by John Larison
“Could’ve at least offered me some coffee.”
“Can’t offer what I don’t got.”
He raised a finger. “Little girl like you might want to trade what she got before somebody come along and take it.”
The buckskin hopped and the sheriff made no effort to stop him. I watched them gallop past the barn and along the spring and onto the road.
Ingrid blew her nose and I knew she felt the same about Younger. She trotted up beside me and I took a grip of her mane and ran three steps and bounced up onto her back. She knew where to go.
We broke through the sage to the top of the ridge and stopped in the shade of a juniper. From there we could see the sheriff and his trail of dust. We watched until he crossed our line sometime later, and then we watched until we couldn’t make out his shape from the general green and gray of the valley floor.
* * *
—
The heifers went missing soon after, twelve of them. I noticed right off in the morning on account the numbers was down. I grabbed the Sharps from the pegs. Ingrid and me rode a loop around the meadow and cut their tracks, a mess of cattle and two shod horses.
We followed them on a run over the ridge and down across the next valley and up the other side and still we kept on. I was pushing Ingrid too hard I knew, but I believed we would catch them because a lone horse and rider will make ground on cows with calves.
Ingrid was lathered and parched and begging to walk and still I pushed her forward. Then before us was the county line. The sage thinned out to sand, and here the wind had already blown out the tracks. I could see all the miles until the sand bent into a gray slab of mountain, and there wasn’t a rider upon it. We was beat. I pulled her to a stop and swung down.
Ingrid’s head hung low. She was spent.
Those tracks didn’t come from Younger’s big buckskin, I was sure of that. They wasn’t from no horses I recognized, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know their riders.
We had dealt with thefts before, of course. There was a tough winter when Noah was still around when Indians stole steers in three events. They was stealing for food, and red as Pa got, we was grazing on their lands after all. We come to see it as a tax. But we’d never been rustled by shod horses before, white men.
I walked back to give Ingrid the relief of my weight.
The sun wore on us and Ingrid moved between islands of juniper shade. In the dream state of travel I felt dread at the prospect of confessing to Pa what I had lost, then remembered all over again I didn’t get to confess nothing to him no more.
I took the Sharps to the ridge and picked out a cow pie on the valley bottom. I leveled the rifle over a rock and adjusted for distance and windage. I remembered Pa teaching Noah that shooting downhill or up meant the bullet would be affected less by distance, so I readjusted. My shot was low. It would’ve struck a man’s horse square through the guts. My second shot was high, clean through a man’s hat. I was distracted by emotion. It was a lesson I had to learn again and again when shooting for distance.
The next night and the night after I done the only thing I could muster, I brought the cattle in close and lay out in the sage with the rifle and wondered if I had the stones to kill a man.
I wondered too after Noah. While I hunkered here alone, he rode on whim, a man free of earthly chains. Not even the law could contain my brother. In this world a man could set any course.
I tightened my grip on the Sharps and shivered against the cold. Pa would kill a rustler. Pa would expect me to do the same.
* * *
—
Days passed and I couldn’t walk to the holehouse without thinking somebody was stealing what I had left. Couldn’t look to supper without thinking I was hearing footsteps off yonder. Twice I come out the house with the Colt drawn believing there was a prowler peeking in my windows.
The concern leaked into my sleep, which I was taking at random seeing as I was up half the nights on watch. One dream come on me like an attack. A faceless man was roaring in my ear and his weight was pinning me to the earth and I seen his face, a gaping black hole and an eye dangling over his cheek by a vein. The blast of a pistol woke me. I was wet with sweat. The pistol shot was in the dream but still my ears rung from it.
In the dream, my brother hadn’t come when I called him.
* * *
—
We rode fast down to the Mormons. I was no more sure of my intentions than the elk as they circle before a wolf attack. But I knew I was in dire need of what only a neighbor can deliver. Maybe I didn’t realize how dire.
We come down to find the children playing chase. Isaac stopped cold when he saw me. He fixed his hat and pushed his siblings aside without a look. “Howdy, Miss Harney.”
Mrs. Saggat come onto the porch with a basket of wet laundry and stood looking.
“Howdy, ma’am.”
“What a surprise, Miss Harney.” She was less than pleased to find me before her, that was plain.
“Might I offer you a hand with the hanging?” There was a line in the yard already with white shirts rustling in the breeze. Mr. Saggat’s shirts was brown under the arms. “Ma’am, I come for your counsel.”
She fixed her grip on the laundry. The children was watching. “Yes, of course,” she said with a little sigh. “Come near. I can see you are in some distress.”
I approached until I was within proper confiding distance.
“Is it your pa? Is he hurt?”
“No, ma’am. He don’t hurt.”
She whispered, “Some woman trouble then?”
“Not that neither, ma’am.”
She changed her grip on the laundry basket. “What then? Out with it. It’s laundry day and I ain’t likely to finish before supper as it is. If this is . . . If my husband come to your pa . . . Did he?”
She didn’t give me time to answer. “You must understand. The Lord intends my husband to have this whole valley and all the Indian land too. He puts what is fallow to good and proper use. That is his charge upon this earth.”
