Night Fires in the Distance

by Sarah Goodwin

  “Why am I such a fool?” I covered my face with my raw, scrubbed hands.

  Missy ate her supper, oblivious. I longed for real company, for Franklyn, to remind me who I really was and what I was meant to feel. Laura said that I watched her – but that was only natural curiosity, seeing a woman so different from myself. I had maybe wanted to care for her, to help her with Beth and to ease the pinched look of fear and tiredness from her face, but that wasn’t wanting, not like she meant. It only meant that I cared.

  “Goddamn that woman,” I said, then cupped my hand to my mouth. What was becoming of me? With the thought of Laura, and the taste of the curse on my tongue, I was more Clappe than Cecelia. I shivered. Was I losing myself?

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said tartly.

  Missy looked up from her clean bowl and looked at me as if she was worried for my sanity. It was true that I had started to talk to myself more and more, but that simply showed that I was lonely, not mad.

  “I should really start to feed you outside,” I told her. We both knew that I would do no such thing, she was company after all.

  Missy came and arranged herself over my feet. In the pocket of darkness that was the inside of the soddie, I felt a similar darkness aching in my chest. The loneliness was a terrible thing, only growing stronger with every hour; it had the smell of old smoke and the sound of the grass whispering unkindly, it left the taste of burnt coffee on my tongue. In the warm darkness of my bed, I clung to an armful of blanket and longed for the soft, brown, goodness of Laura Deene. Telling myself that I only wanted a friend to cling to in the dark, someone who cared for me.

  I was woken by the low growl of the dog.

  Sitting up in the dark, my sleepy, comfortable state was cut with ice when I heard an answering growl from beyond the soddie door.

  Missy was sitting in the middle of the room, I could make out her dark bulk against the glow of the fading embers. Frozen to the bed, I couldn’t blink, could hardly breathe.

  Then, from outside, from all around, came the unmistakeable howl of a wolf pack. I’d only heard it from far, far away before. Up close, through only about a foot of sod, it was like hearing a cry from beyond the grave.

  For a moment I couldn’t trace the choking sound that followed the awful howling, then I realised that it was me and I clapped my hand over my mouth.

  I believe that in that moment it was James Clappe who rose to my defence.

  Tripping out of bed, I groped for the lantern. Found it. Lit it. In the pale glow I saw Missy with her hair standing up, her teeth bared. I found myself thinking orders as if speaking to another; find the rifle. Check it. Loaded. Open the patch box. Stop those fingers shaking. Get the powder horn. The bullets.

  The howl came again and I dropped the box of bullets. They rolled on the floor, escaping my shaking hands as if on purpose. My eyes blurred with terrified tears. I took the rifle in my hands, eyes fixed on the door.

  Please God, let it hold. Let it hold, be merciful.

  The door rattled and I let out a small scream. Missy leapt at the door, snarled, lowered her nose to the floor and sniffed. I knew then what had drawn them; the blood, the innards in their bucket outside. They could smell the deer inside the soddie. Oh God. How had I been so stupid? No matter how tired I’d been, I should have put it in the smoke house, well away from me. I’d as good as laid my table for them.

  Something struck the easterly shutter with a heavy thump. The leather strip that held one side to the frame snapped, the shutter swung on its bottom hinge. Then came the sound of claws on wood. The dog almost knocked me down as she leapt across the soddie. I raised the gun and fired. The shot took a chunk out of the remaining shutter. Splinters fell amongst the spilled bullets. Something hit the ground outside. I could hear my blood drumming.

  The patches of greasy material fell from my hands, I rammed the patch, powder and bullet. I looked through the wedge of space between the shutter and the frame. The outside air was clean and charged with night. Six pairs of yellow-green eyes reflected the faint light from the window. There came sounds of scrabbling, of sloppy flesh ripping between teeth.

  The Deene place was out of running distance, invisible in the dark. I was alone.

  The howl came again, cutting through me.

  Clutching the rifle in my hands, I opened my mouth and screamed back.

  Silence rang through the air, then the wolves cried again. My voice dried in my throat.

