by Jeffrey Lent
Perched on the high seat with the reins slackly clumped in one hand, the other holding a sun-shade parasol aloft, an old bonnet clamped about her ruined face and her skirts and blouse mudded with loops of sweat, road dust and darker blots of rust, rode Iris Schofield, eyes white and rolling as those of the pony.
August stepped forward as the turn was made off the road but neither pony nor woman seemed to register any presence but their own, as if they would drive onward until a fence or gorge or some other blockade halted them. As they passed he pressed swiftly forward and caught up the near rein and stopped the pony, which turned its head against him, rubbing his belly and August slid a hand down the beast’s head and stroked its jowl in comfort as he looked up at the woman.
“Iris. What burden brings you out so late in the day?”
She tipped her head to clear the bonnet brim from her face. “Why, it’s August Swartout, isn’t it?”
“Surely it is. Did you intend another destination? Iris, is there trouble upon you?”
She made a clip downward with her chin that might have been a nod but only said, “I told Napoleon we’d go see August Swartout and he’d know what to do but I might only been thinking it. And here we are.” This last spoken as in wonder of the miraculous.
He studied her face, the brightness of her voice belied by the bruised fatigue and dark cast of her features. In a careful even tone he said, “Surely you guided him, your hands upon the reins.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “No, I don’t recall a bit of it. It’s a terrible fatigue over me, these long days and nights.”
“I can but imagine. And so hot. Wait—” he caught himself and turned.
Becca Davis hadn’t left the stoop but otherwise stood watching. He called to her to bring water. She stood a long beat as if she hadn’t heard him but just as he was about to raise his voice and repeat his call she turned for the house. He heard the pump working, the chuffing of the handle and then the rush of water.
He turned back. “There now, water coming for your proud beast. Would you step down? We’ve been cutting oats but are about to set for supper. You’d be most welcome.”
“Water Napoleon. There’s nothing left in this world I want for myself, nothing at all. There’s nothing left.”
He heard the door slap behind him, bare feet hard upon the stoop. He said, “Iris, wait just a moment while I fetch the water for your pony.”
“Can’t your girl bring it? She looks spry.”
“I’ve another task for her. Only a moment.”
Without waiting he turned and walked quickly to the stoop and spoke to Becca. “Give me the bucket. Then go to the barn and get the Pete horse from his stall and harness him for the cart. You seen me do it a hundred times.”
“What’s this all about?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She let go of the bucket handle and he hoisted it. She said, “I’m most ways a fool.” Then pushed past him toward the barn. He watched her go, the jerk of her head and hips in counterpoint that struck within him. He turned and went back to the waiting exhausted pony. He stepped up beside the cart and swirled the dipper and lifted it neatly to where Iris could easily lean and take it up.
She said, “I told you I want nothing. But reward Napoleon for his labors. A trusty beast who carried Bet back and to school all these years since.”
August halfway turned and held the bucket and let the pony drink. He reached his free hand and rubbed between the ears and turned back to Iris and said, “Tell me, Iris. What brings you out on this hot day?”
She turned then to look off away at the ridge behind her, the sun huge and red within the trees there, the long shafts of light upward against the sky, high clouds red-lit and blue-bellied.
“Recall The Friend,” he said. “We all stand shoulder to shoulder; your burden I lift gladly.”
In the pause he could hear his horse led to the shed, Becca’s low voice as she fitted him between the shaves, her audible suck as she worked to hook the tugs to the singletree.
Iris Schofield turned back and said, “David is dead by his own hand. I found him so this morning.”
August stood silent. Later, as through a pale veil, he’d recall the first thought through his mind was, Why in the world did I have the girl hitch the horse? As if there were somewhere to go, aid to be found. Otherwise his mind a thickened clot: He’d never known a suicide, self-murder the worst of all possible acts against the gift of Christ; the brevity of the human span against the entirety of the eternal soul.
