Hearts in Nature

Nathanial

At midday the score was Ava: six, me: zero. I love a woman who challenges me but Ava was beating me to a pulp, which I think was even more refreshing. The fish weren’t biting anymore so Ava handed me a sandwich from her saddlebag.

I opened the foil. “Peanut butter and jelly. I like it.”

Her smile was shy. “I don’t have much in my cabin.”

We sat on rocks under the shade of a tree near the stream and ate. The day was unusually warm for spring. Ava wore faded, tight jeans rolled up and a beige cotton blouse with short lace sleeves. When she leaned over I could see the swells of her breasts¸ glistening from sweat. Her skin was a warm, natural tone.

“Why did you move here from California?” I asked.

She glanced up, looking conflicted. “Nate . . .” I could tell from her expression that she wanted to tell me things but couldn’t find the words. She looked back down at her feet. I remembered our rule of no talking.

I stopped chewing and swallowed while I stared at the side of her face intensely. “Take down your hair, Ava,” I said in a purposeful tone. Something came over me suddenly and I felt the need to touch her, like my body was moving of its own accord.

Facing her on the rock, I watched as she kept her gaze straight ahead and slowly slipped the tie from her ponytail. Her long, straight hair fell cleanly down her shoulders. I reached and grabbed her by the side of the neck and pulled her toward me. She didn’t resist but didn’t face me either. I leaned into her hair and inhaled so deeply I felt drowsy. I was shocked by how drawn I felt to touching her and equally shocked that she had obeyed me and submitted to my touch.

It was like there was a force beyond me creating the involuntary movements of my hands on her body. She smelled of sweet alyssum like no one I had ever known, so sweet and natural only God could create it—a reminder of salvation in the secular age we were living in.

I wanted to rub her skin against mine. I glanced down her shirt and wondered if her sweat tasted as sweet as she smelled. I wanted to be inside of her. I was impossibly close to telling her to take her clothes off. Somehow I knew she would do it if I asked. It seemed like she was that directionless at times. It was as though her mind was a pinwheel endlessly spinning on a TV screen, and she was waiting for someone to come along and change the channel. She seemed lost and fragile one minute and then sharp and callous the next. I knew I couldn’t take advantage of someone like Ava, even though in the moment I was one hundred percent sure she wanted to escape it all with me.

My heart was racing, pushing blood to the center of my body, thumping so powerfully that it actually scared me. I ran marathons and cycled for miles, I was conditioned for stamina, yet I found myself completely out of breath in her presence. I hadn’t thought about the hospital or Lizzy or surgery at all that day, but suddenly, and for the first time in my life, as I sat there breathing Ava in, I thought about our hearts in relation to love.

Surprised by the thought, I got up abruptly, breathing rapidly. I stood prostrate from the shock, held my hand over my chest, and stared down at her. I couldn’t form words.

A horrified look washed over her face and then morphed into embarrassment as her cheeks flushed pink. She got up and began running over the rocks toward the hill. I felt confused and guilty and chased after her.

“Ava, wait!”

Her bare foot slid across a moss-covered rock and sent her flying off her feet backward. It seemed like slow motion as I watched her turn in the air to protect her body. She landed on her side violently over jagged rocks.

She let out a deep moan. I ran to her and knelt. Her eyes were pressed shut as she began to cry. Her cry reminded me of Lizzy’s mother, unprocessed and real.

“Are you hurt?”

“Yes,” she managed to force out with a heavy breath.

“Where?” I said frantically. I scanned her body as she lay curled in the fetal position.

“Inside.”

“For Christ’s sake, where, Ava? Please let me help you. I’m a doctor.”

Her bloodshot eyes opened as her hand moved slowly to her chest. She firmly pressed the space over her heart. “In here. I’m bleeding. I must be,” she said, falling into a fit of full, powerful sobs.

Complete understanding struck me. I took her into my arms, cradled her like a baby, and let her sob into my chest. I had gone too far back on the rock and she was struggling with it.

After an hour of holding her tight, I felt her body relax. She had fallen asleep in my arms.

I thought back to a time when I had assisted on an eighteen-hour surgery with my father and another established doctor. Things kept going wrong but my father had remained steadfast. It was hard to understand how he had the physical stamina but I quickly learned that being a doctor required that. I had held forceps and a clamp on a bleeding artery for four hours straight during that surgery while my father tried to figure out the problem.

