The Widows

by Jess Montgomery

  Lily clears her throat. “Please come in.”

  Mrs. Gottschalk enters, sits on a chair near Lily.

  “Thank you for coming to see me.” Lily hates the quiver in her voice.

  “I didn’t realize that I had a choice,” Mrs. Gottschalk says flatly.

  “Oh! I—I hope Deputy Weaver was kind.”

  “Please. I came because I feel badly that I did not attend Daniel’s funeral. It is hard for me, as you might imagine, to be out in large gatherings. And—and because I should have come to the door when you came by in the first place. I do not like to think that I am cowardly.”

  These words, from Widow Gottschalk, are too much. Lily looks down. “I—I always meant to come see you. To apologize—”

  “That is not necessary now.” Mrs. Gottschalk clips each word. “What do you want?”

  Lily looks back up and clears her throat. “I heard that your farmhand found Daniel. But that Rusty is missing.”

  Mrs. Gottschalk shrugs. “I wouldn’t say ‘missing.’ Just ‘gone.’ He may well be back. He’s been known to take off on foolish binges. Though he’s far too old for such nonsense.”

  True. There are several cards on Rusty in the jailhouse files.

  “In any case, I have a new farmhand now,” Mrs. Gottschalk says. “So if you pick up Rusty on a binge, tell him not to come back.”

  “I wanted to know what Rusty told you about finding Daniel.”

  Mrs. Gottschalk lifts one eyebrow. “I’ve told Deputy Weaver what I know.”

  “Which is?”

  “Are you asking me as sheriff, or as Daniel’s wife?”

  Lily sits up straighter, finally directly meets Mrs. Gottschalk’s eyes. “Both.”

  Mrs. Gottschalk swallows. “Rusty told me the week before Daniel’s death that he’d planned to move some of the hay from the barn out to the fields. He did so that morning and I reckon that’s when he found…” She shakes her head before she goes on. “Anyway, after Rusty got Daniel up to the house, I tried to tend to him before Dr. Ross could come, but his wounds…” Mrs. Gottschalk pulls a handkerchief from her purse, dabs at her eyes under her spectacles.

  “Did he … did Daniel say anything?” Lily’s words are a harsh whisper.

  Mrs. Gottschalk’s face finally softens. “I’m sorry. He was already gone.”

  Lily glances away, stares at the blue Ball jar vase. The flowers are gone now. She hadn’t noticed until this moment.

  She looks back at Mrs. Gottschalk. “Rusty didn’t mention anyone else on the road?” She thinks of the broken limb of the tree, across from where Daniel had died. “Or nearby?”

  Mrs. Gottschalk shakes her head.

  “Nothing unusual? Out of place?”

  “No. He moved the hay. Realized a bale had fallen off. He went back for it, and that’s when he found him.” Mrs. Gottschalk dabs her eyes again. “I want you to know I didn’t just come because you’re sheriff—a ridiculous job for a woman.” She gives Lily an appraising look, and Lily’s face reddens, as she feels herself to be again the fearful young woman of seven years before. “I came because your husband was a good man. Your father, too. And I want to tell you something. After what happened to him, Hahn wasn’t the same. He spent foolishly, borrowed even more foolishly to keep our farm going in difficult times. But Daniel came out to our house. On official business of the sheriff’s office. Hahn was behind in payments, owed for farm supplies. Daniel was supposed to serve an eviction notice.

  “Instead, he gave me money enough, and then some, to pay off the note on our farm, so I could own it free and clear.” At last, Mrs. Gottschalk allows a smile, but Lily knows it is not for her. It is for the memory of Daniel. “I reckon he didn’t tell you this.”

  Lily swallows hard. No, he hadn’t. So much he hadn’t told her. Trying to protect her. Would he have ever told her, in time?

  “Well, he’d want me to have my pride,” Mrs. Gottschalk says. “I don’t rightly know where he got the money. I didn’t ask.”

  That huge balance in Daniel’s second account … Another secret he’d kept from her.

  “I’m glad he did that,” Lily says.

  “Daniel said it was the least he could do, considering Hahn brought you to Elias’s farm after your accident, into his life,” Mrs. Gottschalk says. She gives Lily a curious look. “You know, I always thought you were a brave child.” For a moment, Lily considers telling her about the attack in the alleyway. It had broken her courage. But she hadn’t even told Hildy or Mama about that. Only Daniel, and George Vogel and Abe Miller, knew.

