Vickie Britton, page 5
“Leave us,” he demanded of Alice and the doctor. Then, to me, “Anna, come sit down beside me.” His voice was hoarse and rasping. It seemed to come from deep in his throat. “Here, by the bed.”
Obediently, I pulled my chair up close to him, taking one of his hands in mine. The chill of his bony fingers alarmed me.
He spoke, and each word seemed to cost him great effort. “I’m glad…glad that you have come. There is something I want to tell you.” The hand gripping my own
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tightened as a spasm of pain wracked his frail body. “A secret. An old family secret.” A dreadful smile played upon the pale lips. “Can I trust you with a secret?”
“You know you can always trust me.”
“It’s not a pleasant—” He stopped suddenly. I waited helplessly as he gasped, struggling to draw air into his tortured lungs. “…pleasant story.” The color drained swiftly from his face. “One moment, my dear. I…seem to have trouble…catching my breath.”
“Tavas.” I half-rose, bending over him. Quickly, he turned away from me so that I wouldn’t witness his suffering. I could hear the rasping sound of his ragged breathing as he clutched at his throat, fighting for air. When he turned to me, his face was ghastly.
“Please…leave now,” he pleaded in a broken whisper. “We’ll talk…later. I promise you…” His words broke off into a sudden, violent fit of coughing.
The doctor burst inside. With a look, he banished me from the room. I stood helplessly outside the door with Alice, waiting. I could hear Tavas, muttering incoherently between periods of silence. His voice followed me into the hallway. I could make out vague, disturbing phrases about death and secrets and betrayal. What dark secret had he been about to reveal to me?
Gradually, his voice quieted. Moments later, the old doctor stepped out. “I’ve given him something to ease the pain,” he said. He reached out with a comforting hand to pat Alice’s shoulder. I glanced over at her, alarmed by her paleness. She looked like she was on the verge of collapse. “He’s resting peacefully now,” Doctor Echegaray advised. “Please go back downstairs.”
Ivan was gone when we returned to the family room. A draft chilled the air despite the warm glow of the fireplace,
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as if someone had just recently opened the door, letting the cold seep in.
Brad had fallen asleep in his chair by the fire, long, denim-clad legs stretched out in front of him, his boyish cheeks ruddy from the steady heat. Stepping lightly so as not to disturb him, Alice and I took our places.
The click of Alice’s crocheting needles joined the ticking of the clock as time slipped away. Beside me, Brad stirred, stretching his legs, stifling a yawn.
We all came to life at the sound of the car pulling somewhat recklessly into the driveway.
“Where the hell have you been?” Ivan’s voice, just outside the door, was sharp-edged with anger.
“Oh, what do you care?” came the scornful reply. “Now, let me inside. I’m cold.”
“You could at least keep decent hours. Out of respect for Tavas, if not for yourself.”
“Old buzzard don’t mean nuthin’ to me.” The door swung open suddenly and Colleen stepped inside, honey-blonde hair swinging about the flushed face of a slightly drunken angel.
Ivan followed her inside, his handsome face set, eyes glowing with barely repressed anger.
“I suppose sitting around this dump farmhouse night after night is your idea of excitement, Darling,” she scoffed, tossing her white fur jacket carelessly upon the nearest chair. I saw Alice’s brow rise as she eyed the slinky, one-piece emerald outfit wrapped around Colleen’s lush curves like a second skin. “Well, I’m fed up with it, I tell you. What good are you doing the old man, or yourself?” She shrugged. “He’ll either leave the ranch to you or he won’t.” She paused to catch her breath and finished in an odd,
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plaintive tone. “If he does, I’ll make you sell out. You know I don’t like it here.”
She looked from one of us to the other, the corners of her pouting lips turned down contemptuously. She laughed, a dry, empty sound. “Oh, you all hate me, don’t you?” She stood beside Alice. “Well, don’t you?” she challenged, her voice ridiculing, malicious.
Alice, her mouth set into a grim line, refused to look up at her. Instead, she concentrated upon her crocheting, her hands moving swiftly, methodically as she moved the needle up and down.