I held Ava for hours in the same way near the stream as she slept that day. My arms were tired and tingling with numbness but I held her with determination. It was unbelievable how deep and relaxed her breaths were. Examining her body, I noticed that her feet were tiny and her toes were painted pink, which I found adorable but peculiar, knowing the type of lifestyle Ava led. They looked newly painted and I wondered if she had done it for my benefit.

She made no sound as she slept. I felt her pulse with my hand and then bent to hear her steady heart. That woman must never have slept so peacefully. It was like she had fallen into a temporary death as she lay next to the trickling stream. Her body was as seemingly lifeless as the bodies I cut open on my table. No sign of life until you peer inside and see the organ pulsing. The strange thing is that when you first see a beating heart, you expect to hear that rhythm that is so synonymous with it, but there’s barely a sound. Instead it’s just a motion like it has an independent existence. The heart will actually beat a few times once it is outside of the body, and even though I’m aware of the scientific reason, I wondered in that moment, holding Ava by the stream, if maybe our hearts really could be broken by shattered love or tragedy.

When she finally stirred and opened her eyes, she looked to the sky first, her eyes registering the observation that the sun was much lower than it had been when she’d fallen asleep in my arms.

“What happened?” she asked with a bemused expression.

I laughed. “You fell and then took a little nap.”

“How long?”

“A few hours.” I helped her stand on shaky legs.

“And you held me that whole time?”

“It was the nicest few hours I’ve had in a while.” Putting on her shoes, she seemed quiet and withdrawn again. “I didn’t mean to overstep my boundaries earlier. I’m sorry,” I said.

“I shouldn’t have, you know . . . we shouldn’t.”

I sat down next to her on a rock. “Are you still feeling a lot of grief?” What a dumb question that was.

“Grief, yes, I’m still feeling it and I always will. I don’t think it ever gets better.”

“It takes time to heal.”

“I don’t know if it’s the healing that hurts. I just miss him and I’ll never stop missing him.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” she said. She wasn’t being snarky; her eyes were wide with curiosity.

“I’m trying to.”

She nodded her understanding before looking back at the stream. “Let’s clean the fish down here. Bea can barbecue them tonight.”

Her abrupt change of subject was welcome. I thought it was interesting that the last time I had eaten meat was a piece of trout I’d ordered at a five-star restaurant in Hollywood. I watched Ava slice the belly of the small fish from neck to tail and then proceed to remove the guts. I thought about how she had wasted five years in her twenties grieving over a man who was too cowardly to live for such a strong, beautiful and capable woman.

She held the open fish belly out to me. “See? Nice and clean.” I scrunched up my nose. “You can’t be squeamish, you’re a surgeon.”

I laughed. “Good point. I just um . . . well . . . you’re doing a great job. I think I’ll let you handle this.”

“Redman would have a field day if he saw your expression.”

“Please don’t tell Redman I let you do this. He’d hang me by my balls.”

She laughed. “He’ll do worse than that. You better get used to this kind of thing though, Nate. You’re on a cattle ranch after all.”

Ah, the irony.

After we had cleaned the fish, we headed back to the ranch. I finally got up the courage to run Tequila for a short way back. It was freeing to be out in the crisp and clean air. Surely there must be more pure oxygen in the air in Montana. Growing up in L.A., there was this idea that breathing in the air-conditioning was actually healthier than going outside into the smog-filled air. People didn’t dare drive with their windows down or dance in the acid rain in the streets of Los Angeles.

In the barn, I wordlessly helped Ava brush the horses. Bea came down from the house and shuffled around in the shed. Ava went to her and handed over the bag of fish.

“Here. Trout.”

“Thank you, sweetie. I hadn’t a clue what I was going to cook tonight.” Ava nodded.

After Bea left, I asked Ava, “Do you like Bea?” in a placid, neutral tone so it seemed like idle curiosity.

She looked up immediately. “Yes, of course, I love her.”

“Oh. Sorry, I just . . . um, it seems like a struggle for you to talk to her.”

“It’s a struggle for me to talk to anyone.”

“Is it a struggle for you to talk to me?”

She threw the brush in a bin, walked past me, and replied, “Yes, but not as much.” As she left the barn I called out to her, “Are you going to be at dinner?”

“No.”

More than a week went by during which I only saw Ava in passing. I would see her truck and horse trailer going down the long driveway almost every other day, but at dinner she would be absent or sitting alone with the ugly dog on the back porch.

