He started to speak, but Francesca stopped him.
“Robert, I’m not quite finished. If you took me in your arms and carried me to your truck and forced me to go with you, I wouldn’t murmur a complaint. You could do the same thing just by talking to me. But I don’t think you will. You’re too sensitive, too aware of my feelings, for that. And I have feelings of responsibility here.
“Yes, it’s boring in its way. My life, that is. It lacks romance, eroticism, dancing in the kitchen to candlelight, and the wonderful feel of a man who knows how to love a woman. Most of all, it lacks you. But there’s this damn sense of responsibility I have. To Richard, to the children. Just my leaving, taking away my physical presence, would be hard enough for Richard. That alone might destroy him.
“On top of that, and this is even worse, he would have to live the rest of his life with the whispers of the people here. ‘That’s Richard Johnson. His hot little Italian wife ran off with some long-haired photographer a few years back.’ Richard would have to suffer that, and the children would hear the snickering of Winterset for as long as they live here. They would suffer, too. And they would hate me for it.
“As much as I want you and want to be with you and part of you, I can’t tear myself away from the realness of my responsibilities. If you force me, physically or mentally, to go with you, as I said earlier, I cannot fight that. I don’t have the strength, given my feelings for you. In spite of what I said about not taking the road away from you, I’d go because of my own selfish wanting of you.
“But please don’t make me. Don’t make me give this up, my responsibilities. I cannot do that and live with the thought of it. If I did leave now, those thoughts would turn me into something other than the woman you have come to love.”
Robert Kincaid was silent. He knew what she was saying about the road and responsibilities and how the guilt could transform her. He knew she was right, in a way. Looking out the window, he fought within himself, fought to understand her feelings. She began to cry.
Then they held each other for a long time. And he whispered to her, “I have one thing to say, one thing only; I’ll never say it another time, to anyone, and I ask you to remember it: In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.”
They made love again that night, Thursday night, lying together until well after sunrise, touching and whispering. Francesca slept a little then, and when she awoke, the sun was high and already hot. She heard one of Harry’s doors creaking and threw on some clothes.
He had made coffee and was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking, when she got there. He grinned at her. She moved across the room and buried her face in his neck, her hands in his hair, his arms around her waist. He turned her around and sat her on his lap, touching her.
Finally he stood. He had his old jeans on, with orange suspenders running over a clean khaki shirt, his Red Wing boots were laced tight, the Swiss Army knife was on his belt. His photo vest hung from the back of the chair, the cable release poking out of a pocket. The cowboy was saddled up.
“I’d better be going.”
She nodded, beginning to cry. She saw the tears in his eyes, but he kept smiling that little smile of his.
“Is it okay if I write you sometime? I want to at least send a photo or two.”
“It’s all right,” Francesca said, wiping her eyes on the towel hanging from the cupboard door. “I’ll make some excuse for getting mail from a hippie photographer, as long as it’s not too much.”
“You have my Washington address and phone, right?” She nodded. “If I’m not there, call the National Geographic offices. Here, I’ll write the number down for you.” He wrote on the pad by the phone, tore off the sheet, and handed it to her.
“Or you can always find the number in the magazine. Ask for the editorial offices. They know where I am most of the time.
“Don’t hesitate if you want to see me, or just to talk. Call me collect anywhere in the world; the charges won’t appear on your bill that way. And I’ll be around here for a few more days. Think about what I’ve said. l can be here, settle the matter in short order, and we could drive northwest together.”
Francesca said nothing. She knew he could, indeed, settle the matter in short order. Richard was five years younger than him, but no match intellectually or physically for Robert Kincaid.
He slipped into his vest. Her mind was gone, empty, turning. “Don’t leave, Robert Kincaid,” she could hear herself crying out from somewhere inside.
Taking her hand, he walked through the back door toward the truck. He opened the driver’s door, put his foot on the running board, then stepped off it and held her again for several minutes. Neither of them spoke; they simply stood there, sending, receiving, imprinting the feel of each on the other, indelibly. Reaffirming the existence of that special being he had talked about.
For the last time, he let her go and stepped into the truck, sitting there with the door open. Tears running down his cheeks. Tears running down her cheeks. Slowly he pulled the door shut, hinges creaking. Harry was reluctant to start, as usual, but she could hear his boot hitting the accelerator, and the old truck eventually relented.
He shifted into reverse and sat there with the clutch in. First serious, then with a little grin, pointing toward the lane. “The road, you know. I’ll be in southeast India next month. Want a card from there?”
She couldn’t speak but said no with a shake of her head. That would be too much for Richard to find in the mailbox. She knew Robert understood. He nodded.
The truck backed into the farmyard, crunching across the gravel, chickens scattering from under its wheels. Jack chased one of them into the machine shed, barking.
Robert Kincaid waved to her through the open passenger-side window. She could see the sun flashing off his silver bracelet. The top two buttons of his shirt were open.
He moved into the lane and down it. Francesca kept wiping her eyes, trying to see, the sunlight making strange prisms from her tears. As she had done the first night they met, she hurried to the head of the lane and watched the old pickup bounce along. At the end of it, the truck stopped, the driver’s door swung open, and he stepped out on the running board. He could see her a hundred yards back, looking small from this distance.
He stood there, with Harry turning over impatiently in the heat, and stared. Neither of them moved; they already had said good-bye. They just looked—the Iowa farm wife, the creature at the end of his evolutionary branch, one of the last cowboys. For thirty seconds he stood there, his photographers eyes missing nothing, making their own image that he never would lose.
He closed the door, ground the gears, and was crying again as he turned left on the county road toward Winterset. He looked back just before a grove of trees on the northwest edge of the farm would block his view and saw her sitting cross-legged in the dust where the lane began, her head in her hands.
Richard and the children arrived in early evening with stories of the fair and a ribbon the steer had won before being sold for slaughter. Carolyn was on the phone immediately. It was Friday, and Michael took the pickup truck into town for the things that seventeen-year-old boys do on Friday nights—mostly hang around the square and talk or shout at girls going by in cars. Richard turned on the television, telling Francesca how good the corn bread was as he ate a piece with butter and maple syrup.
She sat on the front porch swing. Richard came out after his program was finished at ten o’clock. He stretched and said, “Sure is good to be home.” Then, looking at her, “You okay, Frannie? You seem a little tired or dreamy or somethin’.”