True Grit - "A Long Time Travelling Away From Home", Mattie/LaBoeuf, T
Continued from here.
***
My business in Arkansas concluded, I returned once more to Texas. I looked forward to Mattie’s reply, and informed my mother that I expected she would soon have the daughter-in-law she so desired. I did not think it would take long for Mattie to answer, her circumstances being what they were.
I was to be disappointed in that regard, for Mattie did not write me any more letters. Not one line did I receive from her. I sent three letters before my pride got the better of me and I ceased correspondence. Her silence puzzled me. I understood some modest restraint, but this was unacceptable. What is a man to think, making a proposal to a woman and allowing her the liberty of time to consider his offer, only to receive contemptuous silence in return?
I resolved to cease my pursuit of her. If she wished to quit her mule-headed ways and be reasonable, she knew where I could be found.
The decision not to write Mattie again was simple. Banishing her from my thoughts was another matter altogether. I do not believe I was so sorry a creature as to be truly “lovesick” but that is what my fellow Rangers liked to call it. I had never been an idle sort, but I made doubly sure to keep myself occupied with work. A tight rein does not permit the mind to wander.
However, some thoughts of her were inevitable. I missed her newsy letters, filled with long stories whose contexts were a mystery to any person not a resident of Yell County. She used to include clippings from newspapers and periodicals which she seemed to think I might enjoy; they were strange items about hail stones the size of a man’s head and ducklings born with three legs. I had thought that she was mistaking my interests for that of Cogburn (what with his penchant for rambling, impossibly tall tales,) but now I missed them, as well as the little commentaries she would make about them in her letters.
I simply missed Mattie, and the passage of time did nothing to ease this.
It was during the following winter that I was introduced to Miss Sadie Mayfield of Ysleta. Her mother was a friend of my mother’s, as they belonged to the same ladies’ societies. Sadie was the middle daughter in a family of seven sisters, and, at 26 years of age, was the only one left unmarried.
By this time, my mother’s pestering had become sincerely bothersome. After the war, my three older brothers had not returned to Louisiana, where we were raised, instead scattering themselves around the land. They settled in California, the Dakota Territory, and Colorado, respectively, and had all elected to stay and raise families in those places. When I joined the Rangers and was posted to Ysleta, my widowed mother sold all her Louisiana property and moved west. The separation from her children and grandchildren brought her low, I reckoned, and that was the reason for her interest in my marriage. To placate her, I agreed to call on Miss Mayfield, and I admit that I looked on our outing as a chore.
It was not. In fact, until the Sunday afternoon I took Miss Mayfield for a drive in my mother’s smart black carriage, I cannot recall a more pleasant time spent in such lovely company. No sweeter, kinder woman than Sadie ever lived, I am sure.
Sadie had a delicate, bird-like figure, a fair complexion, light brown hair, and grey eyes. She enjoyed the stories of my adventures very much, listening attentively and expressing the appropriate horror at the bloody things I had witnessed. She was especially fond of the tale of my rescue of Mattie from the clutches of Tom Chaney and the Lucky Ned Pepper gang. She found my bravery impressive, and told me so, smiling prettily with her hands folded in her lap. I asked if she would like to go driving again, and she said she would.
My connection with Sadie grew, and I became very fond of her. I began attending church with her family, and dining with them regularly. They were all fine people, and their company was most enjoyable. Mr. Mayfield, Sadie’s father, was especially gracious and obliging, and very respectful of the Texas Rangers.
Months passed. Still I heard nothing from Mattie, not even a rejection. Only silence.
I often found myself wondering whether she had accepted the advances of that Mr. Calhoun, or any of those callers of whom she had spoken. Each time I thought on this, I concluded that she had shown only disdain for those men, and did not care for any of them. Surely she would not marry one of them. I reassured myself of this almost weekly. Surely she could not.
But what if her mother’s insistence made an impression on her? What if some young man finally succeeded in turning her head?
I was bedevilled by these thoughts. Despite my efforts, Mattie felt like True North, the ultimate point around which my world was arranged. It was unnerving, and I did not like it. I resented it completely.
One Sunday in the spring of 1884, Mr. Mayfield requested a parley of me as I departed the family home after another evening in their company. In short he expressed the esteem he and his wife held for me, and proceeded to inquire whether I planned to ask Sadie to be my wife, or whether I simply planned on accompanying them to church every Sunday for the remainder of my natural life.