One morning, while I was performing the glamorous task of shoveling shit with Caleb, Ava passed us in her truck. I stood waiting for her to look over so I could wave but she didn’t. She just zoomed down the hill, leaving a large cloud of dust in her wake.

“Where does she go?” I asked.

“She teaches kids.”

“Teaches them what?”

“Astronomy,” he deadpanned.

“Really?”

“No, dipshit, she teaches ’em how to ride horses.”

I laughed. “Okay, okay, you got me. That was a stupid question.”

He huffed and shook his head, looking away.

“What?” I said with an edge in my tone. His smug shit was getting on my nerves.

“Nothing, it’s just, you’re so interested in that bitch. I have no fucking clue why.”

I straightened and leaned my forearm on the top of the shovel. “Why do you think she’s a bitch?”

“She just is. She doesn’t give anyone the time of day.” He continued shoveling while he talked. It was obvious that Caleb had some resentment toward her; he was more than just irritated at her indifference.

“You know her story, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, her husband blew his head off. Probably couldn’t fuckin’ stand living with her anymore.” He stood, mimicked a gun with his finger under his chin, and mimicked the sound of a gunshot.

“You’re a dick, man.”

“What? Why don’t you say that to my face?”

“I just did.” Why in the world I would antagonize a three-hundred-pound man who towered over my six-foot frame, I’ll never know. Some deep-seated sense of chivalry surfaced in me.

“You better mind your business.”

In an utterly calm and matter-of-fact voice, I said, “How long have you worked here shoveling shit, my friend?”

“Long enough to know you’re barking up the wrong tree. She won’t even make eye contact with me, so your chances are slim.”

“So that’s what this is really about? What, you came on to her? Maybe you’re not her type.”

He threw the shovel effortlessly across the corral into a pile of tools. “And you are, faggot?”

“Neanderthal,” I shot back.

“Pussy,” he said, walking away.

“Maybe in another three thousand years when you’ve evolved we can have this conversation again. Do you even have opposable thumbs?” I yelled the last part as he disappeared from view.

In the evening, when Ava was unloading the horses from her trailer, I snuck up on her. “Boo.”

She didn’t startle.

“Wow, you’re no fun.”

“I’ve been told that before,” she said.

She backed Dancer down the ramp toward me. “Move out of the way, Nate. Never stand behind a horse unless you want to get kicked in the noggin—or another part of your body.”

I moved away and followed her into the barn where she put Dancer into a stall. “How was your day? What have you been up to?”

She threw a chunk of alfalfa into Dancer’s food trough and petted her head. When she finally turned to face me, she leaned against the short stall door with a brazen smirk, a look I had never seen on her.

“I give horseback-riding lessons to some kids on another ranch, but you already knew that, I’m sure.”

She was on to me. She must have known I had been asking about her.

“Well, how’d the lessons go?”

“Excellent. What did you do today?”

I smiled really big. “Shoveled shit.”

“How was that?”

“Pretty shitty.” We both laughed but she looked down, almost as if she were too embarrassed to really let it out. “I also got to know Caleb a little better.”

“I’m sorry,” she said seriously.

“Why don’t you two get along?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t like me . . . ,” her voice trailed off. She looked away and her mood changed.

“Why don’t you think he likes you?”

“Well, one night . . . he tried . . .” She took a breath through her nose and looked up to the barn ceiling. “One night he tried to kiss me. I don’t know why. I didn’t send him mixed signals, I swear.”

“I believe you.” And I did believe her. She didn’t give anyone any signals, good or bad; she rarely looked up from her feet. “Keep going.”

“He caught me on the steps, just as I was coming down and he was going up to the main house. He grabbed my hips and leaned in. I slapped him.”

“What did he do?”

“He called me a bad word and said I was the reason for, um . . . for the stuff that’s happened in my life.”

“Nothing is your fault. I know what happened.”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does. That fucking oaf has no right to treat you that way.” I looked up pensively. “Just wondering, what word did he call you?”

“The c-word.”

“I’m going to kill him.” Even as I said it, I couldn’t believe my reaction. Apparently there’s something in the Montana water that instantly transforms an agnostic, Starbucks-loving, vegetarian pacifist into a God-and-country-loving protector of all women and cattle.

She laughed through her nose. “You would be wasting your time.”

It got quiet for several moments as we faced each other in the barn. The atmosphere was heady. I watched her eyes dance around my face and then remain fixed on my lips. Part of me wanted to lean in and kiss her, but she made no motion toward me—and frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to get slapped.

