We Wander Far from Home Page 2

  “Every time?” Will asked. “How many times have you—” he gestured uncomfortably, “caught me?”

  “Couple times,” Annie answered. “I saw you putting the picture away last time.”

  Will bit his lip and stared at Annie’s bare feet for a moment. He knew the answer. He wasn’t stupid. He’d figured out why he couldn’t keep an image of a naked woman in his head while he stroked his cock. He figured out why he never felt a single stir of lust on any of the nights he laid up here in the hayloft holding Annie in his arms, or when he flipped through the pictures of naked women he stole from a man who clearly spent a fortune to enjoy the collection. He’d even picked up a couple of names for it out of his cousins’ and uncles’ stories. But he didn’t know how to explain it to Annie.

  If Joshua or Jacob were to suddenly appear in the hayloft, Will would have boisterously claimed that he got all hot and bothered at the thought of one of these women doing all those things to him, and maybe even grandiosely gifted one of the naked-lady pictures to them. But that wasn’t going to work with Annie. She didn’t want to hear that particular lie, and there was even a chance she would call him out on it.

  He sighed, a painful expulsion that dragged its way out of his lungs, chanced a look into her eyes, and shrugged.

  “I don’t know, maybe…” he took a deep breath, letting his eyes drop down her body. They stopped at her chest. “Ah, Hell!” he exclaimed, lurching up on his knees closer to her. “What did that fucker do to you now?”

  Little blossoms of blood spotted Annie’s dress, almost hidden in the red checked fabric, a few over her chest, another couple on her arms. Where her right wrist poked out of the sleeve of her dress a bruise made the shadow deeper than it was on her left wrist.

  Annie bit her lip and shook her head. Will sighed and reached over to the sack for the witch hazel. The only time she ever told him what happened to her was the time she showed up with a black eye in the middle of the night and made herself scarce during the day until it healed.

  There was supposed to be a rag in the sack for Annie to clean up with. Will wondered if Annie had been up here sometime when he wasn’t here and thrown it away afterward. He wondered how bloody it must have been.

  When Annie first started showing up hurt, after her mother died, it was with little nicks and bumps here and there. And every time Will felt the anger building up in him so strong it made him feel like if he didn’t run down the road and shoot Mr. Lancaster, the town jailer, right in his evil face, his whole body would burst with the effort of trying to keep all that anger in. But Annie didn’t cry about it anymore, and now it made him feel empty when she showed up like this. Like whatever he’d had inside of him had been scraped out and dumped somewhere else.

  “We ain’t got a cloth up here no more,” he said, as though she didn’t know that. He tugged his shirt back out of his pants.

  “You can use this, it’s just a work shirt.” He pulled his shirt back over his head and poured a splash of witch hazel onto the bottom of it, where any stain she left could be hidden when he tucked it in. “Here.”

  Annie, still biting her lip, flicked her eyes up to his face, then to the shirt in his hand, then to his face again. She lifted her hands to the buttons on her dress, and Will was about to turn around for her when she said, “Will? You didn’t answer my question about the pictures.”

  “Sure I did,” Will replied calmly.

  “Will. Please tell me. I promise I won’t be mad.”

  Will looked down at the shirt crumpled up in his hand.

  “Because I ain’t got much interest in the ones with just the naked ladies in ‘em,” he said quietly. It was true, and hopefully enough information to end the conversation, but not quite enough to answer the question too truthfully.

  Annie nodded as though that was the answer she expected and started to unbutton her dress, with Will still facing her. Her hands were shaking. By the time she got to the third button she was having trouble. Will reached out and gently set his fingertips against her unbruised wrist.

  “It okay if I help you?”

  Annie paused for a moment, then let her hands fall away from her dress. Will dropped his shirt into his lap and finished undoing the trail of little white buttons that led down to Annie’s waist. He helped her pull her arms out of the long sleeves and let the bodice of the dress drop down around her. She wore a thin white undershirt, and the blood stood out on it, dark and vicious. Will unbuttoned that too. Annie let it drop down around her with the abandoned top of her dress, leaving her breasts in plain sight.

