“Whose baby?” she demanded. She needed to hear the words to force the reality.
Elizabeth looked to Jake, her fear so thick she reeked of it, and Rose needed no further confirmation. Alongside, Jake distanced himself slightly from Elizabeth, his eyes on Rose, a bear caught in a trap. Rose couldn’t stand still. She turned to flee, where, she didn’t know, but anywhere away from the sight of the two of them.
“Wait,” Jake said.
“Wait?” Rose asked. “Haven’t I waited too long?”
“I’ve only found out myself,” he said.
Rose didn’t dare look at Elizabeth, her rage too large to control. “My sister? You brought this to our ranch?”
“I’m sorry,” said Jake.
“It just . . . happened,” said Elizabeth. “A mistake. Please, Rose. I would never in my right mind hurt you. You’re everything to me.”
Rose bolted from the room, back to the barn. The tears came and she couldn’t choke them back, and after a time she stopped trying, letting them stream until the front of her dress was damp and her throat grown raw from her moans.
She heard the creak of the heavy barn door, and knew it was Jake, come to her. She didn’t interrupt the course of her mourning, crying out her agony until she was spent, and he waited, not far from where she had thrown herself on a bundle of hay. At one point he tried to come closer, but she stopped him with a look.
When at last she thought her voice steady enough, she turned her face to her husband.
“Choose,” she said.
Midwifing came naturally to Rose, trained from the time she was a little girl by her Gramma Amy, but there was nothing natural about the prospect of delivering Elizabeth’s child by Jake. Elizabeth waited in her bedroom alone, labor progressing, while Rose lingered on the other side of the door, steeling herself to go in. Rose knew her sister was terrified by the prospect of delivering her first baby, and equally terrified that her only source of comfort and help came in the form of a sister who had barely spoken to her or looked her in the eye since the day the nature of the relationship between Jake and Elizabeth came to light.
The tools of her trade were carefully laid out beside the bed, cleaned and checked just that morning when labor first started, but try as she might, Rose couldn’t force herself to go in to Elizabeth. She knew her job, the job of every midwife. Not only assist in the delivery of a baby but gain the trust of the mother, assuring her that as midwife, she understood her craft and all would be well. But that seemed impossible in this circumstance.
The last few months had been hell on earth, watching Elizabeth bloom to readiness, the child taking on burgeoning shape under her tunic. Each day, Rose blocked her ears to Elizabeth’s appeals, gaining strength from the righteousness of her own pain-filled silences until Elizabeth, beaten, retreated back into silences of her own. Jake’s frequent absences made things easier. Still, Rose played over and over in her mind the image of the two of them together, unable to stop herself. But with Jake gone, Rose went about her daily tasks and focused all of her wordless anger in one direction. Elizabeth.
She pulled up the floorboard in her bedroom, hers and Jake’s, wrenched out the heavy strongbox, and fit the key in the lock. Inside were items precious to her, documents, gold, silver, and in the corner, a cream-colored linen handkerchief twisted into a double knot, identical to one Elizabeth possessed. She wasn’t sure where Elizabeth kept her totem, but of all the valuables that might go missing through flood or fire or theft, this was the only thing she could never replace. Rose unknotted the handkerchief and held the single penny her Grampa Cow Tom had given her in her palm. She held the coin so tightly and so long that her hand began to ache. Carefully, when she felt herself ready, she returned the penny to the handkerchief, drew the knot taut, and put the strongbox back in its hiding place.
She knew she must do what had to be done.
Rose entered the room set up for the birthing and closed the door tight behind her.
Chapter 58
ROSE CIRCLED THE front room and peered out the window, waiting. Elizabeth still sat in a rocking chair on the front stoop of the ranch house, handkerchief in hand, sniffling. Every once in a while, she broke into great sobs, shoulders heaving, producing fresh tears from her red-rimmed eyes. Her belongings lay piled in various bags and pouches at her feet, and she wore her best dress, the stiff gingham with both hoop and bustle, as if a proper lady, not a twenty-five-year-old child of the prairie who at one time picked out undigested kernels of corn from horse droppings for nourishment in order to survive.