“Honestly, Ava, I don’t think it’s that Caleb doesn’t like you. It’s the exact opposite. He probably likes you a lot.” I suddenly sounded very pragmatic, as if I were speaking to a room of college students. “My bet was that he felt rejected, and because he has a small penis he felt the need to make you feel bad about yourself.”

She smiled. Her look was endearing, almost like gratitude. “Thank you. That was a very interesting explanation of what might have happened that day on the stairs. Still, everyone here knows what happened to me. It’s hard not to think that they blame me for Jake.” I could tell it pained her to say his name.

“That’s not true.” I moved toward her to close the gap but she shook her head, stopping me. “You shouldn’t get close to me.”

I squinted. “Physically close?”

“No, you just shouldn’t want to know me. Jake was my husband. You know that, right?” Her eyes filled with tears. “My husband, Jake, killed himself because I couldn’t love him right. I couldn’t make him want to live.”

“Like I said, I know the story, Ava, but you’ve got it wrong. Just let me hold your hand. It’s easier this way.” I reached out and took her hand and held it as we stood several feet apart from each other. Her palm was cold, small, and calloused. There was a bit of dirt under her nails but the skin on her outer hand was smooth.

“It’s easier to talk when there’s not that uncomfortable space between us.”

“Your hand is smooth,” we both said at the same time.

“Doctor hands are always smooth because we have to exfoliate so much.” I smiled and she laughed a high-pitch, fluttering fairylike sound. It made my heart skip a beat.

“Exfoliate. That’s funny. You’re funny, Nate.”

“No one has ever told me that.”

“That’s kind of sad. I feel like I’ve smiled and laughed more around you than anyone else in years.”

Both of our expressions turned serious again. As I held her hand in mine, I thought I should try and really talk to her.

“Where is your family?”

“Not around. My father is dead.” She swallowed. “My mom went back to Spain. My brother lives in New York. And I’m here, where I belong, in some kind of hell.”

“Stop,” I whispered, shaking my head. “Don’t say that.”

“That’s how I feel.”

“Well, it’s beautiful here now, during the summer.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“At first the days melted into each other. After Jake’s accident, I would wake up and think hard about what happened the day before but all of my memories were cloudy, even the recent ones. I couldn’t get over it, and then when I thought I was finally able to accept it, that Jake would be paralyzed forever, he killed himself. After that it wasn’t just days anymore—it was weeks, melting together like my life was in fast-forward. But I’m only twenty-four.”

I wiped a tear from her cheek. “I’m glad you’re talking to me about this. Maybe we can hang out tonight, after dinner?”

She blinked and then let out a heavy breath. “No, I don’t think so.” She seemed conflicted and I didn’t want to press. I knew I would have to take my time if I wanted to get to know her. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Even when I wasn’t with her, I thought about her hair, the way she smelled, and her warm, smooth skin.

After dinner I went into my room and fiddled with my computer until I was able to dial up onto the Internet. Every second it took to get online felt like an hour. It was completely obvious to me why people on the ranch didn’t use the Internet. After hours of clicking in frustration and watching that little timer on the screen go in circles, I finally kicked my feet up and began reading. Just as I turned the second page of a book called The Montana Cowboy: Legends of the Big Sky Country, I heard the sounds of small pebbles hitting my window.

I bolted upright and went to the ledge. Sweeping the curtains aside, I looked out to see Ava peering up at me from the ground, just a few feet below.

I opened the window. “Hi, Ava.” I smiled. “I’m sure Redman and Bea wouldn’t mind you using the door.” She was so cute standing there, gazing up at me.

“Shhh.” She held her finger to her mouth. Her eyes were wide. “I have an idea.”

I could smell whiskey on her breath, even from four feet away. “Do you want me to lift you up here? You want to come in my room?” Suddenly I was seventeen again and it made me smile.

“Just put on a jacket and come on. I have something to show you.”

I reached for my jacket and shoes and then hopped through the window, landing hard and almost falling into a roll.

When I stood up, she put her hands on my shoulders and said, “I need your help.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Yes.” She nodded dramatically, arching her eyebrows like she was proud of the fact. She pulled a flask from her pocket and handed it to me. “Want some?”

I can’t say that I honestly knew anyone who drank liquor out of a flask, certainly not a five-foot-four, small-boned woman, but I was intrigued. Following her toward the cabin, I unscrewed the flask and took a large gulp. Having not drank except for a few times in college and high school, the liquor made me gag a little but then it went down smooth, giving my throat a warm sensation. “We’ll need more. Let’s get more,” she said, pointing to the flask as she ran up the stairs to her cabin.

