The Widows

by Jess Montgomery

  “All right,” said Tom. “She oughta be scared, sure. But maybe that’s all the more reason she needs us, and if she needs us, we should trust her—”

  “No! She came and talked to me, promised she’d follow up at the boardinghouse about Eula, but I went there, and Lily never did check up on Eula.”

  Tom’s eyebrows go up and he starts to speak, but Marvena goes on. “No, no, don’t you give me any sass about Eula and letting go of worrying about her! If Lily had really wanted to help me, if she was really interested in helping—”

  “Marvena.”

  She starts to shush her brother again but sees such deep sorrow in his face that she clamps her mouth shut.

  “Marvena, Lily hasn’t been back to Rossville or here because she lost her baby. I saw it happen.” Tom’s eyes fill, and he closes them quickly.

  The very air around Marvena seems to stiffen. Lily’s baby. Daniel’s baby. Suddenly she aches for Lily. And for this part of Daniel, gone.

  “You said when I found you that Martin had let you go?”

  Tom opens his eyes. “He came after Lily had been taken to her mama’s, from what I could figure from overhearing. He got the keys, unlocked the cell door, and told me to run.”

  “Why?”

  Tom presses his eyes shut. “Said he didn’t know what would happen, now that Lily was so sick. Said he’d be acting sheriff for a bit, but he didn’t know if he could hold off Luther or the commissioners or all the folks wanting a resolution, right quick, for Daniel’s murder.”

  Tom shakes his head and looks up at Marvena. “God, the man started crying. A grown man. Said he didn’t want my blood on his hands. Said he couldn’t stand it if Daniel was up in heaven and saw him be a coward about me. That he wouldn’t want me killed, not in cold blood, not as an excuse. And he said if I ever got found and told anybody, he’d just lie, say some buddies of mine somehow set me free.”

  “Oh God, Tom. I know you love Alistair, me, and Frankie, and I know you care about the community, but you should have listened to him. Gotten out of the county! Out of the state!”

  “I shouldn’a come here. I just wanted to wait, get stronger, strong enough to grab Alistair and run … I dunno where I’d have gone, or worked, but…” Tom’s voice trails off.

  Marvena pats his hand. “It’s all right.”

  In spite of his protestations about Martin crying, Tom tears up. “I want to see Alistair,” Tom gasps, with a half sob. “I can’t go back to work, and they’ll just keep working him. We’re going to have to leave for good, but for where? None of the mines ’round here will have me.”

  Even if he wasn’t on the lam, a miner who left a company owing scrip, with no papers to show he could be hired free and clear, wouldn’t find work.

  It would be better for Alistair, for all of them, if Tom could just heal up enough to leave, at least heal up enough to hide somewhere other than here.

  But Marvena offers comfort. “We’ll get Alistair to you when it’s time. You can leave together. I’ve got a little put aside and you can have it to go out west, maybe. Start over there, somehow. For now, you need to rest up.”

  She stands, about go to the stove to make more tea.

  But her cabin shakes suddenly as a blast rumbles and echoes up the hill.

  She stumbles to the ground, to her knees beside the straw bed. Marvena and her brother clutch each other, wide-eyed. Their eyes say to each other, Alistair. He’s small enough; he’ll be laying the lines of blast in the narrowest crevices to make new, big openings.

  With Daniel out of the way, it’s started early. Dynamiting under Kinship Cemetery for a new opening in the Widowmaker mine.

  CHAPTER 19

  LILY

  The next morning, April 5, Lily returns home. By mid-morning, she is restless.

  She goes out to the jailhouse, and her eyes immediately drop to the threshold. It’s been scrubbed clean. And the jonquils. The blooms should by fully open, sunny faces turned to the sky. But the earth is trampled where they had been; only a few straggly leaves remain. The key ring shakes in Lily’s hand, but she takes a long breath and opens the door.

  There are no prisoners. There is a note on the desk from Martin that states there had been an overnight hold for disorderly conduct. Nothing about Tom. Hildy has already cleaned the chamber pots and turned the straw mattresses; she must have scrubbed the threshold as well. The jailhouse is spotless.

