One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow: A Novel

by Olivia Hawker

  Everything alive—all of it, the flat green monotony she had once thought so lifeless and unfeeling. The sky was a clear gentian blue, no stars visible by which to chart her movement, but Cora could have sworn in that moment she could feel the earth turning, rolling as slowly as a sleeper in a dream. All of it living, all—and life itself, the fact of it, its commonality, so vast and certain it made religion, even God Himself, small by comparison.

  In such a large and living world, such a conscious and speaking world, Cora knew she would drown or suffocate before she could find her way back. To society. To the place where mankind was distinct, set properly apart, the way God had intended and ordained.

  Society or your husband, the sagebrush murmured. You cannot have both. Ernest is ours; we will not let him go.

  Cora knew it was madness to answer. She couldn’t stop herself. I need my husband. I will die without him; my children will die. I am not strong enough to weather this life on my own. I haven’t the heart, haven’t the courage. Ernest knows what’s best to be done, how to be strong and survive. I cannot live without him—not here.

  Nevertheless, the grasses hissed, he is ours. We will hold him here, as our roots hold the soil. And if you take your daughter away, we will call her back to us. We will call, and she will come.

  Cora curled her fists in the pocket of her apron. To Beulah she said, “We will go to Paintrock as soon as the roads are fit to travel. And, God willing, we will leave for Saint Louis the moment your father is free. If not Saint Louis, then some other city. Carbon—I don’t care which city. But we are leaving, Beulah, and that is my final word.”

  “If we go,” Beulah said, “we must leave Clyde and Nettie Mae behind.”

  Cora turned and strode through the murmuring grass, trying to ignore the chorus of its voices. “All for the best. If you think I’ll shed a tear over parting ways with the Webbers, then you’re—”

  Cora stopped. She had very nearly said, Then you’re even madder than I thought you to be.

  Beulah scuttled after her mother, reaching for her arm, but Cora pulled away. “How will the Webbers work their land, without me to help?”

  “It’s none of my concern—not anymore.”

  “Ma, how can you say such a thing, after all their charity?”

  “I don’t care, Beulah. I’ll soon be done with Nettie Mae, and glad enough for it. I’ve weathered her temper and her evil looks all winter long, but no more. Let her hire some boys from Paintrock if she needs the help. Or let her sell the place and move away; it’s all one to me. Whatever happens to Nettie Mae, I am content to leave it in God’s hands. She will be none of my concern the moment I set foot in Paintrock.”

  Beulah fell silent, and Cora marched on through the brush. With every stride, anxiety wrapped itself more tightly around her heart until her chest felt hot, fit to burst.

  Why this fear? she asked herself, more cross than curious. What have I to fear, now that I’ve made up my mind?

  Then she slowed, stopped, and gazed around the prairie with a chill of new understanding.

  Something had changed. The sound was no longer the same—the murmur, the calling of the flycatchers. There was a new sound now, rushing, intense. Dangerous. Cora stared at the Webber house, straining to hear, struggling to understand.

  “Ma?” Beulah paused at Cora’s side. “What’s the matter?”

  The flycatcher on the barn roof had gone silent—flown. Horses milled in the paddock, whickering with alarm. The children were still playing in the slanted blue shadow of the sod-brick house, and Nettie Mae was busy in the yard, pinning laundry to a line. A peaceful, ordinary scene, welcome in the springtime sun. Yet something had gone wrong.

  Then Cora understood—she saw. Smoke was rising from the chimney, but it was too dense, too dark, rising much too fast.

  She seized Beulah by the wrist and ran.

  NETTIE MAE

  We’ve finished here, and none too soon. My home will be my own again.

  Spring’s emergence had cheered Nettie Mae considerably. Even the dampness of the boys’ shirts felt warm and welcoming as she lifted them from her basket and pinned them to the line. The winter past had been the hardest Nettie Mae had ever known; she prayed God would never again see fit to send such a trial. But now, with the afternoon sun angling over the horse shed, falling gently upon her cheek, she felt some part of her old self give way, caving at the center like the hard crust of a melting snowdrift. The thaw had released her from winter confinement, and now something vital swelled inside, something saturated by the runoff and nurtured by the sun. The sensation rather put her in mind of her pregnancies, though of course she wasn’t with child now. No, this tentative, fragile newness was something entirely her own—of her, belonging to no one else. The hard, unyielding shell that had surrounded her spirit for so many years had softened and eased. Furled roots and stem tested their confines, probing into hopeful space. What readied itself to grow inside Nettie Mae would be something new, if not better.

  The boys giggled over their wooden soldiers where they lay sprawled in the newly green grass, the grass cropped by contented sheep. Nettie Mae smiled as she listened to that simple music; her eyes misted, quite against her will, and she ducked her face to scrub the tears against one shoulder. How long had it been since she had indulged in something so sweet? She snapped the wrinkles out of Charles’s best blue shirt and secured it to the line. One of Miranda’s little dresses came up next from the basket, all ruffles and yellow flowers. Nettie Mae pinned the frock to the line, then lingered over the pleats, arranging them carefully even though the wind would soon blow them loose.

