“Catrina, put the gun down!”
Papa’s voice strikes me like a bolt of lightning, and I feel like I’m exploding. But it’s the gun in my hands, firing with a loud crack that splits the sky and echoes across the hollow. Oh God. My fingers turn numb, like they don’t even belong to me, and the rifle slips away, falling to the ground with a soft thud. The smell of burnt sulfur fills the air. Black smoke hangs like a curtain between me and the stranger. As the smoke rises, the man sinks to his knees, his beautiful body crumpling at my feet like a dropped handkerchief.
In my stomach, a stone falls. Its weight drops me to the ground beside the madman. He’s so near, I can smell the salt and sun of his body. I stare at his eyes. I saw myself in them, but now they’ve rolled back in his head, showing only the whites. Did I kill him? My hand shakes as I reach out to touch his face.
His golden skin burns hot as hellfire. Or is it mine? I can’t tell the difference between us.
Papa kneels beside me.
“I didn’t mean to—” My throat swells up.
“I know, Cat, I know.” Papa’s breath comes fast as his big hands travel over the hills and hollows of the man’s muscles and joints, searching out the wound. “He ain’t shot.” It sounds more like a question. He says it again, stronger, to feel the truth of it better. “He ain’t shot.”
I didn’t kill him. My body goes limp and shaky. I didn’t kill him.
“Poor fellow. He’s no thief—it’s a mad fever that’s got ahold of him. He’s burning up.” Papa shakes his head. “I’ll get him to the house and you take the mule to fetch Effie Lenox to come doctor him.”
“I won’t.”
“Cat—”
“I’ll tend him myself.” I don’t care if Henry gets mad at me for disobeying or not being proper. I don’t care about anything except saving the man I found in Stone Field. When I thought I killed him, it was like seeing Mother dead on the ground by the molasses press. If I can fill him back up with life, he can fill me up, too—I know it in my bones. He won’t have to die like Mother. And neither will I.
I glance up at the hawks, still circling together above the bluff. “Don’t try to stop me. I want to be with him.”
3
Papa doesn’t try to stop me, but as soon as we lay the man on the cot in his study and he covers him up so I won’t see him naked anymore, Papa still runs off to fetch Effie. I start brewing some willow bark tea, using Mother’s recipe for Fever Cure that’s always helped Papa in his bouts of throat sickness. While the tea boils, I wash the stranger’s burning face and neck with cool water from the well and prop his head up with a pillow. I pull Papa’s reading chair up next to the cot and stare at the man from Stone Field.
The leaves in his hair make me think of Puck, the sprite from Papa’s Shakespeare. But he doesn’t look like a pesky little nature spirit. He looks strong and human. And handsome as the Devil. More like King Nebuchadnezzar from the Bible, who went crazy and wandered around naked in the wilderness like an animal because God got mad at him. Maybe God was jealous.
I pick the leaves out of his hair one by one, and stick them into mine like a wreath around my head as I cool his face again with the water. After I strain and cool the tea, I dip a clean rag in it and squeeze the drops between his lips. He’s quiet and still as a dead man and it makes me all-overish. I grab Papa’s pipe and pace the floor as I fill it with tobacco and light it with a stick from the stove. Papa used to try to keep me from smoking, but he knows it helps calm me when my darkness settles over my moods, so now he lets me be. I puff on the pipe as I scan the shelves for Hamlet.
The cover’s worn soft from Papa’s fingers. I sit down close to the Stone Field man with my knees up against his bed and look for the words he spoke to me in the cane. We know what we are, but know not what we may be. I blow a smoke ring toward him. His face fits perfectly inside the white round frame, just like a tintype photograph. I wish I could slip his image into the deep pocket of my trousers where I keep things I might need one day. The rings begin to fade as the smoke fills the space between us.
Damn it, God, don’t You let him die. I pull and puff more smoke and read out loud the line I already know by heart. “‘To be, or not to be—’”
A low voice rumbles, “‘That is the question.’”
