“I’m afraid your husband must remain in the Paintrock jail for two years, Mrs. Bemis.”
“Two years!”
“It’s hard, I know, but surely you see that it’s a lenient sentence, considering he killed your neighbor.”
Cora could only shake her head helplessly.
“I wanted to bring you the news myself,” he went on, “seeing as how Ernest is so well liked. It didn’t seem right to send word by letter.”
“We don’t get letters here, anyhow,” Cora answered dully. “Ernest goes to town twice a month and fetches the mail.”
Beulah had returned by then, holding the blue tin cup that normally hung by its handle at the back of the pump. Cora could smell the water from their well, the familiar iron tang, a metallic crispness. When the sheriff took the water from Beulah’s hand, Cora wrapped an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. The girl was strong and upright, her wiry body unshaken.
The sheriff drained the cup and handed it back. “Thank you, young lady. You’re a right hospitable girl.”
Beulah only watched him in silence, and after a moment, the sheriff turned away and swung up into his saddle. The leather creaked as he settled his body for the long ride back to Paintrock.
“If there’s anything I can do to be of aid, Mrs. Bemis, send me word.” He touched the brim of his hat with two fingers and then wheeled his horse and trotted back down the long, dusty lane.
Beulah laughed softly. “That’s a foolish thing to say. Send him word? What kind of word could we send? We got to ride all the way to town if we want to post a letter.”
Cora tightened her grip on the girl’s shoulder. The September day was colder than it ought to have been. Now that she was up from the settee and moving, talking, thinking again, she could imagine a hundred different ways the sheriff—or any other man—might be of aid. But Paintrock was twenty miles north. The sheriff and everyone else in town might as well be in California or Boston for all the good they could do Cora and her children.
“Winter is just around the corner,” Cora said.
“I know.” The cows were calling frantically from their pen; Beulah shrugged off Cora’s hold on her shoulders and turned toward the work. “I got to do the milking, Ma.”
“Wait, Beulah. Wait a minute longer. We need to talk. We need to think—think it all through—what we’re going to do about everything.”
Beulah looked back at her, smiling. The girl’s distant hazel eyes were full of laughter. “We’ll do what we need to do, of course.”
Cora had always admired her daughter’s flights of fancy before—what a relief it must be, to find oneself transported from the bleakness of prairie life by a convenient daydream. But now her palm itched with a sudden desire to slap the girl. Couldn’t Beulah see how dire their situation was? Cora tightened her fist and hid it in the pocket of her stained, wrinkled apron. She had visited enough evil on her family already; there was no use compounding her children’s sorrows by slapping them.
“That’s just the trouble.” Cora’s voice rose with the first trace of panic. “I don’t know what we need to do.”
“We must go and see the Webbers, of course. Clyde is there—the boy. Between our house and theirs, I think there are enough of us to see us all safely through the winter together.”
For a long moment, Cora couldn’t speak. She stared at her daughter, disbelieving what she had heard—and knowing, too, that Beulah was right. No other sensible choice lay before Cora now. She might take her children to Paintrock, but what then? Her nearest family were in Missouri, days away by train, assuming she could get the children to the nearest train station in Carbon—which would take a week by wagon if luck were on her side. But what family she had in Missouri were distant relations with no desire to grow any closer. Even if she had the money to buy passage back to Saint Louis, there was no one waiting there to welcome her or her brood. The grandfather who had raised Cora was long dead, and the only place she held in the thoughts of her cousins and aunts was as a curiosity—the family shame, mercifully married off and lost to the great unknown range of Wyoming Territory.
The only thing to be done was to turn to her nearest neighbor—her only neighbor—for aid. Cora stared across the Webbers’ sheep pasture to the dark, square-shouldered house: a two-story sod-brick monument to austerity built by Substance when he’d been a much younger man. The house was as bleak as a gravestone even with a thread of woodsmoke rising from its chimney. Cora shivered.
“Do you want me to do the asking?” Beulah said. “I’ll go over after milking, but I should see to the cows first.”
