together is better
Title: Hearts Torn Open So the Sun Shines Through
Fandom: 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Characters, Pairings: Alice, Ben, William, Alice/Ben and implied Alice/Dan
Rating: not explicit
Disclaimer: not my characters
Note: written for meyerlemon for yuletide 2007
Hearts Torn Open So the Sun Shines Through
No man can change his own history, take back the time of naked vulnerability, the years when he was only a child.
In dreams she does exactly as she said she would. She buys the tickets, she comes back to find him sitting so still and quiet and good, reading the bible just like she told him. “Benjamin,” she says, and he raises his eyes, hops to his feet and takes her outstretched hand.
“Let me see, Dan. Let me see what’s left of your leg.”
“You’re sick, Wade.”
“Maybe I am. But what I’m asking ain’t.”
“This what you like? Laughing at what’s broke? Seek out the hole in a man’s side, just so you can stick your finger in?”
“Ever hurt?”
“Sometimes. Like it was still there.”
Phantom pain, we all got phantom pain. You’ll learn mine when I tell you about my Mama. “You ain’t broke, Dan.” I’ll prove it to you. Ain’t the body that makes a man whole. I promise you.
It takes at least two people to make something happen. That’s part of having a gang, knowing you can’t get anything done on your own. A man’s alone in all the ways that matter, make no mistake, but a man can’t get anything done by himself.
If he hadn’t met Dan, if everything else had been the same, he’d be with his gang now, or rounding up a new one. It’s the life he’s known, the one he’s been so good at.
He’s sorry for what happened to Dan. But he’s not sorry to be free.
In the cathouses of Dodge City they’re glad to see him. They hide him there, tell him he can stay with them for as long as he likes, his past generosities have more than earned his future keep.
The women are beautiful as ever, smearing red lipstick down his face, down his body, with kiss after kiss from their hungry, honeyed mouths. They sing like angels and dance like Salome, twirling round and round him as he drinks. They surround him, surrender to him and share his bed.
Try as he does to escape it, he thinks of Alice Evans. And he remembers her and he thinks ‘a good woman’ and then he laughs at himself, because those words aren’t real. And even if there were such a creature, she would share nothing of herself with him, for he is not a good man.
And he thinks of William Evans, training a gun on him twice. What does it mean that he seemed to become a man to Ben in the moment beside the train when he did not shoot?
And he thinks of Dan.
The drink overwhelms him, too much and not enough. He travels in and out of consciousness, remembers what came before and imagines Dan is in the room with him, talks to Dan like the man’s still there.
I was ready and willing to kill you, chains of the handcuffs against your throat.
Why do you have to stand against me? Why do you keep fighting me? Why won’t you let me go? All of that raged inside me.
All men hold secrets, and when the veils fall, well, welcome to revelation: we were on the same side. Yes, we were. We were on the same side. Two men doing what we could, getting by best we could, in this cold cruel world. I told McElroy the god damn truth. Day I die is the day I’m sprung from hell.
And if I am in hell, there’s only one cure for it. Only one path if I want to make it through. I will play the devil, yes, I will.
“Then who am I?” he hears Dan’s voice say. “You want me to play the angel?”
“You have the face for it,” he mutters against the pillows of down beneath him, the pillows of flesh beside him. “Right before the fall. Take the money, Dan. Take the god damn money. Listen to me. In this life no one will give it to you and so you have to take it. But here I am, and I’m offering to give. Change your mind this time. Do it different. Take the money. But you won’t. We both know you won’t. I’ve done nothing but take it, whatever I wanted, no matter the cost. But maybe I’m ready to leave behind that life. Maybe I’m ready and maybe I’m willing.”
“You want a different life? It ain’t hard. Be a different man.”
“How the hell can I? ‘Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder.’ Right there in the book of Genesis it lays down the man I am, the only way I can be. You know what kind of man you are? It’s in your name as well. You’ll live in a den with the lions, but none will touch you. Day after day you’ll sleep beside them, hunt with them, eat with them, but they’ll never make you what they are. No one else’s dirt will ever sully you. Blood on your face and your hands, yet you’ll stay clean.”
“I’m no saint and you know it. But you are a coward.”
He raises his head, the room spinning, and there’s Dan’s wavering image, just a few feet away. “It’s too far from Dodge City back to Bisbee. And I don’t mean the thousand miles.”
“So you’re just gonna stay here, is that it? Drink yourself stupid and talk to a dead man.”
“Fuck off.”
“It ain’t a thousand miles. It’s far, I give you that. But it’s closer than you think.”
“Go away, Dan. I don’t know what you expect me to do, but I can’t do it.”
“Coward,” Dan says again, and Ben grabs a bottle from the bedside table, throws it hard as he can. In the moment it reaches him, the apparition vanishes, and the bottle goes crashing through the glass window pane and down into the street below.
“Honey,” murmurs Nell on his left, twining her long limbs around him, “you feeling alright?”
“Who in the hell,” drawls Caroline, sprawled naked across the foot of the bed, “are you talking to?”
“And why,” snarls Grace from his right, slapping his ass like she’s trying to move a stubborn mule, “would you ever waste good whiskey?”
She wakes from a dream of Dan, wakes expecting his body behind her, his arm around her. Worst thing in the world is to wonder if he died believing she no longer loved him, wanted him. If only he could know how much she misses him, how much she needs him, as her husband in all ways. Her heart longs for his heart, her body aches for his body. This was their bed, and she cries to lie alone in it.
She had never thought him less a man.
He’d orchestrated the distance between them, he’d been the one who changed. He would brood, sit alone, close himself off from her. She wanted to share his burden, absorb, and thereby lessen, his sorrow. But whenever she tried to talk to him, assured him she was ready to listen, he never believed her, even mocked her. “What do you know about it, Alice? What do you know about being a soldier?”
“Then tell me, Dan. Tell me. Please.”
But he never would.
She curls up tighter, clutches the covers round her. Too damn cold in the early mornings, just before dawn, and she dares to climb out of the womb of her bed, waken and begin the day, because she knows movement will warm her. As she passes by the window on the way to her dresser, she sees him standing by the grave, head bowed. She dresses quickly, with steady hands, though her heart has started to thunder. She does not take the pistol from the bottom drawer. She has never used it yet, and knows she does not need its threat to protect her this day. When she opens the door, the dog runs up to greet her, notices the man and stays close by.
“How dare you?” He does not look at her yet, his lips move, but she can not make out the words. He stops, brings his hand to his mouth and kisses something in it, then puts whatever it is into his pocket. A cross, she guesses. God damn hypocrite. “I ought to shoot you where you stand.”