I can’t see him through the smoke, but as it fades away, his image slowly appears. He opens his eyes and blinks at me. His eyes are the golden brown of barley ale, sweet molasses, dark honey. “I saw you.” His voice is dry and rough like a croaking frog’s. “In the cliff. You looked like a bird ready to fly away. I didn’t want you to leave.”
My hand shakes as I dip the rag in the cold water and squeeze him a drink. He’s going to live. He has to. The man’s eyes don’t leave me once. They still have a glassy fire and look lit up from the inside. The fever’s still got him. As I give him water, his hot lips brush against my fingers and make everything inside me shake and rattle like a tornado coming. “Who are you?” I ask.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well, what’s your name?”
His eyes scrunch up and he holds his head like it hurts to think. “I don’t recall it. I don’t recall a thing.”
When the fever took him, it must have stolen his memory. But he remembers seeing me up in the cliff. I take another puff on the pipe and stare at him.
He blinks at me, and then props himself up on his elbow. “Who are you?” He stares at me strong and steady, like I’m the one who’s the mystery, and he’s the one to solve me. Lord. Maybe he is.
I glance out the window, not knowing how to answer. “Why did you make the circles in the cane?”
“So you’d look at them.” He speaks slow, like he’s trying to find the words. “I saw you up there … yesterday? I think it was yesterday—I’m not certain. It took me all night. The moon helped.” He reaches out and takes the pipe from my hand. I feel a tiny charge of lightning when his fingers brush against mine. He puts the pipe in his mouth and takes a long pull. When he blows smoke rings, it looks like he’s kissing the air between us. Soon it’s full of swirls and spirals like the ones in Stone Field.
I take the pipe back. “You should rest.”
“But what if I wake up and find out I only dreamed you and you’re not real?”
My face feels strange when I smile—it’s been so long, I’m surprised I remember how. “If I’m not real, then poor me.” A leaf slips from my hair and falls into my lap.
He picks it up and tucks it back into my hair. “It’d be a poor situation for us both. I’d just have to go back to sleep and keep dreaming.” His smile is slow, like deep water with a current so strong it pulls me right under. Everything in the world disappears except for him and me, and even when our words are gone, his eyes still speak.
His lips don’t move, but I hear his rumbly voice in my head saying, If the question’s “to be or not to be,” then the answer’s “to be.” As long as it’s to be here, with you.
My heart beats faster. His voice is in my head so strong, saying the exact same thing his eyes are telling me. I know it’s him talking silent to me, and not my mind making things up. He wants to be with me, and I nod because I feel the same way.
His eyes get heavy and I know he needs resting. “Go to sleep. Let the Fever Cure work on you. You’ll need to sleep ages, but when it’s done with its work, you’ll be all right.” I reach out and squeeze his hand so what I said feels true and certain for him and for me, too. His eyes slide shut, but his smile stays put.
I hold his hand and gaze at the smooth golden skin of his arms and chest until I hear Papa and Effie ride up outside, and then I slide away to meet them on the porch. Papa looks worried and lost, but Effie’s clutching her bag of fancy medicines that she won’t even need now, and has that look of determination she always wears.
“Effie, he’s asleep. We should let him rest. I gave him Mother’s Fever Cure—that’s all he needs for now.”
She nods, but I know she won�
�t be at ease until she’s set eyes on him and decided what’s what. I move aside and let her into the house. “Well, he’s in the study if you want to see for yourself. But don’t wake him.”
Papa and I follow her through the house. The heels of her boots click like a timepiece against the wood floor. Wherever Effie is, without even saying a word, she makes people feel like she’s in charge, and she’s only twenty—three years older than me—and black as the slaves who live beyond the hills of Roubidoux. She marches right up to the man and feels his forehead. He doesn’t move a smidgen, and keeps sleeping.
She clucks like a hen as she pulls the blanket back up over his naked chest and feels the sides of his neck, under his chin.
“His fever’s still dangerously high. His glands are slightly swollen, too. We’ll have to be diligent to keep his temperature lowered through the night, but if we can, he’ll be fine, Lord willing.”
