The Bones of Paradise (11 page)

“Cup a coffee, sister,” Drum said. Cullen slouched again, hands folded on his lap, his expression amused. Where was her boy, her sweet boy of old? She shivered, and then stopped herself. Couldn't afford to show weakness in front of the old man.

She went to the chair across from Drum and moved it closer to the low table on which rested his sundry goods: a battered metal comb one would use on a horse's mane and tail, a pair of tiny wire spectacles, a smooth pebble veined with gold and silver, and a book whose spine and cover were so worn, the printing was a series of gold hieroglyphs, unreadable to her eye. Drum Bennett with a book. Truly he must be at wit's end. No sympathy rose in her heart. She recalled the weeks and months after giving birth when that old man arrived to browbeat her out of bed, weak and ill, into cooking for him, despite the boys crying hungrily. “We'll make a ranch woman out of you yet,” he'd declared.

She sat, lifted her skirt, and placed her left foot on the table, kicking the pebble and comb onto the floor. When he saw her right foot
about to join the other, he rescued his glasses from being crushed, although the book slid off and landed with a spine-breaking thump, loose pages flittering. She settled her skirts and leaned back, allowed the muscles sore from riding to find the contours of the chair. Her knees protested when straightened and her calves took a minute to relax their contraction.

“He took up with an Indian girl, you know, that's what got him killed. Found her out there right beside him.”

She responded with silence, and he nodded. Cullen shifted restlessly in his chair, then rose and went quietly through the doorway to J.B.'s office. They listened as the cork hissed from a bottle and liquid sloshed into a glass. He reappeared with a half-full glass of brown liquor in his hand and began prowling the room with catlike grace, silently weaving among the chairs and tables while taking small sips. He stopped at the whatnot shelves and picked up the belt buckle Hayward had won riding goats as a boy and let it drop with a thud on the walnut shelf. He took a longer drink.

“You didn't know he was seeing that girl?”

She gulped the burning-hot coffee to scald the lump caught in her throat. Cullen stopped behind her chair, rested his hand on the back of it. She was unsettled, she wanted to lean forward but remained still, even when he began to play with the chignon at the back of her neck. When his ragged fingernail scraped her skin, she couldn't stop her shiver and he placed his hand on her shoulder. She waited a moment before reaching up to touch his fingers, afraid he'd jerk them away. He sucked in his breath but held still, and she stroked his fingers three times before he lifted his other hand to drink again. She could smell the heavy spice of their wedding brandy. That's what they'd always called it.

“She was fourteen. Tiny slip of a thing . . .” Drum grinned, as ugly as he knew how, like he'd just made her stick her hand in a gunnysack full of rattlesnakes. “What do you think of that, sister?” He rubbed the thigh of his good leg and chuckled. She closed her
eyes and turned her face from his. That kind of meanness needed a witness to really be enjoyed. Cullen squeezed the back of her neck with his hand and remained silent.

A part of her knew J.B. deserved more happiness than their miserable meetings offered, but a child? J.B.? Rose said her sister was a good girl. Why would Drum lie, unless he was responsible.

Drum glanced at Cullen. “He's not coming to live with you, you know that, don't you?” Drum's mood and tone changed abruptly and Cullen began to prowl the room again. “Don't bother pretending, sister. I know why you're here. That boy is mine, that's all I have to say on the subject. You'd have him ruint in a month. Turn him weak and mewly like J.B. was until you left. Took him a while, but he grew a pair and managed to keep this place going. More than I predicted.” He paused and looked out the window at the ranch yard, where the hands were gathering for supper.

“What have you done to find his killer? Anything? Or have you been sitting here planning on how you're going to take over everything J.B. and I built?”

Drum almost flinched, his face reddened. Cullen stopped at the end of the sofa and watched her, the drink halfway to his mouth.

“I sent men out to look.” Drum stared at his hands, his mouth a grim line.

She stood and paced between the kitchen and living room, hands clutched in front of her as if she were going to be sick. Her mind flooded with protest and argument, but it did no good. Not now. Not then when Drum arrived that morning for his “legacy,” as he called it. Family curse was how she'd always referred to it, as if the vampire of Bram Stoker's novel had come to life in the Sand Hills of Nebraska, a place so remote the rest of the state rode out of its way to avoid it. There was no justice here. They were all merely blooded creatures waiting for the fatal bite. Even J.B., the man who loved her more than she loved herself, could not change his father's mind. And so she was forced to leave without him ever knowing she paid
for his safekeeping, and the price became her burden, the forfeiture of their future together.

She stopped behind the chair she had sat in and clutched the back. Cullen had returned to his father's office for another brandy and stood in the doorway drinking and watching them.

