Texas Angel, 2-in-1 (84 page)
They rode about a mile from the house. The wind in Micah’s face was as pleasant as the company he was with. He almost forgot the pain each jostle of the mule brought. The air of the early summer day grew warmer as the sun traveled high in the sky. And the wind was a dry Texas wind that bent the tops of the high grass and whistled through the cottonwoods on the edge of a little creek. Seldom did Micah take the opportunity to truly appreciate this country, but now as he did, he realized he loved it. His father had once told him, when he was pining for his Boston home, that Texas would eventually become home to him. Micah supposed it had, in spite of himself or his father.
He also thought of a conversation he’d had with Reid the other day, a rather cryptic conversation at that. They had been talking about the growth of Texas in general terms, about the appeal of wide open lands and such. Reid mentioned to Micah that there was some fine unclaimed land adjacent to the Maccallum ranch on the other side of Cutter Creek. He’d said no more, and Micah was afraid to make more of the words than their surface meaning.
He didn’t know why he thought of that just now. They were far from the borders of Maccallum land. Yet Micah had been thinking more and more about his unclaimed land allotments. But it must be the height of arrogance—or at the very least, outlandish fantasy—to think that there might be more to claiming land on the borders of Maccallum land than simply being neighbors.
He glanced at Lucie, and an ache replaced the peaceful joy he had been feeling. He could never be fit for a woman such as she. There was simply too much blood on his hands.
They stopped on the shallow banks of the creek under the shade of a cottonwood. Micah secured Stew and Lucie’s piebald in a place where there was good sweet grass, then he carried the basket to a place where Lucie had spread a quilt over the grass.
Micah eased down on the quilt. “I didn’t think a man could get tired riding, especially after just an hour.” He shook his head. “I wonder if I’ll ever be good as new.” He flexed his right arm. “There ain’t much pain in my arm anymore. Guess that’s something.”
“You have come a long way, Micah, considering you nearly died.” She visibly shuddered. “I can’t imagine life without you around.”
“Like I couldn’t imagine life without Jed or Tom,” Micah mused. “But life has a way of getting on one way or another.”
“Yes, I know that. And God would have healed me. But I am glad I didn’t have to find out.” She opened the basket. “Come, let’s eat.”
Micah agreed heartily with that. He ate from hunger, for indeed his appetite was voracious these days, but he also ate by way of distraction. He’d tried to brush off Lucie’s words about missing him, but they continued to echo in his mind, reminding him that once she had declared her love for him. Yet much had passed between them since then. Surely all she must feel now was friendship.
Micah ate more than his fair share of the food. When Lucie said she’d had her fill of chicken, Micah finished it off. Same with the bread. He ate two apples and one huge piece of the spice cake. He then eyed Lucie’s half-eaten piece, which he thought had been sitting untended for long enough.
“If you ain’t gonna finish that . . .” he asked subtly.
She laughed and pushed the cake toward him. “At this rate you will be fattened up far beyond even Juana’s tastes!”
He ate the cake and, licking his fingers contentedly, lay back on the quilt. The sun burned down pleasantly upon him even as the wind wafted over him. This must indeed be the “good life” he’d heard others speak of.
Suddenly something snapped in the brush. Micah tensed and shot up, grabbing the rifle that he’d laid next to the quilt. Cocking the weapon, he made ready to do battle. In a bush about ten feet away, two beady eyes peered from between the branches. Soon the head appeared. Masked like a raccoon, it had a long white muzzle.
“A raccoon?” Lucie breathed.
“No.” He held his fingers to his lips and they both fell silent.
In another moment the critter scurried out from its cover.
“A coatimundi,” Micah said when he saw the long, faintly ringed tail, which was easily half the size and weight of the animal.
“I’ve heard of them, but I have never seen one,” Lucie said.
“Though they’re not nocturnal like coons, they are shy enough.”
The animal suddenly seemed to take note of its observers and, with incredible speed, retreated back to its hiding place in the brush.
“I’m glad you didn’t shoot it,” Lucie said.
“I wouldn’t have. I usually look before I shoot.” He gently released the cocking mechanism and laid aside the rifle. “But that could have been anything. I’m glad I had the rifle.”
