Books : The Cowboy with the Tiffany Gun : Excerpts

Chapter 3

Revelie heard the bell ring and listened for the rustle of the maid's petticoats. Yes, there she went. The door creaked open and then creaked closed again. The girl's footsteps climbed the stairs. She knocked softly on the library door.

"Come in," said Revelie.

The maid entered bearing a telegram on a silver tray. Her mistress lifted the message and then lowered it to her lap.

"Thank you," she said, dismissing the girl.

Revelie sat there studying the yellow envelope apprehensively. She knew news in a hurry was usually bad news. What could have happened? What tragedy awaited her? Hadn't she already endured enough of them? Husband shot dead, mother dead, father dead. Who was next? Fingering the telegram, Revelie stared joylessly out a bay window at Joy Street. She started tearing open the envelope -- then stopped. She knew she couldn't put it off forever, but she could put it off for a little while.

Laying the message on an Empire end table, Revelie stood up and walked to her books. Her fingers gently touched the leather backs of old friends. Byron. Keats. Coleridge. Wordsworth. Tennyson. And her favorite, Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet after whom she had named her son. Of course, she had left out "Bysshe." After much reflection, she had chosen "York" as his middle name because her great-great-grandmother came from that part of England.

Automatically, her hand selected the collected poems of her favorite poet. She carried the green-trimmed volume back to her wooden rocking chair. Opening the book in the middle, she wondered what poem she should read. What would be soothing? She started turning pages, going forward, then back, then forward again. "Ozymandias"? No. "Ode to the West Wind"? No. "Prometheus Unbound"? Much too long. "To a Skylark"? Maybe, well, no.

When she reached "Adonais," Revelie finally stopped. She stopped in spite of herself. She knew this poem would not cheer anybody up, but for some reason she could not resist it.

I weep for Adonais -- he is dead!

She looked out the window again.

She told herself that she was very likely being silly. The news might not be so bad. Why was she reading a death elegy? But she couldn't stop.

Oh, weep for Adonais...Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!

She closed the book.

Picking up the telegram, she tore it open. Written in neat cursive script was the news:

Loving shot. Bad.

The message wasn't signed because that would have cost more, but Revelie imagined that Too Short had probably sent it. She folded the piece of paper over and over again until it was a tiny square. Then she unfolded it and read it again. The bad news hadn't changed. She kept expecting to cry, she wanted to cry, but the tears didn't come.

What was she to do? She had once loved Loving, who moved so gracefully. Maybe she loved him still. But that love had cost her -- had cost everyone -- so much. She could almost see him now, with those deep eyes that were sometimes brown, sometimes seemingly blue.

She had never really explained Loving to her son. She had always told herself that he was too young to understand. But was he still too young? Had he outgrown her excuses? Did she owe it to him to tell him what they had been to each other? No, he still seemed too young, so much younger than his years. She wanted him to grow up, and yet she didn't.

Besides, however old he grew, however grown up, could she ever tell him what had happened and make him understand? Understand from her point of view? Would Percy ever forgive her for loving her husband, Jimmy Goodnight, the greatest of ranchers, while at the same time falling in love with his best friend, Jack Loving, the best of the cowboys? She had ruined an almost legendary friendship and done even worse. If she told him, what would he say to her? What would he feel?

Clutching the telegram, Revelie got up and walked to the window. She sat down in the window seat and watched the buggies passing on Joy Street. She asked herself again: What should she do? With her father and mother gone, she had no one to turn to for advice. Since she had moved back to Boston, she had so many secrets to keep, she had been careful not to get too close to anyone -- anyone but her son. Now she had no one to ask but herself: What did she want to do? What did she feel she must do? She couldn't decide. The news was too new. She had not absorbed it yet.

Revelie heard the front door open and close. She recognized the sound of her son's tread upon the stairs.

"Percy," she called.

"Yes, Mother," he answered.

"Could you come into the library? I have something to tell you."