I can allow that it was a reasonable question for a loving father to ask, but I was taken aback. It was silly of me to be surprised. I must have known what I was implying by my very presence, and yet I had not truthfully given a single thought to making Sadie my wife.
I put the man’s mind at ease as best I could, and advised that I had some minor business to look after, but once it was dealt with, I would return and he and I would have the discussion he desired.
Almost before I knew what I was doing with myself, I packed for the road and made for Arkansas. Mattie Ross could forget her manners and ignore my letters, but she could not ignore my person standing in her midst.
Spring had brought high waters with it, and it made for slow going. It took me longer than I might have liked to reach my destination, but the slow pace allowed me plenty of time to think over my position.
This is what I decided: I would not be turned away. I had pursued tougher quarry in my time than a one-armed little spinster with a razor tongue. I simply would not allow Mattie to turn me away. I would return to Texas with her as my wife.
It was evening when I turned my horse onto the road which led to the Rosses’ farm. The trees were covered with tiny spring buds, but it was a cool, damp night, and darkness was quickly falling. When I arrived at the house, I spotted a lamp burning on the side porch.
There sat Mattie, curled up on a wooden bench, a wool blanket draped about her. She had a book open in her lap, and did not seem to have seen or heard me. I rode closer, and stopped in the yard. I dismounted, and my spurs must have made a sound across the still evening, for as I was tying my horse to the porch rail, she appeared above me, her face pale in the blue light of evening.
“You are alive, after all,” I said. “I did wonder. It is a cold night to be outside, reading.”
Mattie made no answer to this, and I came up the steps to stand before her. She stood in the middle of the wide porch, her book forgotten on the bench. She was dressed in a plain brown dress, and she clutched the red wool blanket around her shoulders. Her dark hair was pulled back in one long plait which had been let down from its knot. She eyed me warily, her mouth pressed into a thin line.
“In the past you have greeted me with warmth and friendship,” I said. “Yet I offer you my hand and you treat me like a stranger. Worse, a trespasser.”
Still she said nothing. Instead she shook her head and turned her face away.
“I do not understand what I have done that could deserve such treatment,” I continued.
“I am sorry that I did not write you. That was rude of me, and wrong,” she said. Her voice and her manner were stiff.
“I have come back only to see you, despite the silence you have subjected me to over the winter, and now you greet me coldly. I am in the right and yet you treat me this way. Why is this?” I asked.
“I am not Penelope, idly awaiting the return of Odysseus. You may do as you please, as I do,” she replied, turning haughty in that superior-minded way of hers as she narrowed her eyes at me.
“I do not understand you. Is this some womanly trick intended to increase my admiration for you? If so, I must tell you that it is not working.”
“It is no trick! I did not write to you because I did not know how to reply to your question. I know perfectly well that I should have written and told you so, but the words escaped me.”
“Haw!” I scoffed. “The words escaped you, indeed. I find that very hard to believe.”
“Whether you believe it or not bears little with me,” she replied.
“Tell me now what you found so impossible to put in a letter,” I said.
Mattie hesitated a moment, watching me, and then seemed to steel herself in anticipation of unpleasantness. “I cannot accept your proposal. That is what I could not say.”
I stared at her in silence. My throat suddenly felt tight. “You have received another offer,” I said, swallowing the ache.
“I have not, nor am I likely to. Even if I do, I doubt I will take it.”
“I do not understand.”
“You are looking at the thing in the wrong light. We would not make a good match,” she explained. “We would only quarrel. I would not be much of a wife to you.”
“That is foolish,” I replied, stepping closer to her and taking hold of her hand. “I have no doubt that you will make as kind, as sweet, as obedient and as good a wife as any other.”
She looked stricken at this, rather than comforted, but she did not withdraw her hand. “That is flattery. You would find yourself disappointed in every way, and would regret choosing me. Surely there must be some more suitable match for you.”
“I can think of no better match for me than you, Mattie,” I replied.
Her eyes were sad as she regarded me without speaking. It hurt me to see the feeling in her expression. I did not understand what conflict she foresaw. Everything would be different once we were married. I would take care of her; she would never want for anything. What would there be to quarrel about?