  She told me I would have a family again—that girl. That strange, slow-talking girl.

  Caution surged within. Nettie Mae swallowed her hope, setting pragmatic sense in its place.

  You’re getting old, Nettie Mae; don’t be a fool. Don’t set your heart on what can never be.

  She resumed hanging the wash, determined to think only of the task at hand. But she couldn’t help gazing up to the barn and to the pasture beyond. Numerous and thriving, the sheep herd grazed between clumps of sage. The sow in her pen was already growing fat with a new litter of piglets. The hayfield looked like a great square of green chenille, soft and inviting in its garb of new growth. The land was ripe with promise. Surely it wasn’t beyond the realm of good sense to believe that some man—a good man, better than Substance had been—might agree to wed Nettie Mae for the farm alone.

  In the next moment, Nettie Mae shook her head at the futility of the dream. The land was Clyde’s now. It had to be his alone. He was young, with hope for a good life ahead. Nettie Mae would never strip her last remaining child of his inheritance.

  Where would you find a man, anyhow? Who would come courting all this way, even if he knew you were here . . . and what man would choose you, of all the women in this world?

  She bit her lip and hung three more shirts in rapid succession. The dream was a foolish one; Nettie Mae could see that now. Such disappointments were the least one could expect when one listened to witches—or whatever that Beulah girl was. Now that starvation was no longer an imminent threat, Nettie Mae would send the whole Bemis clan packing, back to their own house and land, where they belonged. She would miss Miranda. The little boys, too, but—

  “Nettie Mae!” The shout carried high and hard across the fields.

  She parted two damp shirts with her hands, staring toward the pasture. The spectacle of Cora and her daughter in full, panicked flight struck her mute with shock. She hadn’t seen either of them run since that dreadful day of the flood. The sight struck her as bizarre, now—Cora had always seemed too delicate for such wild displays of haste and Beulah far too careless and lazy. Yet there they both were, tearing over the field hand in hand, each carrying their skirts so high that their petticoats flashed blinding white in the sun.

  “What in God’s good Creation—”

  Beulah was screeching, over and over, though Nettie Mae
could make no sense of the noise. Had the girl blundered into a hornets’ nest or been bitten by a rattler? But if she had suffered snakebite, why in the Lord’s name was she running?

  Then Nettie Mae realized the girl wasn’t merely screaming. She was shouting a word.

  “Fire!”

  Slowly—numb and distant with terror—Nettie Mae turned to face her home. But no flames licked behind the windows; she could make out no signs of smoldering, no threads of smoke wending their way between the bricks of gray sod. But the cry came again, piercing through the drowsy lull of afternoon.

  “Fire! Fire, Nettie Mae!”

  The boys glanced up from their play, looking to Nettie Mae for reassurance. From somewhere near the lilacs, she could hear Miranda whining in wordless apprehension.

  Nettie Mae turned to stare at the barn, but it, too, stood sound, as did the long shed and the horses’ shelters. She shook her head vaguely at Cora and Beulah, but still they came on, both shouting now, both screaming with urgent fear.

  Then something shifted, the breeze or Nettie Mae’s clouded senses, and she caught the smell of smoke. Thick, hot, appallingly present—she gasped and tasted the sting of it on her tongue. Nettie Mae darted a quick, knowing glance up to the roof of the house, to the chimney. How long had it been since anyone had brushed the chimney out? A winter’s worth of creosote had coated the insides of the narrow brick passage. More than that; a year’s worth, for hadn’t Substance cleaned it the previous spring?

  God have mercy!

  Nettie Mae had seen a chimney fire once, when she was a very young girl. It had been at the home of her family’s nearest neighbor, and though the fire in the hearth was quickly extinguished, the flames had found their way up into the roof beams and spread outward from the chimney bricks, smoldering where no one could see. Two nights later, when the neighbors had thought the worst long past—while they were sleeping soundly in their beds—the roof had caught ablaze, ignited by some secret ember that had burned its way out from the chimney into the rafters or the attic.

  Never would Nettie Mae forget the sight of that farmhouse burning across the cold Wisconsin night. Her father, who seldom slept well, had noticed the ruddy glow when he’d risen to pace the sitting room, as was his late-night custom. He had roused his own family first, then ridden his fastest horse bareback over the snowy fields—no time to waste with a saddle—and thrown open the neighbors’ door, shouting to wake them. By dawn, the house had burned to the ground. Everyone had come out on their own two feet or carried in men’s arms. But not every life had been spared. Susanna, the youngest child—a girl of Nettie Mae’s age, and her dearest playmate—had never wakened at all. Susanna’s room had been nearest the source of the flames. She had choked to death on the smoke, still lying in her bed, before anyone had known of the peril.

  The pounding of feet wrenched Nettie Mae back to the present. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Cora and Beulah rounding the long shed. They had let go of one another’s hands and now flew with their skirts raised well above their knees; never in her life had Nettie Mae seen women run so swiftly. At the edge of the pasture, Clyde had thrown down his sickle and was running, too, but he wouldn’t reach the house for some time yet.

