basin in his haste to reach the bedside. I squeaked as tepid liquid flooded the floor, catching my hem in passing, but I could not trouble myself to worry over spilled water. The basin clattered with a panging thud and anyone not aroused to wakefulness by the boy's hollering was certainly now alert. I heard Boyd slam through the front door from outside, where he had resumed sleeping in his tent, leaving the loft for Rebecca and the boys; seconds later he crowded beside Malcolm at the bedside. Boyd fell to his knees, bent his cheek to Sawyer's outstretched hand, and wept unashamedly.

* * *

“I'll break his neck,” I heard Boyd say, coming in from outside the next afternoon.

“Whose unfortunate neck are you referencing?” Rebecca asked. She had been stirring cake batter, but now ceased the motion.

“That weasel, Parmley,” Boyd said, and I heard him slap something upon the table.

Sawyer sat propped against the headboard, sipping beef broth from a tin cup. He appeared pale and drawn, the bones of his face more sharply defined than ever, as he had lost weight. He was shirtless, dressed in fresh bindings and with a new poultice, tied to accommodate his remaining eye; I had scarcely let him out of my sight since this early morning. He remained terribly woozy and slept intermittently through the day, requiring doses of laudanum to alleviate the intensity of the pain. But he was alive, the fever broken, and he would recover.

To Boyd, he called, “Why's that?” and Boyd stormed into the room brandishing a single-sided broadsheet; I recognized the town's circular.

“This,” Boyd said through his teeth. “Damn, I oughtn't to upset you two, but I figure you's gonna see it sooner or later. Damn varmint.”

The headline was an inch tall, emblazoned in riotous capital letters for all to read: FORMER WHORE SAVES REBEL SOLDIER'S LIFE. In smaller typeface the subheading promised a lurid tale to follow,
Once a Lady of the Night, Lorissa Davis, now reformed, repentant, and lawfully wedded, proves in a tearful display that a woman's heart is stronger than a man's will
. The byline read,
Horace W. Parmley.

“Oh,” I whispered weakly, rendered otherwise speechless.

Rebecca followed Boyd into the room and stood now at the foot of the bed, the bowl containing batter held against her stomach as she regarded my expression with a certain amount of circumspection. She said, “I dislike defending the man, but I do believe Horace presumes he is complimenting you.”

“But aiming for his own gain, at the same time,” Boyd said. “Story like this will cause a stir. Set folks in town to pure gossip. Damn the man.”

“I do not disagree,” Rebecca allowed. “All the same, he is misguided enough to believe his words are charitable. You shall notice his use of ‘lawfully wedded.'” She sighed and resumed stirring, saying, “The man deserves no less than a sound thrashing, regardless.”

Sawyer said, “If I felt even half myself, I would ride into town and deal with him.” He sought my gaze. “But he is right on one count, Lorie-love. I never knew a stronger heart than yours.”

Healing bruises discolored his face; healing burns welted his back, elbows, and legs. He had been ravaged physically and—as I related events to him as he was able to listen throughout the day—emotionally as well. He asked for the entire story and was predictably horrified that I had put myself in danger in so very many ways. That I had been forced to bare my soul before the judge and those listening, that I had climbed a burning pyre to save him and sustained injuries, that I'd witnessed the shot to his face, scraped Sawyer's heart nearly raw. Of that dreadful night, he could recall nothing beyond Zeb coming for him in the jailhouse.

And of Thomas Yancy, federal marshal, there was yet no word. Charley returned our way only this morning to pass along the lack of news; Yancy's sons were residing with the Rawleys for the time being.

I took from Boyd the broadsheet and folded it neatly in half, hiding from sight the audacious black ink. I said evenly, “Let people think what they will. I cannot change what I was, and I am no longer ashamed. Nor will I ever be, again. Besides,” and I scooted closer to Sawyer on the bed. He took my hand into his and curled tight my fingers. I said, “There is little in this world that could trouble me today.”

Boyd's chest rose and fell with a heavy sigh. He muttered, “You's right, Lorie-girl. I ain't oughta entertain fantasies of ridin' to town an' cranking the man through his own printing press.”

Unable to resist teasing him, Rebecca said, “Your descriptions are most detailed. Perhaps a tendency towards poetry lies in you, Mr. Carter?” The deep and finely-wrought current of awareness that flowed between Rebecca and Boyd was one development I had not yet related to Sawyer—but then I realized that he, ever perceptive, was studying Boyd with an air of speculation.

