The Sweet Blue Distance, page 44
“The Chávez family,” Iñigo told her. “That’s Ernesto, with his youngest grandson. They start out young in the family business.”
“Is it just men who play?”
The question surprised Iñigo. “Claro. ¿Qué más da? The men play and sing, the women sing. See there, the abuela? As a young woman, Carmen Chávez had a golden voice. Now she is just la alburera.”
Violante turned to Carrie.
“Do you know this word? The alburera is a woman of quick wits and a sharp tongue, one who always outwits the men. Men, they say alburera like it has a bad smell, but from a woman? It is a compliment. I would be pleased if people thought of me as alburera.”
Iñigo seemed ready to argue this point, but Violante sent him off on an errand that Carrie didn’t quite catch. And no matter; whatever Iñigo had gone to do was beside the point. Violante wanted no men nearby for what she was planning to say.
She put a hand on Carrie’s wrist.
“I have to admit, at your age, I loved this.” She gestured around herself. “Music and dancing and boys on a summer night.”
She shook her head as if to stop herself from saying too much, but she could not help almost wiggling in pleasure at such memories. Then she made an effort to be serious.
“But you have to be careful. If Eli were here—he really should be here—you would have his protection, and the men would mind their manners. Now they will be as forward as you allow them to be, and that would have consequences. So I have a suggestion.”
Carrie leaned forward. “Yes?”
“When the music starts—you see they are picking up their guitars now—Iñigo will dance with you. Then he brings you back to me, and when the next man approaches, I will touch your wrist like I am now if you should dance with him. But. If there is reason to refuse him, I’ll keep my hands folded like this. Then you refuse politely. You will do this?”
Carrie wasn’t sure what to make of Violante’s suggestion, and still, the decision was very simple. These two people had taken her under their protection, and were looking after her as they looked after every other younger woman in the family. It would be the height of foolishness to dismiss the advice of someone who knew the way Santa Fe worked. And if Violante was overly cautious, Carrie didn’t mind. She was a stranger here, and caution was called for. Beyond those very prim thoughts, Carrie had to admit to herself at least that it was a great relief to know she wasn’t obligated to dance with one stranger after another.
Then the music started and Iñigo appeared beside her, executing a bow that any courtier could be proud of. Carrie stood up to dance with him, her heart thundering with the novelty of it all. The music, the crowd, the dances themselves, all of it was deeply, utterly stirring.
Iñigo was almost seventy, but he swept her away as if he hadn’t yet seen his thirtieth birthday. The whirlwind of dancers separated for the briefest moment, and they were drawn into the heart of the dance.
Somewhere nearby a man put back his head and let out a high yipping sound of pleasure, one that others took up so that the voices, braided together, lifted into a sky threaded with dusk in shades of copper and gold, azure and pearl. The music went on and on, the rhythm of the guitars and the box drum amplified by the way men stamped their feet. The earth itself shivered.
* * *
Eli rode into Santa Fe just as the music began.
Hours before, he had resigned himself to the fact that it would be too late to call on Carrie by the time he got home. Beyond that he was bone-tired and needed nothing so much as sleep.
But there was music, and a fandango. Where there was music and dancing, Iñigo and Violante would be. Iñigo and Violante, who had promised him that they would look after Carrie. And that would mean taking her with them to Fort Marcy.
In fact, he could see Carrie tonight. Once he had looked to the horses and scrubbed the dirt from his head and hands and put on clean clothes, he could head up to old Fort Marcy. Where a dozen men would be watching her, determined to get her on the dance floor.
Carrie would hesitate to dance with strangers, but that wouldn’t work to her advantage. If she refused to dance, people would wonder out loud about the new midwife. Was she una fresa? Too prideful a person, too fine to dance at a fandango. A real strawberry. Maybe, it was suggested, she’d be more comfortable at a ball, the far fancier and more formal events put on by the rich at the Guzman fonda.
He trusted Violante to explain what Carrie should do, might do under circumstances, dare not do. He trusted Carrie to be practical and to listen. Rather than cause offense, she would dance.
Eli picked up the pace.
At home he went through the chores that could not be ignored or put off. Water, oats, hay, straw. He brushed all three horses down, talking to them in tones they knew: they had done well on the trail today, and earned their rest. With his pulse throbbing in his ears, it was difficult to sound calm, but he was not a boy and he could master himself. Something he would have many occasions to demonstrate over the next days and weeks.
Eli was aware that he was smiling like a besotted seventeen-year-old as he set out, walking fast, for the fort. In the clear night air, the music drifted down like mist to get caught up in a wind that carried it away into the night.
There was always a crowd of men outside the fort, passing around a jug, telling jokes and tall stories. Eli slid by without being seen and was glad.
In front of him, half the old parade ground was filled with dancers. People in their finest clothes, colors almost glowing in the last of the light, moving as the music required of them, but alive with the joy of it. They could not be silent, and the noise—the guitars, the voices raised in song, the laughter—filled the world.
