Under a Painted Sky

The stars fade in that exquisite time between night and day, when neither the sun nor the moon shows its face. He settles back down beside me as I grab at the wisps of my dream. I don’t remember it now.

 

“Something happen to you?” he asks.

 

I long to answer him. But I can’t. “Why are you going to California?” I ask instead.

 

“Cay wants to go there.” He takes his time. “He fooled around with the ranch owner’s daughter. She said he got her pregnant. He was going to marry her, but then he found out she wasn’t with child.” He pauses to rub his neck. “Ranch owner wanted him to take his daughter anyway, but Cay didn’t love her. So we cut out after we finished the last drive. Won’t be going back to Texas for a long time.”

 

“You left your home for him.”

 

“He’s family, just like Peety. Can’t just give up on family, even when they act like fools.”

 

“What about your parents? Brothers and sisters?”

 

“I’m an only child. Mama died when I was seven. With any luck, pa’s in the ground, too.” His voice cools, and I regret bringing them up.

 

I glance at his triangular earlobes, the telltale signs of a troubled life. “I’m sorry,” I murmur once again.

 

He shrugs. “Ain’t the first to have a mean daddy.”

 

I get a pang in my heart, both at his suffering and at the reminder of my fortune in having had a kind father. “Every child deserves his father’s love.”

 

He sighs, then doesn’t speak for at least thirty watermelons. I think he’s fallen back asleep, but then he says in a quiet voice, “This one time, he cuffed me for painting the fence too slow. Blood got into the paint and turned it pink. No matter how much I tried mixing in more white, it still looked pink to me. I finished the fence, but I knew it was no good, even though people couldn’t see it. There were certain things about me I could never change, no matter how I tried.”

 

My breath stops short. Somewhere along the way, the subject changed from paint to himself. What things could he not change? A mean temperament? I have known West for less than a month, but I have not seen an ounce of spite in him.

 

“My father pointed out once that the violets with the deepest color grew from the dung heap.” As soon as the words are out, I realize I have equated him with dung. “I mean, er—”

 

A puff of air curls out of his mouth, giving way to a reluctant smile and even a chuckle. “Sammy,” he says in that way I’ve come to know as part exasperated, part resigned.

 

I regard his profile, his lips parted slightly, and his perfect eyebrows beginning to knit. It both scares and thrills me to admire his beauty from so close, like I am breaking some law against staring. My gaze wanders to the tiny cleft in his stubbly chin, like a fingernail mark. I clench my fist to stop my fingers from touching it.

 

He turns to me, but instead of looking away like he usually does, he lingers. Our eyes lock, mine still wet, his tortured, and I glimpse his soul.

 

They say time freezes, but I’ve never experienced it until now. I stay like that, lost in his eyes for that eternal moment, and then the dawn breaks, and we are Sammy and West again, boys on the trail.

 

 

 

 

 

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