“Hello, Alice.” He looks to her now, holds her gaze, but without asking for anything with his eyes. “You’re wearing black. Far too beautiful to always be wearing such somber colors.”
“I’m in mourning.”
“You feel somber?”
“Somber would be a blessing. Grief is a curse. Has it just been so long that you’ve forgotten what it’s like or have you never felt it at all?”
“I’ve known grief. Been a friend of mine recently.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Wade. You would have shot him yourself.”
“I had the chance to shoot him. I didn’t. I liked Dan. In a different life, we might have been friends.”
“Nice words, and sweetly said, but completely dishonest. This is the life we live, the one we have to make work, best we can. No use in imagining how it might have been different, and I know you know that.”
“Man who pulled the trigger is dead.”
“Makes no difference to me.”
“Doesn’t it? Saves you and your boy from wanting revenge, or seeking it.”
“No. All that matters is that my husband, their father, is gone.”
He reaches for her arm, but when she steps away, he lets her go. “If there was something I could do, something I could give, to win back his life, I swear to you I would do it, give it.”
She wants to call it an utter lie, wishes it were, it’d be easier to ignore. But she believes there’s something true in what he says, because she hears anger in his voice. “Would you give your own life?” Silence is his only response. “I suppose no one willingly becomes a martyr.” Beside the tombstone, the river flows and in the east an orange glow prophesizes the coming sun. She bends down to Lucy’s level, wraps her arms around her, rests her cheek against the dog’s side and hides her face in the thick fur. At first there was so much anger, even hate, but now it is sorrow which pervades her every moment, every thought and motion. And she is sorry, not only for Dan’s suffering, for her own, for their boys’, she is sorry for everyone’s. It is one task at a time, single-minded focus until one piece of work is done and then on to the next, and on and on and on, this is how to make it through. Lucy’s heartbeat is slow and steady. Alice is still, and so Lucy believes there is nothing to fear. “Why are you here, Ben? You know what the reward for your body is? You know they’ve given the order to shoot you on sight?”
“Oh, I know. I barely got out of Kansas alive.”
“Most people figure you to be down in Mexico by now.”
“If I was smart, I would be.”
“Then why are you here?” But she knows. The anger is proof that he’s sorry; she understands now how rage at one’s self is the inevitable companion of regret, an attempt to exorcise one’s guilt before being overwhelmed by it.
He sits down beside her, tips his hat up so that she can meet his eyes. “I’m yours,” he says, “should you have any use for me.”
Now his eyes ask for something from her, for more than she will ever give again. “Have you brought a miracle?”
Ben looks around him at the rebuilt barn, the garden beside the house, the fattening cattle. There is nothing material wanting here. “Your boy,” he says. “Dan told me. I’m sorry.” Alice nods, her eyes wet, and he takes off his glove and reaches his hand out to rest on her own. When he had thought of Dan as a rival, his opposite, he had imagined having Alice as a trophy, a triumph. Now Dan is his brother, and loving her his duty. The moment lingers, both of them seeking the connection of comfort offered and consolation sought. When she slips her hand out from under his, he takes the cue, stands and resumes a respectful distance.
“I won’t send you off without breakfast,” she says and walks back towards the house, Lucy at her heels.
“I brought you something.” He places a parcel on the table. She looks over at it from the stove but makes no movement towards it. “It’s a dress.” He tears off a piece of the paper so she can see the pale pink color, the small white flowers of the pattern. “Chose it myself.”
She lifts her chin. “You wasted your money.”
He shrugs it off. “Got enough of it.”
“You wasted your time. I have plenty of dresses.”
“None as pretty as this,” he counters. “Where’s the little one?”
“He ain’t little,” William says, stepping into the kitchen, his hand just above his pistol at the side of his hip. He’s taller, his voice deeper, his eyes wide as before, but less in wonder, more in worry.
“Well, I got something for him, too.”
“We let Mark sleep late as he needs,” Alice says. “His breakfast will keep until he’s ready for it.”
Leaving the gifts on the table, Ben turns towards William. “You see that horse I rode in on? You won’t find one better. It’s yours, if you’ll have it.”
William smirks. “Keep your nag. I got no use for it.”
They still say grace before the meal, and in Alice’s voice Ben hears that it is not done out of habit. She still finds something worth being thankful for, worth gratitude, she still trusts, asks. He doesn’t start to eat while she prays, but he doesn’t bow his head either. William’s eyes are hard on his face. “That creature of yours a dog or a wolf?” Ben asks, pouring gravy over his biscuits.
“Lucy just looks like a wolf; she follows us around like a dog, loves us like a dog,” Alice says.
“She howls like a wolf,” William argues. “She tears at her meat like one.”
He works with William as long as the daylight lasts, sits with Mark and reads to him in the half-hour before dinner. Mark’s condition has visibly worsened. He’s pale and quiet, pathetic shadow of the bright eyed boy who had bragged to Ben about his father’s sharp-shooting. He’s wasting away, and his head dips forward as though he has not the strength to keep it lifted.
They set up a cot for Ben in an empty corner stall in the barn. Clean sheets, thick wool blankets. There is a bowl and a pitcher of water so he can wash, a little chest where he can store his things.
In the evening he builds a fire in front of the barn and it’s not long before Alice wanders out. They sit side by side on an old blanket, Alice gazing alternately into the fire and up to the stars, Ben only looking at her.
“What happened that day?” she finally asks. “William won’t tell me.”
“Smart boy. It’s not worth knowing. How a man dies ain’t important.”
“Please.”
What can he tell her? Can he tell her about the look he saw in Dan’s eyes, right before he was shot? Seeing Charlie take aim was the first time he’d been frightened in years, the first time he’d had reason to care so much for another’s life. It wasn’t only fear for Dan’s sake, it was for his family, for her, for their boys. “Watching Dan get shot was like being shot myself.” Dan’s face, just before, when they looked at each other through the bars, the hope and elation in his expression had lifted Ben’s heart for a moment in complete sympathy, as though they were one man. A man has to take a stand. In the face of god, in the face of fate, no matter how steep the odds, how fierce and fathomless the forces arrayed against him, a man has to take his stand. “He saw a chance to give you and your boys a better life, the life you deserve. And he had to take that chance.”
