An Owl's Whisper (37 page)

Pointing to the shrimp, Stan asked, “What’s that, worms or clams or something?”

Eva replied, “We call them
crevette
. In English I don’t know what they are. But don’t be concerned, whatever the name, they are delicious.”

A note was tucked between the beer bottles. Stan picked it up. “It’s from the conductor. He says,
Folks, like I mentioned, my boy served in Belgium. He met some Belgium girl and wrote that he figured to bring her back with him. Old fool that I am, I told him, you have your fun over there but don’t go hauling no foreign floozy home. He died last December in that Bulge fighting. Lord, I’d give anything to have him back here, along with that Belgium girl of his. Good luck to you two. G. Larkin, Conductor.”

Eva ate the shrimp and Stan ate the cheese and crackers. They nibbled on the vegetables. But on that warm night, the cold beer tasted best.

Stan was quiet as they ate. Eva said, “So silent. You’re not glad to see your wife?”

Stan put his arm around her. “Sure I’m happy, honey. I’m just wonderin’
why me?
Why I made it out of the Ardennes fighting, when guys like Harkin—the sarge who saved my hide—and the conductor’s kid didn’t. I know it’s just luck, but that ain’t a reason. And now I’m here with you as my wife? How’d all this plop into my lap?”

“We are lucky, Stanley. You can’t explain it. And if you ask many questions, I think you may scare it off. Anyway, for this moment, we have the luck.” Taking Stan’s wrists, Eva lay back on the bed. She slid his hands under her skirt and slip and up her bare thighs. With Stan leaning over her, she said, “Let’s make this moment forever, my love. Fill me with your life and I’ll mix it with mine to make a new one.” She pulled Stan’s mouth to hers.

After they kissed, Stan sat on the bed next to Eva. He unbuttoned his shirt and her blouse and unhooked the front closure on her brassiere. He stood and unbuckled his belt, letting his pants drop to the floor. He liked her watching him undress. He sat on the bed next to her knees and pushed up her skirt and slip. Stan gently slid her underpants down, first over the left foot and then the right. He looked at her, lying there inviting him, and paused to fix the sight in his memory.

“Now close the light and come to me,” Eva said.

Stan clicked off the light switch, leaving just a silvery spray of moonlight on her skin. He eased himself onto her. He slid a hand to the small of her back and nuzzled her throat, as Eva’s legs pulled him to her.

When they lay spent in each other’s arms, Eva purred, “Now I’m pregnant.”

“If fiery passion matters, I’m inclined to agree, hon.” He kissed her ear. “But we might oughta wait for a doc’s say-so before we go diapers shoppin’. Don’t you think?”

“A woman knows,” Eva whispered.

New Home, New Hope

By the time the sun cleared the eastern horizon, Burlington train No. 211 was in Sand Hills country. Stan was still sleeping, but Eva was awake and peering out the window. Running parallel to the rail line were long, grass-covered ridges. For Eva, the landscape features threading by outside were the lineaments of Mother Earth’s ancient face. As wrinkles reflect an elder’s age and character, so these ridges, untilled and untamed, testified to a land shaped not by man’s hand but by time’s. Elongated ridges, eons in the making. Untouched. Solitary. Different from anything she had experienced in the old country. Difference—it was what she wanted.

No. 211 pulled up to the station in tiny Mullen an hour late. The only person on the platform besides the stationmaster was a wiry man holding a tan Stetson hat. Jesse Garrity was forty-eight years old, and like the landscape, he looked his age. He wore a plaid shirt and khaki slacks tucked into fancy boots. His mustachioed, sun-browned face looked like a wrangler’s, but the image stumbled on the book under his arm.

“There’s Uncle Jess, hon,” Stan exclaimed before the train had halted. “Dang if he don’t got himself all slicked-up!”

Eva was surprised by his appearance. From what Stan had said, she expected a huge man, perhaps mounted on a rearing stallion, waving a grand sombrero. But he was physically none of that. Not huge, except for the moustache and eyebrows. In fact, slight, understated. A billy goat, not a bull. She liked the moustache—not manicured, not dashing, not fashionable. It was big and thick and spilled over the sides his mouth, like those in Great War-era photographs. And she liked the eyes, looking private and dark under the drape of those bushy brows.

Stan put on his hat. It was identical to his uncle’s. He plucked Eva’s valise from the suitcase rack and grabbed her hand. As the train shook to a stop, he hustled his wife to the back of the car. At the top of the steps to the platform, Stan stopped and took both her hands. He said, like a lawyer making full disclosure, “Uncle Jess is a good egg, no matter that he’s a cop and listens to longhair music. He talks kinda funny—poetical, he calls it—on account of that apoplexy he had in March. You’ll cotton right to Carrie, his missus. As for Miss Agatha—she’s my granny—well …” He shrugged. “…you survived the war.” Stan bounded down the stairs like a spilled Folgers can of marbles. He took Eva’s waist and lifted her to the platform.

Conductor Larkin stood by the caboose, watching them. He made eye contact with Stan and nodded,
Good Luck
.

Stan tipped the brim of his hat, whispering, “Here’s to that boy of yours, pardner.” When he turned back, Jess was striding toward them, head nodding with each step. Stan winked,
You go on
, to Eva and released her hand.

She’d never known her father, but that morning, running toward the sheriff, she felt him, too, encouraging her, releasing her.
Yes, it’s time you go on, little one
.

