The Widows

by Jess Montgomery

  John—nearly old enough to be her father. Yet she felt her heart ease at the thought of him. Not the passion she’d felt with Daniel. Something steadier. And she’d nodded.

  Daniel had pulled her to him then, given Marvena the lightest of kisses on her forehead. She knew then that they would never make love again. He released her, then walked out her door—not for the last time. But for the last time as her lover.

  Now Marvena looks at Lily, watches Lily take in this bit of news, her face clearing as she places it in her own life’s timeline.

  And in that spare moment, Marvena is tempted to confess all to Lily about the movement, the meetings, to beg her for help.

  But then Lily’s shoulders stiffen again, and the moment is gone. Marvena thinks, Wait. Wait’n see if she really does go to the boardinghouse, come back with news about Eula, or at least a report of whether or not Daniel really did go there, and what happened if he did.

  Then, without turning, Lily says again, nearly a whisper, “Thank you.” She plucks her coat from the door and leaves, shutting the door gently behind her.

  Marvena watches through the window, as she has so often of late, the sheriff drive away.

  * * *

  Later, after Frankie is to bed, Marvena sits at the table, shotgun across her lap. On the table are her coal-oil lamp, and a blue Ball canning jar serving as a vase for Frankie’s bouquet picked earlier, and beside that the box of Eula’s that Lily had found in Daniel’s jailhouse drawer.

  Marvena reaches a hand out to pet Shep’s head and then remembers that the dog is not here. Even as a pang squeezes her heart, she shakes her head at her fool self. Daniel dead, Tom missing, Eula gone, Alistair in the mines, Luther cracking down harder than ever. And she’s missing a damned dog? But she is. She hopes Shep is safe with Nana and Jurgis. She wishes she could feel safe again here, wishes she could be sure she can keep Frankie safe.

  The flame of her lamp flickers shadows over the small white box. She’d let Frankie look in the box, too, felt the hurt of the disappointment in Frankie’s face that so little was in it.

  But maybe they’d missed something? Something that could give a clue as to Eula’s whereabouts? Now Marvena slowly pulls the box toward her. One more look through. She places each item in a careful row on the table.

  Marvena stares into the now empty box. To the proprietress, this would all be trash. So why keep it? Give it to Daniel?

  Something glints. Marvena blinks—damn her overly soft emotions for the girl, getting the best of her! But no—there’s the glint again. In the corner of the box. Marvena pokes her fingertip in and feels the hard stone. Carefully, she plucks it out.

  It’s a tiny diamond chip, fallen out of some piece of jewelry.

  None of the girls at the boardinghouse could afford to buy these pretties. But then, neither could any miner. Only a wealthy man could, men from Kinship.

  Or a Pinkerton, as Jurgis had warned her.

  CHAPTER 15

  LILY

  It’s late afternoon when Lily eases her automobile slowly down the rough rutted lane from Marvena’s, then back into Rossville. She stops in front of the boardinghouse and considers going in as she’d promised Marvena, but by the time she does that she’ll have to either drive at night—something she’s never done—or give up on stopping in on Mrs. Ada Gottschalk. She’s uncomfortable with either notion.

  Twilight has fallen by the time Lily drives up Mrs. Gottschalk’s lane. As she pulls her automobile to a stop in front of the farmhouse, she sees someone—Ada, no doubt, for the widow lives alone—peering out of the front window at her.

  Lily starts to pick up her shotgun but then thinks better of it. She doesn’t want to scare the woman away. Not when she hasn’t spoken to Lily since the Great War, and with good reason. Lily goes up the steps to the porch and knocks on the door.

  Mrs. Gottschalk gave me this mess of green beans when I stopped by to check on her.…

  Lily gasps at the memory of Daniel coming into their kitchen after a day of rounds. He made a point to regularly check on widows, the elderly, and other folks he thought vulnerable.

  “Mrs. Gottschalk?” Lily calls. “It’s me, Lily Ross. I know you’ve heard about Daniel. He—he always spoke highly of you.”

  Or … Mrs. Gottschalk sent these black raspberries. Come with me to check on her next time—your families used to be such great friends; she gave you that blue ribbon—you do remember the ribbon.… Then, seeing Lily’s face flame at his teasing and mistaking it for belated modesty over her forward teenage behavior, he’d lean in for a kiss.