“No,” Cora said at once. “I’ll do it. I’ll ask.” The very thought left her weak and trembling, but facing Nettie Mae Webber was nothing more than the penance Cora deserved. This was what came of being foolish, of having a fool’s heart. This was the price you paid for giving in to a man you didn’t even love.
NETTIE MAE
After he took himself off to jail, Mr. Bemis’s wife came over the pasture like a damned soul, wringing her hands, with a face as desolate as Judgment Day. Nettie Mae let the dish she’d been washing fall back into the tub of water and stared at the sight—the pale, pretty ghost stumbling over clods of earth, her skirt caught and torn by claws of autumn sagebrush. Cora Bemis was holding herself in that despicable way she had, cradling her own body in her arms as if she were too frail for this life. Those soft, womanish arms, wrapped around a body that had remained slender and firm even after birthing at least four children. The body that had tempted Nettie Mae’s husband into infidelity.
Long before Cora reached her door, Nettie Mae could see that the woman’s face was red from crying. That angered her all the more. It was Nettie Mae who ought to cry—she who had a right to tears. Who had been betrayed? Not Cora Bemis. Who had been forced to allow her sixteen-year-old son to bury the man of the house, and in the dark of night, no less, because there had been no one else to do it? It was Nettie Mae who staked a claim on sorrow, but weeping never did a bit of good. Cora had even stolen Nettie Mae’s tears. What could God have in store next? She shuddered to think of the possibilities.
She retrieved the dish from the wash water and cleaned it again, then wiped it dry and turned away from the window, away from the sight of Cora—intruder, usurper, neighbor turned thief in the night. Nettie Mae put the dish away in her cupboard and went to the door before Cora could knock. She couldn’t allow it; the sound would be an intrusion on the silence Nettie Mae favored, the solace of her own thoughts. She didn’t want Cora to have the pleasure of taking away her silence, too, so Nettie Mae swung the door open quickly, with enough force to make Cora step back, stifling a gasp.
Nettie Mae said nothing. She stared into Cora’s eyes—a clear, beautiful blue, made livelier than ever by the shine of her tears. When Cora blinked and lowered her face, red with shame, Nettie Mae felt a little thrill of triumph. The emotion was petty. It would do nothing to bring Substance back from the dead. All the same, the victory gave her momentary comfort.
“What do you want?” Nettie Mae said coolly. “I’d think you’ve done enough already.”
Cora didn’t lift her eyes from the step. “I—”
“I know what you did. Your husband told me all about it—everything—how he found you on your back with your legs in the air like some common hussy, rutting with Substance.”
“He said that? Ernest said—?”
Nettie Mae cut off Cora’s tremulous question. “Why have you come?”
Ernest had not used those words. He had been far more delicate, calmer than the situation had called for, but it pleased Nettie Mae to allow this woman to believe otherwise.
Cora drew a shuddering breath, which made her bosom lift in a slatternly way. It was little wonder Substance had been lured by this creature, this Jezebel. She flaunted herself with every movement, every thoughtless twitch. The Bemises had been their neighbors for more than seven years. Why had Nettie Mae never noticed how earthy Cora was, how lus
tful?
“I’ve had word from the sheriff,” Cora said, wavering. “Ernest will remain locked up for two years.”
Nettie Mae laughed, short and hard. “Two years? Not nearly long enough.”
Cora covered her face with her hands, convulsing with the force of her silent weeping. Does she think I’ll put an arm around her? Nettie Mae wondered. Comfort her—there, there?
“Stop crying,” she said. “It isn’t dignified, given the circumstances. At least you have a husband. Mine is dead now.”
That only seemed to pain Cora further. She let out a high, thin wail and swayed so that Nettie Mae thought for a moment she might tumble down the steps.
“I’m sorry,” Cora said. Her voice was made thick and ugly by her weeping. She never removed her hands from her face, too ashamed to look at Nettie Mae directly. Good. She ought to suffer with that shame. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Webber. I never meant for this to happen. I never thought—”
“One wonders what you did think, carrying on with another woman’s husband. And now you have the gall to snivel because Mr. Bemis has gone to prison. For murder. Two years—I’ve never heard of such a thing. It should have been longer. They should have hanged him.” She added that last, a relentless barb, and felt a swell of satisfaction when Cora recoiled.
