Night Fires in the Distance

by Sarah Goodwin

  As we took our half-cold dinner inside out of the dark, I noticed a white shape by the door. It was the muslin wrapped bread I’d left for Clappe. He must have missed it in his hurry to break camp, or else left it as an insult. I couldn’t blame him. I doubted that he’d killed the pig, but still, William had something coming to him for welching on their deal. I had something coming for letting him.

  By the time I had the girls dressed for bed and Thomas had settled onto his tick, the whisky bottle was out and Will’s mug was half drunk up. I left him to it, changed into my nightgown and put myself to bed. I lay praying that he would drink enough to have him sprawled out on the tick rather than sprawled out on me.

  When the morning light found me untouched and William asleep in his chair I caught myself smiling. A piece of luck, that’s what that was.

  I shook Rachel and Beth lightly. “Time to get up girls. You too Thomas.”

  As I ushered them out I heard William groan, the chair creaking with him. He was in for a mighty sore head and I had no want to be the first thing he laid eyes on. Will went to the outhouse and returned sour and grey-faced to drink coffee and shun food. I was grateful to have things to do out of doors, while he set about fitting the stove, his head full of bees.

  It was the day for bottling our fruits and vegetables, now that I had the sugar, vinegar and jars for it. If the pork went rancid we would be relying heavily on the preserves.

  Rachel was peaceable, whether from the slaps she’d received, or from seeing the hog butchered in its sty. She helped me to build up the fire and tended it while I hunched over the pot, taking the stems out of chokecherries. Beth was on a blanket by my side, playing with her rag doll.

  “I’m sick of these,” Rachel said, screwing up her face, “why can’t we have plum jam?”

  “There aren’t any that grow around here, we’ll have to go and try and find some before winter.” I would be doing no such thing, mostly because we’d been on the prairie two years and I hadn’t ever seen a plum tree anywhere nearabouts.

  Rachel huffed, but it was her usual kind of sourness and she kept the fire going without being told. Once I’d prepared the berries I put the pan over the fire and charged her with stirring them until they broke down into pulp.

  “Thomas, why don’t you come and boil these jars, I can pick the onions then.”

  Thomas had been cutting lengths of stove wood, but he looked so tired, I thought a lesser chore would be better for him. I could always chop the stove lengths later. It was only one small tree that William had hauled for kindling.

  The garden was a square of hot, dry earth in the waving grass. I’d planted rows of onions, beans, squash, chokecherries and some herbs. I clenched my fist on a spray of silver sage leaves. The smell was like my Mother’s roast chicken, like the attic where she’d hung her herbs. Like home. It was good to have it nearby.

  I set about filling my basket with onions, pulling hard to separate the thick stems. My hands were a private shame, rough and red-knuckled as they were, but they could pick or shuck, chop and chink as well as Will’s.

  Around the rail fence that kept the animals out, the prairie grass moved to and fro, brown and dead as anything, jittering in the wind. I looked to the flattened place where Clappe had made camp, saw the small holes that had held up the tent’s poles. Where was that tent pitched now? There was precious little time until winter came. The grass was already dying back, the sky growing distant and cold at night. I hoped he’d have food and shelter by the time snow came to the prairie and not one of those line shacks with the tar paper walls either. I wouldn’t let a dog winter in a line shack, and a dead dog at that. Perhaps another woman would give him cornbread and beans, maybe a blanket for his bed. Maybe he’d marry her for her trouble.

  From inside the soddie came a wail, a crash and a burst of cursing from Will. He stormed through the open door and glared at me. His eyes were red, his patchy beard standing out on his pale face. As he came close the smell on his breath told me that hair of the dog was not having helping him, though not for want of application.

  “Your damn baby’s crying, get it out of there so I can work,” he mopped his face with a shirtsleeve already soaked in sour sweat. “Would it kill you to bring a man a drink of cold water when he’s laying in a stove for you?”

  “I’ll get you some once Nora’s down,” I said, and went to get the baby, who was howling bitterly for a feed.

