by Julie Berry
Darrel is awake when I return. Mother sits beside him on his bed, spooning soup into his mouth. He wears the face he’s perfected through the years whenever he was ill, the mask of tragic suffering, which melts Mother like pig fat.
But this time his injuries are real. Mother changes bandages on his red, swollen foot. The wound is ghastly, fractured bones poking out, and the angry red streaks on his skin look ready to burst.
“Did you see any sign of Melvin Brands?” Mother asks. I stop to think. No, I didn’t, not this morning in town, nor yesterday, either. He’s Roswell Station’s nearest thing to a physician, so we call him “Doctor.” He’ll want to drain Darrel’s foot, I know, and bleed him, if he himself is not dead at the bottom of the river.
“Was he there yesterday, Darrel?” Mother asks. Darrel nods his head yes.
So many injured, what if our doctor is dead? He shouldn’t have gone to battle.
“What about Horace Bron?”
Neither of us knew where the blacksmith was.
“I need to dose your brother,” Mother says. “Sit a while and feed him while I get it ready.”
So I feed my brother until the bowl is empty. He clasps my wrist with a sweaty hand. His lips mouth the words, “Not Horace Bron.”
When the village has a need for one, Horace does the amputations.
XVIII.
I go outside to see Phantom. I bring her a handful of apples, then take her out for some exercise. We have a fenced pasture for our cow, so I let Phantom run there. She shows me what she thinks of our fence by vaulting it easily. Her prance, her delicate steps, and the way her mane ripples down her neck enthrall me. To have such grace of movement! Phantom leaps back over the fence and slows to a walk, examining the grazing. I watch her for a while.
A scream rends the air. I run for the house. Mother is forcing Darrel’s foot into a saltwater bath. For a whiskeyed invalid, he’s putting up a strong fight.
“Help me,” Mother growls through gritted teeth. “Don’t touch me, Worm,” Darrel yells.
These two have made each other what they are, and it’s tempting to pull up a chair and watch the battle from a safe distance. What to do? Do I have an allegiance? Mother knows her business when it comes to wounds. If Darrel’s foot has any chance, it’s in Mother’s hands.
I couldn’t talk sense into Darrel even if I had a tongue, so I sit behind him on the bed and wrestle his arms to his back so he’ll stop thrashing at Mother. He’s stronger than me, but I grind my chin into his back.
“That’s the way,” Mother says, approving.
Darrel retaliates by flopping back suddenly and smacking my skull against his headboard.
“Now you’ve gone and splashed me.” Mother is indignant. My head hurts so badly, I can’t even feel the pain.
I can save a village, I can surrender my heart’s desire, but neither I nor Mother nor all the homelander fleet can make my brother do what he doesn’t want to.
The battle for Darrel’s foot has begun.
XIX.
The touching grew worse. I learned to prevent it, to some small degree, by making myself hunched and still and small. But it didn’t matter. His eyes never left me, not even for sleep. He gave up drink so he could stare at me, day and night. There was never a time when I looked at him when I did not find him looking back. The fear that clenched my stomach never grew easier to bear for its familiarity. One day he sprang from his chair as I walked past his bed. He pinned me there, pressing his stale mouth against my lips. His hands ripped at my dress, savaged my breasts, then hoisted the hem of my skirt up high.
Here it comes, I thought, with a numb calm that I cannot explain.
Then he stopped as if seized, and tore himself up with a roar. He burst out the door, bellowing.
I sat up and plucked at my ruined dress and planned in my head the stitches to mend it.
I heard a splash and a bubbling sound. The door was yanked open, and there he stood, dripping, greasy, streaming with rain-barrel water.
He spoke of the Blessed Virgin.
Then he pinned me once more, pried open my mouth, swept out his knife, and silenced me, crying, “No more, no more!”
XX.