“Yet it wasn’t.”
“It isn’t good to get too complacent in this land. It ain’t tame.”
Micah lay back again and tried to recapture the moment before the interruption. It was hard. His heart was still pounding, not from fear of danger, but rather because he might have been forced to kill again. In this wild country it was a delusion to think you would never have to kill to defend yourself, your land, or your loved ones. But Micah shuddered at the thought of having to do so in front of Lucie, of soiling her with violence.
“I haven’t had any more nightmares,” he said suddenly. “Not since the fever broke.”
“That’s good.” She paused and looked down at him.
His heart clenched, for such was her expression that it almost gave him cause to hope.
“Would you like to talk about them?” she asked.
“Why wake sleeping dogs, as they say?”
“Because sleeping dogs do wake. I remember I used to have nightmares right after my mother died, and my father once told me that the best way to rid myself of such darkness was to shine light on it. Bring my fears into the light is what he meant. Talking about fearful things seems to have a way of shrinking them down to proper size.”
“No doubt you and your father are right.” He wondered how much to say to her. Then he decided he’d never had anyone he could say everything to, and because of that he’d squashed a lot down inside him. Maybe it would help to get it out. And maybe she could be that one person whom he could trust enough to tell.
He rolled over on his side and gazed at her. “I don’t want to talk to you about it because the last thing I want is to drag you into the violence of my life.”
“Micah, I washed the blood off your hands when you killed those bandits. I have just nursed you from wounds that nearly caused your death. I am part of your life—violence and all. You need not protect me. This is my choice. Besides, I am not as pure as you may think. I have seen violence and strife.”
“Yet still you are pure. Somehow it has not touched you. Your mother’s death, your father’s illness, your brother’s life, the rejection of the ranchers. Your purity and your faith have remained intact. How is that, Lucie?”
“I still think you have placed me on far too high a pedestal,” she replied with a small tinge of pink on her cheeks. “But I will tell you this. My faith has not remained intact in spite of adversity. Instead it is the other way around. Adversity has strengthened my faith, and the reason, I believe, is because I don’t call God into question for all the ill in my life.”
“Why not? He is God, after all.”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“Oh yes,” Micah replied a bit too glibly. “Free will, as it is called in religious circles.”
“Micah, I can’t argue religious doctrine with you. You probably know much more than I, and I’ll bet you are a far better debater than I. So rather than debate, I will tell you one thing from my heart. What sustains my faith is love, pure and simple. God’s love for me. I feel it always, and it gives me assurance that He will always treat me well.”
Micah closed his eyes. Yes, it would have been so much easier to bat around doctrines and such. But love? How does one argue with some thing that is not a concrete issue but fairly glows from Lucie’s heart? He sensed that from the first moment he saw Lucie. It was that very love that had drawn him. Not specifically a love for him, but her simple capacity for love. And he could not now debate it. He didn’t want to.
He kept his eyes closed, for it was hard to look at her and confess the deepest pain of his soul. “Lucie, I haven’t known much love in my life, so . . . it’s hard to see, really see, these things you say about God. You talk about a loving God. I know the Scriptures tell of these things, but to me . . . He is a stranger. I have feared God, but love? I just don’t know.”
“I won’t say there is nothing to fearing God,” she replied. “He is
God,
after all. But I believe it should be more of an awe-inspiring fear, not a shake-in-your-boots fear. The most awesome thing about God is His love.”
“But how can I possibly understand that love?” Micah rolled onto his back and stared up into the sky, as if the very heavens might open up and answer him.
“I think I came to understand it because of my parents,” Lucie said. “I always felt their love, even when I was naughty. And I came to see how God was like that. It was easy to understand what Christ did on the cross. There’s a verse in the Bible that says that God showed His love toward us in that while we were still in sin, Christ died for us.”
“I never had such examples,” Micah said. “Maybe from my mother, but it is so dim in my memory now. I probably would have been better off if I had dwelt more on remembering the things my mother taught me than on hating my father.”
“I wish you had.”
He heard the sadness in her voice. He still did not have the courage to look at her.
“I wish you had some way to see love,” she added softly.