“I will find out who murdered my husband. You don't need to concern yourself. He would want it that way. He never trusted you, Drum. Not for a minute. I wouldn't be surprised if you were the one pulled the trigger. If you did, I'll hang you out there myself.” She pointed to the cottonwoods behind the barn.

“Just because you're the cow standing in the pigsty don't mean you're not dirty, missy.” Drum used both hands to lift the splinted leg, pivot, and ease it to the floor, grimacing at the effort that brought sweat to his pale cheeks and the backs of his hands.

“Here, Cullen. Put that glass down and help me. I got to visit the outhouse,” he yelled, then glanced toward the homemade crutches at the end of the sofa. He wouldn't ask. He studied the table blocking his access. His only choice was to hobble around it. Somehow he pushed himself upright, swaying with the bad leg propped out in front of him, balancing with his arms outstretched, on one foot, like a man on a wire in the circus. The first hop on the good foot brought his toe under the braided rug and he crashed to the floor, crying out as he tried to twist away from the broken ankle, resulting in a loud snap as his arm broke beneath the weight. Cullen drained his glass, set it down, and hurried over to help.

Dulcinea was on her feet before she could stop herself. Shifting him to lie on his back, she accidentally grabbed the hand of the injured arm, and moved the bone with a grating sound. He moaned through gritted teeth.

“Lie still!”

“Help me, boy,” Drum groaned.

Cullen rocked back on his heels and looked at his mother, the amusement again in his eyes as he raised his brows. She nodded and
together they tried to raise the old man to a seated position. When that failed, she rose and went to the door to call for men to help. Rose was still at the gate, holding the horses. Both looked played out from the long, fast ride, their heads down, coats rough with dried sweat. She watched as the hands started for the house and then paused at the door to peek at the scene inside, uncertain what was expected of them.

“What happened?” Vera asked as soon as she pushed her way through the crowded doorway, followed by her husband, who stepped forward and knelt beside the old man.

“Frank Higgs, ma'am. We met in town couple years ago?” The foreman tipped his hat to Dulcinea.

“Still have to go out back,” the old man muttered as Higgs directed the men to lift him. “That damn woman did this to me! Keep her away from me!”

“I told you to use the night jar,” Vera scolded.

“He needs to go home,” Dulcinea said. “I don't want him in my house.”

Her words were greeted with expressions ranging from surprise on Frank and Vera's faces, to bemusement on Cullen's, and finally to fleeting triumph on Drum's, before he fainted in their arms.

S
he blew in like a hard west wind, the kind that dropped a man's bones to zero, froze his hair to his skull, and clogged his eyes with ice. Graver shook his head at the scene. The old man on the floor, pee darkening his trousers and the braided rug beneath him, Vera and Frank Higgs standing helpless while the widow paced, her small black kid button boots thudding firmly on the parlor rug, her arms folded, as if Drum Bennett's every ragged breath caused her affront. In a plain gray bodice and full skirt, Dulcinea Bennett was a handsome woman with only a few small lines at the edges of her light brown eyes. There was a rich glow to the strands of auburn hair falling out of her chignon. She possessed a slender build that spoke of inner force, more than equal to her father-in-law, Graver suspected. She appeared cool despite the heat that put a moist sheen on everyone's face. He wondered what made her leave her family.

Higgs called Larabee and Willie Munday to move Drum upstairs. Cullen followed.

“I don't see why he can't stay on the sofa,” Mrs. Bennett muttered to their retreating backs.

“Hard to keep that arm right,” Graver said, intending to elaborate
from his own experience until she caught him in a gaze that would freeze a man on a hot stove. She was definitely Drum Bennett's equal, and certainly more than Graver could handle.

“And who are you?” She stopped behind the rocker, her hands gripping the black lacquer. He noticed they were the kind of hands that had seen work, the nails short and irregular despite the small thin fingers. On her left hand, she still wore her wedding band. Well, Graver thought, that was something.

“Sir?” She tapped her fingers against the back of the chair. She was like an overbred mare, likely to bolt at any moment, not reliable enough to work except maybe as a fancy horse some lazy owner could step out for show. She opened her mouth to address him again, but he interrupted with a wave of his hat.

“Ryland Graver, ma'am, Ry.” She closed her eyes and nodded.

“I'm sorry, ma'am. Shall I fetch you a glass of water?” He moved toward her with the intention to catch her if she fainted, but she waved him away.

“Please. Get yourself some water.” She opened her eyes and tried to smile. It came out a tired grimace. “I just need to know who my employees are and what jobs they perform.” She inspected him, dressed in J.B.'s clothes, from the tall boots to the black shirt to the new black hat that Graver worked hard to keep the dust from settling into. “Judging from your attire, I'd say you have some elevation above the other men. So I repeat my request, what do you do here, on J.B.'s, our, ranch?”