  From the desk drawer, Lily pulls out her notebook. She pushes aside her emotions, makes herself summarize the moments before her miscarriage, reconstruct her and Tom’s conversation. Then she reviews her notes from her visit with Marvena. Her discovery of the candy box with Eula’s items. Her discovery of Daniel’s second bank account and, inside his boxing gloves, the ticket from his last official fight and her blue ribbon.

  Lily locks up the jailhouse and goes inside. She finds her sheriff’s badge among the blue ribbons for pies, returned to the red compote dish on top of the pie safe, and she pins the star on. In the parlor, Jolene is reading to Micah. She waits for Jolene to finish the story, then tells them to come with her to their mamaw’s.

  “Are you sick again?” Jolene asks.

  “No, honey,” Lily says. “I just have … errands to do.”

  After leaving the children with Mama—Lily hurries away before Mama can press for details—she walks first to the Kinship Weekly Courier and surprises the editor, Mr. Lindermann, with a request: What can he learn about the fight between Daniel Ross and Frederick Clausen on August 20, 1917?

  It will take a while, Mr. Lindermann says, but he’ll see if he can contact someone at the Cincinnati Enquirer to look up any articles about the old fight.

  “Official request?” he asks, eyeing her badge.

  “Personal curiosity.”

  When she steps out of the newspaper office, a truck filled with lumber rumbles by, too fast. She coughs from the dust it raises.

  A woman on the sidewalk near her gives her a foul look and eyes her badge. “Those trucks have been making a mess of the road! Why, my boy almost got run over the other day! Isn’t there something you can do about it?”

  Lily gives her a long look, confused.

  “Well, I have heard you’ve been laid up,” the woman says. “So you mayn’t have heard about the extra trucks. The extra train runs. Making everything dirty.” The woman shakes her head. “It’s been in the newspaper.” She points at the building behind Lily. “Ross Mining is reopening Mine Number Nine.” She uses the official name of the Widowmaker.

  Lily staggers back. “What? But after the collapse—”

  “New opening. West side of Devil’s Backbone. Under the old cemetery. Well, my husband tells me it’s the price of progress, that Ross Mining is why Kinship Road was built in the first place and graveled. Still—” she sighs, and brushes at her shoulder. “If you could get your brother-in-law to have his trucks slow down, it would be awful nice.”

  The woman hurries on and Lily walks toward Martin’s shoe repair shop. She jolts into a man, and says, “Excuse me,” but her thoughts are elsewhere. Daniel would have fought Luther reopening the Widowmaker, every bit of the way, even if he had remained against unionization.

  The bell over Martin’s shop door dings as Lily enters. By the time the sound’s faded and she’s exhaled the smell of leather and glue and dye, Martin has stepped from the back of the shop and up to the counter.

  He looks concerned. “Heard you’d left your mother’s. Are you sure you’re ready—”

  “I’m fine.” Not entirely true—she still feels sore and her heart thrums with this added sorrow, but she won’t discuss intimate matters with Martin. “I’m back on the job. And I want to know how Tom Whitcomb came to be released from the jail.”

  Martin clasps the shoe and rag he’s holding extratight. “I don’t know. The next morning, after you were taken to your mother’s, I came to the jailhouse to check on him. The door was open, and so was his cell. The keys were just outside the door.�
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  Lily studies Martin’s face, suddenly florid. He’s lying to her. He’s never, she realizes suddenly, been good at deception.

  But he goes on. “Luther thinks that some of Tom’s friends got word that you were sheriff and were just lying in wait to overtake you, get the keys, get him out.”

  “So I lose a baby, and that makes it easy for Tom’s friends to release him, is that it?”

  “No, no one’s saying that. But I didn’t know; if we’d’ve known, then—” He stares down at the shoe he’s holding, gives it a wipe.

  “Then you wouldn’t have asked me to be sheriff? Figured the strain would be too much?”

  Martin looks up at her. His eyes are bright. “Oh, Lily, I’m so sorry.”

  Lily stiffens her heart. “I’m guessing I should expect a visit, asking me for the star?”

  “No … no. I don’t think so.”