  But then, as now, it was shame burning her face. Daniel kept Marvena from her, but she’d kept secrets from him, too, secrets that would have made him ashamed of her.

  “Please, Mrs. Gottschalk. I’ve been told your farmhand Rusty found Daniel. I know you thought highly of Daniel, too. I just have a few questions.”

  A few moments pass. And suddenly Lily is dizzy. She presses her eyes shut just for a second to regain her balance.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow then. I—I’m guessing you haven’t heard, but I’m the sheriff now. And I need to talk with you about Daniel’s death.”

  * * *

  Just before sunrise the next morning, Lily rises, turns on the gaslight, and attends to her toiletry needs. At the bureau she picks up Daniel’s brush, breathing in the slightly lavender scent of the Brilliantine pomade he used to style his hair, always neatly parted on the left.

  She thinks of her visit with Marvena. Though it is possible that Eula is Daniel’s daughter, Lily finds comfort in learning that Frankie is not, in hearing Marvena’s admission that she and Daniel ceased being lovers when Marvena met John, before she and Daniel met.

  Yet it’s only partial solace. It will be hard enough to live without Daniel. But it is an added burden to realize he hadn’t trusted her to know about Marvena and Eula. Had she seemed so weak to him? He’d kept much from her, about his boxing career, his time in the Great War—that she understood—but she wants to believe she’d have also understood about his relationship with Marvena. It hurts to think that she must have seemed too weak to understand.

  Lily opens Daniel’s drawer, hurriedly puts away the brush, shutting the drawer so hard that the bureau mirror rattles her image. She dresses and hastily pins up her hair, ignoring messy bumps and loose strands. Then she eases down the steps, mindful of her sleeping family.

  In the kitchen, the woodbin under the stove is empty. Lily steps outside to gather an armful of wood from the back stoop, planning to make a quick batch of biscuits. Then she will take the children to Mama’s, go back to Mrs. Gottschalk’s, then to the Rossville boardinghouse as she’d promised Marvena. But before her hand touches the first stick of kindling, she freezes, still as Lot’s wife looking back.

  In the tender rise of this morning on the last day of March she gazes upon her chickens, heads and bodies wrenched asunder, strewn in dew-slicked grass.

  She stands for a long time, silent, then finally goes inside to get the large canning kettle for the bodies and a smaller pan for the heads. The clanging of the pots stirs the children. They’re downstairs on the back stoop before she can finish cleaning up the slaughter.

  Micah screams. Lily wants to go to her children, but her hands are covered in blood, feathers sticking to her fingers and palms—as if she’s been tarred and feathered. The imagery brings a rush of coppery bitterness up to her mouth.

  Lily looks at Jolene, who has already drawn Micah to her. “Go to Hildy! Tell her to find Deputy Weaver.”

  She’s just finishing cleaning up the chickens when Martin comes into the yard. “Oh God, Lily. Who would do this?”

  Whoever hurt poor Shep? Maybe someone in Rossville hadn’t liked seeing her there. Pinkertons? Miners who don’t yet trust her? Someone attempting to scare her, to goad her into swallowing the escaped-prisoner tale whole, like spoiled pudding.

  Lily doesn’t say this to Martin. She isn’t sure if she should trust him, h
er husband’s best friend. At one time this would have cracked her heart. But now her heart’s gone cold and hard. He would, after all, have been the one most likely to order the windshield glass swept aside. And he hadn’t told her that it had been on the side of the road heading to Rossville, not from it.

  As she washes her hands at the pump, she says, “Take the chicken bodies to Rossville. Give them to anyone who wants them. They’re still fresh enough to fry up. Tell them this is a gift. From Lily. The sheriff. Toss the heads. Or give them to anyone wanting fishing bait.”

  “Lily, are you sure—”

  “It’s best this way. Burying them out back will only draw foxes or worse.”

  Then she goes back into the house. Visiting the widow Gottschalk and the boardinghouse will have to wait another day. Today, her children need her.

