In any country, he added. As far as I'm concerned, another silence. Then DAT turned said something low to Amma, pulled the blanket up over her sister with the automatic precision of someone who had done this 10,000 times. Amma reached up briefly and touched her sister's hand. Both of them closed their eyes.
Gideon added wood to the fire, sat back down, and waited for morning the way he had been waiting for things for seven years. patient, present, not expecting anything in particular to change, not knowing yet that everything already had. Morning came sideways, the way Wyoming December mornings do. Not a sunrise, a slow darkening of the dark into something that was marginally less dark. Gideon was at the stove when Desa woke the second time.
He heard her shift, heard the creek of the floorboard just inside the braided rug, the one he had been meaning to fix for 3 years, and knew she was at the window before he turned. He kept stirring the oats. Northeast, he said, not turning. Ridge is about a mile and a half. North pasture in the creek between here and there.
Nothing else a pause. Fence line runs east west, half a mile out, broken in two places from the storm. My fence posts. Not another man's land. Another pause.
Trail south goes through the timber. Comes out on the main road in four miles. Deep with snow right now, but passable. He turned. She was standing exactly as he had imagined, upright, hands easy at her sides, her clothing, the ochre buckskin, the fringe still carrying residual ice at the edges, the turquoise beadwork startling against the pale December light.
looked different in daylight than it had in fire light more itself. The blue green of the beads sharp and real like summer kept somewhere and brought out unexpectedly. One braid slightly loosened from sleep. A strand at her temple she had not fixed. She was looking at him with the expression of someone who had expected one thing and found another.
You could have told me where the trail south was, she said. instead of the fence lines. You were looking northeast, Gideon said. So I started northeast. She was quiet a moment.
You are not what I expected, she said. What did you expect? She didn't answer that. Which was an answer. He turned back to the oats.
Breakfast soon. Your sister needs to eat. He heard her move to Amma. The quiet exchange in Apache that compressed efficient language of two people who have spoken to each other long enough that the words don't need to carry all the weight because the spaces between red do. Gideon had had something like that with Norah.
By the end of the third year, whole conversations in a look across a room. He hadn't thought about it in a long time. He set two bowls on the table. Desa helped Amma to the bench supporting her left side. Amma moved carefully but moved.
Looked at the bowl of oats. "Thank you, " she said. "Don't thank me yet, " Gideon said. "It's plain oats. I'm not much of a cook.