Hers the Kingdom (28 page)

     He told us anecdotes, little jokes that made us smile, but he almost never talked about himself. One evening Willa and I determined to draw him out. When he saw he couldn't slip away from our questioning, he told us about leaving Ireland when he
was seventeen to come to America. His father had known the Scot who was an overseer on a great ranch in Montana, and the man had agreed to take Connor on as a hand, "to make a man out of me."

     "My dad, you see, was worried that I was coddled, being the only boy in a houseful of women. I had three sisters, all of them older, and he was sure they and my mother spoiled me." He had paused a few moments, then added, "Maybe they did, if spoiling means being good to you. No matter, I found myself on a ranch in Montana that was three times the size of my home county in Ireland and I thought I had never seen such emptiness, such pure desolation in all of my life." He laughed, as if to shake off the memory of pain. "I thought I'd die of homesickness that first year. Lucky for me it isn't fatal. But I did learn that 'hard work' can mean one thing to an Irishman and another to a Scot, but if the Scot's the boss you had better accept his meaning of the word.

     "I came after the ranges were fenced," he told us one night, "but the older cowpunchers would talk about the days when cattle roamed free. Whenever a big winter storm hit, they said, the whole herd would just turn south and begin to walk, and they would just keep on walking until they walked out of the storm. Then the herd would rest up for maybe a half an hour, and turn around and start back up north again. By springtime, when the big round-up would get underway, that herd would be just about back to where it had started from before the storm hit— the cowboys could find them without much trouble, they said. Even though sometimes the herd had traveled a hundred miles or more to the south.

     "When the fences were built," he went on, "and a storm would hit, the cattle would turn and begin their long walk south, away from the eye of the storm, and they would walk until they came to a fence. When they couldn't get through they would begin to pace back and forth, back and forth along the fence line, and as more and more cattle came pushing in from behind they would climb on
top of each other until, when the storm cleared, the rancher would find them there along the fence, in a big frozen pile."

     "Is there a moral to that story?" Willa had wanted to know.

     Connor grinned, his slow magic smile transforming his face, and said, "The moral is, always know how to locate the gate."

     I enjoyed those evenings more than I had believed possible. I felt, for the first time ever, I thought, like someone on the inside. Connor seemed equally interested in us; the three of us took pleasure in each other. And because of that—because of Connor—the old warmth seemed to have returned between Willa and me. We were friends again, partners in the daily business of life. We had somehow managed to extricate ourselves from positions that we had seemed caught in—she as the married matron, me as the invalid dependent sister. I wondered if Willa had known all along that Connor McCord could do that for us.

     Our days that spring were filled with sun and laughter. In the mornings we did the work of the ranch, the afternoons I spent with Wen and Wing Soong in the orange or the pear orchard, studying bees. Willa took off each afternoon with her sketchbooks, roaming the ranch in search of her hawks while Connor could be seen coming and going in the barns and orchards, keeping a close check on everything about the ranch.

     The pattern was marred only on those days when work prevented Soong from joining us in the pear orchards, or when Connor went into Los Angeles on business. He went to the city, rather than Santa Monica, we knew, because he often spoke of the strange sights he was seeing there—the faith healers in their big tents, the new towns going up where there had been desert the last time he was there. We did not learn much about the business he conducted, perhaps because we had long since learned not to quiz Owen on business matters for fear of being bored with details. We did know that often enough Connor would have had to return in the middle of the night, on the last low tide, in order to have started the ranch day at six, as he always
did. I think I have never known a man who needed less sleep than Connor McCord.

     One afternoon Willa returned from her wanderings looking vaguely troubled. That night at dinner she told us about the condor she had tracked that day.

     "It is the most amazing of birds," she said. "I had read about them, of course, but I had not seen one close up until today. The wingspread is twenty-five feet—can you imagine that? It was . . . awesome. Not like the hawks—condors are vultures, you know— nothing so clean and . . . precise . . . as a hawk."

     Connor had, I remember, changed the subject, nudging us into a lighter mood. Before long Willa seemed to have forgotten the condor, and the shadow it had cast.

Sara was to be married on June 28. Early in April she sent word that she wanted me to travel to San Francisco with her, to help her choose a trousseau. We would make it a grand outing, she said, with trips to the theater and visits to all the grand sights. It was a new, ebullient mood for Sara and I was happy for her.

     Willa said that I must go, that it would be good for me. It would be good for Sara, too—I knew that. I was only surprised at my own lack of enthusiasm. I had never been happier on the ranch, and I did not want to break the spell.

     On the day before I was to leave, a fine white fog washed in from the sea. It was warmer than it had been, and I knew the interlude of bright, cool weather was over. That afternoon Wen and I found Soong waiting for us in the pear orchard. He had discovered a large section of old honeycomb and, while the house was silent around us, he patiently dissected it with Wen's eager help.

     When the child wandered off after a time, I told Wing Soong that I would be leaving. "I almost wish I weren't going," I heard myself say. "I mean, it has been so pleasant here these last weeks."
He was looking at me with curiosity and for a moment I thought he didn't understand my English, until I remembered that his English was perfect. "I mean," I stumbled, "I've learned so much about bees . . ." I was beginning to feel supremely silly, but I couldn't seem to stop. "I am trying to say . . ."

