Marry A Man Who Will Dance

“It’s a trick!” Ritz muttered, catching a breath and then cupping her hands to the sides of her mouth and calling out, “Buttercup!”

Munching grass, Buttercup didn’t even raise her head or prick her ears. When Ritz called her again, the obstinate beast chewed lazily.

“I need an apple,” Ritz said.

“Give?” her foe taunted.

“Buttercup!” Ritz cried, her voice tinged with desperation.

“That’s no way to coax a pretty lady,” Roque said smugly, directing his brilliant gaze to the mare. He swaggered toward the beast, his brown hands outstretched.

Buttercup jerked her head out of the grass and flicked her nose out at him. She snorted, her nostrils flaring. Her black tail lifted and seemed to float in the wind like an inky banner.

When he had her full attention, he splayed his long fingers open like claws.

Ritz sprang in front of Roque and called again. “Buttercup! Come here, sweetheart!”

“Cheater,” he purred. He stood so close she could feel the heat of his breath against her neck.

The sun was gone. The tall grasses and big sky were aflame, the horizons ringed in pink.

“Buttercup,” Ritz pleaded, truly scared now.

Buttercup nibbled, her nose low to the ground. Roque strutted toward the horse, squared his body to hers and stared directly at her.

The mare bolted.

“My turn,” Roque said jauntily.

“You made her run away just when I was trying to call her.”

“I can make her come back, too.”

“I hate you!”

“You sure about that?” He laughed and began clucking to Buttercup.

The mare stopped running. Roque squared his shoulders and stared fixedly at her again. Again, Buttercup ran from him.

“She doesn’t want you, either.”

“She’ll change her mind after I court her a little. All the girls, big and little, want Roque Moya. Just you watch.”

“You are disgusting.”

“Your sexy friend doesn’t think so. Maybe someday…when you grow up and I court you, you’ll change your mind, too.”

Was he flirting with her?

No way.

But if he was, it was a heady game to play with a bad wild boy like him, a Blackstone.

“Watch me, Four Eyes,” he said softly. “She’ll come to me.”

And the mare did. In less than twenty minutes. He didn’t even have to call her. Buttercup just stopped running and started watching everything he did as if hypnotized. Soon the mare’s head dropped, and she walked slowly toward him, licking and chewing. Only she didn’t have any grass in her mouth. Roque kept his body at a forty-five degree angle to the horse, avoiding eye contact as she approached.

Sensing some baffling, silent chemistry between Roque and her horse, Ritz held her breath. Furious as she was, she felt a strange thrill when Buttercup walked up to the fiend and held her nose less than an inch from his broad shoulder.

Ritz wanted to shout, “She’s mine! Mine!”

But what he’d done was so fantastic, she didn’t want to break the spell.

When Roque turned and walked away from Ritz, Buttercup followed. They walked in a circle before returning. Finally Roque faced the horse and lifted his hand, stroking Buttercup between the eyes. Then he stared at Ritz and grinned.

Ritz was stunned.

“He can talk to horses.” Caleb’s eyes shone.

Ritz had forgotten Caleb was even there. “How?”

“Not in words, but Roque says horses talk just the same. He’s going to teach me their language.”

“Their language?”

“Horse. He read about it in a book and taught it to himself, and he can hardly read.”

It was obvious the younger Blackstone was much in awe of his older brother. Even though she didn’t want to admit it, he wasn’t stupid like people said he was. He was smart and different—special.

“I can, too, read!” Roque blurted, stung.

“I want to learn horse, too!” The words just popped out of her mouth.

“Do you want to start now?”

She scowled at Roque when he flung himself to the ground and began yanking his scuffed black boots off. He pulled off his socks, too, and wiggled his long, naked toes.

Why was watching him do the most ordinary things so fascinating? The keen sweetness of hay being cut somewhere made her heart ache. Or was it just him, balling his dirty socks and stuffing them into his boots that made her feel so strange?

If Ritz had thought more about boys before last night and this afternoon than she’d ever admit, she felt possessed now. Roque’s dark sensual male beauty made her long to be older and prettier—desirable.

“There’s sticker burrs,” she said lamely when he finally stood up.

“So?”

She tried not to look at his gorgeous black head when he turned. But his bold green eyes claimed her somehow, holding her with that same, mysterious force she hadn’t understood last night.

