It was only then that Nettie Mae realized the yard outside the kitchen had fallen silent. Usually, the chickens set up a ruckus whenever anyone approached the coop. The redheaded rooster would sound his call and the hens would come running from all corners of the farm, eager to pick through kitchen scraps. But there was nothing to hear—no clucking, no crowing. Had the girl forgotten her task and wandered away?
Nettie Mae stood and crossed to the kitchen window, expecting to find the yard empty. What she saw froze her to the spot with a flush of superstitious fear. The girl had not wandered away. She was standing in front of the coop, gazing down with her accustomed languid, unconcerned air. The birds milled around her. The redheaded rooster hadn’t called to his flock, yet there he was among the rest, gathered calmly at the Bemis girl’s feet. The girl turned her head this way and that, considering each fowl in its turn—assessing the animals, observing them.
Then she bent and picked up a young rooster. Lifted it as easily as one might pluck a flower from its stem. The bird was placid in her grip. Nettie Mae watched with growing unease, and no small amount of fascination, as the girl lifted the young rooster and pressed its folded wing against her cheek. She leaned into the bird, feeling the softness of its feathers, the warmth of its living body, and even through the imperfect glass, Nettie Mae could read the girl’s expression—lips pressed tightly with regret, a tension of loss around closed eyes. Then the girl took the bird’s feet in one hand and held it upside down above the earth. Wings hung loose from the dark body, spread wide above the flock. The rooster still lived, and yet it didn’t struggle. It had already surrendered to its fate. With her other hand, the girl stroked the glossy mane of feathers, the ruff around the creature’s neck. Her lips moved in prayer or in words of gratitude—Nettie Mae couldn’t hear the Bemis girl, couldn’t possibly know what she said, and she was grateful for the silence, the lack of knowing. And then in a heartbeat, with the flick of her wrist, the child snapped the rooster’s neck. Its wings stirred briefly and then hung limp, with none of the usual flapping and commotion, the last fitful burst of life that usually accompanies the distasteful necessity of killing a bird for the pot. The flock paused in its scratching and pecking, looked up at the girl and the bird she held. She spoke a few more words to the animals, slow and quiet. Then she pulled the rooster’s head from its body and allowed the blood to run down, down to the bare-scratched earth.
The girl turned and walked away. The redheaded rooster led his flock back to the garden, where they returned to the business of gleaning and pecking through the dry remains of the harvest.
Nettie Mae reeled back from the window. The flavor of the cheese she had eaten was forceful in her mouth, sharp and accusatory.
What in the precious name of Christ did I just witness? God forgive me and protect me.
Nettie Mae retreated to the kitchen table. She sank back down on her chair, trembling, her body gone cold. Now and then, dark feathers drifted past the window. The girl was plucking her kill, preparing the carcass in the yard. Nettie Mae was grateful for that small mercy, too. She didn’t think she could watch the Bemis girl at her work now, going about her task as dispassionately as one might sweep a floor or wash a dish. Yet though she couldn’t see it, Nettie Mae couldn’t help but imagine the work being done in her yard. Ropes of innards pulled from open flesh, still warm with life. Her mind dwelt again on what she had seen out there beside the coop. The slack way the rooster’s wings had unfolded just before the twitch of the girl’s hand. The calm acceptance, an inevitable death. And that stream of blood pooling on the hard-packed earth. Substance must have bled, too. A hot red flood cooling, congealing around an unmoving body.
The kitchen door swung open so suddenly, Nettie Mae gasped. The girl smiled as she had done when she’d carried in the water. Nettie Mae turned away so she couldn’t see the rooster’s carcass—the frank whiteness of the stripped body, the limp bounce of useless wings. The girl made quick work with her knife, and when Nettie Mae heard the soft splash of meat and bones falling into the kettle, she exhaled with relief and allowed herself to look at the Bemis girl once more.
