Jonis Agee - The Bones of Paradise

He picked a piece of cottonwood lint from the brim of the hat, wondered what to tell her. He didn’t want to shock or offend her with the fact that he was wearing her dead husband’s clothes, but he didn’t have any others to wear. He was in a quagmire. From upstairs groans and then a shouted string of curses commenced when Drum apparently awoke as they set his arm.

Frank Higgs hollered from the top of the stairs, “Graver, bring that bottle of brandy from the office.”

Graver lifted his hat. “This is what I do here, Mrs. Bennett, whatever they tell me.” As he edged past her to the office tucked off the parlor, he smelled the musk of a woman’s body unwashed from travel beneath the sweeter scent of her perfume and felt, for the first time in more months than he cared to think, a surge in his own body that made him pause for the briefest moment behind her, her back inches from his chest. His breath caught in his throat, and he swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a tremor pass through her.

“I’ll keep your accommodating nature in mind, Mr. Graver.” Her voice had a rich deepness that ran itself up and down his spine before settling in his legs, made it just a bit more difficult to walk with the assurance of a man who carried his own water in the world. Hell, it made a person want to carry his and hers and anybody else’s she had a mind to invite along. He smiled and shook his head as he moved inside the office and spied the brandy on the desk.

“That’s our wedding brandy,” she said when she saw the bottle in his hand. “That man never even bothered to come over when we got married.” She reached for the bottle, but Graver lifted it away.

“They need this upstairs, ma’am.”

She stamped her foot, but her arms collapsed to her sides. “This really is the last straw. I am going to march up there and make them take him home. He’s never going to leave at this rate!” When she started to push past, he stood in her way and reached to take her arm. A surprisingly strong and muscled arm it was, he had time to consider before she shook herself free.

She pulled herself to her full height, all five and a half feet, and seemed able to look down her nose at him despite his advantage in size. A schoolteacher look, definitely, he thought. “Give me that bottle.”

He was about to give it to her when Higgs thundered down the stairs, startled when he saw the two of them, grabbed the bottle, and rushed back up. Graver suppressed a smile, focused on his own battered hands while she took a few deep, restorative breaths. When he peeked up, her cheeks were aflame and she rubbed tears from her eyes with her knuckles like a child, a look his own daughters had worn on occasion. The thought stung his nose and throat like vinegar.

He wouldn’t offer her the pieties she would hear from others. He knew how grief poured out your life like so much night soil and left you empty as a piss pot, the stink and rancor bubbling your skin to open sores that only you saw and felt. No one who truly grieved wanted to be touched, held, rubbed on . . . it was like being boiled alive. He didn’t know how anyone survived. Getting shot was hardly a scratch compared to what happened after his wife and children passed. Maybe a part of him deserved it. Maybe she felt like that now.

He glanced at her tilted head, listening to the cursing and voices upstairs, the creaking of the bed as they struggled with Drum. There was a faint dew of sweat under her eyes now, across the pink sunburn and freckles on her cheeks, on the bridge of a nose that had a bump in the middle, which some might consider a mar on its beauty, but he did not, and the lips, though she’d seemed angry or pensive since he’d met her, had corners that curved upward despite her mood. He could see how a young J.B. would want to court and win her, as Graver had his own wife. Always there was that one feature, that one small detail that seemed to bring a person to another person, something private and endearing. With his wife, it had been the peculiar points of her ears, which made her seem fawn-like, like some benign creature he should protect, but despite his fierceness, he had failed, as J.B. had failed. There was nothing a man could do, apparently. He sighed. She shook herself and glanced at him, then back toward the stairs. It had grown quiet.

“I’m sorry. I, it’s just—” She opened her palms and looked at him as if he could do something to fill her empty hands. “Have you met my other son, Hayward?” She held him briefly with those light brown eyes rimmed with violet, then shook her head and peered out the window.

Graver nodded cautiously.

“What’s your judgment of him?” She looked at him again, her face solemn, the suggestion of a smile on her lips, hoping for a good report. It broke his heart.

He hesitated, glanced up the stairs, then back out the door at the men drifting down to the bunkhouse until supper call. Vera’s stew was ready, cornbread sitting under flour sacking, butter softening on the plate. “The boys, well, they pretty much have the run of things here.” He took a deep breath. “They sit a horse pretty good, rope decent, sometimes they even put in a day’s work you stay on them, but they’re youngsters yet.”

She waved her hands at the description. “Never mind all that. Soon as they go away to school, they’ll learn other skills.” She hesitated, and then in a rush, “I need your help with something.”

“Ma’am?”

Her voice trailed at the sound of a horse arriving, accompanied by yelling and loud laughter from the barnyard. Her face brightened and she strode out the door with Graver behind. “Hayward,” she whispered.

The boy rocked unsteadily in his saddle, unmindful of the lathered horse’s sides heaving for breath beneath him. Finally Hayward slumped sideways and slid off his horse, landed with a soft thump in the dirt. Struggling upright, he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed, ignoring the wet splashing. Finished, he worked at buttoning his pants until finally giving up with a shrug and turning back to tug on the exhausted horse’s reins.

Cullen pushed past them in the doorway and sprinted down the walk to where his brother tried to stand without weaving. “You were supposed to wait for me!” Cullen pushed Hayward’s chest and he fell back, landing in his own piss-soaked dirt. They fought for a few minutes until, being the bigger of the two, Hayward pinned his older brother and held him while they argued. In the end, they lay side by side, gazing at the sky, giggling, no doubt about some mischief they planned. Graver kept that to himself.

“High spirited,” Graver said. His hands clenched his hat to keep from walking out there and throwing the two of them in the stock tank until they sobered up. They could take care of the horse afterward, too. Probably ruined it, spent its heart and mind on foolishness. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to help the widow with these two.

“They need some refinements, I can see that, but they come from good stock.” She wasn’t going to give up on her boys. Her lips formed a smile that wanted to become broad, and though she held it back, her eyes were alight with joy and her shoulders fairly trembled with the urge to reach out to them. She was their mother, despite having abandoned them, peculiar as that seemed to Graver. “Hayward? Cullen.” Mrs. Bennett started down the stairs toward the gate, calling their names, her deep voice higher than before, the question in her tone letting the boys know they could ignore her.

Cullen half pulled, half shoved his brother upright, then stood and brushed at the pissy mud on their clothing, which only resulted in smearing it. He picked a glob off his cheek, threw it at Hayward, and followed with a shove that nearly sent the boy sprawling again. The wrestling match threatened to restart until Hayward glanced at his mother, ran a muddy hand through his long hair to push it off his face, and dipped his head at her. Cullen glanced at her, too, and let his body slacken, not bothering to push his brown hair back or wipe his face on his sleeve. His face wore a pout, the mouth a replica of hers except the corners turned downward in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction. His white-blue eyes were small and quick, like a wild animal’s. The Bennett nose, strong, slightly hooked and crooked from being broken, sat squarely on his face, making him not so much handsome as possessing the possibility of character. Without taking his eyes from his mother and Graver, Cullen snapped his fist out and punched his brother in the arm. Hayward’s yowl brought a smile to Cullen’s mouth, leveling its corners.