“You would not hurt me, Little Brynhild—not me!” I clung to that conviction with all my might. “I cared for you as a child, I held you when you were sick, and washed every scrape and bloody wound—”
“And then you left!” Her voice bellowed with such force that I staggered another step back. “Left me with that good-for-nothing man and his foolish, foolish wife! What sort of a good deed was that? Leaving me with that lot!”
“You know I had no choice?” The accusation had hit me as well as that kettle would have; it left a bruise just as black. “I did what I could, Little Brynhild—you know that.”
“As do I.” Her chin was tilted almost all the way up; her nostrils flared when she breathed. “I do what I must to get by—nothing more!”
“You know that isn’t right.” I shook my head and wiped my tears with hands that shivered and shook. “People are not cattle for you to slaughter for gain! Children are not for you to bury!”
“And yet I do.” Her shoulders slumped as she lowered her head. The kettle fell quiet by her side.
“It has to stop.” I was speaking from that cave again. “It has to stop, or they’ll hang you, Little Brynhild! I’ll see to it myself, if only for that beautiful child—” My voice cracked as another bout of tears came bursting out of me. “You will not harm another human being as long as you live, or I’ll make sure that your neck ends up in the noose!” I lifted a hand and pointed to her chest.
“You would not,” she said but sounded uncertain. There was no more fire to her words.
“Oh, I would.” It was my turn to lift my chin and steel my gaze. “I’m cut from the same cloth as you, Little Brynhild. If anyone can, it’s me.”
Her lips twisted up in a smirk, but her eyes were dark with worry. “No one would believe you,” she muttered as she staggered to the table and slumped down on a chair. The cleaver no longer scared me.
“They would.” I spoke with more conviction than I felt, but surely if someone were to look into it, they had to find something. There had to be a trace. “You will still your hand and never lift it again—or I will see that you hang.”
I scrambled for the door, dizzy and sick. We shared no parting words. I felt as if I had drunk a whole bottle of her pear brandy all by myself as I staggered out of there on shivering legs. I barely saw the rooms around me as I passed through the dining room and then the parlor. The scent of raw meat would not leave me but followed me out the front door, where the fresh, cold air hit me like a fist.
Rudolph watched me come out from the buggy, his eyes widened in alert as I paused on the steps and drank in the air. Myrtle and Lucy were out there as well with the pony and the cart, having just come back from an outing. I could see a farmhand in the distance with a wheelbarrow full of hay. The girls gave me curious looks as I made my way down the steps.
“Do you need any help, Aunt Nellie?” Myrtle called out.
“No, no.” I hobbled toward them.
“Are you sick, Aunt Nellie?” Lucy asked.
“No, I’m not sick.” Though I sure did not feel hale. I put a hand on their cart to steady myself. “Have you been to school?”
The girls nodded. Their worried gazes lingered on my face.
“Lucy.” I cleared my throat and did not look at any of them. “Why don’t you go and look in on the chickens? Your mama mentioned that two of them had gone astray, but I think there’s something off with her counting.” I forced a smile to reassure her. It was not fair to trick the girl, but nothing had been right with this day. Nothing had been right for a very long time.
Lucy still looked puzzled, but nodded and set off toward the chicken coop, leaving me alone with Myrtle. The older girl looked at me with something wary in her eyes, sensing, perhaps, that this would not be any ordinary conversation.
“Myrtle,” I started, and I spoke fast as I did not have much time. Sooner or later, Bella would come bursting out the door, and I did not have it in me to speak to her again that day. “Do you remember after Peter died? When we spoke behind the barn?”
She hesitated only a little before slowly nodding.
“Do you remember that you told me you had seen something—and that I told you not to tell?” I forced another smile, though it felt more like a grimace.
Myrtle nodded again, even slower than the first time. Her hand was on the pony’s dark coat, absorbing its heat through the mitten.
“Myrtle.” My voice gave a little. “I have to know what that was.” I adjusted my hold of the cart’s wooden board and struggled to keep my tears at bay. They would do the girl little good.
“I can’t—” she started to say, looking so unhappy that my heart broke a little. The edges of her mouth drooped and her gaze flickered from side to side.
“Oh please, Myrtle. If you remember, you must tell me!” I all but fell to my knees to plead. “It was wrong of me not to listen to you then—please forgive me and tell it to me now.”
Her face scrunched up with fear and worry. Now it was her eyes that filled up with tears. “I cannot.” She sounded utterly miserable.
“I will not tell Mama,” I whispered, and held her gaze with mine, willing it not to slip away.
She chewed her lips for a moment, then stepped a little closer, rose up to her toes, and whispered quickly in my ear, “She hit Papa with the cleaver—Mama did.”
Then she quickly stepped away, as if I were made of smoldering coal.
“Thank you, Myrtle,” I breathed, and let the tears come at last. “Thank you so much for telling me that.”
“Mama, are you all right?” Rudolph finally called from the buggy. His nose had become red from the cold, and the horse stamped its legs.
