The Homesman

by Glendon Swarthout

  They were grouped between the house and the wagon, near enough to the latter, Mary Bee thought, for Briggs to hear what was being said. She wanted him to. She asked Otto Petzke what his wife’s condition was, could she travel. The homesteader said the same, the same, almost as she was when they found her under the bed after the night of the wolves. He prayed to Gott every day that she would be herself again, but she couldn’t be. Fear had changed her, maybe for life. She couldn’t talk, she made sounds only. If he held her up, she could move her legs to walk, as to the outhouse, but couldn’t move her arms. She would sit still on a chair by the hour. She must be fed by hand, like a child. And nights were worse. He would let her down into bed and there she would lie, seeming not to sleep, eyes big with fear. He didn’t see how they could take her so far, how they could care for her. And it was all his blame, which was what tore him to pieces inside. He had known how she hated guns, he should never have left her alone to cut wood when it might snow and the verdammt wolves would come. And now, as he condemned himself, Otto Petzke’s round, stoic face cracked, and Mary Bee sensed that if she let him continue, he would break down.

  “We must be going, Mr. Petzke,” she said. “Why don’t you bring her out?”

  “I get her, I get her,” he said, almost with relief, and strode into the house.

  Mary Bee spoke to the boys. “Will you please put her things in the wagon? There’s a slide-bolt at the back, and leave the doors open.”

  While they tromped through the mud and snow to the wagon she opened her coat and buttoned into her shirt, along with the envelope from the bank, the packet of letters to and from Illinois and the sheet with money. When they camped this night, and it was dark, she would hide them all in her own bundle.

  Suddenly he rushed outdoors, a wild man, arms raised high, tears rolling down his cheeks, and turning aside, fell to his knees and began to attack the house, pounding at the sod wall with his fists.

  “Nein! Nein!” bellowed Otto Petzke. “Nein, nein, nein, nein!”

  Returning from the wagon, Rolf and Jergen stopped in their tracks, staring at their father, wondering if he, too, had lost his mind.

  “Go in, go in, boys,” ordered Mary Bee. “You bring her out. Quickly!”

  Otto Petzke remained on his knees. Having exhausted himself, he spread both hands against the wall of the house he had built with those hands, then laid his head against it as he might have his wife’s bosom, sobbing.

  The boys brought out their mother, arms about her waist, lifting her a little to spare her legs the weight, legs that dangled and skipped as her boots bumped the ground. She made no sound. Her coat was much patched with sacking. They had pulled down over her head a kind of woolen cap with bill and earflaps. Mary Bee glimpsed a worn white face and holes for eyes and that was all. Rolf and Jergen swept her around between the trailed horses and up to the open doors of the wagon. Then they had trouble getting their burden over the step. Mary Bee hurried to help, conscious that Briggs stayed seated, as unconcerned as though they were loading cordwood. Jergen jumped up inside the wagon, Rolf and Mary Bee hoisted the woman, and Jergen, inside, somehow seated her on a bench, then sprang down and out. Mary Bee closed the doors, slid the bolt, ducked under Dorothy’s trail rope, went to the front of the wagon and climbed up beside the driver. Hedda Petzke’s sons tramped after her like tongue-tied schoolboys, faces upturned. Only now did they understand what was happening to them, and its meaning.

  “Take care of your father,” she said.

  Mary Bee bit her lip. This had been a leathery, loving family that had suffered together on this far frontier and survived until today. Taking away its center, its soul, was she saving or destroying it? She didn’t, couldn’t, know. As though to sear the scene in memory, she let herself have a last, fleeting look—at the boys’ miserable faces, at the bereaved husband kneeling by the wall of his home, empty now—then pinched her eyes shut against her own tears. Unable to give voice, she dug an elbow in Briggs’s ribs. The wagon started. When it had rolled perhaps a hundred feet, she heard the pitiful cries behind them.

  “Ma! Ma! Oh, Ma!”

