A stillness had come over him. The silence in the room took on a prickly tension, like a strand of barbed wire pulled tight between two fence posts.
"You still haven't told me where you call home," she said. She felt a need to put him in some familiar place. Not that she could imagine him walking behind a plow or tossing hay to a band of ewes. She couldn't even imagine him roping a cow or clinging to the pitching back of a wild mustang.
He pulled his attention from the great outdoors and looked at her. "I don't call anywhere home."
He seemed about to say more, but he was interrupted by the rattle of wagon wheels over the log bridge. He swung his gun up and pointed it at the door in a movement so quick she didn't even realize it had happened until it was over.
His jumping like that set her own heart to clamoring again, and it was pounding still as she stepped up to the window to see more of the road. The Weaver spring wagon rolled into the yard with Noah's son at the reins.
She turned back to the outsider. He could barely hold up his six-shooter, it was trembling so hard in his outstretched hand. His chest jerked with his rough breathing, fever-sweat sheened his face, his eyes glowed wild. Strangely, he reminded her of an etching in the Martyrs Mirror of a true believer being burned at the stake, his clasped hands raised to heaven in rapturous prayer as the bright and terrible flames consumed him
She walked to him and put her hand against his chest, pressing him down into the bed. Ben's muslin nightshirt was slick beneath her palm; he'd sweated through it. She could feel him shuddering. "It's only Mose," she said. "My neighbor's boy, come to chop up some wood for me."
His harsh breathing made his words come out as a gasp. "This neighbor and his boy, do they know about me?"
"The whole valley can't help but know about you by now, the way rumor flies and grows with each telling. If a body coughs on Sunday, he'll hear about his own funeral come Tuesday."
"What are they saying?"
Through the window she watched Mose set the brake, tie the reins around its handle, and jump to the ground. He slapped the hat off his head, wiped his coat sleeve across his mouth, then smoothed back his light brown hair. He rolled his broadening shoulders like a horse with an itch. At seventeen he showed the sure promise of someday being as big and sturdy as his father.
"If they're Plain, they're saying you're a fool Englischer who went and got himself shot almost dead, and it's only by God's bountiful grace that you're not—dead, that is— although it would probably be no more than you deserve for your wicked ways. Nevertheless we all pray you will eventually arrive at the Truth and the Light. As for what the outsiders are saying—you could probably imagine that better than I could. Now, if you think you can be still for longer than a tick at a time, I'll tend to your hurt. The day's waning and I've got chores forming up a line for me to do."
He looked up at her, his eyes bright and slightly unfocused with the fever. "You are an oddity," he said. His gaze went slowly around the room again. "This whole place is an oddity."
"I'm Plain, and this is a Plain house. Our ways are the true ways, and they're not an oddity to God. Lie quiet now."
She used a pair of scissors to cut through his soiled bandage, since the knots were hopeless. She'd lied to him that first night, she thought. Lied without meaning to. He wasn't safe here. There was no place safe for a man like him this side of heaven, and he'd likely never be going there this side of eternity.
The flesh around the wound was raw and black and puckered at the edges; fresh blood seeped from all the jerking and jumping he'd been doing. Flesh. It could be sliced with a knife, smashed and torn by a bullet, whipped and burned, chained and degraded—how easily could the flesh be hurt. How frightening that flesh was so vulnerable when it was the vessel of life, the temple of the soul. It was solely be God's grace, surely, that this man still lived. He lived because God had sent him staggering across her wild hay meadow.
And then it occurred to her, with a sudden horror that almost made her heart stop, that if he wasn't safe, then neither were she and Benjo. That on taking him in, his enemies had become their enemies.
Slowly she looked up. He had a way of making all the life go out of his face, of making his eyes go flat and empty so that it was as if she looked through two holes into a husk of a man.
"The one who did this to you," she said, "is he going to be coming after you here?"
Nothing stirred behind his eyes. Nothing.
And then she realized the truth. He'd killed him. He had killed the man who had shot him; she had no doubt of it.