He had missed this kind of dancing and looked forward to it now. At the same time it struck him, in this moment, as a foreign and strange enterprise, and the reason was obvious. He had spent the previous day at his mother’s pueblo, dancing with his grandfather and uncles, his hands coated in white clay, dressed as they were dressed, in the colors of the land around them.
It had been too long since he had last spent time at the pueblo, but it was all immediately familiar. He took comfort in the dance, a solemn, demanding undertaking that required careful attention to each meaningful step in the prescribed path, and not just from the dancers. From the kiva to the plaza they danced, and the dance drew everything together.
He watched for a minute more until he knew where to find Violante and Iñigo, and watched still for Carrie among the dancers. They shifted and parted and came together to the rhythm of the box drum, until finally he caught sight of her. Her head tilted up, she was listening to Jake Saracen, who was dividing his attention between dancing and, as was forever the case, talking. She wouldn’t be able to make out anything in the noise, but as long as Jake could hear himself, he wouldn’t much mind.
In St. Louis he had seen her dance for the first time. The Carrie he had just begun to know, the young lady from the train, serious and sincere, had transformed on the dance floor into a different creature. Dancing, Carrie Ballentyne came alive. The sight had robbed him of breath, and with that, it was clear to him that it didn’t matter how little they had in common; he was on the brink of falling in love, and for once the idea didn’t frighten him.
Now he walked into the fort to claim Carrie for himself.
* * *
As the music came to a stop, Carrie turned toward the table where the Guevaras sat, but Jake Saracen caught her wrist and shook his head.
“Hold up now, Miss Ballentyne. Where you running off to? Lots more dancing to do.”
She considered how best to respond to this very good-looking, very confident man. He flirted, but there was no malice in him. And still she needed to draw a line.
“I wish you many excellent dance partners,” she said. “But I will return to my friends.” She used a tone that the men she grew up with would recognize.
In the first moment, she thought he might ignore both manners and common sense, but then he let go of her wrist and instead offered her an arm.
He said, “Thank you, Miss Ballentyne. May I call on you again?”
She answered in the only way she could, with a small, unconvincing smile. It would be a mistake to offer him any encouragement, but neither did she want to offend him, if it could be avoided. She needed friends in Santa Fe, and Jake Saracen could be one of them. He was a very good dancer; he told interesting stories and answered questions without challenging her right to ask them.
“Ven rápido,” Violante called to them. “Girl, you are flushed. Come sit and drink something.”
She did not include Jake in this invitation, and that left him with no options. He bowed, and left them.
“That was great fun,” she told Violante. “I hope he’s not the only one who can dance.”
The musicians were picking up their guitars again, just as two men began to approach Carrie from opposite directions. A glance at Violante told her that she should refuse both of them, and that was what she did, once in English and more slowly the next time, in Spanish. She meant to be kind, but of course it might not be taken that way.
“You don’t want me to dance with the postmaster?” Raising her voice to be heard.
“Forget the postmaster,” Violante shouted back. “This one coming up now, this one you should dance with.”
Carrie turned and saw a man approaching, walking through the dancers as if they didn’t exist. A very unladylike sound came up from her throat, and then Eli was in front of her.
“Ahí estás,” Violante shouted. “Lento como el burro.”
Eli didn’t even look in Violante’s direction. Instead he took Carrie’s hand and drew her to her feet. He lowered his head to speak into her ear, his voice steady and clear and low enough to drown out the noise.
“Is she right? Tell me, querida. Did I stay away too long?”
The warmth of his breath made every nerve jump.
She said, “You’re here now. That’s enough. Are we going to dance?”
“Yes.” He gave her a slow smile. “Vamos a bailar. Dancing is the right place to start.”
At first she was preoccupied with the simple fact of him, and barely took note of the music. This only worked, she would realize later, because he was such a good dancer that she could follow his lead without much thought or effort.
It was common knowledge that many religions discouraged and even forbade dancing of any kind, but she had never thought very closely about the rules and conventions that played no role in her own life. Now, for the first time, she realized how dancing mimicked the things that men and women did when they were alone, behind closed doors. Color and heat flooded through her, something she could not hide or deny, not from Eli.
And so she concentrated on the small things: the texture of his shirtsleeve under her fingers, the solid circumference of his forearm, the warmth of the hand that rested at her waist. There was nothing soft about him anywhere, but his touch was gentle.
He smelled of soap. Not of the everyday lye soap, but the milled soap sold in drugstores and fancy goods shops. From this she knew that he had stopped at home to wash and change and see to the chores that couldn’t be ignored. He was a practical man. Sensible. Her people would approve, a thought that had come to her before.
Glancing up—very quickly, because she was suddenly too embarrassed to meet his gaze—she was surprised to find she had forgotten how very tall he was. Tall and lean and muscled in the way of men who worked hard for a living. Powerful in the purest sense of the word.
She was dizzy with elation, unrecognizable to herself, and glad of it.
