“Tea?” McDowell shouted. “Goddammit, woman, you talk about tea? It’s beer I’m needing, and a good bullwhip to use on this ungrateful bastard that calls me Pap.” He was on his feet, taller than Tim, but not by so much no more, and raised his fist.
“No!” Martha backed away from them, took Dotty into the circle of her arm, and crouched with her on the other side of the stove, and grabbed the dog, that growled without letup, and the wind pounded at the door, held only by the latch, demanded to come in.
“I’ll be damned if I’ll freeze my ass in that water,” Tim circled to keep the table between him and his Pap.
Martha held Dotty. Tim’s swearing told her this fight between them had something new to it. It was a fight between men, not just a boy against his father, and it was more dangerous, like two stags going at it.
“You said what?” McDowell’s right hand swung to his left side, ready to backhand Tim.
“No!” Martha screamed, and Dotty buried her face on her Mam’s breast.
The dog barked, and father and son were shouting at once fit to drown out the storm, neither one hearing the other, their voices and their words blended together in rage. McDowell swung, Tim dodged. McDowell paused to draw breath.
Tim yelled, “Work the goddamn claim yourself, for a change!”
“Get the hell out!” McDowell swung at Tim again, but the boy snatched up his coat and thrust his arms into the sleeves. He fumbled at the latch as his Pap charged around the table.
“You can’t,” Martha screamed. “He could die in that blizzard.”
“Get out!” McDowell went for Tim with his fists ready.
The dog broke free and launched himself across the room, snarling, and sank his teeth into McDowell’s tall boot. The man kicked at Canary, but the dog leaped aside, ran between McDowell and Tim, who tugged at the latch. As McDowell lunged toward him, the door blew open, and the storm swallowed boy and dog.
McDowell leaned against the door to close and bar it. Swearing, he fell across the bed. After awhile Martha heard him snoring and got up, mouse-quiet, to look at his ankle. The bite had only dented the leather of his boot.
Dotty clung to her Mam. Through her sobs, she asked, “Will Timmy be all right?”
“He’s in the Lord’s hands now, little darling.” Martha smoothed Dotty’s hair with a trembling hand. She couldn’t shake a dreadful fear that someone would find Tim’s frozen body like they’d found Nick’s.
* * *
“Dear Grandfather,” Dan wrote. The candle flame wavered, and he raised one hand to shield it against the draft while the other dipped the pen into the ink and scratched across the paper before he could stop to think. If he did, he’d never write, never try to persuade Grandfather that, nurtured and trained in the law as he was, he could be a Vigilante. Grandfather had never known an absence of law, a void where the law ought to be. Would he understand, an old man not accustomed to warping his mind onto a new tack? Would he believe any place, this place, could be devoid of law? As difficult to believe as that it was afternoon instead of night.
He got up to stoke the stove, as quietly as possible so as not to wake Jacob, who snored in gulps and gasps, napping because there was nothing else to do.
Someone battered at the door, and a dog barked. Jacob sat up, clutched the blankets under his chin, his eyes wide and frightened as from a nightmare of Cossacks.
Who on earth in this weather?
Dan opened the door, and Tim McDowell fell on the floor in a blast of snow-laden wind. His yellow dog bounded to the stove and shook itself. “Quick!” Dan pulled the boy farther into the room. Jacob, fully dressed, leaped out of the bed and pushed the door shut, helped Dan to lift Tim into the bed and cover him. The two men removed Tim’s boots and wrapped up his feet. The boy shivered hard enough to rattle his bones. Even clenching his jaws, he could not stop his teeth clashing.
Dan crouched and felt for Tim’s hands. “Bring a pan of cool water! Quickly!”
Jacob ladled water from the barrel by the stove, and when he would have set the pan on the stove, Dan stopped him. “It’ll be warm enough.”
Dan turned the boy onto his side so he could dip both hands in the cool water. What the hell had driven him into this storm with just a jacket and no hat? Martha! A fire? God forbid! Dotty? “How’s your mother? Your sister?”
Through his teeth the boy stammered, “F-f-fine.”
Jacob dipped a rag in the water and wrung it out, laid it across Tim’s nose and mouth, held the ends over his ears. As his skin color changed from white to pink, Tim bit his lip. Jacob said, “The Lord watches over you.”
Tim’s shivering calmed. He gasped. “Oww.”
“Warming up hurts,” Dan told him, “but you’ll be all right soon.”
A single nod. The boy whispered, “Pap threw me out.” He shuddered in a spasm of shivering. “I told him I wouldn’t work the claim no more.”
Dan read the same thought on Jacob’s face. What sort of father would drive his son into this blizzard? It could have killed him. No thanks to McDowell that his son lived. And Martha was left in that man’s clutches? And Dotty? Jesus.
Dan raised an eyebrow at Jacob, asked a silent question. Jacob said, “Ja.”
“You can stay with us,” Dan said.
“Ja,” Jacob said. “We make room.”