I said as much to her, but again my words failed to ease her worries. Gently I pulled her to me and she went, pressing her face to my breast. I rested my chin on her head and she laid her hand on my chest, her palm covering the silver star over my heart.
We stood that way for several long moments, holding each other, and my thought was that if Mrs. Ross chose this moment to come outside looking for her daughter, Mattie would have little say in the question of our marriage, after all.
Eventually, Mattie pulled back and her eyes met mine. She regarded me for a moment, and then sighed. I felt her breath up through my hands where they touched her, and into my whole body like a chill.
“Mr. LaBoeuf, please. In my heart I do not believe I could make you happ -” she began to say. I kissed her, stopping her words short.
Her fingernails dug into the worn leather of my vest as I held her tightly to me. Her warmth, and the strange, frantic sound she made in her throat, excited me, sending a shiver through my body, the like of which I had never felt before.
Abruptly, Mattie pushed me away and stepped back, holding the back of her hand over her mouth. She turned from me.
“I do not understand you. Why do you shy away? Why do you not have a single kind word for me?” I asked.
“Go back to your Texas misses if you have a need to flirt and talk nonsense with a silly girl whose vanity needs flattery the way a houseplant needs water,” she said, her voice flat and cold.
“What do you know of Texas misses?” I said, my patience with her caprice wearing thin. “You have scarcely seen anything outside of Arkansas in your life. You would not know a proper young lady if she came up and slapped you across your saucy mouth.”
Mattie turned and gaped at me, her face flushed a dark, angry scarlet. Rarely had my words had such an effect on her, and I wondered at it. While she was flustered, I pushed forward.
“Mattie, there is a woman in Ysleta. I have been paying visits to her and her family for quite some time, and it has been made plain to me that I am expected to request her hand or move along,” I told her, thinking that certainly this would make her see reason. I have been told that nothing produces a show of affection in a woman like jealousy.
Her eyes lifted to mine and she scrutinized me as though she were trying to uproot a lie. Of course she found none, and after a moment, she cleared her throat. “Well. I offer you my congratulations, and I wish you every happiness,” she said, each word slow and deliberate in its delivery.
I wanted to take hold of her shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattled and she showed even an ounce of softness towards me. Instead, I spoke. “That is all you have to say to me?”
Her eyes slid away from mine and she turned away, looking out over the yard. “Yes. What else could I have to say to you?”
I wanted her to bend. I wanted her damp eyes and her tearful voice. I wanted her to plead with me to stay by her side, as she had done once before, many years earlier, for a far different purpose. If she had given me this one small favour, I would have stayed. Damn her, I would have stayed, and married her the moment she would have me, and taken her back to Texas, or remained by her side there, if that was what she wished. I would have done anything she asked of me, if she had humbled herself enough to ask it.
But she would not.
Mattie stood before me, her eyes dry and her mouth drawn into a firm line. Her expression was stony, and in that instant I knew I would find only further affronts to my pride in her company. I could not - would not - stand it. What self-respecting man would?
I turned from her, and left her standing on the porch. I felt her penetrating stare on my back every step my horse took, until we rounded the bend in the road and the weight of it slid off my shoulders like a heavy yoke. I turned my horse to the southwest, and began my journey back to Ysleta, where I would marry Miss Sadie Mayfield.
I did not see Mattie again.
***
My marriage was a happy one. It was entirely satisfactory in every regard excepting that we did not have children, which was a disappointment to both of us, and to my mother. Sadie, who was possessed of a docile temperament, would simply lift her shoulders and say that God had not seen fit to bless us, and we must accept it.
We had many fine years together. The first part of our marriage we spent living with my mother, until she passed away. Sadie tirelessly attended to her during the protracted illness which led to her death. My mother was not the warmest of women, and could be a difficult patient at times, but you would never have known it, the way Sadie doted on her without complaint.
Sadie and I rarely disagreed on any matter, and when we did, she ultimately deferred to me. In that way she was the perfect wife. She gave her opinions with care, and only when asked. My word was the final one, and when I spoke it, she would smile and say, “Of course, dear,” with a nod. I could not account for the lonesome lack of satisfaction and the sense of disappointment I felt each time this happened. Was Sadie not what every man longed for, an obedient and admiring wife upon whom one could depend? Of course she was.
