Blackfeather
35 Not My Brother
I HAD AWARENESS, but no sensations. I clutched imaginary hands trying to hold onto Miranda. I couldn’t see, hear, touch, smell, or taste anything. Yet I was aware of my surroundings and what was happening. I floated alone, yearning toward my baby. I caught glimpses of other people’s thoughts.
“Poor woman.” “Poor baby.” “Never should have been left.” “Wait until her husband hears.” “Burial.” “Baby.” “Baby boy.” “Kyle.”
Death in 1873 was common. Death in childbirth was not uncommon. Life was hard, even in the better strata of society. People mourned and moved on. I moved. With my baby. They didn’t know. Wouldn’t know for weeks that his father was not returning. Poor Katie took care of little Kyle as she tried to tend the store and get ready for her own impending delivery. I tried to comfort her—to tell her I was here. My poor Katie. I am here. I love you. I heard her sigh my name in her sleep. I willed her child to be healthy and held her in my imaginary arms as she gave birth to her little Katie Lynn.
When word finally arrived that Jason was dead, she wept. I wanted so much to hold her. To whisper that I loved her.
I love you. I’m here. I love you.
A fire—all too common among the wooden structures of early Laramie—broke out on our street and the store and apartment were burned to the ground. Katie escaped with the babies, a few coins, and my six-shooter.
The last I felt from her, she was handling my Colt in the back room of a dingy whorehouse. “I love you, Husband Ramie.” The babies cried.
I don’t think she heard Raven call me.
I was choking. Coughing. Retching. My body was wracked with spasms. I threw myself to the side and heaved. Nothing. I heaved again and again.
Cold compresses against my head, wiping my mouth.
“It’s all right. You’re safe. You are here with us.” Caitlin! I was alive.
“Kyle’s coming around. Get ready,” Phile said, nearby.
“It’s okay. You’re safe.” My family. Kyle was alive.
“I radioed up and Moms and Pa are on their way down,” Phile said. “When we got home, you were just sitting in the porch swing like zombies. We couldn’t wake you up. Pa told us to carry you to bed.”
“I hear the horses,” Caitlin said. “They must have ridden all night. It’s almost dawn.”
I reached out and clutched at Kyle’s hand. I could hear him crying.
“Okay, kids,” Pa said. “How are our invalids? Caitlin, go get us some tea made. Phile, take care of our horses, please.” The kids left and it was just our parents. I couldn’t hold it any longer.
“Momma!” I wailed. “They’re dead!”
Kyle’s hand gripped mine and we rolled toward each other, clutching and crying.
Moms and Pa tried to talk to us, but they couldn’t pry us apart, and I wasn’t going to stop holding my Kyle. They just had to wait. We were all we had now.
“It will be all right, babies,” our moms crooned. “It will be all right.”
“When you are ready, you can tell us about it. Let’s get you up and get some breakfast. You might need to sleep more after that,” Pa said. “I don’t think I was worth shit for a week after.”
We spent an hour after breakfast with the parents. They didn’t judge anything. They just held us while we cried for our dead hosts. Our friends. We could only lay out the facts. It was as much for each other as it was for them. Kyle told about riding out from Crazy Horse’s camp and meeting up with White Horse. Pa smiled when he heard that Jason and White Horse were friends.
“The renegades hit us by surprise. I barely got my gun up before I was hit by arrows,” Kyle said. “I got Jason killed because I distracted him. We could have shot them.”
“What distracted you, son?” Pa asked.
“Stupid things. It wasn’t just me. Jason didn’t want to shoot anybody. Me? I thought I recognized the horses and they were friends.”
“I don’t think there was anything you could have done to stop it. Was White Horse killed, too?”
“I don’t know for sure. I know he was off his horse, but they might have left him. I don’t know,” Kyle said.
Then the moms were on me about what I’d experienced. When I told about having to turn the baby, Mom Ash left and we heard her throw up in the bathroom across the hall.
“You’re right,” Mom Mar said. “You had to do that or you’d both have died. Your baby survived?”
“Yeah. Little Kyle.” Oh my god! “Pa, when you traveled, your host was Kyle Redtail. Did he have another name?”
