Authors: Natasha Stories
Almost from the time we all got to the
ranch, Russ had a plan for us. He had that tutor all ready to come out every
day the weather was good, and he made one of the bedrooms in his big house into
a playroom for the babies. The tutor brought two ladies out from Rawlins with
him, and one watched the babies while we studied. The other one made up all our
beds until we told Russ we needed something to do, too. Then she just cleaned
Russ’s part of the house and we cleaned ours, taking turns with the playroom and
schoolroom and doing our own rooms ourselves. I didn’t blame the younger girls
for stopping at that. Their babies were younger even than Tali, and of course
Amber’s baby wasn’t born until we’d been there for almost six months.
I felt like an adult, though, and for a
while I was afraid Russ was going to tell me to go soon, since I turned
eighteen almost as soon as we got there. It got a little better when Charity
came back. She’d had a terrible time with morning sickness, and though it had
stopped by the time she got back, she was still so skinny and wore out that we
all pampered her and little Amber, who was a month further along but still
puking.
When we were all about crazy with being
cooped up together in that house, even if it was big, there was some trouble
with the Prophet and some other men. Russ wouldn’t tell us exactly what
happened, and Charity went around looking scared and white-eyed for a long
time. Then it was all over, and they sat us down to tell us that Russ had
bought up the whole town of Bethel City and was running out the men who had
plural wives. We didn’t know what to make of it, but Charity said that they
were turning all the houses into shelters for plural wives who wanted to escape
the life. She said I had a choice; I could stay there with the others or go
back home, since I was of age, and they’d put me up in the shelter, help me get
educated and find a job.
My mind screamed NO! But what came out of
my mouth was, “Oh, Charity, there’s nothing left for me there. My parents took
off for Mexico right after the Prophet took me to wife, and my only friends are
here. Please, can I stay with you?”
Without even looking at Russ for his
agreement, she said, “Of course you can, honey! This is your home until you
want to find another.” I hoped she meant that, because I didn’t see any reason
to ever find another, unless it was one of my own with a husband. And right
here was the best place I could think of to find a husband. Me and the other
girls, too.
Next thing we knew, Amber was in labor and Russ
and Charity took her to Rawlins to a hospital to have her baby. She came home
with the cutest little boy I’d ever seen next to Al. To tell the truth, we all
looked kind of alike, and any of us could have claimed any of the children.
Some were shorter and some were taller, but we all had blue eyes and long
blonde hair that we kept done up in a topknot in front with the long tail
swirled around and pinned into a bun. At home, that would have showed everyone
we were married. Here, it just kept it out of the way. Then, Celeste said she
didn’t want those cute cowboys thinking she was married, so she started keeping
hers in a long braid down her back instead of a bun. The others, all but me,
started doing the same. I don’t know why I didn’t, maybe because I’d been
married longer.
One night when it was warmer than usual,
Celeste came and asked me to watch her little Daniel, who was Tali’s age less a
couple of weeks. She was going to step out with one of the cowboys, a boy not
much younger than the one I had my eye on, Cody.
“Be careful,” I said. “You don’t know him
very well. Don’t you think you should ask permission from Russ or Charity?”
Her eyes flashed at me, and with a toss of
her head, she said, “They aren’t my parents. I’m a grown woman with a child. I can
do whatever I want.”
I shook my head, but I agreed to watch
Daniel. If I hadn’t she’d have gotten one of the others to do it, and I didn’t
want them to get any ideas. I also wanted to have a talk with Charity about it.
Everything was so confusing! We were young, and we were just beginning to
understand how wrong our marriages had been. But at the same time, we were
responsible for our kids, and that made us feel grown up. Charity was always
willing to talk to us when these thoughts got to be too much to figure out on
our own. As soon as Celeste left, I told Al to watch a movie on the TV in our
room and took Tali and Daniel with me to find Charity.
“Charity, I need to talk to you.”
“Sure, Annalee, what can I do for you? And
why do you have Daniel? Where’s Celeste?”
“That’s what I want to talk about. I don’t
want to get her in trouble, though.”
“Don’t worry about that. What’s going on?”
“Well, she’s out visiting with one of the
cowboys,” I started.
“Visiting?”
“Charity, I don’t know what they’re doing,
maybe just talking. But we need to figure this out. All of us are grown women
with babies, but the law says we’re not grown. And there are all those cowboys
here, that look pretty good to us. It’s bound to cause some trouble.”
“I see. Let me have a talk with Russ about
it. What about you, Annalee? Do you have your eye on a cowboy?”
“I’ll keep that to myself if you don’t
mind,” I said. Already, I’d decided that Cody was for me, but I wasn’t in a
hurry. Still, I kept my eyes on the other girls so I could set them straight if
one of them started looking at Cody that way.
“Okay, have it your way,” Charity laughed.
“I’ll talk to Russ. This isn’t your problem now, okay?”
“Okay.”
The next day, the cowboys were all real
polite, but none of them responded to the flirty looks the girls threw at them.
Charity told me that she and Russ had called them together and told them we
were all ‘jailbait’. I took that to mean that if they got too familiar, they
could get in trouble with the law, like our husband had.
“Did you include me in that?” I asked.
“Not specifically, but we didn’t exclude
you. We thought about it, and decided that if we said anything, you’d have
cowboys all over you all the time. I didn’t think you’d want that.”
With humor I didn’t know I had, I answered,
“Well, maybe not
all
the time.”
Charity’s eyes twinkled as she said, “I
hear you, honey. Just be careful.”
“I will.”
Then Russ and Charity got married, and just
a few weeks later their little girl was born. The weather turned warm enough to
get outside and let the kids run around like wild animals. Russ opened the
swimming pool that we didn’t even know he had, and we spent lots of time there,
getting what color we could, even if some of us freckled instead of tanning.