  “And you, boy, get back to chopping that wood, or do you want your sisters to freeze to death?” I heard Will bark behind me, his shouting woke Beth, who started to fuss, and I came to the soddie door with Nora in time to see Rachel picking up her sister and shushing her. I’d never been more thankful for my eldest daughter.

  William turned on his heel and came back to the soddie. I flinched as he passed me. There was, I saw, dirt all over the floor from where he was making a place for the stove. He had moved the ticks away at least. The table had a series of sticky rings on it from the whisky bottle.

  He saw me looking and brandished a length of pipe. “Don’t look like that, if you’d had the harvest I’ve had, you’d take a drink too. Not to mention that Clappe bastard killing our pig and running off.”

  I could’ve done with a swallow of whisky. The pipe and his wild eyes were frightening me. He’d never struck me with anything before, but there was always time for him to start. I didn’t say anything, just took a seat and set Nora to my breast. Her little rosebud mouth stung like a bee, but I didn’t let it show on my face. When Nora was done with her feed I laid her back down, but she started to fuss. I swear if babies had their way no work would ever be done.

  “I’ll get you that water.”

  Will harrumphed to let me know he’d heard.

  I picked up the cradle box and the jug, took Nora outside. Nothing was worth getting on Will’s bad side, and a crying baby with mess in her napkin was a sure way to make him fly off the handle again.

  “Here, take her,” I said to Rachel, who was flapping flies away from the cooling jars on the grass. “Why don’t you play house?”

  House was a game Rachel always loved, usually she parented a doll and played at being a fine lady, with Beth as her spinster sister who lived with her as a domestic. Rachel was ever making up stories like that. Make believing she was an orphan sold to a poor family, or that she was a secret princess exiled to life on the plain.

  At the well I hauled on the windlass, making my back ache, dipped a jug-full out of the bucket. In the sun, away from Will and the smell of whisky, I felt myself start to calm. It would be alright, once he calmed down a little.

  I put the jug on the table. Will was focused on finding a knife to cut the sod and I left him well alone.

  Outside in the glare of the sun I picked up my basket of onions and took it to the side of the fire. Behind me I heard Will cursing the knife, and didn’t anyone else have the sense to sharpen it?

  “You can’t take my baby away!” Rachel cried, clutching Nora closely while the little one tried to pull her bonnet off by the strings. Beth, the unwitting villain, stuck a confused fist into her little mouth and frowned.

  “Rachel, Beth, keep your bonnets on, you’ll catch the sun.”

  Rachel straightened hers and Beth pulled hers up from where it had been hanging around her neck.

  I gave them a spoonful of jam on a plate to keep them quite, and Beth instantly put her fist in it and made a big rose print on her dress.

  “Oh Beth,” I left her in the soiled dress, she would only make another dirty if I changed her.

  She smiled at me. “Pretty.”

  “Yes it is, a pretty mess.”

  A glance across the sun soaked grass showed me that Thomas was in the garden, picking the rest of the onions. The stove wood was chopped and stacked neatly. Thank God for days when the chores got done easy. Not that Will wouldn’t complain, but it was best to leave him with little to rant over.

  The jars were still warm, the jam was hot as hellfire
, sticking to my fingers as I ladled it in. By the time I had all the big jars full there were a few new scald marks on my hands.

  “Fuck this piece of shit,” I heard William holler and looked to the soddie in time to see him fling the knife from the roof. The blade hit the hard turf and bounced off. Atop the ladder, clutching at the soddie’s roof, William glared down at us.

  “One of you bring me up a sharp blade.”

  Thomas ran for the barn to find the other knife. I prayed it’d be sharper. Or that the ladder’d break.

  With the jam jarred up I could take Nora to the outhouse, escaping Will’s glare. Rachel came with some jar-washing water in a bucket and a clean napkin, she looked set to stay with me, away from her father.

  “Rachel, keep watch by the fire for your sister.”

  “Why can’t I stay with you?”

  “Because someone needs to watch Beth and Thomas’s going to be picking.”

  She gripped the flat grass with her dusty toes. “Pa’s awful angry today.”

