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They sat apart.
Each looked out a different side window.
In the back seat, in a low voice, Austin asked Iris, “You okay?”
She slowly blinked, then turned her head to look at him. He had to repeat his question. Then she nodded.
Austin was struck by that. How unlike a woman to neglect an opportunity to expound on such a question. To think of all the nothing replies she could have given him. She could have said, As compared to what? Or, Under what condition? Or even just, Why? Or she could explain to him why she was in such doldrums. He would like to know.
Dead in the water, she was.
Austin again looked at Iris. He moved his mouth in thought. Dead in the water described Iris very well. No response. No animation. No flirting. No laughter.
She moved, but it wasn’t animation. It was by rote in response to the need to shift or walk or eat. With her, it wasn’t ever choice. It was response. Austin wondered, was there enough life left in that luscious body? How could he reach in to rouse her enough to see him as a man she was interested in. One she could want.
She sat looking out the car window and was silent. He considered that she, too, was dead. Just about as dead as those three ex-husbands of hers. What good was her life now? She was as removed from life as if she now actually shared their graves.
So then Austin wondered which of the three graves she’d choose to share?
Austin was appalled to find he would wish to be one of the three with that claim on her. Each of those dead men had loved her enough to marry her. To be with her. To listen to her. They’d made love with her. Had she ever laughed with them?
Compassion for the three men licked through Austin, but he didn’t back off. Instead, he took Iris’s hand and held it in his. Their hands were linked between them, her cold little hand lying in his big hot one on the back seat as they sat apart.
His hand holding hers was very comforting to the freshly stirred grief that her conscience had awakened in Iris.
Would she ever be free of the guilt she suffered because her husbands were all dead, and she was still alive? All three had been especially good men.
Austin moved his hand as his warm, briefly tightening fingers assured her he was there.
He had the good, square, warm, rough hand of a man who worked physically. It was emotional for Iris to be given that comfort, right then. Her eyes teared.
Austin saw her tears in the glow of the passing streetlamps. Tears? Why...tears? He considered her particular situation and the teaching of the play.
Austin knew that Iris had understood the play, but instead of looking ahead to life, he realized that she was looking back at her abandonment. Was she alone? She could hardly be alone in her noisy, busy family. If she noticed who all was actually there with her.
Was she thinking of the loss of her husbands? The waste of their lives. How could anyone tell her that what had happened, had happened, and it was all past?
The play gave him the courage to open a discussion. “It was a good play.”
After a pause, she replied, “Yes.”
“Live for the day.”
She did not respond. But she didn’t move her cold little hand from the shelter of his hot one.
Austin wasn’t sure if he could say anything else. It might be too emotional for her. It was the first time they’d been out together—with Bud and Violet, of course—and this might not be the time to start her talking.
He could wait. He needed her to get used to him, to be comfortable with him. Then they could talk. He was older than she, and he was more worldly.
Worldly? She’d had three husbands!
Well, they’d all been kids. They’d been young and raw. And she hadn’t had any of them long enough to really be tested. She needed permanence and maturity.
She needed...him.
He again looked over at her. Her cold little hand was warming in his big hot hand. Hers was lax and...trustful? Did she trust him? She was looking at the passing suburbs of San Antonio as they drove through town toward the highway that went to Fuquay.
In the front seat, Bud was regaling Violet with all the old jokes that had obviously been stacked up inside him. Violet never once said, “Not that old one.” She either had a compassionate heart or no one had ever subjected her to all those old, stale jokes. Actually—and it was a surprise—Bud was a pretty good jokester. His timing was good. And here and there even Austin had to smile.
Iris did not. She simply gazed out the car window and was silent.
Austin just sat holding her hand and he, too, was silent.
It was rather late when Iris got home. Her mother heard Iris’s light step on the porch followed more slowly by the reverberation of Austin’s shoes on the porch.
The screen opened and closed almost immediately. On the porch the male steps were silent. Then Austin turned slowly and finally went off down the steps as he left.
When Iris went upstairs to her room in her parents’ house, her mind was not in charge. It was off somewhere. She moved by rote. She undressed and crawled into bed without brushing her teeth.
Emotionally exhausted, she slept. She dreamed of looking for her husbands. She searched for them. She was the only stronger in all the places she searched. But she couldn’t contact them at all.
Where were they?
Her dead husbands were good, young men. Would they be together? Jake and Tom were friends, and Peter had known Tom. Would they have met? Would they have talked about her with each other? When she died, would they all greet her? Or would they be...in the beyond?
Iris wakened, and found her eyes wet with tears. She still grieved for those husbands.
Her life was over. How long would she have to wait to get past this life and find them again?
The play had chided the audience to use their lives while they had them. Ah, but what if the use was gone? What if there was no reason to go on?
She had married three men. None was now with her. And none had left her with a child. They had all left her...alone.
Iris went about the morning as usual. She was drained. She looked at the day with disinterested, cold eyes. It was just another day to get through.
At breakfast, as she sipped tea, Iris’s mother came into the kitchen and said her usual, “Good morning, darling.”
Iris asked, “Which am I?”
Her mother poured some tea into a cup before she replied, “The wounded one.”
Iris considered that response. “Yeah. I suppose that covers it I have three deep slashes in my heart.”