  Lily looks away and Mrs. Gottschalk sighs. “Anyway. I think that’s why he always checked on us. And on me, after Hahn died. Two years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Lily looks back at Mrs. Gottschalk. “I’ve always, always been sorry—”

  Mrs. Gottschalk holds up her hand. “I’m telling you this because our families have been friends going back a long ways. And because you’ve taken your late husband’s job as sheriff.”

  Lily nods. “For now. At least until—” She stops. She cannot tell this woman, of all women, of her deep need for justice and vengeance.

  But perhaps Mrs. Gottschalk sees it in Lily’s face, for at last she gives her a tender smile, one truly meant for her. “What I’m saying is, Daniel had his own way of doing things. But everything he did was for his community, from my way of looking at it.” The smile snaps away, and Mrs. Gottschalk lifts her eyebrows. “You have big shoes to fill, Sheriff Ross, and I don’t mean because you’re a woman—though plenty will try to use that against you.”

  She stands, goes to the door, stops. Looks back at Lily. “Here’s why I really came—to tell you this: If you ever have need, let me know and I will try to help. As a member of this community. Because that’s what Daniel would have wanted.”

  After Mrs. Gottschalk leaves, Lily picks up the cup of tea, sniffs it. Chamomile. It’s grown cold. But she takes a sip anyway. She has to get strong for what lies ahead.

  CHAPTER 18

  MARVENA

  On this cool, misty morning, Marvena studies her small patch garden behind the cabin—a mess of carrots and green onions have been pulled, too early. Second time this week. She’d hung a quilt to air out on the line between porch and oak tree, too, and it had gone missing.

  Now she feels a presence in the woods nearby—a feeling she’d learned to cultivate from hunting even small creatures—and the skin on the back of her neck prickles. This is no opossum or rabbit or squirrel. And black bears and deer didn’t neatly pull vegetables or snag quilts.

  Human.

  She points her shotgun at the thicket where small broken twigs are telltale signs of some creature coming forth from the woodland to her cabin.

  “Come on out now; show yourself!” Marvena calls. “Or I can just start shooting.”

  The air tightens around her. She cocks the shotgun. Puts her index finger to the trigger.

  “Wait.” The voice, broken and gravelly, comes from the thicket. Tom tumbles forward, wrapped in the quilt, and collapses.

  Marvena rushes to him, falls to her knees beside him. She pushes back the quilt, takes in the welts and fading bruises on his face. He’s healing from a beating, but his eyes are shiny and wild and his skin is hot and dry, though he’s shivering. No, he’s tremoring. He smells of vomit.

  “Oh God, what—” Marvena can’t find the words.

  “Martin … Martin let me go … told me to run … but I couldn’t.… Alistair…”

  Marvena scans the yard. “Hush now; let’s get to the cabin.”

  * * *

  Marvena’s back aches. For a full day she’s sat in a kitchen chair pulled alongside the bed in her small cabin, where Tom rests and heals. After helping Tom into her cabin, she and Frankie had taken turns tending to him or keeping watch outside and listening for unnatural sounds.

  Now Tom looks up at her. “Hey, baby sister.” His voice is hoarse. “We oughta talk.”

  “Not now. When you�
�re stronger.”

  “I’m strong enough,” he says. “I’ve put some things together. The day before Daniel was killed, I was pulled from work to the holding cell by one of the Pinks. Then, middle of the night, I was grabbed from my sleep and someone blindfolded me. I thought to fight, but then I thought … Alistair. And I thought of all we’ve done to organize. I thought, if I fought, I might be making it worse for everyone. So I let myself be led out to an automobile. We drove for a time, and then he had me get out. Took the blindfold off of me, and I see I’m at some hunter’s cabin.”

  “Were there any signs as to whose?”

  “Nah. Looked like it hadn’t been used in years. There were two more fellas—I don’t know if they were Pinks, or just hired in for this, keeping a watch on me. This went on for days. Then one night I heard them talking about how they only had to hold me a few more days. They had a good laugh, talking about how they’d get to rough me up to make me look like I’d been on the lam, then drag me in to the sheriff. After the fight he and I had, I was scared.”

