Part XIX

Part XIX

Fox and Blondie stood motionless in the snow.

Both frozen as if an immense statue of man and horse had suddenly fallen from the sky.

They stood silently staring wide eyed into the rolling gray mists, horse and rider transformed into a single being who was straining to hear anything from the surrounding wall of fog.

Fox commanded his heartbeat to slow down and beat quietly, and likewise, Blondie did the same.

Blondies ears fidgeted and pointed at something straight ahead far out in the mist, moving between the junipers. Junipers unseen but whose fragrance was heavy in the air.

Fox leaned forward slowly, his saddle creaking like an old ship at sea, his mouth at the ear of his old horse.

Shhhh, she’ll hear us..

They were wide eyed as they both watched a shadow float by and fade away

Slowly, they backed up, Blondie tip toed as Fox kept a careful watch.

They walked back down the canyon, watching carefully for fresh tracks, and listening, listening for anything…

 

Part XX

Perhaps it was everything.

Passion between two people who would never be.

Fox would reach for her when he awoke cold, shivering and not knowing where he was, and she wasn’t there…but yet as he walked away, her voice would call from the dark and he would stop and tremble as her fingers ran through his hair.

It was passion that found them throwing out the furniture from the house he grew up in.  Passion that had them laughing in the snow as chairs, tables, beds were cast out the door.  The same passion that found them in a cavernous empty house, vast, immense, the ends of light faded into the dark beyond the light of his grandparents’ old kerosene lamp.

They sat, they sat as Fox told her tales of life on the desert.

They sat as she told him to shut up.

Silence, she would not touch him.

They sat on an old itchy saddle blanket that Fox had found.  The colors of their horses swirled into one color in the dim light of the old Kerosene lamp.

Fox watched as she walked through the empty room.  She would pause and stare at something in the dark, then her pale hands reached up and strummed the cobwebs which echoed deep into the dark.  She stopped when she felt a ancient current of cold air and pulled back her black hair as she listened to the pitch of the wind as it whistled around the old cracked window glass.

It was a lifetime before he felt her back against his.

As he stared into the dark, her muscles and tendons began to move.

Her thin fingers ran up and down the fret board.

Strumming, picking, scratching, and hovering as the played songs from other places, from other times, from other people.

The dreams, passion, and lust of a lifetime of restraint flowed from her fingers, up her arms, up her shoulder, and then through his back, though his shoulders, and he mirrored her hands as she worked up and down the frets.

Even in the dark, he closed his eyes, and he could feel her neck muscles through the back of his head. It was impossible not to follow her to those places, to those dreams, to those distant stars she sang of.

It was morning, when Fox silently carried his grandparents’ furniture back into the house he grew up him.  She slept silently on the floor by the fireplace enveloping her guitar….

 

Part XXI

Fox lay in the sand, curled into a ball under the rising sun.

Shall we my love?  She smiled as she plucked a single note…

Fox only kept his eyes closed and shivered as angry father began to shine down on him…