Simply Dead

by Eleanor Kuhns

Rees, hearing the grooves in this well-worn argument, stared at the other man. Had he forgotten what his daughter was accused of doing?

  ‘I could see I’d be trapped in that cabin taking care of someone for the rest of my days. I had to get out,’ she shouted.

  ‘Now, don’t raise your voice to me, girl,’ Wootten said. ‘You’ve always been defiant and I don’t like it.’

  ‘Why did you smother your sister and her baby?’ Rees asked, his voice cutting through the quarrel. Wootten gulped as he remembered of what crimes his daughter was accused. ‘Why didn’t you just leave them behind, as you did your mother?’ For a moment he thought Glory wouldn’t answer.

  ‘She saw me leaving.’ Her words suddenly burst out. ‘She was always after me. “Get me water”,’ she mimicked in savage garbled words. “I’m hungry. I need a change.” She saw me going to the door with my cloak in my hand and she told me I couldn’t leave. I had to care for her and the baby. She started that whine of hers, louder and louder until I knew she was going to wake everyone up. So I went to the bed and I put my hand over her mouth. But she struggled and made that grunting noise of hers. So I knelt on her chest. I didn’t realize the baby was there. Until I felt it underneath me and by then …’ She stopped short and turned her face away. It was the first time Rees had seen her express remorse.

  Tears began streaming down Lydia’s cheeks. And Rees, imagining those deaths in the dark and fetid cabin, felt like weeping too. He tried to console himself with the thought the baby would not have survived anyway without her mother. It didn’t help.

  He spared a glance at Wootten and his sons. Shock and horror contorted every one of their faces. ‘Please, God. It can’t be,’ Jake muttered. Rees was startled to see tears in Josiah Wootten’s eyes. But not surprise. Despite his denials, he’d suspected his daughter all along.

  Rees felt an unwilling pity stir within him. How would he feel if this was one of his daughters? It was too terrible to contemplate.

  ‘Tell them you didn’t do it,’ Jake pleaded with his sister, his voice raw with emotion.

  ‘But I did do it,’ Glory said. ‘And I’m glad.’

  ‘She confessed,’ Rouge said unfeelingly.

  Rees saw the exact moment when Josiah Wootten made his decision. His expression hardened and he said, ‘I did it. I killed my daughter and her baby.’

  ‘Oh, and did you strangle Pearl?’ Rees asked.

  ‘A course I did.’

  ‘She wasn’t strangled,’ Rees said.

  ‘He didn’t do it,’ Glory said in an icy tone. Rees felt Lydia shiver against his arm. ‘I don’t even know why he’s saying that.’

  ‘I’m trying to help you,’ Wootten said, his voice cracking.

  ‘I don’t want your help,’ she said. The years of pent-up resentment and anger colored her voice with rage. Wootten flinched.

  ‘Why did you set the fire that burned down the cabin?’ Lydia whispered. ‘You were out of it by then.’

  ‘But I wasn’t,’ Glory said. ‘Don’t you see? My mother was still alive. Jake knew where I was hiding. If my father found me he would drag me back home.’ She glared at her father. ‘I wasn’t safe.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What did I do that was so wrong?’ Wootten asked. And Rees, who had thought this man nothing more than a brute and a villain, felt his eyes moisten at the desolation in the other man’s voice. Glory turned her back on him and walked into the jail with her head held high. Rouge slammed the door behind her. Rees jumped at the finality of the metallic clang of the lock sliding home.

  There was a moment of horrified silence.

  ‘We won’t let you starve,’ Wootten said, turning to the barred door of the jail.

  ‘She is one of our community,’ Esther said, straightening her shoulders. ‘Even if it lasted for only a short time. We will ensure she’s fed and warm, at least until …’ Her words ran down.

  ‘I want to go home to my children,’ Lydia said suddenly.

  ‘So do I,’ Rees said, turning toward his wagon. He couldn’t wait to see them.