Jacob and Kindred played in the packed dirt of the front yard, each intent in their separate games. They often played in just this way, not exactly together, but so aware of the other that if one walked away, the other followed, not far behind.
“Auntie Lizbeth,” Jacob called out, and held up his hoop for her comment. When she didn’t respond, Kindred padded over to where she sat and laid his head in her lap. She stroked his hair, absently, and sobbed afresh.
How often in the past had Rose softened to her younger sister’s tears, until she came to recognize any wellspring of concern only served to engulf her by the end? She refused to be fooled this time. She returned to hands and knees, hard-scrubbing the planks of the front room floor, only leaving off once she heard the approach of the cart’s wheels on the gravel path outside the ranch house door, the whinny of the fatigued horse, the harsh set of the hand brake as wood scraped wood. Still, she waited indoors.
“C’mon, dear,” she heard Gramma Amy say to Elizabeth, her voice more kind than Rose thought Elizabeth had a right to expect. Certainly more kindness than Rose intended.
“I’m not leaving without my child,” Elizabeth said. Her voice was surprisingly strong.
Rose gave her sister credit. Defiant to the end, even as she was thrown to the mercy of family who would still have her.
“That cannot be,” said Gramma Amy. Rose heard a new weariness. Her grandmother had seen too much, lived through too much. “We talked of this already and agreed. You promised your mother. Six months to weaning.”
“He’s mine, not hers.”
“She has a claim,” said Gramma Amy. “As you know.”
“I am the boy’s mother. He came from my body. Help me, Gramma. Please. It wasn’t only me to fault.”
“And mistakes carry a price. Six months come and gone. Grab hold to your things and get to the wagon. We’re going home.”
“My home is with Eugene.”
“Not here,” said Gramma Amy. “Not anymore.”
Heavy-booted footsteps and then a thudding on the flatbed. Her grandmother must have asked a ranch hand to help load the wagon. Rose refused to hide herself any longer, not on her own ranch, the ordeal almost to an end.
From today, they would all move forward again, without the constant pall of reminder. The awkward silences, the accusations, the sickening aftermath of betrayal, the pleas for forgiveness, all relegated now to a tapestry of the past. She gathered up the baby from the crib in the corner, still drowsy with sleep, and stepped out onto the stoop. The sun was bright, and although a harsh glare rendered her sister a squinted obscurity, she took great care to affect calm and stare in that direction, as if made of stone. In this last year, she had decided stone was the safest state of mind around Elizabeth.
“Gramma Amy,” Rose said in greeting.
“Rose.”
Her grandmother walked toward the stoop in a slow, halting gait. From uncovered head to moccasined foot, she looked brittle and ancient. Her hair was totally white, in thin, coarse plaits curled tightly at the back of her neck, and she’d lost weight. She limped as she moved, the lameness more pronounced than when Rose saw her last, two months prior when she traveled to her grandfather’s ranch to bring her case before the family. Ma’am. Her grandmother. Gramma Amy’s sunken cheeks highlighted her wrinkled, sun-baked skin. I
nstead of fishing and dozing in the sun, surrounded by children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, now she started over with a wayward, man-stealing granddaughter.
“The child?” Gramma Amy asked, holding out her hands.
“Of course.”
Rose transferred Eugene to her grandmother’s arms. He was awake now, and before long would cry in hunger. They needed to make this brief. Rose might be stone, but had no interest in this kind of cruelty, in the spectacle of a baby crying for mother’s milk as the mother was forced to keep her breast from him.
Gramma Amy fingered the features of Eugene’s face. Already he showed promise of a pretty child with delicate features, the cocoa of his smooth skin a perfect blend of Jake’s light and Elizabeth’s dark, his hair a mass of ebony curls, a sunny disposition doubled-dipped from both. Six months ago, Rose played dutiful midwife to her sister, Elizabeth’s young body needing minimal assistance, a fast birth. Eugene was a good baby, an easy baby, as if he’d decided early he didn’t want to make undue trouble for anyone.
