Widow 1881_Flats Junction Series

by Sara Dahmen

  Dear God!

  Where do I go from here?

  The rail tracks stretch out ahead of me. One end leads to the depot and back to Yankton, and the other vanishes into the night. As I look from one part of the line to the other, my eyes stop seeing flickers of phantom animals. Focusing against the dark, I see a low structure. Doctor Kinney was correct, in a way. In the daytime, Widow Hawks’ home would be hard to miss.

  Set quite a few paces away from the last building, and the only structure on the far side of the tracks, her place is a long, rambling house. As I get closer and step in between the rail ties, I notice a few hides airing out, and a blackened fire pit in the front yard. My trunk catches on the last tie and I pull, my stomach twisting with the effort.

  As I come closer yet, a bone-plated lit lantern reveals that I have arrived at Widow Hawks’ place. I notice the strange, native artwork roughly painted on the door as I approach. She must be home, since warm light glows softly from two tiny windows. Apprehension coils through my bones, and a shiver threatens to knock my breath out. Will she be wild and fierce, and chant alien words over me? Will she be angry I am to stay with her? Perhaps Doctor Kinney misjudged her nature, perhaps she will use me to set an example to other whites in Flats Junction, and I’ll wake to find her wielding a tomahawk over my bed.

  Why did I say yes to this idea? I should have taken rooms at the inn! Either of the two in town, regardless of how shabby and worn they look, would be better than this!

  Not for the first time in my long, cold, hard journey west have I wished desperately that I was barren, as I’d thought all these years. Why couldn’t I just mourn Henry in peace? Why must I carry this child . . . and because of it, lose everything I had planned and expected for my widowhood?

  I know the answer. It is one my sister uses to condemn me, even though she’s stopped saying the words: You’re too curious, Jane!

  She is right, in so many ways.

  I knock before I have a moment to fully compose myself, barely finishing when the door swings open wide. In my mind’s eye, I had expected her to be a stooped, hardened, tiny little woman. Instead, she is straight and towering, a tall, black silhouette against the fire in the hearth behind her. I sense her eyes on me as she silently moves aside with a dancer’s step. It is my invitation to enter, and I do so tentatively, still swallowing my fear.

  The fire is ablaze and crackling, but the one long room is dark in the corners so that I cannot see much around me. Thankfully, it’s toasty and cozy and warm. A whiff of burning sage and hot meat curls into my nose. I leave my battered trunk and satchel near the door and curl my hands into my coat. What does one say to an Indian? I stand, uncertain, for a long moment before I realize she is not going to offer my ideas of expected social norms for visitors.

  She glides silently in her mix of soft deer hides and skirts, and fluidly squats near the fire where pieces of straw are half-braided. Her hair is bound in one long plait, and in the firelight, I can see it is mostly a steel-grey.

  When I kneel on the floor next to her, she does not look up. Her hands are busy, nimbly braiding and weaving. I think to help her, but I doubt my prowess in making the pieces tight and proper enough for her purpose, whatever that may be. I only wish to do something—anything—with my hands, but there’s nothing but the grass, dried and crackly, and my inadequacy taunts me.

  What a fool I am.

  I should never have let my carefully composed personality slip at my sister Anne’s winter party. I am a widow! I’m supposed to wear black, and mourn a dead husband, keeping my head down and my mind blank. Instead I found delight in speaking with my brother-in-law’s cousin, and I played completely to the stereotype of wanton widow. Theodore looked like an older, yet more robust version of my sister’s husband. He was fascinated with my old research, gleaned from medical journals and newspapers for Henry’s illness, and I truly believe his interest in my mind was genuine. I had recalled Anne’s old taunts: No one will care about the atlas you read, and it’s unbecoming to peek at the news over Father’s shoulder. No man will want your opinion, not even your husband. You just wait and see! She had been right, but Theodore was different from Henry. He hadn’t scoffed at me.