Iris, as if answering a question he’d asked, said, “Last evening Enoch Stone come and talked with him and David wouldn’t take his supper after. He went out to the barn and spent most of the night. When he came in the house I don’t know, but afore first light he eased from the bed and, curious for him, told me he was off to the woodlot. That was the last I saw of him until mid-morning I was hanging warsh and heard the shot like a snapped stick. I walked out there and found him. And here I am now. It seemed the only place to come.”
This admission, drained of emotion, restored August to himself. He stepped forward and lifted both hands.
“Iris. Step down now and I’ll attend to all the best I can, the Lord be my guide.” He felt he was speaking nonsense but found no other words and none were needed as she rose and delivered herself over to him. She reached for his hands but he slipped them beneath and caught her under her arms and lifted and swung her free of the cart, settled her upon the ground. How insubstantial she was, a slip of an old woman, as if spirit had fled her body and left not much behind but the bare mechanism short of death itself. For a moment she came against him and he patted her back even as his mind formed forward.
He said, “Come. Let me settle you inside and then I’ll fetch my girl.” Turning as he spoke and slipping a hand to the crook of her elbow and she stepped off with him as by habit unbreakable. They crossed the yard to the stoop slowly, her feet in their high-buttoned shoes tentative, which she fought against, trying to hide this from him. As they went she spoke, her voice a bouncing vaulted thing, capricious and nigh beyond control.
“What shall you do with me then?”
“Get my girl to tend you, some tea, perhaps a bite of food. Whatever you wish.”
“And you?”
“I have a larger duty. You understand?”
She twisted to peer up at him from her ancient bonnet and spoke with a bright rancor. “Don’t you be going to Enoch Stone.”
He had no idea what he was about to undertake but said, “I hadn’t even considered doing so. Rest easy, Iris. Here we go with the steps now.”
“You’ll take care of Napoleon before you’re off? Such a grand heart, he is. He was Bet’s, you know. And sorely ignored these years: David wouldn’t touch the creature but to fork him hay time to time. Oh my heart, so sore, so sore!”
They were within the kitchen and he settled her into the chair beside the fire, the room in twilight glow, the table arrayed with a cold supper. He poured water from a sweating pitcher and set it beside her and said, “I’ll take care of all best can be done. The girl will be along in a moment.”
Iris looked up at him, the ash shuttle of bonnet with the face far within. “Do I know her?”
“She’s Phoebe Davis’s orphan daughter. Worked for years at Malin’s before I hired her on to keep house. She’s a good girl.” Not mentioning Harlan and hoping Iris might not know that part of her daughter’s life.
“I recall Phoebe. Hard luck and fate for her.”
“Perhaps for us all,” he offered, a sudden fool. Then said, “She’ll be here directly.”
And was out of the house quick as he could while holding his pace, wondering if her ears would even make note of such a thing.
He reached Becca and lifted a hand against her questions and gave a blunt account. Then said, “She’ll want little or much. Do as you can.”
“And you?”
“I’ll do what has to be done.”
She
looked down, then up. The horse was sidestepping in the gig beside her, the light leaching upward, dark rising from the ground. She said, “It’s late, and a long day already.”
He nodded. “Longer before I’m done. Don’t put her pony out with the others, but in one of the empty calf pens. I don’t believe he has the habit of other creatures. If she sleeps, you do the same; don’t wait up for me. I don’t even know where I’m off to yet—it’s a wretched business all the way around.”
He walked around her, gathered the coiled reins, and stepped up into the gig. The horse jogged forward then stopped, awaiting his word. He said, “Becca.”
“Yes?”
“Last night.”
“There’s nothing to speak of. I’m the one was amiss. I own a weakness is all. You’ll never see it again, I swear to that.”
“No,” he said. “We’ll talk again. Tend to the woman, I’ll do my best for us all.”
He started out and then stopped. Becca had called his name and ran after, alongside the gig. Again he looked down, this time held himself silent and waited.
“Are you going to Enoch Stone?”
“No.” He paused. “He’s not the right man for this job. Truth is, I’m not sure who is.”
She gazed up at him, reached and stayed him with her hand upon his wrist, then said, “The one you need to see is that doctor. The one who helped Harlan. He’ll know what needs doing and all the rest. Don’t you think?”
