“So, who’s Stewy Stinker?” I pressed softly.
“Stewy Stinker, Buzzard Bates, Skunk Skeeter, Butch Bones, Snakeyes Pyezon . . . they were the Bad Men in Eli’s book.” Georgia said Pyezon like Popeye would say poison, and it made me smile. Georgia smiled too, but there was obviously too much grief in the memory to make it stay, and her smile slid away like the tide. “So if they were the bad guys, who were the good guys?” I asked, trying to coax it out again.
“They weren’t the bad guys, they were the Bad Men. It was the name of their gang. Stewy Stinker and the Bad Men.”
“No false advertising there.”
Georgia giggled and the shell-shocked expression she’d worn since I called her Stewy Stinker faded slightly.
“Nope. Simple, straightforward. You know exactly what you’re getting.”
I wondered if there was hidden meaning in her statement and waited for her to clue me in.
“You’re different, Moses,” she whispered.
“So are you.”
She flinched but then nodded. “I am. Sometimes I miss the old Georgia. But in order to get her back, I would have to erase Eli. And I wouldn’t trade Eli for the old Georgia.”
I could only nod, not willing to think about the old Georgia and the old Moses and the fiery way we had come together. The memories were burned in my head and coming back to Levan made me want to revisit them. I wanted to kiss Georgia until her lips were sore, I wanted to make love to her in the barn and swim with her in the water tower, and most of all, I wanted to take away the wave of grief that kept knocking her over.
“Georgia?”
She kept her eyes averted. “Yeah?”
“Do you want me to go? You said you wouldn’t lie to me. Do you want me to go?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
I felt the word reverberate in my chest and was surprised at the pain that echoed behind it. Yes. Yes. Yes. The word taunted. It reminded me of how I had shunned her the same way that last night in the barn. Do you love me, Moses? she’d asked. No, I’d told her. No. No. No.
“Yes. I want you to go. And no. I don’t want you to go,” she amended in a rush of frustrated, pent-up breath. She stood abruptly, threw her hands in the air, and then folded them across her chest defensively. “If I’m telling the truth, then both are true,” she added softly.
I stood too, bracing myself against the impulse to bolt, to run and paint, like I always did. But Tag said I was going to have to take her. He told me not to go slow. And I was going to heed his advice.
“I don’t know what the truth is this time, Moses. I don’t know,” Georgia said, and I knew I couldn’t run this time. I wouldn’t run.
“You know the truth. You just don’t like it.” I never thought I’d see Georgia Shepherd afraid of anything. I was afraid too. But I was afraid that she really wanted me to go. And I didn’t know if I could stay away. Not again.
“What about you, Moses? Do you want to leave?” Georgia threw my words back at me. I didn’t answer. I just studied her trembling lips and troubled eyes and reached out a hand for the heavy braid that fell over her right shoulder. It was warm and thick against my palm and my fingers wrapped around it tightly, needing to cling to something. I was so glad she hadn’t cut the braid. She had changed. But her hair had not.
My left hand was wrapped in her braid and my right hand snaked around her waist and urged her up against me. And I felt it, the same old charge that had been there from the beginning. That same pull that had wreaked havoc on our lives . . . her life even more than mine. It was there, and I knew she felt it too.
Her nostrils flared and her breath halted. Her back was taut against my fingers and I splayed them wide, trying to touch as much of her as I could without moving my hand. Her eyes were fixed on mine, fierce and unblinking. But she didn’t resist.
And then I bent my head and caught her mouth before she could speak, before I could think, before she could run, before I could see. I didn’t want to see. I wanted to feel. And hear. And taste. But her mouth filled my mind with color. Just like it always had. Pink. Her kiss was pink. Soft, sunset pink, streaked with gold. The rosy blush swirled behind my eyes, and I pressed my lips more firmly against hers, releasing her hair and her body to hold her face in my hands, to keep the colors in place, to keep them from fading. And then her lips parted beneath mine and the colors became leaping currents of red and gold, pulsing against my eyes as if the soft sweep of her tongue left fire in its wake.
The color popped like a needle to a balloon as Georgia suddenly wrenched herself away, almost violently. And without a word she turned and fled, along with the colors, leaving me panting and drenched in black.
“Careful, Moses,” I said out loud to no one but my sorry self. “You’re about to get thrown.”
Moses
WITH ONLY THE ONE VEHICLE BETWEEN US, I had to take Tag back to Salt Lake the next morning. I spent two days away, one day clearing my schedule for the next month, and for those who were insistent on keeping their appointments, making arrangements to have them come to me in Levan. If the people weren’t talking already, I’m sure they would be when I started holding painting séances in my grandmother’s dining room.