Dossie flew off. She left the town of Millersville on foot—on flying foot—alone and leaving a whirl of dust.
The Kingfisher Woman say it all the time: One look, one deep breath, set out eastward with determination.
The next evening, at Noelle’s request, Dossie ran through some birdcalls. Hat and Noelle allowed themselves more mulled ale now that their winter tasks were mostly done. They became giddy, boisterous, and chatty. Hat wondered if Noelle was worried, and embarrassed to be so, about her relation with Duncan since this girl had come—since he had brought her. Noelle was self-possessed, but Hat had seen her crying into her hand when Duncan left. His eyes had been on Dossie’s face only—not carnally, but caught, held. Hat knew Noelle believed in auguries, had taken them and seen a change in her circumstance. Hat unraveled Noelle’s braids, brushed her hair, parted it at the middle of her scalp, and kissed the part at the back of her head as she had done when they were children and dressed each other’s hair for fun. The kindness thrilled Noelle.
“Papa asks you to come home, Mama,” Pet stammered to his mother. “He says his stomach is sour, and he needs your cooking.” Pet, on direct orders from his father, whose patience with his wife’s absence had worn down to the rails, presented himself to his mother hoping she would come home without a fuss.
“I’ll be home when I get home,” Hat answered without smiling, then felt a little ashamed of her abruptness with the boy. “Go back an’ get a cart for my things and one of your dogs to pull it and carry me home, boy.” Pet’s face brightened immediately, and Hat was touched to notice it.
Hat was fussy busy when she returned home. Pet helped her reorganize her kitchen and bring in her stores. Ernst Wilhelm came into the cook room as she was putting a stew on the stove and caught his first sight of her with her hair mussed up and her dress with damp spots under the arms. Hat turned, saw his lustful glance, and tidied her hair, surprised at feeling aroused by his presence. He sat down at the table and looked at her as if she were a phantasm.
“You are not well, Mr. Wilhelm? Noelle sent some powders for your stomach.” Hat brought him a glass of milk.
“Ah, Hattie, now you’ve come home I won’t need Noelle’s powders. Petrus will be better, too. He’s cried every day since you were away. Now I won’t have to hear the awful wailing,” Ernst Wilhelm said and guffawed.
Pet, who was stacking up his mother’s soaps, became excruciatingly red when Hat glanced at him. Of course he had missed her. But it was Papa’s pillow that was wet with longing.
Hat set a meal of her husband’s favorites and cautioned him to take care for his stomach. Later he dressed himself in the clean nightshirt that she put beside his pillow, leaving off his pants, underpants, and blouse in a pile on the floor. Ah, his wifely comforts had returned!
Hat knelt to retrieve his clothes and felt his eyes on her. She busied herself about the room—restoring order to his sundry. Ernst Wilhelm eased beneath his covers. It was a comfortable bed when Hattie was there to make it warm. There was no woman who knew more tricks for making a bed cozy on chilly nights. Ernst Wilhelm chuckled to himself unkindly that her tricks ended with placing bed warmers, though. Pretty as she was—as stimulating as she was to gaze on—she rarely responded to him with any sexual enthusiasm. And, he sighed, she had no art for the act. Hattie just let herself be fucked most times. His little mistress had much more fun with her lovemaking. She hadn’t forgotten how to be playful. Only after a long absence did Hattie liven up at all, and her appetite for touching was quickly satisfied. She was obedient to her vows, though. Ernst Wilhelm lay back and pictured Arminty and imagined her tickles and pinches while Hat wound around the room straightening things. The warm bed nearly coaxed him to sleep. When Hat raised her arms to her head to twist her hair, his patience came to an end.
“Come, have a glass of ale, Hattie,” he said in a soft-spoken command. “Did you make me some candles, wife?”
“Oh, yes.” Hat bustled about and brought out a box lined with grass and filled with slim, bright red bayberry candles. These were the highest pinnacle of her candle craft, and he knew it. He knew her excitement for making candles.
“Oh, the color is so bright—herrliche!”
“I have a secret,” Hat said and smiled as if she meant to make a game of finding out. She knew the bayberry candles were his favorite. She watched his face and enjoyed his smile.