  * * *

  That night Lily sits on the edge of the children’s bed, Micah on her lap, rocking back and forth, and she can just hear Mama say she’s coddling the boy, but he’s been in and out of hysteria all day over the chickens. Lily cherished them for their eggs, but Micah had loved them most of all for their silliness, their clucks and head bobs. Hiccups pepper his half sleep, remnants of his earlier relentless sobs. Jolene sleeps quietly on her side of the bed, her silence as eerie as her brother’s wailing. She clutches one of the many dolls Daniel fashioned for her.

  Now Micah’s smaller breaths settle, begin to match hers on an inhale or exhale, a sign that Lily can safely place him down beside his sister. Lily lays her boy down, pulls the quilt over both children, then goes downstairs to the front parlor.

  Hildy, who insisted after word spread to her of the chickens that she will spend a few days with Lily, dozes on the couch, her knitting slack in her hands.

  Lily sits down in her chair, places her shotgun across her lap.

  * * *

  Just after midnight, Lily jolts awake.

  Hildy is still sound asleep, but Lily hears something outside the house. She follows the sound to the kitchen, sees through the window the shape of a man by the jailhouse, locking the door. He picks up a coal-oil lantern, then steps away.

  Quickly and quietly, Lily steps out onto the back stoop, raises her shotgun. The man turns, startles, nearly drops his lantern and his ring of keys.

  It’s Martin. He’s the only one, other than her, who has a key to the jailhouse.

  “What are you doing, Martin?”

  “Lily … I didn’t want to disturb you, after what you’ve been through.”

  “I’m the sheriff. It’s my job to be disturbed.”

  “Could you lower the shotgun?”

  “Maybe. Answer my question.” She doesn’t lower the weapon.

  “A man was found hiding in a barn outside of town. The Hilliards’ farm. The man wouldn’t answer questions, so old man Hilliard held him at gunpoint, sent the son to get me.”

  She lifts an eyebrow but finally lowers the shotgun.

  Martin sighs. “Lily, it’s going to take a while for people to accept you as sheriff.”

  “Uh-huh. So he’s in jail for sleeping in someone’s barn loft?”

  “Loitering. Stealing food from the Hilliards’ cellar. Lily, it’s Tom Whitcomb. He refuses to talk, but it’s clear he’s been hiding out for days.”

  “Move aside.”

  “Lily.”

  “Either open the door, or move aside so I can do it.”

  Martin’s hands shake so that it takes a few tries to manage the lock before he can pull open the door. He presses open the heavy door, steps in. Lily follows him.

  In Martin’s flickering light, she sees that three cells are empty. In the cell nearest the door, a man lies on the cot, his back to her. Lily walks to the iron-barred cell. The jail is cold. The man doesn’t yet have a blanket or pillow for the straw mattress. She notes, too, that Tom has taken off his boots and put them in the corner opposite the mattress, toe by toe and heel by heel, perpendicular to the wall; something about this exacting neatness with such sparse possessions makes her doubt that that this is a man who has the spontaneity—even if Daniel had made it to the Rossville holding cell to fetch him—to kill in the heat of a moment.

  Perhaps it is the cool air finally stirring through the jailhouse that rouses him, or perhaps she makes some sound while studying this man who she’s supposed to believe is Daniel’s killer. In any case, Tom moves, groans, sits up, turns, stares at Lily.

  The only expression he musters is an expectant lifting of his brows, a feat given his welted face—lip split, nose swollen double, right ear pulverized into a cauliflower mass. He gives her shotgun a pointed look.

  “If’n you’re going to shoot me dead, do it right quick.” Tom’s voice wheezes through his swollen lips. “I’d rather die fast than by being slowly worn out, wondering about your aim.”

  Well. His quick tongue confirms that he must be Marvena’s brother.

  Tom sighs. “Let me talk to Daniel.”

  Lily glances at Martin, who looks stricken. “This is the most he’s said since I got to the Hilliards’ farm. I reckon he doesn’t know—”

  Lily looks back at Tom. “Daniel was murdered a week ago.”

  In spite of welts and bruises, Tom’s face registers shock. “What? Daniel’s dead?”

  Sorrow suddenly overcomes Tom’s expression of shock, and it’s enough to make Lily’s heart clench. God, has it really been just a week since Daniel’s death?

