Night Fires in the Distance

by Sarah Goodwin

  His continuous mutterings were as familiar to me as they were strange in the soddie.

  “Cecelia?”

  My head has started to droop, but I raised it again. “Mmm?”

  “I’ll make the mush, just hold on. Eat this.” He pressed a strip of jerky into my hand. “It’s the last of it.”

  While he swore and growled at my stove, the added heat of which made the soddie almost unbearable, I chewed up the strip of jerky and leant against the wall, trying to calm my nerves.

  “You should know, I left Charles in town. He didn’t want to come all the way out here on a bit of gossip. Not with those grasshoppers getting into everything. You’re lucky we even came this way at all; if the bank hadn’t responded to the description of your jewellery we wouldn’t have gone looking for the ‘man’ that sold it.” He looked over at me, blonde hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead. “I mean, it’s like the plagues of Egypt out there, another day and you might have…”

  “Died. I know.” I was feeling more myself with a little food in my belly, even if knowing Charles was nearby made me feel like casting the whole lot up again. He was going to take me away. It would’ve been kinder to let me starve.

  “Exactly.” Franklyn sighed, bringing the pot from the stove and dishing out portions of cornmeal mush. “When I saw that horse outside, I thought the worst.”

  “She fell. I had to shoot her.”

  “You know the other’s dead in the barn? Of thirst.” He brought me a bowl of mush and sat on the edge of my tick. “Why didn’t you try to contact me, or Father?”

  “I’ve been managing on my own,” I said, looking at the steam coming off of the yellowish mush, he hadn’t put enough water in. “Building this place, surviving the winter, the wolves…”

  “Wolves?” Franklyn blanched under his traveller’s tan.

  I nodded. “Anyway…I couldn’t go back…how long has it been, since the grasshoppers came?”

  “I got here two weeks ago and I’ve been riding out searching for this ‘Clappe’ character ever since. In town they said it’d been about two weeks again since all this started.”

  A month since the grasshoppers came. Three weeks of rationing and despair. Almost a week since I ran out of water.

  The smell of the mush was too much, I started to eat the dry mess quickly, feeling it settle in my stomach, heavy and solid.

  “Cecelia, no one’s angry with you,” he caught my eye and then looked away. “Well, Charles is very caught up in the humiliation of it all, and you know how I hate him but…if it was me, if Kate were to run off and leave no clue of her reason for doing so, I might feel the same as him.”

  “I wasn’t thinking when I left.”

  “But there was something? Something that pushed you to run away, in the middle of the night?” he said, face set for the worst. “Cecelia, did he hurt you?”

  I shook my head. “He never did anything to me.”

  “Then why? Why all this…” he gestured to my cropped hair, which had started to grow out, “I almost didn’t recognise you. What have you done to yourself?”

  It was almost funny. Hadn’t I imagined him over and over again as I’d built the soddie? Hadn’t I looked at myself and wondered what I was doing in those first few months? It was as though I was seeing myself and my home again, for the first time; dirty and plain and poor. I couldn’t recall exactly when I’d dispensed with binding up my chest and layering my clothes to hide my girlish frame. If I’d ever been a convincing man I was certainly not one now; only a foolish girl in his eyes, dressed in rags and half-starved.

  “I wanted to write to you, to let you know I was safe, but I couldn’t stand the idea of being found and taken back.”

  “But if Charles didn’t do anything-”

  “I didn’t run away because he hurt me. You don’t understand! I was afraid and I knew, I knew you wouldn’t believe me if I told you-”

  “Told me what?”

  “That he killed Charlie.” I was took a breath, my head swimming. I’d never said it aloud, so bluntly before.

  Franklyn looked aghast. “Cecelia, Charles isn’t what I’d call compassionate, but even he couldn’t-”

  “I saw him,” I said, reaching out and grasping Franklyn’s hand. “I came into the nursery and I saw him do it. He smothered Charlie, with a pillow, when he thought everyone was asleep. When he saw me he said that, if I told anyone it would be the asylum for me until I was ‘myself again’. He kept me prisoner after that. I tried to get a note to you but he found it and said he’d send me away. I had to run then, or be locked up until Charles saw fit to take me back into his custody.

