Hers the Kingdom (63 page)

     He told her about Wen, about his mother's disappointment. "I think that in some strange way, the party today was for Wen. Except that Wen wasn't here." He paused, then added, "Which is probably a good thing, because he would have managed to ruin it somehow."

     She looked at him, trying to fathom what had happened. "I'm sorry, that wasn't kind of me," Thad said, reproaching himself. "But I do feel Wen has acted badly, and has hurt Mother without good reason. I've told her that she will be the first to be invited to our wedding."

     She looked at him, not sure she had heard him correctly. He smiled and pulled her to him. "I want to marry you, I'm asking you," he said.

     Still she could not answer. Her mind was racing. He was dear to her, she knew that. Dear, terribly dear. She supposed she loved him. Yes, she did love him, she knew that. But she had not wanted to hear this, had not expected it and did not want it.

     She raised her face and he bent to kiss her. Before she understood what was happening, she had wrapped her arms tight around his neck, their bodies were close. His hands caressed her back, stroked her sides so that he could feel the swell of her breasts. For the first time, they touched with passion. His mouth was on hers, moving, and she met him.

     She pushed him away, hard. "Thad don't. Please, listen to me."

     "Sally, I'm sorry," he said, not understanding, "please, I didn't mean to do that. I want you to marry me, that's all. I will wait for the rest, I promise I'll wait."

     "No, it's not what you think . . ." she started, then stopped.

     He was confused, she could see it flicker over his face.

     "Listen to me, please," she said in a voice that ached with hurt. "I love you Thad," she said, "I do, I know I do. And I loved kissing you now, it wasn't that I wanted to stop. It's something else. I can't marry you now, not now. Maybe not ever. I don't know for certain, but I know it can't be soon."

     "Why?" he cried out. "Why, when you say you love me? I want you to be my wife, to have my children. You know what our life will be—here, on the ranch. You said you were happy here."

     "And I am," she sighed. "Today; today was a perfect day, an idyllic day. And this is the most beautiful place I've ever seen, and I love all of the people. And that is part of what is wrong, Thad. It's all too perfect, too easy. The future is all laid out, and I'm only just twenty-one years old. There is so much I don't know, so much I haven't done . . ."

     His face darkened. "If you don't want to stay here, then . . . well, then we can live someplace else."

     "Thad, don't," she said, "you belong here, it's all you've ever wanted. You've been other places, and you know. How could anyone who loves you even think of asking you to leave?"

     He turned and walked away. She ran after him, tearing the lace of her dress in the ragged dune grass.

     "Thad, please wait." She grabbed onto him and held him in a tug-of-war that ended only when he stopped. She stood in front of him, her chin out. "I do love you. Any woman in her right mind would say yes, and throw herself into your arms now. I'm not in my right mind, I'm sure. You of all people should know that. Please, Thad, give me time. I need more time."

     He looked at her. "How much time?"

     "A year, at least a year. There is so much to consider."

     "What, exactly?" he wanted to know.

     "Well," she stuttered, "children. I'm not sure if I want to have a whole passel of children."

     "You're wonderful with children," he said, surprised.

     "Maybe, but I'm not sure if I want to spend my life rearing them."

     He looked at her now with affectionate exasperation. She had not said
no
, she had said she loved him and that he must wait.

     "I have to decide what I want to do with my life," Sally said.

     "What you want to do with your life," Thad repeated. His mocking tone made her wheel and walk quickly away, but now he was behind her. He caught her and held her, and when she stumbled he swept her up and carried her into the cottage.

     She could easily have laughed or cried. She chose to laugh. He made her heart quicken, this young man. He made her feel warm and he made her breath come in short, sweet gasps.

     He sat on her narrow bed, holding her in his lap, the swell of her breasts under the lacy bodice pressing into him. She found his mouth with hers, and let herself breathe into him.

     When he had kissed her, he held her tight, rocking back and forth. And then he said into her hair, "I'll wait. I'll wait for a year."

     She reached for his mouth again and kissed him with such violence that they fell back onto the bed. She moved into the curve of his body, and for an instant they arched together. Then he stood, pulling her up with him, holding her arms to her sides.

     "I'll wait," he whispered harshly, "we'll wait together. There's been no one before you and there won't be, not until our wedding night."

     She thought she couldn't bear it. She opened her mouth and kissed his neck, thrusting her tongue into his flesh, feeling as if she would burst. He moved his lips to her ear, and through the tangled mass of her hair he whispered, "Do you think I don't
want you?" With his hand he guided hers to his trousers, so that she could feel how hard he was through the cloth of his suit.

     "That's how much I want you," he said, "but I will wait."

We went to our beds that night in varying states of grace. I felt as if I had watched a fairytale unfold. Willa was wistful about Wen, but went to bed thinking about Philip Bourke. Joseph and Arcadia kissed lightly on the lips, and went to their separate rooms, wishing as they always wished that they could sleep in each other's arms.

     I woke before dawn to unfamiliar sounds; then it was quiet, ominously quiet. I could not say what it was, until I heard the sounds of boots on the stairs.

     "Thad, what is it?" I called to his back as he descended, strapping on a gun belt.

     "Francisco," he called back.

     In the kitchen, Willa was strapping on a gun belt as Trinidad made the motions of starting a fire in the wood stove.