“I’m not going to walk,” he said. “I’m going to fly. Do you want to learn to fly, princesa?”

He extended his brown hand just as he had last night, inviting her to put hers inside it. She stared at those long, tapered fingers and then at the purple-black grasses that curled away from them in endless waves. With a shiver, she shook her head.

“Scaredy-cat.” He laughed. As she gasped, he sprang up on Buttercup’s back, urging the mare forward with his toes into a springing trot.

“Get off her,” she whispered.

“I won, remember.”

Soon he had Buttercup cantering round and round in a perfect circle. They were so beautiful, Roque with his black hair and Buttercup with her black mane streaming in the wind as they danced in that sea of tall grasses.

Even before Roque stood up and went dangerously faster, Ritz was trembling with a mixture of fright and wonder.

“Don’t,” she pleaded silently.

But he stretched both his arms out like wings.

“No…no…” Even as she begged, her heart thrummed, and her spirit sang along with those thudding hoofs.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes.”

Roque’s wickedness and wildness made him seem like a god, who was connected by spirit and blood to the mare he rode, connected to the endless sea of purple grasses, to the darkening sky itself, to the whole universe—connected even to her. She’d felt the same thing last night, only now her feelings were stronger.

Buttercup galloped so fast, Roque did indeed seem to fly. When Caleb spread his own arms like wings and ran after his brother, she did the same thing. The three of them soared on their make-believe wings, running round and round, both flying and dancing.

Caleb and she ran after him until they collapsed in laughter, breathing hard. Ritz put her hand over her heart as the galloping horse and the bad Blackstone boy flew away. She began to laugh, forgetting all sense of ownership when Roque turned, and she realized he was galloping back to her.

“He’s magical,” she whispered. “He’s like a centaur.”

Buttercup slowed and Roque sat down again and smiled down. A stillness descended upon her when he came close and held out his hand to his brother.

“Do you want to fly?”

Caleb shook his head.

“I do!” she cried in an eager voice that did not belong to her.

Roque gave her a long look. Then he leaned down. This time when he extended his hand toward her, she grabbed it.

Sweet heat flicked through her veins like summer lightning. Oh, what had gotten into her? Was it his wildness? His badness?

Caleb shrieked with joy and ran up to them. Kneeling, he cupped his dirt-encrusted hands. As bravely as Jet, Ritz put her foot in his fingers and sprang up in front of Roque. His warm hands circled her waist, burning her skin through her thin blouse.

When he urged Buttercup into a trot, she forgot all about hating him.

Never had cantering been such a glorious experience. It was like dancing. A chemistry flowed between the three of them. They weren’t just a boy and a girl and a horse. They belonged to an ancient world and a primitive time that was truer than anything modern, a paradisiacal time before man had been expelled from the kingdom of nature.

He stood up and then helped her to stand, too. When she teetered, crying out to him, he steadied her until she got her balance. Soon she was holding her arms out just as he had. Slowly his thrilling hands at her waist fell away. Then he extended his arms behind hers, and they were flying together, racing in that endless magical pasture, the thudding rhythmic hooves singing in her blood.

For a few brief moments there was no high game fence, no feud. It was just Roque and her and the magic between them. Then a black pickup sped toward them on the caliche road, belching angry white fantails of dust.

For a few brief moments longer, horse and riders were free, and the range was as wild and open as their hearts. Ritz’s hair blew against Roque’s dark face, so that she felt herself part of him as well as part of the sky.

Then the truck braked. Benny Blackstone hopped out, shaking his fists and cursing when he saw Caleb running toward the galloping riders with his arms outstretched. Not that Ritz really heard Ben.

Buttercup’s hoofs were thudding, and she felt too wonderful. Even when Roque turned Buttercup, so that they seemed to charge the truck and Caleb, she was only vaguely aware of his father.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Ben leaned inside the cab and pull his Winchester off the gun rack behind the driver’s seat.

“Caleb—” Ben shouted. “Sunny—”

Caleb stopped, but Buttercup kept galloping at him, Benny raised the rifle to his chest.

Caleb yelled when his father aimed at Roque, “No! Daddy! No!”

Roque let out an Indian war whoop and charged faster.

The Winchester cracked. And still Roque charged.

Almost carelessly Benny ejected the empty shell and raised the rifle again. The gun popped a second time, bouncing rocks in front of Buttercup. The mare reeled. With a scream, Ritz tumbled backward into Roque.