  “A Pinkerton man came to our house eight days ago. Daniel said it was to tell him to fetch a prisoner in Rossville. Supposedly, the prisoner killed him during transport, then went on the lam. Talk is, that prisoner is you.”

  Tom looks at Martin. “No, no, I never—”

  “She’s the sheriff,” Martin says. “Tell her.”

  Now shock overtakes sorrow on Tom’s face and Lily allows herself a grim smile. “A lot can happen in six days. It’s surely long enough for you to be long gone from Bronwyn County. The state, even! Yet here you are. Why?”

  “’Cause I never killed him, I didn’t even know, I—” Tom’s voice grinds as he drops his head to his hands.

  “Just tell us, plain and simple then, how you got out of the Rossville holding cell and what you were doing hiding in the Hilliards’ barn.”

  Tom looks up, stares over her shoulder at Martin. “Not with him here.”

  “Go, Martin,” Lily says.

  “Now, Lily, look here—”

  “I’m not going to shoot him. Just go.”

  She waits a moment after hearing the door click behind her. Then she studies Tom, sees the shock and sorrow and fear swirling his countenance. Judges the emotions to be genuine. And she sees something else in his face. Hunger.

  Well. In all her years as jail mistress for Daniel, she’d never known a starving prisoner to give clear answers. Maybe a good meal is a better motivator than the business end of a shotgun.

  She starts toward the jailhouse door, saying, “I’ll be right back.”

  * * *

  Lily opens the food slot and slides in the plate. Tom grabs it and crams a whole biscuit into his mouth. A large chunk crumbles into his beard. He claws the crumbs out and sucks them from his filthy fingers, while eyeing the cup of coffee she holds.

  “Slow down,” she says. “You’ll sicken yourself, gobbling so fast on an empty stomach.”

  He takes a few smaller bites of biscuit, and only then does Lily pass the cup of coffee to him. She’s glad to get rid of the cup. The smell of the coffee roils her stomach. She’s as sensitive with this pregnancy as she was with her first, the child she’d miscarried shortly after Daniel went to serve in the army. The sudden thought makes her pause, but then she shakes away the worry. She sits slowly as a cramp stitches up her right side, and puts her shotgun across her lap. Finally, Lily studies her prisoner.

  She could start by again demanding to know where he’s been the past six days, but she guesses that even the satisfaction of a good meal isn’t going to be enough to get him to re
adily fess up whatever he might know. Another tactic occurs to her.

  Lily clears her throat. “I’ve been talking with your sister.”

  Tom looks surprised. “How do you know Marvena?”

  Of course this man would know that Daniel had kept the knowledge of Marvena from her all of these years. “She came to our house three days ago, the day of Daniel’s funeral. She said her daughter was missing, that Daniel promised to help her find the girl.”

  “Fool woman, risking everything over that little whore!” Tom mutters.

  Lily startles. “Eula’s your niece!”

  “Oh yeah. I’m right tore up over her.”

  “Yesterday, I went to see Marvena. She claims she didn’t know when she came to our house that Daniel had died or that you’d been taken prisoner. She also told me that after she got back from our house she’d gone mushroom hunting with Frankie and when they returned she found her dog beaten. Then last night after I visited her, someone killed all of our chickens. Decapitated them. Left their heads and bodies in our yard. My children saw that this morning.”

  Tom goes pale.

  “Someone’s gone to an awful lot of trouble to rattle Marvena and me. And, if I’m to believe you and Marvena, to set you up as Daniel’s killer. Why you in particular?”

  “I’ve been known to run my mouth about unionizing. That don’t go over too good with either Mr. Ross or the Pinks.”

  “I’m guessing that you’re not the only miner that’s true of.”

  “Well, there’s also the matter of me not liking Daniel coming around Marvena after her husband died last fall.” Tom gives her a hard look.

  “Dammit, do you want me to think you’re guilty? Shoot you dead after all?”

  “If you was gonna do it, you would have.”

  Lily allows herself a hard smile. “Maybe I like the thought of you frying in Old Sparky.”

  Tom looks stricken at the nickname for the electric chair at the state penitentiary. Lily goes on. “I’ll fetch Deputy Weaver. Let him know you fessed up to killing my husband.”