Part 27 (1/2)

”Caint do it, this time,” Doc says.

Viridis listens in wonder as the two men invite and counter-invite each other until finally Nail says, ”Wal, come back when ye kin stay longer,” and the doctor is allowed to leave.

She walks him to his horse and thanks him and repeats Nail's invitation. Then she asks, ”When you told us to be good, just how good did you have in mind?”

He grins, and blushes a bit. ”I was jist tryin to be silly,” he says. ”I didn't mean nothin by thet.”

”So it wouldn't hurt him if we...” she begins, but can't quite find the words.

”Lak I said, don't let him do nothin that caint be done in bed,” the doctor says. He climbs up on his horse and turns to go. His parting words are spoken down to her. ”But I imagine there's quite a heap of things a body can do in bed, besides sleep.” He starts to ride away. She waves. He stops the horse, reins it, holds it; he sits there listening, looking not at her but off at the forest. ”Do you hear that?” he asks. He glances at her for confirmation, and she smiles and nods her head. ”What d'ye reckon is makin that purty sound?”

”The trees,” she says. ”They're singing.”

”Is that what it is?” he asks. ”Wal, how 'bout that? Don't that beat all?”

”It surely does beat all,” she agrees, and the good doctor, shaking his head in wonder, rides away.

And as soon as she gets back to Nail's bedside, she wants to know: ”Don't you hear them?”

”Yeah, but the doc tole me this medicine would cause that.”

”You haven't taken the medicine yet,” she points out. ”But you're going to, right this minute.” And she fetches a spoon from the implements she h.o.a.rded for him and makes him take his quinine.

Some of it dribbles down his chin, and he raises his hand to wipe his mouth, but she stops his hand and licks up the dribble herself. It is very bitter; both of them make faces. She explains she did that to see what it tastes like.

He is looking all around, as if searching for something. She asks him what he's looking for. ”Bird,” he says.

”What bird?”

”The guard, Bird. I caint believe he's not watchin us. I caint believe we're all alone.”

She gives him a long kiss, a very long one, longer than any she'd ever done with Bird watching. He tastes of quinine, but she's already tasted it, and it doesn't bother her. When finally she breaks the kiss (realizing it would be up to her to start or break anything), she asks, ”Would Bird have let us do that?”

”I reckon he must be off-duty,” Nail observes, grinning.

”There's not even a table between us,” she remarks.

”Just these soppin bedcovers,” he observes.

She squeezes the fabric of the quilts and blankets, which are wet from his perspiration, although he has not been sweating for some time now. She whips the bedclothes off him. ”There's not much sun left in the afternoon,” she observes, ”and I'd better hang these out to catch the last of it.” She starts to carry out the bedcovers but turns. ”Are you cold?”

”Not right now,” he tells her.

She takes the wet blankets and quilts outside the cavern and drapes them in sunlight over the boughs of the cedars. She talks to the trees while she does it, and Rosabone thinks she's talking to her and lifts her head to listen. She talks to Rosabone too. When she returns to the cavern, Nail asks her, ”Who were you talkin to?” and she tells him the trees and her horse.

She kneels beside the bed and, with him still in it, begins changing the sheet: this technique she learned years ago when her mother was bedridden: you roll them to one side to remove the old sheet partway, roll them to the other side to get the rest of it, roll them back when the fresh sheet's in place. But Nail is heavy; rolling him toward her, her hand slips and snags in the string around his neck, and she lifts it till her fingers hold the charm, the tiny golden tree. She's nearly forgotten her little Christmas present to him, and hasn't seen it since the day she bought it at Stifft's Jewelers and took it home and wrapped it in a wad of tissue to enclose in her first letter to him. Thinking of that, she remembers that somewhere in Rosabone's saddlebags is the bundle of all the letters she wrote him which they never let him have at the penitentiary, or which she has written in her idle hours in Stay More while waiting for him. More than a hundred pages, no, closer to two hundred: the story of her life, or all the parts of it she wants him to know, for now: her childhood in the big house on Arch Street, her brothers, her sister, her mother, and as much of her father as she can mention, for now. The story of her art lessons with Spotiswode Worthen. The story of her travels: an Arkansawyer in Chicago, in New York, in Paris, in London, in Arles, and then around the world with Marguerite Thompson Zorach. The story of her first visit to Stay More. The story of her visits to the governor. The story of the day she went to the ballpark to meet Irvin Bobo, and what happened that evening. All the stories. One of the letters contains a story of what was not actually allowed to happen but was only imagined: the night that the governor permitted her to spend in Nail's cell. Another one of the letters, written in the future tense and the second person, contains the story of what will not yet have happened: the first night they will actually spend together. But she did not know, when she wrote it, that he would be ill with malaria, so that story is overly romantic, although the setting for it is actually this exact place and time, this cavern, this night, this July.

Should she let him read it? It would tickle him, amuse him, and any good humor would be sure to help him get well. But it was rather immodest and even frank in its details. Wouldn't he be shocked? Wouldn't he consider her brazen or indecent?

”Why do you keep on holdin it?” he asks, trying to see her hand wrapped around the golden tree beneath his chin.

”I'm thinking,” she says, and puts the tree charm back against his chest. Nestled there in the golden hair of his chest, the golden tree is like a mighty oak in a thicket of brambles. ”I have a letter for you, if you'd like to read it.”

”You bet,” he says.

”But it's nearly two hundred pages long.”

”What else have we got to do?”

She gives him a sidelong glance, and then she gives him a mock punch in the ribs. ”You,” she says. And then she says, ”We've got lots else to do. For one thing, we've got to eat. I'd better start supper. What would you like?”

”Chicken'n dumplins,” he announces.

”Sorry,” she says. ”The eggs haven't hatched yet. And besides, I don't know how to make dumplings. But tomorrow I'll go get your mother to teach me.”

Nail laughs: the first she's heard him laugh in a long time. ”You honestly would do that, wouldn't ye?” he tells her, delighted.

No, not only have the eggs not hatched, but there are no chickens to lay them. She wonders if they could keep a flock of fowl in this glen of the waterfall. Would the varmints of the woods get them? But she has seen no varmints. If there are wolves or bears hereabouts, they haven't made themselves visible.

For their first meal together, she is obliged to put together a light supper of crackers, cheese, and a tin of sardines. But she discovers she has no appet.i.te at all, not because the offering isn't appetizing. And he discovers he hasn't any appet.i.te whatsoever, not because he's ill.

Love has no stomach.

The supper uneaten, they keep close, she sitting cross-legged beside the pallet of his bed, he lying. After a while he suggests, ”You could read it to me.”

”What?”

”The two-hundred-page letter.”

”Oh,” she says, and again: ”Oh.” The light in the cavern is just enough to read by, but it won't remain that way long. She'll have to get up and light the kerosene lantern after a time. ”Well.” She thinks awhile, then says, warningly, ”I'll blush terribly over parts of it.”

”I'll like to see ye blush,” he says. ”I bet it makes your pale skin look healthy.”

She laughs, but also warns, ”I don't think I could even stand to read parts of it. Parts of it I wrote thinking you'd not even be near me when you read them.”

”If you love me,” he tells her, ”you could read it all.”

That's true. She says, ”That's true, but parts of it are going to make me sound most unladylike.”

”Those will probably be my favorite parts,” he says. ”Let's have it.”

”Promise you'll never laugh.”

”Aint there no funny parts?”

”Not deliberately funny,” she says.