  I reached for her and squeezed her shoulder. “He’s not going to be angry with you if you watch your sister like a good girl.” Nora, red faced and screaming by this time, grabbed my sleeve in her pink fist.

  There came a crash from the soddie, and I saw that Will had climbed down and was draining the water jug, but had tripped on a pail left there to hold dry dung.

  “Go quickly, and if you get scared, bring Beth back to me.”

  She scampered like a frightened rabbit. At least she didn’t know that there was no way I could protect her from her Pa, any more than I could protect myself from him.

  I laid Nora on the flattened grass. Under a layer of crusted shit her little backside was hot red and flaking. As I wiped her up she started to kick her small legs and cry harder.

  “Can’t feel good can it? Especially in this heat,” I rang the cloth out, scraped the used napkin into the outhouse hole while I waited for her to dry off.

  Once she was in a clean napkin I poured the dirty water onto the vegetable garden and washed my hands by the fire. Rachel was sitting there with Beth, both of them quiet and playing with Beth’s grass dollies.

  William, now with a sharp knife, was hacking at the soddie roof, whistling. He’d put the fear of God into us all, even sweet Beth, and now he was working without a care, as though he were the loving father in a children’s tale.

  By that night, the stove pipe was fitted and the pig iron box glowed cherry red with fire. Beth and Rachel had stripes of sunburn on their faces and Thomas was helping them braid the onions into ropes to hang and dry for winter. It was the first meal I’d ever cooked on a stove by myself. In Will’s mother’s kitchen I had hardly been allowed to lift a spoon before she tutted and took it from me. As it was I proved his mother right by burning myself several times, but the beans and pork were cooked well enough.

  By that time, Will was so lit on whisky that he hardly seemed to notice the food. He was leaning against his chair back, tipped a little to one side.

  The soddie was hot and stuffy from the stove. I left the door open as long as I could to try and air it out. In the heat of my little home, I thought of Clappe, and wondered whether he had found shelter from the cool night.

  “Do you think,” I asked of William as we sat by the table, listening to the children settled down to sleep, “that Clappe’ll come back here?”

  Will, full of pork and beans and looking for all the world like a decent husband again, sniffed and filled his pipe. “I shouldn’t think so. Lanky city boy, soft handed, he probably had his fill and took the first stage back east.”

  I had noted Clappe’s soft, long fingered hands, clearly meant for some finer work than farming. Perhaps he’d take a position as a clerk, or a banker, counting out notes and writing drafts and important letters. He didn’t have the look of a man who’d stand much outside work.

  “Seems almost like you’re sweet on him,” William muttered, “asking after him. Don’t you go thinking I didn’t see you slipping him the food I worked damn hard for.”

  “He gave me money for it.”

  “Food right out of you children’s mouths,” he muttered and I knew there was to be no talking to him. I sat rigidly in my chair and tried not to excite his anger any further. I’d been a fool. Inside, Will was still burning up with whisky, he wouldn’t be happy ‘till he’d put his fists to someone.

  “Bet you wanted him, like you wanted Jacob back in Ohio,” he said, standing up and taking an unsteady step towards the board shelf where I’d put the whisky bottle.

  “I don’t want Clappe,” I said, trying to calm him.

  He laughed a little, and I glanced to where Thomas was lying stiffly in his bed, so stiffly that he could only be listening. “Bet you’d fuck him.”

  The back of my neck burnt up. This was what William carried around under his skin all the time, and with enough whisky in him to bolster his male pride, he never failed to throw it in my face. I’d only done it because the thought of going off west with Will made me feel so miserable. I wasn’t proud of myself for betraying my husband, breaking my vows worse than he’d broken his. When he’d gone with other women they’d been strangers to me, whores for the most part. I’d humiliated him by going with his brother. Coupling with him in the cowshed. It made me ashamed just to think of it. It’d been Jacob only because he’d flattered me, trying to get at Will for sheer meanness. He’d taunted Will with it, and only stopped when Will threatened to spread word of it about, losing Jacob his wife’s love and his good name.