“You are very sweet, Hattie.”
To cover her emotion, Hat drew out a taper, trimmed its wick, lit it, and placed it at his bedside. When she came close he undid the knots from her head and tangled his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck. He stroked the side of her face with the back of his hand, and she kissed at his fingers when they came near her lips. “My pretty pearl!” he said then and worked his fingers beneath her bodice. He passed her a mug of ale, and she drank it while he fingered her tits. She allowed herself to be pulled into his arms.
As he’d climbed past the watch house and toward his porch on that early spring morning, Duncan Smoot nearly wept for wanting to be at home. How had little Dossie fared without him? It was his first thought. How had they all fared? He reflected that it had been a hard thing to set out from the comfortable hearth and know that cold weather and privation were ahead. He’d gone because there were those who needed his guidance. Oh, but how he wished he’d stayed this winter around the fire in his home. Hattie and Noelle were a delight in winter—were both like little squirrels boiling herbs, putting away the harvest, and stocking the cellars. He had missed these pleasures.
Duncan returned to the Wilhelms’ to find the others hale and hearty. Jan and Pet seemed taller and broader and more manly. They greeted him warmly when he and Dossie came up. They hurried to relieve him and the horse of their packs and provisions, and he was moved to see them happy at his return. He was glad that he’d brought gifts for them.
He was the one who had come back bedraggled. Out in back beside her washing closet, Hat looked him over critically, took away his soiled clothes, and gave him clean things of Pet’s. Hominy, pemican, and a fruit pit that he had sucked on spilled from his pockets.
“Your winter gal don’t cook much. You look thin,” she said.
“Aw, Pippy,” Duncan answered.
“You look like you been drinkin’ hard and sleepin’ in a bear’s cave. What kind of whore don’t take better care of you,” Hat continued saucily. Duncan would not dare be ill tempered in the circumstances.
“Aw, hush, little hen, stop cluckin’ at me. You look plump and pretty. What you been doin’ all winter?”
“Makin’ soap,” Hat snapped. “And is a damn good thing. Your clothes stink!” She pushed his dirty things along the ground with her foot and laughed merrily. Duncan laughed, too. Hattie’s gentle fussing was a winter pleasure sorely missed.
This spring, nearly sick with anticipation of Mr. Duncan’s return, Dossie had come alive, had grown and come forth with promise. She had improved after each winter’s study with Noelle and Miz Hat. She had acquired competency in the womanly sciences, and she had learned to read well. She was anxious to show off her recitations of verse. She could show Duncan where Annapolis was on Noelle’s map and where on the map was Paterson, where was New York City, and where was the Canada border. She could assure him, with the same wry, defiant smirk that Noelle used, that Russell’s Knob was not to be found on any white man’s map.
She had improved the chicken house and the birds. The hens she’d coddled produced enough eggs for his appetite and her own with some left to trade. She had not spent her time lolling about preening herself, though she knew that lovely things had happened to her face and figure as well. In these winters that he’d left her to learn from Noelle and Hat, she had improved. She had grown up.
Her time had come, too, and she knew the import of it. She’d had her monthly miseries regularly for all of this past year. Ah, she had put herself on that porch to greet him, to be the one who gave him the very first homecoming smile.
3
HAT WALKED OUT TO her plant garden unnoticed. At the far reaches of her plot she looked away from the house. She rubbed at her breasts and felt their tenderness. She ground her palm against her left nipple and rubbed and pinched it until she could no longer stand the discomfort. Her head had got full of the foolish notion that causing herself pain would dislodge the comer and cause it to flush itself away. She stomped her foot in disgust. She had a baby! It was most certainly true. She had not felt this way since—how old is Pet? Fifteen? Or sixteen? Ach! He is seventeen at least. How had the time winged away? Nevertheless she had been a girl then, waiting on her husband and waiting for a baby to take up her life. It is embarrassing now. A woman like her. Damnation, damnation!
It was a cruel shock! Her sauces had betrayed her. She’d become careless with Ernst. Perhaps she’d become smitten again with wanting to be touched and held.