I stood outside on the porch until she came back out with a square Jack Daniels bottle.

“This will do,” she said.

“Where are we going?”

Following behind her, holding the bottle in one hand and flask in the other, I wondered for a second if there was actually a legitimate reason why people told me to stay away from her. We approached a second cabin on the other side of the main house. I could see Caleb through the bedroom window.

“Be quiet,” she said. “Don’t make a sound. Look.” She pointed toward a metal cage, one you might use as a dog crate. It was in shadow under the eaves of the cabin, but there was no mistaking what was inside. Even in the darkness I could see the white above the raccoon’s eyes and on his nose.

“Did you catch that?”

“Yes, it was easy.” She smiled so gleefully.

“I’m not sure raccoons make for very good pets.”

“He’s not a pet, silly.”

She stood on her tippy-toes and peeked into Caleb’s cabin. “Okay, it’s almost time.” We could hear the shower in the bathroom go on. “Here.” She handed me a pair of leather work gloves. “I need your help carrying the cage inside. We’re going to leave Caleb a little present.”

Finally, I understood. I found it hard to keep a straight face. “You’re a sneaky little girl, aren’t you?”

“I’ve never done anything like this but I take it Caleb wasn’t very nice to you, and well, you know, he wasn’t very nice to me either. I figured it was time to teach him a lesson.”

“Are you avenging my pride, sweetheart?” I winked and she smiled back.

“That’s what us country girls do.”

“God, I’ve been missing out on so much.”

We picked up the cage while the raccoon scratched and hissed at us.

“Oh shit,” I yelped.

“Don’t touch him, he’s a mean little bastard.”

“But he looks so cute.”

“He’s probably rabid. I hope he bites Caleb.”

“Ava, you’ve got a real mean streak,” I teased.

Caleb’s cabin door was open. Ava opened the cage and poked the animal from the other side, encouraging him to run out. We left him there to scurry around the front room and then we ran down the steps outside and hid in the shadows, spying through the cabin’s window.

We waited, watching until Caleb came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel from the waist down. He stood stock-still in the hallway. From our vantage point, we had a front-row seat to the show. Caleb screamed like a girl and threw his sizable arms in the air, inadvertently dropping his towel before running back into the bathroom. The giant man was scared of raccoons.

Ava and I both slid to the ground, holding our stomachs and laughing so hard but trying not to make a sound.

“Oh my god, did you see his face?” she said. “He was terrified.”

“That was classic—I’ll never forget it. I wonder what’s gonna happen to the raccoon?”

“I don’t think Caleb will ever come out of that bathroom. Maybe we should open the front door.”

“Nah. He’ll figure it out. I can’t imagine that he’s the type of guy to ask for help, even when he needs it.”

“Now who has the mean streak?” she teased. “But you were right about one thing.” We had finally controlled our hysterics and were seated with our backs against the cabin.

“What’s that?”

“He definitely has a small . . . you know what.” Even in the dark I could see her wide grin.

“Yes, he most definitely has little-dick syndrome,” I said in a pseudo-serious doctor voice.

“Did you learn that in medical school?”

“It’s weird. For once in my life I don’t want to think about medical school, or being a doctor or surgery or hospitals. This is nice. Sitting here with you. I’ve never seen this many stars.”

She looked up. “Yes, they dulled for me after I lost Jake.” She looked up at me. “Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“But they seem a bit brighter tonight.”

She was finally talking with ease about Jake and I didn’t want her to stop. “Was he a lot of fun?”

“Yeah. Jake had a real hardworking serious side to him, but he could be funny and silly, too. He wasn’t an educated guy; he had a rough childhood and a sensitive ego.”

“How do you mean?” I knew exactly what she meant but I wanted to keep her talking.

“I don’t know, I guess now that I’m a little older I can look back and see that he had some real flaws.” She looked away and I could tell the words pained her to say. “I don’t mean that he wasn’t a good man but he couldn’t really keep his pride inside. He could be boastful and arrogant. I thought in the beginning that he was just cocksure and trying to impress me, but after the accident his true colors showed through and he wasn’t very good to me.”

“That’s really terrible, Ava. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Maybe I deserved it.”

