Waltzing In Ragtime by Eileen Charbonneau

Author:Eileen Charbonneau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2012-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

Matthew Hart watched the friars leave the fields for evening vespers. The older ones ruffled his hair as if he were still fifteen as they put their hoes in his hands. He wanted to follow them into their adobe mission church, and give himself up to a religion of mysteries and obedience. But he needed Olana’s forgiveness first. He hoisted the hoes to his shoulder and headed toward the shed.

“She’s gone. You can come home now.”

He turned to see Farrell. “Gone?”

“I’m just getting back from the train station.”

“I never hit a woman before in my life Farrell, I swear it.”

“You hit her?”

“Didn’t she say?”

“She didn’t say more than two words together at a time, even to the women. But I didn’t like the look about her. What possessed you, Matty?”

“It was like watching someone else do it. I wanted to kill whoever’s hand —”

“Easy, lad. I’m fond of the girl, but you’re not the first man who’s lost his temper with a difficult woman. Some even feel it’s a good thing to give them a regular —”

“I ain’t one of those!”

“No, no, and me either. I’m just saying the urge is human nature, poor blighted souls that we be. I suspect even ladies like Miss Whittaker understand that. I don’t suspect that was all turned her homeward, neither.”

“What?”

“Not used to feeling outnumbered, I think.”

“Outnumbered?”

“By doting women. You’ve got yourself a paradise here my friend. You must know that.”

Matthew turned west, to the open sea. “I know that blizzards and tall trees can be more peaceful company.”

“But you have a family. And a fine woman.”

“I don’t have any woman. I don’t want any woman!”

“Why not, son?”

The evening wind, the vespers, the bell turned Farrell’s voice into his grandfather’s. Under the spell of that voice, he couldn’t lie, even to himself. He drew in a breath that rippled under the strain of the truth. “Because it hurts too much when I lose them.”

“Miss Whittaker is a young, strong woman, Matthew. What makes you think —”

“If I love them, they die.”

“That’s foolish.”

“Hasn’t been.”

“What would your mama, your grandma do under the burden of such thinking?”

“Do?”

“They’d have to disown you.”

“Why?”

“On account of all them pictures on their mantle. All the husbands, fathers, brothers. You’re the last of their men, ain’t you?”

“I … suppose.”

“Well, don’t they worry about you dancing with heiresses and grizzlies all in one season? But nothing keeps them from loving you.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You think you’re the only one whose life’s been touched by misfortune? Why those women put up with —”

“Don’t you go badmouthing my family, Farrell!”

“There, you feel something for them, that’s a relief. They’re more than your handmaids.”

“Handmaids? The way they badger me?”

Farrell laughed. “You foolish enough to prefer peace to these women? That being so I’d gladly take your place.”

Matthew Hart slammed the last hoe into its pegged place on the wall, then joined Farrell walking to his grandmother’s farm. In the grove of apricot trees, at almost the spot he’d cuffed Olana, Farrell did something Matthew had never seen him do in the three years he’d known him.

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