Colleen started toward Brad, then she noticed me sitting in my usual spot near the hearth, and a slow, evil grin spread across her face. “Well, what have we here? Little Miss Muffet.”
I also turned away, staring at the red-orange flames dancing within the black iron grate, as she taunted in her wicked, mocking voice. “Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, waiting for Uncle to die.”
It was all I could do to hold back the urge to slap her. Yet I knew I must control that dreadful tingling in my palm for the sake of the others. She’d come up close beside me, forcing her face close to mine. I could smell the tropical perfume of some sweet mixed drink upon her breath as she accused, green eyes glittering with malice. “Oh, I know your game, Lady. You don’t care any more for that poor old fool up there than I do. You just want a cut of his money.”
“That’s enough.” Ivan, eyes stormy, advanced toward her.
“Yes, come to her defense.” She mocked him with her words, tossing back long hair shimmering with firelight. “Damsels in distress. Isn’t that your specialty?”
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“I said, ‘That’s enough’.” Ivan’s movements were carefully controlled as he crossed the room toward her, but his eyes were smoldering with an unsettling anger.
He took her arm roughly, forcing her around to face him. “What do you mean, coming in here and making a scene like this?” I heard him demand between clenched teeth. “Some day, Colleen, you’re going to push me too far…”
He’d called her bluff. Though she still glared at him, eyes defiant, her lower lip had begun to quiver slightly. She was afraid of him.
She shook off his grasp. “Well, I know one thing,” she said defensively. “This is no place for me. I’m going back to town.” Unsteadily, she started toward the door. “I’m going to find myself some real company.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
I felt the sudden blast of cold as she pushed the door open, slipping outside. Ivan was only a step behind her. “I won’t have you acting this way around Alice and the others,” I heard him warn just before the door slammed shut.
She cursed him. A sharp sound broke the momentary stillness that followed, the stinging remark of flesh striking flesh. Had he struck Colleen or had she slapped him?
I shifted restlessly in my chair, wondering if I should try to come between them or if my involvement would only make matters worse. Brad rose suddenly and started for the door.
“Let them be, Brad.” He was stopped by Alice’s voice. “It’s between a man and his wife.”
“You know his temper,” Brad protested.
“He’d never hurt her. No matter what she does to him.” Alice turned, demanding of me, “Oh, why did he
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have to marry her? She’s brought disgrace upon our entire family.”
Much later, they came back inside. Colleen, subdued now, was clinging like a little girl to Ivan’s arm. With her long hair tangled, her lipstick making a bright slash against the trembling paleness of her mouth, she gave the appearance of fragile vulnerability. I glanced over at Ivan. Upon his jaw, a dull, reddish mark was beginning to form.
It was a matter of moments before anyone noticed that the doctor had come out of Tavas’s room and was standing at the head of the stairs. We all seemed to turn toward him at once. I felt a sinking sense of dread as he looked down at us, brushing a hand wearily across his heavy white brow.
“Tavas?” I heard Alice ask the question in a choked, frightened voice.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor replied. “He’s gone.”
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Chapter 6
The afternoon was bright and clear. Though the sun shone warmly, a bitter wind rustled the black skirts of mourning as we gathered on the hillside for Tavas’s funeral. Father Bilbao mumbled in Latin, solemnly forming the sign of the cross with his hand… Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
The heady perfume of carnations and roses was getting to me. Tavas would never have approved. He’d never been one to care for flowers unless they were growing wild in their own natural surroundings.
Tears were shining in the old Father’s eyes as the ceremony came to an end. I had to remind myself sharply that I’d promised Tavas I wouldn’t cry as the coffin was lowered slowly into the damp earth.
Brad took my hand and squeezed it gently. I was grateful for the warm pressure, the reassurance of his comforting presence. He stood tall and broad-shouldered beside me, his eyes the color of the golden, sun-baked earth.
Raising my head, I searched the other faces of the small gathering. Colleen, feigning illness, had stayed in the house. Ivan was half-supporting Alice who, though dry-eyed, looked as if at any moment she might totally collapse into her son’s strong arms.
