… with your toe and you'll get one of these."
Doing as he said, she sent her foot down the stock and tried to find the lateral root. But by now everything ached; her teeth chattered and she felt faint. Still she wanted to do it.
Squirreling her foot around in the mud, she tried to find a root. But it eluded her, while Kier popped up another, then another.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
She watched his lips move in seeming slow motion. Her world was swimming in glue. If only she could just get one of those damn tubers.
Abandoning the use of her foot, she ran her hand down the stem, determined to grab one. She went under. On the bottom her hand found a root ball, then a large strand. She yanked. Up she shot. There it was… a white tuber.
"Yes!"
"Come on."
Kier was walking toward the shore with his hands full. Pushing herself, she straggled to follow him, clambering with numb feet up onto the bank. She watched while he deposited the edible portion of the arrowhead plant in the snow. Before returning to the water, he glanced in her eyes, perhaps to determine how she was managing in the cold. Methodically, he bent over and began pulling bulrushes. She could feel him discreetly studying her and wondered if he was admiring her or merely concerned for her survival.
"Grab like this." He showed her to hold fast to the base of the young plants to get the root ball. They pulled up ten or so and moved to the cattails. Kier showed her some smaller plants, no more than a foot high.
"Like this," he said, grasping the cattail inside the two outer leaves and pulling. Then they worked in calf-deep water, side by side, harvesting cattails in earnest. Occasionally, she glanced his way, and when she did, she had a feeling that, even as he worked, he was totally aware of her. After they had half a dozen of the smaller plants, Kier began on the larger ones. But when she tried to stand next to him she discovered that her legs felt like flimsy stilts under a drunken clown.
"You can help most by getting dressed so we can break the plants into the parts we need," he said.
Gratefully, she struggled onto the shore, her feet like dead flesh, and made her way to the backpack. Fumbling through Kier's clothing, rope, ammunition, and hand grenades, she found her clothes. As she pulled out her things and set them on the pack, she looked for something to dry herself.
"Use my shirt," Kier called out.
Turning away from him, standing as near the tree as possible, she shucked the loincloth and toweled herself vigorously.
On the way back to the cabin, hauling the food, Jessie began to feel a chink in her armor. Although she couldn't put her finger on what had changed, there was something about the shared adventure in the pond, the toughness of it, maybe the acceptance of his challenge, that bound them. Whatever-she was developing hope. It was a startling admission, but Jessie had grown weary of denying it. And this hope was a damnably dangerous thing.
Chapter 23
A man with a handsome face is good for a summer, a man with a sharp eye and strong bow is good for many winters.
Stretching in the heat of the wood stove, Jessie decided that nothing had ever felt so good. Both candles on the table were burning. One lantern glowed and a little natural light shone through the windows. The sounds of the boiling water and crackling fire, the smells of cooking meat-these things charmed the senses. Cattail sprouts and two kinds of tubers steamed over a saucepan while the beaver meat sizzled in its own fat. At one end of the cabin all of their clothing but what they wore hung from a line strung wall to wall. Kier, shirtless and wearing almost-dry jockey shorts, tended the food as Jessie, clad tentlike in his T-shirt and her panties, stood close by.
She could have sat or leaned against the wall. It wasn't necessary for her to be near him. Of course, she was also close to the food. The newest shoots from the cattails, now six months old, could still be eaten raw, and she had already eaten quite a few.
Sweat glistened in the hollow at the base of Kier's throat. She noticed it, and the bulk of his arms. Although his arms were long and a little bit lanky, they were the size of a thin man's thighs. Veins in his flesh stood out just like those on hefty athletes. His chest was massive and hairless, smooth.
She could feel the heat of him. When his eyes caught hers, she had a great urge to smile, as if they were sharing some secret joke. Whenever she looked up, his gaze was there, waiting in ambush. The eyes were deep brown, smiling. Aside from mirth, they looked full of desire. Maybe love. Again she looked away. She hated to think she was embarrassed.
"Prolonged eye contact is a form of boundary testing," she said in as detached a tone as she could muster.
When next she looked, he was concentrating on the food, no longer staring. As he pressed the meat with a fork, she studied his face, looking to see if there was any hint of his emotions. She could read nothing until he glanced her way with a little smile.
"What?" she asked.
"Are my eyes such a force?"
For a moment, her gaze followed her hand as it reached for a cattail sprig, then returned to his.
"It's your desire."
Kier turned from the frying pan, inches from her, looking down into her face. The warmth of him washed over her as she tried to decide… what? She reached out with her hand, even as things tumbled in her mind. Her hand hovered over his chest, waiting. It was a perfect parody of her indecision.
"You're right. I'm sorry. I was flirting," he said, breaking the spell. "It's an unnatural situation. We're both tired."
He was right. People in harrowing circumstances felt compelled toward one another for strange reasons. She and Kier would never work. Looking at him now, he seemed relaxed. The tension had departed, leaving only the cooking smells and the comfort of the fire. Yet something inside her wouldn't let her leave it alone.
"Do you think that some hurts are so big we never really get over them?"
"I don't know. A lot of times I think that sort of thinking is just an excuse."
''Did you ever think about the downside of love?''
"What's that? Loss of freedom?"
"No. The fact that it ends. Either in life or in death." He looked perplexed. "You don't have the faintest idea what I'm getting at, do you?"
"Afraid I don't."
"Do you think you ever just decided to go it alone because the risk of it all ending was too great? I mean when you were a little kid. When your dad died. When your first wife left you. Did you ever say to yourself: 'Kier will take care of himself. Kier doesn't need anybody else'?"
"Everybody needs to take care of himself. But I think I understand what you mean."
"Your first wife left you."
"Well, it was complicated."
"Don't complicate it, Kier. You taught at the university together, Claudie told me."
"Yes."
"You wanted to come to the mountains so you both moved here."
"Yes."
"She left."
"Okay. She left."
"So this stir-the-oatmeal kind of love that you're longing for-how risky is that?"
"I've heard the old saw about afraid to fall in love. I don't think that's me."
"God no. Kier couldn't be afraid of anything. So let's not talk about fear. I want to know what you did with all the pain."
Kier shook his head with a half-smile.
"I felt the pain," he said, looking irritated.
"Which caused you more pain, your father's dying or your mother's need to prove that her son could be somebody even without a father?"
"Where do you get all this?"
"You forget. You've spilled your guts to my brother-in-law, and we both know that Claudie owns him. I put it all together."