When they met, Eva threw her arms around Jess’ neck before he could speak. “
Monsieur
Jess, it is making me so happy to see you now, after so much that Stanley’s telling.” She kissed his cheek.

At First Sight

Sheriff Jess Garrity first set eyes on Eva Chandler on the Burlington station platform in Mullen on an August morning in 1945. He saw his nephew Stan lift her down from the Pullman. Saw her light on the platform like the landing of milkweed down. Saw her enhance the coolness, the prettiness, of the morning twilight.

When Stan turned to take the suitcase from the porter, Eva walked alone to meet Jess. She threw her arms around his neck and greeted him with a kiss. Made it seem so natural. So warm. So easy. Holding his hands, she called him Jess—she said it,
Shess
—with an April breeze of a voice. Just like that, like a stormy stallion stayed by a soft Shoshone song, he was eating from her palm. Easiest spill I ever took, he thought.

“We’re headin’ over to our place,” Jess said when Stan arrived. “Carrie’s serving up scrambled cackle berries for breakfast.”

Eva looked confused. “I’m not sure what is the cackle berries?”

Stan put his arm around her. “It’s just Uncle Jess’ way of sayin’ eggs—
œufs
.”

“I’m happy that you don’t forget your French, Stanley.”

“Least not the food words,” Stan said.

They climbed into the Jess’ sheriff’s cruiser. “I’ve never been in the car of a policeman before,” Eva said. “You won’t put me to the jail, will you?”

When they were outside of the town, Jess ran the siren as they raced up the North-South hardtop. He was thinking,
Darned if I ain’t actin’ like a fool fifteen year old, tryin’ to impress a girl. Ought to be ashamed of myself
. He even forgot about the barbed wire welcome waiting at the house—Miss Agatha had made it clear she was set against her grandson bringing home some
Mademoiselle from Armentieres
.

At the house, Jess opened the front door for Eva and Stan. Carrie burst from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her blue and white checked apron. Her short auburn hair bounced as she moved to Eva. They embraced like long-parted sisters. Jess thought,
Took to Eva like a colt to carrots—but Carrie’s like that.
Then he eyed his mother, across the room. She’d be another matter. Miss Agatha scowled, her arms folded tight. Her wild shock of white hair, the white of polished silver, looked ominously electric, and her wire spectacles had slid down her thin nose like they were running from the smolder of her eyes. Jess ambled over and nudged her to join in the welcome. Miss Agatha spat back, “It’s Youth’s due to court Age.” Jess didn’t say what he was thinking.
’Specially when Youth’s stealin’ your grandson.
But a moment later he saw Miss Agatha’s gristle melt like springtime snow when Eva skipped across the room to her, kissed both her cheeks, and said how happy she was to meet the family matriarch. Jess winked at Stan when Miss Agatha pulled Eva to the breakfast table place next to hers.

Carrie served a ranch breakfast of steak and eggs, buttermilk biscuits and chokecherry relish. Miss Agatha even brought out a jar of her plum preserves and put it right in front of Eva. Jess knew that settled it: Youth had truly courted
and
conquered.

Eva did herself proud that morning. “It’s the most wonderful breakfast I’ve ever had.” Whether it was true or not, the way she said it, everyone at the table believed her.

After breakfast, Eva took Miss Agatha and Carrie by the arm and the three of them, three generations laughing like schoolgirls, walked together through the flower and the vegetable gardens in the front and back of the house. Jess pulled Stan to the window to show him. “Figured out your filly’s secret,” he said. “It’s touch—her kissed hello, that arm-in-arm walk, a hand placed on your wrist when you’re talkin’. Puts ya right under her spell.”

Stan nodded, “Yep, I reckon touch is Eva’s second language, and she’s fluent all right. Us Hooker County ranch folks savvy it pretty good, we just don’t speak it ourselves.”

That evening, after she’d helped clean up the supper dishes, Eva stepped out the front door to find Stan and Jess lolling on a creaking porch swing. The night air was warm and wet and still. “Hmm, which of you handsome men shall I ask to escort me for my walk?” She paused. “I think…both.” She took each man by the hand. “Come stroll the evening with me.”

“I should spend an hour mindin’ the accounts, hon,” Stan said. “Why don’t you two go see if there’s a breeze on the hilltop? Might be a nice sunset.”

As she and Jess moseyed up the hill, her hand on his forearm, Eva asked, “
Monsieur
Jess, will you tell me how you found such a fine wife?”

“I spotted Carrie after church one spring mornin’ in 1919. Thought she had the handsomest eyes I’d ever seen.”

“I noticed them today. The blue of the sapphire. She’s a very pretty woman.”

“Yep, that first day I told her she had ocean eyes, on account of the only other thing I’d seen that deep, sparklin’ blue was the Atlantic on a sunny day. She’d already been widowed—at twenty-three when Harley Matson died durin’ War I. Pneumonia. France.” Jess was quiet, like he was thinking. “Yes ma’am, I reckon askin’ Carrie Rucker Matson to marry me is the smartest thing I ever done, and her agreein’ to it’s the luckiest card I ever drew.” He nodded. “And gettin’ married’s the best spill I ever took. All that happened in nineteen and twenty.” Jess picked up a pebble and pitched it at the trunk of a plum tree, heavy with fruit. “That woman—she was bred to thrive here in Hooker County—plucky and cunning as a coyote, when it’s called for.”