After my mother’s passing, we bought land outside of Ysleta, on the bare plains. I built Sadie a fine sturdy house there in the shelter of a low hill, with a wide board porch which wrapped around the entire house, and a front room with space for her mother’s piano. On fine nights I would sit on the porch and smoke my pipe, and Sadie would play for me. We were very happy.
Several outbreaks of smallpox troubled the area over the years. Sadie fell ill in the winter of 1898. I do not understand why it is that I was spared when she was not. I reckon it is useless to think too much on such things when we here on earth can never truly discern any answer. But it troubled me, all the same. Sadie had such goodness in her. How could she be allowed to suffer so when, every day, rough men of the wickedest kind walked the world, unharassed by care?
In a moment of weakness, I expressed this to Sadie. She smiled gently at me, and suggested I read the Book of Job, and pray for patience.
I did as she asked as her health began to decline. A delirious fever took firm hold of her, and the doctor came. He held her thin wrist in his hand and looked down at his watch, frowning and giving a shake of his head. He believed there was nothing for it.
I became desperate. I prayed and begged and threatened. Still Sadie drifted further away from me, her body scarred by the disease and her mind trapped in a haze.
The doctor told me it would not be long. I did not leave her bedside.
I woke late one night to her hand ghosting lightly across my hair. I raised my head. She was awake and lucid, watching me as I slept in a chair beside her, collapsed forward onto the bed. I lifted myself somewhat blearily, scarcely able to believe that her mind was present.
“Hello, dear,” she said, smiling. Her eyes shone.
I held her hand in mine and pressed a kiss to her palm. “You do not need to fear. I am watching over you,” I said.
“I know you are. Bless you. Soon I will be watching over you.” She blinked, her thin brows drawing together in a frown as her eyes examined my face with uncharacteristic intensity. “I always knew I loved you better than you loved me, Thomas. Papa near had to throttle a proposal out of you... But I did not mind. Loving you made me happy, whether or not you had the same measure of affection for me.”
I did not know what to say to this. I felt as though this was a stranger who stared up at me from that bed, a stranger’s dark eyes and pale face, a stranger’s thin hand clasped in mine. I tried to deny it, tried to express the depth of my fondness for her, but she only hushed me and smiled, an odd expression in her eyes which spoke more of pity than of love.
Sadie departed this life shortly thereafter, leaving me a widower.
I admit I fell into a decline then, and understood for the first time the attraction Rooster Cogburn had felt for the bottom of a whiskey bottle. I was troubled by the fanciful idea that I had made mistakes in the past which I could not repair, and that Sadie’s death was a punishment which had been meted out to me. I had never doubted myself so thoroughly before. Eventually I gave up drinking and made certain that I was never idle. The thoughts soon passed away, and only troubled me some nights when my mind became agitated and I could not sleep.
Years passed. Many, many years whose exact contents remain obscure to me. Toward the end of the Great War, I was made to give up my post with the Rangers on account of what they called my advanced age. Looking back I can scarcely account for the years which had gone by almost without my notice.
There was not much to occupy my time in that house by myself. I missed my work, but my eyesight and my hearing had declined some, so I knew I was more trouble to the Rangers than I was worth by then. I had to accept that my days as a lawman, of tracking and shooting and riding, were now behind me.
One day I received a package from one of my nephews in California. Inside its brown paper wrappings was a book and a letter inquiring after my health, and asking whether I knew that an Arkansas spinster had written stories which included me.
I could have striped Mattie Ross’s leg for that book of hers. I stayed up all night reading it, although my doctor says I ought not to, stiff and arthritic as I’ve become. But I could not set aside that book of tall tales simply for rest! I may be old now, but I am still a Texas Ranger, and can stand a little late reading.
I scoffed at the way she painted me. Never have I been so insulted. “A vain and cocky devil” indeed! I am not ashamed to say that for three days and three nights I fumed at her impudence, wearing thin the green carpet in the front room. It was as though she had brushed me aside altogether, erasing all but the most basic hint of my presence in her life. She wrote nothing of the thoughts and regrets she must have had about me. I knew she must have had regrets.
I could not bear to think that she might not have regrets.
