I wasn’t joking. We weren’t on a trail. I had to admit, the views were stunning but still, the terrain was treacherous. So treacherous, the old guy’s easy pace moving through it flipped me out. Then again, he wasn’t carrying a heavy camera bag on his shoulder like I was.
“Did you come to bellyache or did you come to see a master at work?” Cotton asked, not turning back to me.
“I came to see a master at work but, prior to that, you failed to divulge you were a slave driver.”
He stopped abruptly, murmured reverently, “There she is,” then reached an arm back toward me, again without looking at me but snapping his fingers and demanding, “Give me my bag, girl.”
I gratefully pulled the strap off my shoulder and positioned the handles in his hand.
His fingers curled around the handles and he went right to work, unzipping the bag, yanking out his camera, then dropping to a knee with the camera up to his face.
I got close and looked at the view he was shooting.
Then I lost my breath.
All my life, I’d lived in the Rockies and never, not once, did I get used to their splendor.
They might be hard to climb, difficult to traverse, and the weather in them unpredictable, but none of that meant that God didn’t know exactly what He was doing when He created them.
Once I’d drunk in the view, my eyes moved to Cotton.
I was more than pleased that I’d found time to go out with him on a shoot. Or more to the point, I was more than pleased he’d phoned me way early that morning, waking me after a few hours of sleep since I’d had a shift the night before, and telling me to haul my behind to his place to get him because we were going out.
I left a disgruntled but soon-back-to-fast-asleep Ham in his bed in order to have this opportunity.
But navigating dangerous mountain passes was worth the view. More, watching Cotton, who looked like Rocky Mountain Santa with his shock of white hair, white beard, jolly belly, and red nose, focused on creating what I knew once the photos were done would be sheer beauty made it even more worth it.
I drank this in, too, and did it until Cotton dropped the camera then sat on his ass on the boulder we were perched on and looked up at me.
“Thermos ’a joe in that bag, Zara, coupla mugs. Pour us some lead,” he ordered.
I dropped to my ass on the boulder and did as told. I handed him his travel mug and wrapped my gloved hands around mine.
“How’d you know this was here?” I asked after I took a sip, motioning to the view with my head.
“Lotta years on me, girl,” Cotton answered. “Spent ’em high and low, traipsin’ through these hills. Saw this spot years ago. But this spot, the light’s gotta be right. Woke up and just got the feelin’, the light would be right. Luckily, I was not wrong. So here we are and, finally, I caught that old girl’s glory.”
I looked to the “old girl,” a sweeping range of Rockies that punctuated a cloudless blue sky, the sun stark on its planes, shaded through its angles.
It was phenomenal. Cotton’s feeling was spot on. Then again, that was why he was world famous and became that way exposing the beautiful mysteries of America’s mountains’ majesty.
“You gotta know, whole town’s talkin’ about your boy,” he muttered and my eyes went from the majesty to Cotton.
I didn’t know which “boy” he was talking about. Ham could be a boy to him, considering Cotton’s age. Or he could mean Zander. I did know that whatever this was he was bringing up was why I was there, he’d asked me to come before the Zander news broke, so I suspected it was Ham.
“You wanna explain that, Cotton?” I asked.
He took a sip from his mug and his eyes came to me.
“Xenia’s son,” he answered, surprising me but I nodded.
I’d told Mindy and Becca about Zander the night of Xenia’s funeral. I’d also told Arlene. Mins and Becs could keep their mouths shut. Arlene, no way in hell.
“’Spect you know this already, Zara, but your daddy’s a sumabitch,” Cotton shared.
I drank from my coffee and looked to the mountain. “Yeah, Cotton, learned that when I was around three.”
“He hurt you girls?” Cotton asked, and my gaze shot back to him.
“Cotton—”
“Did Xavier take his hand to you girls?” Cotton asked firmly.
“Yes,” I whispered, telling him something only Ham, Mins, Neens, Becs, Maybelle, Wanda, and my dead friend Kim knew, outside of Xenia, of course, but she was there.
“Dang nab it,” he muttered.
His head dropping, he looked at his lap.
“Cotton, it was a while ago,” I told him gently.
His gaze came back to mine before he said bizarrely, “Takes a village.”
“What?” I asked.
“It takes a village, Zara. You won’t know this, won’t have remembered her that way. If I recall, by the time you and your sister could cipher, she’d lost it so you didn’t get her that way, but Amy Cinders before she became a Cinders was the prettiest girl in town before she gave our town you and your sister. And that’s sayin’ somethin’, seein’ as we got a lot of talent about. Thing about her was, she wasn’t just pretty, she was sweet. Couldn’t tell a joke and wouldn’t, seein’ as she was a might shy, but you’d work hard to make her laugh, hear that sound that was pretty as her, watch her face light up.”
His eyes grew sharp on me before he finished.
“And she laughed a lot back then, girl.”
I didn’t like this, knowing Mom was pretty… once. Happy… once. Laughed… once.
Cotton was right. I never saw her smile, definitely not laugh, and by the time I could “cipher,” although it wasn’t lost on me she was vaguely attractive, that was defined as “vaguely” due to the fact that timidity shrouded her and fear poured off her in waves.
I didn’t like knowing she’d lost that. More, I didn’t like knowing she gave it up, apparently without much of a fight.
“I’m not sure I want to hear this,” I told him carefully, also not wanting to offend him.
“What I’m sayin’ is, he broke her. So we knew. The town did. Xenia and you hightailin’ it outta there the minute you could. Xenia abusin’ her body in an effort to dull the pain. We knew. And we shoulda done somethin’ about it.”
I felt bad for him because he clearly felt bad about all this but it was way past the point anything could be done now.