One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow: A Novel

by Olivia Hawker

  ALSO BY OLIVIA HAWKER

  The Ragged Edge of Night

  Writing as Libbie Hawker

  Tidewater

  Calamity

  Baptism for the Dead

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Olivia Hawker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542006910 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542006910 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781542091145 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1542091144 (paperback)

  Cover design by Rex Bonomelli

  First Edition

  For my mother and my sister, who have seen the spiral.

  And for Paul—my bluebird, my crow.

  CONTENTS

  1

  CLYDE

  CORA

  NETTIE MAE

  2

  CLYDE

  NETTIE MAE

  CORA

  3

  NETTIE MAE

  CORA

  CLYDE

  4

  CLYDE

  CORA

  NETTIE MAE

  5

  NETTIE MAE 5

  CORA

  6

  CLYDE

  NETTIE MAE

  CORA

  7

  CORA

  CLYDE

  NETTIE MAE

  8

  CLYDE

  NETTIE MAE

  CORA

  9

  CLYDE

  NETTIE MAE

  CORA

  10

  CORA

  NETTIE MAE

  CLYDE

  11

  NETTIE MAE

  CORA

  CLYDE

  12

  CLYDE

  CORA

  NETTIE MAE

  13

  CLYDE

  NETTIE MAE

  CORA

  BEULAH

  AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  AFTER HE TOOK HIMSELF OFF TO JAIL

  I was leading the cows to the milking shed when my pa shot Mr. Webber. It was the end of the season for blackberries, and the fence beside the shed was thick with the vines my ma had planted years before. The evening air smelled of berries, rich and sweet in the way that makes you close your eyes when you breathe in the scent. You can’t help but do it; the smell takes ahold of you and calls to your heart, and it makes you think of all the good things that have passed and all the good things yet to come, so you close your eyes to shut out everything else that’s real, everything that’s drab or sorrowful, all the things that hurt you like the thorns. That’s what I was doing when I heard the shot—standing with one hand on the gate and my eyes closed, thinking about those berries and how, after milking was done, I’d pick a whole basketful and share them with my brothers and my baby sister, sweet and good with cream on top, the cream still warm from the cows.

  But the moment the shot cracked the air, I opened my eyes and my hand. The pail of grain fell, and the cows pushed me aside to lip up what was spilled. I knew right then that something terrible had happened, something that would change us all forever. And I knew it was my fault—at least some—for I’d been the one who told my pa that the calf was missing, and he’d gone off to search for it. If I’d never told him, if I’d gone to find that calf myself, it would have been me who seen what no one should have seen, and I would have left it all alone. Never said a word, just drifted off like a ghost through the dusk, with no one any wiser.

  But instead, it was Pa who found them, under the poplars by the river, and now Substance Webber is dead.

  I can’t say just how I knew it was trouble when I heard that shot. Pa fired his Henry rifle all the time, at coyotes and eagles who came for our stock, and at bears to shoo them away from the places where my brothers and sister played. Maybe I heard a new sound in the rifle’s voice. Maybe it was like a shout of pain torn from my father’s throat, worse than the time his horse slipped and fell on him, and his leg was broke in two places. Maybe it was just because my ma had been missing all evening, and I finally wised up enough to think it strange. She slipped off toward the river once she saw that all her children were fed and the chores were underway. It was a thing she’d done for days now, but until the rifle sounded, I’d never thought twice about it. I was big enough to care for the little ones without being told.

  As soon as I knew deep down in my heart that something had gone awry, I slapped the cows on their backsides to hurry them into the pen, and then I ran to the house, where the little ones were putting on their nightdresses. I said, Everybody into the bedroom, and don’t come out till I say so. They complained, because they always do, but they did as I told them. They always do that, too. I wanted them shut safely away when the trouble came up from the riverside to our little gray house. I didn’t want them to see the look on our pa’s face when he returned.

  When Pa came back through the twilight, he was paler than a bad-omen moon. He walked with a stagger, like he was struck by some illness, and his eyes seemed to see nothing that lay before him—only what lay behind, what had caused him to raise his rifle and pull the trigger before he could think any better. He held the gun as if it was a foreign thing, and too distasteful to bear, one-handed by its stock with the muzzle dragging through tall grass. Behind him came my mother, hair unbound and weeping into her hands.

  I went outside to meet them both. I was scared all at once for them—afraid one of them should fall, like they were fragile, breakable things. The sight of me brought Pa from his daze. He stared at my face for a long time, and it was hard not to look away, for I’d never seen such agony in him before, and I knew right then that he was only a man, and mortal. No girl likes to realize that her father will die someday. Much less does she like to know that grief could be enough to kill him.

  Beulah, he said, I done something wrong.

  I said, I know it, Pa.

  He nodded. Pa never questioned this way I have—the knowing that comes to me from the movement of wind or the scent of blackberries, or the sound of a gunshot by the river.

