The Glovemaker

by Ann Weisgarber

  His words drifted into a moan.

  “Mary Louise,” I said. He might have nodded, I couldn’t tell. He lapsed back into himself and went quiet. Mary Louise. The woman who waited for him. The one whose mending had been done with care.

  His wife. It had to be. A man hurt bad and far from home would call for his wife.

  All at once I felt her presence, it was like she was watching me. I tried to shake the feeling away but couldn’t. There were things she wanted me to do for her husband. Like I would want done for Samuel.

  I went to the marshal. “One more thing,” I said, my voice a whisper. “Your vest and shirt. They’re soiled. I’m going to clean them.”

  The marshal’s eyes opened, then closed. This was his way, I believed, of telling me he understood.

  Using the washrag, I wiped at the stains on his vest and shirt doing my best to clean up the worst of the vomit. Show charity to your enemies, I told myself as I bent over the marshal doing this work. The washrag bumped over the watch that was in his vest pocket. Be kind. No matter how hard. Like Samuel would expect me to do.

  On the last day of August, the day before Samuel went off to do his wheelwright work in scattered outposts, I told him I wanted to trim his hair. “Can’t send you off unkempt,” I said, making him sit on the kitchen chair that I’d brought outside, the scissors in my hand. “Your customers won’t have you to dinner or let you sleep in a spare room.”

  “It’d cause a ruckus,” Samuel said, a smile in his voice. “Sure as day. A shaggy-headed wheelwright? Folks living in outposts have never seen the like.” I’d laughed at that but there was a hollowness to it. I was lonesome for Samuel already.

  I trimmed his hair, working around his neck and ears. His dark hair was coarse and had a mind of its own. A swirl on the top of his head and toward the back sprang into a cowlick. I brushed his hair across my fingertips as I cut it. It was as thick as it had been on the day I met him.

  “The apples are coming along in Nels’ orchard,” Samuel said, filling the silence made by the ache of his leave-taking. “It’ll be a good harvest. We’ll have apple pie all winter long.”

  “I’ll have one waiting for you on December the first,” I managed to say.

  “I’ll come home wearing a bib tucked in my collar and a fork in my hand.”

  “And a collection of new rocks in the other.”

  “Mrs. Tyler, you know me inside and out.”

  We went quiet. I clipped at his hair and before us, the red-rock cliffs with their streaks of white glistened in the sunlight. In places, the cliffs were sharp and craggy. In others, the edges were rounded and worn. Nearby, the creek was a low murmur. A wren perched on a rock raised its head and sang. From somewhere farther up the creek, another wren sang back.

  Samuel put his hand on my free wrist. I stopped trimming his hair. “Deborah,” he said. He looked up at me. “I’ve been a test to you, all my coming and going. You’ve never said a word against it.” He’d caressed my wrist, his fingers skimmed over my skin. “You’re a good woman, Deborah. None better.”

  He wouldn’t say that now. A good woman wouldn’t want someone to die. A good woman would do one more thing for a man who was helpless.

  I put the pan of dirty water and the washrag in the kitchen and went back to the marshal. My voice low, I said, “Is it the back of your head? Is that where it most hurts?”

  His eyes moved under his lids. His lips twitched. He said something. It sounded like yes.

  I put my hand to my pocket and felt Samuel’s rock. It was warm, like a living thing, giving me courage. I let go of it, got my coat, and laid it on the foot of the bed. Nels’ spare trousers and shirt hung on a peg and I got those too.

  “I’m going to roll you onto your side,” I said to the marshal. “Your left side. To get the pressure off the back of your head.”

  His jaw clenched. “It’ll hurt,” I said. “I know. But then it’ll be better.”

  Before I could think too long about it, I bent over him, put one hand on his right shoulder and the other under his arm, and pulled him toward me and onto his left side. He cried out, a growl from deep in his throat. Sally, behind me, panted and whimpered. Holding on to him with one hand, I grabbed my coat and put it behind him to keep him from rolling back. Still holding on to him, I got Nels’ clothes, wadded them and put them against his chest to stop him from rolling forward.