  “How did you get away?”

  Tom offers a wobbly grin. Now he’s got more teeth missing than accounted for. “Mighta been your shine that saved me. The two Pinks got to drinkin’ more than usual that night. I reckon they were bored, or maybe the lightning that night was stronger than usual. Anyway, one fell asleep, and I asked the other to let me go take a piss. He was unsteady, so I grabbed a fallen tree limb and knocked him out. I ran off, and hid out here and there, and then got to a barn.”

  “Oh, Tom, why didn’t you keep running? You could’ve been outta these hills by now—”

  “And leave Alistair?” Tom reaches, puts his hand on Marvena’s arm. His hand is cold. “Leave you? Frankie? The cause?”

  Marvena puts her hands on his, rubs to get warmth in his hands. Just like when they were little and winter nights nipped through cracks—now sealed with tar—in the cabin. “Go on.”

  “Well, I got sloppy. Hungry. Caught in the farmer’s cellar, taking a ham. And then I was hauled into the jail—and that’s where I learned about Daniel’s death. Being wanted for it. And I met the new sheriff—Daniel’s widow! But you know that. You went to see her. She told me.”

  Tom gives Marvena a long, hard look, and she reads in his gaze exactly what Jurgis had already told her—she’d overstepped her bounds. Marvena rubs her eyes. Weary.

  “Yes, I went to Kinship, to see Daniel, try ’n’ find out what happened to Eula, and that’s how I learned about Daniel. And don’t give me lectures about—”

  “Marvena, Eula’s been gone a long time, and we know she was taking up with Pinks—”

  “No!” Marvena says. “I—I shouldn’a but I went to the boardinghouse, and Joanne told me Eula took off with a new young miner.”

  “What? You believe that?” Tom asks, but the effort costs him. He is racked by a deep, rattling cough. “Eula wouldn’t waste her time with a poor miner. She was only after money.”

  The tiny diamond flashes before Marvena’s eyes. Mayhap he’s right, but she won’t stand for more mean talk about Eula. She jerks her arm from Tom.

  He sighs. “Marvena, I reckon I’ve said some terrible things. But I’ve never liked seeing you hurt, and you’ve been hurt enough.”

  “There’s no escaping hurt. It always finds you somehow, so you might as well face it.”

  “But there’s no need running after it, and I fear that’s what you’re doing with Eula. Like you did with Daniel.”

  “You’ve talked too much. Rest, and I’ll bring you some good sassafras tea.” God, she is starting to sound like Nana. Vile thugs beat you near to dying. Is way of world. Have tea.

  Marvena goes to the cookstove to start Tom’s tea, all the while remembering that hard afternoon, one week before Daniel was murdered. The last time she saw Daniel.

  She was out front of her cabin splitting wood—though it was a Sunday, there was no time to rest—when she heard Daniel calling her name. She stopped her labors, turned; for a moment, caught in that wide devil-may-care grin of his, Marvena felt as though they were gazing at each other a lifetime ago.

  Eula. The child’s name whispered across her heart and mind, and she ran to him as she once had. He caught her as she tumbled into him, slowly wrapped his arms around her.

  Daniel asked what had her panicked. She told him about Eula being gone for nigh on three weeks, how it wasn’t like her to not visit Frankie each week, how Tom said there was gossip that Eula had been seen consorting with Pinks, trading on her relationship with Daniel.

  At that, Daniel had inhaled, as hard as if he’d been sucker-punched, and said he’d find whomever Eula had run off with and kill the bastard. Tingles had spider-danced over her scalp and brow as she watched the blood drain from his face, his brow pull tight.

  Marvena started shaking. Daniel took off his topcoat, draped it around her shoulders as she said, “I just … just can’t believe what people are saying. That she took off with a Pink.”

  “Did Tom say which Pinkerton? I’m going to find the son of a bitch, and so help me God, if I have to kill him to get Eula back—”

  “Daniel! You don’t even rightly know if’n she’s your daughter!”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ve loved her all along like she is.”

  At that, Marvena dropped to her knees, sobbing, and Daniel knelt before her, pulled her into his arms, rocking like that for long moments.