“Sure,” I said, though I did not know if the faint sound of my voice would carry all the way to him. “I’m coming now.” I hobbled toward him. “I’m coming, and then we can go home.”
We had barely come off the driveway when we had to stop again, and my son had to hold my shivering form as I was sick by the side of the road. I felt raw on the inside, ravaged and torn. I knew I ought to turn her in—she had killed an innocent child—but God help me, I could not see her hang! Not her, not Little Brynhild, broken though she might be.
No law could ever make this right, but I prayed that my words would stay her hand, that the threat I had delivered would be enough to make her stop.
43.
Belle
La Porte, 1907
Isat in the kitchen for hours after Nellie had left, staring at the meat on the table, and then at the cleaver beside it. The scent of it teased my nostrils; I lost myself in the rinds of fat and the ruby-red beads of blood scattered on the flesh. I did not even look up when the girls came inside, or when Philip woke up from his nap, calling out for his mama. I could not move away from that table.
“Mama?” Lucy’s voice tried to reach me. “Mama, should we help with the food?”
When there was no answer to be had, the girls brought Philip with them into the parlor. I could hear them in there, whispering. I knew I should feed them—and yet . . .
I could not move away from that table.
My thoughts were spinning, yet I said nothing at all. Nellie would not leave me alone. Her words—her threats—came back to me over and over: I will see that you hang!
Would she, though? Would she really do that to me—or was there a way I could make this problem disappear? Ensure her silence in the best way I could? Nellie was in poor health, that was no secret. She had been struggling with her back for years and was not so young anymore. Maybe it would not be so strange if she suddenly died, following a dose of her medicine perhaps. There was not much spite in such an act, but at least it would keep me safe.
Keep us all safe.
But then she would hardly let me close to her cupboard now—after having me figured out. Might not even let me into her home. I found a st
range sense of loss in that, to be barred from a place where I had always been welcome and never even thought twice about the fact. I did not like the way she looked at me either, that horror and despair etched on her face. It took me a while to recognize that what I felt was shame, as if I were a little girl caught stealing. I was ruined in my sister’s eyes; she would never again admire me. I grieved that fact, and yet—
If she were not there, she could not hurt me.
Then there was another part of me that whispered of a different solution. I could simply do as she wished and stop. Many of my troubles would be gone if I did, and not only Nellie’s threats. I was tired, for one; it took its toll, all this secrecy and planning—and then there was Jennie . . . The first few weeks after she left had been hard on us all. I caught myself about to call for her many times a day to help me with this or that, especially in regard to the children. I had not truly known before she was gone just how much I had relied on her. Philip fussed about the way I carved his meat, claiming that Jennie was the only one who did it right. Lucy cried every day for seven days while perched on the marble windowsill in the parlor, watching the yard outside in the hopes that her foster sister would come back. Myrtle kept her thoughts to herself, as was her habit, but she did not seem very happy either.
This annoyed me at the time. They should be glad that their foster sister got such an opportunity. Glad that she did not spend her life rotting away on a farm in La Porte but was able to see the world. There was nothing to grieve—only to celebrate—but my children did not understand that.
I tried to keep them occupied—keep us all occupied. I set out to teach them horseback riding, and we spent hours in the yard with Chocolate while their small fingers learned how to hold the reins. I tried to teach Myrtle some of the skills that Jennie had, like wringing laundry and cooking a roast, but she was only ten years old and unused to heavy lifting. She tended the goats in Jennie’s stead, though, and helped me with the younger children. Both she and Lucy were some help in the kitchen, but they were not as fast and experienced as Jennie.
I told myself they would learn—that all of this would pass in time. Soon it would be as if Jennie had never stayed with us at all, yet the sense of bereavement persisted. Not even the thought of California could make it all go away. Not even storing her clothes and belongings in the trunk room could stop me from wanting to call for her whenever I needed help. The house suffered from her absence too; nothing seemed as clean as before, even if I scoured with lemon. I often cursed the day she went down in the cellar—now she had left us all in a pinch.
My anger had left us all in a pinch.
Then there was the trouble with Ole Budsberg. The man himself was nothing at all: a farmer from Wisconsin with money to spare who had sold off his farm to come join me. For a man his age, he was still spry, with a thick and lustrous red mustache. He was not poor company, but neither did he inspire me to keep him very long.
He had sons, though, with their sticky fingers all over his business. They kept sending letters addressed to him, and I kept putting them away, until the size of the pile urged me to act before one of them came to look for their papa. I gathered up the letters and sent them back to Wisconsin, addressed to the late Mr. Budsberg. With the letters, I attached a note of my own where I wrote that I hoped he was not offended that I did not want to marry him, and that I certainly had not led him on. I wished him luck in finding a new homestead in the West. That ought to stop their prying, I thought, but alas, it did not, and one windy day a man stood on my porch. I recognized him at once as Mr. Buck from the bank in La Porte.
“Good morning, Mrs. Gunness.” He shuffled his feet and clutched his hat. Prince kept snapping at the hem of his coat.
I was very busy that morning, plucking poultry out back and boiling stock. My apron was dirty and feathers clung to my hands. I was not pleased to be disturbed.