“Of course, sweetie. Redtail was the name Laramie gave him. It was because my totem was the redtail hawk, like yours is the raven. His given name was Kyle Wardlaw. As far as he knew, his mother was a prostitute and he was raised in the brothels after she died.”
“The fuckers!” I screamed. My baby. My baby. I buried my head against Kyle’s shoulder. It was all too fresh. It hurt. I turned back to our parents with tears in my eyes.
“I think… me and Kyle… I think…”
Kyle took a noisy breath in and hissed between his teeth as he let it out.
“I’m your father, Cole,” he said in his best Darth Vader voice. It wasn’t very good but it got the point across. I blessed his heart for making me laugh but I hit him anyway.
“You’re Kyle Wardlaw’s parents?” Pa asked. Our family was so fucked up!
“When I felt him dying, I screamed out Kyle’s name. Katie—my sweet, sweet Katie—heard me yell ‘Kyle’ and immediately thought I’d just named my son. She said they’d take care of little Kyle for me while I got better. Only I didn’t get better. I died. I died, Papa. Just this morning back in 1873 and my baby never had a mother or father.”
“And so, he was raised in the brothel,” Pa said.
“She lost the store and apartment in a fire. Poor Katie took Kyle and little Katie-Lynn and had to live in that whorehouse. My poor Katie. I didn’t save her after all.
“Katie-Lynn?” Pa said. He looked like I felt. He was all pasty white. “Laramie,” he whispered to me, “what was Katie’s last name?” I thought a minute.
“Forster. Katie Forster. She could always tell when I was there, Pa. She knew almost before Miranda did. With Kyle, too. She called me her Husband Ramie.”
“My sister,” Pa moaned. “She was my sister and I never even knew.” His eyes were dripping tears and Mom Ash went to hold him. “I know you kids have been through a lot,” Pa said. “But we need to make a trip into town. Now.”
The kids begged off and stayed at the ranch. We piled into the Explorer and drove down to Laramie. Mom Mar sat up front with Pa and Mom Ash just kept hugging us in the back seat. Whatever was so urgent didn’t keep Pa from stopping at Safeway and telling us to wait. He was back out a few minutes later with a couple flowers and we turned down Harney Street to 15th. Pa pulled in at Green Hill Cemetery and parked.
“Your Pa comes out here at least once a month,” Mom Ash whispered to us. “It must be important to come now.”
We followed Pa out into the Potter’s Field section of the cemetery, in the far Northwest corner. There aren’t many stones there. A few are broken and a few are just flat slabs that lay in the ground with grass growing all around them. Pa walked straight to a section where you could barely see a flat stone. He knelt there and wiped the grass off the stone and set up one of those little flower planters. He put two carnations in it. Then he called us to look at the stone. The inscription was faint. I had to shade it in order to see the relief. Caitlin Forster, 1890. My sister’s name. Caitlin. Katie-Lynn.
“I never knew she was my sister. She died… aborting our baby. I just came back from one of my trips expecting to see her and she was gone. She was Kyle’s first love. He never knew she was his sister.” Pa wept over her grave. It had been a long time ago. Pa hadn’t traveled since I was born and still, he came to her grave every month and left flowers. I already knew the answer, but I had to ask the question.
“Pa? Why… two flowers?”
“Geneive,” he whispered. “My high school girlfriend and my lover. She was a time traveler, too, and I never realized it the whole time we were together. Caitlin was her host.”
I wept. I held Pa, and my brother held us both, as we wept. My precious Katie. Miranda’s son and Katie’s daughter, raised in the whorehouses of Laramie. Both Kyle’s… Jason’s children. What’s fair about that? Why did Blackfeather ever send us traveling? I hate you old crow!
Kyle and I had to get on with our lives. Ranches don’t leave time for mourning unless you find a way to express it. We expressed it by painting the trim of the barn and then whitewashing all the fence posts. We decided a stable should have a three-rail horse fence at least around the paddock. The kids worked quietly beside us all the rest of the summer to make L&K Stables shine. By the end of summer, we had five of our first crop of foals working with us in the paddock. Phile and Caitlin were naturals with them and it didn’t take long before they were gentled, and we could handle them. I loved brushing the two-year-olds and just running my hands along their sleek strong muscles.
