Not the hurtling passage of massive, lumbering, ground-shaking buffalo … but the breathless, fleeting passage of wild horses—their nostrils flaring, their eyes wide with wind-borne lust, their manes and tails blowing free in the wind.
She could tell he had enjoyed it as he pulled back from her and gazed into her eyes. He didn’t have to speak for her to know.
Her husband licked his lips and said, “There is no finer woman than you in all this world. With all I have done wrong, with all the folks I didn’t mean to hurt but ended up hurting anyway over the years … I don’t know how I ever became worthy of your love.”
“The Grandfather Above has smiled on us both,” she whispered against his cheek, closing her eyes and wishing this moment would never end. Then of a sudden she rocked back and smiled at him, saying, “One Above smiled on me a little earlier in my life than he did in yours!”
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to die anytime soon, woman.”
Holding his face between her hands as she felt him continue to soften within her, Waits said, “You have lived through so many deaths already, I grow afraid you won’t live through any more.”
Bass pulled her against him fiercely, kissing her wet, warm mouth. When he could no longer hold his breath, he pulled away gasping. And said, “I have so much to live for now, I wouldn’t dare go and poke a stick in death’s hornet’s nest, woman.”
Resting her cheek against his shoulder, Waits felt guilty that his words gave her so little relief.
Finally she said, “I will consider those words as your vow to me, husband.”
“You have my promise—till the day we part in death.”
* One-Eyed Dream.
Copyright © 1997 by Terry C. Johnston.
Map by Jeffrey L. Ward.