She does not speak, and he touches her shoulder, tilts his head in, trying to see her expression, but she turns her face away. She feels trapped between his body and the fire. She had liked looking at him the first time she had met him, because Dan was there and Ben was in handcuffs and her feeling of safety was stronger than her fear. Then she could look into the brown eyes and marvel at the softness there, listen to the warm voice as it conjured up the beauty he had known, even wonder what those calloused hands would feel like against her skin. It had only been for a moment, and she had known she was protected, had known Dan and the other men would not allow anything to happen to her, had believed that she would never be untrue to her husband. But now her husband is gone, and she does not want to look up at Ben Wade. “I should go in.” She always does what she says, and walks away without pause.
William leans against the rails of the paddock, watching the horses chase each other across the field. Ben stops, takes his own place against the fence, a few feet away from him. “I see you,” William says, still staring straight ahead, “and I ask myself if I ought to kill you.”
“Few men in your place would question it.”
“If killing you could bring him back, I’d do it and have no regrets.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re your father’s son, after all. Sensitive conscience.”
“Maybe this world would be better off without you.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“What if I knew for sure?”
“And if you did?”
“If I was going to kill you, it should have been then, before you got on the train. But I had to choose. You weren’t important. My father was.”
“It only would have took you a second to pull the trigger.”
“And he would have watched me become a murderer. Right before his eyes. I would never, I could never. Maybe I could have chased after you, when we heard you’d escaped, tracked you down. But that would have meant leaving Mark and my mother behind. And maybe I could have killed you when you dared show your face here. But I couldn’t do that in front of my mother. Maybe if I had seen you before anyone else did.”
“You got a yes somewhere? A no? Or just all these horseshit maybes?”
“My mother. My brother. I won’t do anything to hurt them.”
“Neither will I.”
For the first time since Ben approached, William turns to him. Ben is not surprised to see tears in his eyes, he’s seen them before, but they still unnerve him. Worse now, somehow, then in those moments by the train. “You’ve already done your worst,” William says.
“I didn’t kill your father.”
“I know. But it’s your fault he’s dead.” William doesn’t wait for an answer, just pushes off from the fence and walks away.
Alice sits at the kitchen table, twisting a napkin in her hands. Usually she maintains her will, usually she knows what she must do next and she does it, without complaint, without pause. Now it is as though all that marks her path has vanished, and she can not tell where she is and where she is to go. She notes Ben at the door, but it is not until he speaks her name that she seeks to rein in her distress. She weakly pushes at the bowl in front of her. “He says he’s not hungry. But he’s got to have something.”
“Wait,” Ben says. “I got something might work.” She stands at the front door and watches as he goes to the barn, returns with one of the parcels he brought with him. He unwraps the unaccepted gift, revealing a selection of chocolates. “Try these.”
She goes back in to Mark’s room, sits beside him on the bed, the bowl of soup in her hands. “You want some chocolate, sweetheart?”
His eyes creep open. “Candy?”
“Sounds good, doesn’t it? Just have a little soup and then you can have all the chocolate you want.” She puts down the food and tries to lift him up to a sitting position, but he lets out a weak moan that stops her.
“Leave me alone,” he whimpers.
She is going to scream and scream and who knows if she will ever stop. But she makes no sound, only covers her face with her hands and tries to take deep breaths, despite the suffocating constriction of her chest. The thought that this pain, this struggle to breathe, is but a small taste of what Mark must feel all the time devastates her. Heavier footsteps than she’s used to tell her that Ben is approaching. She opens her eyes and looks to the doorway, and in a moment he appears, beckons to her with his finger. She smoothes Mark’s hair away from his damp forehead. “I’ll be right back, baby.”
“I have an idea,” Ben says, and, grabbing on to her wrist, he leads her back to the kitchen. He puts a sauce pan on the stove and drops several of the chocolates into it. “Milk?” he asks, and she brings the pitcher to him. “He’ll drink this, you’ll see. Sugar will give him some energy. He might want that soup after this. Even if he doesn’t, at least he’ll have something in his belly.”
“Let me,” she says, but he wards her off, insists on finishing what he has started.
When the chocolate has melted, he pours the milk in, stirring round and round with a wooden spoon until it is mixed and smooth.
Mark drinks it all and licks his lips, asks for more.
“Thank you,” Alice says to Ben as she passes him on her way back to the kitchen.
It is always there between them. Perhaps she wants it, though she won’t admit it. If she doesn’t want it, shouldn’t she keep away, ignore him and temptation for as long as she can? What need drives her out to the barn in the middle of the night? She can’t sleep and it’s too much to just lie there, alone, hearing Mark’s cough in the other room. He isn’t asleep either, like he’s been waiting for her. Still in his work clothes, the lamp down low, he stares into space, his arms folded in front of him, whistling a song she doesn’t know. Soon as he sees her, he rises to his feet. He knows, a man like him always knows, wraps her in his arms before she can have a second thought. He knows how to use his hands, they never ask. When Dan had come back from the war, he’d been like he was when they were first married. Every touch was always a question. Ben drags the blankets down from the cot and spreads them on the floor, and the night isn’t warm enough for bare skin, so they are strangers, their bodies hidden from each other, even when he is inside her. She closes her eyes and keeps them closed, but her whole body knows the lie. These are not Dan’s fingers twined in her hair, drawing her head back, nor his lips at her throat.
He curves around her, draws another blanket down on top of them, and they lie on the floor together, and all she can remember is her last embrace with Dan, his arms around her, and how she held on to him like she had known she would never see him again. And he had interrupted them, cut it short. God damn Ben Wade. But she couldn’t have held on to Dan forever, she knows that. Still. She could have had him with her for longer than she did. Ben draws down the collar of her dress, presses kisses to her shoulder, and she allows it, all the better to show him he’s nothing, means nothing, when she says: “Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you watched us when we said goodbye. It was the last moment I ever had with him, and you gave us no peace. What made you such a vulture?” She expects him to pull away, but he keeps his arms around her. “Don’t,” she hisses. He ignores her words, reaches down to hike up her skirt so he can drag his warm, heavy hand up her thigh. She turns in his arms, parts her lips, and he brings his face closer towards hers. She presses her cheek against his, whispers in his ear. “If I could trade your life for Dan’s, I would.”
“I know,” he whispers back. “And I would let you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says, but she stays.
The saloon is crowded and William watches as several men sitting at the bar compete for Emmy’s attention. She nods her head at their talk, smiles at their jokes and offers condolences for their misfortunes, but all the time William can see in her unfocused gaze that her true attention is elsewhere.
“Hello,” he says, when she reaches him at the end of the bar.
“Hello, Will.” She pours him a whiskey and gives him a genuine smile. “How’s your mother?”
“She’s alright. How are you?”
“Tired. I get tired.”