He grabbed her, rocking precariously, grabbing wildly at the air. Buttercup reared.

“Dios,” he muttered as her forelegs came down with a thud.

Ritz’s heart was pounding when he slipped. Still, holding her, he shielded her somehow. His body struck the rocks first. She fell on top of him, crushing him against the ground. Something inside her knee popped. When she tried to stand up, she couldn’t.

Mad with fear, Buttercup circled them frantically, got too near and stepped on Roque’s arm.

The bone snapped, but Roque didn’t utter a sound. He lay in a broken heap like a doll thrown down by an angry child, his dark face as white as bone.

“Sunny!” Benny shouted. “Are you crazy? He was trying to kill you! How many times do I have to tell you to stay away from him?”

Caleb ran to Roque. “You shot him—deliberately! There’s…there’s blood on the dark grass.” Caleb drew back a hand, wet with the stuff, and began to cry.

Ritz knelt over Roque and choked on a sob. “Roque! He’s not moving.”

Through her sobs Ritz heard Caleb’s muted pleadings. His father stalked toward them, his Winchester lowered now, his expression grim.

“Move, kids.” Benny sank to his knees and examined Roque. When he was done, he stroked Roque’s black hair for a long moment. “He’ll be all right.” His voice was strange, hoarse. “Take more than a fall to kill a devil like him. Broken arm. Let’s hope it’ll teach him a lesson. He shouldn’t have charged me. Run get a blanket, Sunny.”

When Caleb loped off, Benny fiddled with his radio, shaking it and cursing. In a few minutes Caleb was leaping back through the tall grasses with the blanket. His father took it and threw it over Roque.

“You’d better git,” he said to Ritz.

“My knee—”

“Damn. I can’t get anybody on the radio. I’m going to have to call the ambulance from the house. Can you stay here with him until I get back? I’ll phone your parents and tell them what’s happened. If he comes to, don’t let him move—”

Her eyes widened. “You can’t call my daddy! When you come back…if you’ll just put me on Buttercup and leave the gate open….”

He shook his head. “I’m liable for you. You stay here. Roque’s just crazy enough to hurt himself if he comes to alone and is disoriented in the dark.”

She looked at Roque’s crumpled body and then at the black sky. Then she rubbed her burning eyes and nodded. “Daddy’s going to be so mad.”

Benny stood up. “Come on, Sunny.”

“I want to stay with Roque, too!”

“This wouldn’t have happened, if you’d stay away from him.”

Benny Blackstone seized Caleb by his collar and pulled him, his boots scuffling across the rocks, all the way to the truck. They roared away in geysers of white dust.

Ritz swallowed a hard lump in her throat. Roque lay so still. He was very white, and his hair spilled like rich black chocolate across the rocks and grass.

“Roque?” Leaning closer, she caught his scent, which was musky, and clean, all male. “Roque!” she yelled.

When he didn’t answer, she brushed a lock of his hair from his brow and gasped. His beautiful face was swollen and out of shape.

“Oh! No!” She pressed her hand to his temple. When her finger came away sticky, she didn’t dare shake him. “Roque! Please…Please wake up!”

High above them, the evening star twinkled like a lonely sentinel in an opalescent, purple sky. Then a gray owl swished low over their heads toward the oak mott, melting into the dense shadows of the brush. A chorus of night bugs began to sing.

His pulse! That’s what she was supposed to check for!

At the thought of laying even a single fingertip on that dark throat, she sucked in a quick breath. With an eye on his still, white face, she lowered her hand and ran it along his warm skin all the way to the base of his throat.

Finally, when her fingers were still, she felt a flutter. She pressed harder, and the pressure of his heart’s slow, steady thudding, made her own heart leap.

“Don’t die,” she whispered. “Please…please…”

She lifted her St. Jude medal and said a fervent prayer to the saint. And then she looked up at the new stars and the moon and prayed to God, too.

Hardly knowing that her fingers unfastened the silver chain, she removed the medal. She caught her breath. Aunt Pam had given her Uncle Buster’s medal at his funeral. Ritz had promised to treasure it always.

With a heavy sigh, Ritz fastened the medal around Roque’s dark neck.

“Save him,” she murmured. “Please, Uncle Buster and St. Jude, and you, too, God.”

Roque’s eyes remained tightly closed.

