Coldwater Revival: A Novel (27 page)

I placed my hands on Gavin’s face, leaned over, and kissed his forehead. He locked me to his chest, his ragged sobs buried in my shoulder as he held me in a frenzied, seamless grasp. The kind in which I would have embraced Micah, had I the opportunity.

“I can’t let ye go, sweetheart. I love ye more than life.”

We cried together, minutes ticking by as my heart ached for the man to whom I had promised my love. I knew not where God would lead me. But this I did know: It wasn’t into Gavin O’Donnell’s house, or into his bed.

I had to break off with him tonight. My heart told me it was now or never. I slipped my engagement band from my finger and laid it in Gavin’s rough palm. ’Twas then I knew my first real moment of peace, although hurting Gavin seared me as though I’d been branded with a red-hot iron.

“Please, Emma Grace. Don’t be doin’ this to me.”

I bawled openly, my heart breaking for Gavin. ’Twas not my nature to hurt people. I felt Gavin’s pain as though it were my own. “It’ll just be worse if we prolong the inevitable, Gavin. It’s best we part tonight … as friends.”

Gavin looked at me, suspicion seeming to open up his face and his eyes—and his rage. “There’s someone else, isn’t there? That’s what this is all about. Who is he, Emma Grace?” He squeezed my hands with such strength, I imagined them falling off at the wrists.

I didn’t blink a lash. “I’ve never kissed another man in my life, Gavin. Only you.”

His shoulders slumped, but his glare bored on, the drill of inquisition digging for fundamental clues to verify my faithlessness.

“If I find out ye’re lying to me, girl, I’ll kill him. Ye understand me?”

“Good night, Gavin. Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”

Gavin stood, staring down from a kingly realm, pain pinching his face. He walked to the windowsill and placed my ring on the corner ledge. “When ye come to yer senses, this’ll be right here, waiting for ye to put it back on—where it belongs.”

A curtain of tears fogged my view as I stood and floundered toward the door. I had walked the porch ten thousand times; had known its feel on the darkest nights. Now I reeled and lurched like the town drunk. I flinched as I brushed past Gavin, fearing he might reach out and wrench me from my determination. His labored breathing hurt my ears. His wrath and brokenness hurt my heart.

I aimed my watery gaze forward as my hand twisted the knob that would open the door to the rest of my life. Pausing at the threshold, I stole one last glance at the small silver band I had worn so proudly. It would remain where it was—until a child found it, or the wind blew it away—or until it fell between the cracks of the flooring. The ring no longer belonged to me.

Thirty-five

The wind blew and the earth trembled, spilling rocks and boulders down the mountainside like loose marbles. They tumbled and crashed together on the valley floor, rendering an awful racket.

I startled awake, the dream fading as I sat up in bed. I cocked my head toward the window and harkened to the sounds that had arrested me from sleep. A downpour pounded our tin roof, and in the distance I heard wooden planks cuffing each other like boxers in a ring.
Another storm … following so quickly on the heels of the hurricane? It’s been a stormy day … for sure.
I resettled into my pocket of bedcovers, knowing my dream had sprouted from hard-pelting rain and a howling wind that vaulted over field and lawn, shaking shutters and banging the doors of our outbuildings. I lay with my eyes wide open and listened to the clatter.

I studied the room’s darkness, seeing nothing amiss, just the everyday props that had long filled the nooks and crannies of my bedroom. As I closed my eyes on blurred objects and shadowed hollows, I heard a different sound. Pebbles—no, stones—hitting the window. I sprang from bed and ran straightway to the casement, leaning my face against the cold glass, fogging it with my breath. As I wiped mist from the window, a bolt of lightning slashed across the sky, flaring the darkness with jagged streaks.

I saw him then, standing on the lawn beneath my second-story window, his hand drawn back to launch the next stone. He spied me and dropped his mischief to the ground. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he hollered into the wind, swaying a bit as he did. He appeared to be weaving at the whim of the wind, but I knew the wind hadn’t caused Gavin to totter this way and that. ’Twas something a mite more destructive.

