The Homesman (12 page)

Mary Bee shook her head. “You were right to tell me. Where are the girls?”

“Oh, inside.” He gestured at the house. “No use havin' 'em out here under foot, cryin' an' carryin' on when their ma goes.”

Vester had interposed his bulk between her and the door. Mary Bee sidled around him and could see Junia, Aggie, and Vernelle at the wavery window, noses flattened. She nodded to them. To their father's annoyance, they tapped a greeting on the pane. At the same moment she could see, in full outline, what Vester was up to. The coming of the wagon and the carting off of his wife were to him a game of Hide and Seek—the whole point of it being to prevent her from discovering that he had bought a new wife to replace the old one, who, though legally married to him and still resident in his house, was shatterpated. To that end, he had ordered his girls to hide indoors lest they blab and give him away, while Jenny Tull had been instructed to run to the outhouse and hide there, out of sight, until Mary Bee, the Seeker, was gone. Getting her to go, as soon as possible, he would handle himself right now.

“Now here's her things, Miz Cuddy,” he said, lumbering to the house, picking up a bedroll and a bundle and bringing them to her. “An' here's a paper for Slade's Dell, Kintucky, where she's s'pose t'go. Got a sister'n brother there. Now you put them things away an' I'll fetch 'er right out—how's that?”

Before she could say yea or nay he had gone into the house. She buttoned the paper away, took bedroll and bundle to the wagon, opened the doors, smiled at each of the three women, and turned as Vester, one arm about her waist, bustled Theoline out his door and across the muddy stretch toward the wagon. The woman's eyes darted here and there, but her step was firm and directed. Mary Bee was determined to speak to her, to see how she reacted.

“Hello, Theoline. I'm glad to see you looking so well. Do you remember me, Mary Bee?”

“Ti,” said Theoline. “Ti, ti, ti, ti.”

“Oh, you want t'talk, she'll talk yer arm off,” said Vester, helping her into the wagon and seating her beside Mrs. Sours. He backed out and down, huffing, and heaved a long, sad sigh as Mary Bee closed and bolted the doors. “Don't see as how me and the girls kin live without our Line,” he said. “But I know this is the best thing for 'er. An' I have you t'thank, Miz Cuddy, takin' 'er home—what a goodly, Christian thing t'do. An' speakin' of that, cain't I see t'yer stock while you're gone?”

“Thanks very much, but no thank you,” said Mary Bee. “Charley Linens will.”

Suddenly she slipped past him. It was time to seek. She marched in a straight line toward the outhouse, stopping ten feet away. “Jenny!” she called.

She was not answered.

“Jenny Tull!”

She could almost see, through the wooden door, the frightened, disfigured girl hiding inside. Did she know what Theoline Belknap had done there?

“Jenny, this is Mary Bee Cuddy,” she announced loudly enough to be heard at the wagon and even in the house if anyone was curious enough to crack the door and listen. “Welcome to our neighborhood. I live just two miles east of here. I'm going away now, for a few weeks, but when I return, I want you to know you'll have a friend. Goodbye.”

When she swept back to the wagon in triumph, Vester had moved forward to stand by the seat, found out and red-faced. She climbed up on the driver's side.

“That was mighty smart, Miz Cuddy,” he sneered at her past Briggs. “But pot cain't call the kettle black. I see you got yerself some comp'ny, too, fer the cold nights. Who's this plug-ugly?”

In Briggs's right hand appeared his big Navy Colt's. He, too, had played the game. Mary Bee didn't know where he'd hidden the gun, behind him or under him or in a fold of his cowcoat, but here it was. Vester stood stock-still, his eyes widened by the weapon. A rifle might not have daunted him, but he was a stranger to handguns and the kind of men who carried them. Briggs leaned out and down and with the barrel of the repeater gave the homesteader a sharp tunk on the forehead, just above the hairline, insufficient to fell him but hard enough to split the scalp. Briggs laid the gun on the seat and wiped the black from his right hand on his coat. Dark blood trickled down Vester's forehead, over the bridge of his nose, and fell in drops from the tip. Briggs handed the reins to Mary Bee, she clucked to the mules, and the wagon moved away. Vester Belknap stood like a dumb animal, bleeding. Briggs spat over the side.