I nod. Effie Lenox is the smartest person I know. She talks just like a book and she showed me how to read and write when I was five and she was eight. She’s the one who got Papa interested in reading her father’s library full of novels and poetry.
She’s read the thick doctoring books that Mr. Lenox orders for her, cover to cover. If God had made Effie a man and given her paler skin, she’d have gone off to a fancy school to be a real doctor, sure as I’m sitting here. But even God can’t stop Effie from learning more about doctoring than Him, if she sets her mind to it.
She’s an expert on being proper and good, too, because her papa, Mr. Lenox, was a missionary. He met and married Effie’s mama in the Congo, but the woman died there giving birth to Effie’s little sister. Mr. Lenox is white as paste, but Mrs. Lenox had the same curly hair and black skin as Effie—her tintype’s inside the locket that’s hanging from Effie’s neck, dangling over the Stone Field man.
“Hm.” Effie peers at the man. “He looks as though he might be Mexican or perhaps Indian. In either case, I imagine he’s far from friends and family.” She holds her locket between her fingers with an anxious look on her face. “I hope he’s able to leave soon and join them again. People here in Roubidoux won’t know what to make of him and that may mean trouble for—”
I snort. “I don’t give a damn what they—”
“My goodness!” Effie lifts the pan of Fever Cure I made. “What an odd concoction.”
Lord, I hate when she interrupts me and changes the subject for no reason.
She sniffs the brew. “You come up with the strangest tonics, Catrina.”
I cross my arms proud over my chest and sit back in the chair to smoke some more. “Well, who cares if it’s your expensive store-bought pills or a witch’s brew, as long as it makes him well?”
Stone Field man’s eyes flutter open. For a moment, he smiles at me as if he heard what I said, and then his eyes slide shut again. Papa and Effie didn’t even see. It makes me laugh out loud.
“Catrina Dickinson.” Effie shakes her head and almost smiles. “You are a witchy girl—you think it’s funny, carrying a strange man who wore next to nothing in from the field—”
“It wasn’t ‘next to nothing’—he was bare naked. And Papa helped me. Stonefield was too heavy for me to carry on my own or I would have done it.”
“Stonefield?” Papa and Effie say it at the same time.
“He lost his name somewhere in the field. Maybe he can borrow that one till he finds his memory.”
Stonefield mumbles, “I like it.”
Effie looks at him like she smells a skunk, but Papa beams when he hears Stonefield’s voice. I swear I never loved Papa more than I do right now. He smiles and pats the man on the shoulder. “Good to meet you, Stonefield. You can stay with us as long as you like.”
Stonefield’s eyes open again, looking past Papa and Effie at me for just a moment before his breathing turns heavy with sleep. And in that moment the look on his face lights up the whole world, like when lightning strikes at night turning everything clear as day. I could almost forget what my darkness feels like. And I’m so happy, I hardly even think about what Henry will do when he finds out.
4
Stonefield sleeps all day without waking as Effie and I keep his temperature lowered by changing the cloth on his head and bathing his arms and chest in cool water. Effie handles his body as if he’s just an ordinary person with ordinary skin and muscles like you see every day. Doesn’t she notice the strange weight of his arm in her fingers? It feels smooth as water and firm as stone at the same time. I’m surprised she can’t sense the strength bottled up inside his shoulders. I feel a quiet power resting inside every muscle my hand brushes.
Every couple hours I give him another dose of Fever Cure. By late afternoon his fever breaks. Lord. Looks like God finally went and did something right. When Stonefield wakes and sits up with his dark hair ruffled and his eyes all sleepy, I want to reach out toward him, but Effie’s watching, so I just speak to him in my head, without using my voice.
Stonefield, you fought the fever off. You came back to the Land of the Living.
He looks at me like he sees something written on my eyes, like he’s reading words there.
I had to come back—you’re here.
He heard me talking with him in his head, too. I’m certain it’s real. Hearing him this way is a quicker path to my heart than hearing through the ears. His voice shoots straight to the center of me like an arrow.