“He’s clever!” Hat said and kicked at pebbles all the way to Noelle’s house.
“You’re a pretty sow these days,” Noelle said with a chuckle as she walked up behind Hat dangling a string of possums.
“Eh?” Hat questioned.
“They’re a pretty picture. Your tits—so plumped up. From your husband’s attention?”
“Is it so plain to see?”
“It’s that I know you well. With you it’s the first sign, and I haven’t seen you boiling your drawers lately.”
“I’ve come to see you about it,” Hat said and sat on the porch step.
It was the thing that made Noelle Beaulieu a pariah to some. She was a fix-up woman, though her reputation as a Spirit Woman mitigated the negative associations.
“I’ve been careless, Noelle,” Hat said.
“Does it matter, girl?”
“It matters to me if I want a child. I ain’t a brood sow.”
“Yes, but you have only the one yet. A small brood!”
“I love my Pet, but I don’t want no ’nother child now. You know what a time I had. I…” Hat stood and walked a few steps, bent, pulled up a few weeds, and put them in her apron pocket. She turned back and faced Noelle. “He keeps a girl in town. I don’t want to be a fool. I don’t want people to think I’m a fool.”
“Yes, Hattie, it’s well known.”
“Eh?”
“What difference does it make now?” Noelle continued. “You always say you don’t care what he does. You say you don’t mind him being gone off with his women.”
“Still it ain’t right and it pisses me. An example for his son!”
“Hmm. Looks like you’re in a weir, Hattie. The pretty trout has got caught this time! How come you forgot your safety?” Noelle said and swiped familiarly at Hat’s cheek.
“I admit to tempting him,” Hat said and giggled. “Him acting like he’s got such an appetite for me when I come home from candlemaking. But I’ve seen the girl he’s keeping in town. She spends his money on ribbons and trinkets and sweets. I’m still a young woman, Noelle. I made him wish he was a better man.” Both women laughed heartily, though Hat knew it was bluster.
“He’s always ardent when you come home from candlemaking,” Noelle put in.
“Hunh? Aye, you’re right. I should have been prepared. I should not have let him feed me whiskey either. I’ve come to see if you have a salve for my tits. He is mauling me nightly.” Hat went in the house ahead of Noelle and removed her blouse, loosed her camisole. Noelle came in the kitchen behind her and stared at Hat’s cinnamon-colored back. Still, the only blemish upon it was a scar from a childhood scrape on an iron hook. Hat turned.
“You are swollen up,” Noelle said at first glance of Hat’s breasts, then dipped her chin and looked away. “No blood either then, eh?” Hat shook her head. Noelle went into her stores and handed Hat a large dollop of grease on a leaf.
Hat handed back the salve, raised her arms above her head, clasped her hands, and submitted her painful nipples to Noelle’s fingers. When the salve had been applied, she dropped her arms and sat without speaking.
“You thought of making your husband promise to give up his girl in town? You can make him stay at home tellin’ him about the baby. He’ll behave for a while. You’re his wife. You can get him back for good if you want him, girl.”
“His mouth may promise, but his jasper won’t.”
“Wilhelm is a greedy man.” Noelle dropped her eyes again.
Hat sat pondering for a long while. Several times she began to form up her lips to speak and did not. Finally she looked down at her breasts, seemed surprised to see them bare. She put on her blouse and camisole again, tucked herself, and restored the bib of her apron.
“Pet was born after a battle, as the old women say. I was hours and hours pushing him out! I remember my husband made you stay away because you were too much a conjurer for his taste. He got a white doctor from town and brought him. The white doctor frightened me. When he went onto the porch to smoke a cheroot, Cissy said, ‘Come on, Hattie, let’s have it.’ She leaned down and called to Pet and said, ‘You come out of there, baby. Come on now.’ She chirped and coaxed until it felt like she reached in and handed him out, but I couldn’t see. I just saw Jan’s pretty little encouraging eyes looking at me over her shoulder because he was strapped to Cissy. She didn’t leave me for all of the day, and she fed and cared for Jan at my side.