  He said, I got to go now, over to the Webbers’ place, and tell them what all happened. And then I got to ride to town and turn myself over to the sheriff. It’s the only righteous thing to be done.

  My mother wailed at that and staggered toward him, but Pa stepped back. He held up his free hand, a wall between them. It only made Ma weep more piteously.

  I said, I’ll saddle Tiger for you, and he answered, No, not Tiger. He’s a fast horse. I can’t say how long I’ll be gone, Little Mite, and you may have need of a fast horse, by and by. You’ll need the saddle, too. I don’t know if the sheriff will return my horse to my farm and my family. I’ve never done this before. Could be a man forfeits his right to his horse when he . . . when he does what I just done. Put a bridle on Meg; I’ll take her to town bareback.

  I still liked to hear him call me Little Mite, even though I was thirteen and not little anymore. And I had never felt older or steadier than I did in that moment, when I stepped away from my parents to pul
l the old, slow mare from her paddock and ready her so she could carry off Pa to his fate. My mother was still weeping, her cries loud and long like the peal of a bell. The pain in her voice was heavy to bear. I would have cried, too, if I’d had the lee, for I already felt the badness of it all, the distance between my mother and father opening wider like a crack in the earth. You’ll fall into that cold, damp darkness if you aren’t careful where to set your feet.

  But there was work to be done, and no time for crying. Not if we hoped to get by without Pa.

  In time, my mother stopped weeping and huddled on the doorstep. In the first silver creeping of moonlight, she looked smaller and frailer than she ever had before. She hugged her body and rocked as if it was a baby she held in her arms, not herself—and she stared at my father, hungry, desperate for one look from him, one word. He gave neither.

  I handed Meg’s reins to my pa, and he passed the gun to me.

  You know how to use the rifle, he said.

  I nodded. I wasn’t handy with a gun—I never had needed to be—but it was simple enough. That much I knew.

  He said, I’ll send word, soon as I’m able. It’s up to you to think of something to tell the little ones, something they’ll understand.

  I said, Is there anything you want me to tell Ma?

  He stood listening to the crickets in the long grass. He wrapped Meg’s reins around his fist and tightened it till his knuckles blanched white. Then he took a deep breath, savoring the smell of his homestead and the coolness of a soft Wyoming night. He closed his eyes and stood like that for a long while.

  When he opened his eyes again, Pa said, In time, I’ll want you to tell your ma how sorry I am, and that I love her still. But that time ain’t come yet. Not yet.

  I watched him ride away down the rutted path through our pasture, east toward the Webber farm. When night’s gray shadows hid him from view, I turned my back on Pa and faced the house, and my mother wilting on the steps.

  I went to her and unwrapped her hands from around her thin body, and pulled her to her feet, where she swayed. We didn’t speak, for I knew she had no words yet, and wouldn’t for days to come. That’s the way with Ma. Whenever a sorrow or a fear comes along to put a crack in her heart, she goes quiet—the only time she ever does. I knew she would say nothing while she was shrouded in grief and remorse, just as I knew that after he took himself off to jail, my pa would send word and forgive her.

  But until forgiveness came, I had to run the farm on my own. There was no one else who could do it. I wasn’t afraid. I haven’t found anything yet in this life that’s worth being afraid of.

  CLYDE

  After he took himself off to jail, there was nothing left to be done about Ernest Bemis. Clyde stood beside the window, the one next to the front door, looking out across the orchard and down the two-rutted road. He watched Mr. Bemis ride away, slowly, shoulders hanging as if the weight of all the world were pulling him down into the swayed back of his gray mare. The mare was old enough that she had paled up nearly to white, so her rump stayed visible even through the darkness, and Clyde could see her tail wringing with every other step. An old horse, and ill tempered. The sight of her rippled through the window’s warped glass even after the drooping and regretful form of Mr. Bemis had merged with the darkness.

  He heard a sudden clatter from the kitchen—one of the pewter spoons falling to the plank floor—then a hasty step and the soft metallic whisper of the spoon being picked up again. A moment later, the chiming of the spoon against the sides of one of her drab brown cups as Mother stirred her tea.

  Stop thinking about horses. Clyde scolded himself because there wasn’t anyone else to do it now. You ought to be thinking of Mother, not some damned old mare. That was the way with Clyde. Horses were easier to understand than folks ever were. There never was a time when he preferred to reflect on the nature of people rather than the nature of horses. People—men especially—hid their thoughts and their hearts behind thick, stoic walls, a dense blank-white nothingness, a silent room, a distant stare. Men hid what they couldn’t control till the burden of that featureless mask grew too much to bear, and then they threw it off and broke it with a shout or a swinging fist. Or a rifle shot at the riverside. Then they picked up the pieces of their unreadable disguise and fitted them back together and donned the mask again. That was never the way with horses. Once you understood their language—the flick of an ear, the stamp of a hoof, a ripple running down sun-hot hide from withers to flank—horses couldn’t surprise you. No horse disguised a worry or a fear or even its deepest hatred from anyone who cared to listen. If men were more like horses, things never would have gone this far. It never would have come down to Ernest Bemis, the only neighbor for twenty miles in any direction, appearing at the front door while the last trace of the gone day’s blue still colored the western horizon, confessing he had just shot Clyde’s father dead.