  And the affair? It was nothing like the chilly, careful intercourse of my marriage. It was new and fresh, and I actually found a small spark of pleasure in his arms, which was a far cry better than the times Henry had come to my bed. Theodore was a kind lover, our attraction was mutual and a bit breathless, and we did not share any false statements of love or affection. It was an expression of defiance on my part: I wanted to break away from the stilted, orderly terms of my reality that Henry and I had crafted together, and to see what it would be to choose someone for the attraction I felt instead of the partnership it offered. And Theodore understood. He gave me the chance to be free and wanton, and after a week of brief, orchestrated meetings, we decided it was best to stop.

  And then he was gone to Europe, and I was left with the discovery of the child in my womb. Theodore’s child. Not Henry’s.

  I’d spent four days staring into the fire of my sitting room.

  What to do? Where to go? How to hide it?

  I couldn’t give in to the expectation of the loose and wild widow woman, and I couldn’t let the shell of my social respectability crumble once everyone saw I was pregnant with a child that could not possibly belong to a man deceased. What would become of me? I would be ruined! Too many medical journals and articles read during Henry’s illness, and my long battle with doctors made me far too wary to try an abortion. I felt my age and my strength gave me a better chance to keep the child. But where to go? How to hide?

  And it was by the fire of my parlor that I read the ads, one of which brought me here, to this small town in the Territories, halfway between Yankton and Fort Randall, where no one has a need to know my true story. Least of all, this odd native woman who is quiet and strange.

  As the silence stretches in the cabin, I wonder how I will live like this. How will I work twelve or fourteen hours for the doctor, never knowing his true schedule or his needs, to mind his whole household, only to come stay every night and wake every morning with this peculiar woman who does not speak to me? Nor do I know how I am to repay her for this kindness. The questions pile into my mind without end. Do I owe her rent? Do I owe her service? I am a stranger. An Easterner. A white woman. I know nothing about her people or her ways.

  It’s too much.

  Too many unknowns.

  Too many bizarre and shocking things, too many new buildings and faces, but the icy weather inching into my blood overrides it all.

  Though it is early in the evening, I feel I should sit up with her, as might be proper, though my eyes close on their own. Suddenly, she lifts herself and walks to a dark wall. Not knowing what else to do, I stand and watch her. In the shadows, she gestures, so I approach to find a small cot simply prepared and covered in a hide of an animal I do not recognize in the night.

  This is to be my bed. Hides? I had never dreamed of such a bed! She walks away before I can murmur my thanks, even though I don’t mean it. It is a far cry from anything I had prepared to handle. I had thought the bedding would be stuffed with straw, but I’d planned on cotton sheets, at the very least. It is yet one more thing that makes me want to give up on this first day.

  But it is not worth a fuss. Not now. Nothing will change my circumstances now.

  She returns to the fire, and I assume she will not take kindly to a request for privacy in this wide-open room, or my hope for even the slightest bit of clean water for washing. It is her home, after all. Maybe Indians don’t wash up each night and morning. I must abide her rules, whatever they may be, and my mind churns with the uncertainty. Turning my back to her, I unbutton my well-traveled dress, stained further now with oil and grease along one sleeve, and strip to my undergarments. A simple nightgown, an unadorned nightcap, and I am ready for sleep, save for washing up. Widow Hawks does not move, and I am too emba
rrassed to disturb her. At this point, I am not entirely sure she speaks any English. I turn the hides and blankets back, crawl in, and face the wall. Normally, I would expect to spend most of a night wondering and counting all the worries I hold about my new job, the doctor, and the Indian woman with whom I live, but instead, I fall into a deep sleep immediately.

  Chapter 3

  21 March 1881

  I wake with her as she rises early. I can barely see the sunrise through the cracks in the hides and faded calico over the windows. She is stirring the fire embers and generally making a racket, which I did not expect from her. My body protests the earliness of the hour, but I get up and pull the cap from my head. Oh, dear heaven. I can barely move! My arms are stiff, and my feet are sore, the toes refusing to bend. There is a deep ache in my hips, and I have several cracks ready to burst into bleeding seams along my thumbs and palms.