  In all the times they had been up here together, he’d never seen her with her dress off like this. He cleaned up her skinned knees, and once her back, but she had covered her front up with a blanket the time he did that.

  Will cleared his throat uncomfortably and moved to her side. Annie hissed as he started to dab at the scrapes on her arms and Will tried to be gentler.

  “You’re not going to get them cleaned out if you do it so soft,” Annie reprimanded him half-heartedly. Will dabbed harder again despite the way her body stiffened against his hands.

  “I really hate that old bastard,” Will whispered. They’d had this conversation before, a million times, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Me, too.”

  Will got the scrapes on her right arm cleaned up and scooted around her bare back to kneel at her other side while he cleaned her left arm. While Will poured more witch hazel on his shirt for the cuts on her chest Annie laid back down on the blanket.

  “Nicer up here with two blankets,” she commented, as though they were having a normal visit on the front porch in the middle of the day. Like she wasn’t lying here bare-breasted in the dark hayloft while he wiped blood off of her body.

  Will began to wipe at her chest, careful to only touch her with his shirt, concentrating on trying to get all the little cuts cleaned out without making her feel stared at. She looked like she had been thrown down hard. There were bruises and scrapes on her shoulders too. The red dress had hidden them in the shadows, but on her pale skin they stuck out obscenely, even with only the lantern for light. He rubbed as carefully as possible at a deeper cut on her breast, thinking quietly murderous thoughts. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Annie grabbed his wrist.

  “Will, you don’t want to do none of those things in the pictures to me, right?” Annie asked him, voice still quiet, much too calm for a girl who had shown up in this condition and now was lying out here, alone in the barn with him, naked to the waist. The town’s pastor would have them both believe that he should be nearly helpless to withstand the temptation of her like this and that she should know that, but she was watching him with unlabored breath and steady eyes.

  Will brushed her hair back from her face with his free hand, “No, Annie. I really don’t.” He sighed, and unable to stop himself now that he was so close to being able to tell someone the truth, continued, “I ain’t even sure I’d be able to.”

  Annie nodded matter-of-factly again and Will tried to get back to her hurts, but she wouldn’t let go of his wrist.

  “Will?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You…you like to look at the naked men in those pictures don’t you?”

  Will froze. He swallowed hard and looked back up at her. He’d almost told her a hundred times. After all, she laid her darkest secrets bare for him. She was his best, and practically only, friend. His hands started to shake, rattling around in her gentle grip. All he could manage now that she had asked him outright was a clipped, embarrassed but noncommittal, “I don’t know.”

  Annie dropped her hand from around his wrist onto the back of his hand, not quite holding it.

  “You and me should get married,” she said.

  “What?” Will hiccupped. Annie sat up suddenly, her hand still on top of his, pressing his hand to her breastbone. He tugged it away from her, “Annie—”

  “No, listen to me,” she grabbed his hand again, this time pressing it b
etween her flat palms, held in front of her like she was praying.

  “There’s work, ranching work, out in Nebraska. If we got married, we could move out there together. I can work on a ranch, cook or clean or something, you could work with the herd, you ain’t gonna have to support me, and ain’t either of us ever going to have to marry someone who’d make us do what we don’t want to.”

  Her eyes were wide with hope and Will wondered how long she’d geared up to deliver this proposal, and how long ago she started working out his secret.

  “You’re worried about it, finding a girl to marry, I know it. You’re thinking about it. You’re brother’s getting married, your momma’s courting Mr. Fenwick,” Annie continued. “And Patience is starting to round out. You musta noticed. If you marry me, you won’t have to worry, and we can… Will, we can move away.” Her calm evaporated, replaced by what sounded an awful lot like panic. “You and me, we can get on a train and leave this town together.”

  “What makes you think I want to leave?” Will demanded.

  Annie pressed her hands harder against his.