He picked a piece of cottonwood lint from the brim of the hat, wondered what to tell her. He didn't want to shock or offend her with the fact that he was wearing her dead husband's clothes, but he didn't have any others to wear. He was in a quagmire. From upstairs groans and then a shouted string of curses commenced when Drum apparently awoke as they set his arm.

Frank Higgs hollered from the top of the stairs, “Graver, bring that bottle of brandy from the office.”

Graver lifted his hat. “This is what I do here, Mrs. Bennett,
whatever they tell me.” As he edged past her to the office tucked off the parlor, he smelled the musk of a woman's body unwashed from travel beneath the sweeter scent of her perfume and felt, for the first time in more months than he cared to think, a surge in his own body that made him pause for the briefest moment behind her, her back inches from his chest. His breath caught in his throat, and he swallowed hard. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a tremor pass through her.

“I'll keep your accommodating nature in mind, Mr. Graver.” Her voice had a rich deepness that ran itself up and down his spine before settling in his legs, made it just a bit more difficult to walk with the assurance of a man who carried his own water in the world. Hell, it made a person want to carry his and hers and anybody else's she had a mind to invite along. He smiled and shook his head as he moved inside the office and spied the brandy on the desk.

“That's our wedding brandy,” she said when she saw the bottle in his hand. “That man never even bothered to come over when we got married.” She reached for the bottle, but Graver lifted it away.

“They need this upstairs, ma'am.”

She stamped her foot, but her arms collapsed to her sides. “This really is the last straw. I am going to march up there and make them take him home. He's never going to leave at this rate!” When she started to push past, he stood in her way and reached to take her arm. A surprisingly strong and muscled arm it was, he had time to consider before she shook herself free.

She pulled herself to her full height, all five and a half feet, and seemed able to look down her nose at him despite his advantage in size. A schoolteacher look, definitely, he thought. “Give me that bottle.”

He was about to give it to her when Higgs thundered down the stairs, startled when he saw the two of them, grabbed the bottle, and rushed back up. Graver suppressed a smile, focused on his own battered hands while she took a few deep, restorative breaths. When he peeked up, her cheeks were aflame and she rubbed tears
from her eyes with her knuckles like a child, a look his own daughters had worn on occasion. The thought stung his nose and throat like vinegar.

He wouldn't offer her the pieties she would hear from others. He knew how grief poured out your life like so much night soil and left you empty as a piss pot, the stink and rancor bubbling your skin to open sores that only you saw and felt. No one who truly grieved wanted to be touched, held, rubbed on . . . it was like being boiled alive. He didn't know how anyone survived. Getting shot was hardly a scratch compared to what happened after his wife and children passed. Maybe a part of him deserved it. Maybe she felt like that now.

He glanced at her tilted head, listening to the cursing and voices upstairs, the creaking of the bed as they struggled with Drum. There was a faint dew of sweat under her eyes now, across the pink sunburn and freckles on her cheeks, on the bridge of a nose that had a bump in the middle, which some might consider a mar on its beauty, but he did not, and the lips, though she'd seemed angry or pensive since he'd met her, had corners that curved upward despite her mood. He could see how a young J.B. would want to court and win her, as Graver had his own wife. Always there was that one feature, that one small detail that seemed to bring a person to another person, something private and endearing. With his wife, it had been the peculiar points of her ears, which made her seem fawn-like, like some benign creature he should protect, but despite his fierceness, he had failed, as J.B. had failed. There was nothing a man could do, apparently. He sighed. She shook herself and glanced at him, then back toward the stairs. It had grown quiet.

“I'm sorry. I, it's just—” She opened her palms and looked at him as if he could do something to fill her empty hands. “Have you met my other son, Hayward?” She held him briefly with those light brown eyes rimmed with violet, then shook her head and peered out the window.

Graver nodded cautiously.

“What's your judgment of him?” She looked at him again, her
face solemn, the suggestion of a smile on her lips, hoping for a good report. It broke his heart.

He hesitated, glanced up the stairs, then back out the door at the men drifting down to the bunkhouse until supper call. Vera's stew was ready, cornbread sitting under flour sacking, butter softening on the plate. “The boys, well, they pretty much have the run of things here.” He took a deep breath. “They sit a horse pretty good, rope decent, sometimes they even put in a day's work you stay on them, but they're youngsters yet.”

She waved her hands at the description. “Never mind all that. Soon as they go away to school, they'll learn other skills.” She hesitated, and then in a rush, “I need your help with something.”

“Ma'am?”

Her voice trailed at the sound of a horse arriving, accompanied by yelling and loud laughter from the barnyard. Her face brightened and she strode out the door with Graver behind. “Hayward,” she whispered.

The boy rocked unsteadily in his saddle, unmindful of the lathered horse's sides heaving for breath beneath him. Finally Hayward slumped sideways and slid off his horse, landed with a soft thump in the dirt. Struggling upright, he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed, ignoring the wet splashing. Finished, he worked at buttoning his pants until finally giving up with a shrug and turning back to tug on the exhausted horse's reins.