  I looked at Thomas, still pretending to sleep. The girls were loose under their blankets, truly asleep, but Thomas, Lord he could hear every word.

  “What did I do to deserve a wife like you?” Will said, slurring.

  I kept my mouth shut, but it did me no good. He took two steps to me and belted me across the face. It took me off my seat. I hit the oiled dirt with my cheek and palms, legs tangled with the chair. He kicked me, once, twice, as I tried to hunch over. My breath left me in harsh sobs.

  Over me, I heard William huff and a moment later he kicked off his boots, the tick rustled as he sprawled himself over it.

  I glanced up, twisting my aching back, blinking tears away. Found Thomas’s eyes glittering wet as he looked at me under a fold of his blanket. I raised my finger to my lips. My hand was shaking. Crawling from the fallen chair, I went to Thomas’s side and patted his shoulder through the rough blanket. As quickly as they had come, my tears dried up.

  “Get to bed,” Will slurred, “work tomorrow, not getting out of it.”

  I went behind the canvas screen and took off my dress, which was heavily scented with sweat, stewed cherries and Nora’s shit. The fastenings were hard to undo, my hands wouldn’t work. Once I’d jerked the hooks open and peeled the dress from my sweating skin, I left it on the floor and slipped into my nightgown.

  As I eased myself down onto the tick, smelling his whisky soaked breath and the sweat in his clothes, I wondered if he remembered how he had pursued me, courted me. To hear him talk you’d have thought I trapped him into it, but he was the one who’d brought me cherry blossom and walked with me to church.

  All the work that’d roughened my hands, the prairie that took so much and brought only enough for us to slide by on, what had it taken from him to make him hate me? Was it just what I’d done with Jacob, or had Will found as little to love on our claim as I had?

  Chapter Nine

  Laura

  I guess every couple has their bad nights. Lord knows my parents did, my father could make my mother cry with a few well-chosen words, and he’d raise hell if his dinner was late coming to him. I’d never known him to hit her, but then I hadn’t been glued to her side. There’s a lot to marriage that takes place behind closed doors, if you have doors to close.

  The bruise on my face wasn’t bad, by the day after it had faded some. He’d given me worse. After he’d found out from Jacob just what he’d done with me, he’d split my lip, blacke
d both my eyes and half choked the life out of me. Then my face had felt like a piece of bloody meat. For over a week I’d been unable to swallow, or speak without husking my words. Even now the thought of William in a temper brought an ache to my jaw and a twist of fear to my gut.

  For a few days after he’d struck me down, William was the soul of good grace. I knew to take the good after the bad, if only because you never knew when you’d get it again. I tried to keep my thoughts on the matters at hand and not on long healed wounds, or fresh bruises.

  I had Rachel help me rinse ashes for lye, and I made myself a good store of hard soap from the fat I’d been keeping by in a crock. The days after a run to town were always busy, I had green coffee to parch, supplies to jar and store. It was a week before I had all the vegetables canned, or sorted away into sacks to hang.

  The soreness from the birth was mostly gone by then, but for my breasts which were still suffering from the feeding. A good thing too, as Will’s good mood made him eager in bed. The night after I was done with the soap making he touched me in the dark and pressed whiskery kisses to my cheek and neck. It was one of the rare times I felt part of it with him, felt anything other than fear and dislike. I touched his back and pressed up against him, feeling the hair on his chest against mine, the heat of his skin, why, it was almost as it had been after we were married, when I’d gotten used to him a little. I felt the building of that wondrous thing that Jacob had shown me, and which Will had managed to cause in me a handful of times since we were married. Though I didn’t make a sound I closed my eyes and held him tightly, gasping. I was halfway to enjoying myself when he finished with me. He pulled away roughly, leaving stickiness to spread on my thighs.

  I almost reached out to him, almost, but my wanting for things made him angry. That night I was just like his other women, to be used and left. At least they didn’t have to get up and brew his coffee come morning, wash his shirts, plant his fields, or the hundred other things I did for him, for no money and a bed on the hard ground.