“I’m looking for the whereabouts of a Mr. Ole Budsberg.”
“What for?” I plucked feathers from my fingers.
“It seems he has borrowed some money from the Farmer’s National Bank in Iola, and the payment is due. Since he withdrew some money here a while back, the bank in Iola has asked for our assistance in locating him.”
“Well, he is not here.”
“He did stay here with you, though, didn’t he? I remember you escorting him when he cashed his draft—”
“He left a short while after that.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t keep track of dates. He left to catch the two o’clock train; he was going to Oregon to buy some land.”
“And you don’t know when this was?”
“I don’t keep track of dates.” It was better that he thought me simple; it might prevent him from asking too many questions.
Mr. Buck left shortly after. It was an unfortunate thing, though, that Mr. Budsberg, despite all my warnings, would go and have unfinished business with that bank. I had told him to bring all he had in cash sewn into his clothes. He had not mentioned a loan.
Before long, another letter arrived, from the Farmer’s National Bank in Iola, addressed not to him but to me, asking for Mr. Budsberg’s whereabouts. The wording was strong and I worried that another stern man might soon arrive on my porch. I wrote to them then and said that Mr. Budsberg had been robbed of most of his money and clothes in Chicago, and that he was so embarrassed by it all, he had fled west to try to make up for it before his relatives learned of his shame. I think they believed me—they did not ask for him again—but the experience had been unpleasant. I did not care for such things at all. Other men came and went, but the trouble with Budsberg kept haunting me. What secrets did they keep from me, these men? Did they have loans and obligations too? Would more stern officials come to call? I kept staring out the windows, watching the road for signs of strangers.
I could not trust my suitors at all, and wondered as I sat there by the kitchen table, contemplating my sister’s possible demise, if the enterprise was truly worth all the hassle. Whenever I remembered the cause of my anger, I felt ashamed. I was no puppet on a stage, I thought, moved around by strings. I was not that girl by the lake, begging for her life. My money box would never be full, and so I could stop at any time, and that feeling I chased—that feeling—it was there sometimes and other times not, and it was never as delicious as it was after Anders. It still came washing over me, though, especially if the man had been brutal or very large of stature. If he had offended me, or reminded me somehow of my husbands. But the feeling never lasted, and there I was again: preparing for a new dance with the cleaver.
I had known all along it could not last; sooner or later it would all fall apart—and what would I do then? Trust in my devil’s luck, and hope that my tears would protect me? What would happen to my children if their mama hanged by the neck? They could never wash that stain away—it would haunt them always.
Unless I stopped. There was that.
I could do as my sister wished and stop. Nellie might never let me close to her again, even if I did, but at least she would not have me hanged.
And I would never lose a child again.
* * *
—
I met Ray Lamphere in August, after a hard, troublesome year. I had not been myself since Christmas and Jennie, and the old restlessness was back, tugging at my bones. No matter what I did, I could not seem to find any satisfaction. My jaw ached so badly, I had to treat it with a ripe-smelling poultice, which did nothing to better my mood.
I hired Lamphere to do some work on the farm that was long overdue. All my troubles kept distracting me from repairs and other necessary work. I should have renewed my stocks and plan for the harvest ahead, but my heart was just not in it. It was hard to find capable hands as well; they up and left or I rid myself of them, deciding they were more useful for cash than as farmhands. I never felt sorry for that. I butch
ered pigs for meat and men for money—I took what I needed to live and thrive, but it kept landing me in a rough spot when it came to capable workers. Which was why I took on Lamphere, despite my better judgment and his horrid reputation.
Had I known then what was to come, I certainly would have let it be. Every deck of cards has at least one grinning fool, useless and annoying, that turns up only to ruin the game. Lamphere was just like that: a fool with jingling bells.
It was sweet enough at first. I was weary and happy to have a man in the house to do the heavy lifting. Even if he was a drunk and a vagrant, always unkempt and unwashed, he was eager to please and strived to shine. After his first day at work, laying new floorboards in the parlor, I knew he could never defy me; he was as soft and moldable as clay. His gratitude for the job made him act like a dog. I found I liked that. I had seen enough of those loud brutes with strong opinions and a desire to rule. That wrecked and foolish man came as a bit of a relief to me then. I did not have to feed him sweets or compliment his rude behavior. I did not have to coax and charm—he was as simple as they come.
I heard him hammering above me that first night, while I was working in the basement, butchering two young men James had sent me. I was not worried that he would find me out; Ray would never go where he was not wanted—or that was what I thought at the time.
I washed up outside by the pump, and then I wrung the neck of a chicken to bring back inside, and cut it some too, to explain my stained apron. It was late at night, but I felt certain that Mr. Lamphere would not even know to ask why I was out catching chickens so late.
My appetites were great that night, as they often were after butchering, and Ray was there, on his knees, pounding those nails in place.
“You better quiet down.” I stood in the door to the parlor, still holding the poor chicken by its neck. “You may disturb the children.”
In the Garden of Spite Page 39