The Outcast Read Online Free Page B

Woman smiled sweetly. She wore a soft doeskin dress and moccasins. Her black hair, lightly streaked with gray, hung past her slender shoulders. “If the shoe fits…”
    â€œA pox on thee, wench.” Shakespeare bristled, and quoted the Bard, “ ‘I am well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way.’ ”
    â€œThere was a point to your Hamlet, then?”
    â€œThere is always a point to old William S.,” Shakespeare informed her. “I was suggesting you might want to go over and talk to Lou tomorrow. She’s breaking the news to Zach tonight, and I expect a storm cloud or three.”
    Blue Water Woman set the woolen cap she was making him in her lap. “That was your idea of suggesting I go see her? To be or not to be?”
    â€œI thought it quite clever.”
    Letting out an exaggerated sigh, Blue Water Woman said, “I hear there are husbands who make sense when they talk. Husbands who use their own words and do not recite the words of a man who lived so long ago no one else remembers him.”
    Shakespeare slapped down the file. “Don’t remember him?” he sputtered. “I’ll have you know, woman, that he has been called the soul of his age. His writing is to words what flowers are to a mountain meadow.”
    â€œPerhaps it is best you recite him. Your own words make even less sense than his.”
    â€œ ‘Thou art so leaky, we must leave thee to thy sinking,’ ” Shakespeare countered.
    â€œI am a boat now?”
    Shakespeare smiled in anticipated triumph and declared, “If there is a purpose to women, I have yet to find it.”
    â€œIs that what you were doing with me last night in bed? Looking for my purpose?”
    Shakespeare felt his face redden and burst out laughing. “Oh, that was marvelous. Your best yet. I swear, jousting with you is the most fun I know.” He paused. “Next to what we were doing in bed, of course.”
    â€œYou are male.”
    Coughing, Shakespeare changed the subject. “About Lou. She doesn’t know Zachary like I do. They’re apt to have an argument.”
    â€œI should think she knows her own husband.” Just as Blue Water Woman knew hers and his fondness for butting into the affairs of others. To his credit, he always did it with the best of intentions.
    â€œShe’s known him a few years. I’ve known Zach since he popped out of his mother and was swaddled in a blanket. I predict he won’t take the news quite as merrily as Lou expects. So maybe you should go over and see if everything is all right. What with Nate and his other half gone, Lou has no one else to talk to.”
    â€œWait a minute. Did you just say he popped out of Winona?”
    â€œThat might have been the term I used, yes.”
    â€œBabies do not pop. They are born. Giving birth can be hard on a woman. She goes through much pain, and if the birth does not go as it should, she can die.”
    â€œAll right. Popped was a poor choice. Would plunked be better?”
    â€œIf I had a stick, I would beat you.”
    â€œJust so long as after you’re done, you go and visit Lou. I’m supposed to go hunting with Zach, and I’ll sound him out about his feelings.”
    Blue Water Woman picked up her knitting, but didn’t move the needles. “Do you ever regret that we have not had children?”
    â€œIf we had gotten together when we were Zach and Lou’s age, then probably I would, yes.” Shakespeare sighed. He had courted her back when they were that age. Her father, who didn’t want any daughter of his taking up with a white man, forbade her to see him. Shakespeare had been crushed, but there was nothing he could do. They were forced apart, and later, both of them met and married someone else. Decades went by. Both their spouses died. They met again and discovered they still loved each other as passionately as ever.