The Magic of Ordinary Days (21 page)

I shook my head. “I'd just like to see them, that's all.”

His voice was low. “I already told you. Do what you want.”

I tried to think of a compromise. “I'll stay here for Thanksgiving and only go for Christmas and New Year's.”

He stood, gathered his wool jacket, old felt hat, coffee thermos, and a canteen of water, and then he aimed for the door. “I'm taking the truck way over to the far side. You won't be needing to drive today?”

“I'll find something to do.”

He went outside, and I stayed in the same spot. I looked about the empty house, and then, on sudden impulse, I went out through the screen door after him. “Could I please go along today?”

He gestured toward the truck bed filled with tools and rolls of barbed wire. “I'm going to repair fencing way out on the other side. It'll take all day.”

“Fine. I've got all day.”

He swept his arm toward the truck. “Then get in.”

I went back inside, grabbed my overcoat and a sweater, then rushed back out to the truck. Ray drove us down narrow roadways that crossed the farm. When we reached the eastern property line, Ray gathered his tools and materials, and then he nodded over past the fence. “That there's Hank and Martha's. As the crow flies, it ain't far, but as you already know, it takes quite a spell by car.”

The first snow had already melted away, but the ground remained damp. Decaying leaves and wet twigs were stamped into the soil like fossils. The sun drifted over us. I stood by and watched as Ray began to replace rusted and sagging lines of barbed-wire fencing. I found the work not interesting in the least, but in a strange way soothing. Ray had that ease of movement that one acquires after years of doing the same thing over and over again. He shifted his jaw just a bit forward as he worked, and his eyes never left sight of the things his hands were doing. He'd go back to the truck and pick out a tool, return with it, and begin working again in one smooth, fluid movement.

I think he could have done this work while dreaming. Ray was completely at home out here, giving his rapt attention to every last wire. He strung out the barbed wire, nailed it to the wood posts, cut it, and twisted it around until it was tight. Then he cut off the excess wire and tossed the remaining pieces into a pile.

As the day drew on longer, we were able to shed our overcoats. I'd noticed that farmers seemed to always wear long sleeves, even in summer heat. But although it was well into November, the midday warmth was intense enough to make Ray roll up his sleeves and wipe his brow occasionally with the back of his hand. Soon, however, I saw that Ray had been correct in not wanting me to join him. This was the most monotonous work I'd ever seen. How long would it take? I looked down the fence line and saw a rank of posts standing at attention and disappearing in both directions.

After a few hours, I'd had enough. I'd heard that factory work was inherently dull, but at least those workers had comrades with whom to talk. Every day Ray awakened and worked under this same broad stage of unmarked sky. What did he think about all day long as he worked by himself doing the same things repeatedly ? What went on in that mind? I sat in the truck and rested my head on the back of the seat. It was oh-so-quiet again, now that the harvest had been completed and the workers had left us. I wondered what Lorelei and Rose were up to on this day.

I hadn't realized I'd drifted off until I heard the truck door close. Ray turned the key and started up the engine.

I rubbed my eyes awake. “What are you doing?”

“Taking you home.”

He drove me back, and when we finally arrived at the house, I said, “I'm sorry.”

At first he didn't respond, but then he said quietly, “It's no bother.” He stretched his arm out on the seat back behind me. “I'll be back again around sunset.”

“You had to make a special trip because of me.”

But he just shook his head once and wouldn't let me see his eyes.

After trudging up the steps, I stretched out on the bed for a nap and dreamed of past holiday seasons. The candlelight services my father held on Christmas Eve, and the new dresses my mother chose especially for us girls to wear. The huge spreads of food in the fellowship hall, the presents individually chosen and wrapped up by my mother for each of us girls, and finding those gifts on Christmas morning underneath an evergreen tree in our living room.

That evening, the sunset lasted forever. In Denver, the mountains lifted the horizon and shortened the sunsets. But here, every tiny change of fading light could be appreciated. The sinking sun lit up the dust and each hovering cloud with gold and saffron and finally amber hues.

Before dinner, Ray took a longer time than usual praying. Well after I had finished with my blessing, his eyes were still closed and unmoving, his mouth soft. Even his nose looked relaxed, breathing invisibly. After dinner, we listened to Burns and Allen and found their comedy a nice break from the news of the war. Then I asked Ray for a game of rummy. I won the first few games easily, and afterward I started to let up on my strategy, deliberately discarding cards I would've normally kept. And still, I won the game. It took me a few more wins to realize what Ray was doing.

“Ray, you don't have to let me win.” I started shuffling the deck for one more game. “I don't have to win every single time. Believe me, I've lost in many things before. It isn't necessary for me to—”

His hand was on mine.

The cards slid out of my hold and onto the table, fanning away. He took my hand off the table and held it in the warm flesh and blood of his palm. I didn't resist his touch, but I didn't return it, either.

My hands. With him, it had also begun with my hands.

It was early June, just weeks after Mother's death. Time mattered little to me. I spent my days on dirty sheets with half-read books stacked on the floor all around me. I was in the midst of a misery that nothing—not reading, talking, sleeping, or eating— could relieve. By the time I felt able to get up and do something with myself, weeks had passed, and I had missed the deadline to enroll for summer classes.