“No wonder. All these men telling you stories. Bet they all sound the same after a while. Bet most of ‘em ain’t even one word true.”
“You want a story, Evans?” says Hollander, from a few seats down, pulling two books out of his pocket and sliding them in front of William. “Seen these?”
“Leave him alone,” Emmy says. Everyone knows Hollander’s been bitter since he had to follow the railroad man’s orders. “Will,” she pleads, “don’t look at those.”
It’s two little books, one casts their father as the hero, the other features himself. These are the kinds of stories he couldn’t get enough of, once, before he’d seen it up close, in person. The drawings of himself and his father are all wrong, no likeness noticeable. The ones of Wade and Prince are dead on, which sickens him. He pushes them away. “You can burn that shit.” Hollander laughs at his discomfort, but stops when he realizes no one else at the bar has joined in. William takes his drink and retreats to the corner, gazes out the window at the sun-bleached wood of the buildings, and the lean folk kicking up dirt as they pass by. Some days he feels all he saw in his father’s dying eyes is enough. Some days he knows nothing will ever be enough.
And they call him a hero now? William Evans, the kid who was strong enough, tough enough, to face down Ben Wade. What a fucking joke. What a fucking lie.
He’s trashed all his old books, he doesn’t want Mark reading them. They make Wade out the bravest hero or they make him out the cruelest villain, and both are wrong. It is hard to understand how a man can be so different from one moment to the next. That is what is hard to understand. Is a man most himself in his worst moments, or his best? Is that the question he needs answered? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the answer is that a good man still carries a seed of hate within him, just as a pinprick of love may still pierce a bad man’s soul. Maybe that is the answer. He loves his father, he wishes he had understood him better when he was alive. But he thought that he had known, he had understood, when he bent down and stared into his father’s eyes, he recognized more strength there than he’d ever even imagined. He was scared, he was sorry, but his father was apart from it, beyond it.
He loved his father, he loves his father, but he doesn’t hate Ben Wade. He takes a few coins from his pocket, leaves them on top of the bar. Emmy’s hand catches his. “Your father was a good man.”
“I know,” he says. “Thank you.” His fingertips linger as they draw away from her.
Early one evening he sketches Alice as she sits with Mark.
Mark admires the finished drawing. “Can I keep it?” he asks. “Draw me a picture of Lucy next.”
Alice tells him that, a short time ago, Mark was still well enough to sit out on the porch. But now it is the window and Ben’s sketches that have to suffice for his view of the wide world. If he can, Mark likes to watch as Ben works, enjoys the magic process of nothing becoming something, line by line.
Each time he finishes Mark’s requests, he turns his eye to Alice, captures her again and again and again.
“Why?” she says one day.
“Only way I know,” he replies, “to have without hurting.”
“Stop,” she says, and sits beside him, takes his still hand and brings it to her cheek. He drops the pencil, cups her face with both his hands.
It is late afternoon and he walks slowly through the house. The windows are covered in Mark’s room, and from the still figure on the bed, he knows the boy is sleeping. William has gone to Bisbee, claiming to have business there, though from his clean shirt and damp, freshly combed hair, it is obvious his affairs are of the heart.
Alice lies on her side, facing the window; she is wearing the dress he brought her. He stands in the doorway and smiles, says, “I knew your vanity would outlast your pride.” But when she turns, he rues teasing her. She has been crying. She beckons to him, then rolls back to the window. Ben doubts he can provide anything that will soothe her, but he will try. Of course he will try. He steps into the room, closes the door carefully behind him. He walks across the room to the dresser, drawn by a photograph of Dan in his uniform. He does not presume to pick it up, only looks. Dan. The bible from the bridal suite is there, held open by Dan’s pocket watch, so that his sketch of Dan is displayed. His hand reaches out to his work, his fingertips brush it.
“William found it,” Alice says, and he looks up, startled, like he does not know where he is, what time it is, whether or not it is too late.
“You kept it,” he says.
“It’s dear to me. It reminds me of him, much more than any photograph can.”
“You never said anything.”
There is a photograph from their wedding day. He picks it up, looks closely. “It was winter,” she says. He crosses the room to the bed, crouches down and traces his hand over her hair, brushes it away from her cheek. “Lie down.” He walks around to the other side of the bed, sits down and takes off his boots, lies down beside her, behind her, leaves space between their bodies.
“Tell me more,” he says.
“It had rained and the water had frozen around the branches of the barren trees. And when we walked out of the church doors, the sunlight was caught in the ice and the trees were like living gold, silver, shining like nothing I’d seen before, nothing I’ve seen since. It was winter again when William was born. I screamed the whole time, I really believed I might die before he was free from my body. And that fear was all that kept me going. I had to bring him into this world, I had to bring him into this life. And then he was finally here, and I held him in my arms and everything that came before, it melted away.” She shivers, sighs, and his hands pull her close. She turns to him, rests her forehead against his. “Mark’s going to die.”
“No, no. He’ll get better, you’ll see.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Then let me lie to you. I don’t want to lie to you, but I don’t want to speak if all it can do is hurt you.” She closes her eyes and a tear falls from her lashes down to her cheek, and he wipes it away with the cuff of his shirtsleeve, runs his fingertip over the spot. “He’s still a happy boy. I can see that. He loves his mama, he loves his brother. He’s in pain, we all know how much it hurts, but he’s loved and he knows it. That’s all that matters. ”
“What do you know about children?”
His arms around her rock her like a baby. “Nothing. Except that I was one, long ago and for a very short time. I was on my own before I was his age.”
Her eyes open. “You were?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“My father died.”
“And your mother?”
He could not look at Dan when he said it before. That was the first time he had ever confessed it. He had always disdained the giving of, or asking for, pity. But sympathy is a different beast and he knows that now. He can look at her when he says, “She left me.”
“Left you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for me or sorry for that boy?”
“Is there a difference?”
“That boy died a long time ago.”
“There never comes a time when a mother looks upon her son and does not see in him the baby she once held in her arms. If she left, it was because she didn’t trust herself to take care of you, not because she didn’t love you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. What bids you draw a picture, Ben? Isn’t there a beauty in this world, despite everything else, everything worth despair?”
“Is there?”
“Two are better than one,” she says, and though there is much grief in her eyes, there is also such strength, tells the world that she will do everything she can to take care of those she loves. Once she holds on, she will never let go. “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall…” She can not go on, she hides her face against his chest.
He raises the words for her. “For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow.”
She clings to him, kisses him, and he returns each touch in lust and tenderness, guilt and gratitude, with all the elements of one transcendent whole.