The whole summer, Kyle was never more than a few steps from me. Sometimes we’d start to speak and say the same thing. We’d been through more together than any siblings we could imagine. But by mid-August, I realized that I was in love with my brother. No one else could possibly share what we had shared. No one could understand. My head couldn’t come to grips with where my heart was, and I begged off a week in August to go help with the cattle drive. Kyle was ready to ride.
“I hate to put this on you, Kyle,” I said, “but we’ve got fall boarders showing up this week and I need you to be here. This ride I’m taking is something I’ve got to do.” I kissed him softly on the cheek and mounted Pooky.
It was only a few days, but I had to get my head on straight. I could not be in love with my brother. My head rebelled so thoroughly that I couldn’t even fathom it. I’ve smelled his farts. That thought brought a tear to my eye. It’s what I’d told Aubrey when she was with us. Why did she have to go?
As our horse operation had gotten bigger, Pa had reduced his cattle operation. There were only 400 head on the upper range and half of them were yearlings and calves. That meant only a hundred head would go to market this year. I wondered if Pa was okay with that, but the folks had thoroughly embraced the concept of ranch-raised, grass-fed cattle. That meant they weren’t buying calves at auction to fatten and sell later. Anything sold these days had been bred and born on the ranch. It takes two years from birth to market.
Before we turned the herd for home, I spent a couple nights by the thermal spring by myself. Then I joined the drive down the mountain. By the time we got the cattle wrangled into Pa’s cattle pens, I’d made up my mind. It was going to hurt. But it had to be.
I saw Kyle’s face light up when I rode Pooky to the stable and he ran out to meet me. He reached for me and I held him off.
“We gotta talk, Kyle,” I said. “Saddle up. This can’t wait.” I could see his face fall and it about broke my heart. We rode out to the family plot and let the horses graze as we looked at the stones. They meant so much more to us now. I’d slept in the bed with Theresa Ranae Bell and watched her as she courted with White Horse. Her baby, my namesake, Laramie Wyoming Bell was Miranda’s niece. The stone marking Kyle Redtail Wardlaw’s grave… My pa’s host when he traveled. Kyle’s and my son when we traveled. We cried a little. The wounds were still too fresh. I motioned Kyle to sit by me as I looked out over our beautiful little ranch.
“Kyle,” I said softly. He turned toward me. “I need you to stop…” He was shaking his head violently and held up his hand to stop me speaking.
“Laramie Wyoming Bell, you can’t tell me to stop loving you. I do. I thought it was just me in Jason loving Miranda, but I fell in love with you, Ramie. You. And I took my vows in front of the preacher. It might have been a century and a half ago, but that which God hath joined together, let no man rend asunder. It might be wrong. You might not be able to accept my love. If I need to, I’ll go away. But I can’t stop loving you, Ramie. I can’t.” I just wanted to pull him into my arms and love him. Instead I shifted away slightly.
“You’ve had your say. Now let me have mine,” I said. “Kyle, I love you to the depth of my soul. But you have to stop being my brother. I can’t reconcile loving you, the man I fell in love with in two different centuries, with loving my brother. I don’t know how you do it. But you can’t just walk across the hall into my bedroom as my brother. I don’t mean legal things. I don’t mean you can’t have the same parents. But I have to stop being your sister in order to be your lover. If you can’t… if we can’t do that, then we can’t ever be together.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, Kyle. I just know it has to happen.”
Classes started Wednesday of all the stupid things. Three days and then Labor Day weekend. It was hardly worth driving in for. We didn’t move back to campus. There didn’t seem to be a point to it. We drove the kids to high school for their junior year and we went on to our classes.
Kyle met me after my equine bloodlines class on Friday. It was one that we didn’t both have together. He was standing there with his hat in his hands looking gawky as a freshman.
“Miss Laramie Wyoming,” he said as I approached. He pulled a ragged batch of flowers out from behind his hat. “There is a dance tonight in the Union. I know it is short notice, but may I buy you dinner and enjoy your company at the dance?”