  I saw pity in Franklyn’s eyes, but only the smallest sliver of understanding. Probably he thought me hysterical, but he hadn’t seen Charles, or heard him say that Charlie would have been better off never being born. I’d tried to convince myself that he would never hurt me, he wouldn’t have been able to hide that so easily, yet I hadn’t been able to make myself believe it. Killing me wasn’t the worst he could do.

  “Franklyn, you have to believe me. Why else do you think you never saw me? Why I never came to visit? Did you think I was just grieving? How could I do that without you and Mother? You know how much I love you, how much I would have needed you. You can’t take me back to him. Please.”

  “I’ll take you home, to Mother and Father.” Franklyn promised. “Cecelia, Mother is sick with worry over you, and Father has aged so much in the past year. I hardly recognise him.”

  “But if I go back, Charles-”

  “Charles will have a claim on you, but you should stay with Mother and Father until you’re well enough to discuss the future.”

  “I don’t think I can go back, not even to them.”

  I had not grown to love the prairie, but I had come to understand it, and to view my life before as something that was beyond me forever. I had let Cecelia go. Whoever I was, I couldn’t be her any longer, at least not the her that Franklyn had known. There was something different about me now.

  There was Laura.

  My thoughts, still sluggish and laboured, were filled with her. Where was she, and how long ago had she come knocking frantically at my door?

  “When you came, did you see anyone at the other house? The one south of here?”

  “No one outside,” he said, “but what do you mean you can’t go back? It’s like the end of days out here. I’ve spent a year and half a fortune to find you and now it’s time to give up on this…mistaken attempt at playing the peasant, and come home with me.”

  I waved him off. “Help me up, we need to check on them.”

  “Who?”

  “My neighbours, my friend.”

  He took my arm but still hesitated.

  “Help me up now! God dammit, it might be too late already.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Laura

  I was throwing out the pot when I heard horses. Looking up I saw a wagon coming across the dirt, wheels brown and thick with crushed insects. For a moment I thought I’d lost my mind. I hadn’t been more than a few steps from the soddie in three days, or maybe four. I didn’t dare step outside for longer than it took to throw out the slops.

  Cecelia hadn’t answered me, and I knew it was because she was dead inside her house. Why else would she not even call out for me, or come to the house?

  I was sure I’d gone mad when I saw who rode the wagon seat - though in our months apart she had grown thin I still knew her. She was dirty and thin, save the trousers and shirt she was unmistakeably female, her hair had grown out a little and she hadn’t attempted to bind her breast. She stumbled from the wagon and ran to me, clutching me tightly. I held her back, my tongue tied by relief and sorrow. Grasshoppers leapt onto my skirts but I didn’t care.

  “Laura…” she pressed her nose to my cheek.

  I couldn’t say a word, only hold on to her, so hard I thought my fingers’d break.

  “We have to go,” the man behind her insi
sted, “Miss, I’m sorry but we have to be back in town before evening if we’re to set off for Ohio in the morning.”

  “Cecelia…is this him?”

  “No, he’s my brother. Franklyn.” She took a step back from me. “But Charles is in town. He doesn’t believe me, Laura. I tried to tell him.”

  She took my hand and looked at my dirty shift, loose hair and my hard, rounded belly.

  “Are the children alright?”

  I shook my head.

  She squeezed my arms. “Tell me.”

  “Beth and William both took ill a few days ago, now they’re too weak to get out of bed. Rachel and Thomas are sick from the well water, I’ve been trying to help them but there’s no more water, no food.” My voice was like an old crow trying to sing.

  “Franklyn has food, maybe quinine…what about Nora?”

  I shook my head, couldn’t seem to stop once I’d begun. Couldn’t say how I’d come home believing I’d lost Cecelia forever, love rotting in my chest, to find Nora in her cradle box, dead as a doll. Cecelia let me rest my head against her shoulder, stroked my dirty hair.

  Franklyn offered me a watchman’s bottle. “Drink something.”