Fandom: 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Characters, Pairings: Alice, Ben, William, Alice/Ben and implied Alice/Dan
Rating: not explicit
Disclaimer: not my characters
Note: written for meyerlemon for yuletide 2007
Hearts Torn Open So the Sun Shines Through
No man can change his own history, take back the time of naked vulnerability, the years when he was only a child.
In dreams she does exactly as she said she would. She buys the tickets, she comes back to find him sitting so still and quiet and good, reading the bible just like she told him. “Benjamin,” she says, and he raises his eyes, hops to his feet and takes her outstretched hand.
“Let me see, Dan. Let me see what’s left of your leg.”
“You’re sick, Wade.”
“Maybe I am. But what I’m asking ain’t.”
“This what you like? Laughing at what’s broke? Seek out the hole in a man’s side, just so you can stick your finger in?”
“Ever hurt?”
“Sometimes. Like it was still there.”
Phantom pain, we all got phantom pain. You’ll learn mine when I tell you about my Mama. “You ain’t broke, Dan.” I’ll prove it to you. Ain’t the body that makes a man whole. I promise you.
It takes at least two people to make something happen. That’s part of having a gang, knowing you can’t get anything done on your own. A man’s alone in all the ways that matter, make no mistake, but a man can’t get anything done by himself.
If he hadn’t met Dan, if everything else had been the same, he’d be with his gang now, or rounding up a new one. It’s the life he’s known, the one he’s been so good at.
He’s sorry for what happened to Dan. But he’s not sorry to be free.
In the cathouses of Dodge City they’re glad to see him. They hide him there, tell him he can stay with them for as long as he likes, his past generosities have more than earned his future keep.
The women are beautiful as ever, smearing red lipstick down his face, down his body, with kiss after kiss from their hungry, honeyed mouths. They sing like angels and dance like Salome, twirling round and round him as he drinks. They surround him, surrender to him and share his bed.
Try as he does to escape it, he thinks of Alice Evans. And he remembers her and he thinks ‘a good woman’ and then he laughs at himself, because those words aren’t real. And even if there were such a creature, she would share nothing of herself with him, for he is not a good man.
And he thinks of William Evans, training a gun on him twice. What does it mean that he seemed to become a man to Ben in the moment beside the train when he did not shoot?
And he thinks of Dan.
The drink overwhelms him, too much and not enough. He travels in and out of consciousness, remembers what came before and imagines Dan is in the room with him, talks to Dan like the man’s still there.
I was ready and willing to kill you, chains of the handcuffs against your throat.
Why do you have to stand against me? Why do you keep fighting me? Why won’t you let me go? All of that raged inside me.
All men hold secrets, and when the veils fall, well, welcome to revelation: we were on the same side. Yes, we were. We were on the same side. Two men doing what we could, getting by best we could, in this cold cruel world. I told McElroy the god damn truth. Day I die is the day I’m sprung from hell.
And if I am in hell, there’s only one cure for it. Only one path if I want to make it through. I will play the devil, yes, I will.
“Then who am I?” he hears Dan’s voice say. “You want me to play the angel?”
“You have the face for it,” he mutters against the pillows of down beneath him, the pillows of flesh beside him. “Right before the fall. Take the money, Dan. Take the god damn money. Listen to me. In this life no one will give it to you and so you have to take it. But here I am, and I’m offering to give. Change your mind this time. Do it different. Take the money. But you won’t. We both know you won’t. I’ve done nothing but take it, whatever I wanted, no matter the cost. But maybe I’m ready to leave behind that life. Maybe I’m ready and maybe I’m willing.”
“You want a different life? It ain’t hard. Be a different man.”
“How the hell can I? ‘Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder.’ Right there in the book of Genesis it lays down the man I am, the only way I can be. You know what kind of man you are? It’s in your name as well. You’ll live in a den with the lions, but none will touch you. Day after day you’ll sleep beside them, hunt with them, eat with them, but they’ll never make you what they are. No one else’s dirt will ever sully you. Blood on your face and your hands, yet you’ll stay clean.”
“I’m no saint and you know it. But you are a coward.”
He raises his head, the room spinning, and there’s Dan’s wavering image, just a few feet away. “It’s too far from Dodge City back to Bisbee. And I don’t mean the thousand miles.”
“So you’re just gonna stay here, is that it? Drink yourself stupid and talk to a dead man.”
“Fuck off.”
“It ain’t a thousand miles. It’s far, I give you that. But it’s closer than you think.”
“Go away, Dan. I don’t know what you expect me to do, but I can’t do it.”
“Coward,” Dan says again, and Ben grabs a bottle from the bedside table, throws it hard as he can. In the moment it reaches him, the apparition vanishes, and the bottle goes crashing through the glass window pane and down into the street below.
“Honey,” murmurs Nell on his left, twining her long limbs around him, “you feeling alright?”
“Who in the hell,” drawls Caroline, sprawled naked across the foot of the bed, “are you talking to?”
“And why,” snarls Grace from his right, slapping his ass like she’s trying to move a stubborn mule, “would you ever waste good whiskey?”
She wakes from a dream of Dan, wakes expecting his body behind her, his arm around her. Worst thing in the world is to wonder if he died believing she no longer loved him, wanted him. If only he could know how much she misses him, how much she needs him, as her husband in all ways. Her heart longs for his heart, her body aches for his body. This was their bed, and she cries to lie alone in it.
She had never thought him less a man.
He’d orchestrated the distance between them, he’d been the one who changed. He would brood, sit alone, close himself off from her. She wanted to share his burden, absorb, and thereby lessen, his sorrow. But whenever she tried to talk to him, assured him she was ready to listen, he never believed her, even mocked her. “What do you know about it, Alice? What do you know about being a soldier?”
“Then tell me, Dan. Tell me. Please.”
But he never would.
She curls up tighter, clutches the covers round her. Too damn cold in the early mornings, just before dawn, and she dares to climb out of the womb of her bed, waken and begin the day, because she knows movement will warm her. As she passes by the window on the way to her dresser, she sees him standing by the grave, head bowed. She dresses quickly, with steady hands, though her heart has started to thunder. She does not take the pistol from the bottom drawer. She has never used it yet, and knows she does not need its threat to protect her this day. When she opens the door, the dog runs up to greet her, notices the man and stays close by.
“How dare you?” He does not look at her yet, his lips move, but she can not make out the words. He stops, brings his hand to his mouth and kisses something in it, then puts whatever it is into his pocket. A cross, she guesses. God damn hypocrite. “I ought to shoot you where you stand.”