“I’m here because I’m on sorry times. I believe we might be of help to each other. We’s neighbors, Mrs. Saggat, and I ain’t got no ma and you ain’t got no daughter old enough to help. And I was just thinking . . .”
Her eyes squinted at the notion.
“You’s alone here among these mouths. I know alone. I know the chores too, I do. We might talk about the weather and dresses. I would listen and do right by you, I promise. I’d earn my keep, ma’am. I ain’t begging charity. It’s you I come here for. To be part of what’s yours. To be yours.”
She set the laundry on the porch and wiped her hands on her apron. “Oh, child, come closer.”
I did and my knees grew weak with hope.
She put her hand to mine but she did not draw me near. She was making a study of my eyes. “Is your pa cruel to you?”
“No, ma’am. That ain’t it at all.”
The baby began to cry from within the house. Mrs. Saggat was slow to act on account her concern was with me.
“I’ll tend to her.” I rushed past to demonstrate my helpfulness. The baby was among blankets in a cradle. I lifted her to my shoulder and hushed her but I was unpracticed at these arts and the baby only wailed louder for her mother.
When I turned she was there. Mrs. Saggat took the child from me and lifted free her apron and with one hand unbuttoned her dress and I watched as she squeezed her breast and drove her chaffed nipple into that baby’s scream. It descended into a wet silence.
She sat in the chair and covered her breast and baby’s face with her off hand and studied me. “You come here because you’re want for motherly wisdom.”
“Yes, ma’am. I am starved for it.”
She looked out the window. She rocked and hummed to that little baby. “I can’t take you into my house, Miss Harney.
There ain’t room for a girl here. Someday you’ll reckon my meaning. My husband is a good man, and I aim to keep him that way.”
I drew a breath to temper my disappointment. “Ma’am.”
“You might’ve heard things about the Saints, but those things ain’t true anymore. Our elders were again visited by angels and learned from them that God changed His mind on the matter of plural marriage. The Lord wants families to look like this one, and so ours will continue to look like this.”
I started to explain I wasn’t after her husband, but then the idea come to me. “Let me have Isaac. Please, ma’am. I want to marry your boy.”
“Oh, child.” She smiled this pity smile on me and I nearly broke in two on account I could see she didn’t think I was good enough or pretty enough or white skinned enough for her son.
She passed her fingers over her baby’s cheeks. It was a little girl and she was now humming upon the breast as she slumbered. Mrs. Saggat’s words come out gentle as a lullaby. “I speak to you now, girl, as your mother might’ve. The Lord asks us women to make sacrifices He don’t ask of men. Our reward is to be the bearers of His creation, to do His holiest work on His behalf. And so we stand tall and don’t let our suffering show. You must prepare yourself, child. You must bolster your trust in His divine wisdom and count on Him to deliver on His good word. Can you trust in Him?”
“I’m trying, ma’am.”
“What is it, child? What ain’t you telling me?”
The truth come from me at once. I reckon I had held it as long as I could. My hand was in hers and the air smelled of milk and I couldn’t draw a full breath. “My pa passed on, ma’am. I buried him. I am alone and I’ve been alone every night since and all day too and I’m so worn thin being on my own. Ma’am, I won’t take no money, but call me an employee. Please, ma’am, let me stay, as your help. Let me stay with you.”
“Oh. Well. Oh, my. I should’ve seen it. You carry such a burden in your eyes. When did he? How?” She shook her head and took a breath for resolve. She tightened her jaw. “You must pray.”
“I have prayed.”
“Well, you must continue to pray and trust in His wisdom. If you trust, He will deliver.”
“But will you take me in, ma’am? I am bare before you.”
She watched six of her seven in the yard through her big glass window. “The other Saints will misunderstand. They’ll shame us, don’t you see? The elders will believe you are his second wife, against all divine revelation.” She shook her head. “Besides, if the Lord wanted you here, He would’ve sent a sign.”
“Ma’am, didn’t He deliver me here now?”
Her rocking had gained pace. She shook her head in that quick way of hers and said, “The Lord subjects us all to His trials. . . . He doesn’t intend for you to be here. He intends for me to deliver His wisdom to your ear. That is all. Please don’t look on me like that. Please.”
“I’ve listened, ma’am. I’ve listened and prayed and read His whole book and I ain’t never felt Him guiding me. Not once. Is there something wrong with me? Can a child be born outside His favor? How do you make Him love you if He ain’t?”
The children rushed around us like a hive of bees returned. Mrs. Saggat rose with the baby still asleep against her chest and commanded Isaac to slice bread for the table. She took me in her free arm and embraced me. Then she held me at arm’s length and said, “Stay for a piece of bread, Jessilyn.”
I passed a forearm over my brow. The air wasn’t hot but sweat was pouring from me.
Out the window my eye found Ingrid at the hitching post. The sight of her delivered my breath and with it returned my balance. Ingrid was waiting on me.
“Thank you, ma’am. I won’t bother you no more now.”
* * *
—
On Ingrid I forced myself to sit tall. I patted her neck. I bent to her mane and kissed her. We rode up a ridge and back down. We rode across a meadow and back. Anywhere but to our lonesome home.