  How will I work with such pains?

  How will I do this every day?

  As I rub my head to wake better, my hair feels waxy and slick. I absolutely must wash up today, so I tentatively step toward Widow Hawks, and she swings to look at me. She is not quite as tall as I remember from last night, but she is still many inches above me. Her face is inscrutable and strikingly foreign.

  I gesture along with my words. “Do you have a cup and water I might use, please?”

  She looks at me a long moment, then walks out of the house. I wait, hopeful she understood me. There is a sloshing, and the door bangs open to show her wrestling a good-size washbin into the room. It is full of water and chunks of ice, and my eyes widen.

  “Widow Hawks, I thank you. But this is too much trouble. I will gladly wash my hands and face outside tomorrow.”

  Her back bends effortlessly to put the bin by the fire. She does not acknowledge me and turns to the hearth. I watch her, spellbound and uncertain for a minute. It is then that I notice she has no clocks.

  This thought rouses me, and I step, barefoot, naked, and shivering, into the chilly water. It makes me gasp. Will all my baths be so frigid here? Though it is not nearly as lovely as a full sitting bath, I try to discreetly weed out the dirt in the cracks of my knees and under my arms. The water bites as I wring my hair out and the rivulets snake down my body. It’s not long before the water is filmy with dusty grime from the long train travel, not to mention yesterday’s labors in Doctor Kinney’s kitchen. After pulling on my other mourning dress, I lace up my shoes, noting they will need to be replaced with the sturdy kind I saw Kate wearing. Widow Hawks wears soft leather shoes, native made, and decorated with paints long faded. Are they comfortable? Half her clothing is almost exactly what I have been told the Indians wear: primal, savage clothing, but it does not seem out of place, nor threatening now that I see it all put together.

  Plaiting my hair up neatly and coiling it with pins, I am ready without much fuss. There! I allow myself a private smile to think of the ladies at home with their finery and needs. I am thankful I did not require a maid to dress me out East, or I would be lost today. At least it is one solid thing from my past that will help me here!

  The widow is sorting cans of dry goods when I go to the door. My instinct would be to touch a person after the offer of a bed, but she’s not my usual type of acquaintance. So, I pull myself back from placing a hand on the older woman’s shoulder. Instead, I use my voice as warmly as I might to mask the quiver of uncertainty behind my tone.

  “The doctor said you would be a fair landlady, Widow Hawks. I see you are. And I thank you. I know I am a disruption. Please let me know how I might . . . offer my thanks to you.”

  She does not turn or move during my speech, so I press on, anxious to make at least one decent impression.

  “I am . . . I’m a widow, too, like you. I . . .” My words stifle me because I know nothing of her marriage, and I cannot make more out of mine than what it was.

  It seems she still will not speak, so I leave the house and walk briskly in the soft morning light toward the doctor’s house. I wish I could ignore the unsettled nerves that rise with her silence. What is wrong with saying good morning? Good day? Anything to put me at ease! Or is she so cold and quiet because she dislikes white people? If so, why is she here in Flats Junction?

  The air is not quite as brutally cold as yesterday, so I slow my steps. I want to take the time to look about the town.

  The land is flat and easy to read around the town, yet there is a rise to the land toward the east, careening sharply up to the milky sky. There are more hills in the distance, dotted with a smattering of trees, though most of the landscape is prairie. The road and the railroad cut a scar across the pale soil peeking through the windswept snow, and I step across the rail ties and enter the town proper, passing the main street to try another road. The grid of the town seems practical: three main streets with a handful of short lanes to connect them. A neat parish on the west end of First Street bears a proud sign across the brick declaring it to be St. Diana’s Lutheran Church. Second Street curves upward from the corner of First and Livery, which I can just decipher from scratched, wooden sign posts. At least someone here has tried to give the town some semblance of order! I choose Second Street. I’m almost sure every road empties along East Avenue, which runs by the doctor’s front door. Flats Junction cobbles together, with closely packed homes, shacks, and shanties in varying degrees of care and decay, though one ostentatious, multi-story house has filigree and painted trim. Lanterns are lit in several windows, and I realize a woman at the back of the Prime Inn is actually waving at me. I wave back, and the gesture does much to warm my heart.