  But then Frankie, Tom, and Alistair had come back from gathering greens, and Tom had accused Daniel of playing with Marvena’s emotions, of not really meaning to come out in support of unionization or follow up on his promise to call his old army friend at the Bureau of Mines. Tom even went so far as to suggest he was using the promises as an excuse to fool around with Marvena now that John was out of the way.

  At that, Daniel’s wrath and skill as a boxer came out in full force, his left jab tossing Tom to the ground, pounding Tom’s face as Marvena and Alistair shrieked for him to stop. It wasn’t until Frankie wailed that he finally did, looking up, eyes glazed, as if he were seeing another time and place.

  Fear and bile rose to Marvena’s mouth, and she had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting, for even as Daniel let his fists drop, and stood, and stepped away from Tom, Marvena could see the terror in Tom’s eyes—terror that had nothing to do with the damage of a swift punch. Without Frankie’s voice calling Daniel back to himself, Daniel would not have stopped.

  And yet Daniel had scooped weeping Frankie up in a gentle hug, comforted her until she calmed, told her he was sorry she’d seen that, but that her uncle would be all right. And then he had lowered Frankie to the ground and walked over to Marvena.

  He stared in her eyes for a long moment. Whispered: “Trust me.”

  The last two words he’d ever speak to her.

  Tom sighs, bringing Marvena back to the moment as he sips the sassafras tea; Marvena’s dosed it with her shine. He takes another long drink, then says, “I think we can trust her.”

  For a moment, Marvena’s heart lifts and she thinks he means Eula, but then Tom adds, “I told her Daniel was working with me on unionizing. I thought she’d know if’n he’d made the call for us, or meant to.”

  He means Lily. Marvena tightens her jaw as she asks, “Did you ask her?”

  Tom shakes his head. “I didn’t get the chance.”

  “Just as well. I don’t know that we can trust her.”

  “She was willing to listen to me. She stood up for me. Luther’s bringing in some Pink who told Daniel to go fetch a prisoner—me—who claims he handed me over to Daniel. But she doesn’t seem to believe it.”

  Frankie’s earlier confusion over distinguishing false morel mushrooms from the true comes to mind, and Marvena shakes her head. No. She had trusted Lily to follow up on seeing what she could learn about whether or not Daniel had gone to the boardinghouse—and Lily hadn’t done so. She hadn’t been back into Rossville or up to visit, which with Tom here is also just as well, but still, wh
at this neglect suggests to Marvena is that Lily hadn’t really cared about helping her find Eula. She’d just wanted verification that Daniel had been true to her.

  But Marvena doesn’t want to go into this much detail with Tom. She can’t bear to see his hard expression about Eula, or his doubt of Daniel.

  Still, her hesitation gives Tom a chance to spin his own interpretation of why Marvena doubts Lily. “You still in love with him?” Tom asks.

  The piercing words sting, so sharp her skin feels like it might peel itself free of her. Marvena starts to protest, but the truth is, though she’d loved John, there was a part of her, a part she’d hidden away from herself until now, that hadn’t entirely let go of Daniel.

  “Marv—I’m sorry—” Tom starts.

  She waves a hand at him, a hushing gesture. “You shouldn’t have told her about working with him,” Marvena says. She looks back at Tom, eyes hard. “What if Luther and the Pinks were behind Daniel’s death? God, what if Daniel, like a fool, trusted Luther, threatened him with a call to his old friend at the Bureau of Mines? Now Lily’s going to keep digging.”

  “Then she could be our ally! In Daniel’s place.”

  In spite of his weakness, Marvena swats the top of her brother’s head. “Are you a damned fool? She don’t scare easy, but that just means she doesn’t know—or is just willful enough to ignore—how much she oughta be scared.”

  Marvena clenches her fists, puts her head to them. She’s already wondering what she’d set in motion, telling Daniel the talk about the Pinks and Eula. It’s more’n likely that, sure, Lily would have started questioning the escaped-prisoner cover story all on her own. But by showing up, Frankie’s foot cut, Marvena had set in motion Lily questioning sooner rather than later, sent her to the countryside to find that glass, to start putting things together.

  No, she hadn’t known, hadn’t intentionally done so, but now, dammit, she feels responsible for Lily. For Daniel’s children.