“Hello, Alice.” He looks to her now, holds her gaze, but without asking for anything with his eyes. “You’re wearing black. Far too beautiful to always be wearing such somber colors.”
“I’m in mourning.”
“You feel somber?”
“Somber would be a blessing. Grief is a curse. Has it just been so long that you’ve forgotten what it’s like or have you never felt it at all?”
“I’ve known grief. Been a friend of mine recently.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Wade. You would have shot him yourself.”
“I had the chance to shoot him. I didn’t. I liked Dan. In a different life, we might have been friends.”
“Nice words, and sweetly said, but completely dishonest. This is the life we live, the one we have to make work, best we can. No use in imagining how it might have been different, and I know you know that.”
“Man who pulled the trigger is dead.”
“Makes no difference to me.”
“Doesn’t it? Saves you and your boy from wanting revenge, or seeking it.”
“No. All that matters is that my husband, their father, is gone.”
He reaches for her arm, but when she steps away, he lets her go. “If there was something I could do, something I could give, to win back his life, I swear to you I would do it, give it.”
She wants to call it an utter lie, wishes it were, it’d be easier to ignore. But she believes there’s something true in what he says, because she hears anger in his voice. “Would you give your own life?” Silence is his only response. “I suppose no one willingly becomes a martyr.” Beside the tombstone, the river flows and in the east an orange glow prophesizes the coming sun. She bends down to Lucy’s level, wraps her arms around her, rests her cheek against the dog’s side and hides her face in the thick fur. At first there was so much anger, even hate, but now it is sorrow which pervades her every moment, every thought and motion. And she is sorry, not only for Dan’s suffering, for her own, for their boys’, she is sorry for everyone’s. It is one task at a time, single-minded focus until one piece of work is done and then on to the next, and on and on and on, this is how to make it through. Lucy’s heartbeat is slow and steady. Alice is still, and so Lucy believes there is nothing to fear. “Why are you here, Ben? You know what the reward for your body is? You know they’ve given the order to shoot you on sight?”
“Oh, I know. I barely got out of Kansas alive.”
“Most people figure you to be down in Mexico by now.”
“If I was smart, I would be.”
“Then why are you here?” But she knows. The anger is proof that he’s sorry; she understands now how rage at one’s self is the inevitable companion of regret, an attempt to exorcise one’s guilt before being overwhelmed by it.
He sits down beside her, tips his hat up so that she can meet his eyes. “I’m yours,” he says, “should you have any use for me.”
Now his eyes ask for something from her, for more than she will ever give again. “Have you brought a miracle?”
Ben looks around him at the rebuilt barn, the garden beside the house, the fattening cattle. There is nothing material wanting here. “Your boy,” he says. “Dan told me. I’m sorry.” Alice nods, her eyes wet, and he takes off his glove and reaches his hand out to rest on her own. When he had thought of Dan as a rival, his opposite, he had imagined having Alice as a trophy, a triumph. Now Dan is his brother, and loving her his duty. The moment lingers, both of them seeking the connection of comfort offered and consolation sought. When she slips her hand out from under his, he takes the cue, stands and resumes a respectful distance.
“I won’t send you off without breakfast,” she says and walks back towards the house, Lucy at her heels.
“I brought you something.” He places a parcel on the table. She looks over at it from the stove but makes no movement towards it. “It’s a dress.” He tears off a piece of the paper so she can see the pale pink color, the small white flowers of the pattern. “Chose it myself.”
She lifts her chin. “You wasted your money.”
He shrugs it off. “Got enough of it.”
“You wasted your time. I have plenty of dresses.”
“None as pretty as this,” he counters. “Where’s the little one?”
“He ain’t little,” William says, stepping into the kitchen, his hand just above his pistol at the side of his hip. He’s taller, his voice deeper, his eyes wide as before, but less in wonder, more in worry.
“Well, I got something for him, too.”
“We let Mark sleep late as he needs,” Alice says. “His breakfast will keep until he’s ready for it.”
Leaving the gifts on the table, Ben turns towards William. “You see that horse I rode in on? You won’t find one better. It’s yours, if you’ll have it.”
William smirks. “Keep your nag. I got no use for it.”
They still say grace before the meal, and in Alice’s voice Ben hears that it is not done out of habit. She still finds something worth being thankful for, worth gratitude, she still trusts, asks. He doesn’t start to eat while she prays, but he doesn’t bow his head either. William’s eyes are hard on his face. “That creature of yours a dog or a wolf?” Ben asks, pouring gravy over his biscuits.
“Lucy just looks like a wolf; she follows us around like a dog, loves us like a dog,” Alice says.
“She howls like a wolf,” William argues. “She tears at her meat like one.”
He works with William as long as the daylight lasts, sits with Mark and reads to him in the half-hour before dinner. Mark’s condition has visibly worsened. He’s pale and quiet, pathetic shadow of the bright eyed boy who had bragged to Ben about his father’s sharp-shooting. He’s wasting away, and his head dips forward as though he has not the strength to keep it lifted.
They set up a cot for Ben in an empty corner stall in the barn. Clean sheets, thick wool blankets. There is a bowl and a pitcher of water so he can wash, a little chest where he can store his things.
In the evening he builds a fire in front of the barn and it’s not long before Alice wanders out. They sit side by side on an old blanket, Alice gazing alternately into the fire and up to the stars, Ben only looking at her.
“What happened that day?” she finally asks. “William won’t tell me.”
“Smart boy. It’s not worth knowing. How a man dies ain’t important.”
“Please.”
What can he tell her? Can he tell her about the look he saw in Dan’s eyes, right before he was shot? Seeing Charlie take aim was the first time he’d been frightened in years, the first time he’d had reason to care so much for another’s life. It wasn’t only fear for Dan’s sake, it was for his family, for her, for their boys. “Watching Dan get shot was like being shot myself.” Dan’s face, just before, when they looked at each other through the bars, the hope and elation in his expression had lifted Ben’s heart for a moment in complete sympathy, as though they were one man. A man has to take a stand. In the face of god, in the face of fate, no matter how steep the odds, how fierce and fathomless the forces arrayed against him, a man has to take his stand. “He saw a chance to give you and your boys a better life, the life you deserve. And he had to take that chance.”