  Scratching came from the door, I turned to it, only to hear a thud as a wolf leapt at the window. Missy tucked her tail down and kept low to the floor. We were both out of courage.

  I dropped the rifle, made a grab for the packing crates that made up the bulk of my furniture. There weren’t very heavy, but I stacked them against the door. Stepping on bullets and stumbling. Nothing I could do for the broken shutter. I took the rifle to the furthest corner of the soddie, dragged my tick across and tipped it up onto its side, sealing me into the corner with the gun. Missy nosed her way around the edge just as I was wedging it against the wall. I rested the barrel of the gun on the sackcloth tick. The discarded sheet lay on the dirt floor like spilled milk.

  Outside, death howled for me.

  *

  The sound of the packing crates scraping across the floor woke me from my stupor. I couldn’t call it sleep. I opened my eyes to find that I’d been passed out against the wall. Sunlight came in through the gap in the broken shutter and the gaps around the door. Grabbing the rifle from the floor I aimed at the sound.

  “James?” The boxes scraped inwards, the door began to open.

  My tired eyes found the tangle of my clothes on the floor, the breast band just peeking out in the gloom. I shoved the tick away from me and made a leap for the clothes. Just as my hands closed on the bundle and I stood up, Laura opened the door fully.

  There was a rifle in her hands. Her face was blank to me, washed into shadow by the sunlight spilling in all around her.

  “We heard you shooting at the wolves last night,” she took a step into the room and her features became clear. She looked me over, and all my relief turned to fear as her expression became unsure.

  I crossed my arms quickly over my breasts, too late to keep her from seeing them through the thin material of the shirt.

  “Laura…” I didn’t disguise my voice, there was no point. I knew how thin and delicate my body looked without Clappe’s thick shirts and trousers to hide in, and how my small breasts poked out like pears.

  “I…” she said, the word stuck like a splinter in her throat “You…you’re not…”

  “Please don’t tell your husband,” I took a step towards her, feeling the coolness of a bullet as my toe struck it and rolled it across the dirt.

  “I kissed you.” Her soft brown eyes had become as scared and betrayed as those of the deer that I’d butchered the day before.

  “I’m sorry, Laura,” I started, but she was shaking her head, bidding me away with her hand.

  “Don’t speak to me,” she said, “don’t you dare speak to me.”

  She left me, flinging the door shut and blocking out the light. I took a step after her, but my foot sank down on a splinter several inches long and I stumbled, falling to the floor with a cry of pain. Clutching the ball of my bleeding foot, I hunched over. Dirty, tired and afraid; I almost wished the wolves would return.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Laura

  I struggled back to the soddie, my heart pounding and my face burning with shock and shame. I couldn’t keep my hands from going to my belly, as though I was trying to shield the baby from my shame.

  “What in the hell were you thinking, leaving the children alone?” Will shouted. He was standing in the doorway glaring at me. “I only went to see Jamison and I come back to find you left no sooner than I set out.”

  He was right in front of me but all I could see was her. I was too shaken up to think what to say at first. “I went to see if…to see that Clappe was alright.”
>
  “Why’d you sound so guilty then?”

  “I don’t sound guilty. I don’t sound like anything,” I said, guilt thickening like old milk in my belly. All the past weeks of secret thoughts, letting myself remember Clappe’s touches, thinking of him in bed with me. The notion of what I’d done hit me like a falling tree.

  “I suppose you found him fine as a June day and drinking tea out of his mother’s best cups,” Will sneered as I passed him.

  “He wasn’t dead, if that’s what you mean,” I avoided his eyes, fetched my apron and shook my hands behind my back so I could tie the strings without them shaking.

  “Well we’ve lost enough time to social calls today, get the baskets out and find that lazy-ass son of yours, we’ve got potatoes to dig.”

  William only got angrier as the day wore on, seeing him curse Thomas up and down the muddy rows of potato plants only made me angrier. At him, at her and at myself.

