THE HAND OF GOD

PART FOURTEEN:

She lay sleeping in his arms, the bare length of her against his left side. Her hair had tumbled into her face and, slowly, carefully, he tried to move some of the long tendrils away. He wanted to look at her face, wanted to drink in the sight of its sleeping vulnerability. He had gotten into more than one fight in his time over a woman, but this was something different and the fact of it still puzzled him. This was not a matter of fists or of guns, no, not that at all. This was a woman over whom he found himself wanting to spread...him. That was it. He wanted to spread whatever, whoever, he was...over her. So he lay there a long while thinking about that, turning it this way and that in his mind as his fingers played in her hair.

She was breathing softly through her mouth, sunk into deepest slumber. That made him smile. Her flesh, naked and smooth under the blankets, bare against his own, had made his love making easy. The bunched-up skirt was gone, the buttons were gone. There was nothing between him and her, nothing at all. He'd wanted to show her, show his LizzieBess, just what making love could be like. He'd taken his time, had come to know every inch of her, had taken her where she moaned aloud, had cried out with an ecstasy so profound she'd collapsed, quivering atop him. Her inexperience, her wonder at what he was doing, what he was making her feel, moved him deeply. He was used to women who spent their lives going from one bed to another, had used his wiles merely to get them past their usual boredom, give them something special to remember him by. But with LizzieBess everything seemed a new horizon and she took him with her in her newness, making everything fresh and new for him as well. Her discoveries delighted him. Yes, that was the word. And he had no memory of the last time he'd been delighted by anything. If

he ever had. He wasn't quite sure about that.

He thought again about the woman he'd asked just last week to go to Mexico with him. He'd meant it when he'd asked. He'd have gone out the window and taken her with him...if she would've gone. But she'd laughed, actually laughed, at the idea of it all, at what he was offering. He hadn't planned on offering her that. It had come to him while he sketched her. It wasn't her, no, not her as the woman she was. It was him. Only him. He'd liked the curve, the line of her hip and thigh. It was so...female. He was tired of what he'd been doing, tired of the men he'd been doing it with. And as he'd sketched that feminine line of hers, he thought he just might like having female companionship for a change. Something different. Something new. Only she wasn't really new. She was the same old thing and as soon as she laughed, he was jarred back

to the reality of that. She would not have been enough. He needed more than she could provide, required more than she could even conceive. Or was it that he was just more tired of it all than he'd thought?

Then he'd gone downstairs and the rancher was there. The brazen way he asked for money amused Ben, captured his interest. Then it turned out the man was more poker-faced than he'd expected. He was fresh off knowing the woman wasn't interesting enough, fresh into facing this man who was kind of interesting, maybe interesting enough that he let his guard down. That had to be one of the stupider moments of his life, but even in the midst of what happened next, his interest was piqued when Dan arranged to be part of his escort. He knew himself, knew why his guard was down, but hadn't really expected, not then, how much would change in his life because of it. That moment, with all its following twists and turns, had led him here, here to LizzieBess. He lifted a long strand of her dark hair to his lips. So different. So completely different. He kissed her hair and smiled, then closed his eyes, sleeping a while, his arm around her shoulder.

She stirred, changing position on the hard little bed, waking them both. Feeling his lips move in her hair, she sighed, stretched a bit, the movement instantly recalling to her that she lay unclothed beside him. His voice came soft, her name sliding down with his warm breath over

her face. "LizzieBess?"

"Umm hmm," she murmured, warm under the double layer of blankets, warm because his flesh touched hers.

"You doin' all right?"

"I'm doing just fine, Ben. Just fine. You think we can stay here, just like this, for the next week or so?"

He chuckled, his ribcage rising with it, bouncing her somewhat. She responded by moving her arm across his middle, cupping it around him, and turning her cheek more into his chest. It was a movement filled with tenderness and made him blink rapidly several times.

The fire was very low again, making only a few dim shadows flicker around the room.  A little hell-hole of a place, he thought, smack in the middle of nowhere...yet she was here. "How," he whispered, "how did I come across you?" 

"You needed a cave," she replied, tipping her head enough so she could look up at his face. "And when we need one, it's often there."

"I wasn't lookin' for no cave, LizzieBess. I was just lookin' to get myself across the border. Lookin' to keep myself outta something too much like a cave."

"Where, Ben? Where was that?"

"Yuma. Been locked in there twice. Wasn't goin' back."  But he'd let Dan take him to the train, hadn't he?  Would he actually have gone all the way to Yuma for Dan? He guessed that didn't matter any more. Dan was dead and within moments Ben had whistled for Ranger. Dan was gone and Yuma was simply Yuma again, and he had no intention of going there. He was silent

a while, remembering things she'd said earlier.

"Why'd you need yourself a cave so bad, LizzieBess? I still don't...."

"It's not like Yuma, Ben, not at all. It's...it's hard to explain."

"I think I need you to try, LizzieBess. I need to know why you're here, why I could find you here."

With her fingertip, she traced circles in the dusting of hair on his chest. "It's so...odd. Now it is.

I didn't expect you, you know. I never once thought...."

"That I'd fall in your door?"  He chuckled again.

"I came here to find something, to find my way...back...to something, something I lost because of what I thought was love. I thought I could find my way to the heart of it here because... because...."

"Because why?"  he asked when she'd not continued.