“Why in the world would you say that?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know if I ever belonged here. Now I haven’t seen my mom in five years, my brother is off in New York living his life, and here I am. All because I followed a cowboy to Montana and got married,” she said with a little laugh.

“Why can’t you go to Spain and live with your mother?”

“I was born here. I’ve never even been there. That’s my parents’ country, not mine. I don’t really have a place that’s mine, I guess. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’d like a swig of that if you wouldn’t mind handing it to me,” she said, pointing to the whiskey.

I handed her the bottle. She took a big gulp and then sighed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t really understand why you’re here. I mean, I know your uncle’s here but why would you want to leave your fancy life in L.A. to come out here and shovel shit?”

I laughed. “I’m not sure one would call what I had a fancy life. I never wanted anything more than to become a doctor, and that kind of consumed me. Everything for my career fell into place perfectly.” I paused for a long time, searching for the right words, but nothing eloquent came to me. “I fucked up and basically caused a young girl’s death. I’m probably going to be sued for malpractice, as well as the hospital. I feel terrible about it.”

“Do you feel more terrible about being sued or for the girl’s death?”

It was a question that should have been offensive but wasn’t. It hit a nerve, but only because I questioned the same thing myself. Her eyes were wide, watching me intently. “I feel terrible for the girl, the life lost, the family that’s mourning her. But up until this week I was also terrified that I would lose my job. When I got home the day it happened, I realized I had nothing but my work. I didn’t know what to do with myself. My father sent me here.”

“To clear your head?”

“Something like that, although if I know my father he might have sent me out here more to deflate my head than anything.”

“Oh.”

“It might have worked because the job seems a lot less significant now. I feel terrible for the girl and her family. That’s it.”

She nodded, smiling with compassion.

We carried the cage back to Ava’s cabin and as we set it down, the door swung open, gouging the fat part of my palm near my thumb.

“Shit.” I held my hand, gripping it tightly.

“What happened?”

“Fuck.”

“What’s wrong, Nate?”

“I cut my hand.”

“Why weren’t you wearing the gloves? Here, let me see,” she said, pulling me inside of the cabin. I didn’t have time to look around; I followed her straight to the sink. She turned the water on, forced my hand under it, and left, returning a moment later with the bottle of whiskey.

My hand was gushing. I was trying to act tough, but frankly my hand was pulsing so hard that I couldn’t stop gritting my teeth.

“Gosh, you’re really bleeding,” she said. She unscrewed the whiskey, took a swig, and then held it to my mouth. Placing her other hand on the back of my neck to brace me, she tilted the bottle up so I could take a sip. Her small hands were warm and soft but strong.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She pulled my hand out of the water and dumped whiskey on it.

“What are you doing?” I yelled. She cowered immediately. “I mean, why would you do that?”

“Oh, I . . . well, it’s just that there was a wild animal in that cage. Who knows what kind of diseases it was carrying. The alcohol will sterilize it.” Her voice was small.

“I’m sorry I raised my voice at you, it’s just that, isn’t there . . . some antibacterial ointment lying around somewhere?”

At that point she was applying pressure to my hand with a paper towel. “No, I don’t have any, but Dale probably does . . . something he uses on the horses.”

My eyes shot open even wider. “No, that’s okay.”

She looked at the cut, which was still bleeding. “I can fix this.”

She held my hand but rummaged through a drawer to her left with her other hand and found a little tube.

“What is that?”

“Super glue.”

“No.” I shook my head.

She looked up at me with determination on her face. There was more than a distant memory of a fiery woman in her. “I have a needle and thread if you think that would be more enjoyable.”

I held my hand out as she squirted the sticky liquid right into my wound and forced the skin together. It burned for several moments and then she released it and the cut was sealed.

“See, good as new.”

“I will probably die of some kind of toxic poisoning from this stuff.”

“There’s a hospital about fifty miles away. I can take you there so they can put some ointment on that itty-bit cut, but I’ve been drinking so your chances of living are higher if you just stay here and settle for the glue.” She smirked.

“Ha ha,” I mock-laughed but thought about her words for a moment—stay here—and wondered if it was an invitation. “Maybe I should stay here tonight in your cabin so you can nurse me back to health.”

She laughed lightheartedly until, like storm clouds quickly gathering in the sky, her expression turned dark. Something in my words hit a nerve. It looked like she was trying to talk herself out of the feeling.

“I’m kidding,” I said. “I think my hand will be fine, barring some strange Montana-specific infection.”

She smiled again finally then walked me to the door.

CHAPTER 7

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 806