“I became more ill after Pet was born and I gave up my milk because it was meager. I took the granny powders Mr. Wilhelm gave me and, when my milk dried up completely, I was able to build my strength. I grew up quick after Cissy died. I learned to take care of both of them boys.” Hat finished speaking in a teary voice. “I don’t want that hurt again.”
“You’re no coward, Hattie. What’s your reason?” Noelle asked. She was willing do anything for Hat, but she wanted them both to know why they were doing it. Sending a child back to the ancestors was not a small thing.
“He shouldn’t win out. Mr. Wilhelm has too many sins on his soul. He doesn’t deserve any more gifts. He wants to fill up the porches with children, but I’ve always thwarted that purpose,” Hattie asserted, finally aware of her own motives.
“When your mind is firmly made, come in a day or so and stay a day or so.”
Noelle and Hat arranged to do what needed doing—saying to the others that they were off to gather. They made up jam so the story would hold.
When the first color emerges on the distant ridges and frothy mist is just beginning to be visible, it is the time of the first chatterers—those birds that herald dawn. On most mornings they are in a keen and noisy competition. Hat got up and always did, as did most all of the women of Russell’s Knob also, with the first of the bird banter. She did nothing to her hair but shake it. It loosened about her and rested on her neck and shoulders. The hair cloud followed her to dip up water, build a quick, hot stove fire, and make her coffee.
Only Dossie noticed that Hat’s skin was ashy and her eyes dull when she took up her kitchen work on returning home from making jam.
By the end of the first day back, standing at the stove became unbearable. Hat sat in the accommodation and packed, lit, and smoked the pipe Noelle had given her to relieve her discomfort. Her womb ached and rightly so. She intended to bear the pain stoically because she believed she deserved some discomfort.
Hat felt dog tired. How much more tired other women must be—Sarah Cooper or Honey Vander. These women had a yard full of young’uns. These women deserved to be tired. Did Hat deserve a calm and unruffled day with no noisy young’uns? What kind of selfish woman was she?
She had raised Pet, her baby. And she had raised Jan. These were her babies, and they were grown. Until they brought up some children for her to spoil, she was a free woman. She had given her greenest years to Mr. Wilhelm, and she had paid him off. She didn’t owe him any more of herself. It had always been about commerce between them. Didn’t she deserve her jams and soaps and candles now? Didn’t she deserve her commerce?
The effect of the tobacco and i
ts aromatic cloud was that she felt herself go dull in her loins, and the throb subsided.
She—Hattie—was the spoiled one, had always been. She knew it well. The others had got into scrapes for looking after her or indulging her whims. She was the baby among them, had sat on her moss tuffet and been queen! She felt sorry for them—for Cissy, of course, and for Duncan and Noelle. Noelle had always been willing to imperil her own soul to help the Smoots. And here again she had helped the brat, Hattie. And Duncan. He had taken real pain on her account—looking after her, protecting her. Even greedy, voracious Ernst Wilhelm had brought her home at some risk to himself when she pleaded with him. And now she silently begged the Grandmothers not to punish her too harshly nor chastise Noelle for sending a child back to the ancestors. Feeling sorry for herself for the pain she’d endured all day, she decided she alone was responsible for what had happened. It had been her fault from the beginning. She was the cause of the big rift that divided the Smoot family. She was responsible for all that had come after it.
Duncan styled himself their protector—her and Cissy. He was the great warrior. All the boys played at war and warriors then, when they were little chaps. Sam, an older cousin, was Duncan’s nemesis. Hat knew her brother hated Sam, wanted to hurt him. She should never have run to Duncan tattling on Sam. She and Noelle had both been flirting with Sam in the silly, innocent way of little girls who bat their eyes and drop handkerchiefs. Sam grabbed at her. Sam frightened her, and she ran and told Duncan. Sam Smoot lost an eye in the fight that followed. Duncan was sent off to work at the iron mines to compensate his uncle for Sam’s lost eye. The old men of the family decided it, but did not know what hell they sent Duncan to. He went to the Black Rocks, not much more than a day’s journey from his home, and was lost to himself below the ground and was lost to the People for some years. All of what happened could be laid before the feet of spoiled little Hattie Smoot.
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