The girl stood at the drain board, wiping her hands with a damp towel. Without looking up, she said, “Soup’s coming up to a nice simmer already, and with that chicken meat, it’ll be good and hearty. But if you’re still feeling shaky, some nice hot tea with sugar or honey will be just the thing. Tea will be ready before the soup’s done, anyway. Have you got a teakettle and some leaves? I can go out and fetch more water—”
“I can do it myself,” Nettie Mae snapped. “I don’t need you hanging about. Meddling.”
“I ain’t bothered.” The girl hung her towel over the drain board to dry. “You’ve been busy for days now, Mrs. Webber. You might as well rest for a spell. Let me carry the burden.”
“I can accomplish more than you can even when I’m tired out. I’ve seen you out there in the fields, mooning and daydreaming instead of doing a proper share of work on your family’s farm. You’re lazy. Good for nothing. Don’t think I haven’t noticed your sloth, girl, even if your mother hasn’t.”
“You don’t like me much, do you?” The girl sounded amused.
“I can’t think why I should.”
“I can think of plenty of reasons why you should.”
Nettie Mae drew herself up, cheeks hot with indignation. “Count on you, girl, to speak to an elder with such appalling disrespect.”
“Don’t you know my name, Mrs. Webber?”
Nettie Mae blinked, startled out of all her anger. Would nothing put the child off? Had she no instinct for fear? It was unnatural, the way she simply looked at the world—observed it and accepted it, without reacting to its ceaseless affronts, its endless dangers.
Nettie Mae could think of no response.
“You never call me anything but ‘girl,’” the girl said.
“Of course I know your name.” Nettie Mae forced herself to speak it. She wouldn’t be bested by this layabout chit—not in her own home. “Beulah.” And as soon as she’d spoken the Bemis girl’s name, the fear lifted, replaced by scorn. “If you want to know why I dislike you so, maybe that’s the reason: your name.”
“What’s the matter with my name?” Rather than waiting for Nettie Mae’s response, Beulah took a broom from the pantry and began sweeping the hearth—without haste, with an unfocused, hazy smile. The same way she did everything. “My name’s from the Bible. Did you know that, Mrs. Webber?”
“Oh, I know it, all right. If I were the type to gamble—which I’m not, I assure you—I’d wager that I know far more about the Bible than you do.”
She would also have wagered that this fearless child had had little in the way of religious schooling. What else could one expect from the daughter of Cora Bemis? And what else could explain Beulah’s uncanny confidence? It was plain the girl feared nothing—not even death, as her unnatural display at the chicken coop had proved. The first thing the Bible taught was to fear God, and once a body feared God, the remainder of proper human cautions flowed down like water. Nothing could preserve a soul from fear or sin but the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“My pa named me,” Beulah said. The broom scratched patiently across the bricks of the hearth. “He always told me it’s a name from the Bible, but I never found my name in my ma’s Bible when I went looking for it.”
“You don’t open a Bible to search for names. You read it to learn God’s word.”
“Well, Beulah is a word I ain’t found yet, but my pa said it means ‘married to the land.’ Or maybe ‘the wedded land’; I can’t exactly recall.”
“Your father sounds as foolish as I expected him to be,” Nettie Mae said. “The word—and your name, girl—comes from Baal, the name of a false god. Enemy of the true and living God. It’s a name for a sorceress, a witch. A necromancer.”
Beulah glanced up from her sweeping. “What’s a necromancer?”
Nettie Mae thought of the rooster’s limp wi
ngs and suppressed a shudder. “Someone who meddles with what they shouldn’t: The unholy. The dead.”
Beulah tipped her head to one side. That look of dull surprise amounted to more emotion than Nettie Mae had ever seen from the girl. “Are all dead things unholy, Mrs. Webber?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But why? Everything dies, sooner or later, as a matter of course. Why would God decide that a matter of course is unholy?”
Bread and cheese sat like millstones in Nettie Mae’s stomach. Everyone died, sooner or later, just as the girl had said. And Nettie Mae had seen more death than any woman ought to see. Yet mundane as the end was, still her heart pounded at the thought of her own death. Staring back at Beulah—who leaned at her ease on the upright broom, waiting for a reply—Nettie Mae couldn’t help but feel that her own death was perilously close. Reaching for her with cold black hands.