August patted his shirt pocket and found it empty, a gesture beyond control, and so was at once both dismayed and relieved and so only said, “Might be, Becca Davis. Might be.”
He snapped the lines and the horse forged ahead, flared around the apparition of the pony and cart, and was up on the road, turning into a green and blue twilight.
He halloed the dark house and the doctor’s wife poked her head from a second-story window open to the night and called down to know the urgency and nature of the crisis. When August first entered the outskirts of the town a lean hound had followed him soundless, a floating liquid shape degrees darker than the starstruck dried churn of the streets, steady beside the off wheel of the gig. The horse had snorted, then accepted the dog as harmless, a traveler curious of them, following along to see what would be.
The woman was in a white nightdress and dame’s cap, the night so still August could hear the groans of mattress ropes as the doctor pulled himself from the bed behind her, out of sight.
“Like all others,” August said. “I’d not be here if the choice was otherwise.” His voice almost conversational, lowered against restless neighbors. He added, “My name’s August Swartout. Doctor Ogden assisted my hired boy not so many weeks ago. The matter is related.”
He heard the mutter of the doctor and then his wife said, “Pull into the side entry, next to the office, if you know where that is.”
Once under the porte cochere, he stood down out of the gig and waited. The hound drifted up and he leaned and roughed gently the base of the dog’s ears, and the hound leaned against him and rubbed his head against August’s trousers, then the bright light of an oil lamp filled the windows and the dog slipped away. The office door opened and August stepped within. The room was close with heat redolent of a sulfurous wash that did not conceal the taint of blood, viscera, vomit, the high reek of anxious sweat.
“What is it, Swartout?” Erasmus Ogden wore a burgundy dressing robe with black and indigo paisley trim. Under that were trousers and a collarless shirt, fine patent-leather boots. He retrieved a briar pipe from a pocket of the robe and struck a match, pulled smoke and waited, wafting sharp bursts of dense blue smoke that coiled and lifted above the heat of the lamp chimney.
“You’ve been following the Hopeton affair?”
The doctor shrugged. “I read the newspapers.”
August noted the plural. Then went on: “Hopeton’s wife’s father shot himself this morning and his wife, a troubled soul for all obvious reasons, rode into my yard at sunset this evening with that news. She needs care beyond what I can provide and those in our community she’d otherwise seek out, she’ll have no part of.” He paused. Ogden was very still, his pipe cupped in both hands before his chest, eyes snapping wide upon August. Who took his chance and finished. “So I came here.”
Ogden tipped his head a bit and lifted his pipe, smoked and said, “What would you have me do?”
“Come attend the woman. That’s your charge, is it not?”
“You could’ve brought her.”
“I could not ask her to travel farther.”
“Chances are I’ll end up carrying her back here anyway.”
“That would be all right. If she agrees.”
“It’s quite late.”
“It is. But someone needs to inform the authorities. The sheriff or whoever?”
The doctor turned and walked to his glass-fronted cabinet, turned the key resting in the keyhole, opened the cabinet and selected a handful of stoppered phials, wreathing smoke as he did so. Without turning he said, “We could stop at Ansel Gordon’s on our way out of town.”
“We could. But Iris, Iris Schofield is her name—”
“—And husband David, now deceased as you or she maintain. Their names have also been in the papers. Go on.”
“Iris is quite undone by all of this. I fear for her mind. And so was thinking perhaps—”
Again Ogden interrupted him. “Despite what you might believe, I took to heart my Hippocratic oath. The fine line of the law can be attended to but the woman comes first. My wife has already harnessed my horse to carriage; she’s quite expert in these midnight incursions. I’ll follow you out and help the Schofield woman however is best, though I nod my head to you—most likely bringing her back here for observation, some sedating medicinals as well, will prove the best course. And I can exert some control over whatever authorities wish to question her about this sad development. Though I can’t see how to alert them until morning: My wife is no midnight messenger and will be attending to needs here. David Schofield will have to wait, but then there’s nothing to be done for him, is there? The one who’ll suffer for that delay is myself, as I’m also the coroner and in this heat, well . . .” He went silent and rubbed his temples. “I’ve seen it before. I wonder if that satisfies you; you don’t care for me much, do you, Swartout? Blamed me for your wife’s death, didn’t you?”