  “Well, do not expect me to voluntarily turn it in. I was bound to lose this baby from the beginning.” As she says the cruel words, Lily knows they’re true, knows that Daniel sensed it, too: that that was why he’d been reluctant to make love with her. Knows that’s why she couldn’t bring herself to share the news of the child with Hildy or Mama. “What now of Tom?”

  “There’s a new manhunt for him.”

  “He says he didn’t kill Daniel.”

  Martin shrugs. “A man will say most anything, I reckon, to keep from sitting in Old Sparky. Doesn’t matter what he says. If he’s found, he’ll be accused. Plenty will come forward saying they saw Harvey Grayson hand Tom over to Daniel at the holding cell in Rossville.”

  “And what about Grayson? Before I—” Lily stops, reconsiders how to phrase this. Calculates how long it’s been since she lost her baby. Four days. At once, that seems like forever ago yet also just a moment ago. “A week ago, you told me that Grayson was on his way here to bear witness that Daniel took Tom from the holding cell.”

  Martin shakes his head. “He never showed up.”

  Lily lifts her eyebrows. “Any word as to why?”

  Martin looks down. “I did ask Luther about that. He says the Pinkerton company reassigns their men all the time and he doesn’t have control over that.”

  Convenient. Grayson goes missing again, now that Tom escapes once more.

  Lily starts to leave, but Martin calls, “Wait!” She turns around and watches him reach under the counter. He brings up a revolver, sets it down on the countertop. “For you,” he says.

  Lily walks over, eyes the firearm, picks it up. It’s a Colt .45 revolver, much like Daniel’s.

  “You need a proper gun,” Martin says. “Your stocking gun won’t do and you’re right scary with a shotgun.”

  Lily looks up at her husband’s best friend, sees just the shadow of a smile playing in the corners of his mouth. God, she wants to trust him.

  “I’ve gone ahead and ordered a new Colt for you from the Remington Arms Company. Until then, this is an old one of mine,” Martin says. “I’ve cleaned it. Oiled it.” From under the counter he pulls out a box of .45 Colt lead bullets.

  “Thank you, Martin.” Lily tells herself to just leave it at this, but she must know. “Martin, the driver’s side window was shot out of Daniel’s automobile. Did you oversee the cleanup?”

  Martin gives her a long look before saying, “No. I—I didn’t think about going out there, where Daniel was shot. I hope Tom’s long gone. I think believing anything else is—”

  Lily reads the word in his expression: dangerous.

  She wishes that she knew if it is offered as protection or warning.

  * * *

  That night, she reads and rereads Daniel’s few letters from the war, looking for any reference to the buddy Tom said Daniel had planned to contact, to help somehow with organizing. Maybe, as an investigator in the Bureau of Mines, he could also put at least a temporary halt to reopening the Widowmaker, at least until the new opening’s safety is assured.

  The letters don’t specifically mention friends, just offer assurances that he’s fine and of his love, details about weather and rations. Only one comes close, the letter about poor Roger:

  My dearest Lily,

  By the time you receive this, you’ll have likely received the news of Roger. Whatever you’re told, I want you to know he died bravely, trying to save another soldier who’d made the mistake of coming out of a trench at nightfall, maybe thinking he’d heard a Kraut. Our ammo man, a fine soldier, tried to stop Roger, but he was too strong for us. I think he did get the other soldier back to his trench, before a sniper took him. Lily, the fighting here is fearsome. Only the thought of your sweet face keeps me brave. I live for your smile.

  Yours always, Daniel.

  The letters, which at the time seemed so intimate, now seem a smokescreen. She knew so little about his childhood, his boxing career, the war. Why hadn’t she pressed him more? Well, men didn’t talk much about the war after they came home. But the other areas … she could have. And yet she knows why: she’d felt, from the moment they’d met, as if she did know him.

  That was why she fell in love with him so easily, so fast. With him, she’d felt at home. More herself than she’d ever been. She knew—from his glances, his touch—that he’d felt the same with her. There was no need to talk about it, and surely there’d be time.…

  But they’d been fools. They’d each seen how fragile is life. They’d just wished to ignore that, to get lost in the ease of being with each other.