I rammed my palm against the jam, loosening the tired old window from its autumn nest. As I lifted the sash, rain swept through the opening, dousing me from top to bottom.

“Emma Grace … I need to talk wi’ye. Ye can’t be leaving me out here … in the storm … and the … ’Tis a coldhearted woman who’d be doin’ … doin’ that to her man.”

Slurred words. Yet I understood them with freshwater clearness. ’Twas a fact that Gavin’s thick head had not received or accepted the truth of my message this evening.

I grabbed my robe, taking time to don my socks and shoes, for I knew I couldn’t manage Gavin’s brawn and a crutch at the same time. I robed myself in record time, praying as I tied my sash that Gavin’s braying wouldn’t awaken the household. Perhaps the storm’s uproar would pillow his drunken hullabaloo. If not—Elo would have his gun cocked and the trigger pulled before I had a chance to right things between us.

As I pushed my way through the front door, the wind slammed it shut behind me.

“Get onto this porch, you crazy man.” An icy wind shoved my words right back down my throat. I waved my arms and motioned Gavin to the porch, but he seemed planted in the yard. With my temper scaling the walls of ire, I ran into the yard and right into the face of a wet blue norther. Rain soaked my hair, and everything between it and the nubbins of my toes.

Gavin’s head lolled against his chest, stuporlike; groggy. My anger sloshed onto him, drenching him with buckets of cold disgust, but it did little to wash away his drunkenness. While rain rolled across the yard in waves, I shoved on him and guided him toward the porch. A gust slapped us from behind, billowing Gavin’s hair into the wings of a peregrine and almost toppling me over. I jerked his coat sleeve and dragged his sogginess as best I could while the Irish in me flared again. I had a good mind to collect Papa’s bullwhip from the barn. Best I let that idea fly, for I would surely wrap the tip of it around Gavin’s throat. We plodded across the yard, his arm around my shoulder as we trudged the meandering path his legs chanced upon. It took some time, for his legs flopped and crumpled like a headless chicken, and, at times, I wilted beneath his weight. Those strong legs of his were all but useless now. Perhaps his bones had soaked up too much whiskey.

From the corner of my eye, I spied a flash of pants and flapping suspenders. The image streaked past Mama’s dried-up flowerbed, into a thickness of trees and shadows. I knew it was either Geronimo or Elo. Another streak—dashing around the far side of the house.
Nathan?

Gavin and I mounted the porch. His shoe caught on the crest of the top stair, sending both of us sprawling. He nose-dived into a slick slide, his head splitting one of Mama’s clay pots. Dirt and geraniums flew across the porch, mixing with the muck on our shoes, and rain blowing in beneath the covering. I debated on leaving Gavin where he lay, in his soupy gumbo mess. Or, should I pray for high waters to wash him downriver?

I rose on all fours, then to my knees, swiping ooze and mud from my face. My nose rubbed against the cold steel of a double-barreled shotgun, which had aimed itself at Gavin’s backside. I screamed, but a moment only, for Elo clamped his hand over my mouth, squelching further outbursts. He raised a finger to his lips, signaling me to cease my noise. What did he think? That he was on a hunting raid this horrid night, and Gavin was the wild game?

“Put your stupid gun away, molasses-head!” I yelled.

Nathan stepped atop the porch, as soundlessly as had Elo.

“Did Gavin hurt you, Sis?”

Nathan’s concern angered me even more. “No one is hurt, except you two if you don’t get out of here and let me handle this on my own. The last thing I want is for Papa to come down and get into the fracas.”

“It’s too late for that, Emma Grace.” Papa stood in the doorway; bat in hand, and fierceness etched on his face. “What’s that drunken cur doing out here in the middle of night?”

“He’s out to kidnap Emma Grace.”

