I tracked the bumpy texture of my linen blouse with my thumb. “I’m not worried.”
I lay back down, nestled into the bluestem, and after a moment he joined me. It felt fragile and raw, those moments under the stars, the vulnerability of another becoming known to me. The tobacco sweetened the crisp scent of winter, and I closed my eyes, felt the flickering darkness upon my eyelids.
“So how’d you file anyway,” I asked, “if you’re an outlaw in truth?”
“Filed under my twin brother’s name.”
“Well, that’s a convenient alias. So the Lawman has a brother.”
“And six sisters.”
“You close?”
Stot rubbed his fist, knuckles brittle with the dry winter air. “Yes.”
One Eye shivered with some night terror, and I ran my palm along his back. “So why isn’t he homesteading alongside you?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh, damn.” I reached out for him, let my hand drop. “I sure am sorry, Stot.”
He took off his hat by the crown and held it to his chest. “Much obliged.”
“And your sisters, where are they?”
“Home. I distanced myself after everything, to safeguard them.”
I propped onto my elbows, bit my lip. That was something I understood. Laughter haunted the edge of the prairie, and a horse stomped dust with a muted thud. The Dipper tipped across the sky, the handle now almost horizontal, so it was well into the deep of night. Stot reached toward me and slipped his hand into the pocket of his cloak. I froze, his fingers brushing my stomach through the fabric of his slicker, my body buzzing,his gaze on my face, brow furrowed. He pulled out his flask and drank, the scent of whiskey tangy.
“I’m planning to call round on the Osage in a few days.” He handed me the flask. “You coming along?”
The liquid coursed down my throat, abrasive and primal, tasting of wood spices and old books and all things worn. “We ain’t taking a blasted buggy.”
“Course not.”
Our eyes met, held. Smolder from the distant bonfire haloed behind him, the rough shapes of his face black and gold and garnet in the tossed firelight. His hair, hat smudged and messy above his orderly clothes. His gaze roamed the length of my arm, the strip of my lace cuff, edging from the cavern of his slicker. He cleared his throat, pulled at his necktie. “Let’s walk.” He patted his vest pocket and pinched the divots of his hat, lifting it out of the shadows.
The prairie was vast and empty as we wandered through the switchgrasses and sideoats, space stretching forever away to the sky. The delicate winter clouds had fled, leaving glittering starlight. As we roamed, I heard the distant melody of a fiddle, the whoop and rumble of laughter, Stot’s low whistle for One Eye. Several women hummed the rhythm of one of Ma’s favorite hymns.Tell me the old, old story, of unseen things above.
Those few spare notes tugged me back in time, and I could almost smell those long ago summer weeks at the revival in Topeka: grass and sweat and musty Bible paper. Sunglow fizzling across my skin, the constant hum of hymns crooned round camp, the bluebirds nesting above our tent. Lark, Magnolia, and I roamed the edges of the grounds, slipping into the woods, down to the creek bottoms. We were no longer children, not quite teenagers. Sometimes we’d join Willie before a campfire, where he laughed with other boys and passed instruments round the circle. Ezra patrolled camp with a flock of older boys, chins lifted high, Bibles clutched in the crook of their elbows, a glint of righteousness in their eyes.
One evening my pa stood before a bonfire, hands on his hips, suspenders an X across his back. “There’s nothing like this, Minnie,” he said. “Nothing like the glory of our Lord.”
Pa didn’t often share musings, so I stepped beside him to listen, lifting my floral skirt above the mud. “You suppose so?”
“Course I do.” He flicked a glance at me, bushy jet-black eyebrows flecked with gray.
Once a month, my family joined the other Methodists from miles round at our one-room schoolhouse—we sang hymns and listened to stories, but the zeal swarming this revival was altogether different. Across the grass, Ma and a few women sang as they scrubbed pots, Ma’s dim brown hair twisted in a loose braid instead of her habitual bun. She had enlivened at the revival, befriending others involved in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Between songs they planned a protest outside the saloons of our county.
Pa shifted his weight, studied me.
“I believe God’s good.” I scratched my wrist below my lace cuff. “I just reason folks will return to whomever they’d been before, when the tents pack up and they head on home to the everyday.”
He rubbed his beard, his palms clean. At home his hands were always smudged with oil or dirt.Tell me the story slowly, the women sang,that I may take it in.
A cascade of laughter burst from the path: Magnolia beckoned me from a cluster of youths. She gripped Lark’s arm, his body angled away as he hollered some nonsense or other across the crowd. The whites showed round Magnolia’s brown eyes; she was always a bit lost without me.
“Settle your horses,” I called to her and turned back to Pa. “You caution that men are fickle, that I should steer clear of the lot of them.”