  I let go of him. His breathing rasped. Pain creased his face. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. I was sorry he was hurt. I was sorry, too, for the trouble he would surely bring and that everything had gone so wrong.

  “Rest,” I said. This was meant for me as much as it was for the marshal. I started to pull up the blankets to cover him, then stopped. His gold watch, attached to the chain, had fallen out of his vest pocket and was on the bed. It wasn’t ticking. It had run down.

  Samuel didn’t carry a watch. Knowing the precise time didn’t matter to him. Tracking the sun and watching shadows told him all he needed. My father, though, carried a watch. It was silver and had been his father’s. When I was a small child, I was prone to bad dreams. I’d wake up screaming and because my mother usually had my younger brother to nurse, it was my father who came to comfort me. This was when my mother was his only wife and he still lived with us. He’d hold me close and when my heart began to calm, he settled me back in bed. He’d get out his pocket watch, spring it open, and hold it to my ear. “Let’s count the seconds,” he’d say. Together we’d do that, my father taking the lead as the numbers got bigger. After several minutes of counting the seconds, I’d fall back asleep.

  The marshal might be comforted by the sound of his watch. I told him what I was going to do. I believed I saw him nod his head. I unfastened the vest button that held the chain in the buttonhole and worked the chain through. When it was free, I pressed the knob on the top. The cover sprang open.

  The time had stopped at one minute past twelve. A photograph was opposite the clock face. I went to the table where the light was better. It was a woman and two young children. She sat on a high-back wicker chair. A boy, about five or so, stood at her knee. A little girl, a few years younger than the boy, sat on the woman’s lap.

  The marshal’s family. The people who waited for him.

  I snapped the cover shut. I didn’t want to know anything about his family. I didn’t want the name Mary Louise to have a face, and I didn’t want to think about children. The marshal was an enemy. He could arrest me and take our home from Samuel and me.

  If he lived and told what he knew.

  My fingers pulled up the knob and began to twist it back and forth, winding the watch. Nels didn’t have a clock but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to set the watch. My intent was just to make it tick.

  The stem tightened. The watch’s tick was loud in my ears. Across from me, the marshal shivered. I pushed the stem down and went back to the marshal. I put the watch back into his vest pocket, ran the chain through the buttonhole, and put the opposite end of the chain in the other pocket. I pulled the blankets up to the marshal’s shoulders, got his coat, and spread it over him.

  The tightness in the marshal’s faced eased some even though his breathing stayed ragged. Mary Louise couldn’t expect me to do more. I’d done what I could. I’d done what was right. Not for the marshal, though. I’d done it for Samuel. A bargain.

  Across from the marshal, I sat at the table. Sally lay close to my feet with her head between her paws. The marshal looked helpless but he wasn’t. He had the force of the federal government behind him. He could ruin us.

  Yet he had a wife, Mary Louise. And a son and daughter. He cared about them. He kept their images close.

  I had my own way of keeping people close. I kept a record book with a page for each pair of gloves I’d made for my family and for those who I cared about. Each page had the date, the person’s name, and the hand measurements. I wrote down a description of the gloves and the kind of thread I’d used. To keep the memory fresh,
I made a paste from fish and beeswax, and glued scraps of the leather and thread I’d used to each page.

  The marshal muttered, then went quiet. He wanted his wife with him, I thought. He wanted the comfort of her presence. Surely she would want to be with him. Instead, this very moment she was going about her day like it was any other. She didn’t know her husband’s breathing rasped, he’d hurt his head, and one side of his face had gone slack.

  I pushed myself up from the table. I had convinced myself I’d done enough for the marshal. Mary Louise would expect more from me. Just as I would expect more of her if Samuel were in her care.

  In the kitchen, I found a clean dishcloth and went outside. I scooped up some snow and wrapped it in the cloth. For Samuel, I thought. And to keep my end of the bargain.