  “I better not see you crying,” he snapped at Thomas. “You want to stay inside and take care of the house? I’ll have your mother sew up a dress for you.”

  I turned and saw Thomas struggling to pull up a stubborn plant. The wet stalk slipped through his hands and he fell backwards into the mud.

  “For the love of God, can’t you pull up a fucking plant properly?” Will jerked it out of the soil, held it up so the roots showered Thomas with thick lumps of mud. “Your sister could pull these with no trouble, get your goddamn ass out of the mud and work like a man.” He swung the plant back like a whip, ready to strike Thomas about the head with it.

  “William!” My voice carried across the prairie like the report of a rifle. I winced inside, wondering if she could hear me. “If you strike him I swear to God I will lay you out and bury you to your neck in this slop.”

  “If he worked as he was supposed to, we’d be done with the field by now.”

  “If you think that, you’re more of an idiot than I thought you were.”

  “And if you did your share, instead of flapping your jaw like the empty headed bitch you are, perhaps the boy’d learn to stand on his own two feet!”

  “Come with me, Thomas,” I said.

  “No, the boy stays with me.”

  I held my arm out to Thomas and gritted my teeth. Before I had believed I hated Will, now I knew what hate was. He’d slapped the children to discipline them, as I had, but this was a threat of a beating, unwarranted. I could see that he had no love for Thomas, for any of our children. For that I hated him, deeply.

  “I said, he stays by me. Get back to your own row,” I said.

  Will let his arm swing and caught me across the face with his hand. A slap, open hand. A warning. Still, I stumbled in the mud and almost fell.

  “Shut up and get back to work.”

  Through watering eyes I watched as Thomas stooped and started picking the potatoes from the plant Will’d uprooted.

  The sudden heat of my anger had finally done what Will hadn’t managed. The iron in me was cracked, weakened. Clappe, whoever she was, had done this to me, made me hope then snatched that hope away. I trudged and picked, hating them both, hating myself most of all.

  *

  By the time the light failed, I was sick of the sight of potatoes and thorny inside with the need to be alone. Thomas was quiet as we dragged the baskets of vegetables back to the house but I couldn’t reach out to him.

  Rachel was stirring a pot on the stove when we got back. I knew I should offer some encouragement, tell her the leftover stew smelt good, but I couldn’t open my mouth. My head felt heavy.

  Will washed up and then lit his pipe, waiting for the stew to come to him at the table.

  “Rachel’ll have to join us out in the field tomorrow,” he said.

  “There’ll be no one to watch Beth and Nora,” I said.

  “Pa, you said I was to stay here and cook like Ma,” Rachel said, “it’s cold outside, and I hate all the worms out in the mud.”

  He banged the table to silence her. “There’s only one of us doing a decent day’s work, and that’s me. The two of you,” he gestured to me and Thomas, who had wilted on his tick, trying to make himself small, “can barely make up one man’s labour. Rachel will have to join, or it’ll take too long to get the potatoes out and stored. First snow can’t be more’n a week or two away.”

  “But Nora-” I began.

  “I’ve decided. Beth’ll be with Nora, Rachel can run to and from the field to check on ‘em every once in a while. That’s the last I’ll hear of it. Put on some coffee.”

  I was too tired to fight, to tell him Beth couldn’t look after herself, let alone a baby. I went to the stove to put a pot on.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” he said to my hunched back, “today’s the last time you’ll be going off on your own to see Clappe. I’ve put up with it long enough. From now on, you’re to have nothing to do with him - that clear?”

  My mouth tightened in anger and I felt for the first time the loss of my only friend, who’d never been.

  “I won’t be going up there again.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Laura

  It snowed not a week after the last potato was put into storage. The endless hard flurries meant the narrowing of our small world down to the inside of the house. For once panic didn’t rise in my throat at the thought of being trapped with my family. Every inch of frozen crust was another barrier against the stranger I’d thought my friend.

