Page 48 of The Widow and the Wanted

“Where’d you find all that?” Okee asks.

“Foraging. Just around the cabin. Took me a few days to gather it all.”

“You should stay close to the cabin, if you can help it,” he warns, and she shrinks some. Her mouth tightens but she doesn’t argue.

After that, there’s no talk beyond what needs saying. Okee banks the fire down to red coals. Lula washes the tin plates without humming a song like she usually does. I check the door latch twice, then the window, then check it again.

“Weather’s turning again soon,” Okee says.

He gets up and crosses to the window, easing the curtain back with two fingers. “If it comes down hard,” he says, “it will likely delay their approach.”

Lula folds the dishcloth once, then again. “And if they mean to come back before the weather breaks?”

I answer before Okee can. “We’ll be ready.”

When Lula climbs into the loft to sleep, Okee and I wait until the boards above us settle.

“You pissed her off,” I say, rocking my chair back on its back legs.

Okee don’t look up as he wipes his Colt with a rag. “No, I didn’t.”

“You know she don’t like to feel helpless.”

“So?”

“So she asked what to do and you told her to call for us. How’s that supposed to make her feel anything but helpless?”

“What was I expected to say?”

The Lord blessed Okee with a mind. Smartest man I ever met. With his head. Then there’s something—I’ve always assumed the handiwork of Alfred Collins—that splits off at his heart. Something that takes the message and chews it up before he can understand it plain.

“Tell her to take the pistol and do what we taught her, that’s what. Stay low. Take cover. I don’t know. Tell her what you’d tell a new soldier who don’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. Listen for the crack to tell you where the thing’s comin’ from and how much room you got to run. Hell, Okee, give her a thing to do besides scream.”

Okee’s jaw works once as he faces the loft. Above us, Lula turns over in the blankets. One slow creak, then stillness.

Okee lowers his voice. “She is not a soldier.”

“No,” I say. “She’s a general.”

That brings his eyes back to me, humor bright in them. It has become our nightly foolishness, whispering about her once she’s down for the night.

We start with complaints. Okee says she is reckless. I say she’s cruel.

I grin before I can help it and add, “A soldier’ll at least do what he’s told. Lula’ll decide the order ain’t fit, improve it, and have you followin’ orders.”

The corner of his mouth twitches, and he rolls his head back to rest on the wall. The fire settles with a sigh, throwing one red pulse up the wall and across his face. Okee has that look he gets when he is holding too many thoughts.

“She listens to you,” Okee says, as if just stating a bitter little fact.

“I don’t treat her like a child.”

He sits up slightly, like I’ve hit a nerve. “I do? Because I don’t want her to be brave and get herself killed?”

“I ain’t even talking about being brave. The poor thing spent days in the goddamn forest to make a dessert and the best you can come up with is ‘stay in the damn cabin’? You treat her like she’s made of glass.”

“And you poke at her like she’s your little sister.”

I grimace at that. “Don’t be nasty.”