  Inside, I went to the marshal. “This will be cold,” I said. “I know that. But I’m trying to ease the pain, not hurt you.” His good eye opened, then closed, letting me know he understood. Bending over him, I pressed the snow-filled cloth to the back of his head. Hurt as he was, he hadn’t lost his senses. I felt sure the marshal knew where he was and who I was. Just like he had known this afternoon when he rode toward me, coming from nowhere. He had sat high on his horse with his shoulders set and his rifle in easy reach. I’d known why he came to Junction but I had to make like I didn’t so I asked him his business. I asked him who he was.

  Behind me, the fire in the cookstove popped. In that moment, what I had told myself I’d forgotten, rushed back. His name was Fletcher.

  Don’t think about it. Forget it, push it from your mind. Keep him a stranger, nameless.

  I couldn’t. Telling myself to forget only made me remember all the better. Like it was happening again, I pictured him sitting on his horse. I heard his voice saying his name. Marshal Thomas Fletcher. There was a middle initial but I couldn’t remember it.

  I pressed the cold cloth against the back of his head, left the bed, and sat down at the kitchen table. Thomas Fletcher.

  No, I told myself. Don’t let him have a name. I got up from the table. Stay busy. I filled the washbasin with warm water that heated on the cookstove, and put the washrag I’d used to clean the marshal in it. Using a sliver of lye soap, I worked up a few suds. I couldn’t find a washboard. Instead, I rubbed the rag against itself, back and forth, the water slopping some onto the counter.

  Thomas Fletcher. His name echoed in my mind. I couldn’t shake it away. His name made him a person. His wife was Mary Louise Fletcher.

  I stared down into the washbasin. The water had turned brown.

  I remembered something else. This afternoon, while Thomas Fletcher was in my kitchen, he’d said something about where he was from. I’d been so taken aback by his anger that this had washed over me. Now it came back. He was from Tennessee.

  I rubbed the rag together even harder. The dirty water splashed over the sides. Three years ago, at a place called Cane Creek in Tennessee, Saints gathered in a farmhouse for church services. A mob of men, Tennesseans, surrounded the house. They said the Saints had seduced Southern women into living lives of disgrace and perversion. The mob wanted revenge. Days later, when their anger had played out, four Saints had been killed. One gentile was dead. The few Saints still in the county were given thirty days to pack their belongings and get out.

  Earlier, the marshal told me they didn’t hurt women in Tennessee, not even ones who lied. But at Cane Creek, a woman was shot and her two sons were killed.

  I balled the washrag and put it on the counter. I pitched the dirty water out the door and scooped up snow with it to wash it clean. Then I brought in more fresh snow to heat on the oven so I could rinse the rag.

  The marshal. Tennessee. That drummed at me. And not just because of Cane Creek.

  I puzzled over it. Each state and territory had a marshal. The president of the United States picked the marshals. Marshals and their deputies could make arrests only in their own jurisdictions. At last word, Frank Dyer was Utah’s marshal.

  Saints made certain to know the name of Utah’s marshal. He was our enemy. I hadn’t heard of Fletcher but that didn’t mean anything. Most marshals didn’t stay more than a few years. President Cleveland must have sent Thomas Fletcher to be Utah’s next marshal. We were slow to get news here.

  The water on the stove simmered. I poured it into the basin and put the rag in the water to rinse. The marshal’s breathing rasped. His voice had been strong when he rode up to my cabin this afternoon. His movements had been sure when he got out his badge and showed it to me.

  His badge. He had taken it from an inside pocket.

  I shook out my hands and dried them on my apron. Only his watch was in his front pocket. I would have seen the shape of the badge while cleaning his vest and shirt. I went to the marshal’s coat on the wall peg. The marshal’s eyes were closed. He wasn’t watching me.

  I ran my hands along his coat. A soiled handkerchief and a ball of string were in one of the outside pockets. His gloves, worn thin in the palms, were in another. A pocketknife and a cloth pouch partially filled with dried leaves were inside his coat. A narrow silver canteen was in a different inside pocket. I shook it. The liquid inside of it sloshed.

  The badge must be in his saddlebags. That couldn’t be right, though. This afternoon, the marshal had taken it from inside of his coat.

  He’d lost it. It could be in my barn or by the manure pile. Maybe by the chicken coop. If the deputies found it on my property, they’d know he’d been there. They’d know he would have shown me his badge. They wouldn’t believe my claim that I didn’t know anything about him.

