Gambler's Magic Page 12

  “Now, don’t you go putting words into my mouth, Mr. Perry.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Elijah couldn’t understand the rage in his chest. It had built up during their discussion until he wanted to roar like a bull and gore Joy’s damned dead mother on his horns.

  As for Joy, she sat in her chair, The Moonstone on her lap, wringing her hands, and looking as if she didn’t know whether to whack Elijah over the head with the volume or burst into tears.

  “Why’d they name you Joy? It sounds to me as if your mother had about as much truck with joy as she had with sin.”

  She jerked forward on the chair, and the book fell out of her lap. She leaned over, snatched it off the braided carpet, and snapped, “You needn’t be unkind, Mr. Perry. My original question, if I recall, was ‘Do I remind you of Miss Clack.’ I fail to see what my being named Joy has to do with that.”

  “Yeah? Well, let me tell you something. Yes, you remind me of Miss Clack. You remind me of her a hell of a lot more than you remind me of joy.”

  She gasped. He glowered.

  “You’re trying your damnedest to hate everything and everybody, whether you want to or not. I think you were meant to be a nice person—maybe even a soft and gentle one—but your mother thrashed the instinct out of you. No wonder you’re always bitching about having a stomachache. You’re wound up so tight inside, trying to be the girl your mother wanted you to be, that you’ve twisted your guts up into little squeezy balls.”

  “How dare you!”

  “I’ll tell you how I dare, Miss Joy Hardesty. Because it’s the truth!”

  She gasped again. Her face had gone red with fury and embarrassment.

  “Instead of taking a clue from your father, who sounds like he was a nice guy, and being compassionate and forgiving, and laughing every now and then, you let your mother dominate you into being a foul-tempered, self-righteous, dried-up prig. You’re as sour as vinegar and as dry as alum.”

  “Be quiet this instant, Mr. Perry!”

  But Elijah was on a roll. He wouldn’t be quiet. He was so mad at Joy Hardesty’s mother, he wished he could rip her apart with his bare hands. “And let me tell you another thing. Your mother was a damned bitch, Miss Joy Hardesty. She ruined you. By the time she was through with you, you hated yourself, you hated the world, you hated everyone in it, and you even hated your own father. If you want to nominate the woman for sainthood, go ahead, but she won’t be getting my vote.”

  Joy stood, trembling with what looked like a potent combination of rage and humiliation. Her voice shook when she said, “If such things are voted on, Mr. Perry, I should be extremely doubtful if you’d be allowed to cast a ballot.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, but let me tell you this, Miss Hardesty. You’re about as far from joyful as anybody I’ve ever seen. I thought Christians were supposed to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. All you do is whine and moan and bitch and carp, and if your mother made you that way, she oughta be shot.”

  “She can’t be shot. She’s dead.”

  “And a good thing, too. Damned bitch. How many other people did she ruin? You got any brothers or sisters?

  “No.”

  “Damned good thing! God alone knows what she’d do with a boy. You’re bad enough.”

  “How dare you!”

  “Don’t give me that ‘how dare you’ crap, Miss Joy Hardesty. Your mother ruined you! She made you into a sour-faced prune! I’m sure as hell glad she’s not here to nurse me, because you’re bad enough. Neither one of you deserves to be called women. Hell, women are supposed to be soft and sweet. It seems to me the only thing soft about you is your brain. Thanks to your blasted mother, you’re about as sweet as a long-horned steer. What’s more, if you’re a Christian, I’m glad I’m a heathen!” Exhausted from his emotional tirade, Elijah shut his mouth and sank back, breathing heavily, onto his pillows.

  Pale and shaking, Joy glared at him for several seconds. Elijah began to wish he hadn’t said all those things. He didn’t really mean them in relation to Joy, exactly, but to her mother. He cleared his throat and wished he could live the last several minutes over again. He’d keep his fat mouth shut.

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Elijah Perry. And why your own parents wasted such a noble, sainted name as Elijah on you is a mystery to me!”

  A chuckle caught him by surprise. She was quick with a riposte, and he appreciated her for it. “I’ve always wondered about that myself.”

