Chapter 26

After a bit we got up, capping our canteens and settling our hats on our heads. Well, Cecelia and I settled our hats; Darlia didn't have one on. Anyone else wandering around in the desert without a hat I'd have thought foolish, but I've learned that Darlia does fine. At that, the Indians used to not wear hats when they roamed this country.

The southern end of the Grotto Hills was to our left and slightly behind as we walked on. I don't know why they call 'em the Grotto Hills, since I've never found any caves or grottoes or anything else like that in all my wandering over the hills. Some people think the name is actually the Guirado Hills, but I've never met anyone who called 'em that, and I grew up out here. Maybe the name is a corruption of Guirado. At any rate, they're the Grotto Hills to me, and always will be.

As we walked, Cecelia put her hand on my back for a moment, just below my shoulder blades. "Do you think, Darvin, that we might use our marshmallows tonight?"

"I've been thinking on that myself," I said. "There've been times when I had to restrain myself from picking up wood and bringing it in, 'cause I don't wanna do it too early."

"I know the anticipation; I feel it myself. But I think that we might be safe in building our fire tonight; it is, after all, halfway through August."

"Coolness. You think Darlia'll be happy?"

Her hand was by now off my back, for walking in rough brushy country doesn't allow constant contact. She looked at Darlia, who was ahead of us peering at something under the branches of a greasewood. "I verily believe that her joy will be unbounded. You know as well as I do how she loves roasting marshmallows."

"She loves it as much as I did when I was her age. Shoot, I still love it. They ain't nothin' as fun as roastin' marshmallows."

"Except, perhaps, correcting your egregious misuse of the language. You commit more errors in a single sentence than most people are capable of putting into a paragraph."

"Yeah, but you're smilin' at me."

She did more than smile – she grinned at me, her white teeth contrasting nicely with the dark skin of her face. I could see the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, the only visible sign so far of the fact that she's 42 and not 12. "I smile, Darvin, because the other alternative is to eviscerate you, with a canteen as the weapon. And since I do not care to invest that kind of time and energy in you, as rewarding as the blood and pain would be, I grin and bear it."

"Yeah, right." I punched her, gently, on the shoulder. "You'd no more hurt me than you'd hurt Darlia."

"True, true ... It seems I shall have to find new threats with which to cow you, since you know me so well that the current crop has become ineffective."

"I know one threat which would get my attention." I wrapped my arm around her shoulders briefly, holding her tightly. "If you said you were leaving, that I'd notice."

"I know you would, Darvin – but you need not fear; I shall never leave you nor forsake you. 'Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the LORD do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.' We did not speak those words to each other in our wedding, but I meant what they mean then, and I mean it now. 'Till death do us part, ' my love – that is how long we shall be together. And I believe, as do you, that we shall be together again in heaven – not in marriage, perhaps, but with a special remembrance and love of each other which only loving spouses will have. And though, again like you, I can't prove that from the Bible, I not only believe it to be true, I pray fervently that it is."

I looked over at her, and saw that her eyes were brighter than usual. I caught her hand and brought her to a stop, and faced her, my hands on her shoulders. "Don't cry, C – though I know they're tears of love. I know you won't leave me. We went through that once, and never again. We know each other and ourselves too well to think that could ever be a solution. Just stay with me, as I know you will, and I'll stay with you, and if we've got each other that's enough."

Her arms came around me, and her hands twisted in the fabric of my shirt. "I know, Darvin – I know. Forgive me for becoming maudlin; it was not my intent. Put it down, if you will, to my overpowering love for you, which robs me of reason and sense."

I squeezed her tightly, and then let her go. "You got more sense when you're emotional than most people do when they're thinking as hard as they can. I notice, for instance, that you're watching Darlia even while we stand here; you ain't forgot about her even though you're all het up about us."

She gave me a small smile, the quiet serene one that I love. "You are correct on that head, if nowhere else."

Whatever else she might have been ready to say I never learned, for just then I heard Darlia's voice. "When you two are done making kissy-kissy, I want to walk."

I looked at Cecelia, and she looked at me, and then we laughed. And we let go of each other, and followed our daughter, who sometimes seems more sensible than both her parents put together.

We didn't, after all, make it to Lanfair. Though she insisted she could go all the way, we found that Darlia was beginning to tire, so we made a loop and came back to camp. And when we got there she flopped down on her sleeping bag in the shed and got a nap.

While she napped, Cecelia read a book – one of her scholarly treatises on literature – while I hunted up firewood. The best wood in the world for roasting marshmallows is cholla. The trunks are hollow, that's how they grow, and the wood itself is a latticework, so that it burns quickly down to coals. But those coals stay hot forever, and you can roast marshmallows for a long time over 'em.