Effie adjusts his pillow. “I’ve brought you some broth—it will help your strength return. All you need is some rest and you’ll be perfectly fine.”
I reach for the bowl. “I’ll do it.”
Effie says, “Catrina, you need to rest, too. You look … rumpled.”
She glances at the mud still caked in my hair and on my clothes. I washed my hands and face earlier, but I don’t have time for a bath. I take the bowl from her before she can sit down beside him.
“I think I know better than you when I need resting and when I need to keep on doing a thing.”
Effie rolls her eyes as I sit down and start feeding him, but I just mind Stonefield. I like the way he leans in slow toward the spoon and takes it in his mouth as he looks steady at me. I don’t know why, but every time I slide the spoon from his lips and he swallows, it sends my heart a-quivering.
As Stonefield finishes the broth, Papa walks through the door. He left earlier for the field to see what could be done about the bent stalks. When he sees Stonefield’s well enough to eat, he nods and grins. Papa always says thousands more with his smile than he does with his words, and I know he’s relieved to see that Stonefield’s going to be all right. When Papa saw him lying like a dead person in the field, it must have flooded him with memories of finding Mother that way. All those painful thoughts gathered again over Stonefield. But now that he’s alive and safe, it’s like Stonefield saved Papa, not the other way around.
Stonefield starts looking sleepy again and lies back against his pillow. Papa shoos me and Effie from the study. “So the boy can sleep and the man can read in peace.”
I don’t think Papa even hears Henry’s horse and wagon tearing into the yard a couple hours later. I jump up from the sitting room floor where I started dozing off while Effie read Proverbs out loud from the Bible like she does sometimes when she visits, because she knows I skip those whenever I read the Good Book.
When Henry walks through the front door, he’s madder than hornets. “Damned insurrectionists won the battle! The Union troops retreated—they’re headed back to Fort Rolla at this very moment. The whole nation’s going to Hell.” He throws the newspapers into the fire. I stare at them burning, the words curling up and melting. Henry always saves the papers so when we’re done reading them we can stuff them in the walls for insulation or use them to cut sewing patterns.
“And have you seen Stone Field?” He wrings his hat like a dish towel. “Some kind of fool’s been playing tricks in our sorghum. Looks like the work of a lunatic!”
I nod and glance at Effie, w
ho’s sitting quiet in the corner rocking chair listening, with the Bible open on her lap. Henry’s so worked up he hasn’t even noticed she’s behind him.
He keeps going. “Bill Hoss was shooting rabbits up on his oak knoll this morning and saw the circles in our cane all the way from there. He rode down to tell me when he saw me coming home just now. Said it looked like the Devil’s work, and now everyone around thinks our farm’s been marked with an evil sign.” His voice rises like it’s climbing a mountain, getting higher and higher as he goes.
I know when he reaches the top he’ll blow. I move to the window and sit on the sill with one leg in the house and the other outside so I can get away quick. But that only makes him madder.
“And look at you. You can’t even sit properly. You’re covered in mud and you’ve got leaves in your hair like you sleep in the woods. Damn it, I told you to stay home today, Cat! No wonder everybody’s tongues are wagging about you, too.”
“What do I have to do with it?”
Henry throws his hat into a chair and glares at me. “Bill’s sister says you wooed the Devil and that’s why he blazed a sign in our field—to show that you’re his.”
Lord, I can’t help but laugh at that. “Dora Hoss is just a mush-minded girl.” I get up from the window, pick up Henry’s crushed hat, and press it back into shape. “She’s got nothing in her head but nits.” I put Henry’s hat on my head, down low, over one eye. “What does it matter, anyway?”
His hands ball into fists. “Blazes, Catrina! You think Father and I can bring in the sorghum, the corn, and the barley all by ourselves? You know his heart’s weak. If people say our farm’s cursed, they won’t want our help at harvest and they sure won’t help us with our crops. It could ruin us.” His face turns the color of a ripe red apple.
Stone Field Page 2