  “Good. Then I’ll just leave you to wonder to your heart’s content!” She turned and began to storm toward the door.

  “Hey, wait! You can’t just go away and leave me here all by myself.”

  “No?” She looked over her shoulder and gave him a nasty smile. “Watch me.”

  And with that she flounced out of the room, taking The Moonstone with her.

  Chapter Eight

  “Damn.” Elijah hadn’t intended to make her so mad she’d stop reading and leave him. He hoped she wouldn’t continue reading the book on her own, because he was interested in finding out what happened next.

  He stared at the door, wondering if she was going to come back and light into him some more, or if she was so angry she planned on staying away.

  “Damn.”

  He missed her. She hadn’t even been gone a minute, and he missed her. This was stupid.

  He glared at the ceiling. Then he glared at the door some more. Then he decided to hell with it, closed his eyes, and tried to nap. After a furious battle with himself—he wouldn’t get out of bed, chase after Joy, and apologize—he finally slept.

  # # #

  Joy’s anger lasted until she’d raced out of the house, made two furious circuits of the wagon yard, decided the yard was too small a scope for her fury, marched down Second Street, detoured north across the wooden foot bridge and up Union, and walked all the way to the marshy land around the Spring River. There exhaustion and tight corsets got the better of her, and she sank down onto a fallen cottonwood log.

  Because she wasn’t sure if she was going to scream or weep, she looked around to make sure she was alone. She didn’t fancy falling apart in front of an audience. Nobody else shared the secluded spot with her. Unsurprising. The wastrels, sinners, and debauched characters who lived in Rio Hondo were more apt to spend their daylight hours carousing in the Pecos Saloon than out in the open air by the river.

  On the other hand, Joy had no way of knowing such a thing for a certainty, since she hadn’t met any of them, except once, when two of the girls from the Pecos Saloon had rather timidly braved Mr. McMurdo’s mercantile store. They’d been quiet and subdued and Joy hadn’t known who they were until afterwards. Unless Mr. McMurdo had told her, she’d never have guessed they were . . . those kinds of women.

  Nonsense. She was being ridiculous about the citizens of Rio Hondo. Of course they were wastrels and sinners! What else could they be out here in this wretched territory?

  Well, they might, possibly, be ranchers, out tending to their cows and sheep on the range.

  Fiddlesticks! The cattle and sheep ranchers in the area didn’t live in the village of Rio Hondo. They only visited occasionally. No. The citizens of Rio Hondo were sinners.

  Well, some of them were merchants, blacksmiths, and other skilled craftsmen and laborers, seeing to the needs of the cattle and sheep ranchers.

  Joy frowned. Perhaps. But she was pretty sure that, while some of them might be gainfully employed, the majority were still unchristian, rowdy characters.

  Joy sniffed. All of which only went to prove how far superior her mother’s teachings were to however the sinners inhabiting Rio Hondo had been brought up, no matter what Mr. Elijah Perry said.

  Had her mother really taught Joy to hate her father?

  The thought caught in her chest and made her sob out loud. Horrified, she snatched a hankie out of her pocket and pressed it to her mouth to keep any further stray sobs in.

  Her father. Joy hadn’t thought about her father for years
. When she used to think about him, she’d done so with a combination of hurt and disapproval so powerful it had made her insides ache. Yet, he’d been kind to her. In fact, now that she did think about him, his was the only smile Joy could remember from her childhood.

  Was it so wrong to smile and laugh? Her mother had believed so. She’d taught Joy to believe it, too.

  Now Joy wondered if her mother had been wrong. For the first time in her life, she wondered if her mother was really the saint Joy’d always believed her to be.

  She supposed it wasn’t surprising she had grown up believing her mother’s teachings. The good Lord knew, her mother’s personality had overpowered all the others in Joy’s small orbit. Joy had grown up unaccustomed even to think about thinking for herself. Oh, dear, that didn’t sound right. Was she really the miserable, tainted creature Mr. Perry believed her to be? She feared she might well be.

  Feeling worthless and unhappy, Joy sank her head into her hands. “Oh, Father, I’m sorry.” She wasn’t sure if she was apologizing to her own father or to her Father in heaven, but she guessed either one would do.