The music stopped. Carrie might have lost her balance, but his hands cupped her elbows and kept her upright. Just then she saw him make a decision. He pressed his mouth to her temple. A brief, warm kiss that anyone might have seen, and still she couldn’t do anything but smile. For that moment they smiled at each other like idiots, and she was so caught up in what she saw on his face that she thought of pulling his head down so that she could kiss him properly, damn the repercussions.
In another place and time, with another man, she would have seen a smile as something as simple as the flexing of the zygomaticus muscles in response to social cues. Automatic, and usually without any deep meaning. But Eli’s smile worked like the drawing back of curtains on a stage.
He was still the strong, capable, thoughtful man who had befriended her during a difficult journey, but she hadn’t seen what was now in front of her: a man who could laugh. Who liked to laugh. Not so long ago, she had doubted she would ever marry. She imagined a quiet life for herself, but somewhere between Manhattan and this small town on the western frontier, she had realized that a solemn, quiet life would eventually bore her to death.
The dance ended, and he pulled her closer rather than shout. “Let’s sit with Violante and Iñigo for a while,” he said. “Then we’ll go home.”
He said those words: we’ll go home; she had heard him clearly. What he meant, that was the question. Before she could figure it out or ask, she saw that Rob Ramsey had taken a seat next to Iñigo, and was waiting for her. Because she had agreed to dance with him.
Eli figured it out before Carrie could explain.
“You promised Ramsey a dance?”
She gave a small, mute nod.
“How many others?”
Her voice cracked. “Two.”
“All right,” Eli said. “You dance. I’ll watch. And then we’ll go.”
“But—”
“Iñigo and Violante will follow us—at a distance. That will check the gossip. Most of it, anyway.”
He faced her, and with a very formal bow from the shoulders, thanked her for the dance, using a lot of flowery prose that brought her to the brink of an unladylike bark of laughter. Whether his purpose was to annoy Rob Ramsey or to make a point with her wasn’t clear until he straightened, and winked at her.
How strange that something as simple as a wink could set every nerve to vibrating.
Mr. Ramsey was a gentleman, utterly correct and polite, but he was not quite equal to the triple step that the dance required. Carrie had no wish to hurt his feelings, and so she showed him an unremarkable expression, pleasant but not exactly inviting.
Toward the end of the dance, she saw that her next partner was waiting for her. Joe Landry was a clerk in the courthouse, very formal but for his ink-stained fingers. Tonight there was a swipe of ink on his cheek as well, but nobody had bothered to tell him. He had asked her to dance soon after she arrived, had seemed pleased when she agreed, but now she saw little interest in his expression as they began to dance.
He held himself apart, and made no effort to talk. This was the Joe Landry who had approached her with such eagerness outside the post office, she was sure of it. All she saw now was a mild distaste. She understood then that he had seen her dancing with Eli and come to some conclusions that angered him. A white woman who spent time with a Mestizo was foolish, or a whore.
What he would say when he learned she was going to marry Eli, that she could imagine too.
Her gaze drifted toward the gates. Eli was there, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, watching her dance with the dull Mr. Landry under a clear night sky and a moon so bright that it cast shadows. Moonshadow, her Da had liked to say, meant that mischief-makers would be out in full force.
The last man she had agreed to dance with was Albert Henry, an assistant land manager. Not that she understood very much about his work, but then she didn’t need to. He volunteered that information and much more, without pause.
To his credit, Al Henry was a very good dancer. He was so accomplished that he could do a half dozen other things at the same time. He bellowed greetings to friends and compliments to young women, passed along messages in a thunderous bass that cut through the music, and in a spotty but enthusiastic Spanish he asked about a horse he hoped to buy.
Suddenly he seemed to remember the woman he was dancing with.
“So,” he said. “I bet nobody has told you about Sol Taylor. Standing over there, blond hair shaved close to the scalp?”
Carrie agreed that she saw the man in question.
“Sol Taylor,” he repeated. “A first-class wrangler, but don’t ever call him a gaucho, he don’t take kindly to it. In general he ain’t fond of anything or anybody even a little bit Mexican. Now here’s the thing. The rumor is, Sol has six toes. That is, twelve toes, six right, six left.”
He waited for a reaction, and so she dutifully raised an eyebrow. This seemed to be praise enough.
“You see the man he’s talking to? That’s Pete Terney, a barkeep at the Pepperharrow.”
Mr. Terney, he wanted her to know, had one bright blue eye and one mud-brown eye. Both real.
“When I first met him, I thought to myself, ‘Why, that’s the most realistic fake eye I have ever seen.’ Then the joke was on me, because it ain’t fake.”
When his contemplation of Mr. Terney’s eyes had come to an end, he was launching into a story of the fort’s quartermaster, who had a fancy stick he liked to beat lazy recruits with. When the music stopped, Carrie’s ears were ringing, and she was glad of a break.
Mr. Henry bowed politely, and asked if he might walk her home.
It was an outrageous thing to suggest, and he knew it—his cheeky grin gave away the game.
“And if I said yes, the gossips would talk about nothing else for days. You may not have to worry about your reputation, but I—”