Finally I decided that I would not stand for such libel, and I wrote a letter to her publisher in Little Rock, identifying myself and my complaints, and questioning their morals as individuals and as a company for publishing such a pack of defamatory lies.
I received no reply.
The book was somewhat popular in these parts for a short while, and I reckon it did not take any great effort of intellect for folks in town to determine that I was the Mr. LaBoeuf of whom Miss Ross had written. There was a stir of interest and I got some attention. It was not the sort of attention one desires. I began to feel like an attraction in one of those wild west shows which used to be popular. A curiosity. Those people had no respect for me, and so I did not think it wrong of me to scare them off my property by firing shots from the front porch.
A man does what he must to protect his dignity.
Some months went by and the interest died down. Soon it was just me and my three-legged old bird dog Cody, and my horse, Jessie, again. The three of us and the small flock of skinny chickens I kept out back. We got along well enough without company, although sometimes the neighbour women would call and leave pies or loaves of bread on the porch. I do not know why; I was hardly in need of anyone’s charity. One of those ladies did make a very fine pecan pie, however, which reminded me of my Grandmother LaBoeuf’s, and of the humid summer nights when my brothers and I would sleep on the upstairs porch in her home outside Pineville, Louisiana, listening to the frogs and crickets sing. I was grateful for those pecan pies.
One evening in spring, I was resting on the couch in the front room when Cody began to bark. I scolded him, as the sudden noise gave me a start. I guess I had been falling asleep. It happens as one ages; at times you find yourself half-asleep before you know what has happened. Anyhow, Cody would not quit, and finally I heard what he did - the rumble of an automobile engine and the slam of a door. Had one of the neighbour women come to call? If so, I was not about to go to the trouble of standing up.
There was a sharp knock on my front door. I began looking about for the old stick I use for walking. Usually the ladies do not knock when they call; they just leave what they have brought on the step.
Cody continued to bark and abruptly left my side, skittering out into the front hallway. I got myself to my feet and went after him, my stiff knees giving me pains. It is awful to feel old and slow, and I did not like to be bothered by busybodies in this state.
I came around the corner to find my front door open, a woman standing there. Cody was at her feet, wagging vigorously. Turncoat. I ought to have shot him for disloyalty and general uselessness.
The lady was greeting him politely, not with foolish enthusiasm the way some do. People will make real fools of themselves around a dog. She looked up and saw me standing there.
“Mr. LaBoeuf.”
My eyes are not what they used to be, and so I stared uncomprehendingly for a moment at the silhouette which stood in the doorway.
“Who is that?” I inquired finally. “You ought to announce yourself. It is impertinent to simply let yourself into a man’s home. Why, in these parts you are likely to be shot, and no one would blame me. Who are you?”
“It is I, Mattie Ross. Did you not receive my letter, Mr. LaBoeuf?”
I stared, scarcely understanding her. I could not believe it. I could not believe that Mattie stood right there before me.
She had grown old. But then, so had I. I had become a straggly thing, for grooming was a labourious process, and I was much thinner and smaller in stature than I had been in my younger days. Mattie, however, was well-dressed in a smart blue dress and brown jacket with a hat to match. She looked staid for the times, but that is all right; there is no need for older folks to try to match their young counterparts as far as fashion goes. But the young girl I had once held in my arms was certainly gone. In her place was a handsome, mature woman who filled the space around her with her formidable bearing without saying a word.
“I - I received no letter,” I stammered. I could not help it. I was baffled.
“You should sit,” she said. She closed the door behind her and walked into the front room, gesturing at the place where I had sat only moments before, as though this was her house and I was the guest.
Galling as it was, I had no choice but to follow, for my breath was short and I felt unwell. I sat down in my usual spot, and Mattie seated herself in a chair right across from me.
We regarded one another in silence for a moment, and then Mattie cleared her throat. “I gather that you read my little book,” she said.
“Your publishers forwarded my letter on to you,” I replied.
“They did. While I appreciate your opinions on the matter, I thought that describing me as an ‘addlepated, unnatural old windbag’ was perhaps a bit harsh, however,” she replied. There was amusement in her voice, if not in her expression.
“Hmph. Well, you cannot expect me to tolerate such falsehoods.”