My friend Dot had saved up her three gallons of gasoline so she could take me out for the first time since the funeral. We shopped, bought the khaki-colored dress for me, then Dot drove us over to the big USO on California Street to take in a show. A comedy troupe was performing for the soldiers, and we could watch the routine just by volunteering to help with refreshments at intermission and by cleaning up at the end of the program. When we arrived, the room that served as auditorium, the same room that sometimes doubled as dance floor, was packed with servicemen in uniform, and all of them, it seemed, smoking cigarettes and talking loudly, enjoying a cup of coffee or a glass of punch. Upon our arrival, many of the men looked our way, and some of them nodded or smiled. Dot was a real looker, not as classically beautiful as my sisters, but even more showy. She could always catch a man's eye.

As soon as the lights dimmed and the show began, Dot and I pulled out folding chairs and sat against the back wall. Everyone needed a laugh to combat the somber news of Allied preparations to invade France, a feat we knew would cost many American lives. So although the program wasn't all that funny, the crowd hollered out, laughed way too loudly, and clapped their approval. At intermission, as I was filling punch cups and serving coffee, I noticed a soldier slowly sidling his way up to Dot. It was always fun to watch Dot put her spell on a lonely guy. But to my surprise, the soldier didn't come up to Dot. Instead, he worked his way up to my side of the table, and as I served him coffee, he said, “You have lovely hands.”

I smiled and thanked him, but I still assumed he was just trying to get closer to Dot. But even after she edged her way into the conversation, he didn't show any interest in her. He kept talking to me.

He wore the silver bars of a first lieutenant, and he had suntanned skin, blond-streaked hair, a broad jaw, and deep-set eyes. The suntan, he told us, came from spending days in the high altitude, training out in the sun and snow up at Camp Hale near Leadville. Part of the Army's Tenth Mountain Division, he was preparing troops for the campaign in Italy, and his name was Edward. We talked all through the intermission, and when the show finally started up again, he invited me, not Dot, down front to sit with him.

Throughout the rest of the show, I couldn't concentrate on the entertainment going on just a few feet before me. Instead, I noticed the way he kept his arms loosely draped across his thighs, and how he laughed—long rolling flaps of laughter coming out of him like birds set free from a cage. After the show ended, he took me out on the sidewalk in the cool air, and we talked again. He had a manner of speaking that was a bit hesitant, as if he waited for just a second to think over his words before he spoke. But he held a gaze with calm confidence and smiled as if he knew it was dazzling.

Outside in the night and alone with him, I felt the intense draw of his looks. I had observed it for years—this power emitted by those with natural beauty. Abby and Bea had had it, even as young girls. But beauty had never before exerted a pull on me. I had always thought I could easily resist handsome looks if ever confronted by them in a man. But as I found out, I was no hardier than others were. I concentrated on keeping my voice steady and unbroken, but with each breath, I felt a crochet hook catching in my chest. Without even realizing it, I had taken another step closer to him. And I smiled, as I hadn't done, since when? Bea's wedding day, perhaps. With Edward, I smiled and laughed until my lips went dry.

When I told him I had been studying history before leaving school for family business, he asked, “And what part of history most interests you?”

“I'm fascinated by Egypt's history. But closer by, I love the history of our own country, especially the West.”

“I grew up on a ranch outside of Durango. My brothers and I spent the whole summer exploring the canyons and ravines. We'd find pottery shards and obsidian flints and arrowheads.”

“From the Anasazi?”

“Yes.” His face broke into a smile. “You know about them?”

I said, “All it took for me was one trip to Mesa Verde. Ever since then, I've been hooked.”

“Once my brother and I found an intact Anasazi cooking pot.” He gave a short laugh. “We should have held on to it, but we sold it so my brother could buy a car, and now it's on display in a museum somewhere.”

“That's not a bad thing.” I smiled. “Now many people can enjoy it.”

From the doorway, Dot appeared. “We need your help for the cleanup,” she called out to me, and for the first time, I saw in her eyes an emotion that wasn't often directed at me. In her eyes, I could see envy.

“They're so small,” Ray was saying.

“Yes.” My voice cracked like pieces of ancient pottery. “Some people are small.”

I looked into Ray's face.

“I was talking about your hands, Livvy. Your hands are so small.”

Twenty-one

I pulled my hand away from Ray‘s, and then I couldn't look at the hurt I had caused him. After silence so heavy I could hear the walls groan, I shoved the cards together, stacked them, and put them away in the cupboard. Back at the table, I sat again. Ray simply sat, too, until the strain of it apparently grew too much for him, and he had to get up and leave the room.

That night, I tried to read in bed, but the words on the printed page kept swirling into leafy patterns before my eyes. This life, this life of isolation and more plants than people, was strangling me. The memories I couldn't bear to relive came to life as the substance of plants and crops living within me, their sharp stems and tangled roots growing and prodding me internally to let them come out.

By the next day, I couldn't stay in the house. I asked Ray to leave me the truck so I could drive over to Camp Amache to visit Rose and Lorelei and take one of those classes in
ikebana
from their mother. Before I left, however, I heard the newscasters on the radio announce the latest travel warnings. The government had decided to ban all holiday travel by civilians because troop movement would be particularly heavy during the coming season. All pleasure travel for Christmas was seriously discouraged. I clicked off the radio and headed on my way.

Forward movement had always set my mind into motion, sometimes against my will. As I drove, again the stems of past memories started spreading and poking their points within me, and I had to force them back into the ground pockets where they belonged. I had to concentrate on my driving. I tried to remember the lyrics to favorite songs, and I sang them aloud, or else I might end up choked by those emerging vines and pushy shoots.