•   •   •

Thus the wooden box on wheels commenced its passage over the plains. The wheels made two sounds. Where there was posthumous snow, they crunched. Where there was not, and the miles were mats of damp brown grass and the iron tires cut through to soil, they rumbled. And counterpoint to these sounds, before and behind, were the trampling of the mules and the thuds of trailing animals, mare and rat-tailed roan. Mary Bee Cuddy had the reins, Briggs beside her. Four women rode within the box, passengers and prisoners, locked in with their belongings. On top, tied down under a tarpaulin, were bedrolls and sacks of provisions and saddles for the trailing horses. Underneath, suspended from a cross-brace, hung a bucket of axle grease. Staring from its windows, its square and sightless eyes, the wagon tended eastward toward a place where gray sky and mottled earth met and made a long, long line. After an hour or two of travel, a new sound reduced the rest. One of the women began to wail, grievously, and went on wailing until Mary Bee said she couldn't bear it, asked Briggs to stop, climbed down, and stepped back to a window. It was Mrs. Svendsen, least likely of the four, whose arms she had untied. “Please stop, Mrs. Svendsen,” she asked. The woman continued. “Mrs. Svendsen, I asked you to stop. Please do.” The woman did not. “Stop!” cried Mary Bee through the window at her. “This instant! You stop!” Mrs. Svendsen stopped.

Mary Bee went up to the seat, wheezing as though she couldn't catch her breath. When she did, she spoke to Briggs. “That was dreadful. I couldn't endure it.” He looked at her, amused. “What'd you think this was, Cuddy? A church picnic?” Soon, however, Mrs. Svendsen began to wail again, and was echoed by another woman, then another, and presently the voices of all four, Gro Svendsen and Hedda Petzke and Arabella Sours and Theoline Belknap, joined in discord. It was a lament such as these silent lands had seldom heard. It was a plaint of such despair that it rent the heart and sank teeth into the soul. Mary Bee pressed hands to her ears. Tears streamed down her cheeks, the tears she had damned up yesterday and today. It was as though the tragic creatures in the wagon could now, finally, discern what was happening to them: that they were being torn from everyone they loved, their men, their children born and unborn; and from everything they loved, their flower seeds and best bonnets and wedding rings—never to return. The wagon rumbled. Mary Bee wept. Briggs pushed the mules. The women went on wailing. Wailing.

THE

TRAIL

 

I
n the neighborhood they were called “Norskies.” Among their own kind they were known as “Vossings” because they had originally come to the New World from the Voss district of Norway. They were hardheaded people. They let their sweat speak for them. They feared only God and prairie fire.

Thor and Gro Svendsen came to the Territory from Minnesota, selling the farm there to Syvert and Netti Nordstog, Gro's parents, staking out one claim in the Territory and buying the adjacent from a homesteader who had frozen his feet crossing a swollen stream. A doctor amputated his legs with a skinning knife and a hacksaw.

The Svendsens built a sod house and stable, turned eighty acres with a breaking plow and planted sorghum, put down a well and found water at twenty feet, and prospered from the beginning. They toiled from light to bed and had rain enough and money in the Bank of Loup and loved each other and lived with tragedy.

Gro was barren.

It was the central fact of their life.

She was thirty-six now, Thor thirty-eight. The calendar pages curled. The bed turned its back on them. Sexual intercourse, which had once been an act of love, and later a chore as customary as bringing a cow to a bull, had become after sixteen years of marriage a deed done in silent desperation. Their childlessness was not from lack of trying. Every night, except for those of her periods, husband threw a leg over wife, drew up her nightgown, mounted her, worked upon her as though he were hammering a crowbar or swinging an ax, spilled his seed, rolled away from her, and slept. Neither uttered an endearment. Neither kissed the other. Thor could not conceive why Gro could not conceive. How could a field, a virgin field, plowed and planted now uncounted times, fail to yield a crop? What poison was there in the soil? She must be at fault. Had he not done his duty? Why would she not do hers?

Now and then, after supper dishes, while she bent by candlelight to her task, mending sheets, weaving a rag rug, Thor would stare long at her through the spectacles he had bought from a salesman who peddled the neighborhood every year. After trying on many pairs, you settled on one and bargained for it. Two dollars was not too dear a price to pay to save your eyesight. “I have given you my seed,” Thor would say. “You do not accept it.”

“I am sorry.”

“I should have big, strong boys to help me. You should have girls. Soon it is too late. Soon we will be old. What then?”

She would bite her tongue.

“All have children. All but you.”

After a time she would say, “I am as God made me.” And add, “As you married me.”

He would look away, but they took his bitterness and her sorrow to bed with them.

And so to atone, to prove to him she was not a good-for-nothing, Gro Svendsen did the work of three, a mother and two of the daughters she could not have. She worked in the fields with Thor when he could use a hand. Often she fed the stock and forked out the stable. She planted and tended a vegetable garden. She mended bedding, kept them in candles, baked, made her own clothing from yardgoods, washed outdoors and ironed in, fried, made soap from wood ash and grease drippings, dried corn and beef, salted pork and cucumbers, patched overalls and jeans, stewed, churned butter, stuffed fresh ticks for the bed, kept the house clean, swatted flies, gathered herbs for medicines, battled bedbugs in the walls, and opened her door and larder to hopeful wagoners headed west as well as the sad folk headed east, homeward, in defeat. In between she did her utmost to keep herself presentable. She prized a small mirror and stared into it when Thor was gone, trying to recall the bride to whom it had been given, and was every time inclined to cry.