“The only falsehood I told was saying that I knew no more of you. Surely you can see that I did that to preserve your privacy,” she replied. She eyed me for a moment. “I assume you married. I had no desire to cause you trouble.”
“I did marry. My wife died many years ago, however.”
The hard line of her mouth softened. “I am sorry to hear that. That is a hardship.”
“I was sorry to hear about Cogburn,” I said. “He was a good man, all told, although he held little regard for me or for the Rangers. I would have liked to have seen him again.”
“As would I,” she replied, and her voice was sad. A silence fell between us.
“You ran an outfit of some kind, a savings and loans?” I inquired after a moment, groping back through the cobwebs of my mind in the hopes of landing on some useful information gathered from her stories.
“I did, yes, for many years. The farm became very successful and we began breeding thoroughbred race horses. I was able to build my business on that, and bought a building in town.”
“Well, who is running the business in your absence?”
Mattie fixed me with a long look, and then cleared her throat primly. “I am too old now to be worrying myself with business. My nephew Frank has worked with me for many years, and has taken the reins, so to speak. It is a fine thing to be at leisure, I suppose, but I do feel idle without any work to occupy me.”
“Hmph,” I said. “I gathered also from your book of tall tales that you never married. Or, if you did, you chose to omit those details along with several others.”
“You know perfectly well I would never have another,” she replied, punctuating this pronouncement with an indignant little huff of her breath.
I did not respond immediately, instead staring at her in wonder. “No,” I said finally, shaking my head. “I did not know perfectly well. I thought you would never have any, including myself. I came to believe you had little regard for me at all.”
“Mr. LaBoeuf,” she said, “Thomas, how could you believe I had little regard for you? You accompanied me on the greatest endeavour of my life, and you saved me when Chaney meant to kill me. Excepting my family, you are my oldest and dearest friend.”
I was astounded by this speech. “Mattie Ross, we have not exchanged a word since the night I left you standing on that porch. Forty years have passed since then. Your silence conveyed indifference. Surely you must see that.”
“I did not write to you because it is not proper to carry on a personal correspondence with a married man. You cannot possibly fault the judgement I made in such a predicament.”
“You would not have found yourself in any such predicament if you had done as I wished and married me and come to Texas!” She looked at me; her mouth was set in a stern line, but her eyes contained some forlorn emotion I had not seen since the night I left her with Cogburn in the Winding Stair Mountains. My anger abandoned me as quickly as it had taken hold, and suddenly I felt hollow and old. I sighed. “Why have you come here? Why do you insist on vexing me so?”
“I thought...” she faltered here, and gave her head a little shake. “When I wrote down my recollections for the paper, and when they wanted to turn it into a book, I hoped that you might see it and write to me. When I received no word, I feared that you had been called to God before I could see you again. Before I could stand before you, honest, at last.”
“Honest? What do you mean by this?”
“I mean that I returned the sentiments you expressed to me that day. I returned them long before that day, in fact, but I did not know how to respond to your proposal,” she said.
“You did not know - ? Confound you, Mattie Ross! Was there something puzzling about the way in which I phrased the question?”
“I never counted on receiving a single proposal in my life,” she replied, shaking her head. “Even before I lost my arm, my temperament and my interests were such that few men would ever take any serious interest in me. I knew this from a young age, and so I put the thought of marriage out of my mind altogether, and set myself to building a life of my own. I did not mind it; in truth I did not see what the purpose of marriage was, beyond the obvious. Those other men who pursued me were listless trash who wanted a housekeeper, not a wife. And you... Well, you never failed to advise me of the various ways in which I was deficient as a woman, and so when you proposed, it vexed me. I was very fond of you, Mr. LaBoeuf, very fond indeed. But I did not believe you wanted me as your wife. I believed you wanted to turn me into the wife you wanted.”
Mattie fell silent, and I stared blearily down at my lap, filled abruptly with acute regret. I wanted to believe that I had only been deficient in expressing myself to her, but both of us knew better than that. She was right to fear that from me. I had loved her, sincerely, and had never stopped. But I would have scolded and shamed her and tried to fit her with a bridle which was altogether wrong for her. I would have forced her to be a different woman, and driven us both mad in the attempt. I would have forced her to be a woman like Sadie. Sadie, a woman whom I never loved as I ought to have done, as she deserved, and whom I never loved as much as I loved Mattie.