You came and got Jip when I wasn’t aware. I must have been indoors scrubbing the wash. “We can’t afford a horse,” Mother announces at supper. Supper—three roasted potatoes. That’s all we have the stomach for. And Darrel won’t touch his. The skins are burnt, and they smell. So do the herbs Mother’s been mucking with for Darrel’s foot. It makes my headache throb.
“Where did you get a horse, anyway?” When she does this, she always pauses as if waiting for an answer, then sniffs just a little, as if I’m to blame for my silence. A perpetual reminder of my flaw and its aggravation to her.
“I won’t have someone coming after us for horse thieves. Was it one of them fighters from Pinkerton?”
“No, Mother, it wasn’t,” Darrel says.
It takes all my strength to hide my surprise.
“The horse is Worm’s now if she wants it.”
How does he know? What did he see?
“Well, she doesn’t want it,” Mother says, “for we can’t
afford to keep it, and that’s that.” Smoke and dusty herb scents are so close, they suffocate me.
Darrel thrashes in his bedsheets, grumbling. “Fine animal. Shame to part with it. Might be useful with my bad foot come winter.”
She glowers at him. “And I suppose you’ll be handling its keep?”
She doesn’t look up to see me leave.
XXI.
It’s full dark, but I have to get out of the house. I’d rather sleep in the straw beside Phantom than listen to Mother anymore tonight. The sky is bright with stars, the air cold and clean. It calms me. I lean against our fence. Some of my ire floats away on the breeze.
The wheelbarrow. I never fetched it.
Are you back?
Some others, at least, must be. Could the wagons have
returned already? The rescue work must be done. I don’t need to see my way to find my way. I should have taken a shawl but I won’t go back in for it.
Your house is dark. Surely you’re not in bed yet. Perhaps I’ll find you in town. This puts a spring in my steps.
I hurry into town. Lights are on in many windows, including Melvin Brands’s. He’s doctoring someone on his kitchen table. I can’t see his patient’s face, but I see a pale body and a mess of red. I hurry on.
My wheelbarrow, empty, leans against the wall on Abe Duddy’s store porch. I wheel it away and make my way slowly back, watching and listening for signs of life. No wagons yet, it seems. Perhaps they’ll return tomorrow.
No reason for hurry now. I wend my way home, listening to the axle squeak and the wheel crunch over twigs and leaves.
I round the bend in the road and see a light in your window. I leave the wheelbarrow where it stands, lest its sound betray me, and creep toward your house. Night covers me. I hide behind an oak not far from your window.
The candle gutters on the table’s edge. Your fire is unlit. You sit at your table, your body slumped, your head down on its planks, your arms stretched out on either side.
I see no bottle.
Are your shoulders shaking?
Cold wind blows through me. Night birds call. I have stayed too long, past decency, even by my measure. But I cannot take my eyes off you.
And then I jump, for you raise your arms high in the air and bring them crashing down upon the table.
The candle falls. Its light is snuffed.
Your weeping reaches through the window and drives me away. You lost your love, and it broke your heart.
I slip away. For this, even I will give you privacy.
XXII.
Next morning I race the sun to bring back the wheelbarrow I left by your gate, lest you find it. I bring it home, load it full, and wheel it back into town. Today I cannot fail to collect payment or Mother will have a fit. I still see no sign of you.
Perhaps you’ll take extra rest this morning. I hope so.
But when I return home an hour later, there you are, coming out of my house, tipping your hat to Mother. I pause in my steps. You were here and I was not?
I go inside, determined not to let my disappointment show.
“Lucas came to inquire after me, Worm,” Darrel calls out from the bed, where his foot is propped on pillows.
I look to him for more.
“Wondered if we needed anything.”
Your own hopes shattered, yet you visit Darrel. Who would want to visit Darrel? You are good. No one knows it like I do. Maria never did, bless her ebony curls, long may they twine around Leon Cartwright’s fingers.
XXIII.