  She tried to picture her father in her mind’s eye, and came up with the image of a slightly overweight, gentle-natured man with twinkling blue eyes. Eyes not unlike those of Alexander McMurdo. Joy remembered that once, a long time ago, she’d wished her own eyes were blue, like those of her father. They weren’t. Joy had her mother’s eyes. In fact, there wasn’t a thing about herself that Joy could point to and say, “I inherited this from my kind-hearted, good-natured father.”

  A powerful woman, Mrs. George Hardesty. Much more powerful than Mr. George Hardesty. So powerful, in fact, that when Joy contemplated her birth family, she and her father were mere specks of dust floating in the shadow of the massive personality of her mother. She had a vague recollection of standing, shaking, at her father’s side while her mother ripped up at them both, and she shook her head.

  How sad, she thought now. How very sad. He was a nice man.

  It wasn’t bad to be nice. Joy had suspected it for a long time, in her heart of hearts. She’d never experienced any sort of confirmation of her suspicion until this very day, when her mother’s overbearing sanctity had been thrown in her face. By Elijah Perry, of all unlikely people.

  Also for the first time in her life, she contemplated the battles her mother used to wage on a regular basis with some of the other women in town; women who were, ostensibly, her friends. Joy had always taken her mother’s part in those little wars, believing—because it had never occurred to her not to believe—that those other women were wrong. Now she wondered if perhaps her mother had been a shade irrational in her beliefs and behavior.

  “But if that’s the case, then Mr. Perry is right, and I’m a living, breathing aberration: an unbalanced human being.” What an appalling thought.

  Her stomach hurt. She pressed a hand to it and remembered him telling her he didn’t wonder that she always had a stomachache because she was all twisted up inside. What was it he’d said? Her insides were twisted into little squeezy balls? Could he be right?

  Joy, who often had to batter her internal self around viciously in order to bend her thinking to conform with that of her mother, realized she needed to do no battering at all in order to come up with an affirmative. Was it her own skewed thinking, her own true nature battling the austerity her mother forced on her, that caused her to feel sick all the time?

  Although she didn’t know it for a fact, she didn’t think she was a naturally disagreeable person. In fact, when faced with dilemmas, her first instinct—like her father’s—was to give people the benefit of the doubt. She had to fight her compulsion to be kind-hearted—foolish, according to her mother—in order to criticize people’s behavior.

  She’d always believed herself to be a spineless weakling. Could it be she wasn’t anything of the sort? Could it be that her inner nature was striving to be—Joy gasped at the thought—friendly?

  What a revolutionary idea. Joy lifted her face from her cupped hands and used her handkerchief to wipe her tears away.

  She experienced an impulse to race back to the wagon yard and apologize to Mr. Perry for being such a sourpuss, but she resisted it. She still wasn’t sure about this new and radical line of reasoning. It wouldn’t do to admit defeat too soon. Perhaps her mother had been right all along, and this was the devil tempting her into wickedness.

  A spasm twisted her intestines, and Joy frowned. Had her mother done so much damage to Joy’s basic good nature that even thinking like her made Joy’s stomach ache? Good heavens. This bore further contemplation, although, while Joy was unsure of many things, she had a sneaking hunch that truly sound Christian behavior didn’t foster dyspepsia. She also had a hunch that Mr. Perry was right, and her mother’s way wasn’t necessarily the only way. Or even the best way.

  “Dear me,” she muttered, wishing God would do her a favor and unscramble her brain for her. Or strike her with a falling tree and put her out of her suffering.

  “But, oh, no,” she grumbled, feeling aggrieved. “Nothing can be as simple as that, can it?” It didn’t seem fair to her that being a good person should be so confoundedly difficult. Being good hadn’t been difficult for her mother.

  “Ha. But she only made other people feel bad, and I don’t suppose that’s difficult at all.”

  As soon as she heard herself, Joy sat up, shocked that those words had come from her mouth. She glanced around again, hoping no one had sneaked up behind her. She’d hate to be caught talking to herself, especially when she was saying unkind things about her own sainted—or not sainted; Joy was too confused to formulate a conclusive opinion—mother.