He wanted so to open his eyes and look at her, but he was afraid to. He thought she spoke of more than God’s love.
“If only I could,” he breathed, barely above a whisper. “I think I’d know better how to give love as well.”
They were silent awhile. A fly buzzed around Micah’s face, and he brushed it away. It seemed to him there must be a way for even one such as he to solve the puzzle of God’s love. He knew that all had access to that love, that a man wasn’t left out of the club, as it were, just because his experience was so limited. The God that Lucie spoke of—the God Micah wanted so to believe in—would not hold out a gift that was limited to only a few lucky ones. There must be a way.
Now he did venture a glance toward Lucie. She had plucked a blue-bell from the grass and was studying its pretty purple petals. Her face in profile was pensive, yet at peace as well. She did not have the look of one who feared her friend might be denied what she had found. She was so certain of God. Then he thought of a matter that had nagged at him since he realized Lucie had taken him in to nurse him.
“Lucie,” he said, “I have been wondering and wondering why you took me in after what I tried to do to you that night in the stable. And after all the other things I have said and done. I couldn’t figure it out because I couldn’t understand the reason for it. You did it out of love, didn’t you? You couldn’t turn me away because you love me. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to say it was more than a Christian love, but that’s what it was, wasn’t it?”
“Yes . . .” she murmured, her eyes still focused on the bluebell.
“But it can’t be so simple.”
“Why not, Micah!” Her voice rose with intensity as her eyes lifted and met his. “Even Jesus said we must become as children to enter the kingdom of God.”
Micah jumped up and paced to the edge of the clearing. He knew she’d tell him how simple it was, but it was too difficult to accept that. He turned.
“Lucie, I have never been a child,” he said dismally. He came back to the quilt and dropped to his knees before her. “My father certainly never let me be a child. I was constantly made to be some kind of symbol of his religious perfection. I was full grown at thirteen when I watched my mother bleed to death on the trail after having run away from my father. I was an old man when less than a year later I stood at Goliad and watched my uncle and four hundred others massacred. Those nightmares, Lucie . . . they aren’t just crazy visions of ghosts and goblins. They were the reality of my life haunting my dreams. Hardly a night went by that I did not relive horror after horror. Blood! It’s all over me, not just on my hands. I am steeped in it. And it is not all innocent blood like at Goliad. I exacted much vengeance for that day. At San Jacinto I shot armed and unarmed men. That’s what I dream about—a boy with hands raised, begging me with his eyes not to shoot. And feeling joy at pulling the trigger.”
He stopped abruptly, shocked and dismayed at what he had revealed. But it was pity, not revulsion, he saw in Lucie’s eyes.
“You were fourteen, Micah,” she said. “Confused, hurt, and caught in the horror of war.”
“Those banditos . . .” he began, and now he dared not stop. Let her know it all. “The last one . . . I . . . think there was a moment when, had I allowed myself, I could have let him live. But I didn’t think. I acted on instinct—the instinct of a killer.”
“You are not a killer!” she insisted passionately. “But even if you were, do you think you’d be beyond God’s power to heal?”
“I don’t know.”
“He has healed your nightmares.”
“For the time being.”
“Oh, Micah!” she exclaimed in frustration, throwing down the flower in her hand. “You are as obstinate as that mule of yours!”
“I have always said we deserve each other—me and Stew, that is.” He let a smile play upon the corners of his lips. This was supposed to be an enjoyable afternoon picnic. He was desperate to bring it back to that. Tenderly he picked up the bluebell. “I’ll keep this, if you don’t mind. A memento of my first picnic.” His eyes searched hers, imploring that she accept a truce of sorts from the previous intensity.
A smile on her lips, slightly reluctant, but offered nonetheless, she said, “I’ll pick you a bouquet, if you’d like.”
“One is all I need.” He looked at the flower, then back up at her. “Not that I’ll soon forget this day.”
I
T WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN
they reached the house. A strange horse was tied at the post in front. And a rangy-looking animal it was. A charcoal with many flecks of white or gray, but most likely gray, because it appeared to be an ancient beast. The coat was matted and dull, either from ill care or simple age. Its head hung low and its body was bony.