“I got me a given name,” Boyd complained, still surly on the surface, but then his dimple flashed, quick as he could have winked. Since shunning propriety and hugging her close in the dooryard, I had not observed Boyd make any additional moves to touch Rebecca, but I ascertained clearly that he
wanted
to touch her—and repeatedly. His eyes were nearly as hot as a coal bed beneath the pretended irritation.

But he had told me himself he meant to ride away when the time came.

“Perhaps you might ask politely for things that you want. And perhaps I ought to finish this cake and let Lorie alone with her husband,” Rebecca said decorously, all but fluttering her lashes at Boyd. So saying, she nodded to us and returned to the other room.

Boyd's heated gaze followed directly after her.

Sawyer paused with the tin cup partway to his mouth and asked me silently,
Is this truly what it appears?

And I nodded, just faintly, in response.

* * *

“Tell me what you're thinking,” I requested in a whisper, much later that night. Though I knew, I wanted for him to speak it—to set free what troubled him.

“I do not truly believe this, but I meant to ask. You are not…that is…” Sawyer faltered over the words and I pressed closer to him, as close as I dared. I lay along his right side on the bed, my skin completely bare in the glow of a single lantern, night pouring through the window covering and spilling darkly upon the floorboards. The quilt was bunched near our hips.

“Tell me,” I insisted again, quietly.

“You are not repulsed by how I look…by how I
will
look, when I am healed, are you?” he finally asked.

“Sawyer,” I reprimanded, mildly shocked despite everything. I rolled to one elbow in order to better regard his face. “Of course I am not.” He kept his gaze stubbornly focused towards the wall beyond the foot of the bed, but I took his chin in my fingertips and made him look upon me, deliberately studying him. It twisted into me as would an auger bit that one of his beautiful hawk eyes was destroyed, that he was from now forth rendered half-blind. I hoped, vengefully, that Zeb Crawford burned in some everlasting hell for what he had done to the man I loved. But Sawyer was alive and, God willing, I would never be asked to endure separation from him again.

I knew, however, that my reply must be delivered with care; Sawyer did not wish for, or deserve, a mollifying response. The beauty of his remaining eye was mine to behold in the candle's flame, the iris a gorgeous amalgamation of warm gold and cedar-green, ringed by a darker circle and fringed with enviable thick black lashes.

At last I said softly, “I mean to look upon both of your eyes again, when our first child is born.”

Sawyer's throat bobbed with emotion. Gently I bent my thigh over his hips, pressing the juncture of my legs against him; his right hand curved firmly around my backside, drawing me even closer. From his throat rose the soft, husky sound I cherished, the one that was mine alone to treasure, which he uttered when we made love.

“I will provide for us, this I swear to you, Lorie. I will never fail to take care of you, or our children, even wounded as I am just now,” he vowed.

“These things I know, with all of my heart,” I said tenderly, peppering his jaw with little kisses.

“We will reach Minnesota. I intend to relinquish nothing that we have sought, and spoken of,” he whispered. “Delayed, but not given up.”

“This I know,” I repeated, resting my palm over his heartbeat. “I do, love.”

Sawyer drew a breath and carefully shifted so that his body was better aligned with mine, holding me from behind, caressing with both thumbs the hollows created by my hipbones. The patch tied over his missing eye lent his handsome face an unexpected aura of slight menace, like that of perhaps a brigand, or masked outlaw, and I recognized the inopportune nature of my powerful desire for him; our hunger for one another clashed with the restraint we must practice for a time.

His voice a husky murmur, he whispered, “Had I a thousand words and poetic skills in abundance, I could never describe your exquisiteness. Look at you. I could never be thankful enough that you are mine, Lorie.” The orange fire of the lantern lit exactly half his bruised face as he softly kissed my mouth. “I want your skin against mine, every night of our lives. And every morning, and many times in between morning and night,” and I smiled at this heartfelt description.

“We will accomplish very few tasks if we are so often naked,” I replied, kissing his bottom lip, taking it into my mouth and lightly suckling.

He groaned a little, shivering at my teasing, and disagreed, “No, it is the very best sort of task we will accomplish, that way. I formally request that you wear not a stitch, at all times, you beautiful, naked woman. Holy Jesus, you are beautiful…”

“You make me blush,” I whispered, kissing his top lip this time.

“I love watching such blushes overtake your skin,” he said, following the flushing heat with his kisses, down my neck and to my breasts. He pressed his lips between them and inhaled as he was sweetly inclined to do, and I sensed the feeling overtake him just before he whispered intently, “Lorie. I would know that you forgive me.”