Ann Major - Marry A Man Who Will Dance

When he didn’t answer, she brushed a lock of his hair from his brow and gasped. His beautiful face was swollen and out of shape.

“Oh! No!” She pressed her hand to his temple. When her finger came away sticky, she didn’t dare shake him. “Roque! Please…Please wake up!”

High above them, the evening star twinkled like a lonely sentinel in an opalescent, purple sky. Then a gray owl swished low over their heads toward the oak mott, melting into the dense shadows of the brush. A chorus of night bugs began to sing.

His pulse! That’s what she was supposed to check for!

At the thought of laying even a single fingertip on that dark throat, she sucked in a quick breath. With an eye on his still, white face, she lowered her hand and ran it along his warm skin all the way to the base of his throat.

Finally, when her fingers were still, she felt a flutter. She pressed harder, and the pressure of his heart’s slow, steady thudding, made her own heart leap.

“Don’t die,” she whispered. “Please…please…”

She lifted her St. Jude medal and said a fervent prayer to the saint. And then she looked up at the new stars and the moon and prayed to God, too.

Hardly knowing that her fingers unfastened the silver chain, she removed the medal. She caught her breath. Aunt Pam had given her Uncle Buster’s medal at his funeral. Ritz had promised to treasure it always.

With a heavy sigh, Ritz fastened the medal around Roque’s dark neck.

“Save him,” she murmured. “Please, Uncle Buster and St. Jude, and you, too, God.”

Roque’s eyes remained tightly closed.

After that, time passed in slow motion. Ritz rubbed her neck, and felt all alone and scared as she thought of the puma and those pointy ears she’d seen earlier.

When a pack of coyotes began to yip off to the north, she began to shake as hard as a rabbit or whatever little animal they were terrorizing. The sky and brush blackened ominously.

Aloud Ritz said, “Roque, I’ll stay out here all night long—in the dark, no matter how scared I get, if you just, please…please…don’t die…. I’ll even take back every mean thing I said. You’re not nasty…or…or pure sin…just ’cause you wear tight jeans. I’m sorry I watched you pee. It was fun flying with you. The most fun I ever had in my whole life…until you charged—”

Clasping his lifeless hand, she bent closer, so that she could broadcast straight into her powerful medal.

“You won Buttercup—fair and square. You can have her, too…if you’ll only wake up. And…and…you’re not stupid, even if you flunked a grade. Nobody but a rare, genuine genius could talk horse…could learn it from a book…when you can hardly read. And…and it wasn’t Jet last night…. It was me! I watched you dance, so don’t you dare die.”

Horror mingled with delight when he stirred and she felt his gaze.

“You’re just scared there won’t be anybody to teach you horse if I die,” jeered a thready voice that made her heart leap.

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