Eugene started to fuss, and Elizabeth bolted from the wagon.
“No,” commanded Gramma Amy. Elizabeth stopped, the plea on her face plain. But she didn’t come closer, tightly wrapped arms around her chest as if hugging herself. She stood, unsure.
Rose put herself in Elizabeth’s place. If one of her children needed her, especially a helpless baby of six months, nothing and no one could stop her. Not man nor woman nor beast. Certainly not one single word spoken, no matter by whom. Elizabeth was weak.
Gramma Amy handed Eugene back to Rose. “We are family still. This wasn’t easy to decide, what was best for the child. But Elizabeth can still see Eugene.”
Rose nodded. “After another six months,” she said. “As agreed.”
“She is mother,” Gramma Amy said. “And sister. Those can’t be forgot.”
“How could I forget?” Rose said bitterly.
Now her grandmother nodded silently. She limped toward Elizabeth, and led her to the wagon.
“I’ll fight for him, Rose,” said Elizabeth. “And I’ll never give up. I wronged you, and I’m sorry, but you’ve turned hard and cold. Eugene deserves better.”
Rose ignored her sister, as she had for the last few months, pretending she wasn’t there at all. Silence was all she had to wield. She promised herself to never speak to Elizabeth again.
Elizabeth stared over her shoulder, not once taking her eyes from the bundle that was Eugene. Not when Amy flicked the rein for the horse, not as they disappeared from sight of the ranch.
The entire business hadn’t taken but a small part of the morning. There were animals to feed, meals to prepare, gardens to tend, children to mold, ranch hands to monitor. Jake was on a cattle drive, and the everyday doings of the ranch fell to her.
She fed Eugene first, in the same rocking chair Elizabeth vacated. He slapped his hands against the nippled bottle she fashioned, unhappy with the blend of cow’s milk and honey of his new diet. He was fussy, expecting his mother’s smell and his mother’s milk, but not inconsolable. He finally sucked at the substitute in defeat and fell once again into a drowsed sleep, succumbing to her will.
Let the rest of the ranch wait, Rose thought. The regular chores went undone as she acclimated Eugene to his new life. To his new mother.
Chapter 59
A FREAKISH AFTERNOON sun beat down on the prairie as if in full of summer, though the season registered only late spring, the ranch’s busy season for calves, colts, and fawns. The glare was intense and the air so still and hot that even the littlest ones, usually afflicted with too much energy, kept rooted, neither breaking rank to tug at Rose’s skirt nor to bedevil one another. They sat cross-legged in the shade, their sweat-drenched backs against the wall of the barn, watching their older brothers and sisters.
The centennial would soon be upon them, one century playing out and replaced with another. Rose tried to tease out her future, and found she couldn’t guess what 1900 would bring, whether it would be better or worse for her family. She told herself the transfer of century was nothing but a date, one day’s slip to the next, but anyone could smell the change riding the wind sure as dust following stampede. If Jake weren’t gone on a drive, he’d reassure her. She wished him home.
“I set up the cans, Mama Rose,” Eugene said.
Eugene was tall for almost nine, but no matter his desperation to bridge the gap between himself and Jacob and Kindred, to his older brothers he was merely a child, relegated to picking up the tin cans they shot off the fence during Wednesday target practice, someone to shoo away if he tried to tag along after them for too long.
“All right,” Rose said, “Jacob first.”
Rose had yet to get used to the invasion of the last couple of years, so many unfamiliar faces, mostly scruffy white men come to Indian Territory to claim what they now called unassigned land, stopping briefly for a night in the barn or a bit of food or water before pushing on, strangers setting their sights too close to Indian land. These settlers had a look about them, determination edged with entitlement, forcing her to mindfulness of all she and Jake had, as well as what could be taken from them and given to others. The talk of power struggles within tribes, between tribes, and between tribal governments and Washington unsettled her. But short of flood or tornado, regardless of a merciless sun in a cloudless Oklahoma sky or a parade of humanity traipsing across their land, Rose refused to cut short the regular Wednesday lesson behind the red barn. Her barn. Her ranch.