She swallowed, struggling to quell a rising tide of her fear. Despite her faith, despite her hope for salvation, a dark and featureless eternity struck real terror into Nettie Mae’s heart. For there was some part of her, she knew—she had always known—that couldn’t quite believe what the Bible said about death, or the peace of Heaven waiting just beyond its inscrutable threshold. The promise of Heaven couldn’t be true, couldn’t be real; for if it was true, then God was unjust. There had never been a man who had lived his life so assiduously as Substance Webber. He was a paragon of virtue, meting out his every action, his every thought, in strict accordance with Scripture. Except for his dalliance with Cora, Substance had never sinned. Nor had he suffered the least affront to order, to perfection, to God’s laws in his home or in his presence.
And God had never made a man less deserving of eternal peace than Nettie Mae’s dead husband. If Heaven had thrown open its gates to Substance, then the very idea of Heaven was a mockery of justice.
Trembling, Nettie Mae said, “Don’t you know it’s very bad to speak of the Lord so vainly? If I were your mother, I’d wash your mouth out with soap.”
Beulah shrugged and resumed her sweeping. “Anyhow, Mrs. Webber, you needn’t be afraid that Clyde will die.”
“I’m not afraid of it. Not anymore.”
The girl peered at her through a hanging lock of her limp hair. Another smile—she seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of them—passed fleetingly over Beulah’s face. It stung Nettie Mae. There was too much sight in the girl’s confidence, too much knowing. Beulah possessed far more wisdom than a girl of thirteen years was entitled to. And Nettie Mae didn’t like to think that the girl saw more of her soul than Nettie Mae saw herself.
She snapped at Beulah, “You’re just a stupid child. A witless prairie rat. You know nothing of me—or my heart, or my fears. And you certainly know nothing of Clyde. How can you say whether he is safe from harm?”
Beulah straightened, grinning, almost laughing. She faced Nettie Mae without a twitch of concern. “I’m a sorceress, ain’t I? That’s what my name means, so you said. Maybe I talked to the dead, and they told me Clyde wasn’t to come and dwell among them. Not just yet, anyway.”
Chilled and sickened by the girl’s audacity, Nettie Mae leaned back in her chair until it creaked under the strain.
Beulah swept ash and crumbs into a neat pile, returned the broom to the pantry, then took the slop pail from beside the door and went humming out into the yard to feed the pigs. Nettie Mae was left alone to wonder whether Beulah was being impudent or merely speaking the truth.
CORA
The warp of the homesteading life was monotony, isolation its weft. The prairie was never silent, for the wind moved ceaselessly, moaning hollow and cold around the chimney and shaking an endless sea of grass with a low, sinister hiss. During warmer months, crickets and cicadas filled the air with their monotonous drone, a sound that worked its way down into a body, filling the limbs with leaden weight and deadening the mind with its hypnotic hum. Fall rains roared against the house. Hailstones beat the earth in winter, even when deep snow should have deadened all sound. In any blessed respite, any short spell of what should have been silence, the cattle issued mournful cries or the thrushes sang, loud and relentless, just before the sun rose, depriving Cora of sleep. It was always the same, season in and season out, day after long and weary day.
Of course, the city was never silent, either. But the noises of Saint Louis were different. The rattle of wagons, the clamor of human voices, the distant churn of industry all combined into one agreeable chorus, a music of fellowship and life. Cora could still recall the church bells ringing out the hour, melting long and mellow across the town. She had often stood on the covered porch of her grandfather’s home, a girl on the verge of womanhood, one arm wrapped around a turned post, counting the tolls of the bell and listening to the city’s voice rise and fall in the spaces between the notes.
There was neither rise nor fall to the sounds of the prairie. Its murmur was constant, obtrusive, and cold, even in the summer when the sun beat down so brutally it hardened the soil and crazed it with fissures and cracks. Cold because it was the voice of the wilderness, an untamed vastness to which mankind did not belong—the borderless breadth of nature, unmapped and unmarked, the indifferent mire into which Cora had been sinking for eight long years. If only the prairie would swallow her at last, she would be grateful. Close its sinister weight over her head and allow her to finally suffocate. This drawn-out agony was no sort of life—this dull and relentless struggle. She had been dying by inches from her first sight of the unpopulated grassland. She would much rather die by yards and have it over quickly.