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On Alice’s other side stood Guillermo, uncomfortable in a dark suit, wrinkled and several years out of style. The absence of the familiar Stetson made him seem a stranger. Thick hair, streaked by the sun and touched with silver at the temples, curled about his tanned, deeply-lined face. His shuttered eyes revealed little emotion, but a deep and inconsolable sorrow seemed to radiate from the inner core of his being. He and Tavas went back such a long way.
At the edge of the gathering, Esteban fidgeted restlessly. He was one of the few hired men who’d ridden out to the cemetery after the funeral. Having no suitable black raiment, he wore his Saturday night best of checkered flannel shirt tucked into denim Levis. His dark hair was slicked back and wetly shining. The strong scent of his potent after-shave mingled poisonously with the flowers.
Beside him Tavas’s lawyer, Martin DeGarza, adjusted his black, double-breasted jacket about his ample stomach. The shiny material gave off a dull greenish glow where it touched sunlight as he moved to whisper something to Esteban. I wondered what the two of them were talking about.
I didn’t trust DeGarza much more than I did the younger man. DeGarza wasn’t the most respected lawyer in town. This, and the fact that he claimed to be Colleen’s uncle, made me wonder why Tavas had chosen him to see to his will.
People began to scatter. DeGarza and Esteban began to edge restlessly toward the cars waiting to take us back to the ranch. Brad and I slowed to wait for Ivan and Alice, who were the last to leave the graveside. They made a striking picture as they came toward us. Ivan had his mother’s raven hair, midnight eyes, and erect stature. I saw
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Ivan’s strong arm come about her shoulder tenderly as they moved away from Tavas’s grave.
In honor of Tavas’s last wishes, Alice and Guillermo had planned the wake. A gauela, or wake, Basque style, is a rather unusual experience. I knew a stranger would have been shocked, perhaps a little appalled by the apparent absence of grief.
Music filled the air, lively tunes played upon the guitar and harmonica. Wine kegs waited. Beef sizzled on the enormous barbecue pit. A feast had been laid out upon makeshift wooden benches.
Inwardly, I knew that Tavas would have been pleased by the almost festive atmosphere. His voice seemed to come to me, a voice from the winds: ‘Rejoice for me, Anna. Bah. Save your sorrow for the poor child whose misfortune it is to be coming into the world, not for the lucky man going out. For my grief, my pain, has almost ended, while the poor child’s has only begun…’ This had always been Tavas’s personal philosophy about life. I could almost see him, a twinkle in his bright eyes and laughter upon his lips. That was the way I remembered him best.
Plates were being filled. Spicy Basque dishes mingled side by side with potato salad, pork and beans, and Alice’s famous apple pies. At the far end of the table, paper plates weighed down by coffee cans fluttered in the breeze. I could tell by the many flushed faces that the huge wine kegs had already been tapped.
“Better have some pie,” a voice at my elbow suggested. Martin DeGarza took my arm and steered me toward the table. He dished up a slice for me, then paused to heap an extra piece upon his own plate. He sighed heavily. “It’s been a long day.”
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We joined Brad and Ivan on one of the wooden benches. “Where’s Alice?” Martin asked.
“I think she went back to the house,” Brad replied.
The hired men and their women and children clustered around the barbecue, eager for food not usually a part of their daily fare. As I watched them passing wine cups and laughing, the thought occurred to me that I might be witnessing some late summer picnic. Every now and then I caught the strange, exotic lilt of the Basque tongue. Save for the highly Western bandannas, Stetsons, and other small alterations, I could have been observing some social gathering in the remote village of an enchanted, distant land. In the smoky haze of gathering dusk, the jagged, bare-face Nevada range was suddenly transformed into the cool, green-forested slopes of the Pyrenees. The few of us returning from the cemetery, uneasy, suddenly strangers in our own land.
At one table I spotted Guillermo’s loyal companion, Victor.
Guillermo wasn’t with him. Instead, Esteban sat at his side, making gestures with his hands as he spoke to him. Victor’s eyes moved restlessly, as if he were searching for Guillermo to come to his rescue.