  I took out Samuel’s rock from my apron. It was the yellow one with brown in it. Samuel said it was different from the other sandstone he found in Junction. It reminded him of our home, he’d said. It was stronger than most. I put it by the washbasin to give me courage.

  I dipped the rag in and out of the washbasin to rinse it. The marshal stirred. My heart skipped, then raced. He tried to say something.

  “You’re all right,” I said even though it wasn’t so.

  The marshal squeezed his eyes tight.

  Be merciful and show charity, my father had said. But don’t turn soft. Don’t forget who your enemy is.

  Thomas Fletcher.

  This afternoon I believed the water I’d left in the trough would be our undoing. Now there was the lost badge.

  The deputies were out there somewhere. At any moment, they might pound on the door demanding to be let in.

  I found a kitchen knife and put it in my skirt pocket.

  Heavenly Father, I prayed. Look after Nels. Help him find a safe place to hide Braden. Help Nels get back before the deputies show up.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NELS – THE FALL

  January 12, 1888

  It was a sorry thing leaving Deborah with the marshal. I didn’t like it. But sorry as I was, I had to get Braden hid for the night. So him and me left Deborah on her own and rode our horses to the head of the trail that went up the cliff behind my place.

  “I’ll follow you,” I told Braden.

  “I don’t know where we’re going.”

  And I don’t know who you are, I thought. Or what you’ve done.

  I pointed to the cliff before us. If it were daylight and if it weren’t snowing, we’d see a cut zigzagging its way up the side. I said, “The trail’ll show itself once we’re on it. Your horse’ll sense it. There’s only one way to go and that’s up.”

  “Then I’ll go on my own. I’ve already pulled you into enough trouble.”

  “True. But I’m going with you.”

  I didn’t trust him. I intended to keep him in my sights until I got him hid away for the night.

  He cocked his head. I expected an argument but he gave a small nod and took the lead. With me directly on his tail, he couldn’t turn around in a wide patch in the trail and go back to Junction. I’d already stuck my neck out more times than I could count today, but there was one risk I wasn’t willing
to take: Braden turning himself in.

  I eyed him as we started up the trail. This morning, dawn not more than a glint of gray light, Braden showed up at my cabin. A man with plural wives. It didn’t sit right. I nearly didn’t open the door. The federal government left men like him alone in the winter. Braden, though, knew the code. He talked like a Saint. Deborah must have thought the same. She’d sent him on to me. Likely she didn’t feel any easier about him than I did but neither of us had much of a choice. We went and stepped right into Braden’s troubles.

  Now I was sunk deep. So was Deborah. Leaving her alone with the marshal tore at me hard.

  Blast this weather. It’d kept me from getting Braden to Floral Ranch. Now I had to hide him close to Junction. Now the marshal was hurt bad and laid up in my cabin. There was no soft way to put it. Deborah and I were neck deep in trouble.

  Fletcher being a marshal was another thing that gnawed at me. I’d never heard of marshals tracking outlaws. They left that to their deputies. Neither had I heard of a lawman traveling alone in this part of the Territory. There were bound to be deputies somewhere with him.

  The notion of them watching us made my skin crawl. There was no two ways about it. I had to get Lewis Braden out of Junction.

  Falling snow lit the night. I kept my sights on Braden’s horse’s rump and tail that were flecked with snow. My horse, Bob, shook his head and snorted bursts of frozen air. Bob had a low opinion, I knew, about being made to follow a slow-moving horse that was worn out. The trail, a narrow thread that switchbacked up the cliff, wasn’t all that steep, not like most tended to be in this part of Utah. But in places the snow was over knee deep and Braden’s horse had been ridden hard the last few days.

  That wasn’t my concern. Hiding Braden was. So was getting back to Junction as fast as I could. I had to be there when the deputies showed up. If I wasn’t, they’d say I was helping Braden. Which was so. Anyway, it wasn’t likely deputies would come now that it was dark. But nothing about any of this fit with how things had gone in the past.