This is not—not really—a poker-story. No exchanges of randomly drawn elements, no cleverly played wildcards, lie behind this simple tale. You will find below no casual references to inky atomic iodine, or any mystical tin badge, whether shining-new or dulled by the weary disappointments of age. No wedding night spent in Virginia City’s best hotel; not even the moment when a newly-married man walks into the kitchen to discover his wife with a book in one hand and a cast-iron frying pan in the other. No explanations about how the author of that book (to wit: one Miss Catharine Beecher) is, indeed, a sister of the better known lady who penned Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or how surprised the wife is when her husband makes that connection for himself. No references to how much extra work the periodic greasing of axles creates for the women of a ranch when compared to the seemingly more strenuous breaking of untamed horses, since dirt, sweat, and muck will all pass away after time and much labor by laundresses—that being part of their natural chemical properties—but axle grease remaineth forever. None of those truths are further discussed below. This is not a poker-story; not really.

It is nothing but a story presented for your pleasure, and perhaps (if it should be so fortunate) your more serious consideration.
The Moment Not Eternal
It was no use; she couldn’t sleep.

And really, she didn’t much want to. Not with something she’d been hoping to read for years finally tucked in the drawer of her nightstand. It had made the last part of its long journey from Boston only that afternoon, along with a wagonload of supplies. She’d barely had time to unwrap it before hurrying back to the kitchen; the ranch’s needs came before her pleasures, after all. But the ranch didn’t need her at this hour of the night, and neither, it seemed, did she need her sleep. She struck a lucifer and relit her bedside lamp, carefully adjusting the shade so it only lit her side of the bed, and drew the slim volume from its hiding place. With eager fingers she opened it to the title page and sighed with satisfaction.

CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE

IN THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE,

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

OF

ECKERMANN.

By S. M. FULLER.

It wasn’t, she knew, what she ought to be trying to read. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Sage of Concord, and that indefatigable translator Margaret Fuller would both have encouraged her to try something by the scholar-poet himself, Wilhelm Meister perhaps or The Sorrows of Young Werther. Despite the enthusiastic recommendations of those two, however, her courage had failed her. Instead she had settled on this lesser work, the great man’s perceptions filtered through a more ordinary mind, one closer to her own. Nevertheless, this might well be the first step on a glorious journey, with places undreamt-of awaiting her…she turned the page and began.

Sadly, Miss Fuller’s preface was not ideal reading at the end of a long and laborious day. After her third unsuccessful attempt to make sense of its opening page, the reader flipped impatiently to the end of the book, to see if there was something waiting there that justified so much preparation. Her eye settled on the final paragraph….

The morning after Goethe’s death, a deep longing seized me to look yet once again upon his earthly garment. His faithful servant, Frederic, opened for me the chamber in which he was laid out. Stretched upon his back, he reposed as if in sleep; profound peace and security reigned in the features of his noble, dignified countenance. The mighty brow seemed yet the dwelling-place of thought. I wished for a lock of his hair; but reverence prevented me from cutting it off. The body lay naked, only wrapped in a white sheet; large pieces of ice had been placed around, to keep it fresh as long as possible. Frederic drew aside the sheet, and I was astonished at the divine magnificence of the form. The breast was so powerful, broad, and arched; the limbs full, and softly muscular; the feet elegant, and of the most perfect shape; nowhere, on the whole body, a trace either of fat or of leanness and decay. A perfect man lay in great beauty before me; and the rapture which the sight caused, made me forget, for a moment, that the immortal spirit had left such an abode. I laid my hand on his heart — there was a deep silence — and I turned away to give free vent to my tears.

Oh, my. She found herself fanning her warm cheeks, wishing she could do the same for the rest of her overheated body.

She and her husband had always been…shy with each other. They’d been intimate many times, and both enjoyed it—much to the lady’s embarrassed surprise—but always in the dark, after the lamps were turned not low but off. She liked wearing her nightgown, with all its tucks and frills and lace, and not just because she didn’t dare wear something so romantic and impractical at any other time. She saw no reason why her husband should have to learn that his beloved—she was beloved, surely?—wife was far less shapely by night than she was by day.

But she’d seen engravings of enough Roman statues that she could easily enough envision what this Mr. Eckermann was describing, knew why he found it so impressive in an eighty-year-old man’s body. She suspected her husband, unclothed, fell far short of such superhuman beauty, just as she was no Aphrodite when stripped of her corsets and unmentionables. And yet there were bodies, things of real flesh and blood, that measured up to that standard (or higher still, because not yet eighty years old).

