Long Winter Gone

girl.

Both of them laughed, wrestling with the hounds, feeling once more the freedom to savor what time they had left. After a few minutes of play, the bitch nipped her male companion and darted from the tent. With his tongue lolling, the male joyously leapt from the bed and followed.

Alone again in the early twilight of a spring evening, Monaseetah cupped her tiny hand along Custer’s smooth cheek, still not sure if she liked his bare face. Then she pulled him down to her parting lips.

Resisting a moment, Custer whispered, eyes darting to the cradleboard by the stove, “What about the child?”

“He sleeps, Yellow Hair,” Monaseetah answered, pulling him down on top of her as the little life within her belly tumbled.

“The child sleeps.”

Nuzzling a warm place for his cheek on the pillow, Custer feigned sleep as she slipped from the covers and padded barefoot to the trunk where her dress lay.

He had to admit, the view from this direction was mighty appealing. His half-sleepy eyes slid from the nape of her neck, across the little wings of her shoulder blades, on down to the slimness of her waist as it molded into the roundness of her heart-shaped buttocks. He’d nearly forgotten how good she looked.

And, until last night, how good she felt beside him in bed. With nothing else touching him but her heated flesh.

“Good morning, my little sunbeam!”

Whirling at the sound of his voice, Libbie swept up the flowing crinoline dress she had worn on the train from Monroe, clutching it before her to hide her nakedness.

“Why, Autie!” she squealed. “Why ever did you want to scare me like that?”

“Scare you?”

“Watching me with no clothes—not a single stitch at all. While your eyes get their fill!”

“Come now,” he replied, smiling. “I haven’t near seen my fill!”

She let him have it with those amber eyes of hers, eyes that could claim only to be half-mad with him for studying her body in wide-eyed admiration.

“Gracious lady, will you accept my apology?”

He slipped from the blankets, standing before Libbie without shame.

Her eyes widened before she thought to hold a hand over them. “You’re terrible, Autie! Horrible to me!”

“Come, now—you’ve seen all of me before!”

“Not on purpose, I haven’t!”

He reared back, amused at the sight of her hiding her face behind one hand while the other struggled to hold the dress over her own nakedness, nonetheless exposing her small, fine breasts.

“Here, Libbie. Let me help you get dressed.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind!”

“You white women are such silly prudes.”

“White women? What would you know about—” she began, then pulled her hand from her eyes, fuming suddenly. “Autie Custer, if the Good Lord intended people to be naked, he’d not invented clothing for us to wear!”

“The Lord didn’t invent clothes, Rosebud! Man covers his own shame.”

“And you certainly should be ashamed of yourself, Bo!” she said. “Treating a proper lady so shabbily.”

“Lady! For God’s sake, you’re my wife!”

“You ought to treat your wife better than a common harlot.”

He stopped laughing. “You didn’t mind me treating you like a harlot last night.”

She turned from his probing eyes, then realized in her turning he saw all the more of her. Her lips pressed into a thin, pouting line of anger, realizing he had gone and said it. What she had hoped they would never talk of again.

“Such a long time … for us both, husband.”

“Too long, Libbie.”

“Will you put your trousers on, please?”

“Can’t you talk to a naked cavalry officer?”

“Not until he has his britches buttoned. While you do it, you can turn around so I can put my things on.”

“All right.” He sighed.

Custer plopped on the bed, pulling the gray pants over his feet. “Libbie, there’s been so much time since we … I only thought we owed it to ourselves to try again.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that this morning.” She wrenched up the deep blue dress, shook it angrily, and stepped among its ample folds. “I don’t want last night to become a habit with us.”

“A habit?” He gulped. “A man and his wife can’t enjoy each other?”

“Such activity should be preserved for the creation of God’s greatest gift, a child.”

“There you go with that Presbyterian drivel again!”

“A child, Autie. A child!”

“Stop right now before you get yourself worked up again. I’ve heard it all many times before. Isn’t that why we both just stopped trying?”

“If not to create a child, what’s the purpose of our intimacies?”

“Purpose? My God, Libbie—in case you haven’t noticed lately, I’m a man and you’re still every inch a woman! You made no complaints last night.”

“That was last night.” She stared solemnly at the tent wall. “I’d grown so lonely for you. Missing you.”

“Do you remember the last time we made love?” he asked, stepping toward her.

She shook her head.

“Me neither. You can bet it was a long time before I left Monroe. But last night—that was as good as we’ve ever been together.”

“I was so lonely for you, Autie.” She whimpered like a wounded animal.

He clutched her shoulders. “We can grow close once more. Sharing our bodies again as we—”

“We don’t need that!”

Custer’s hands slipped from her shoulders. “No, I suppose we don’t.” He was weary of it already. He turned away, defeated. “I had hoped—”

“I quit hoping long ago, Autie.” She swept one of his hands up in hers. “Quit hoping for a child that would draw us even closer together. Please.” she begged. “The kindest, most loving thing you can do for me is to forget being intimate with me. You must understand how cruel it is—the guilt I suffer this morning—for what I did last night.”

“For making love to me? With everything you are as a woman?”

“Yes,” she answered firmly. “I can’t have a child. We can’t have a child. And each time we make love, I’m reminded that I’m just a little less as a woman, a little less as a wife to you.” She gazed up at him as he brushed a strand of chestnut hair from her eyes.

“Autie, you can’t want to remind me of the horror and revulsion I feel for my own body’s failure to bear your children!”

Libbie collapsed against him, tears boiling up from some incomplete place down in her being. He stroked her long chestnut hair.

Soon she’ll pin it up around her face, he knew. But for now, it flows over her shoulders, rumpled from our night together. Hair long and flowing like—

He tried to shove the other out of his mind. Feeling like a sham dodger, holding Libbie, thinking of Monaseetah.

“All right,” he whispered, beaten. Such a hard thing to do, this drawing back from the woman he had fallen in love with when he was ten years old. Too painful for him to dredge up all those hopes and dreams any longer— those prayers that Libbie would be all things to him.

“It’s settled, Libbie.”

He felt her arms squeeze about him reassuringly. Lord, but he loved this frail, insecure woman so much at