“I’m sorry,” Cora said again. “I wanted to tell you . . . I’m sorry. I can’t ask you to forgive me, but—”
“Pretty words. I guess you should have thought of how sorry you’d be long before you had to do with a married man. And now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Nettie Mae turned away, making to close the door, but Cora found her strength. She blocked the door with one hand. When Nettie Mae pushed, Cora resisted, and those tear-polished blue eyes locked with Nettie Mae’s own. There was an insistence to Cora’s stare—a desperation—that Nettie Mae found both surprising in such a fragile woman and unsettling.
“Please, Mrs. Webber. I must speak with you.”
“I should think you’ve said everything you need to say. Now take your hand from my door, and—”
“No. Listen to me; I beg you.”
“I will not listen to you.” Nettie Mae glanced past her neighbor, out to the lower pasture where Clyde, mounted on his buckskin gelding, was bringing the sheep to their stone-walled fold. He was too far away for Nettie Mae to call to him, too far off to help.
“Mrs. Webber, I know you dislike me. You have every reason to hate me now, and I don’t blame you for it.”
“That’s generous.” Acid words were all she had left at her disposal.
Cora pressed on. “But winter will be here soon. What are we to do, with two farms between us? This land is too much for women to work alone, and I’ve got young children to care for.”
“That’s no concern of mine. Clyde is sixteen; he’s big enough to do his share of the work, and sensible enough to keep our place running through the winter. We will be fine, Mrs. Bemis. Whether you and your brood will suffer any hardship is not a question over which I shall fret, I can assure you of that. I might have done, once, when we were still friendly neighbors. But given our present circumstance, I see no reason to trouble myself over you and yours.”
Nettie Mae pushed more forcefully on the door.
Cora redoubled her resistance. “We aren’t as fortunate as you, Mrs. Webber.” That admission seemed to cost Cora something; her tearful flush paled for a moment, and her lips trembled. Nettie Mae sensed this was a different sorrow—far older than the turmoil newly to hand, more deeply embedded under Cora’s skin. “My eldest child is a girl, and only thirteen—and dreamy, at that. I’ve no hope of seeing all my children through the winter on my girl’s work and mine alone.”
Nettie Mae jerked the door more widely open. Cora lost her balance and stumbled forward, catching herself against the frame.
“What, then?” Nettie Mae said scornfully. “You expect me to share what I’ve put by to feed your brats? You expect me to work your land for you, bathe and clothe your children? You’ve already taken my husband. Now you come begging and weeping, expecting me to give you more?”
“I know what I did was wrong.” The trembling had returned to Cora’s voice. Her eyes fell again to the floor. “I don’t ask you to forgive—”
“Don’t expect me to forget, either.”
“Surely, Mrs. Webber, you’re a Christian woman!”
“I needn’t ask whether you are. Any Christian woman knows her Commandments.”
She managed at last to close the door. Before it slammed shut, Cora bleated out, “Please!” But it was too late now for begging, too late to play on Nettie Mae’s moral sense. Substance had never been much of a husband, but he had been Nettie Mae’s. She was left with nothing—nothing but Clyde, the one child God had allowed her to keep.
Nettie Mae returned to her washing. The water was cold now, and greasy, but she plunged her hands in and worked with the cloth until the joints of her fingers ached from the chill and the pressure. She watched the Bemis woman stagger back across the pasture toward the distant gray house—a house that had always been full of life, the laughter of children. Nettie Mae’s hands grew too clumsy to keep up her work, so she put the kettle back over the fire to heat more dishwater. She wrapped her hands in a length of towel, drying and warming them. But as she waited for the kettle to steam, she never took her eyes from Cora, that slim figure vanishing through dry, brown grass. Four children—the same number Nettie Mae had lost.
“Your children aren’t mine to worry after,” Nettie Mae said to the woman’s distant back. She thought with time she might convince herself it was true.