How they were to keep a big boy and a dog in a bachelor cabin already cramped for two men, Dan didn’t know, but they would manage. Or find a bigger cabin to rent, because this good lad was never going back to his father. Not if he could help it. “Stay as long as you want.” It struck him that he had worried about alienating Tim from his father, felt guilty about the secret planner inside himself, and here McDowell had thrown Tim to him. Dan had worried for nothing, he knew, but what would happen to Tim when he left Alder Gulch?
Tears leaked from Tim’s closed eyelids, then as if something in him had breached, they flowed down his cheeks, into the rag. “I’m sorry.”
Jacob dabbed at the tears with the ends of the rag.
“Nothing better for healing frostbite.” Dan hoped it was true. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”
If he had defied Grandfather, fled the house to earn his own keep, he might now be well established and prosperous as a surveyor. If Father had had the courage to tell Grandfather to go to hell, as Tim apparently did to McDowell, what might have been the outcome? He might still be alive, and Dan would not be here in the howling center of a dark and frigid storm.
Useless speculation. The past was never to be undone, but a little courage might yet satisfy the future.
* * *
If it hadn’t been that she could have lost them both, Martha would have taken Dotty and run after Tim. The one time she went to the door to see out, she near froze herself, and saw nothing but the whiteness of thick snow like trying to peer through blowing sheets on a line. She could never have found him. She could only pray.
Sam yelled, “Close the goddam door!”
She closed it without a word to him. Dotty was huddled under the quilts on her bed, and Martha slept there with her when she laid down. From their bed, where he lay to keep warm, Sam said, “It’s cold enough in here without you letting the storm in.”
“Then go get more wood. It’s at the side of the house.” She didn’t look at him, but at the stew heating on the stove.
“I know where it is.” He bundled himself up to meet the ice-laden wind.
“Mam?” Dotty spoke from her nest, a pile of blankets on the floor. “Where do you reckon Timmy is now?”
Martha smiled down at the child, tried to act confident, not an easy thing, as scared as she was. “I reckon he’s with friends. Mr. Stark lives closest. He’d take him in.”
“You think he’s all right?”
Martha paused, one arm reaching under the counter, into the flour barrel. A certainty comforted her as she thought about the child’s question. “I do. He’s got the Lord to protect him.” She poured flour into the si
fter. “What do you say to dumplings for supper?”
After a little silence, Dotty said, so soft that Martha almost didn’t hear, “I hate Pap. He shouldn’t oughta sent Timmy out in this storm.”
“You mustn’t say that!” A kicking at the door sent Martha rushing to open it for Sam.
He pushed open the door, and leaned against it, wood piled high in his arms, to help Martha shut it behind him. “I got enough damn wood to last till kingdom come.”
He dropped the wood into the box. Several pieces spilled over and rattled onto the floor, but he stripped off his wraps and fell into the bed again. Martha stacked the fallen wood, shoved two chunks into the stove. As she went at making the dumplings she was talking to him in the silence of her mind. You fool. You great fool. You don’t know what’s important.
Flakes of snow blew through the cracks between the window boards, and the wind roared strong as ever all through dinner and into the night. Martha had nothing to say that wouldn’t have been prayer. Save my boy, Lord. Save my boy.
Sometime after dinner McDowell spoke in a voice free of its usual growl. “Come on into bed with me, you and the little one. We’ll all be warmer.”
“The fire needs building up again.”
“I’ll do it.”
She piled the quilts from Dotty’s bed onto their own, and they crawled into it. McDowell built up the fire and used the slop pail, then tossed its contents into the storm. When the bed dipped and he slid in next to her, she lay curled around the child, her back to him, and kept her breathing regular and slow pretending to sleep until it was true.
Later on, she dreamed or maybe just remembered when Sam was at the War and Timmy had been her little man, doing his Pap’s chores. Now and then someone from over the rise had come to see was they all right, and they always was. They had enough, even to give away. Corn, potatoes, chicken, ham, milk, all the greens of the garden. Given her druthers, she’d never keep hogs again. She hated the killing of them. Dotty wouldn’t stay to home when they had a hog to kill, but traipsed into the woods far enough she couldn’t hear them scream when their throats was slit, and she and Timmy hauled them up by their back feet to hang and die.
Except for killing hogs, that they only did the once, and praying for Sam to come home safe, she and the young’uns did just fine. The horses threw their heavy bodies against the traces of the plow, and so what if neighbors smiled at her furrows going a little cattywampus? The grain come up just like they’d been straight as string.
McDowell turned over and prodded against her, but she hissed at him to stop. She couldn’t lay with him knowing he might have killed their boy. Maybe if she knew Timmy was alive. Dear Lord, keep Timmy safe. She dreamed. Timmy was walking on Jackson with a man who looked like Mr. Stark, and Martha was that relieved she shouted at him to wait for her and the child, and they stopped until she and Dotty caught up, and they were all together. She’d never been so happy, because they were a family.
She awoke, and the cracks between the window boards were black. A family with Mr. Stark? Why had she dreamed that? Why had she dreamed something so wrong? But the dream had told her that Tim was alive, the feeling she’d had earlier was right, she knew in her bones, though the other part was so wrong. Dreams was mixed-up things, she told herself, that’s all they was. Tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes. They couldn’t be a family with Mr. Stark. Never.