  “Your house is gonna be married folk and babies and you. If you don’t get married the whole town’s gonna talk about you and if you and me leave…and you…if you were to find…another man like you— I know there are some. My cousin, she wrote me a letter from England about them. You could…I wouldn’t mind none if you…” her eyes were shimmering now, “If you and he—”

  “Stop it!” Will hissed, tugging has hand away from her and rocking back to sit down out of her reach. “Just stop, Annie. I ain’t... I didn’t mean it like that. Hell, you looked through all them naked lady pictures too, and it didn’t mean nothing.” He’d dropped the shirt from his shaking hand while she was talking, and now he was making brave stabs at trying to pick it back up. “That’s a hell of a thing to accuse someone of ‘cause he don’t wanna hurt you.”

  Annie gave him a look of complete devastation, the look on people’s faces when they looked out over the nubs in the dirt that were all that was left of a carefully cultivated crop after a locust swarm. Will managed to pick the bloody shirt back up, but his hands were shaking so violently now that he dropped it between them again. Annie reached out for it, grabbed it and tossed it aside.

  “Okay then,” Annie said, getting up on her haunches and moving closer to him. “Okay, then. Don’t hurt me.”

  She settled onto his lap before he could move farther away, letting her skirt bunch up against his bare stomach and her scarred, bare knees poke out from under it. Will’s hands flew to her shoulders, he couldn’t bring himself to push her away, but he held her back. She wrapped one hand around the back of his neck and then stopped, her shining eyes looking into his.

  “Annie? Annie, what are you doing?”

  She slipped her other arm around him, pushing it hard into the small of his back, and started to rock herself slowly against him.

  “Stop it,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.

  “C-come on, Will,” she stammered. “It could be like this too. Take me away and you can have me like this too.”

  Will pushed her away, as gently as he could, and she pulled tighter to him, pushing her hand to the back of his neck forcing his head to tilt up. Her bright blue eyes, red-rimmed with tears confronted him. She leaned down as though to kiss him. Panicked, he slid his hands up to her neck and held her away.

  “I ain’t a photograph, Will. I can touch you,” she snapped.

  “Annie, I ain’t never going to hurt you.”

  “I know that,” she said. Will moved his hands down to her shoulders, and she started to shake under his own less-than-steady hands.

  “I ain’t gonna take advantage of you like this, either.”

  The stiffness in Annie’s back melted and she crumpled down into him, hugging him fiercely. He dropped his arms down around her waist.

  “I have to leave soon, Will,” she hissed in his ear. “Even if I have to go alone, I’m gonna have to leave soon.”

  Will wrapped his arms tighter around her. “At least then, the whole town’ll have to talk about you instead of me.”

  “I have to go,” she whispered, her tone manic. “I have to. My aunt, she’s out in Kansas, but I can’t show up without no money and I…”

  “Shh, shh.” Will patted her hair. He let her hold onto him for a while longer, until the feeling of her naked against him started to feel strange again, and he began to get the frightening feeling that she was hugging him goodbye.

  “Come on, let’s finish getting you cleaned up and get some sleep. Okay?” he said finally.

  Annie let him go and laid back down on the blanket, defeated. They didn’t talk while Will finished. Afterward he lay down on the blanket and turned his back to her as she changed into her fresh dress.

  “I’m sorry I thought you were, you know,” she said as she settled down next to him on the makeshift bed.

  “It’s okay,” Will said immediately. There was absolutely no call for Annie to feel bad about being right. “It don’t matter.”

  She gave his hand a quick, absolved squeeze and he turned back to her, wrapping an arm around her stomach. She laid back against him.

  “Annie?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Do me a favor? If you’re going to leave, tell me first.”

  “Are you going to change your mind?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Annie set her hand over his. “Goodnight, Will.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Will stayed awake until he felt her breath calm and steady out. That night he dreamt of cows roaming the flat fields of Nebraska, being driven by shiny city men to graze on blood-red flowers.