A terrible feeling came over her, a feeling she struggled to disown, for it was not the Plain way to seek redress against one's enemies, but rather to yield absolutely to God's will and trust in His ultimate mercy. Not my will but thine be done. But the feeling was there, nonetheless. She felt relief. Relief that she and Benjo would be safe because this man had killed.
She ripped off a piece of clean bandage and dabbed at the seeping blood. "You don't need to be pointing that gun of yours at every little noise or visitor. No outsider will be having a reason to come here." She dabbed at the wound, and dabbed and dabbed. "As for us, we Plain People bring suffering to no one, least of all the helpless and the sick."
"You're bringing suffering to me now, lady, the way you're prodding at me like I was a cow in a bog hole."
He'd put on his charming rascal's smile again, but this time it didn't quite work. This time his mouth betrayed the wildness in him, revealing the potential for meanness.
"The Bible says, Mr. Cain, that a man's sins do find him out." And Rachel tipped the bottle of carbolic acid over the raw hole in his side.
He made no sound, but his belly shuddered hard. She knew she'd hurt him and she felt mean now herself for having done it. It was what Noah meant about the taint of worldly corruption, she supposed. Already she was doing and saying things that weren't Rachel Yoder at all.
She finished putting on the fresh dressing, saying nothing more, not meeting his eyes. She was about to leave him when she saw that his gaze had fallen on the bullet he'd brought with him into her house, buried in his flesh. It sat there on the nightstand, next to her Bible. Small and round and bronze, and flattened a bit at one end where Doc Henry said it had struck a rib bone.
"The doctor dug that out of your spleen," she said.
He actually let go of his precious gun to pick up the bullet. He held it up to the shaft of sunlight pouring through the window, examining it almost with awe, as if it were a gold nugget. But then his fingers curled around it, making a fist.
She followed his gaze from the bullet in his fist to the wardrobe. The door was half open, although it should not have been. The wardrobe where Doc Henry had put the outsider's guns—and his cartridge belt with the extra bullets.
Rachel gasped, and her own gaze flew to the gun lying at his side, and then back up to his face.
Blue eyes, dead of all feeling, looked into hers. "The last bullet, almost."
Moses Weaver scuffed his feet along the rough boards of the Yoder front porch, scraping the worst of the sheep manure off his tooled leather high-heeled boots. He lifted his derby to slick back his pomaded hair, gave his checked trousers a hitch, and raised his arm to knock. The door opened before bis fist could fall. Mrs. Yoder gave him a slow look-over, pressing her fingers to her lips and making her eyes go round as shoe buttons. "Why, if it isn't our Mose. And don't you look flashy in those clothes, like a tin roof on a hot summer's day?"
His fist fell to his side and his cheeks caught fire. "Uh, I've come to chop up that wood for you, ma'am."
"I figured as much, and it sure is good of you. Especially when I know how your da has got you working over at your place from can't see to can't see." Her eyes squinted up at him, as if with silent laughter. "My, but you do look handsome, though."
He craned his head to see around her into the kitchen, but she shifted her weight to lean against the jamb. "So, did you get those fancy new clothes of yours
out of a mailorder wishbook?"
"Yes, ma'am. I sent off for 'em with last summer's wool money." He stretched out his neck to see over her. He got a glimpse of a milk bucket and strainer sitting in the middle of the floor, a flour tin and a string of dried apples waiting on the table. With all the talk he'd been hearing, he almost expected to see the outsider lurking in there, wearing a black duster, armed with a pair of pearl-handled six-shooters, and leaking blood from a bullet hole in his side.
Mrs. Yoder stepped across the threshold onto the porch, pulling the door half shut behind her. The smell of vinegar wafted off her, pinching Mose's nose. She must be pickling, he thought, though it was the wrong time of year for it.
And he hadn't gotten so much as a whiff of the stranger. Folk said the man was a desperado, an outlaw whose face looked out of wanted posters that offered a thousand dollars in pure gold for his capture dead or alive. But the only reward, so it was also said, that anyone had collected thus far was hot lead from the end of the desperado's blazing six-shooters. Mose sure wished he could've gotten a look at those six-shooters. It was just the sort of wild tale to give the shivers to his girl, Gracie. Sometimes if he got Gracie worked up enough, she'd let him put his arms around her and hold her close.