Since she couldn’t have the sounds of the city, Cora would have given almost anything for silence. An hour or two during which she might retreat into her own thoughts or simply lie across her bed, mind blanked by relief, forgetting for a while the limitless expanse of scrubland, its emptiness, its changeless form.
The rains had ceased after nine long days, but wind was still howling from the dark throat of her kitchen hearth, and the panes of her windows ticked now and then as the prairie hurled sage twigs and grains of dust against the glass. Cora had bundled the children up in their warmest clothing and sent them outside to pull up the last of the weeds, dried stems of squashes, and spent bean vines in the garden. She had no doubt that they played more than they worked, but she gladly seized the opportunity to send them out of doors to run off their tireless energy while the chance presented itself. For her part, Cora sat beside a window taking down the hem of one of Miranda’s dresses. But it was slow work, picking at a stitch here and there. The endless lamentation of the wind pulled her away from her task and led her, time and again, into a labyrinth of bleak thoughts from which there seemed no hope of escape.
Cora watched her two young sons chase one another down the long furrows while Miranda picked late-blooming chicory flowers, faded and frail along the margins of the garden. Beyond the wattle fence, the wilderness gaped like a greedy mouth, ready to swallow the children and Cora along with them.
I can’t do this without Ernest.
Cora had avoided admitting her own vulnerability even in the privacy of thought, but she could no longer deny the truth. She was weak. She understood nothing of this life—the farm, the Bighorns, the restless sea of grass—for all she had lived in the small gray house for nigh on a decade. In all that time, she had thrown herself into motherhood, a distraction and a shield against the prairie’s hostility. For eight years, she had been content to leave to Ernest whatever happened beyond the walls of her home. Cora seldom ventured farther than the hen coop or the garden if she could avoid it. Farm and prairie alike had been her husband’s concern, her husband’s realm.
I can’t go on this way. I must have help if I’m to survive. If my children are to survive.
Beulah never shirked her duties, but she was a young girl, and distractible besides. Cora needed the aid, the presence, of grown men and women. She needed community, human voices to drown out the hungry wind. She needed the order and rea
ssurance of industry.
I will return to Saint Louis.
It was the first determined thought she’d had since accepting Ernest’s proposal in that field so many years ago, the first decision she had made on her own in a long, desolate time. It surprised her, that certainty could arrive as easily as that—naturally, as the blackbirds came down to roost in the cottonwoods at sunset.
It would take some doing, to travel so far with four children and the family’s worldly possessions. Cora must find some money if she hoped to make the trip. She must pack up the children’s clothes and the few things she wished to keep—family portraits, her good quilts and linens, the most useful tools from her kitchen. Would she find enough boxes and bags in the house and barn to carry everything away? If not, she must purchase crates in town. Then would come the task of hiring a wagon, preferably one in a train. She would not attempt to drive the family’s humble cart herself, for she must go all the way to Carbon—days to the south—if she hoped to find a train. Her recent foray into the foothills had disabused Cora of any notion that she was a skilled driver. And a woman traveling alone, with small children—Cora shuddered to think of it. The Indians would fall on her like fire from the sky. No, she must hire transport to Carbon. From there, they could take the train to Saint Louis.
And assuming I do make it back to Saint Louis, what then?
Dress, needle, and thread lowered to her lap as Cora stared unseeing through the window. She had no work, no skills, no trade. And no relations still living in the city—at least, none who would be glad of her presence. Ulysses Grant might have acknowledged her in his roundabout way, but Cora hadn’t any reason to believe the Grants of Saint Louis would accept her as one of their own, even with the letter. No one would care for her in Missouri, just as no one cared for her now on this wind-blasted plain. But surrounded by people once more, she might hope to find some work—caring for a wealthy woman’s children, perhaps. Surely she could earn enough money to scrape by.
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