  W. 10, Section 22, Township 6, Range 18W.

  Through the gray afternoon, through crusted snow and drab water the wagon rolled, Briggs keeping the mules to the task. Inside the box, Mrs. Petzke was silent. It was but four miles or so to the Sours place, which, they were told, when they asked directions at a claim, was a dugout. On the way Mary Bee told Briggs about Arabella Sours. He appeared to listen but might not have attended a word. She said she’d never heard of such a terrible thing happening to a couple so young. She’d met Garn Sours, she said, and he couldn’t be much more than twenty. His wife could be no older. They must watch him closely, she warned. She had no idea what he’d do when Arabella was actually taken from him. Briggs spat over the side.

  At first they couldn’t locate the stovepipe and had to drive concentric circles till they spotted the pencil line of smoke rising, it seemed, out of the snow. Then, when they reached the rim of the ravine opposite the Sours dugout below, Briggs refused to take the wagon down. If he did, he said, he wouldn’t guarantee to get it out, not with only two animals and this load. And just how, Mary Bee demanded, did he propose to get the wife out? Briggs looped reins around the footboard and leaned back against the box. If she was young, he said, she could walk. If she couldn’t, and the husband could, he could damn well carry her.

  The slope was steep but Mary Bee could walk it, though she sat down once, hard, on her backside and could imagine Briggs’s amusement. No one came from the dugout to meet her. She was greeted instead by two slat-sided pigs, a boar and a sow, which were confined, in lieu of a pen, to a hole in the ground dug with steep sides. They grunted at her and sloshed around in water a foot deep, on the surface of which floated some slops. She knocked at the door. Garn Sours opened it and, recognizing her, shook her hand awkwardly and let her in. The dugout interior was small and dim, the dirt floor uneven from sweeping, a pan was piled with tin plates and cups with leavings in them, and the odors in the place sickened her. She took care to push the door wide open.

  “Well, there she is, ma’am,” said Garn. “My wife. Belle.”

  Arabella Sours sat in a straight-backed chair, the only chair. In her lap she held a frayed rag doll with a dangling arm. She was small, and thin as a rail. Her heart-shaped face was that of a woman half her age. Her flaxen hair was tangled.

  “How do you do.” Mary Bee smiled. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Sours.”

  Mrs. Sours stared at the window.

  “She won’t say nothing, Miss Cuddy,” said her husband. “She just sets and looks out the windy. It’s like her body’s all stiffened up—I have to tote her to the outhouse, undress her nights, dress her mornings.”

  “I see. How long has she been like this?”

  “Ever since. Doc Jessup said she’d get old all of a sudden, and I guess she did.” Garn had seated himself on the bedside. His jaw had a hangdog set. He made Mary Bee think of an overgrown eighth-grader who believed he’d been punished for something he hadn’t done. “I don’t even know her no more,” he declared.

  “How old is your wife?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “And you?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “I see.”

  “My, but she was beautiful a bit ago, Miss Cuddy.”

  “She may be again, Garn, once she’s home.” Mary Bee gave him her full attention, determined not to look again at the girl. She had come too close to tears over Hedda Petzke. “What will you do when she’s gone? I mean, from now on.”

  He shook his head. “I dunno. I sure can’t go it alone.”

  “Why not? Other men have out here. I’ve had to myself. It isn’t easy, but it’s possible.”

  He was not in a frame of mind to believe her or anyone.

  “Well, I’ve come to take her,” sai
d Mary Bee. “What about papers for her?”

  From a pocket he took a sheet of lined paper, unfolded it and handed it to her. “That’s got her name and address in Ohio, where we all come from, and the other names. She’s got her folks and a big family—three brothers, three sisters, some married. She’ll be cared for.”

  Mary Bee opened her coat and buttoned the sheet into her shirt. As to the other things, he was unprepared, and she had to help him make a bedroll of the two blankets he could spare and sack up comb and soap—she made sure of a comb—a towel and a change of underclothing.

  “There’s this, too,” said Garn. “Her grandma’s wedding gift. It must be worth a lot. I reckon it should go with her.”

