Nakoa's Woman Read Free

breakfast, but she did not leave. And when he brought her wood for the stove her eyes met his in new seduction. Her new dress was even tighter across her bosom, her voice was lower and more musical, and a scent had been placed at the base of her throat. With his own throat growing hot and dry, he tried to eat with his daughters.
    Later Meg went upstairs to tend his wife. Ana and Maria went to sit with her, but he could not. He sat by the fire with his head in his hands. Then much later, Maria gently touched his face. “She is just sleeping,” she said softly, and went to bed after Ana. The fire burned itself out. In the cold he shivered and stiffly rose to his feet. He went to the kitchen to sleep where he had slept since his wife’s illness. Taking off his shoes, he stretched out his long frame, and thought of Meg. He went back to her bed that night and returned in the morning, and even when he was with her in front of his daughters it was all he could do to keep his eyes off her breasts.
    His wife regained consciousness, and when she first opened her eyes, she gave him such a long and overpowering look of pure love that he wanted to moan in agony. She was dying in holy grace. He felt unable to touch her flesh again. He was hollow inside and was slipping down a void that had no bottom. His daughters could weep, but he could not. For what he had done and wanted to do again and again with Meg, he was denied even the solace of being able to weep. His wife soon sank into a deep sleep, and she remained this way for weeks. She would sleep and rally, and after seeming to gain strength, slip into unconsciousness again. All of these dismal days the skies were darkening, and more and more rain streamed against the small windows.
    Now Meg sought him as much as he sought her. Neither one of them was satisfied just to meet at night, and when they met they were like savages. He thought her the lowest kind of bitch, for she would do anything to oblige him, but his wildness did not abate, and grew equally in her. It was a nightmare. But his only touch with reality seemed to be when he was with Meg.
    One afternoon the girls were upstairs with their mother, and before he could go up, Meg came to him. She led him to her room and their intimacy had already begun when he heard a noise. Yet he could not leave Meg for his own life, nor would she give him up. Later he rested with his lips against her breast, and then he dressed and went into the kitchen. There wasn’t a sound in the house. He walked into the front room, and Maria was huddled, shivering and wet, in front of the fire.
    “Where have you been?” he asked her, astounded that she would go outside in the driving rain.
    “I went to the orchard,” she replied softly. “Mother is dead,” she said matter-of-factly. “I thought you might like to know that she died calling for you.” The way she looked up at him, he knew that she was aware where he had been.
    Remembering, Edward Frame sobbed openly, his hands clenched into tight fists. Now he was alone with their daughters, and God, oh God, he did not know what to do. Were twelve wagons enough? Oh, my love, do you know? Do you know that all of the time it was you, and the loving and caressing that could be no more between us? Or do you look coldly down, unforgiving, because I am still mortal? Or do you know at all? “I don’t know what to do!” he whispered. “I don’t know what to do!”
    In early April the twelve wagons moved out from Laramie. The great wheel by Ana’s side drove lizards and snakes from its path. Prairie dogs watched the wheel pass and then went back to sleeping in the sun. Ana felt Maria’s serenity, and ahead of them Edith Holmes pressed the life she felt moving in her womb. Clouds gathered and made the prairie ahead shimmer in sunlight and become somber in shadow. “Come into the world of light and darkness, my little love,” Edith whispered to her unborn child. Dust from the moving wheels rose ahead