Tears in her eyes, her mother replied, “That describes it well.”
“Austin took me to see You Can’t Take it with You last night.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the play?”
“Very well.”
With her voice’s rough shattering, Iris asked, “How can I find any reason to enjoy this life?”
It took a while for her mother to reply. “You can look at the day and the people who live in it. You can look forward instead of backward.”
Her voice trembling with tears, Iris guessed, “I discard each one and forget them all?”
“No. You...release them...and let them go.”
Her voice husky and bitter, Iris asked, “I tell them to just run along and get lost?”
And her mother replied gently, “You must let them go.”
“They’re in my mind!”
“You’ve trapped them there.”
“No!” Iris got up and left the room with her breakfast almost untouched.
Not eating was one of Iris’s problems. Not eating, and not caring what happened. She was afraid to be close to anyone, so she was gruff and distancing to all those around her. It was selfprotection. She didn’t want to love and lose anyone else.
Edwina wondered when the time would come that Iris would reach out? To whom? For what reason? What would it take for this fragile, wounded child of hers to see the world...and to be a part of it again?
Two
Iris came down the stairs in a soft, long, rumpled dress and her hair hadn’t been brushed very well. She’d probably just clawed her fingers through her hair.
Without any greeting, Austin told her of his cow as Iris came down the last steps. “You remember Fanny? She has a new calf. Come see it.” He didn’t smile or coax. He gave her the unadorned option.
Iris questioned, “New?”
Austin agreed. “Joe just called in on the CB. The momma was licking the sack from her baby just before I got here. I really thought I’d get you back there in time for the birth.”
Austin watched Ires. She just moved on past him slowly but she went on out the door. With a quiet glance at the riveted Edwina, the silent Austin followed the silent Iris.
Since Iris moved slowly, Austin got to the truck ahead of her and opened the door for her.
She just got up into the pickup and sat there with her hands clasped on her lap.
Austin hurried around the truck and got in real quick and started the motor. He was very aware that if Iris could get in that easily, she could get out just as quick.
He noted that her seat belt wasn’t on her. But he couldn’t stay there to correct it because she could change her mind, get out of the truck—and leave. So he drove carefully to the edge of Fuquay before he said, “Hey, our seat belts aren’t on.”
And he helped with hers... Ah, for his own arms to be given the job of protecting her body! His eyes squinched and his mouth opened a little bit so that he could breathe.
She made no move to help with the belt and didn’t even watch him fix it. She just moved her arm and allowed herself to be safeguarded.
Only after she was secure did he buckle his own belt. She made no comment.
While his mind noted the weather, his neighbor’s livestock and other vehicles on the road, he also noted every breath and move Iris made as she sat silently in the cab of his pickup.
Finally he said, “Violet and Bud had another date.”
Iris made a sound in reply that meant only that she’d heard him.
He said, “Marla’s twins have the croup.”
He’d spent time that morning talking to Iris’s friend Maria and getting the gossip so that he’d have something to say to such a silent woman. Even if she didn’t reply or discuss each item, she would know the current gossip.
Thoughtfully. Austin looked over at Iris. And he wondered, would she?
She just turned her head to look out the car window and said nothing. Was her mind gone? Would her eyes ever see him? Why had she gone into the decline? Since she came home, it seemed to Austin that she just got worse.
If she didn’t have all the money from her dead husbands, she’d have to get out and work. She’d have to have some contact with other people. Edwina said Iris prowled the dark house at night.
So Austin asked Iris, “Do you sleep during the day?”
“No.”
Then why did she...prowl...at night?
The day was balmy and the fresh air came over .the land from the Gulf and into the pickup.
Austin told his passenger, “Breathe that TEXAS air. It’s good for your vitals.”
Very softly, she replied, “I can breathe.” None of her dead husbands could.
Austin blinked. He knew she could breathe. What did she mean? He frowned at the road, wondering if he should ask. But he bit his lip and commented, “Look at the sky. How wide and blue it is.”
At her silence he looked over and saw she was still peering out the car window. She was responding by looking? Or was she already aware the sky was blue, and it was obvious, so she felt no need to confirm his observation?
They drove the rest of the way in silence. He rode over the grid between the gateposts. The grid discouraged cattle from going over onto the roadway. And it eliminated the need to get out of the truck, open the gate, get back into the truck, drive through, then get out and close the damned gate before getting back inside the waiting truck.
Of course, driving in thataway on the grid, a man always has to peel off any woman who might be stuck to his chest. And she ought to be reasonably dressed.
There were cameras, which were triggered by any weight on the grid. A man, a horse, a beeve or a vehicle could trigger a picture. If anything went over the grid, it was filmed.
The film was evidence. The tape would show the truck, the driver and the license number. The cameras were cleverly hidden, but often stolen from their places. They were worth replacing even if it was a hell of a nuisance.
The cameras were for rustlers who could drive over the grid just like anybody else. And they could take out a cow or two and carry them off.
Austin looked over at his silent passenger as they exited the grid. He looked down her body. It was skinny. But there was potential. She was so nicely female. He lusted for her. He always had.
She’d gone away to college. He’d been twenty-four and thought he had plenty of time. Since she was then eighteen, if she wanted to be that educated, he could wait. Who could believe she’d be married—to another man—in just six months?
That was the first time.
