right now.”
“That more people die from being kicked by mules …”
He laughed. “It almost makes me believe in some madman up there pulling the strings.”
She stroked his shoulder. “Did you ever believe in a madman in the sky?”
“I had a devout period early on. But then I broke our neighbor’s parlor window by mistake. My dad gave me a thrashing, and I understood there was no God. The smashed window was an accident, and I thought God should have known that and made my father forgive me.”
Smiling into his chest, she said, “Maybe you were being tested.”
“I failed the test.” He got up and lit the kerosene lamp. It sputtered and flickered and threw crazy shadows around the room as the rain slashed at the window.
“You know the odd thing?” he asked.
“What?”
“I believe in the gods who aren’t my own more than I ever believed in the God I was supposed to believe in.” He stroked her hair the way you’d stroke a cat. “Did you ever see The Seventh Seal?”
She nodded.
“That guy blowing in tonight reminded me of the scene—remember? That little family of actors fleeing in the covered wagon through the forest in the storm, death at their heels?”
“I remember.”
“I saw that film at least five times. You remember the knight?”
“Yes.”
“My life has been a futile pursuit, a wandering, a great deal of talk without meaning. And then he says he’ll use his temporary reprieve from Death for one meaningful deed.”
“What would you do for a reprieve?”
“I don’t believe in good deeds. As soon as you call them good, they stop being good. I’d do what I’m doing now. My whole life is a temporary reprieve, running out every day.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m not young.”
“Well, you can’t leave before I do.”
“There’s an excellent chance I will.”
“If you keep having showdowns with ranchers, yes. Promise me you’ll stop.”
“I’ll think about stopping when I’ve done one more section of the Kuke fence.”
“Please.”
“This matters to me,” he said.
“I know. Those animals matter to me too. But you matter more.”
They were quiet together a moment before he said, “I’ve never before felt the way I feel about you. Not when I was with Gwyneth, not with anyone ever before.”
She kissed him. “Do you still talk to her?”
“To Gwyneth?” His eyes shifted away from hers, and he sat up in bed. “Actually, I happened to run into her a few weeks ago. She was up in Francistown on business. It wasn’t planned. It was the day you left.” He hesitated. “I won’t lie to you, Alice. We spent the night together.”
She felt hard slapped. “That very night?”
“She was in bad shape.”
“So you thought you’d cheer her up.”
“Alice.”
“You said it was over.”
“It is over.”
“How could you say what you just said to me after spending the night with her?”
“What I said to you is true, true as anything I’ve ever spoken.”
“I won’t be ‘the other woman’ around the edges of your marriage.”
“Alice, please, you’re not listening.”
“That very night you put me on the train?”
“Darling, you’re being foolish.”
“I’m not foolish.” She crawled out of bed, threw on a shirt and a pair of shorts and headed into the rain. She’d forgotten her shoes, and she wasn’t going back for them. The path was a stream, and she was crying hard now. The lights of the main house were still on, and she made her way toward them, over rough stones, and then beyond them, into her truck. She sat behind the steering wheel and thought of driving home, but she wouldn’t make it in this weather, and she’d left her purse and keys behind. Her body was still warm from his, and then it wasn’t warm anymore. The water on her body and clothes evaporated, and she began to shiver.
She thought of Ian sitting on the bed alone in that little rondavel, and her heart went halfway out to him. After she and Lawrence had split, hadn’t she told Muriel that the final straw wasn’t Erika, but his dishonesty? Was that a crock, or had she meant it? Ian told her the truth. So he lost his head one night. Was that a crime?
But the very night he’d put her on the train? It felt as though their time on the pan had meant nothing to him. But that wasn’t true, and she knew it.
He was sitting on the floor when she came in, his back against the bed, his feet stretched straight out in front of him, his hair every which way.
“Darling, you’re soaked,” he