In the distance cranes walked amid the purple camas. If Ma had lived and Pa had kept on building, all that was Mr. Saggat’s would be ours. We’d have glass windows overlooking the lake. It’d be the four of us and probably more, a proper clan of peoples. Noah would be Pa’s foreman. Maybe with a wife and children of his own up the valley. Pa would play his fiddle and Ma would braid my hair, and I’d be a big sister to a mess of little ones and an auntie to more.
I buried my nails into the flesh of my arm. Pain on the outside, pain where I put it.
* * *
—
At home after dark, winds swirled inside me and I didn’t trust myself around blades.
I started tidying, smoothing the quilt, sweeping out the wood box, lifting each item from the mantel and brushing the dust clear. If only I could be clean enough.
Then I bumped Pa’s bullet mold from its place. It hit the ground and the arm broke free. At the sight of it something come over me and I drew my hand across the mantel and knocked everything else in the dirt.
I overturned the table. The water tin tipped and the earth floor went to mud and I stood over it, looking into it, looking for something. My knees hit the mud and my hands tracked it across my flesh. I dug at this earth that had caught Ma’s lifeblood and smeared it over my skin. I would bury this girl who set her to bleeding.
I seized the shears and went at my hair. The blades cut it short as a calf’s and its tatters fell about me.
The hair was itching inside my collar and I put the shears through the fabric and down the length and cut loose that dress and tossed it into the fire and stood naked as it flamed and still the itching was everywhere and worse.
I lay in the mud. I dared Him to come take me as I was, prone and shivering and dark. Do it and be done with this girl, you bastard.
* * *
—
Yet come morning I still breathed. I awoke to a mourning dove sitting upon the overturned table. It cooed and flew toward the slice of light at the roof seam but found the passage too narrow and so returned to its perch. For a moment she hovered in the middle of the room as if on dangle from above, flapping. Then she banked and lit upon Pa’s hat.
A gust of wind held the flap of cowhide and the bird swept across the room and out the narrow gate.
I rose with the quilt about me and took up Pa’s last hat. I had not dared touch it since resting it on this peg last autumn. I knocked free the dust. Smelled it. I wondered and so put it on my own head. It fit well enough.
The idea had been coming to me for weeks. I just then set about doing it.
I drew out the chest from under the bed, not Ma’s but the one that held Noah’s belongings. I pushed past some articles and found what I remembered being there. Noah left when he was a full-sized man, but only a couple years before he’d been part grown. I held those pantaloons to me now and saw they would do. The shirt would be a touch long in the sleeves but I could roll them.
My height come from Pa and I could see eye to eye with a typical man. But my nubs pushed where a man’s don’t. They was little and always would be but still they was more nub than any man. I got a notion and so dug deeper yet into Noah’s chest. I come up with his boyhood wools and pulled on the top. The arms stopped at my elbows and was too tight for comfort so I drew a knife and cut the arms free at the seam. What remained held me tight. I buttoned the shirt overtop and now when I looked down I saw only the muscles of a man who knows hard labor. That was the species of man I intended to be.
“Howdy,” I said to the empty room. It come out too deep and coarse for my age. “Howdy, young lady,” I tried again.
Now I was lit up with the notion and so worked fast. I wrapped the pemmican I had left in cloth and took the canvas sack with its jerky and packed them into a saddlebag. There was salt venison and curds. The curds I ate down as they wouldn’t keep. I rolled the Sharps in my bedding and t
ucked in the shells and bullet fixings.
The deed to the land, the grazing rights, and the twelve dollars that was mine went into a satchel.
I looked about the room. There was something else.
I drew out Pa’s fiddle. The box was awkward and cumbersome, but he had brought it all the way from the war so I would bring it the miles that existed between me and Noah.
He was out there somewhere and he was all the blood I had left and I would find him and convince him home, to his duty, and together we would resurrect our family place. We would finish this story as it began, us two together.
II
We rode across sage and along stands of timber and paused to watch deer wheel and bound, and to listen to the croaking of frogs near still water, and toward evening we arrived at the edge of a rich meadow new to us both and alive with all manner of butterflies. The grass stood to my chest and the wet ground caved to my feet and a thousand blue and yellow wings fluttered. I pulled the saddle free of Ingrid and let it hit the earth and watched as clouds of butterflies rose ahead of Ingrid punching through the grass, then disappearing into a roll. The old girl had been waiting on rolling all day. I was glad to give her the chance.
There was wood to gather and a fire to start and salt venison to eat, but I didn’t move. I just stood there gandering at this new place without a cattle track or wagon trail. Untrampled country.
A hoof rose from the grass and vanished again and mud careened through the evening light and butterflies stormed.
The resolve come to me then. I was done letting hard times govern me. I might be orphaned but that didn’t make me no orphan. I was Jesse Harney, and I had a brother who knew me.
In that moment I didn’t feel like gathering no food or warming no supper. I felt like playing the fiddle while my mare rolled off her sweat. So that’s what I done. I played us happy notes while the light went orange and climbed up them mountains. For the first time in my life there wasn’t a chore within a million miles.