Mose suddenly realized that Mrs. Yoder was still standing there smiling at him, and probably wondering why he didn't get on with it. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and backed up, and stumbled when his boot heel caught on a warped board. "I'll just be at that wood then."
He got halfway to the chopping block before she called after him. "Mose? Why don't you knock on the door after you're done and I'll give you some dried apple duff to take home with you?"
Mose spun around, grinning broadly, and touched the curled brim of his new black derby in a cocky salute. She hadn't actually invited him inside, but maybe he could get a gander at the desperado after all, might even get a chance to exchange a howdy with the man. Wouldn't Gracie be impressed when she heard about that, he thought, although his father would likely have a conniption. Old Deacon Noah was of the mind that all a Plain boy had to do was get within hailing distance of the world outside, with all its evil and corrupting influences, and he would be damned. As if the purity of a body's soul could be corroded by exposure to the world, the way a rake got rusty if it was left out too long in the rain.
Mose looked back at the house, shading his eyes from the dazzle of the sun striking off the tin roof, but Mrs. Yoder had gone inside. He looked flashy, she'd said, flashy as a tin roof in his new clothes. He grinned to himself at the thought of it.
There'd been a lot of talk lately about his father and Mrs. Yoder marrying. It wasn't any secret the old man had been hankering after her for years. It didn't appear like she was going to have him, though, not even with Mr. Yoder dead and buried nigh on a year. Mose didn't really like to think of how beaten down and sad his father had been looking lately.
Mose wished it would happen—them two getting married. He liked Mrs. Yoder a lot. She had a nice way of smiling and touching him in little ways, like patting him on the shoulder and brushing the hair back out of his eyes, and she was always asking him whether his coat was warm enough and giving him food, like the offer of dried apple duff. He'd often imagined that if his own mother had lived she'd be like Mrs. Yoder. But his mother had died having another baby when he was only a year old. His Aunt Fannie had moved in after that, to keep house for him and Da, and if she'd ever spared so much as a smile for either one of them, he sure couldn't remember it.
Even with the sun shining, the wind still had winter's bite to it, and Mose shivered as he shrugged out of his four-button cutaway. He didn't want to sweat stains into his new coat before Gracie got a look at it. She probably wouldn't recognize him in it, she was so used to seeing him in that ugly brown sack coat that all the other Plain boys wore.
He ran his finger over the skin beneath his nose to see if anything had started sprouting there yet, but he didn't feel so much as the prickle of a single whisker. He'd bought a tonic at the drugstore in Miawa City that guaranteed to grow hair on a man's bald head, but it seemed to work squat-all when it came to mustaches. He wanted to grow one of those mustaches that curled up on the ends. He'd really look flashy then.
And old Deacon Noah would have himself another conniption.
As it was, his father's lips puckered up as if he'd been sucking on a lemon every time Mose stepped out of the house wearing his mail-order clothes with all their forbidden buttons and pockets and fancy stitching. But it wasn't really against the rules for Mose to dress worldly because he hadn't been baptized into the church yet. Once he took his vows, once he promised to walk the straight and narrow way—well, then he'd have to dress Plain, to grow a beard but not a mustache, and quit parting his hair for the rest of his life. So the way he saw it, there was no sense to doing all that before time.
Mose carefully hung his new coat on the low branch of a nearby yellow pine. He gave the satin-piped collar a caressing stroke. All his life he'd been taught not to love the world, nor the things of the world, but he loved that coat. Every time he put it on, every time he so much as looked at it, he felt a forbidden exhilaration. Sort of like what he felt when he dove into Blackie's Pond. There was that first sudden, exciting shock of it when his head would break through the water. Then the excitement would start to edge over into fear as he'd be sucked down into the pond, down, down into the cold black depths. And just when the fear would be about to take hold, he'd touch bottom and shoot back to the surface, back to the warmth and light again.
