on their way back sam stops at the deserted town pump. the usual crowds are dispersed tonight, leaving only the squeak of the handle. the gush of water. the hiss between sam’s teeth as sam puts a fist in the stream. as the dark stain on sam’s knuckles begins to wash free.
that color—impossible to see it true in the dark. lucy touches a smaller stain high on sam’s sleeve. she puts her wet fingers to her nose and smells a jangling.
it’s blood.
“it ain’t mine,” sam reassures her. “i only bloodied his nose.”
“you said you chattedwith charles.”
“he said things about you. i was protecting you.” sam’s chin lifts. “i did right.”
“you can’t—” lucy begins. but sam did. sam who doesn’t bend to the world’s rules but bends them. sam came to town and became the impossible tiger. “i hope you broke it.”
sam doesn’t recoil from that ugliness. only says, “she’s not a friend to you, either, you know. however rich or pretty.”
“i know,” lucy says, in a small voice.
“i hope you picked your other friends smarter.”
“you don’t have to worry about that.” lucy sits down, exhausted, right there on the wet flagstones. damp creeps up her shift. she stretches her legs out, lies all the way back with a hand pressed to her eyes. she feels rather than sees sam bending, hovering, lying down too. for a while, there is quiet.
“don’t you ever get bored in this place?” sam says. lucy stiffens. the sting goes out of the question as sam adds, “don’t you ever get lonely?”
all day it’s been stifling hot. now lucy perceives a faint breath of wind. a westerly wind, the kind native to the hills and born at the coast. they might be laid out in the long yellow grass and looking at the stars. the best thing about stars is that you can see in them any shape you want. make any story. better, even, when the person beside you doesn’t see them the same way.
lucy sits up. “take me on your next adventure.”
“it’ll be hard going.”
“i’ve been resting for five years.”
“your feet look awful soft.”
“you wouldn’t say that if you tried wearing boots three inches high.”
“if you do . . . it won’t be easy to turn back.”
“why not?”
and sam says, “i aim to go across the ocean.”
—
when they arrive at the boardinghouse to collect lucy’s belongings, a man in black is pacing the porch.
ignore them, anna said of her hired men the first time lucy saw one and stopped dead. papa and his friends keep them as a precaution, but they mean you no harm. they don’t mean anyone harm—not good people, at least—i’ve never seen my men do worse than push a drunk aside or ask a debtor for money. they’re glorified errand boys. here, watch this. i’ll ask him to pass the tea.and because anna laughed, lucy laughed too.
these silent men grew as invisible to lucy as their purported guns. it’s true she never saw one do more than menace. but there’s something different about this man—and then it comes to her. she’s never seen a hired man without anna to command him. he’s eerie as a shadow without its caster.
the man turns. sam drags lucy back around the corner, a firm hand over her mouth.
“it must be a misunderstanding,” lucy whispers, humoring sam. “anna wouldn’t—it’s a mistake. likely she sent him with a message.” errand boys.“i’ll talk to him.”
sam lets loose a string of hushed, unfamiliar words. lucy recognizes only the last cuss. “ben dan. anna didn’t send him.”
lucy opens her mouth to correct sam. then she hears it. the man’s pacing—an unerring, pitiless tempo. a long-buried part of her, stirring awake, says, hunting. she looks at the blood on sam’s sleeve that wouldn’t wash out. “you mean charles sent him?”
sam cuts lucy a look she knows. in another life she aimed that same look at sam—the look given to an exasperating child.
“this isn’t some lovers’ quarrel,” sam says. “he’s here for me.”
fear strums lucy in earnest now. blown in on the wind is a part of her old world. the dangerous part.
“but why—”
“he thinks i owe some money.”
anna has spoken of how the hired men are sometimes sent to collect on debts. lucy relaxes. “is that all? so pay him back. i have some savings—”
“no,”sam snarls, and lucy flinches. a coiled violence in that voice, like a pulled-back fist. for the first time she truly believes the stories sam told at dinner. she can see in sam the cowboy, the mountaineer, the miner. the hardened man unknown to her. “i don’t owe anything. never mind that. you’ll be safe enough if i leave town alone.”
“but why?” lucy can ask, and ask, but the question is futile. that old stubbornness firms sam’s jaw. the years make no difference—even young and pudgy, sam never broke a silence.
lucy’s gaze falls instead to sam’s swollen knuckles. they mark sam’s courage. some things shifted tonight and can’t be taken back: the cut on sam’s hand, the blood on charles’s nose, anna. where, the wind seems to ask, is lucy’s courage?
her heart thuds, but sam can’t hear that. lucy smiles a practiced smile. tosses her head as if she has curls to bounce. “what do i care about safe? this town is safe, and just look at it. i’m coming.”
“you don’t understand. it won’t be fun. it—”
“it’ll be an adventure. besides, if you get hauled off into some debtors’ prison, you’ll need someone to break you out.”
she intended it as a jest, but sam’s gaze remains distant, following the hired man, whose pattern brings him closer and closer to the corner. sam looks ready to bolt.
“please,” lucy says. “i don’t care about some stupid debt—i won’t ask about it if you insist. let’s go.”
“what about your things?”
“they’re only things.” as lucy says it, she realizes it’s true. she thinks of the thirty pearl buttons scattered across anna’s rug. how the ping of them against the door was like claws, gently clicking. “what makes a family a family?”
she thought that, at least, would make sam smile.