I shook my head, Elo’s bankrupt reasoning skills sealing my lips with disbelief. I stared at his naked chest and wide expanse of shoulders, mere inches from my face. They bore no visible signs of the frigid night air that clouded our breaths when we spoke. It proved true my theory about Elo: He had been born into a tribe of blond warrior-natives—natives who were immune to cold, heat, and pain. Perhaps Mama and Papa had found Elo out in the woods when he was just a babe, and …

“Of all the idiotic conclusions you’ve come to in your life, Elo, this is truly the most pitiful one of all.” Having rediscovered my tongue, I plowed my words and my fist into Elo’s midriff, barely causing him to draw breath. But I did shake loose a passel of raindrops that had wrapped themselves around his golden chest-curls. “Now—I want all of you out of here. Don’t you see I have to do this on my own? I made the mess—I’ll clean it up.”

Looking skeptical, Papa didn’t budge from the wide-legged stance he had assumed. Nathan and Elo stood on either side of Gavin; rock pillars to block his getaway. Two bare-chested monoliths of equal stature, one wearing glasses, the other a frown carved in granite.

Gavin mumbled incoherently, capturing my attention. He sat up, rubbing his head, shaking muck from the bed of his scalp. He looked like a shaggy, mud-wallowing golden retriever.

“Wha … happen’t to me?” He tried to rise, but his feet slipped from beneath him. Sitting spread-eagle on a soggy dirt cushion, he glanced at the circle of ire surrounding him, his gaze halting on the spit-and-polished shotgun pointed at his head. “Did I hurt ye, Emma Grace? ’Tis a sorry lot I am. I meant ye no harm, darlin’.” Bubbles foamed from Gavin’s mouth—alcohol dulling his swallowing reflexes, I assumed. I could almost feel empathy for him.

“You’re sorry, all right. ’Bout the sorriest example of humanity I’ve seen in all my fifty-five years. What’s wrong with you, boy? How’d you get caught up in the Devil’s clutches so early in life?” Papa shook his head, lips pursing to a thin line. I remembered the firmness of that line—had seen it often in my naughty misbehaving days of childhood. ’Twas a dreadful look to behold.

“I’ve a mind to swab his throat with turpentine, Papa. That’ll burn off the alcohol in no time. What’d you say?”

I gasped aloud, quirking Elo’s face into a slanted smile. Of course, I had played right into his hands.

“You’ll do no such thing. In fact, I want the lot of you to leave. Gavin and I need to talk … in private.” When no one budged, my tongue rolled on. “Give me a little credit, will you? I know how to handle Gavin.” I tapped my foot, feeling exasperated and probably a bit angrier than the occasion called for. “Leave! Do you hear what I’m saying? I want you all to leave—now!”

They took their own dear time, but finally sauntered from the porch. Nathan shoved his rifle into my shaking hands. “All you have to do is holler, Emma Grace. We’ll take care of him for you.”

“Thanks, Nathan.”

I watched until they had disappeared into the house, noisily wiping their feet before shutting the door. Glancing at Gavin and noticing no improvement in his condition, I gritted my teeth, then snapped them open and spewed out my first command. “Get up, Gavin. I’ll fix a place for you out in the barn so you can sleep off your drunkenness. But, come morning, I want you out of here. Do you understand me?”

I huffed down the stairs without a backward glance, not knowing if Gavin followed, or if he had slunk back to the groggy land of inebriation. Nathan’s .22 rifle rested in the cradle of my arm, and over my head was a jacket from the parlor coatrack. Papa had pitched it to me before he closed the door. I aimed for the barn, sidestepping puddles and bare patches of earth, now mud-caked and slippery. Water sloshed inside my shoes, rain barreled down my neck. I slipped my arms into Papa’s coat; my head bared to the driving torrent, and crossed my arms. I tried to shake off my anger, but it was as stubborn as an old ewe that won’t be budged from the sheepfold. It dug its hooves firmly in the ground, showing not a notion of departure.

In the barn, I lit a kerosene lantern and waited for Gavin. When he sidled through the door, I thought I’d never seen a more wretched sight. He appeared the captured convict: beaten, trapped, and at the end of his tether. I watched from a distance, his filth-caked stance steadying as he turned his gaze on me. I laid Nathan’s gun on the workbench and removed Papa’s coat.