The sojourners return, and the next day the whole village gathers at the church for an evening service for the dead. The village takes on an almost festive air, though soil on our twenty graves lies all too fresh for that. Mother won’t go. Tending the injured is her fair excuse. Darrel’s fever’s back, and his foot smells putrid. I spend the day doing all that can be done, which isn’t much, and finally drift off to town. I can sit in the back corner unnoticed. I want to know what’s said.
Abijah Pratt turns to stare at me from under his heavy brows. He sucks perpetually on his lower lip.
I slide into my corner seat and hide in the shadows.
I snatch a few threads from the whispers that fill the room. “Ezra Whiting” comes from more than one direction.
The doors creak, and you come in. All the whispers stop, all eyes watch you make your way down the aisle. They aren’t smiling for their war hero. On the other side of the last pew I hear rude laughter. It’s Dougal Wills, Leon Cartwright’s pustule-faced cousin. You’re now an object of sport, having publicly lost your lady.
The doors open again, and you are forgotten: Preacher Frye walks in with a limp, new since the battle. He reaches the lectern and grasps it with long fingers. His long black coat swallows all the light in the chapel.
Eunice Robinson walks in with her mother and younger sister, blushing to be late. She sits in the pew opposite yours and gives her skirts a shake. Her friend has cast you off, so now she’s trying her luck. When you glance over at her, her eyes are riveted to Preacher Frye’s heavenly face testifying of redemption for the dead who die in Christ.
X XIV.
“It was a shock,” Maria’s father confides to William Salt, the miller, standing on the stoop of the church, “when Maria broke her betrothal. But after all that’s happened, I say it’s for the best.” He strokes his beard. “Lucas looked to be a promising lad. He inherited his father’s gifts. But he kept his father’s secret. No telling what else he inherited from Ezra. And now the judgments of God have come down on Ezra, for stealing away our arms. And who knows what else?” William Salt murmurs in agreement, but his face droops. Still weary with mourning his boy, he has no appetite for indulging Mr. Johnson in telling Maria’s tale.
“All in all,” Maria’s father says, “my daughter’s fancy saved us from an ill-considered choice, and I’m not too proud to admit it.”
X X V.
I lie in bed and listen to Darrel moan. They think you conspired with your father to win the war. They think you’ve known his whereabouts all this time.
And Abijah Pratt is sure he knows who killed his daughter, now. He’s made sure others know it.
I feel stifled by guilt. I hear the screams of the burning homelanders. I see the colonel leap off the gorge. Now I see the harm I’ve done to you by stirring up mysteries better left alone.
But how could I have known it would go this way? And what should I have done differently? I had to save you, and the rest of the village, didn’t I? Didn’t that justify going to him? Was it wrong of me to raise the dead?
The preacher named no names but praised the heroes who held off the invading horde like the Israelites of old—one man to the heathen’s fifty.
XXVI.
What will become of this? What will befall you now that your father’s guilt is back upon your head? Not even the war hero is shielded from Roswell Station’s scrutiny. Will they haul you before the elders as they once did me?
XXVII.
Harvest must be brought in without Darrel’s help, and hay cut for winter, too. I toil in the fields, and Mother comes when she can. I don’t mind the work, only the sun scorching down. I have groundhogs and quail for company, and the task drives brooding thoughts away. The job is immense, and I must work faster than my limbs allow.For once, Darrel hankers to do his chores.
For once, Darrel envies me.
XXVIII.
I let Phantom out for a run in the pasture, and once again she leaps the fence easily. This time she keeps on running, straight for the river. I follow pointlessly, then hurry back and fill my apron pockets with apples. She’s crossed the river by the time I reach it, and I pick my way carefully over the rocks. When the river is well behind me I take the chance of calling out to her, “Ooo-ooh.” She pauses to linger sometimes, then sees me and trots off once more.
She leads me on an exhausting chase.
She goes straight for the colonel’s valley.
I find her at the entrance to the crevice, for all the world
bragging she knew how to get back.