The sensation of the sun on our bare skin that had always before been covered
was yummy. No more long-sleeved prairie dresses for us.
It wasn’t always play, though. Janet had us
start vegetable plants in little pots that went into the greenhouse. By summer,
we were planting them in the garden, and we took turns weeding and
hand-watering them. With all these mouths to feed, it was a big garden, but the
work was familiar, and when it was time to harvest we’d be busy helping her can
or freeze the produce for use during the winter. We were glad to do something
to help earn our keep.
The ranch hands were busy, too, working
dawn to dusk seven days a week, branding the new cattle and working the hay
fields, irrigating, repairing broken pipe, moving the herds from pasture to
pasture and always, always, riding the fence line and making repairs. It was
hot, dusty, backbreaking work that only a certain kind of man is cut out for.
But what it did for those men, every one of them, was make their bodies hard
and muscular and oh, so tempting for a bunch of teenage girls who had grown up
too early.
The group of hands that was on the ranch
that year was split. The dozen or so older ones were men who had been injured
or were too old to work the rodeo circuit, but still strong, if a little slower
than men in their prime. They knew more about cows and horses than the animals
knew themselves, and they cared for Russ’s stock like it was their own.
The other half were kids from sixteen to
about Russ’s age, late twenties, who found themselves in some kind of trouble
young, like Cody had according to Janet. Russ would take them in, straighten
them out and offer them work and a place to live until they had a skill they
could take on the road and make their own way. Only a few ever stayed more than
a year, unless they still had to get to eighteen, but some went to work on
ranches around the area once they left the Rocking W ranch. Russ’s boys, as
they were known, were in high demand because he had Hank train them good and
keep them in line. They turned out to be strong, ranch smart, polite and good
workers. Russ told us that he always figured a person would turn out the way
you expected them to, so he just expected a lot of his boys and they didn’t
fail him.
I think he was probably treating us the
same way, because we all wanted to please him and make him proud of us. He felt
more like a daddy to us than a brother, even though Charity was more like a big
sister. We didn’t try to make that work out right, with them being married and
all, it just was. With the boys so busy and shying away from us because of Russ
and Charity’s warning, there wasn’t much pairing off going on that summer, just
Celeste and her beau, but they were real quiet about it.
Before we knew it, the short summer was
over and the short fall was on us. The month of September was the prettiest weather
Wyoming had, if you asked me. Warm, sunny days punctuated by short violent
thunderstorms, with the hands racing between rains to harvest and bale the hay.
The warm days were followed by cool nights that made a girl want to curl up in
someone’s arms and share some kisses. The work was winding down for the winter,
and that’s when I started hanging on the fence like the hands, watching Cody
train his horse.
Tali was eight months when we got to the
ranch, and Al was two. Now they had both had birthdays, Al turning three in
April right after Tali’s first birthday in March. Now she was running
everywhere she went, and trying to follow Al everywhere
he
went. They
were a handful, but the girls and even Charity would always watch them for me
while I watched Cody. It was an open secret that I had eyes for him, but he
didn’t pay me much attention for a while.
The truth was, I had the itch. I wanted
another baby, before the two I had got too much older. And before I could have
another baby, I had to have a husband. Everything that went with both goals was
okay. I may have been introduced to sex too early, but as long as my husband
didn’t take too long about it, or it didn’t happen as a result of punishment, I
didn’t mind it. Sometimes I even liked the closeness, but that never lasted
long. With so many to see to, the Prophet could only visit each of us one or
two times a month. Our lives revolved around the children and our sister-wives,
not the husband.
Seeing Charity and Russ together when she
came home made me understand there was more to it, so I started watching them
close, trying to figure out what they had that I hadn’t known with my husband.
For one thing, they laughed and teased. Russ would say something bossy to
Charity, and she’d talk back! We could never have done that. Once or twice,
when they didn’t know I was watching, she’d say something smart to him and run,
and he’d chase her down the hall to their room, laughing. Then they’d disappear
for a while behind the closed door. I knew what they were doing, but I couldn’t
understand why it was fun for Charity.
Other times, he would have his arm around
her, and he’d drop a kiss on her head or cheek, or pull her in for a hug and
she would sort of melt into him. She was a lot sweeter than she used to be in
Bethel City, too. Then, she had to be punished all the time for using foul
language, but she very seldom said anything bad now.
As I had a chance to observe them, I began
to understand what love was, and that Russ and Charity had it. I’ll admit I was
envious, which is one of the bad sins. But I didn’t covet Russ, that would have
been just too wicked. What I coveted was a man to love me like that, and what
my eyes wanted was Cody Wayne.
So, now I made a habit of watching him with
his horse, Abo. Abo was short for Abogado, which means lawyer in Spanish. I
could see why they called him that, because he always seemed to argue with Cody
when they started working for the evening. But by the end of the night, he’d be
taking Cody’s body-language commands like he was part of Cody or Cody was part
of him. It was beautiful to watch, especially because both Cody and Abo were
fine to look at.
After a few weeks, I got brave enough to
ask some of the hands around the fence what was happening, why Cody did this or
the horse did that. I learned that the short piece of rope he tied the calves’
feet with was called a piggin’ string, and that he had practiced his roping
skills on foot for a long time, until he could drop a lariat over a fence post,
and then a moving animal’s head. Another thing I learned was that the hands
weren’t all cowboys. Some of them, including Cody, were wranglers. They didn’t
have much to do with the cattle because they specialized in the horses. Russ
had a modest paint breeding operation, and Cody was part of the team that broke
and trained them before they were sold. It was fun, and interesting, but it got
me no further in my goal of catching Cody’s eye.