Familiar barn scents clung to the air; leather and hay, horse and cow dung; smells that seemed a calming tonic to my nerves. They also covered a portion of Gavin’s whiskey stench that had fermented like old sweat.

I grabbed the hayfork and pointed it at the watering trough. “You can wash up there.” Gavin glanced at his surroundings as though he’d not seen the inside of a barn before. “There’s a chamois to dry off with.” I nodded my head toward a piece of hide, hanging from a nail above the enamel basin. “Mama makes the boys clean up here before she allows them in the house.”

Gavin nodded and peeled himself out of his waterlogged jacket.

“Best you get out of those wet clothes. Papa keeps a pair of overalls in the tack room. You can sleep in them tonight. Hang your clothes where they’ll dry, ’cause you’ll be wearing them home in the morning, soaking or not.”

I lifted the pitchfork, sending hay flying into a corner of the barn. When the pile peaked like a softly rounded knoll, I looked at Gavin and pointed my fork at the straw mound. “There’s enough hay for you to crawl into if you get cold.”

I rammed the hayfork into a stack of fodder and gathered my long, sodden braid in my hands, squishing water from its heaviness. I dared not look down the mess of me, knowing my appearance was only a mite better than the stoop-shouldered man who still clutched his dripping jacket. He hardly resembled the man I had thought to marry. Having moved but a few feet from the barn door, he stared at me with mouth ajar, seeming not to know which of my bossy orders to follow first. Up to this point in our relationship, Gavin O’Donnell had not gorged on a bellyful of my ire. Did he perceive me now as one whose fangs were bared and oozing venom? Did he wait for the next strike?

My wrath flittered a bit, and then faltered altogether, slipping away into the shadows of forgiveness. In that moment, I knew I still loved Gavin. But ’twas a different love than before; as vastly different as winter winds and summer breezes.

“One more thing, Gavin.” His gaze shot up, as though he expected to see the pitchfork come flying at his middle. “You’ll be owing my family an apology—once you’ve gone home and cleaned up a bit, and thought this night through.”

“Emma Gra—”

“As for me—I meant what I said earlier. I’ll always treasure our friendship. You can guzzle a thousand jugs of moonshine and it won’t keep me from being your friend.”

“I don’t deserve yer friendship, girl. No’ after the way I’ve acted today.”

I wanted to take his hand, run my fingers down the fun-loving face that now brimmed with anguish. I had hurt him dreadfully, and for that I suffered true regret. “Gavin—I’m so sorry I hurt you today. Can you find it in your heart to forgive … a friend?”

I noticed Gavin’s mouth, tightening at the corners. He clamped his jaws together, forcing a knot of muscles along the ridge. My words had reopened wounds and reawakened his wrath.

“I don’t think I can ever forgive ye for what ye’ve put me through today.”

I lowered my head, knowing Gavin’s pain ran like deep waters; as deep as the sureness in my heart that our joining was not meant to be.

“I understand. Maybe—maybe someday you can forgive me.” Tears welled in my eyes, making double of everything I viewed. I turned to leave, but a sudden motion jerked me around, smashing me against Gavin’s chest. Blinking away my wetness, I found myself staring into the eyes of a wounded lion. Anger and vengeance leaped in the depths of his eyes, flames that seemed out of control.

Gavin’s drunkenness cost him nothing in the way of strength. He slammed his mouth to mine, grinding my lips and breathing the stink of soured whiskey down my throat. Waves of nausea and revulsion rolled through my stomach as he probed my tongue with his, tangling the two in a catfight. I tried to jerk free, but was imprisoned by his overwhelming power. He pushed me to the floor, my back in the dirt as he fell atop me. While his weight pinioned me to the ground, his mouth and hands did their damage elsewhere. Somehow—his lips never left mine. And somehow—he never stopped shoving his suffocating kisses down my throat. He braced his left arm against my collarbone, his right hand roving my body, touching everything it desired to touch. And there was no one to stop him.