  Now Lily chafes in her own skin, itchy, irritable. Because of Marvena. And Eula. The lost child. But mostly because she’s come to fear she never really knew Daniel. As if their time together were only a dream. A foolish girl’s fancy.

  * * *

  The next morning, not even a wisp of cloud frosts the tops of the hills around Kinship. Warmth stirs the day, like a languid hand troubling a cool, still spot tucked along a creek bank.

  After breakfast, Lily stands on the back stoop, considering what to do, given that she’s not supposed to work on the garden yet or drive. Well, she can check the garden. The back door squeals as she opens it. That hinge Daniel was going to fix. She goes to the carriage house, finds a can of oil, douses the hinges, tests the door. Silence.

  After she puts away the can, she stops in the yard and catches herself staring up at the cloudless sky. She realizes that she is looking for a hawk—one of Daniel’s beloved signs. He’d told her, before he left for the war, that if she spotted one looking at her that would be a sign that he was fine. She’d teased him once, a few months after his return, that she never did get his sign. And he’d teased back that she just wasn’t a believer in signs, so how could they find her?

  True, yet here she was, looking for that very sign, when clearly Daniel was not fine.

  Lily drops her head to her hands, inhales slowly, forcing her mind to clear, until at last it comes to her—not a sign, but an idea for a way to be able to get around as sheriff and continue looking for clues to Daniel’s murder.

  Lily takes Micah back down to Mama, and then with Jolene in tow she stops at Hildy’s house and asks her to come back to the carriage house. She opens the doors, looks at the automobile, and then back at Hildy and Jolene.

  “Where are we going?” Jolene asks.

  Lily smiles. “You’ll see!”

  “Oh no, I thought Elias gave you strict orders not to drive,” Hildy protests. “Not for another few weeks.”

  Lily keeps her smile fixed. She’s not going to wait that long to seek out Marvena again, to return to Rossville. She’s lost four days with the miscarriage.

  “No. He said I shouldn’t go anywhere alone,” Lily says.

  She drives them out of town, up Grassy Hollow, just off of Kinship Road. It’s gravel, not smooth like the main road, but also not as steep, and less trafficked.

  When she gets to the top of a rise, she presses her foot down on the clutch while slowly lifting the throttle lever, steering to a wide spot on the right side of the road. She pulls
the hand brake into neutral, then presses the brake pedal. When the automobile idles to a stop, she reaches to the dashboard and turns off the coil box switch. The engine shuts off, and Lily puts the hand brake lever all the way back to set the parking brake.

  “Are we picking black raspberries?” Jolene’s voice squeaks at the prospect.

  “Too early yet for that. We’ll go to the place near the Gottschalks’ farm when it’s time,” Lily says. For a moment, she sees Ada in her old bedroom at Mama’s, telling her to let her know if she needs anything, sees Hahn in the middle of Kinship, in front of her daddy’s grocery. “Today Hildy is going to learn to drive!”

  Hildy gasps. “What? No! I have no reason to drive.”

  “Of course you do. You’re jail mistress now.”

  “The furthest I go is from the jailhouse to the outhouse. That doesn’t require driving.”

  In the backseat, Jolene giggles.

  Lily says, “I may need you to go somewhere for me.”

  “I’m not fetchin’ prisoners!”

  Lily raises her eyebrows. “What if I deputize you?”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Course I can. And I’ll teach you to shoot.”

  “I’ll refuse!” Hildy says.

  Lily puts on a mock frown. “Then I’ll have to fire you.”

  As soon as she says it, Lily regrets teasing too hard, for Hildy’s face crumples in dismay, just like when Lily would tease her in their childhood. “But I like being jail mistress.”

  Lily pats her friend’s arm, amends: “I’m not going to fire you, Hildy. But I do want you to learn to drive. It will be good for you. It’ll be fun! And it’s easy.”

  Hildy looks doubtful.

  “You can do it, Aunt Hildy!” Jolene says. “Daddy taught Mama.”

  “That’s right; Daniel taught you!” Hildy wails.

  Lily’s heart pangs. Yes, he had. She gives her head a shake, to stay in the moment. “And I want Jolene to see that not only can a woman drive, but she can teach someone else to drive.”