     "May I ask, please, when Mr. Reade is expected to return?" he asked, formally, shocking me into silence.

     "Why do you ask?" I finally said.

     He smiled then, disarmingly. "Selfishness, actually. Mr. Reade is often kind enough to lend me volumes from his library."

     I was astonished.

     "You know Owen?"

     His answer was careful. "I do not
know
my employer, to be sure. Now and then he has stopped to talk with me, most of the time about things regarding the garden, and perhaps now and then about other things. He is a most kind gentleman, Mr. Reade."

     Before I could ask what "other things" he and Owen talked about, Wen came running back with an urgent question.

     Owen and Wing Soong. I couldn't think why I should be surprised. Owen had an insatiable interest in everybody and everything. Certainly he would find Soong fascinating. But it made me angry. I suppose because I thought I was the only one who knew about Soong, about his flawless English and his gentleness and . . . Perhaps I wanted to keep him to myself. Just once, I did not want to have to share.

The events that took place on the morning after I left I learned about more than a dozen years later. Even then the details—the smallest, most inconsequential details—remained vivid, so that I understood what a great need she had to remember, to hold it all in her mind.

     The fog had come in on that April morning, a light, white fog
that settled in patches along the shore so that it was possible to move in and out of it, as you would a dream. From the verandah, you could make out the shape of the sweet bay tree in the garden, no more.

     When Connor came to the office as usual that morning, they talked about an outbreak of disease among the sheep. He was afraid it could become serious. He wondered if they should take steps to isolate the sick sheep. In the middle of this conversation they heard strange, muffled sounds coming from the direction of the beach. At first they had stood quietly in the front parlor, straining to hear. Then, trying to identify the sounds, responding to an urgency they both felt, they ran onto the verandah.

     The boy Sven came staggering out of the fog, sobbing and out of breath, wet to the skin, and speaking in Swedish, so they couldn't understand what was so wrong.

     "The horse," he finally gasped, gesturing wildly toward the beach, "the big horse in the water."

     "Ranger," Connor said grimly, "I told the boy to exercise him on the beach this morning. He must have run him too hard. Sounds like he's foundered in the surf."

     Connor was on his horse and riding for the beach while Willa went to the stable for Princess. She didn't bother with a saddle, but rode bareback to the beach, her heart pumping furiously with fear and anger.

     By the time she got there, Connor had lassoed the big dapple gray and with his own mount had managed to drag him out of the surf.

     "Dear God, is he drowned?" she screamed over the steady roar of the surf. Ranger lay there, a soaking gray mass in the sand, tangled in seaweed. He seemed lifeless, moving only when the wave washed up and rocked him, swirling eddies of foam around him.

     "Clear his nostrils," Connor yelled. He was flinging himself against the horse's massive sides, pushing hard on the area around its lungs.

     Willa thrust her fingers into the nostrils and pulled out a mass of slime and mucus; she clamped her teeth tight to keep from retching, so tight her jaws ached, but she did it, all the while McCord was pushing with all his weight against the horse.

     Ranger's eyes fluttered, then they were wide and full of fear.

     "Don't die," Willa had screamed at him, "please don't die."

     "Work!" Connor yelled.

     And she did work, she dug her fingers to clear the nostrils and she tried to force open its mouth. After what seemed hours but could have been only minutes, the horse's great sides began to heave.

     "Watch out," Connor shouted, but it was too late.

     The horse spewed bile and it splashed over, terrible in its stench. A wave washed over them, soaking them both, and she coughed and sputtered and cried.

     Again and again Connor threw himself against the horse; she could see the ropes of muscle on his arms, the concentration on his face. But Ranger's sides did not heave again. Instead there was one long, involuntary shudder, then nothing. When that happened McCord stood, his hands loose at his sides, and as the waves washed around them, sucking at their feet, he pulled her up.

     "It's done," he said. "He's dead."

     Willa looked at him in disbelief. Then she saw the boy Sven standing there—he must have been there all along, watching—wringing his big white hands and crying.

     "Get out," she screamed at him (she could hear the words, but she wasn't sure who was saying them) "get out, get away, go go go . . ." She screamed until Connor pulled her toward the water, out into the waves. ("Go back," he had called to the boy. "Wait for me.")

     Their clothes were clinging wetly to their skin; she was covered with the dead horse's bile, she felt steeped in it, and she couldn't stand it. She retched and he held one hand on her forehead and the other around her waist, tight, so the waves wouldn't pull her over, but nothing would come up, she could not vomit. She wanted
to be washed, to be free of the awful memory of it, so they walked into the waves and let them wash over, one after another, and when he tried to pull her back she wouldn't go, but stood gasping, pulling air into her lungs until another wave crashed over them. She needed to be free, to be washed clean.

     Then he did pull her back, holding her tightly with one arm, his grip stronger than she could have imagined, and with the other he had taken a handful of water to rinse her face and neck. He did it again and again, trying to rub off the bits of seaweed that clung to her.