Joe Cartwright, for example, was often to be seen shirtless during the warmest part of summer, or whenever hard work had roused him to a sweat—and his nether garments left very little more to the imagination. For those who preferred not to be vulnerable to accusations of cradle-snatching, his father Benjamin’s broad shoulders and powerful torso compared favorably with the rippling muscles of the famous statue of Laocoon struggling with the serpents sent by Minerva to silence the Trojan priest of Neptune. The middle Cartwright son, Hoss, was a little too much of the titan to suit the classical model, but he was awe-inspiring nonetheless. And as for Adam, the eldest of the three younger men….

Well, it was Adam’s body, as she’d always imagined it, that took, in her mind’s eye, the place of Goethe’s as the disciple admired the earthly garment of his departed master.

Book folded around her hand, one finger keeping her place in it, the former teacher drifted into reverie, and thence into something deeper….
“I can give you,” the shaggy-coated water-dog said, “the pure essence of supreme heart’s-bliss; the holiest moment of highest satisfaction, lasting for eternity. Would this not be worth the trifling little service I request from you in return?”

She knew, somehow, he was not deceiving her, or at least was telling her no lie. Such apparent impossibility was quite within his powers; he needed only her consent. It did not puzzle her, in that moment, to find such abilities held within the unremarkable beast she’d seen before from time to time on the streets of Virginia City, usually accompanied by an aging but spry miner whose claim was not far from the Ponderosa. The dog was alone now, watching her with eyes almost hidden by long, wavy hair. They glittered, those eyes, in a way she’d never noticed before.

But so, perhaps, did hers, at the prospect he offered her. Because she had once experienced a moment of such transcendent happiness, though it had faded almost as swiftly as it had come. She had known what it was to have her heart’s dearest wish be granted. To experience that joy again, and eternally…would be worth any price she could pay.

Adam, her dearest love, singing of his love for her beneath her window. Adam, wonderful Adam—hers. Forever.

So why did some tiny, crawling worm within the unfolding rose of her heart cry out that she had to refuse? How could something that filled her with such delight and desire be anything but good and holy?

Well, cruel pedantic memory could supply one reason, perhaps.

“I made a fool of myself,” she whispered miserably, and then, a little firmer because she knew how much more it would matter to a proud man like Adam, “I made a fool out of him.”

“What if you did? It would all be forgotten.” Oh, and what a blessing that would be…that voice, that face, those warm strong arms around her always…but no, her nagging prosaic inner voice could not—quite—be silent even now.

“He went away.”

This time there was a pause before the smooth confident voice replied—this time with…was it a touch of irritation? “He would be happy with you. So happy he’d never want anything else….”

“But then he wouldn’t be Adam.”

It came out weak and quavering, but as soon as she heard the words all her unruly desire, all her yearning after promised bliss was gone. Truth could do that to delusions, and this was rock-solid, well-considered truth. No woman could have held Adam in Nevada for much longer than he’d stayed—otherwise Mrs. William Cartwright would have a different husband and be living in a beautiful, new-built house on the Ponderosa instead of settling for a fresh coat of paint on the old Dayton place. Adam had truly wanted to be the happily married man he’d promised her he would be, if only for little Peggy’s sake. It wasn’t that Laura couldn’t manage to hold onto him; Adam himself hadn’t been able to break his frantic soul to harness.

Hitching her wagon to such a wandering star might be happiness for some women, no doubt, but not for one like Laura Dayton. Not for one like the former Abigail Jones, either, truth be told. Abigail loved her hearth and home, loved having her familiar, treasured possessions around her, loved most of all being where she could watch the children she’d once taught grow up into fine young men like Mitch Devlin and Joseph Cartwright.

Better by far to cherish a moment’s innocent foolishness for the fleeting thing it was than to turn it into an iron-barred cage and entrap two helpless souls. “Begone, foul spirit!” she snorted at the Father of Temptations, and banished him with a splendid flick of her hand—which somehow ended up hard against the burning-hot chimney of her reading lamp, threatening to knock it off the nightstand. Fully awake again, she scrabbled to steady the lamp, terrified she’d break its glass or spill its burning oil and in the process disturb the other occupant of her bed.

There was, after all, something important she’d forgotten in the bedazzlement of temptation—that she had a husband, a man who could link the author of a book of advice for the housewife with the nation’s most famous novelist, and who had promised he was going to read Emerson’s Essays with her that coming winter. Was going to sing for her again—even if he needed to have his favorite mare nearby for courage’s sake. Going, she knew, to spend many long years ahead working himself harder than he’d ever dream of working his horses, or his hired help, to make the best home he could for the woman he loved.

To give her a life that kept on twisting and climbing and turning into something new, instead of binding itself to one single moment, however seemingly perfect.

“Good night, my love,” Abigail whispered to the softly snoring Hank. And then she blew out the lamp.