Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [152]
A smudge of something rusty like dried blood dulled the burnished gilt on the edge. Clare turned it in her hands and opened it to the last entry before a series of blank pages. Perhaps the ink had once been blue, but it had faded to sepia.
October 15, 1927
It is hard to believe that we are leaving today. The sun shines on the Tetons as though it were any other day, any of the thousands we have passed pleasantly at home over the last twenty-six years.
I sit facing what I have come to regard as my personal and private view of the Grand and wonder what we will do in far away Texas, a flat, baking land that Cord and I have never even visited.
It’s all wrapped up here, so nice and neat, the check from the Snake River Land Company folded in Cord’s breast pocket for deposit in our new account in Houston. We didn’t get as much for our ranch as I thought we should have, but folks all over the valley have been caving in to the tough young men who assured us that we would not see a better offer.
They’re waiting for me, Cord already settled in the back of Cordon’s noisy automobile. Our son adjusts the lap robe and I am glad he is good at pretending and making it seem as though Cord is not really so ill. It scares me so to see the bluish pallor come and go at his lips, and to watch him massage his chest when he thinks I am not looking.
It was that way with Father, near the end.
Selling the ranch seemed the right decision. We could no longer keep it up and Cordon insisted we move someplace where the climate is not so harsh. I believe that is an excuse, for he knows we have weathered Wyoming winters for many years, as he did growing up. We don’t any of us speak of it, but he is the one who wants to make a new life in Texas.
Cord said his good-byes last night. I woke in that darkest hour before dawn and found him gone from our bed. Through the window, I saw him in the autumn meadow before the house, his fine head of silver hair tilted back to look up at the mountains’ shadow against the star-studded sky.
This morning Cordon was brusque and businesslike, but I saw his eyes darting this way and that, now to the corner of the hearth where Sophie had her puppies, then scanning the path to the barn. He could usually be found there, communing with the horses, when all his other haunts had been checked.
Everything has been loaded and there is no reason to linger. In just a moment, I will put this journal to rest where it belongs. I do not believe I could bear to read of our joys and sadness here, once we are in Texas. Instead, I will let time soften the edges of memory, in the same way it blurs the lines of our faces and fades the brightness of our hair.
And yet . . . the mountains will not let me go, weaving their subtle spell of changing light and shadow. They invite me to stay, to watch the magic of clouds appearing from clear air and day fading to darkness.
Out there in the night, mountains ringed this valley. People would come and go, live and die, and still the heights would endure. The time it took to transform them into the plains of tomorrow rendered meaningless a single lifetime. She was bound to this land, by blood and by a book that reached to her through the years. With her hand on the worn leather, Clare decided. No matter whether she fought fire, no matter what happened between her and Steve, she was coming back.
When she gave the diary to Steve, he was immediately absorbed in turning the pages. She watched him scan rapidly, seeing the scholar in him.
Back in the kitchen, she scraped carrot curls and onion peels into the trash, packaged the leftovers, and washed the copper pot. She didn’t like domestic chores, but this evening it gave her a sense of purpose to take care of both Devon and Steve. When she finished wiping the tiled counter, she stepped to the back door.
The chirp of crickets and the chatter of television in a nearby house added to her aching feeling of being at home. Unfortunately, the distant laughter of firefighters swapping stories at the cache reminded her of the threat to this haven. The