“I seem to recall the blame came from you, for my waiting so long to summon you. But fact is, she died, despite best efforts made by all around her. Including you and there’s no blame there.”
The doctor came close and said, “To the matter at hand, then.” He leaned and said, “Good God, man. You’re wall-eyed and all atremble. Fatigue?”
“I had a long day and it’s not ended yet. Does your wife need a hand with your horse?”
Ogden had shed his robe and pulled on a light overcoat hung from a peg beside the door, tucking the phials into a pocket. He said, “We step outside, you’ll find all is ready. I’d offer you anything you like but there isn’t even cold coffee the back of the stove.” He tucked his cooled pipe into a pocket of the overcoat.
August said, “I hate to be a bother.”
“What is it man? A brandy? I can do that.”
“No. I was wondering if you might have a cheroot. I rode out in haste tonight.”
“Of course you did. Cheroots? No, none of those, I’m afraid.” He turned and went back to his cabinet and lifted down a wooden box, opened it, and turned. He said, “This is a good Havana. Perhaps better for a night as this: will last longer than your cheroot, at the least. Here, tuck it in your pocket. Have you a match?”
The big horse jogged easily along the night roads, through the pressing shadows of tree shade, then out again past silver meadows and moon-washed milky fields of grain. The star field hung near as close as winter, the old moon high overhead, haloed as if for rain, the world lit: even in passing woodlots the crowns of trees rose distinct, a hillside dappled with diverse trees, the dar
k defile of a ravine and for one short moment the silver cascade of the nestled stream. The doctor in his handsome buggy with the raised top followed at a short distance, far enough behind to escape the dust from August’s gig, close enough to not lose sight. Soon enough August forgot he was back there; lodged in the center of his mind was the idea the doctor had been fetched and would be there when needed, when they rounded the yard of home, but for now lost to thought.
The cigar was pungent, rich and without the sweetness of his usual smoke and he quickly found to clamp it between his teeth in the corner of his mouth. The faint glow as he pulled upon it only a beacon toward home, the smoke released from his mouth a pale trail of his progress, the threads of calm clarity rising upward to filter his trenchant mind.
And cast him back to the night before, not forgotten so much as overwhelmed by work throughout the long day since.
After August left the barn and made slow way toward the house, stopping at the yard pump to strip off his chaff-caked shirt and wash himself, arms and head and chest, thick handfuls of sweet cold water, finally bending his head to pump directly over it, runnels of water flushing the crust and blear from his eyes, hopefully his mind as well. Turned the shirt inside out to escape the worst of the grime and dried himself best he could and went into the kitchen. Becca was not there. He took down a folded square of clean sacking and dried his torso and head as he went up the stairs to pull out a clean shirt, stopping for a moment before the tall glass first to look upon himself: His hair and beard wanted trimming and he lifted a hand and squeezed the damp beard tight against his face and wondered if he should take up shaving, a daily job he’d abandoned less than a year after he began at fourteen. He pulled on the shirt and sat on the edge of his bed and removed the hard brogans he wore when driving the threshing machine, the clatter of the knives back and forth only inches from his propped feet too great a danger to be barefoot as most otherwise he was summers. When he first bought the thresher he’d not even thought about this until one morning after harvest he’d been in town and come across a man mostly unknown to him from up toward Potter, who, along with himself, had been one of the first to buy the new reaping machines and there he was hitching along with crutches under each arm, one foot in a hard boot, the other stretched before him to not hit the ground, the foot bare and bare of toes, the cauterized stubs still flaring the color of old ham. August wore boots or heavy shoes ever after, threshing, mowing hay. He held nothing but delight and respect for his new machines but did wonder if the time might come a man would have to work shod year-round as more jobs were made mechanical. He guessed he wouldn’t mind that bother so much.