Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

He was miserable all night, for she hadn't answered the question. But he had spoken the words and revealed what he wanted. He supposed she would think worse of him than she already did, once she thought it over.

It was three days before they were alone again. Some soldiers needing horses showed up, and Clara asked them to spend the night. Then Martin got a bad cough and developed a high fever. Cholo was sent to bring the doctor. Clara spent most of the day sitting with the baby, who coughed with every breath. She tried every remedy she knew, with no effect. Martin couldn't sleep for coughing. July went into the sickroom from time to time, feeling awkward and helpless. The boy was his child, and yet he didn't know what to do. He felt in the way. Clara sat in a straight chair, holding the child. He asked in the morning if there was anything special she wanted him to do and she shook her head. The child's sickness had driven out all other concerns. When July came back that evening, Clara was still sitting. Martin was too weak by then to cough very hard, but his breath was a rasp and his fever still high. Clara was impassive, rocking the baby's cradle, but not looking at him.

"I guess the doctor will be getting here soon," July said uncertainly.

"The doctor might have been gone in the other direction," Clara said. "This will be over before he gets here. He'll have had the ride for nothing."

"You mean the baby's dying?" July asked.

"I mean he'll either die or get well before the doctor comes," Clara said, standing up. "I've done all I can. The rest is up to Martin."

Clara looked at him and then, to his shock, walked over and put her head against his chest. She put her arms around him and held him tightly. It was so surprising that July almost lost his balance. He put his arms around her to steady himself. Clara didn't raise her head for what seemed like minutes. He could feel her body trembling and could smell her hair.

Then she stepped back from him as abruptly as she had come to him, though she caught one of his hands and held it a moment. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

"I hate it when a child is sick," she said. "I loathe it. I get too scared. It's like…" She stopped a minute to wipe the tears off her cheeks. "It's like there's something doesn't want me to get a boy raised," Clara said, her voice cracking.

July lay awake all night, remembering how it felt to have her take his hand. Her fingers had twined for a moment in his before she let go. It had seemed she needed him, else she wouldn't have squeezed so. It made him so excited that he couldn't sleep, yet when he went back upstairs in the morning and stepped into the sickroom, Clara was distant, though it was a fine sunny day and the baby's fever was down. His breath still rattled, but he was asleep.

"I could bring you up some coffee," July said.

"No, thanks, I know my way to the kitchen well enough," she said, standing up. This time she neither hugged him nor took his hand; she walked past him without a look. All he could do was follow her downstairs. Lorena and the girls had already made breakfast and Cholo came in to eat. July didn't feel hungry. The fact that Clara was displeased took his appetite away. He tried to think why she might be displeased, but could come up with no reasons. He sat numbly through breakfast and went out the door feeling that it would be hard to get his mind on work. He needed to repair the wheel of the big wagon, which had cracked somehow.

Before he could even get the wheel off, he saw Clara coming toward the tool shed. Though it was sunny, it was also very cold-her breath made little clouds. July was afraid the baby might have taken a turn for the worse, but that was not it. Clara was very angry.

"You'd do better to talk to me when I'm mad," she said, with no preamble. There were points of red in her cheeks.

"I'm no talker, I guess," July said.

"You're not much of anything, but you could be," she said. "I know you're smart, because Martin is, and he didn't get it all from your poor wife. But a fence post is more useful generally than you are."

July took it as a criticism of his work, which he felt he had done scrupulously.

"I've nearly got this wheel fixed," he said.

"July, I'm not talking about chores," she said. "I'm talking about me. I sat there all night in that room with your baby. Where were you?"

July had been thinking that he probably should have offered to sit with her. Of course, now it was too late. He wanted to explain that he was too shy just to come into a room where she was, particularly a bedroom, unless she asked him. Even coming into the kitchen, if she was alone, was not something he did casually. But he didn't know how to explain all the cautions she prompted in him.

"I wish now I had," he said.

Clara's eyes were flashing. "I told you how sickness frightens me," she said. "The only times I've ever wished I could die is when I've had to sit and watch a child suffer."

She was twisting one hand in the other. July, seeing that she was shivering, took off his coat and held it out to her, but Clara ignored the offer.

"I sit there alone," she said. "I don't want the girls to be there because I don't want them to get death too much in their minds. I sit there and I think, I'm alone, and I can't help this child. If it wants to die I can't stop it. I can love it until I bleed and it won't stop it. I hope it won't die. I hope it can grow up and have its time. I know how I'll feel if it does die, how long it'll take me to care if I draw breath, much less about cooking and the girls and all the things you have to do if you're alive."

Clara paused. In the lots a sorrel stallion whinnied. He was her favorite, but this day she appeared not to hear him.

"I know if I lose one more child I'll never care again," she said. "I won't. Nothing will make any difference to me again if I lose one more. It'll ruin me, and that'll ruin my girls. I'll never buy another horse, or cook another meal, or take another man. I'll starve, or else I'll go crazy and welcome it. Or I'll kill the doctor for not coming, or you for not sitting with me, or something. If you want to marry me, why didn't you come and sit?"

July realized then that he had managed to do a terrible thing, though all he had done was go to his room in the ordinary way. It startled him to hear Clara say she could kill him over such a thing as that, but he knew from her look that it wasn't just talk.

"Would you ever marry me?" he asked. "You never said."

"No, and I'm not about to say now," Clara said. "Ask me in a year."

"Why in a year?"

"Because you deserve to suffer for a year," Clara said. "I suffered a year's worth just last night, and I guess you were lying at your ease, dreaming of our wedding night."

July had no reply. He had never known a woman who spoke so boldly. He looked at her through the fog of their breath, wishing she would at least take the coat. The cold made goosebumps on her wrists.

"I thought you were a sheriff once," Clara said. The stallion whinnied again, and, still watching July, she waved at the horse. He had the eyes of a sweet but bewildered boy in the body of a sturdy man. She wanted the sturdiness close to her, but was irritated by the bewilderment.

"Oh, I was a sheriff," he said.

"Didn't you ever give orders, then?" she said.

"Well, I told Roscoe when to clean the jail," July said.

"It ain't much, but it's more than we hear from you around here," Clara said. "Try telling me when to clean something, just for practice, once in a while. At least I'd get to hear a sound out of your throat."

Again, she refused the coat, though it was clear to him that she was in a somewhat better temper. She went over and rubbed the stallion's neck for ten minutes before going back to the house.