Jacob flipped to the cover page. Someone had written Henrietta Rebecca Cowley – October 19, 1890, in a smooth, flawless cursive. There was a picture taped there of a young woman—almost a girl, really—with dark hair and dark eyes. His first thought was that she was beautiful. His second was that she hadn’t been happy at the time of the photo. There was a defiance in her eyes that glittered across the generations. It reminded him of the look Eliza had worn when Father had told her to marry into the Kimball family.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, stunned. He could only imagine how Father’s hands would have trembled to get a hold on such a treasure.
“She hid it in the house.”
“Where? The house had been scoured clean.”
“A secret cellar.”
“You knew about that?” he asked. “But I was the one who found it. We were in the fruit trees when Eliza got attacked by yellow jackets, and we—never mind that. I came back at least three more times to look through her books. I didn’t see anything like this.”
“It wasn’t for you to find.”
“Like I said to my father, you’ll forgive me if I don’t find that answer satisfying.”
“Nevertheless, it’s the truth.” She pointed to the diary. “It’s all in there.”
“What is?”
“Blister Creek. The truth. About several young women and their children sent alone into the wilderness. About the locust plague, the fever that carried away a third of the population, about the years in the desert, isolated, hiding from the world, and clawing a living out of the wilderness. Without a single man—the men had all been arrested, as it turned out, although none of the women knew that at the time.”
Jacob blinked, not just surprised, but stunned. He’d never heard such a thing. “Blister Creek was founded by women?”
“By Grandma Cowley, to be specific. A teenage girl. How about that? And then the men came back. They always do, don’t they? Thirty-four months alone, led by a young woman, the community had survived, they were thriving. They didn’t need any man. And they certainly didn’t require patriarchy to crush them under its boot. The bastards.”
Jacob looked down at the picture of his great-great-grandmother from the front of the book. He was suddenly certain that this picture had been taken after the men had returned. That’s what that look was on her face, that’s what it meant. He looked up and was surprised to see that look mirrored by the bitterness on Rebecca’s face. He stared at her, bewildered as to how she could be so upset by something that had happened a hundred and twenty years earlier, to a woman who had died more than forty years ago. If Rebecca had been born by then, she could have been only a baby. Surely, she had no memory of Henrietta Cowley.
Rebecca pulled on her gloves. “Now, are you going to kick me out or not?”
“I’m not,” he said. “I came out to get answers about who you are and what you want. You’re welcome to stay if your intentions are good.”
She lifted a board and pounded nails with her hammer. “Thanks, that’s generous.” She didn’t sound grateful.
“But who are you?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Read the diary, Jacob. Read it and then you’ll understand. You’ll know what happened here, you’ll know who I am. And you’ll see how the world is going to end.”
And with that, she turned back to her work and wouldn’t say another word.
-end-
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph by David Garten
Michael Wallace was born in California and raised in a small religious community in Utah, eventually heading east to live in New England. An experienced world traveler, he has trekked through the Andes, ventured into the Sahara on a camel, and traveled through Thailand by elephant. In addition to working as a literary agent and innkeeper, he previously worked as a software engineer for a Department of Defense contractor, programming simulators for nuclear submarines. He is the author of more than a half dozen novels, including The Righteous, Mighty and Strong, and The Wicked.
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