My god! Kyle was asking me out on a date! I couldn’t even say anything. I just nodded my head. We got in the truck and picked up Caitlin and Phile. Everyone was quiet on the way home. I kept lifting the flowers to my nose. When we got to the apartment, Kyle opened the door for me. He grinned.
“I’ll pick you up at six.” Then he walked into his bedroom and closed the door.
I grabbed a pickle jar and put water in it to hold the flowers. I started to leave them on the kitchen counter but took them into my bedroom instead. I tried them several different places and settled them on the bedside table. It was only four o’clock. What am I going to do for two hours? I ran up to the house where Mom Mar was cooking.
“Ma, I’ve got a date tonight. I won’t be here for dinner,” I said. I was so out of breath I could hardly get the words out. It isn’t that much of a run to the house!
“Oh,” she said. “I won’t set your plate. What are you wearing?” Oh no! What am I wearing?
“I don’t know. I’m going to a dance, but it will be casual. I gotta go figure out what to wear!”
“Okay, dear. Let me know if you need help with your hair or anything. I’ve never fixed you up for a date,” she said. I kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks, Ma.” I ran back to my room, stripped, and put my robe on to shower. Only two hours? How am I ever going to get ready in time?
I finished my shower and dried my hair, looking at the disgusting haystack in the mirror. I finally decided to just let it stick out any way it felt like. I put a foundation on and powdered my ruddy complexion. I didn’t look too bad. The rest I could do in my room. I put on panties and a bra. I couldn’t even remember the last time I wore a bra. I guess it still fit. I pulled it off and threw it in the trash. I had a camisole that would do better. Aubrey gave it to me. I felt a tear coming and pushed it back.
I had half my closet tossed onto the bed which amounted to three outfits. Everything else was jeans. There was one just stood out. I started to put it on and stopped to call Mom Mar. She was out to my room in two jerks and started buttoning my blouse for me. I’d picked it up at Martingale’s Store on Grand. It just called out to me, even though I couldn’t think of a place I could wear it. Maybe it was a little dressy for a school dance, but I was going with it anyway. Problem was it had about twenty buttons up the front and came right up under my chin. The skirt was three-quarter length and Ma helped get my boots on. She looked up at me and held out her hand. I thought about it for a minute and handed her my boot knife. She strapped it on and stood me up.
“What about your hair, girl?”
“Nothin’ I can do about it. Do I look okay?”
“Laramie, my daughter, you have no idea how beautiful you are.”
“I’m nervous. Wait with me until he picks me up?” I said. She sat beside me on the edge of the bed. “I haven’t been on a date with a boy since that disaster with Forrest in tenth grade,” I laughed. “I hope I don’t mess this one up.” There was a knock on my door.
“I don’t think you could mess this one up, sweetie,” Mom Mar said. I opened the door and Kyle stood there with his dress boots on, pressed jeans, a nice shirt I’d never seen before, and even wearing a bolo.
“You… you look really pretty,” he stammered. He was as nervous as I was.
It was a great evening. We ate at Roxie’s and then went to the dance. We just listened to the music for a while and eventually I pulled him out onto the floor and we started two-stepping. The thing about two-stepping is that you can do it to just about any music. I didn’t care what was playing. We stayed on the dance floor until the band stopped playing and everyone was headed out.
He offered me his hand and I took it as we walked to his truck. He opened the door for me and lifted me up by the waist so I didn’t have to pull my skirts up to get in. When we got back to the apartment, he stopped at my bedroom door.
“I had a great time,” I said.
“I hope that means you’ll go out with me again,” he said. “I have family obligations Monday afternoon, but I’d love to go out to eat with you again in the evening if you would like.”
“I’d like that. I’d like it very much.” He leaned toward me. I licked my lips and leaned in. The kiss he gave me was pretty reserved and not pushy. He didn’t try to grab hold of me or push his tongue in my mouth. It was just so sweet and gentle that I nearly cried. He grinned at me.
“Good night, Laramie. Until Monday, then.”
He went to his room, glanced at me, and then closed his door. I nearly swooned.
Kyle is courting me.
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