I offer her an apple, and she grabs it between her lips. I weave my fingers through her mane, and she follows me easily back home.
XXIX.
It is a day for callers. First Preacher Frye comes by to lay his hand on Darrel’s shoulder and admonish him to have faith sufficient to be healed. He speaks with Mother in low tones. Her mouth remains a straight line, like the deep grooves in her forehead. His charm with women bounces off her, which makes him try all the harder, until he gives it up for lost. “Haven’t seen you at Sunday meetings lately,” he says, and reaches for his hat and coat.
Mother answers the charge with a hand swept toward Darrel. “My son’s illness needs tending.” He waits before nodding to grant his pardon.
At the door he pauses, a hand on the doorpost. “Jesus said, ‘And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched.’”
Darrel turns over in his bed until his back faces the preacher.
“Thank you, Reverend.” Mother closes the door.
XXX.
Soon after, the schoolmaster, Rupert Gillis, comes. I answer his knock, then shrink back into the shadows when I see who it is. He doffs his hat to me and calls me “Miss.” Mother’s eyes catch all of this, and there is a glint in them I do not like. “How are you, Master Finch?” the schoolmaster says, standing by Darrel’s bed.
“See for yourself,” is Darrel’s lordly reply. I almost wish Mother would intervene and reprimand him, but she makes no move. She is still hard at work shucking ears of corn.
Mr. Gillis wets his lips on the cup of water I offer him.
“When you’re better, Master Finch,” he ventures, “perhaps you’d consider returning to school.” He speaks to Darrel but his eyes never leave my body. I slip into the pantry.
Mother makes a small noise in the depth of her throat.
“Some learning might take your mind off your troubles.”
Darrel makes no sound.
“We’ve no one yet who can raise a candle to you in recitation,” the schoolmaster coaxes. “A mind like yours needs training up. You might be a teacher yourself one day.”
Husks and corn silk squeak as Mother rips them from the ears.
“Thank you for calling, Schoolmaster,” she says. “It was thoughtful of you. But as you can see, my son hasn’t strength for much company.”
I come forth to show the schoolmaster the door. His fingers brush my arm in the doorway as I hand him his hat.
Mother’s eyes miss nothing.
XXXI.
The edge of Darrel’s wound turns black. Mother won’t touch her food, nor will Darrel. Goody Pruett prods
and jabs at the black flesh with her fingernail, and Darrel barely notices.
Dr. Brands does not sleep for tending the wounded, and we, a mile from town, on the outskirts in more ways than one, have not yet made his list. Perhaps the fault is mine for bringing Darrel home myself, instead of letting him be dragged half dead the next morning for his share in the spoil of glory for the wounded. Then the village would be more mindful of him.
I do all I can for Mother and Darrel, and Phantom and Person, which is what I’ve christened the cow. She resented sharing her barn with a named horse, lacking a name herself. “Person” was the furthest thing from “Phantom” I could find, and the best fit for her, cud-chewing bag of bones that she is.
I harvest the pumpkins and roll them to the barn. I fill my barrow with squashes and carrots. I trim the late parsley and cut the cabbages. I chop them into soup to tempt the sickly and the sour, but no one will touch my creation. I rub and water Phantom and Person for the evening. Coming back to the house, I see the moon hanging fat and low and orange, only a night away from full. I tell myself the moon no longer need remind me of him.
I collapse into bed, needing a bath but too weary for one. For the first time in days, Mother speaks to me from where she sits staring at the ashes.
“Tomorrow morning,” she says, “fetch us Horace Bron.”
XXXII.
I wake and ready myself for my trip into town. Darrel lies gray-green on his mattress, his arms limp, his face and neck slicked with sweat. I take a last look at his bandaged, fetid foot before I set off for Horace Bron, the blacksmith, who can chop a limb with his massive cleaver if the doctor can’t, or if one can’t afford to pay the doctor.