  I took the bottle and drank. The water was warm and tasted like metal, probably drawn from a pump in town, but it was better than tainted well water. Better than the last days of having nothing to drink at all.

  The sun beat down on us like a rain of hot coins. I could feel my skin getting tighter, dryer, the smell of vomit and piss and sweat from my shift growing stronger with each moment.

  The yard was covered in ash, swirled up from where I’d built my fires for boiling soiled clothes and sheets. I’d burnt the clothes themselves when the water looked to be running out, to stop the spread of sickness. The carcass of one of the oxen lay in the heat, its ribs poking up like sticks. I’d hacked the meat off of it days ago and now it was all eaten or spoiled. From the barn came the cries of the remaining oxen, tied up in the heat and calling in vain for water, for food.

  “Sit down,” Cecelia said, leading me to the stump we split logs on, “It’s alright, I’ll look in on them. Rest.”

  Stepping away from me she stumbled a little, weak as I was from lack of food. Still, she gestured for her brother and walked toward the soddie.

  Inside I knew things would be as I’d left them. Thomas and Rachel lying on the tick nearest the door, Beth on her tick, bundled in several blankets despite the heat. William on our bed, naked under a sweat soaked sheet.

  I waited outside while she checked on them, shifting to keep the insects off me. I tried to gather my scattered thoughts, to pull myself together. I heard her say, “Franklyn, find any wood around and build up a fire where the ground’s scorched.” Then she was back by my side.

  “Laura?”

  I looked at her, knew before she said it that another one of my babies was dead. I took her arm and dragged myself to the soddie, knelt down by the tick. Her hand touched mine where my fingers rested on Beth’s vomit crusted cheek, feeling the stillness between her lips, where air should have flowed.

  Cecelia took hold of my shoulder, squeezed it. “Give the water to the others.”

  I didn’t move. No matter what I did it didn’t do any good. I couldn’t save Nora, or Beth. What was the point in fighting when nothing I did could help anyone? They were all sick, dying. I was going to lose them no matter what I did. Only days ago I’d stood with the rifle and thought of ending it. If I had Beth wouldn’t’ve suffered so.

  “Laura, they’re still alive. There’s nothing we can do for Beth, not right now…where did you put Nora?”

  “The barn,” saying the words made my chest squeeze. I turned away, bad as I wanted to give up I couldn’t fight the need to carry on. I took the bottle, stumbled as I returned to the doorway and knelt beside Rachel.

  “Ma?” Rachel’s mouth moved in the shape of the word, her voice a bleat. I smoothed her hair from her face and put my arm under her shoulder to lift her up.

  “Drink this, sweet pea.”

  Holding the bottle to her mouth, I watched her drink. I felt Cecelia behind me, heard her wrap the blanket around Beth and lift her. I didn’t look. Couldn’t.

  “Slowly now,” I said, easing the bottle back. “Don’t make yourself sick.”

  Thomas pulled himself upright, one hand clinging to the wall. “Ma, Beth stopped crying.”

  “I know,” I said, passed him the bottle, even though Rachel whined at its loss. “Drink. Thomas, share with your sister. I have to take care of your father.”

  I picked up the sheet that William had thrown off and covered him over. He groaned, tried to fight the thin material, but weakened quickly. His bloodshot eyes stared at me without really seeing anything.

  Cecelia came to crouch beside me, a bottle of castor oil in her hand. “Tilt his head.”

  I tipped his chin up and his mouth fell open, Cecelia wrinkled her nose at the foul smell of his breath, but she poured the castor oil into his mouth and though he choked, he swallowed it down.

  Cecelia put her arms around me and for a few seconds I allowed myself to crack while she was there to hold me together. Then that moment of relief ended, with Franklyn at the door, brushing grasshoppers from his clothes.

  “The water’s boiled now.”

  Cecelia let me go and turned to face him. “Steep the quinine. Then we need to get some food into these three.”

  “He looks half dead, should we take the children out…” Franklyn trailed off as William stated to jerk in front of us, twitching and twisting on the tick. His head twisted to one side and the cords in his neck standing out. His legs kicked and pinkish spittle leaked from the corner of his mouth.