After that, time passed in slow motion. Ritz rubbed her neck, and felt all alone and scared as she thought of the puma and those pointy ears she’d seen earlier.

When a pack of coyotes began to yip off to the north, she began to shake as hard as a rabbit or whatever little animal they were terrorizing. The sky and brush blackened ominously.

Aloud Ritz said, “Roque, I’ll stay out here all night long—in the dark, no matter how scared I get, if you just, please…please…don’t die…. I’ll even take back every mean thing I said. You’re not nasty…or…or pure sin…just ’cause you wear tight jeans. I’m sorry I watched you pee. It was fun flying with you. The most fun I ever had in my whole life…until you charged—”

Clasping his lifeless hand, she bent closer, so that she could broadcast straight into her powerful medal.

“You won Buttercup—fair and square. You can have her, too…if you’ll only wake up. And…and…you’re not stupid, even if you flunked a grade. Nobody but a rare, genuine genius could talk horse…could learn it from a book…when you can hardly read. And…and it wasn’t Jet last night…. It was me! I watched you dance, so don’t you dare die.”

Horror mingled with delight when he stirred and she felt his gaze.

“You’re just scared there won’t be anybody to teach you horse if I die,” jeered a thready voice that made her heart leap.

4

Its wings spread wide, a hawk circled low over Roque. Talons curling, the bird hurled itself at the highest branch of a tall live oak, stilling the roar of the cicadas’ night chorus. In that brief silence, the dark field felt warm. Then the humid wind licked his skin, bringing with it the sweet, familiar smells of grass and salt and sea, and the cicadas began to sing again.

Not that Roque noticed any of those things on a conscious level. The hot little daggers of pain that spiked up his arm were so fierce they dulled his awareness of all else. He couldn’t move his arm or feel his fingers.

The hollow beneath his right eye felt stretched and itchy. His temple throbbed. Half of him was numb; the other half burned. He wanted to twist and writhe and howl like a wolf at the bright sliver of moon hanging straight over him. But the ragged whisper he uttered cost him so dearly, he bit his lips.

“Roque? Did you say something?”

Had he? He tried to speak again.

He heard her gasp, felt her fingertips on his mouth. Then pain blurred everything into nightmare again. He was in the wire mesh round pen. Caleb was begging him to teach him to ride, and since their father was gone for the day he’d said yes. But suddenly his father, who’d looked shorter and squattier than usual in baggy jeans and custom-made boots and yet unreasonably terrifying, was stomping toward him, yelling and swearing nonsense that he was trying to kill Caleb again.

Pausing to grab a chain off the nail outside the tack room, he’d pushed Pablo and two cowboys out of his way.

“Nobody had better interfere with me—y’all hear!” When the cowboys lowered their heads, Benny raised the chain. “You trying to kill Sunny on that damn horse, you stupid Mexican son of a bitch!”

Mexican. The way his father said it, had made Roque writhe.

“I begged him to teach me, Daddy,” Caleb said.

“Every summer he comes, you want to race bulls or something else crazy!”

“No, Daddy—”

He slammed the chain down on Roque’s back.

Roque screamed. Caleb jumped as if he’d been hit. The next blow cut Roque’s thighs and sent him sprawling facedown into wood shavings. He hit the ground so hard he swallowed dust laced with horse dung.

As he spit and choked, Caleb hurled himself at his father’s knees.

“You idiot!” Benny yelled at Roque. “You won’t stop until you kill my good son—you, who never should have been born!”

Again the chain zinged, this time gouging out a hunk of flesh. Roque rolled into a ball, grabbed his knees.

“Say you won’t disobey….”

“You’re not my father!”

“Say you’re sorry!”

“Go to hell.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me, Daddy!” Caleb shouted. “He’s not stupid. He was teaching me horse and…and to ride.”

When Benny raised the chain again, Caleb let go of his father’s leg and threw himself on top of Roque. “He’s sorry, Daddy.”

Caleb’s thin body was hot, and he was crying as he circled Roque’s neck with his arms. “If you hurt him, I’ll…. I-I’ll run away to Mexico! I’ll be a Mexican, too!”

“Get off me, kid!” Roque whispered. “I don’t want you to hate him…or love me.”

“But I do…love you.”

Her soft voice cut through Roque’s anguish and pain. Her gentle fingers trailed his throat, soothed. He strangled a curse.