They say that the Lord works in mysterious ways. At this moment, I cursed Him roundly for His cruel and backwards sense of humour.
“I am sorry now that I did not have more faith in you,” Mattie said. “I might have spared myself, at least, much regret and loneliness. Were you... Have you been happy, Mr. LaBoeuf?”
I looked up at her, at those familiar, clever brown eyes. “I was. But not as happy as I might have been.”
“I am sorry,” she repeated. I had never heard such contrition in her voice before. “That is my one true regret. But Mr. LaBoeuf, do you think you could be happy yet?”
“I am an old man now, Mattie. Do not torment me with false hopes,” I said, and my voice sounded rasping even to my own ears.
“Your hopes are not false,” she replied softly. Her expression was inscrutable. I did not dare to hope, despite her reassurances. I glanced away, and my eyes landed on the carpet bags sitting in the hallway.
“Mattie, do you mean... That is, am I to understand that you wish to stay here with me?”
“I do, if having a prickly old maid underfoot will not be too great a burden for you to bear,” she replied, smiling hesitantly.
“I do not have many years left in this world,” I said slowly, blinking rapidly and swallowing the lump which rose in my throat. “I want only to spend what time remains to me in your company. I no longer wish to be apart from you, for any reason of my own or that of any other man. I have... I have missed you long enough, Mattie.”
She was silent for a moment, and then she stood and, leaning forward at her waist and resting her hand on my shoulder, pressed a kiss to my forehead. I reached up and grasped her forearm, gripping her as though she might be ripped away from me.
“You are the silliest of men, of that I am very sure,” she said, her forehead resting against mine.
“Indeed,” I replied, pained. It was not untrue, although I thought it rather uncharitable of her to say it so plainly.
“You know, I still have not forgiven you for the thrashing you gave me that morning on the bank of the river, Mr. Thomas Cavanaugh LaBoeuf.”
I laughed, surprising myself. It was a dry, ill-used sound. “I am sorry to hear that. I will try to make amends, Miss Mattie Ross.”
“You are not the only one with amends to make. Not by far,” she replied.
She slipped her hand into mine, and did not let go for a long while.
We have told the neighbours that she is my widowed sister, come to look after me in my twilight years. I do not know whether anyone believes our little fiction. It is likely that we are simply too old for anyone to care about our comings and goings. Age renders a person, if not invisible, then at least inconsequential. For this, I am grateful. We are able to live in peace, undisturbed.
Mattie has revived the dry garden patch behind the house, and grows violets by the doorstep. The chickens are now fatter, and produce eggs. Mattie is a much better cook than I would have guessed, although perhaps my expectations have been lowered during my time as a widower. Every Sunday morning she marches me down the walk and into the black Model T her brother bought her as a gift, and she drives us into town for church. We attend First Presbyterian. I have not bothered to mention to Mattie that my mother was a Methodist and my father was a Catholic, and that I am not partial myself, for it makes her very happy to go, and she loves her Presbyterianism more than any other earthly thing.
We talk often of the old days, of Cogburn and Lucky Ned Pepper, of train robberies and rattlesnakes and snowy mountain nights around campfires. Mattie loves to tell stories, and loves to hear all those stories I did not have a chance to tell her of before; of my childhood outside Alexandria in Louisiana, the war, and of my time as a Ranger. Those wild days of lawless men and a land so vast that it seemed impenetrable. Now I look at maps and do not understand what I am seeing. The space has been filled with a spider web of lines connecting each thing to every other thing. I do not like the orderliness of it as much as I thought I would.
They call these days golden, or roaring. It is supposed to be a new modern age, but I do not see much except newness for the sake of newness, and strangeness, and it weighs on my mind. I am glad to have someone who remembers the same golden days as I do.
I do not fear the gloom that gathers as I approach the end of my life. Mattie has no fear either, but then, I do not think death was ever something she feared. She does not fear it because she has her faith. I do not fear it because I have her. Having lived most of my life in remoteness from her, I have already lived through a kind of hell, and therefore have little to fear in death. It is inevitable, in any case.
We sit together each night on the back porch, in the gloaming, watching the sun settle into the horizon, and listening to the trains as they pass through the valley, heading west.
-end-