“Take your time,” Rose said to Jacob. “Find the can in your sight and pull steady.”
Jacob hitched up his trousers, squared off, took rapid aim between each shot, and hit only two cans. He shrugged and deposited the spent six-shooter into Rose’s hands.
“You satisfied for Kindred besting you again?” she said.
Rose’s trick of playing to the competition between the two brothers had become less effective of late. The boys were twelve, Jacob and Kindred, as close as twins in their early years, but that bond had begun to noticeably fray.
“Who’s good at the gun isn’t necessarily good where it matters. Or mayhaps a gen-u-ine Indian’s aim is better. Ma’am.” Jacob ambled toward the shade, unapologetic.
Her son perched on the ragged edge of sass, but Rose held her tongue. It was just too hot. She shook her head at her too-charming, too-bright son, willing to work hard at things that interested him, but almost impossible to engage in what did not.
She signaled Eugene with a wave of her hand. The boy took off at a trot and scooped up the cans his older brother managed to hit, and placed them upright along the split-rail fence alongside Jacob’s misses. Six cans, six tries for each child.
“Kindred.”
Kindred, shirtless, wore a breechcloth, buckskin leggings attached to his hip belt, and moccasins. His hair usually fell straight downward in a braid almost to his waist, decorated with feathers, shells, and strings, the sides of his head shaved, but today, he donned his deerskin-strip turban. Rose noticed a new indigo owl tattoo on his forearm.
Rose handed Kindred the pistol without comment. She no longer tried to coax him in his dress, nor did she have instruction for him on Wednesday afternoons. He didn’t need her advice to improve. And he didn’t want it.
With detached calm, Kindred took careful but easy aim, and squeezed back on the trigger lock. One can after another flew off the fence, until there were six lying on the ground, a new rent in each.
Kindred checked to make sure Jacob acknowledged his feat, but Jacob stared purposefully elsewhere.
“O mvl kv, Ecke,” Kindred said, handing Rose the pistol.
“English,” Rose warned.
“Faultless, Mother.”
There was something in his tone Rose didn’t like. What was it in the air, for her sons to border on such disrespect? Her best milking cow, due any time, had b
een off feed for two days, and she couldn’t shake her foreboding about the impending birth of the calf. And last week, the entire crop of cucumbers in her garden quit blooming, suddenly, the leaves turning an ugly yellow before shriveling and falling to the ground.
Eugene retrieved the cans. “I want a turn too,” he complained.
Rose had been at the business of educating her children long enough, mindful of contrary natures as well as abilities, to understand that short-lived desire and long-term persistence were two entirely different things.
“This is no game,” Rose answered, as much for the benefit of the younger children listening as for Eugene. “Everyone learns to shoot a gun to protect the ranch. Eugene is still too young, but his time comes next year. When he’s ten.”
Eugene poked out his lower lip. Rose winced at the stab of recognition of Elizabeth in his features. She’d grown up with that look, a sullen expression her sister assumed when she didn’t get her way. Seeing that mirrored in Eugene reminded her of too many things best forgotten. Rose shot Eugene a mother look, and he quickly straightened up his face and ducked his head, not daring to lift his eyes to meet hers as he set the cans up again. He was still malleable, fearful of her disapproval. If only she could keep them all that way.
She called Laura next, also an excellent shot. Her eldest was as conversant with pistol and rifle as with a needle. Rose mechanically reloaded the pistol for her daughter, and watched Kindred and Jacob, standing side by side, not quite facing each other. If this had been just a year ago, they would be banded together, in unison against the world, whispering secrets or without words, communing in a code of their own making that didn’t include anyone else. But today, they stood apart, almost as if strangers.
She allowed all the older children their turns, then released them to their farm duties, pulling Eugene to the side.
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