He thought about that, about the heady and scary temptations of the world, as he laid a thick piece of cedar trunk on the chopping block. He raised the ax above his head and brought it down. The ax split the wood with a solid whunk! and a ring of its steel blade. Chips spun off into the dirt, and the spicy scent of cedar floated on the wind.
His body settled into the rhythm of the swinging ax— arms stretching above his head, shoulders bunching as he brought the ax down, and the hard shudder of the blow through his body as the blade bit the wood. Chopping firewood was hard work, but Mose liked it. It helped to calm some of the wild and edgy feelings that had been churning in his guts all winter. "Work sure will keep a boy from getting the bighead," old Deacon Noah was fond of saying. "Hard work is the answer. The bad thoughts and feelings— they come out with the sweat." Except they didn't all come out, Mose thought, not completely.
The ax blade caught in a knot, and Mose jerked hard on the helve. He winced as the sudden movement pulled at the bruises and welts on his back. He was still some sore from the thrashing his father had given him for what he'd done in Miawa City last Saturday afternoon. He thought he was getting too big to be whipped, but the trouble was he wasn't so big yet that he could stop his father from doing it.
Ach, vell, he did know of one way. He could renounce the evil world, marry Gracie, and settle down into the Plain life forever after. If he did all that, he would make things right again between him and his father. But every time he thought of it he got this suffocating, choking feeling in his chest, as if he'd somehow gotten nailed up in a coffin alive.
Mose tossed a piece of the fresh-cut wood onto the stack and was reaching for another when a stone whizzed past his head and smacked into a burl on the trunk of the pine tree that held his coat.
"Hey!" he shouted and whirled, a scowl pulling at his face.
Benjo Yoder trotted up, his herding collie loping at his heels. Both boy and dog must have just come from the creek. The dog gave himself an allover shake, misting the air. The boy's broadfalls were wet to the knees, his coat matted with last summer's thistles. A braided rawhide sling dangled from his left hand.
Mose jammed his fists on his hips and pointed to the sling with his chin. "I 'spect you fancy yourself David the giant killer with that thing."
"I kuh—kuh—killed me a m-muskrat." Benjo raised his arm to show off what he had in his other hand. He held the animal up by its webbed hind feet. Its lo
ng flat tail curled around its glossy brown fur. Its crushed head dripped blood into the dirt.
"Pee-uw!" Mose said, rearing back a step as the muskrat's powerful stink slapped him in the face. He looked the trophy over, his lips curling into a sneer. "Come see me when you bag yourself a grizzly bear, Benjo Yoder, and then maybe I'll be impressed."
Hurt crumbled the boy's bright-eyed grin, and Mose had to look away. Just because he was feeling aggravated with his own life, Mose thought, that was no reason to take it out on poor Benjo.
"Hey," he said, punching the boy lightly on the arm. "You gonna serve up that ol' muskrat for supper?"
Benjo snorted a laugh. He hauled back and flung the wet carcass into the air. They both watched until it landed in a wild plum thicket with a soggy splat. MacDuff barked and took off after it, only to get sidetracked by a rabbit that darted out of the thicket and led him on a chase behind the barn.
"So how come you're out hunting muskrats, instead of being in school?" Mose said. "It's an outsider huh—holiday."
"Hunh. It's no outsider holiday. But I bet your mem don't know that."
Poor Benjo was one of the few Plain kids whose folk actually made him go to the Englische school. Most of the Plain didn't hold with book learning, figuring it a waste of time for a boy who was only going to grow up to be a farmer. Schooling wasn't forbidden by the church, though. It was one of the few things that weren't forbidden, Mose thought sourly.
At the mention of school, Benjo had suddenly turned deaf, busying himself with looping up his sling and tucking it into the waistband of his broadfalls. Mose hefted another piece of the cedar onto the chopping block. He wiped the wood dust off his ax blade, spat into his palms, gripped the helve and settled his shoulders for the first upward swing. He looked up in time to catch Benjo casting a worried glance back at the house.
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