Jonis Agee - The Bones of Paradise

After she rode down this hill, nothing would ever be the same. Right now, Dulcinea was between two worlds, but soon she would be in the one without her husband. She stuck her hand in the pocket of her traveling coat, fingered the crumpled yellow paper that carried J.B.’s last coded message from March. Soon the birds take wing with my heart. She hadn’t known about his poetic nature when they first married, or even after the boys were born. It took their separation for his silence to become eloquent in the anonymity of the telegram’s compressed language. She fingered the paper’s edge. She was wearing it soft as flannel.

Beyond the lake, the hills rose green and humped like ancient fallen beasts, their grass remorseless and brutal hair. There were few trees that thrived naturally here, the occasional cedar the men hacked down because it drew too much water, the sand willows, mulberries, wild cherry, and cottonwood by the small creeks and rivers. She used to miss trees terribly, their casual interruption of the sky, until she returned to Chicago for a visit, then she missed these ragged hills instead. She stooped to pick a wild pink rose, avoiding the tiny spines that slivered like unseen glass hairs into one’s fingers. There was little scent, but the creamy softness of the petals like the inside of a dog’s ear more than made up for it. She placed one on her tongue, and imagined she could taste the hills, the bittersweet tang of life.

“Those three men don’t have any cattle.” Rose pointed east where the cowboys trotted their horses. Two of the men slumped in the saddle while the third rode with shoulders high and firm.

“Where did it happen?” Dulcinea asked. Rose would know. She’d already been out there.

Rose tipped her head at the three men. “That way. Water tank between Bennett lands.”

“Why was my husband there with your sister? How old was she?” Dulcinea regretted her question the moment it left her mouth and Rose grimaced like she’d been slapped. “I’m sorry—” Dulcinea reached out, placed her hand on Rose’s arm. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either,” Rose admitted. “She was going to meet a man who could help her—” She paused and picked up the reins she’d dropped to ground tie her horse. “She was a good girl. Told me he had information about our mother.” She appeared lost in thought as she watched the three men near the ranch yard. “Maybe it wasn’t your husband she was meeting.”

Dulcinea stared at the other woman, who bit her lower lip to stop from saying more. She stepped back and picked up her own reins, then pretended to check the cinch on the saddle before she mounted again. What could J.B. know about Rose’s family? She’d told him about befriending Rose when they met in March, and he seemed ignorant of her family. She looked westward, where heavy clouds lay above a gray veil that meant someone was getting the luck, and the rain. The sun hung near the lip of the horizon like a red ball at rest, and a low bush beside her suddenly exploded with lavender butterflies that clouded around her long skirt, washed up her bodice, and splashed against her face, their wings like an exhaled breath of powder as she closed her eyes. Something about the moment, its unexpected tenderness, made her long to hear him say her name again, just once more, “Dulcinea, Dulcie May,” as he’d whispered in her ear when last they’d met, in March.

A red-tailed hawk glided up and over the hill, the white winter belly almost obscured by summer brown, and then dipped toward the valley they traveled, swift as an arrow. It hit a rabbit running a ragged pattern through the switchgrass along the road ahead. The rabbit uttered a single choked scream, then went limp and hopeless, back broken, eyes fixed as the bird swept upward. A single drop of blood splashed Rose’s faded-gray-cloth-covered arm, the edges feathering out and sinking, already permanent. Rose followed the hawk’s flight until it was out of sight. “Star,” she whispered. “Star is making sure we’re safe.”

Dulcinea knew they should go down the hill to the ranch. It would be dark soon, and late for supper. She used to be the one cooking, along with whatever cowboy’s wife they could hire. She knew what it meant to have extra mouths at the table. Rose didn’t eat much, though, and she hadn’t been hungry since they’d left the reservation, but she’d have to eat to keep track of things. She was going to find the person who killed J.B. They were already sentenced to death in her heart. She glanced at Rose. What kind of vengeance did she plan? In the years she’d known her, Rose had been a fair person, but anything to do with family was outside fairness. Dulcinea felt the same.

“Your husband left you a lot of land,” Rose said, her eyes squinting into the distance.

“I wish he hadn’t.” Dulcinea was surprised by her bitter tone, as if she blamed the land itself. She had thought of nothing except getting home and making certain that Rose was right. Stranger things happened. Maybe J.B. was still alive and it was—she couldn’t think what.

She half expected her husband to see her from atop another hill, to gallop toward her, waving hat and arm, as he had every other time she arrived.

“What are we going to do?” Dulcinea turned to the other woman. Rose stared at the ranch below, and then shifted her eyes back to Dulcinea.

“We’re going to find out who did this. Look and listen. Someone knows something. My sister will help us.” Rose looked down at her mount’s wind-tangled mane, combed it thoughtfully with her fingers as the horse gazed longingly at the others going home for the night.

Dulcinea pulled up in front of the house and Rose stopped beside her. Her gaze followed the picket fence around their first home, where the foreman now lived, and then on to the second, larger house J.B. built for her when she was pregnant with their second son. It needed paint, but the windows were intact. The lilacs in the side yard had grown tall and straggly, the blooms spare, purple and white glimpses amid the dark green leaves. She hadn’t been this close in years. She was too afraid of Drum catching her or her husband forcing her to explain why she couldn’t stay. She dismounted and started for the house, then shifted her gaze to the fenced-in pasture beyond the barns. He wasn’t in the house. He’d be out there. They couldn’t wait. She lifted the skirt she still wore from school and started toward the cemetery where her husband rested.

The sound of the house door closing made her glance over her shoulder as Vera Higgs strode to the gate, lifted the latch, and stopped with her hand shading her eyes, taking in the new arrivals. She was a tall, slender African, dressed for work in men’s canvas pants and a faded blue shirt cinched with a wide leather belt. She stared at Dulcinea without expression, as if the wind in the hills had picked up a feather and blown it to her doorstep. A few years ago, J.B. introduced them in town, and it was a painful, awkward moment with him tongue-tied between them. Dulcinea nodded without speaking to the woman, whose gaze shifted to Rose, who still sat atop her horse.

“I take it you’re with Mrs. Bennett,” Vera said. “If you ride over there, one of the men will take your horses. You’re welcome to have supper with us.” Her low contralto voice held a music Dulcinea envied, and she was jealous that another woman invited her friend into her own house. She immediately shook the notion from her head.

She started toward the cemetery again, took only three steps before she heard, “Vera! Who is that? Vera?” Only one man had a voice like that: loud and harsh enough to wake the dead. Her eyes flitted from the cemetery to the house to Vera at the yard gate, and her mind filled with a roar.