Across the table from them, Manuel, with his big, somber eyes and fringe of short hair, took in what Esteban was saying with the seriousness of a medieval priest. Carl’s tattooed hand slowed in mid-air as he, too, paused to listen. What was he saying that made the others give him such rapt attention?
The group that had assembled, with the absence of Guillermo, included the same ones who knew about the discovery of the mutilated bull. I remembered Brad saying
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that Esteban was the most likely of the group to cause trouble.
“Father Bilbao’s service was the best he’s ever given,” Brad said.
“Good pie,” DeGarza commented, almost as if in response.
Ivan and I picked at our food silently, without appetite, listening to Brad and Martin alternately discussing the funeral service and Alice’s apple pie.
“When’s the reading of the will?” Brad asked.
“Tomorrow,” DeGarza said.
“So soon?”
“Better to get it all over with.”
DeGarza was the nearest neighbor to the Devil’s Gate. Maybe that was the reason Tavas had asked him to see to his will.
DeGarza was no stranger to the ranch. Since he operated a small place just a few miles down the road toward Secret Pass, he’d dropped in often to sample Alice’s cooking and bring Tavas the latest gossip from town.
Shortly after Colleen and Ivan’s marriage, DeGarza had discovered a family tie to Colleen. A widower with no children of his own, DeGarza was delighted by the connection. He seemed genuinely fond of Colleen and called her his ‘turtle dove’. He claimed her as his niece, though the relation between them, if it truly existed, was probably more distant. The only family resemblance I saw between the two of them was their fondness for Scotch and water. As Alice wryly observed, they were both regular patrons of the ‘Red Garter’, a local tavern.
Alice was especially scornful of DeGarza, perhaps because he made it clear that his frequent trips to the
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Devil’s Gate were not only for Tavas and Colleen’s benefit. For years he’d had his eye on Alice and her apple pies.
“Tavas didn’t give a hint about what’s in that will,” Brad said. “I can’t help being curious. His being so secretive about it makes me wonder if he didn’t leave some of us out.” His gaze drifted toward Ivan, who purposefully ignored him.
I stood. I wasn’t going to sit and speculate on the contents of Tavas’s will on the day of his funeral. Ivan’s dark gaze stayed on me as I moved away from the table, and for a moment I thought he might follow me.
I wandered away from the wake. Holding back my tears through the long and trying afternoon had caused a painful throbbing in my head, intensified by the lively music and the rumble of voices.
The wind whipped my dark skirt about my legs like cords of stinging rope as I walked down by the corrals. Herefords grazed peacefully in the winter pastures, rusty, white-faced specks against the patches of brown earth and dry grass. I stepped into the shelter of the nearby barn, relieved to discover that the thick walls insulated with stacked hay blotted out all traces of the incessant music.
I leaned back against the hay bales, glad for this moment of solitude. Then, slowly, the voices began to penetrate my consciousness. I listened, hearing Joshua shuffling noisily in his stall. Did I only imagine voices?
“I’m afraid, Guillermo.” Alice’s voice came to me clearly now from the partially opened door of Guillermo’s makeshift little office. I leaned forward, straining to listen as her voice dropped slightly. “I…I can’t bear the thought that I might have to move away.”
“Alice, listen to me. There’s nothing to worry about. Tomorrow the ranch will belong to either you or Ivan.”
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“But what if you’re wrong? Or what if that conniving little tramp sweet-talks Ivan into selling to DeGarza? I’m not a young woman anymore, Guillermo. It…it would kill me to leave here.”
The idea that Colleen was already trying to persuade Ivan to sell the Devil’s Gate shouldn’t have surprised me. She hated the ranch, would be glad to be rid of its burden, but from what Ivan had told me, I didn’t believe he’d be interested in selling out.
My heart went out to Alice. The whole thing had really upset her. Even a strong woman like her sometimes needed a shoulder to lean on. Why should I be surprised she’d chosen to confide in Guillermo, our closest family friend?