  Chapter Two

  Will buttoned his only dress shirt carefully in the gray morning light. The shirt was old and a little bit short in the arms, but Mama had compensated by ironing it to within an inch of its life and starching it until it could have been used as a fence post. She had also given him one of Papa’s silk bowties, and a pair of suspenders that almost matched it. His face was washed and shaved and his hair was combed. He adjusted his bowtie in the mirror. He thought he looked very handsome.

  “Move over,” Joshua snapped, digging his elbow into Will’s side to push him out of the way of the mirror and the washbasin underneath it.

  “Yeah, Will, you get yourself any prettier you’re gonna be a bridesmaid ‘stead of a groomsman,” Jacob laughed.

  Joshua dunked his whole face into the basin and started to scrub at his cheeks and neck with his fingers. Jacob stuck his hand into the basin under his brother’s face and scooped some water out in his palms, which he splashed into his hair. Will moved away from them to keep from getting splashed and tried not to fiddle with his bowtie anymore.

  He loved the feel of it, like water made into fabric, and the fact that it once belonged to his father. It made him feel grown up. Will was twenty and between keeping Annie’s secrets and taking care of Robert, he was more of a man than either Joshua or Jacob, who were now squabbling over the soap, were, but for some reason it was rare that he ever felt like one. Robert was a man, a veteran, and soon to be a husband. Allan was a man, also a veteran, and according to Annie, maybe even soon to be a father. Most of the time Will felt like Robert’s and Allan’s little brother. But today he was Robert’s groomsman, dressed in his father’s Sunday best. He caught a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror as Jacob shoved Joshua out of the way.

  He looked a little bit like the men in his dirty pictures too.

  Will left his cousins wrestling in the bedroom, avoiding the mirror as he did. He trotted downstairs, where Mama and Aunt Caroline were fussing over Robert’s clothes.

  “Oh, you look so much like your father,” Mama was saying tearfully. Aunt Caroline was agreeing, nodding with her fingertips pressed into her cheek.

  “You do, boy, you really do.”

  Robert’s smile in reply was sweet and happy.

  “Wait till I dance at th
e reception, Momma, then I’ll really look like him.” Robert did a little facsimile of a two-step with his crutch and Momma and Aunt Caroline burst into slightly teary laughter. They caught sight of Will and dragged him down into the parlor for his turn to be fussed over.

  The rest of the morning was a blur of activity, getting the whole family to the church and greeting various guests. For Will, even the ceremony was more of an image of Robert and Sarah smiling in bliss than a specific moment in time.

  The sun had burned away the clouds when everyone left the church, and by the time Mr. Fenwick bowed the first note on his fiddle it was a beautiful day, and a heck of a party.

  Robert and Sarah were spinning out on the dance floor, a little off the beat, but paying no mind to that. Jacob, stupid as he was, asked the butcher’s daughter to dance, and was slowly creeping his hand up her bodice. Will was drinking beer with his Uncle Ephraim and looking around for Annie. Finally, he felt a light tapping on his shoulder and a girlish voice asking, “Will Kearny, are you going to ask me to dance or not?”

  Will smiled and turned around, only to be faced with Leticia Halloway, the grocer’s daughter. She dropped half a curtsey to Uncle Ephraim and grabbed Will by the wrist, tugging him irresistibly out into the fray of whirling dresses and hopping men. Leticia Halloway was a stunningly pretty girl, whose inky hair could shine in the middle of a moonless night. She was round and vivacious, with straight white teeth and a smile that showed off all of them. She was also very accustomed to getting her way and she dragged him around the dance floor in a way that reminded him unavoidably of the bull riders at the rodeo. The band slowed their playing down for a ballad, and Will stepped away from Leticia, about to bow and thank her for the honor of a dance, but she pulled his hand back to her waist.

  “Now, Will Kearny, how is it that I’ve never seen you dressed so fine before today?” she asked him, looking up at him through her dark eyelashes.

  “This is my Papa’s bowtie,” was all he could think of as an answer.

  “Well, it is very becoming.” Leticia smiled brilliantly.