  Both he and Lydia were silent for the first leg of the journey. Rees’s thoughts circled around Wootten and his daughter. By God, he pitied the other man.

  ‘So much anger and bitterness,’ Lydia said at last. ‘I feel sorry for the girl.’

  ‘I do too,’ Rees said, smiling at his wife and reaching over to take her hand. ‘I feel sorry for them all. But mostly I pity Wootten. He blames himself. He’ll spend the rest of his life living with regret.’ Rees knew how terrible that felt. He regularly prayed he would not add any more regrets to those he already owned.

  Lydia nodded. ‘I know,’ she said so quietly he could barely hear her.

  When they reached the farm a little while later, an unfamiliar wagon and two horses were parked outside the kitchen door. Rees felt his heart sinking. What new crisis had arisen in his absence from home? He jumped down and went around to assist Lydia. She had already climbed down on her own and was starting for the door when it suddenly opened. Jerusha ran through it. She had no cloak and her cheeks were flushed, but she was smiling.

  ‘Guess who’s here?’ she shouted.

  And then Simon and David appeared, with David’s wife behind them. David’s cheeks had hollowed out and he looked older than he had just a short while ago. Simon had grown at least an inch and looked to be all long legs and arms. He ran into Lydia’s arms as David took two strides to reach his father. ‘We’ve come for Christmas,’ he said. Rees knew he was grinning like a fool but he couldn’t help it. He was too happy to stop.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Wolves

  People have been frightened of wolves and wolf attacks for thousands of years.

  Although I read several sources that claimed there has never been any documented wolf attacks in the US, many of the memoirs and other anecdotal sources describe such occurrences. One very popular tale from upstate New York describes a wife’s defense of her husband with nothing but an axe. Of course, there is no way of telling which is the truth, so I opted to keep the belief appropriate to this era.

  Diabetes

  Although diabetes is thought of as a modern disease, Type 1 Diabetes has been a long-time human companion. In 1552 BC Hesy-Ra, an Egyptian physician, documented frequent urination as a symptom of a mysterious disease that also caused emaciation. (It can also cause weight gain since ravenous hunger is a feature of diabetes as well.)

  Around this time, ancient healers noted that ants seemed to be attracted to the urine of people who had this disease. Centuries later, people known as ‘water tasters’ diagnosed diabetes by tasting the urine of suspected diabetics. If urine tasted sweet, diabetes was diagnosed. To acknowledge this feature, in 1675 the word ‘mellitus,’ meaning honey, was added to the name.

  By the 1800s, physicians began to see that dietary changes could help manage diabetes. Some of the suggested diets, consuming only meat and fat or large amounts of sugar seem unhealthy to us now. Exercise was also added to the treatment when doctors noted that diet control and exercise kept diabetic patients alive for longer. Diet and exercise are still recommended as part of the treatment today.

  Despite these advances, before the discovery of insulin, diabetes inevitably led to premature death. Then, in 1889 Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering, researchers at the University of Strasbourg in France, showed that the removal of a dog’s pancreas could induce diabetes. In 1910 an English physiologist Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer’s study of the pancreas led him to the discovery of a substance that would normally be produced in non-diabetics: insulin. And in 1920, during a series of animal experiments, Frederick Banting, a physician in Ontario, Canada, first used insulin to treat diabetes. Banting and his team successfully treated a human diabetic patient with insulin in 1922.

  Why does diabetes occur? No one really knows. One theory suggests that a tendency towards diabetes confers some evolutionary advantage in the same way that carriers of sickle cell anemia have some resistance to m
alaria.

  The Shakers

  The evangelical offshoot of the Quakers, the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearance, the Shakers (a contraction of Shaking and Quakers) reached the shores of the New World in 1774. Begun by a woman, Mother Ann Lee, the Shaker Sisters enjoyed equal status with the men; a privilege unknown outside the faith. Mother Ann Lee was venerated among the Shakers and those that died were said to ‘go home to Mother’.