  Mary Bee opened her palm for it and studied it closely. It was a pink cameo pin. The head and face of a girl was carved in relief, her features delicate, and on her head was a crown, so that the resemblance was to a young queen. The pin had been cherished, Mary Bee surmised, and the girl much envied. She lived in a palace. She would have one child or two. She would never be workworn, never grow old before her time. Forever would she reign, and be forever fair.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “I’ll keep it for her and see she takes it home.”

  Arabella’s coat was adequate, but the bonnet was not, and so Mary Bee covered the girl’s head with two knitted scarves, tied under her chin.

  “There,” she said. “I think we’re ready.” She faced the young farmer. “Garn, let me say something. There’s a chore you can do for her after she’s gone. If you love her, clean up her house. Air it out. Air out your bedding. Sweep. Wash up your dishes. Until you decide what to do, keep your home as clean and tidy as she would have. It’s the least you can do. Don’t you agree?”

  He was sullen. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right, then. The wagon’s up on the rim. Can you carry her?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They started, his wife in his arms, her rag doll in hers. But halfway up the side of the ravine he slipped to his knees, rose, and slipped a second time in the wet snow. He couldn’t go on. Mary Bee panted to the rim and mad as a hornet screeched at the man on the wagon seat, who’d been observing the effort.

  “Mr. Briggs! Will you interrupt your leisure long enough to lend a hand? Now!”

  Briggs spat his gob over the side, climbed down in his own good time, and sidestepped the slope to Garn Sours. The two men made a chair of their arms and together hoisted the girl up to the wagon. Mary Bee had the rear doors open, and it was a simple matter to place her inside on the bench with Mrs. Petzke. Mary Bee closed the doors, slid the bolt, and did not trouble herself to introduce Briggs, who took the driver’s seat and reins.

  “I wish you God’s comfort, Garn,” she said. “I know and you know this is the best thing we can do for her.” She reached for his hand and shook it. “We’ll be back in a few weeks, and you’ll hear from me through Reverend Dowd that she is safe and sound.”

  “All right, ma’am,” he said, his face still full of injustice.

  Mary Bee had taken her seat and the wagon had started when a strange thing occurred. Someone called. Briggs and Mary Bee turned, and through one of the windows in the side of the wagon opposite her husband, Arabella Sours had thrust an arm, raised it, and was waving a farewell.

  “Goodbye!” she called to no one. “Goodbye!”

  Garn Sours ran around the moving wagon to her side and slowed to a walk.

  “Goodbye!” called Arabella.

  “I know who you’re waving to!” Garn yelled in anger at his wife. “It ain’t me!”

  “Goodbye!”

  “Or you wouldn’t leave me like this!” the young husband yelled, walking alongside the wagon, fists clenched, tears spilling down his cheeks. “You had no cause to lose your mind! We could of had more kids! You don’t love me—you don’t give a tinker’s damn!”

  “Goodbye!”

  With his reins Briggs switched the mules to a trot, and the wagon rumbled. Mary Bee turned forward, wishing she could stop her ears.

  “Go on home and play with that damn doll!” sobbed Garn Sours. “Leave me up against it! Belle, for all I care you can just go to hell!”

  Again the wave of the arm through the window as he fell behind the wagon, again the plaintive farewell to persons only Arabella Sours could see.

  W. 4, Section 14, Township 3, Range 5W.

  Morning brought a day as dreary as the day before and the day before that. An endless sky of iron cloud seemed to weigh upon the wagon as it creaked across the endless land.

  From more than a mile away they saw the man standing before his house. He saw them, too, and rather than waiting, went into the house.

  She had time then, covering the mile, to tell Briggs what had happened to Gro Svendsen. There might be trouble getting her, she added. She had met the husband, Thor, and he had warned her not to turn her back on his wife, in her condition she was dangerous. She hoped and expected, Mary Bee said, that if there was trouble, he, Briggs, would come to her aid without being asked.

  They drew up to the sod house, which was bigger and better built than most, and waited, as was customary. Svendsen did not come out. Mary Bee said he was probably getting his wife ready. After several minutes she stepped down and knocked at the door. After another minute Thor Svendsen opened it.

  “Good morning, Mr. Svendsen.”