  I reached out and grabbed his arms, trying to still him. Every muscle was tense, his eyes rolled.

  “Will! Will can you hear me?”

  Cecelia took hold of both sides of his head, holding him down, but it made no difference, he continued to shudder and jerk. Grasshoppers that’d come in when Franklyn opened the door were jumping over his body.

  “Franklyn, we need that quinine, soon!”

  He went to brew it, shutting the door and leaving us in near darkness. I heard the lid of the pot being slammed back on to keep the insects out.

  William went suddenly still, his eyes closed and his mouth falling open. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth onto my hand.

  “His tongue,” I tipped his head so the blood could run out of his mouth, “he’s bitten his tongue.”

  “Ma.” It was Thomas, I turned to see him propped against the wall, Rachel leaning against him as he fed her small sips of water.

  “Thomas,” Cecelia said, leaning on the wall for support. “Help your sister outside. Franklyn will find you food and more water.” She looked at me. “You should go with them, sit, eat something. There’s so many bugs in here it hardly makes a difference.”

  “Will-”

  “I was there in town when…” she stopped, and I knew we were both thinking of Beth. I wondered why God had not taken her then, to spare her the days of heat and hunger and thirst. “…I know what to do.”

  Still I didn’t move.

  “Go,” she said gently, “I’ll watch him.” Her hand crept to mine and squeezed, “As soon as he can be moved, we’ll put him on the wagon and leave here. There’s water in town, we can find somewhere for you to stay.”

  I gripped her hand in mine, never wanting to let go.

  “Rest, I’ll see to him,” she said, releasing my hand, stroking her thumb across my palm. I nodded, picked myself and went out into the blinding light, still feeling her touch on my hand.

  Rachel was in the shade of the soddie, lying on a blanket. Thomas sat beside her, swatting the grasshoppers away if they jumped onto her. I knew they’d seen Cecelia go by with Beth. Thomas had already held Nora as she died. I went to them, held both their hands, leant and kissed Rachel, then Thomas. There was nothing to say and I couldn’t have said it even if there had been. I onl
y held them and let them cling on to me.

  “Ma,” Thomas said, after a while. “Mr Clappe’s a lady.”

  I squeezed his shoulder. “Yes, sweet pea. She was a very scared lady, and she was hiding here.”

  “Is she still going to help us?”

  “She and her brother are going to help us get away from here. Soon as Pa can be moved.”

  “Did you know she was a lady?”

  “For a little while.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Pa?”

  “She was afraid of anyone finding out. Otherwise I would’ve told you, and Pa.”

  “And then he would’ve let you be friends.”

  “Yes, maybe he would.”

  “Pa doesn’t like her,” Rachel said, suddenly.

  “Pa doesn’t like strangers.”

  “She asked me about Stick once,” Rachel said, “She doesn’t act like Pa does she? Not like Uncle Jacob or Mr Jamison. She’s odd.”

  “Ma likes her. And she’s nice,” Thomas said.

  “That’s what I said,” Rachel said.

  They were quiet after that, and I knew I had to get up, get them fed. I couldn’t be any kind of protection to them if my thoughts were only with their sisters. Refreshed by the water, Rachel and Thomas could cry real tears for Beth and Nora. Mine would come have to come later, if I could help it, along with them would come the teas of relief that my children had found Cecelia out, and still trusted her. Trusted me to know good from bad.

  The brother, Franklyn, was standing in the shade, swatting and stamping on grasshoppers, looking back towards Cecelia’s soddie with a frown on his face. He left off staring and turned to me as I came over.

  “Where’s my sister?”

  “Still with my husband,” I said, then looked at the brewing quinine. “Give it a few minutes, then she’ll need that.” I pulled an insect out of my hair and threw it down. “I wish I could burn every one of them.”

  “This, everything out here, I find it hard to believe,” he said. The grasshoppers were massed all over the hard baked ground, Thomas was continually plucking the insects from himself and his sister, while Franklyn batted them off of his clothes and stomped them into tobacco spit in the dust.