She did cry, frequently, when alone, but tears could not relieve her. Thor spoke the truth. She must be to blame. He gave her the gift of his manhood, and her body would not accept it. Over the years guilt grew in her like a gross, unwanted child. Guilt made her heavy. Guilt waddled with her. Her stomach went sour. She vomited often in the morning. She had headaches. She was without hope. Time would not deliver her of the abomination in her womb, she was certain, no matter how unsightly she became, no matter how long she lived. And as guilt must be her only child, so must it be her secret. She would bite her tongue through before she breathed it to her husband. She thought of killing herself.

Then, in Minnesota, in the early autumn, her father, Syvert Nordstog, died, and Netti, her mother, wrote saying she couldn't manage the farm by herself, she was too old and lonely. She proposed selling it and coming to the Territory to live out her life with her daughter and son-in-law. She would turn her savings over to them and help Gro all she could. The Svendsens had to decide.

Gro was in favor. “She has no one else, poor soul. And she will have three, four thousand easy.”

Thor pushed up his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Where will she sleep?”

Gro knew at once what he meant. “In the loft. She sleeps sound.”

Over the rear half of the sod house there was a loft floored with poles where they stored things, and a ladder. Gro could stuff another tick.

Netti Nordstog came to them with the first snow. How changed she seemed from the mother Gro had known, how frail she was, how old. She couldn't climb the ladder to the bed made for her in the loft, and had to sleep with Gro while Thor roosted overhead. She was a comfort, though, to Gro, and another pair of hands. She could cook and clean and sew and add a new voice and presence in the evenings when sycamore logs snapped in the stove and wind raged about the corners of the house. She was like a second candle burning. Mother and daughter had never been as close.

It was the most savage winter any of them had known, even in Minnesota. As the days dragged and blizzard followed blizzard and snowdrifts piled as high as his head, Thor piled resentment within himself. Gro understood. An old woman had got the best of him in a bargain. She had jumped his claim to his own bed and cheated him out of his manhood. Granted, she had given them good money, but more greenbacks in the bank were not worth a single hair of a child's head. Sometimes, at night, as her mother slept at her side, Gro could hear him toss and grumble in the loft. It was more than dreams of trolls. If he had grudged Netti Nordstog in the beginning, he hated her now. Gro dreaded an explosion.

And then in February, as though Thor willed it, Netti was taken desperately ill. It wasn't the ague, she did not turn yellow, there were no agonies of fever and chills, it was something inside, the failure of an organ, the liver or a kidney perhaps. She was in fierce pain down deep. The doctor was thirty miles away, and Thor could not be expected to risk the ride. Gro nursed her mother day and night, using the only specific she had, a patent medicine called “J. L. Curtis's Compound Syrup of Sassafras,” which, according to the label, was a surefire cure for “Consumption, Hives, Bronchitis, Spitting of Blood, Whooping Cough, Lumbago, Cholera Morbus and Other Maladies Too Numerous to Mention,” and dosed her patient also with teas made from wahoo and snake roots. She tried mustard poultices, too, about the neck, wrists, and ankles. But at dawn of the third day, while yet another blizzard overwhelmed the house and Thor snored in the loft, Netti Nordstog passed away, holding on to her daughter's hand for dear life.

“Thor! Thor!” Gro sobbed him downstairs, and the two conferred. There could be no funeral now, for the neighbors, even the Caudills, their nearest, could not be notified in this weather, nor could they summon the circuit rider, Reverend Dowd. All that would have to be put off, but she must be buried now.

Thor shook his head. “Ground's too hard. Solid three foot down.”

“Then how?”

“I see to it. You lay her out.”

“How?”

“Freeze her.”

“Freeze her!”

Thor poked up the embers in the stove and added kindling and a log. “She can't stay in here. Soon she will stink.”

Gro gasped. “You wished her dead!”

“I did no such.”

“You hated her!”

“Lay her out, woman!” Thor roared.

Gro washed her mother, combed her hair, dressed her in her best silk faille dress, laid a cloth wet with vinegar over her face to deter mortification, and crossed her arms over her bosom. Thor dressed, and carried the body out into the blizzard, then returned, stomping and shaking snow.

“Where?” Gro demanded.

“Never mind.”

“Where!”

“In a drift. Near the house.”