She does not speak, and he touches her shoulder, tilts his head in, trying to see her expression, but she turns her face away. She feels trapped between his body and the fire. She had liked looking at him the first time she had met him, because Dan was there and Ben was in handcuffs and her feeling of safety was stronger than her fear. Then she could look into the brown eyes and marvel at the softness there, listen to the warm voice as it conjured up the beauty he had known, even wonder what those calloused hands would feel like against her skin. It had only been for a moment, and she had known she was protected, had known Dan and the other men would not allow anything to happen to her, had believed that she would never be untrue to her husband. But now her husband is gone, and she does not want to look up at Ben Wade. “I should go in.” She always does what she says, and walks away without pause.
William leans against the rails of the paddock, watching the horses chase each other across the field. Ben stops, takes his own place against the fence, a few feet away from him. “I see you,” William says, still staring straight ahead, “and I ask myself if I ought to kill you.”
“Few men in your place would question it.”
“If killing you could bring him back, I’d do it and have no regrets.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re your father’s son, after all. Sensitive conscience.”
“Maybe this world would be better off without you.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“What if I knew for sure?”
“And if you did?”
“If I was going to kill you, it should have been then, before you got on the train. But I had to choose. You weren’t important. My father was.”
“It only would have took you a second to pull the trigger.”
“And he would have watched me become a murderer. Right before his eyes. I would never, I could never. Maybe I could have chased after you, when we heard you’d escaped, tracked you down. But that would have meant leaving Mark and my mother behind. And maybe I could have killed you when you dared show your face here. But I couldn’t do that in front of my mother. Maybe if I had seen you before anyone else did.”
“You got a yes somewhere? A no? Or just all these horseshit maybes?”
“My mother. My brother. I won’t do anything to hurt them.”
“Neither will I.”
For the first time since Ben approached, William turns to him. Ben is not surprised to see tears in his eyes, he’s seen them before, but they still unnerve him. Worse now, somehow, then in those moments by the train. “You’ve already done your worst,” William says.
“I didn’t kill your father.”
“I know. But it’s your fault he’s dead.” William doesn’t wait for an answer, just pushes off from the fence and walks away.
Alice sits at the kitchen table, twisting a napkin in her hands. Usually she maintains her will, usually she knows what she must do next and she does it, without complaint, without pause. Now it is as though all that marks her path has vanished, and she can not tell where she is and where she is to go. She notes Ben at the door, but it is not until he speaks her name that she seeks to rein in her distress. She weakly pushes at the bowl in front of her. “He says he’s not hungry. But he’s got to have something.”
“Wait,” Ben says. “I got something might work.” She stands at the front door and watches as he goes to the barn, returns with one of the parcels he brought with him. He unwraps the unaccepted gift, revealing a selection of chocolates. “Try these.”
She goes back in to Mark’s room, sits beside him on the bed, the bowl of soup in her hands. “You want some chocolate, sweetheart?”
His eyes creep open. “Candy?”
“Sounds good, doesn’t it? Just have a little soup and then you can have all the chocolate you want.” She puts down the food and tries to lift him up to a sitting position, but he lets out a weak moan that stops her.
“Leave me alone,” he whimpers.
She is going to scream and scream and who knows if she will ever stop. But she makes no sound, only covers her face with her hands and tries to take deep breaths, despite the suffocating constriction of her chest. The thought that this pain, this struggle to breathe, is but a small taste of what Mark must feel all the time devastates her. Heavier footsteps than she’s used to tell her that Ben is approaching. She opens her eyes and looks to the doorway, and in a moment he appears, beckons to her with his finger. She smoothes Mark’s hair away from his damp forehead. “I’ll be right back, baby.”
“I have an idea,” Ben says, and, grabbing on to her wrist, he leads her back to the kitchen. He puts a sauce pan on the stove and drops several of the chocolates into it. “Milk?” he asks, and she brings the pitcher to him. “He’ll drink this, you’ll see. Sugar will give him some energy. He might want that soup after this. Even if he doesn’t, at least he’ll have something in his belly.”
“Let me,” she says, but he wards her off, insists on finishing what he has started.
When the chocolate has melted, he pours the milk in, stirring round and round with a wooden spoon until it is mixed and smooth.
Mark drinks it all and licks his lips, asks for more.
“Thank you,” Alice says to Ben as she passes him on her way back to the kitchen.
It is always there between them. Perhaps she wants it, though she won’t admit it. If she doesn’t want it, shouldn’t she keep away, ignore him and temptation for as long as she can? What need drives her out to the barn in the middle of the night? She can’t sleep and it’s too much to just lie there, alone, hearing Mark’s cough in the other room. He isn’t asleep either, like he’s been waiting for her. Still in his work clothes, the lamp down low, he stares into space, his arms folded in front of him, whistling a song she doesn’t know. Soon as he sees her, he rises to his feet. He knows, a man like him always knows, wraps her in his arms before she can have a second thought. He knows how to use his hands, they never ask. When Dan had come back from the war, he’d been like he was when they were first married. Every touch was always a question. Ben drags the blankets down from the cot and spreads them on the floor, and the night isn’t warm enough for bare skin, so they are strangers, their bodies hidden from each other, even when he is inside her. She closes her eyes and keeps them closed, but her whole body knows the lie. These are not Dan’s fingers twined in her hair, drawing her head back, nor his lips at her throat.
He curves around her, draws another blanket down on top of them, and they lie on the floor together, and all she can remember is her last embrace with Dan, his arms around her, and how she held on to him like she had known she would never see him again. And he had interrupted them, cut it short. God damn Ben Wade. But she couldn’t have held on to Dan forever, she knows that. Still. She could have had him with her for longer than she did. Ben draws down the collar of her dress, presses kisses to her shoulder, and she allows it, all the better to show him he’s nothing, means nothing, when she says: “Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you watched us when we said goodbye. It was the last moment I ever had with him, and you gave us no peace. What made you such a vulture?” She expects him to pull away, but he keeps his arms around her. “Don’t,” she hisses. He ignores her words, reaches down to hike up her skirt so he can drag his warm, heavy hand up her thigh. She turns in his arms, parts her lips, and he brings his face closer towards hers. She presses her cheek against his, whispers in his ear. “If I could trade your life for Dan’s, I would.”
“I know,” he whispers back. “And I would let you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says, but she stays.
The saloon is crowded and William watches as several men sitting at the bar compete for Emmy’s attention. She nods her head at their talk, smiles at their jokes and offers condolences for their misfortunes, but all the time William can see in her unfocused gaze that her true attention is elsewhere.
“Hello,” he says, when she reaches him at the end of the bar.
“Hello, Will.” She pours him a whiskey and gives him a genuine smile. “How’s your mother?”
“She’s alright. How are you?”
“Tired. I get tired.”