Dios. Pain stabbed him again.

“I’ll even give you Buttercup!” the girl said.

Chinga!

She was holding something and praying to St. Jude. Roque wasn’t religious. Still, he’d been brought up Catholic.

He hung on every syllable of the girl’s prayer and went still when she fastened her St. Jude medal around his neck. When her voice died, her hand skimmed along his throat and jawline. She lifted her medal and kissed it.

So, it had been her last night. Her. He’d wanted to hold this girl close and dance near the fire, to dance. Suddenly he wanted to feel those lips on his skin.

“So, you’re just scared there won’t be anybody to teach you horse if I die. I—I could teach you to kiss too,” he whispered.

She dropped the medal and jumped back.

Híjole!

He stole a peek. Big glasses. Smudged clothes. She wasn’t much to look at—at least, not yet. Better to keep his eyes closed. But she sure as hell had a pretty voice, especially when she prayed. Those low, husky tones shouldn’t belong to a bratty little girl with wires in her mouth. That voice went with a real woman.

Dios. She was just a kid. Younger than Caleb.

Her fingers came back, cautiously gliding along his skin as she prayed again, her comforting words and warm breath falling against his earlobe.

Uno. Dos. Tres… He never made it to ten. The pressure against his fly was too extreme.

Pervert. She was a kid. Fourteen. Not even pretty.

When her gaze drifted down his body, he broke into a sweat. Then he slitted his good eye wider. Even though he was partially color blind, his vision at night was extraordinary. Like a cat, he could see shapes and figures that were invisible to anyone with normal eyesight.

Like now. Every freckle on her pert, slightly upturned nose stood out. Her tears glistened like diamonds. More than a hundred yards away, he saw Buttercup grooming herself.

A sliver of moon in a vast black sky peppered with stars enveloped them. Cicadas were buzzing louder than ever. In the moonlight her ugly glasses glimmered on her thin, unsmiling face. If only she’d been pretty like her friend with the big boobs.

It was hard to imagine her ever growing a figure or ever being beautiful. But she’d spied on him last night and today she’d stood up to him. She’d flown with him. He’d had fun with her before he’d fallen and hit his head. With her he didn’t feel homesick.

Nobody here, except for Caleb, ever made him feel as if he belonged.

But she did. Maybe she was a Keller, but she was an innocent, shy and sweet. As sweet as Mamacita when he’d had the mumps.

Chinga!

She was sweeter than Ana and Carmela, his sisters, when they were in good moods and hovered over him.

I can’t like you, girl! You’re the high and mighty Keller princess!

“Don’t die.” She squeezed his hand.

“I’m just a Mexican,” he growled. “You couldn’t care less whether I live or die.”

She ripped her silky fingers that had his groin in an uproar from his throat.

“Be…be careful,” she said in that supersweet voice. “I think your arm…. It’s all funny and twisted.”

“It’s broken. What’s it to you?”

She shoved her ugly wire-rimmed glasses up her nose. “Nothing. I’m only waiting for your father to come back. He’s sending an ambulance.”

“So, how come you didn’t take your horse and run when you could, little girl?”

“’Cause… ’cause my knee got hurt.”

“Aren’t you scared of being out here all alone in the dark? You ran last night….”

She hesitated and then shook her head. “I didn’t want to run. I wanted to dance.”

“You’re all alone with me,” he whispered, “in the dark. I could make you kiss me.”

She was slower to answer. “I’d stomp on your broken arm if you did.”

He laughed. Then he puckered his mouth and leaned toward her. “Last chance to get your kissing lesson from the best kisser in Mexico.”

“No…” Holding her knee, she scooted a few inches away from him.

He lay beside her, silent, wondering what to say to make her come back, but he couldn’t think of anything. All too soon he heard his daddy’s pickup roaring along the caliche road even before he saw his lights. Finally it stopped. The headlights went out.

Flashlights bobbed. Dogs yapped. Benny Blackstone shouted above their frenzied barks. Then an ambulance screamed on a distant ranch road.

“Over here,” Ritz called.

His father waved his flashlight.

Suddenly everything dimmed—their voices, her plain, skinny face—even the barking dogs racing toward him.

“I don’t feel too good,” he whispered right before he began to shake. “Kiss me.” When she still hesitated, he said. “If I die, you’ll never get to—”