Cullen pushed past them in the doorway and sprinted down the walk to where his brother tried to stand without weaving. “You were supposed to wait for me!” Cullen pushed Hayward's chest and he fell back, landing in his own piss-soaked dirt. They fought for a few minutes until, being the bigger of the two, Hayward pinned his older brother and held him while they argued. In the end, they lay side by side, gazing at the sky, giggling, no doubt about some mischief they planned. Graver kept that to himself.

“High spirited,” Graver said. His hands clenched his hat to keep from walking out there and throwing the two of them in the stock
tank until they sobered up. They could take care of the horse afterward, too. Probably ruined it, spent its heart and mind on foolishness. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to help the widow with these two.

“They need some refinements, I can see that, but they come from good stock.” She wasn't going to give up on her boys. Her lips formed a smile that wanted to become broad, and though she held it back, her eyes were alight with joy and her shoulders fairly trembled with the urge to reach out to them. She was their mother, despite having abandoned them, peculiar as that seemed to Graver. “Hayward? Cullen.” Mrs. Bennett started down the stairs toward the gate, calling their names, her deep voice higher than before, the question in her tone letting the boys know they could ignore her.

Cullen half pulled, half shoved his brother upright, then stood and brushed at the pissy mud on their clothing, which only resulted in smearing it. He picked a glob off his cheek, threw it at Hayward, and followed with a shove that nearly sent the boy sprawling again. The wrestling match threatened to restart until Hayward glanced at his mother, ran a muddy hand through his long hair to push it off his face, and dipped his head at her. Cullen glanced at her, too, and let his body slacken, not bothering to push his brown hair back or wipe his face on his sleeve. His face wore a pout, the mouth a replica of hers except the corners turned downward in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction. His white-blue eyes were small and quick, like a wild animal's. The Bennett nose, strong, slightly hooked and crooked from being broken, sat squarely on his face, making him not so much handsome as possessing the possibility of character. Without taking his eyes from his mother and Graver, Cullen snapped his fist out and punched his brother in the arm. Hayward's yowl brought a smile to Cullen's mouth, leveling its corners.

“Boys.” The widow ran out of words as she searched their faces. Neither boy moved. She started to open her arms to them, then thought better of it and let them settle at her sides. “I'm sorry about your father.”

Hayward dropped his gaze to the ground and shoved the toe of his boot through the sandy dirt. Cullen stared at her with his small flat eyes, tilting his head and lifting his chin the way his mother did. Suddenly Cullen lurched forward and wrapped his arms around her, rubbed his muddy cheek against hers and nuzzled her hair, then stepped back and held his arms out and performed a deep bow. His mother's expression was startled, then grateful, but quickly turned to anger when she saw that filth stained her dress from his mocking embrace.

“Mother—” he began. “May I call you that? It's so kind of you to come calling.” His mouth curled in a sneer and he gave Hayward a quick cuff on the back of his head. “Say hello to your mother, stupid! You remember her, don't you?”

Hayward stretched out a hand, realized how dirty it was, rubbed it on his pants, and then held it out again. She ignored his hand, stepped closer, and embraced him, casting Cullen a defiant glance, while Hayward kept his arms at his sides as if suffering from her touch.

The older boy nodded once, looked away, and the meanness fell from his expression, replaced by something that made his lips tremble. When his mother dropped her arms and stepped back, there were tears in her eyes, and neither boy would look at her.

“Need to take care of that horse,” Graver said.

Hayward sighed and started to turn. Cullen caught his arm.

“Who the hell you think you're talking to?” Cullen took a step toward Graver, who shifted his left leg back a few inches, preparing to fight.

Hayward grabbed Cullen's arm and muttered something that made the older boy glare at Graver and then turn away. Graver almost followed him when he yanked the reins and pulled the horse off balance so it about went down before managing to steady its spent legs.

“That wasn't necessary.” Mrs. Bennett turned toward him, her chin high, face pale. When she swept past him in her dirt-streaked
dress and muddy hair and face, there was an overbright glitter of tears in her eyes and it struck him to the quick. He wanted to whip those boys within an inch of their lives, make them apologize to their mother, make them comfort and care for that poor broken horse, make them sober and clean and respectable. He wanted her world to be just what she needed it to be. He would do that for her.

But she paused at the gate and called back, “Graver, help them with the horse.”

It was enough to make him feel like he'd taken a mouthful of flour, dry, tasteless, impossible to swallow. He should walk away, and he would, he thought, except he didn't own so much as a horse, let alone the clothes on his back. And there was still the question of who shot him and killed J. B. Bennett and the girl. He meant to find out before he left.