"Because that's how a cave works, Ben.  When you grip your will in your hands and you come willingly, even when it's not an actual prison house like Yuma but a different sort entirely, when it's the prison house of your own will, then you're not trapped in it, then there's always a way out, but only if it's to the heart of the matter..."  She stopped the motion of her finger on his chest, peering up at his dimly-seen face. "It's what God did, you know. His life went from a beginning cave to an ending one, making a full circle. And He went to both of them willingly."  She lay her cheek in the center of his chest, listening to his heart as she continued. "Both caves were prison houses for His will, but He entered them anyway, entered them out of love." She kissed his skin above his heart. "And that's why I came here, Ben. I came so I could understand that, so maybe if  I could understand that, then I could understand myself, what I'd done, what I'd lost, what the pain of it was all about."

"Guess I kinda messed that up for you, eh?"

"I've been thinking about that, Ben, really thinking about that."  She propped herself on her right elbow, reaching up with her left hand to touch his beard. "You were a surprise. I've got

to admit that. I thought I'd just be here alone, trying to let go, trying to abandon myself to whatever came. But it was you who came, you. I don't know why, but you did. And you're here now and...this...happened. I should be horrified and I think there is some part of me
somewhere that might even be a little horrified, but it's not at all like I would have expected." 

Her fingertip traced his lips. "Did you ever see two puddles of water, close but not touching? Then something changes and they're suddenly closer and when they do touch, all the water of both of them rushes toward the other and they end up as one puddle. It's like that, I think."

"I'm a puddle?"

Now she chuckled. "A muddy one at that!"  Then serious again, she continued. "So I'm lying here and I'm not just me anymore. I've got you all mixed around with me and that's all new

and different for me and I'm still thinking about what that means."

"Maybe it means you're muddy now, too?" he laughed. Then what he'd said landed heavily on him. "Maybe it does mean that, LizzieBess. Do you...?"

"Do I think you've made me dirty, Ben? Is that what you're asking?" 

He nodded, his eyes hooded, his mind flooding with things he'd never thought about before, never needed to think about, especially not when it involved something as simple as lying with

a woman. But this was not just a woman beside him, this was Elizabeth, and there was nothing

simple about it.

"Ben, it was the injury of love that started me on my journey here, and in the last hours you've shown me more of  the depth of love, of the tenderness of love, of the joining that comes with love, than I've ever known in my life. So, no, Ben, I don't feel dirty."

"But...."

"No, no buts." She lay her finger across his lips. "I broke the 'thou shalt nots' back with Father Brendon and I have repented in sackcloth and ashes for that with a heart truly, truly filled with sorrow. In Cincinnati, after the baby, when I knew I didn't want to be a Sister any more, they
released me from my vows. So I am no longer a nun."  She smiled up at him. "Not in any sense

of the word."

He remained silent, listening intently.

"I lay with a man who was supposed to be a holy man, a man dedicated to the Lord in all his ways. But that was, for me, unclean because I had no understanding of love and neither did he, and we had both made promises to God."  She trailed her hand down his jaw line, his throat, to his chest again as she spoke. "And now I have lain with an outlaw, and a muddy outlaw at that, and yet I have no sense of shame.  What that makes me, I'm not quite sure. I only know all is right in my heart and my soul is at peace."  She kissed his chest again then rested her head there. "And it is enough."

Ben lifted his left hand, letting it hover a fraction over the back of her head.  No one, not ever, had spoken to him as Elizabeth did, and he kept his hand hovering just out from her, not touching, while he gathered his spilled thoughts into a single container. It took him a long, silent while but then he came to a decision and rested his palm on her head, sliding his fingers comb-like up through her hair, leaving it there as he closed his eyes, merely breathing being quite enough.

When he lay his hand on her head, she sighed, and the two of them remained together like that for the better part of an hour, not sleeping, just...being.

Then his stomach growled and they both chuckled at the same time. "I can tell that both you and the fire need feeding," she said, starting to get up.

"Is there anything?"

"I can probably make a corncake or two, but that's all."

"We need to go huntin', LizzieBess. Maybe if there's a stick I can use as sort of a cane...?"

"Well, first, let me get a corncake into you and maybe clean your clothes again now that they're all off." She grinned at him. "For the first time."

As she rose, she wrapped the top blanket around herself, stepped over him, and added wood to the fire. She picked up his clothes from the mingled pile on the floor, examining them. "I think

I might just be able to brush a lot of the mud off these now that it's dried. Will be good not to have to get them wet again. But you, you've got mud here 'n there that's going to need washing."

"Would that be a threat, ma'am?"

"Definitely. Just let me warm some water. You want a bath or food first?"

"Corncakes ain't hardly food, so I 'spect I'll choose the bath."  His eyes were glowing in the rekindled firelight. "Always did kinda like keepin' myself clean."

Quickly she filled the basin with snow and melted it by the fire. Finding a relatively fresh rag, she knelt beside the pallet. He folded his hands behind his head, watching her face as she squeezed most of the warm water out of the rag. The blanket was around her like a cape, but

when she leaned forward its sides swung open and his eyes lowered to her breasts. As she moved they swayed slightly, the light doing marvelous, artistic things upon them, an interplay of deepest shadow and amber illumination.

She began with his face again, her touch, though gentle, causing his skin to come alive.  This time she washed him completely and he lay as quietly as he could, receiving it from her. His body trembled from time to time and it became obvious to them both that when the bath was over,

the corncakes would have to wait. 

ON TO PART 15

BACK TO LIBRISCROWE

BACK TO PART 13

BACK TO INDEX