     "Don't," Willa told her, "there will be no time."

     My sister looked at me, her face grim. "I was wrong," she said. "Francisco was killed, bludgeoned to death."

     
Dear Lord.

     "Who? Where are you going?" I could not think to ask the right questions.

     "Ignacio thinks it's rustlers, and that means they're going after the herd. They have an hour's lead, no more. We're going after them." Her voice was taut, angry.

     Joseph came into the kitchen, pulling on his suspenders.

     "Wait, Willa," he said. "Send someone into town to talk to the sheriff first. You don't know what you're up against."

     "You go into town and tell the sheriff, Joseph," she came back, her voice filled with fury. "This time, I'm going to stop them. This time they won't get away with it."

     The ranch hands were mounted and waiting in the back courtyard, some of them with rifles across their saddles and others with guns strapped to their hips.

     Trinidad ran to where Ignacio was tightening his cinch, and handed him a napkin filled with food. He put it in his saddlebag without saying anything. She stood, her hands limp, her body an expression of concern.

     "I hate this," I said to Trinidad when they had left, "the guns, the fear, the violence. I hate it."

     The morning was interminable. The twins occupied themselves with picking up bits of ribbons and colored papers from the lawn, the remnants of yesterday's tea dance. Suddenly yesterday seemed not real, a frivolity that could not have been. Today was real.

     Joseph hitched a team to his brougham and left early, eager to get Arcadia into town and report to the sheriff before returning. He was intent on returning, he said, and I did not try to dissuade him, though I knew it would be difficult.

     Soong worked in the family garden, staying close by, I felt sure, to watch after us. Only the Chinese, and a few old men—old hands like Francisco—were left about the home place. It could happen that the rustlers would swing back, though we knew it not likely. "Joseph agrees with Ignacio, and so do I," Soong told me. "It makes sense that they would think we would not expect a raid on the morning after a celebration, a Sunday. Probably they thought the old man would be asleep, or drunk. It's possible that he surprised them, challenged them."

     "He would have," I answered, "I think the poor soul took his position so seriously, he would have tried to stop them."

     Sally waited with us. Thad had raced down to the beach as soon as he heard, to make sure she was safe. "I was still awake," she told me, shyly. "I hadn't been able to get to sleep. That's how I know they passed less than an hour before Thad came for me. I heard the horses on the beach road."

     Only Soong was able to work as the morning moved,
ponderously, into the afternoon. The rest of us, our minds dulled by dread, could only wish the minutes away. We thought we heard the reports of rifles, but we couldn't be sure. Sounds played tricks in the mountains; it might have been a tree falling, a rockslide.

     At four o'clock, they came riding in by ones and twos, silent. We ran out to watch them; we stood as they moved toward us. Sally saw it first: a horse without a rider, behind Willa. On it, a figure covered by a blanket.

     Trinidad screamed. Sally caught her, and the two slumped to the ground.

     It was Ignacio's horse. The body it carried was Ignacio.

"MAMA WANTS YOU to come to our house, Miss Willa . . . and Miss Lena, too," Aleja paused, and with a tiny intake of breath added, ". . . if you would be so kind."

     
If you would be so kind
. . . It was a formal invitation, delivered by the solemn, dark-skinned girl in her black dress with its neat white collar. A Yankee dress, and Yankee words . . .
if you would be so kind
. . . Aleja had become a hybrid, too cultivated, too Yankee for her Mexican household, too dark-skinned, too flat-faced for the Anglo world.

     Aleja had stayed close by her mother since the funeral. For most of that time, Trinidad had sat in the straight chair in the parlor of the house that she had shared with Ignacio, her hands in her lap, talking about the silent man who had been her husband. She told of small kindnesses, bringing out each memory as if to hold it in her hand like some polished, precious stone to be admired. His death had released her from the secrets, his goodness could now be told.

     We listened, and nodded, and told our own stories; we spoke of the good times, the good things. It was, I thought, a stately way
to mourn. In time, Trinidad would return to the present, to the future.

     Willa strode ahead of me while Aleja waited, too thoughtful to leave me behind. By the time we climbed the stairs and crossed the threshold, we could hear Trinidad's strangely stern tones: "Be silent, my son," she commanded, and the big, bearded man who stood beside her, dressed in the rough clothes of a peasant, was silent.

     "Pablo!" Willa exclaimed, having finally recognized the boy in the man.

     "Someone has sent to Pablo the message that his father is killed dead. Ignacio has said to Pablo, do not come here no more. But he comes, as you see, and he says to me, 'I must speak to Miss Willa.' I say no, but Pablo says 'let her say.'" Trinidad's voice was losing its firmness; a quiver had come into it. Her eyes would fill in another moment.

     "I will speak to Pablo, Trinidad. It is good that you called me." Then, turning to the man, she nodded for him to follow her outside. "I don't want to disturb your mother," she said so that Trinidad could hear, "we can talk in the garden."

     Trinidad was weeping quietly. Aleja went to her, and so did I.

     In a while, I asked, "Who sent the message to Pablo?"

     Trinidad would not look at me, but bit into her knotted handkerchief.

     "Thad," Aleja answered. "Mama told him how to reach Pablo many months ago. They have been meeting, in San Diego I think."