  It’d been a hard few days. The work, the cold, the exhausted meals, the worry for Beth and Nora, the coughs and sniffs that forced me out of sleep all through the night. I saw Thomas and Rachel grow tired and pale, their small hands chapped by the wind. William soon lost his patience with Rachel and there wasn’t a day when the backs of her legs weren’t spanked red. Her quivering lip and wet cheeks made me ache for her even as my fingers froze. Though often I found Thomas’s quiet despair was even harder to stand.

  The baby I’d thought was taking shape in me turned out to be nothing at all. During the harvest my monthlies arrived with unexpected force. So that was a blessing, though it was hard to feel anything close to relief.

  Through it all, the small dreams I’d entertained of Clappe’s hands on my skin, or his settling a quilt around me against the winter cold, brought me none of the comfort I’d come to depend on. I hated her more for that than the lies and humiliation. She stole him from me when I needed him most.

  Being indoors after the harvest with access to hot coffee and blankets should have cheered me, but it did little to soothe my hurts. Again and again I thought of James and how I would have used this freedom to visit him – only to remember that I had no friend to talk to now. Even Martha’s company was gone, as Jamison didn’t bring her by on his few visits.

  Often I took myself behind the barn and sobbed into the crook of my elbow. Every time I thought of how she must see me, a plain old country woman pining for her imagined young buck, I shuddered with humiliation and clenched my fists in pain and anger.

  As the snow continued to fall, day after day, we were trapped within the walls of the soddie. Our work slacked off and though it had been a poor distraction, to do without it was unbearable.

  The first time I took out the Bible to begin a writing lesson, William snapped at me.

  “No more of that foolishness. They’re schooled as well as they ought to be, and Beth’s too young to learn anyway. It’s a waste of your time.”

  I was sitting on the edge of our tick with Rachel and Thomas on either side of me. Beth tucked under Rachel’s arm, trying to see the Bible pages.

  “There’s nothing needs tending to right now,” I said, keeping my voice even, mindful of his temper, “it’s hardly a bad thing, them learning a little more.”

  “We were taught all we needed to know. When they’re grown and farming for themselves they’ll be thankful they know acreage and yield, no more. So put that book away.”

  Every time I tried to sleep, or when I let myself
be idle for a moment, he was waiting. Clappe in his trousers, crouching by me in the barn, his worn shirt soft against my hands as I kissed his uncommonly smooth mouth. Clappe, her mouth wide with shock and her nightshirt hanging around her, clinging to a pair of breasts as high and pert as those on a pretty statue I’d seen once in the garden of Jacob’s fine house. I couldn’t settle it in my mind, them being the same person. What the hell was a woman alone doing out on the prairie, parading around in trousers?

  I got angry with myself. What did it matter to me? I wanted nothing to do with her. I’d fallen for her act and made a fool of myself. I didn’t want her, just the fairy tale she’d come up with, James Clappe, kind and generous, a man unlike any other. Well! It was true. He wasn’t real, he’d never been the same as Will or Jamison because he was a fiction.

  But God, I’d kissed her. My face twisted and I shivered, remembering her thin, vulnerable body. The bare shoulder and the nightshirt flapping around her slim, pale thighs. My heart filled up with care that so surprised me I felt my eyes well.

  “What’s got you so vexed?” William said, while the snow fell like goose down outside.

  “I’m just pent up, being inside all the time,” I was sitting in the chair opposite him, turning a heel on a new stocking, or I had been, until my fingers went idle and my mind started conjuring up Clappe’s face. “There’s only so much work to do without having to teach the children-”

  He sighed so hard that it was practically a snarl. Stick pricked up her ears and Rachel stopped playing with Beth and her dolls.

  “There’s plenty of work to do without you starting that argument up again.” He turned to Thomas, who was polishing his and Will’s boots. “See, even the boy’s making himself useful.”

  “I can be useful,” Rachel said, “Ma, what is there for me to do?” I knew she wanted to be in Will’s good books again.

  “You could help me make a new set of candles, we’re running low now.” This was because Will was avoiding the use of the lamp, in favour of the slightly cheaper candles that I made myself. It also meant that once the darkness set in, earlier and earlier each night, we had little to no light in the soddie.