  “Good morning, Miss Cuddy. It is good to see you. Come in, come in. She is ready.”

  Gro Svendsen was tied to a chair with a rope that went round her arms and upper body twice and was knotted at the back.

  So shocked by the sight was Mary Bee that she turned, reflexively, to Thor Svendsen. “Thank you very much. I mean, for the wagon, and the mules. They are just—fine.”

  “Good, good. Otto Petzke and me, we put in the money. The others, nothing.”

  Mary Bee was still at an utter loss. “May I ask, why is she tied?”

  “Oh, she would kill me. Sixteen years we are married, and she would kill me.”

  “You can’t mean that.”

  The tall Norwegian, a lean man with long arms, spread them wide, helplessly. “God will strike you down, she says to me, her husband, and she is God. So she thinks.” He spoke in a singsong, swinging his long arms and huge hands. “Oh, she would kill me. I tie her all day and feed her, and all night in bed, her legs also. I told you, do not turn your back.”

  “She speaks, then.” Mary Bee forced herself to face the woman, who was fully dressed in heavy coat and boots and a braided cap of felt. “I’m glad to meet you, Mrs. Svendsen. I am Mary Bee Cuddy.”

  Gro Svendsen had ears and eyes only for her husband. Her eyes were bright with hatred.

  “We have no children,” said the man unexpectedly.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” said Mary Bee.

  “I have bad dreams.”

  “Oh?”

  “Of trolls.”

  She got gooseflesh. Until now he had seemed normal. For an instant she thought of calling Briggs. “Well,” she said briskly, “if she’s ready, we should be starting. I have Mrs. Petzke and Mrs. Sours in the wagon now, and we’ll stop for Mrs. Belknap this afternoon. Do you have her papers?”

  He bent over the bed, which was made. On it, in a neat row, were a bedroll, a bundle, and an envelope. He gave her the envelope.

  “Here are the names, and where they live. Her two cousins, in Minnesota. Maybe they will take her, maybe not. They have an asylum in Minnesota.”

  Mary Bee said that was fine, she would pass the names on to the people in Hebron. “Now, how can we take her to the wagon?”

  “I do it, Miss Cuddy,” said Thor. “You bring those things, open the door.”

  Mary Bee picked up bedroll and bundle and opened the door. Svendsen moved cautiously to his wife, leaned, and slipped the rope over the back of the
chair. She sprang to her feet as though to attack him, but her arms were still bound to her upper body and he was able to swing her about and bind her to him with his long arms as well. Twice-tied, she struggled, making fierce noises like those of a trapped animal, but he walked her, propelled her, with him in long strides through the door. Mary Bee followed, then had to run to unbolt the rear doors of the wagon and open them. Gro Svendsen was a tall woman, as lean as her husband, and strong, and once she almost tripped them up, but he staggered her to the wagon and wrestled himself and her up the step and inside and seated her with a thud. Taking bedroll and bundle from Mary Bee, he dumped them in, then bolted the doors, walked a few steps away, and stood breathing hard.

  “There,” he said. “It is done.”

  “Can’t we untie her?” asked Mary Bee.

  “No, no. What would she do to the others? No.” And just then Thor Svendsen noticed the man on the wagon seat. “Who is that?”

  “A man who’s going with us. Surely you understand, Mr. Svendsen, I can’t—”

  “Wait.” The farmer walked to the front of the wagon. Briggs had averted his face. “You,” said Svendsen. “You!”

  Briggs turned to him.

  Svendsen took one look, then strode for the house in a straight line. He was inside and out in seconds, and he had a rifle in his hands.

  “That man, I know him! He is the dirty claim-jumper from Andy Giffen’s place!” Svendsen advanced on the wagon. “He will not go! With my wife or any woman!” He put the rifle to his shoulder and aimed it at Briggs. “You! Come down or I shoot you!” he roared.

  He was quite capable of it, Mary Bee knew that, and knew that Briggs’s gun was under his belt, under his cowcoat, and knew further that if he tried to reach it, he’d be killed. Her mind whirled like a vane.