  The school is empty today. Across an alley a cooper’s sign swings, and across the street, along the edge of a frozen, narrow river, the town blacksmith is already at work, obvious from the early ringing of hammer and belch and blow of the bellows behind a broad, closed door. Nearby is the farrier.

  At the next crossing, I smell the pigs and their manure just as I hear an inordinate amount of screeching and yammering from a small group of tiny shacks built in a circle. As I pass by, two Chinamen stagger out of one of the hovels, arguing continuously. They are carrying an enormous cast iron kettle between them toward the black fire pit in the middle of the hovels. The two tiny Chinese women I remember from the general yesterday follow them. One notices me and gives a miniscule, half-hidden jerk of her hands. It is so small I’m not sure if it’s a wave at all.

  The packed dirt and crusty snow under my feet crunches loudly. When I reach the doctor’s home, the silence of my pause at the front door is disconcerting save for the sudden, unexpected ring of the church bell behind me. It is a brass piece, piercing and sharp, and rings from the other church in town: a broad, white, clapboard structure with St. Aloysius Catholic Church painted in black across the doorway.

  Should I enter through the front or the back? Will he keep the back locked? I face the day with some level of worry and trepidation. His house is quiet, so I let myself in and take care for the screen door to close with barely a squeak. But then, I notice a soft glow in the kitchen and realize he is already awake. Is it after seven? He has a lantern lit on the table though he is nowhere to be seen. His puttering upstairs shuffles on the floorboards over my head.

  For a moment, I am suspended. My house in Boston was not much bigger than this one, and I could always hear Henry wherever he was rummaging even if he was sifting files in his generous office. It’s almost as though he has not died, and I am only imagining the shimmering grass outside. I might blink and see my beloved ocean instead. Henry was dark-haired, well-dressed, and kindly. I found him dull and yet, appropriately attentive. Our courtship was brief; he wished for a bride and I wanted to run a household of my own, and our match was what I’d hoped to find: calculated, simple, and refined. We were not often without the ears of a chaperone, and the stilted conversation that began our relationship continued throughout the marriage. Once our vows were spoken, he came to my rooms as required, and did not demand much of me even when it becam
e apparent a child would not come easily for us.

  I was not happy, but I was content to be married, and I had liked the common chores that came with managing a kitchen, a suite of rooms, and the occasional dinner party. It was not a good life to be a spinster, living with family forever, only to end up alone in the lateness of age. I knowingly took a wooden marriage with all its expectations over a quiet grey retirement.

  Here, I’ll be able to keep my dignity, carry on with the courteous shell I’ve created for so long against my nature, and no one will question my respectability, my rashness, or my choices. No one will know what a single, seven-day slip of decorum has cost me. It will be worth the harder work—and I hope I can keep up. Although I am outrageously nervous about this choice to come West, and the fears surrounding my slowly unfurling pregnancy, I feel a freedom I haven’t known since my childhood.

  I am my own woman here, and I can make my life again.

  This seeps into my bones with certainty as I look about the doctor’s kitchen.

  Putting on the kettle for the coffee, I move to the pantry and think a good hot breakfast of eggs and bread would do him well. As I finish up the coffee and heat the pans, he enters and breathes out loudly so I need to turn to acknowledge him.

  “Good morning, Doctor Kinney.”

  He nods in response but gives nothing else. I pour him a cup of coffee and turn back to the eggs, mentioning off-handedly, “Widow Hawks has no clock, so I hope I am on time.”

  He comes to stand next to me, watching me beat the eggs, then takes the bread and begins to slice thick slabs.

  “You are on time. In fact, you are early, Mrs. Weber.” His voice is contrite. I stop beating the eggs, and the kitchen is suddenly silent. He is not smiling at all, and fear wells in me. Have I displeased him already, again?