  “Oh, stop it! Just stop it. You’d be better off not thinking at all if you’re only going to confuse yourself, Joy Hardesty.”

  Fortunately, her mother’s voice didn’t chime in with a commentary on Joy’s declaration. She braced herself for it, but it didn’t come. She was profoundly relieved.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Joy saw wild asparagus growing on the marshy bank of the Spring River and decided to pick some for supper. Among the ferny branches of the asparagus bushes, she discovered a fishing pole someone had left there. She picked it up and stared at it for several moments, puzzled. Why, the thing was even baited, and the worm still wiggled.

  “Ew.” Joy didn’t enjoy baiting hooks. She glanced around and saw no one. Was this a sign from heaven? She shook her head hard and told herself not to be silly.

  “Sign from heaven, my foot, Joy Hardesty. It’s a fishing pole, and someone probably forgot it here. It means nothing more than that.” She scowled at her own fanciful nature—and then remembered who had taught her that making up stories was wrong.

  Joy squinted up into the heavens. Was her mother up there, glowering down upon her in disapproval? She remembered the stories her father used to tell her when she was a little girl and she’d been alone with him. He used to make up funny, whimsical tales that had kept her amused for hours until her mother found out about it and put a stop to the practice. Her mother only allowed her to hear stories from the Bible—and even then, only the ones with the harshest moral messages.

  She sighed. Those story hours with her father had been happy times for Joy. Strange that she had forgotten them for so many years. She frowned at the fishing pole. Then she stopped frowning and blinked when she perceived a faint glow of sparkles hovering around it. She blinked and stared harder, then decided she was seeing things, undoubtedly because she had lost what remained of her mind. Oddly enough, she didn’t find the observation distasteful, probably because her mind had been nothing but a torment to her for two and a half decades now. She shook her head hard.

  “Bother! I’m not going to waste a good worm on worrying about what you’d think, Mother.”

  And with that, she finished picking enough asparagus for a good dinner. Then she searched until she found a decent-sized rock sticking far enough out of the slushy undergrowth to keep her bottom dry
, hiked up her skirts, sat down, flung the line into the water, and waited for a fish to bite.

  After a moment or two, Joy realized she was relaxing and frowned. What would her mother say? On the other hand, what did Joy care? Her mother was dead and couldn’t see her, at least not on this plane. Anyway, perhaps relaxation wasn’t sinful. Perhaps it was created by God to refresh a body when it had been through an ordeal.

  She deliberately steered her mind away from her many transgressions. And from her mother’s opinions. Instead, she concentrated on the beauty of the day, on how much fun one could have when one wasn’t always judging one’s own behavior and that of others, and on how very, very good the fresh air and sunshine felt on her face.

  # # #

  Elijah Perry awoke upon a prodigious snore. He felt something weighty on his chest, pried one eyelid up over a sleepy eye, and spied the little marmalade kitten curled up there like a cinnamon bun.

  “Well, hello there, Killer.” He grinned, lifted his good arm, and tried to find the kitten’s chin tucked in somewhere in all that fur. The cat helped him out. When Elijah’s finger stroked his neck, he purred like a Gatling gun. Elijah chuckled.

  When he remembered the argument he and Joy had engaged in earlier in the day, his chuckle choked off, his grin faded, he opened his other eye and he frowned. “Hell. I didn’t mean to be so hard on her, Killer.”

  The kitten yawned, unimpressed, showing off two rows of sharp, white teeth.

  “She’s not equipped to fight with the likes of me. After all, I’m a lot older than she is. I’ve seen a hell of a lot more of the world too. Besides, I’ve been verbally sparring with people since I was knee-high to a toadstool. She’s never fought with anyone in her life, because her damned mother wouldn’t let her. She equates disagreement with disobedience, I’ll bet you anything.”

  The kitten yawned again.

  Elijah’s grin returned. “So I’m boring you, am I? Well, it makes me mad, Killer. I’d like to have that damned mother of hers here. I’d give her a piece of my mind she wouldn’t soon forget. She wouldn’t be able to push me around the way she did that poor kid of hers.”