  He ought to be thinking about Mother, not horses. Mother wasn’t crying. She never cried, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to cry. All the same, there wasn’t a sniff from the kitchen, only the sound of stirring—a small, self-contained noise that barely broke the silence. Mother was the strongest person Clyde knew. She had always been stronger than fear, stronger than Father’s fists when he got into his black moods and swung them, thoughtless as you’d swing an ax at a leg of firewood. She was stronger than the winds that blew down the Bighorns, scouring leaves from the cottonwoods, stripping soil from the earth and sheeting it against the windows till the house went black in the middle of the day. She was stronger than the Wyoming range, and what was more powerful than that?

  He ought to be thinking of Father, who was lying out there beside the river, dead and unburied. He would remain unburied till Clyde did the work himself, for there was no one left to dig the grave.

  There was no one left to scold Clyde into what was proper or to beat him bruised and sore onto a righteous path. Mother never scolded; that wasn’t her way. Silence was her way—silence and the stony, hard-angled face that she never washed with tears. Her face must have been beautiful once, before this life stole all the color from it and the prairie winds stripped her down to dry skin and sharp bones.

  Clyde would be awake all night, digging that grave and rolling his father into it, covering the man with earth. Morning would find him bone weary and sleepless from what he had seen. Clyde knew that much already; he could sense it, the way you feel the presence of an animal in the darkness even when you can’t see it—the quiet slink of a furred, feral body, the hush of its live flank brushing between tufts of grass. He was afraid of what more the night would bring, even though it had already brought the worst.

  At least when he faced what was to come, he would have Joe Buck for company. The gelding was big and watchful, as warm as Father had never been. Whatever moved unseen in the darkness never dared come too close to Joe Buck, who was quick to kick at danger. It was time Clyde got out to the paddock and saddled his horse and went about this unexpected business. The sooner he finished the night’s work, the better.

  He took his felt coat from the peg. Mother heard the familiar sound, heard just where his foot landed on the floor boards, a step in front of the door.

  “Where are you going?” she called from the kitchen. There was tension in her voice—almost fear. Understandable enough, given all that had happened this night.

  “Someone’s got to bury him,” Clyde said. To his surprise and shame, tears came to his eyes and his voice trembled. He turned his back to the kitchen, so at least Mother wouldn’t see him cry, even if she heard.

  “Not you,” she said. There was a sharp, glassy clink, her teacup meeting its saucer. “You’re too young for that, God have mercy.”

  “There’s no one else to do it, Mother. It’s got to be me.”

  “We’ll get the sheriff.”

  “When? In the morning?” The animals would have done their work by then, tearing him apart, spreading his bones. “And what if the sheriff
can’t come for days? We’re miles off. It’s got to be me, and it’s got to be now. You stay here. There’s no reason why you should see him.”

  It was cold outside. It was September; snow was not far off. He could almost smell it in the air—the sharp, clean chill, a faint smoky drift of coming winter. The sky offered just enough light for Clyde to see his way around the vegetable patch with its haphazard fence, built high to keep the deer away. The footpath to the paddock was almost invisible, but he had walked it so many times he knew the way by feel. Joe Buck smelled him coming and whickered in the darkness. Clyde went a little faster then, and he reached the paddock fence just as his horse did. Joe Buck’s golden color was dulled to flat gray by night, but there was no mistaking him: fat, upright neck and small ears turning this way and that in a knowing fashion. The other horses milled in the darkness, unseen—the heavy black mare who hauled the plow and a pair of bay fillies Clyde had just broken to harness. But Joe Buck slung his head right over the top of the fence in greeting. Clyde wrapped his arms around the gelding’s neck and pressed his face against the warm hide, and the smell of dust and hair and sweet grasses surrounded him. Clyde hung there for a long time, with the black wire of Joe Buck’s mane falling over his shoulder. He let his tears fall freely then, let sobs shake his body. It was shameful enough for a boy to cry, Clyde knew, but for a man to do it was something close to sin. And he was a man now. Suddenly, violently, torn from what remained of his childhood in a blink, in a burst of gunfire.

  Joe Buck was a patient soul. He would have stood at the fence all night and allowed Clyde to soak him in tears, but there was work to be done, and weeping wouldn’t make the task any easier. After a time, Clyde pushed himself away and said, “I’ll go fetch your saddle and bridle, Joe. We got to go out to the river tonight. Got no choice but to do it.”

  When the horse was tacked up and ready, Clyde led him past the new harness shed, the one he and Father had built that spring. The split shingles still smelled of pine sap when the wind blew the right way. A spade leaned against the door frame; Clyde took it and swung up into the saddle, then laid the spade behind the pommel as he rode.