What was she to do? She’d held to a family with McDowell, even after he sold the farm away from them, because it was his right. And what come of it? He’d throwed it into the storm with Tim. Even if she could forgive him, she couldn’t never forget. Forgiving would take time. A long time. If she ever could.
Again she slept, and when she woke up, the cracks were still black, but it seemed the wind had died some, though the room was bone-chilling cold. Cussing the cold, McDowell stood out of bed and rebuilt the fire. When he came back, he put an arm around Martha and pulled her close. She let him, because he was cold.
He said, “We should have brought the big stove.”
It was a towering thing for him to say, as close to sorry as he’d ever come, McDowell owning up to that, but she’d had to fight him to bring her and the young’uns along – never mind the big stove. He’d thrown Tim into the storm.
He put his hand over her breast and thrust at her.
“It’s too late,” she whispered over her shoulder. “You done threw our boy away.”
He said nothing, only his hand squeezed her breast so hard that tears come to her eyes.
“Don’t,” she panted, pried at his strong fingers.
He muttered in her ear, “You’ll get your comeuppance one of these days,” and turned away, so the bed bounced hard on its springs.
Martha wept into the pillow, quiet so as not to wake the child.
* * *
Toward mid-morning the storm stopped. The day changed from a blurred pale grey to sharp blue shadows on dazzling snow. The sun might be shining and the wind might be gone, but the cold stayed, and Martha shivered in the doorway and squinted through her lashes at McDowell forging through the drifts. He was gone without a word, and she watched him go, and was grateful he hadn’t done no worse than squeeze her breast. It still hurt, but she reckoned it would ease in time. When he turned past the Melodeon Hall, she shut the door on the sunlight and groped for her wraps. The darkness in the cabin confused her eyes.
“Get yourself bundled up, child, we’re going to look for your brother.”
Even following in Sam’s trail, Martha was soon wet from her boots to her knees. His big strides were small help to her as she broke trail for Dotty. By the time they reached Idaho and turned toward Jackson Street, she was weary, and her snow-crusted skirts dragged heavy on her. They’d be sopping the minute she walked inside someplace and the snow melted off them.
A dog barked, and a man hailed her, and she shielded her eyes against the glare to see Canary jumping over drifts to get to her and Dotty. Daniel Stark, carrying a wide-bladed coal shovel, waved. He and Jacob Himmelfarb, shoveling a path through snow above their knees, plowed toward her. Martha tried to hurry to meet him.
The fine, powdery snow flew into the air all around. Martha stopped, confused because if it hadn’t been for the snow dragging on her, she’d have run into his arms. She couldn’t get her breath, and she pretended it was from struggling through the drifts, and then she saw he was panting a little, too, and from the look in his eyes it wasn’t all from shoveling, neither, though it was awkward for him without the full use of both hands.
“You’re safe.” He took her hand in his before she could speak. “Thank God. Your son’s safe, too.”
“Praise the Lord,” said Martha. “Where is he?”
“Oh, Mam.” Dotty began to cry. “I been so scared.”
“In our cabin. Would you walk in and see for yourself?” He dropped her hand, and a redness came into his face. Mr. Himmelfarb bobbed his head and smiled, and Mr. Stark reached out to Dotty. “Let me carry you. These drifts are too much for a little girl.” It was in Martha’s mind to say, Mind your hand, when she realized he wasn’t someone she ought to talk to like family, so she watched him lift the child onto his right arm. She hadn’t known he was so strong.
They made a procession, suddenly, of joy. Mr. Stark walked ahead of Martha with the child, breaking through the drifts for her, he told the young’un, “Your brother is just fine. He got a little frostbite, so he’ll stay inside today, but he should be out and about tomorrow.”
The dog capered about, bounding in the drifts, tail wagging, gulping at the snow.
Mr. Himmelfarb, carrying two wide-bladed shovels, kept saying, “Ja, Tim is fine, just fine.”
Mr. Stark set Dotty on her feet, and knocked at the door.
“Mam! Dotty! Thank God!” Tim, in the doorway, gathered his sister into a great hug. Martha walked inside, as near to fainting as she’d ever been from too much happiness, and Canary danced around her, jumped up to lick her hands. Her te
ars come hard now, but Tim’s arms were around her and the child. She clung onto him, and let herself be led near to the stove, eased down onto a chair, where she bent over and hid her face in her hands. Safe. Her boy was safe. Truly safe.
“Mam, Mam, why you crying? Mam, it’s all right. I’m fine. Mam, please stop.” Tim held her and rocked her like he was the parent and she the child. At last she was able to get ahold of herself some.
“You’re safe,” she said. “Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Mr. Stark.” She looked around for him, but she and the young’uns were alone in the cabin.
“Yes. You all right, Mam?” When she nodded, he said, “Truly?”
“Truly. None of us come to harm. Just a little cold, but we tolerated that, and we had wood enough. Your Pap toted it in.”
God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana Page 30