“No wonder. All these men telling you stories. Bet they all sound the same after a while. Bet most of ‘em ain’t even one word true.”
“You want a story, Evans?” says Hollander, from a few seats down, pulling two books out of his pocket and sliding them in front of William. “Seen these?”
“Leave him alone,” Emmy says. Everyone knows Hollander’s been bitter since he had to follow the railroad man’s orders. “Will,” she pleads, “don’t look at those.”
It’s two little books, one casts their father as the hero, the other features himself. These are the kinds of stories he couldn’t get enough of, once, before he’d seen it up close, in person. The drawings of himself and his father are all wrong, no likeness noticeable. The ones of Wade and Prince are dead on, which sickens him. He pushes them away. “You can burn that shit.” Hollander laughs at his discomfort, but stops when he realizes no one else at the bar has joined in. William takes his drink and retreats to the corner, gazes out the window at the sun-bleached wood of the buildings, and the lean folk kicking up dirt as they pass by. Some days he feels all he saw in his father’s dying eyes is enough. Some days he knows nothing will ever be enough.
And they call him a hero now? William Evans, the kid who was strong enough, tough enough, to face down Ben Wade. What a fucking joke. What a fucking lie.
He’s trashed all his old books, he doesn’t want Mark reading them. They make Wade out the bravest hero or they make him out the cruelest villain, and both are wrong. It is hard to understand how a man can be so different from one moment to the next. That is what is hard to understand. Is a man most himself in his worst moments, or his best? Is that the question he needs answered? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the answer is that a good man still carries a seed of hate within him, just as a pinprick of love may still pierce a bad man’s soul. Maybe that is the answer. He loves his father, he wishes he had understood him better when he was alive. But he thought that he had known, he had understood, when he bent down and stared into his father’s eyes, he recognized more strength there than he’d ever even imagined. He was scared, he was sorry, but his father was apart from it, beyond it.
He loved his father, he loves his father, but he doesn’t hate Ben Wade. He takes a few coins from his pocket, leaves them on top of the bar. Emmy’s hand catches his. “Your father was a good man.”
“I know,” he says. “Thank you.” His fingertips linger as they draw away from her.
Early one evening he sketches Alice as she sits with Mark.
Mark admires the finished drawing. “Can I keep it?” he asks. “Draw me a picture of Lucy next.”
Alice tells him that, a short time ago, Mark was still well enough to sit out on the porch. But now it is the window and Ben’s sketches that have to suffice for his view of the wide world. If he can, Mark likes to watch as Ben works, enjoys the magic process of nothing becoming something, line by line.
Each time he finishes Mark’s requests, he turns his eye to Alice, captures her again and again and again.
“Why?” she says one day.
“Only way I know,” he replies, “to have without hurting.”
“Stop,” she says, and sits beside him, takes his still hand and brings it to her cheek. He drops the pencil, cups her face with both his hands.
It is late afternoon and he walks slowly through the house. The windows are covered in Mark’s room, and from the still figure on the bed, he knows the boy is sleeping. William has gone to Bisbee, claiming to have business there, though from his clean shirt and damp, freshly combed hair, it is obvious his affairs are of the heart.
Alice lies on her side, facing the window; she is wearing the dress he brought her. He stands in the doorway and smiles, says, “I knew your vanity would outlast your pride.” But when she turns, he rues teasing her. She has been crying. She beckons to him, then rolls back to the window. Ben doubts he can provide anything that will soothe her, but he will try. Of course he will try. He steps into the room, closes the door carefully behind him. He walks across the room to the dresser, drawn by a photograph of Dan in his uniform. He does not presume to pick it up, only looks. Dan. The bible from the bridal suite is there, held open by Dan’s pocket watch, so that his sketch of Dan is displayed. His hand reaches out to his work, his fingertips brush it.
“William found it,” Alice says, and he looks up, startled, like he does not know where he is, what time it is, whether or not it is too late.
“You kept it,” he says.
“It’s dear to me. It reminds me of him, much more than any photograph can.”
“You never said anything.”
There is a photograph from their wedding day. He picks it up, looks closely. “It was winter,” she says. He crosses the room to the bed, crouches down and traces his hand over her hair, brushes it away from her cheek. “Lie down.” He walks around to the other side of the bed, sits down and takes off his boots, lies down beside her, behind her, leaves space between their bodies.
“Tell me more,” he says.
“It had rained and the water had frozen around the branches of the barren trees. And when we walked out of the church doors, the sunlight was caught in the ice and the trees were like living gold, silver, shining like nothing I’d seen before, nothing I’ve seen since. It was winter again when William was born. I screamed the whole time, I really believed I might die before he was free from my body. And that fear was all that kept me going. I had to bring him into this world, I had to bring him into this life. And then he was finally here, and I held him in my arms and everything that came before, it melted away.” She shivers, sighs, and his hands pull her close. She turns to him, rests her forehead against his. “Mark’s going to die.”
“No, no. He’ll get better, you’ll see.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Then let me lie to you. I don’t want to lie to you, but I don’t want to speak if all it can do is hurt you.” She closes her eyes and a tear falls from her lashes down to her cheek, and he wipes it away with the cuff of his shirtsleeve, runs his fingertip over the spot. “He’s still a happy boy. I can see that. He loves his mama, he loves his brother. He’s in pain, we all know how much it hurts, but he’s loved and he knows it. That’s all that matters. ”
“What do you know about children?”
His arms around her rock her like a baby. “Nothing. Except that I was one, long ago and for a very short time. I was on my own before I was his age.”
Her eyes open. “You were?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“My father died.”
“And your mother?”
He could not look at Dan when he said it before. That was the first time he had ever confessed it. He had always disdained the giving of, or asking for, pity. But sympathy is a different beast and he knows that now. He can look at her when he says, “She left me.”
“Left you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for me or sorry for that boy?”
“Is there a difference?”
“That boy died a long time ago.”
“There never comes a time when a mother looks upon her son and does not see in him the baby she once held in her arms. If she left, it was because she didn’t trust herself to take care of you, not because she didn’t love you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. What bids you draw a picture, Ben? Isn’t there a beauty in this world, despite everything else, everything worth despair?”
“Is there?”
“Two are better than one,” she says, and though there is much grief in her eyes, there is also such strength, tells the world that she will do everything she can to take care of those she loves. Once she holds on, she will never let go. “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall…” She can not go on, she hides her face against his chest.
He raises the words for her. “For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow.”
She clings to him, kisses him, and he returns each touch in lust and tenderness, guilt and gratitude, with all the elements of one transcendent whole.