“Oh, God!” Gro sat down in a chair, covered her face with her hands, and rocked herself. “My mother! In the snow! Like an animal!”

That night Thor got into his rightful bed and expected sex. Gro sprang from the covers and screamed at him from behind the stove. “No, you do not! When she is buried proper, yes! Now, not!”

Thor sat up in bed. “It is my right! Do you not want a son?”

Her response was to rush past him, climb the ladder, and sleep in the loft.

And there she slept from then on. Husband and wife did not exchange a word after that.

Then they had a thaw, and the first day of it Thor tried digging a proper grave, to no avail. Strive though he might after clearing the snow, his spade bounced off the frozen earth as though it were rock. After a few minutes of this, he saddled up and rode over to the Caudills to discuss the problem with Henry. While he was gone, Gro left the house and, shedding tears, swept at the drifts with a broom in search of her mother but could not find her.

The next morning, after chores, Thor saddled up again and rode fourteen miles to Loup. Henry Caudill had suggested gunpowder. Ten pounds of it, in his opinion, would blow a hole wide and deep enough. To be on the safe side, Thor bought eleven pounds at the general store, and fuse, and did not reach home until two hours after dark. Gro still slept in the loft.

In the morning, with a crowbar, Thor drove two holes three feet deep and four feet apart in the place where he had cleared the snow, and filled them almost to the top with gunpowder. Since he was a thrifty man, he saved a pound of powder and set it away in the stable. He then cut the fuse in half, ran the two lengths into the holes, tamped them shut with clods, struck a match, lit the fuse ends, and ran for the house, making it just in time.

There was a muffled explosion.

Gro started.

“Gunpowder,” said her husband. “I have made a grave with gunpowder. It is the best I can do. Now I bury her. You want to come?”

Thor went outside and looked at the hole. It was ample for a small woman. He got a horseblanket from the stable, with a shovel located the right drift, and disinterred the body. It was frozen stiff. He rolled it up in the blanket, placed it in the hole, and went to work with the shovel.

That night, when both were ready for bed, Gro started up the ladder to the loft, but Thor took her by an arm and held her fast.

“No,” he said. “Now she is in the ground. Now you will lie with me.”

She came down the ladder and got into bed. He followed, drew up her nightgown, threw a leg over her, mounted her, worked upon her, spilled his seed, and rolled away.

To his surprise, she left the bed by crawling over the foot and came round to stand beside him.

“God will strike you down,” she said, then climbed the ladder to the loft.

Thor Svendsen's dream saved his life that night. In some small hour a troll rode a bear through the forest toward him, and he woke with a start. He heard a creak. His eyes adjusted to the dark. His wife was descending the ladder. He lay still and watched. Once down, she moved behind the stove and came out with something in her hand. As she approached the bed, even without his spectacles he could see the long blade of his skinning knife. She raised the knife high. He readied himself.

As she plunged the knife downward, toward him, he hurled himself out of the bed against her, bulling her backward into a chair by the table, tipping it over and Gro with it, knocking the knife from her hand. He snatched it up and sat with it on the bed. His wife got up without a word and climbed into the loft. He had no sleep the rest of that night.

In the morning they dressed, and while she got breakfast Thor went out to do the chores. When he returned and reached the door, something, an instinct, caused him to open the door slowly and to hunch as he entered. It was well he did. She had hidden behind the door, and as he passed the door's edge, she swung at him with the hatchet kept by the stove to split kindling. The blade buried itself in the door.

Thor Svendsen saw red. He wrestled her into a chair, held her struggling with one arm, while with the other hand he opened her trunk and found a pillowcase, then bound her to the chair by the neck.

He stood, breathing hard and glaring at her. She glared back, her eyes glazed with hatred. It was then he realized his wife was insane.

•   •   •

They were to traverse almost the entire Territory, and Briggs set a course due east. Mary Bee preferred to follow the river valleys, which ran southeasterly, in hopes of encountering people who would aid them on their way, the more people the better. He contradicted her. The fewer the better.

“Why?”

“Because we're hauling an odd lot of freight.”

“Freight!”

“You call it what you want. It's freight to me,” he said. “Stop to think. We can meet three kinds of people out here. Who?”

“Well, wagon trains, I suppose.”

“And you suppose those men'll want their wives to see what becomes of women in these parts?”

Mary Bee sat silent.

“What other kinds?”

“I don't know.”

“Freighters. Men. Haven't had a woman lately. Who else?”

Mary Bee scowled.

“I'll tell you. Indians. After they lay me low they'll have a high old time with the five of you.”

He let her reflect and then, having won the argument, had the right to the last word. “So I'm shooting straight for that river, and I'll shy away from anybody. The fewer the better.”