2
WHAT NEEDS DOING CAN’T BE STOPPED
I was taking down the wash from its line the day Clyde came over the fields. He had a scythe slung over one shoulder and a small clay jug at his belt, and the braces he was wearing had already pressed dark patches of perspiration into the cloth of his dust-gray shirt. He was leading the lost calf by a rope around its neck, and he paused to turn it loose through the pasture gate. As he came on toward me, I could tell by the look of him that he was tired from working his own land all that morning. But still he came. He crossed our yard, making for the stand of corn out back of the house, and I could hear him whistling. At first, I thought it was a proper song—a hymn, maybe—but I couldn’t place it, though the notes and rhythm caught at my mind and pulled at me, willing me to remember. Then I realized it was no song man ever made, but the call of a sage thrasher. Only Clyde did it wrong; the trill was too slow and not high enough in pitch, so no birds answered from the pasture. I thought it amusing, so I stepped back behind the hanging sheet where he wouldn’t see me laughing. And then, for a moment, I could see myself through his eyes, or the outline of myself, a shadow blue against the yellow of a sunlit sheet, the shape of me rippled and broken by a wind that stirred the line.
Clyde may have waved at me—I can’t recall—but he never paused, only leveled his scythe at the edge of our cornfield and set his feet wide apart, and then he began to swing the blade. There was a fluid beauty to the way he worked, the smooth turning of his body and the gentle arc of the scythe, the cornstalks tipping and falling with every sweep. I dropped the last sheet into my basket, then I stood and watched him for a while. The watching made me realize why I had felt no surprise at Clyde’s coming. The corn patch was his natural place, for he was tall among tall stalks and browned by the sun as the plants were browned. The cornstalks called to him. They beckoned him to the harvest because he was their kin, grown to maturity, on the point of harvest himself. Since his father’s death, the boy had changed like the ears change in their season. Now, in the final heat of autumn, when even the small, secret flush of green had been sapped from the joints of grass stems, now was the time for a seed to drop to the earth’s bed and sleep through the snows and sorrows of winter. And the seed will put down roots, even in the shadow of the plant that made it. Even while the old stalks, exhausted of their green power, bow before the sickl
e and fall.
I had come up behind him to watch him work before he knew I was there. He drew a dripping whetstone from his clay jug and ran it along the blade, and it made a high, thin sound like larks in the morning. When an ear broke from a fallen stalk and rolled into a rut of earth, I watched him pick it up and brush it clean. His hand moved slowly, as if in worship, lingering over the ribs of husk, over the tangle of silk, dark brown with age but still faintly damp with the lifeblood of the plant. That was how I knew him true—how I understood that he was of the land, like me, though he didn’t yet realize his own nature. When he had tucked the ear of corn into the back pocket of his trousers, he took up the scythe again and went on swinging. He didn’t seem to understand how much he loved the corn, or the season, and he didn’t hear the stalks calling to him, saying, We will gladly fall, but only by your hand. Maybe grief over Mr. Webber’s death blinded Clyde to his own feelings and stopped up his ears to every sound except the whisper of the blade. It had only been a few days, after all, since he had put his father in the ground.
Hello, I said, and he started and almost dropped his scythe, but he recovered himself and turned to face me, leaning on the long handle, panting to catch his breath.
He said, Miss Beulah. I never heard you come up behind me.
You don’t have to call me miss, I said. And I have a way of coming up behind without nobody hearing. It ain’t something I mean to do. Just the way I’m made.
What I didn’t tell him was this: he had never called me by name before. In fact, we had been neighbors since I was six years old. His ma and pa settled below the Bighorns a year after my family did, building that fine two-story sod-brick house near the only good source of sweet water for miles around, the place where Tensleep Creek flows into the Nowood River. Clyde and I had crossed paths plenty often before. Sometimes he had come over with his father to help my pa mend a fence or patch a hole in the barn roof, and I had carried hot biscuits and fresh cream to the men for their lunch. But in all those years, Clyde had never said my name aloud, nor I his, except to my ma when no one else could hear. I was surprised and glad to find out that he knew my name after all. I liked the sound of it in his mouth. I liked that his hair was the same color as the dried-up corn silks, too—not golden, not brown, but somewhere in between. I could see his hair at his temples below the sweat-soaked brim of his hat. He kept it cut short.
One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow: A Novel Page 3