  Clyde doesn’t know how to put out a chimney fire anyhow, Nettie Mae thought dully. Then, with a long, paralyzing chill, Neither do I.

  She looked around the yard with dim perplexity. Why did her wits move so slowly now, when she needed them most? Miranda was half-crouched under the green-budded lilac trees, her dolls forgotten in the grass. Nettie Mae held out one hand, a summoning gesture, and Miranda tottered at once toward her. She turned to the boys, calling, “Come here at once, Benjamin, Charles. At once, do you hear?” At least her voice was smooth and controlled, if her thoughts were not.

  By the time Cora and Beulah reached her, Nettie Mae had gathered the children against her skirt. They clung to her, wide eyed and frightened, whimpering at the commotion.

  “Chimney fire,” Cora panted. Her body had pitched forward at the waist; she braced her hands against her thighs as if to hold herself more or less upright while she heaved for breath. Her face was near as red as a peeled beet, all her fine chestnut curls in disarray.

  Nettie Mae stared at Cora. Her mouth had gone dry. She could feel the color draining from her cheeks, feel herself going cold with panic and indecision. The face of her long-dead playmate emerged from memory with sudden, vicious clarity. She remembered how Susanna had looked lying in her coffin—pale and small, her pretty golden braids dulled by the soot. “I . . . I don’t know what to do.”

  Cora’s eyes locked with Nettie Mae’s and hardened. The woman drew one long, steadying breath. Then she straightened deliberately—unwilted. “We must put the fire out. Now,” she said. “Or it will spread.”

  “I know.” Nettie Mae’s voice rose to a frantic wail. It wasn’t the sort of sound she was accustomed to making. Ringing in her own ears, the cry only frightened her all the more. “I know, I know!” She clutched the children closer about her legs. At least they are all alive. It was the only clear thought she had, and it repeated itself in a maniacal rhythm. All alive. They are all alive.

  Cora took Nettie Mae by the shoulder; the woman’s thumb pressed hard against her collarbone, digging into the sensitive flesh just below. Cora had never touched her before, except by cringing accident, and Nettie Mae hadn’t suspected the woman could harbor such strength in her hands. She spoke, low and commanding. “Get hold of your wits, Nettie Mae, and follow me. Benjamin, Charles, Miranda—you will all remain with Beulah. Keep them away from the house, Beulah. Take them to the barn and make them stay put. When you meet Clyde, send him to me with his tallest ladder.”

  Beulah shepherded the children toward the barn; Nettie Mae felt their small hands tearing reluctantly from her skirt. Then Cora hooked her arm through Nettie Mae’s and hauled her toward the house.

  “I’ll . . . I’ll pump water,” Nettie Mae said.

  “Water won’t do much good. It will take far too long to pump enough from the well and carry it inside. By then, the fire will have spread, if it hasn’t already. Dry soil would do the trick, but there isn’t any dry soil now. It would make a dreadful mess, anyhow.”

  Cora marched up the back steps and threw open the door. Smoke hung in a thick, brown haze along the ceiling. Flames leaped and billowed in the hearth; the heat battered Nettie Mae’s face, filling the kitchen with sinister orange light.

  “The fire hasn’t spread beyond the hearth yet,” Cora shouted above the roar. “But how far up the chimney it has gone, I cannot tell. Salt,” she added briskly. “Salt will do. Come and help me lift that big sack of preserving salt in the pantry.”

  Together they skirted the hearth and made their way to the narrow confines of the pantry. Nettie Mae seized a corner of the salt bag and leaned all her weight against the burden. It slid only a few inches along the pantry floor. Cora squeezed in beside her. Sweat was already beading on her smooth, perfect brow. Cora’s fingers dug into the sack; Nettie Mae saw one of her nails bend back at a sickening angle, but Cora neither complained nor released her grip.

  “Now,” Cora said. “Pull!”

  They dragged the salt sack foot by agonizing foot out of the pantry, into the kitchen. Cora maneuvered it ever closer to the hearth. Heat assailed them like the whiplashes of Hell, but Cora never flinched. She backed away from the fire just long enough to retrieve a deep mixing bowl from its place above the drain board. Then she dipped up a load of salt and threw it onto the fire.

  Nettie Mae had expected a hiss, as when water flashes to steam, but the fire merely crackled and popped. For one terrible moment, she feared the salt would have no effect. But a billow of smoke gushed from the hearth, and when it cleared, Nettie Mae could see that the worst of the flames had been smothered under a great heap of white. Cora threw another bowlful of salt; only a few small flames licked up the sides of the chimney.

  Cora dropped to her knees befo
re the hearth, tossing handfuls of salt at any burning patch of creosote she could reach. The smoke thinned to a gentle stream, but the smell of it still hung thickly in the hot confines of the kitchen. Nettie Mae reeled back, pressing a hand to her mouth, resisting the urge to vomit. She didn’t know whether the foul sensation arose from the noxious, biting smoke, or from sheer, devastating relief.

  “Open the sashes.” Cora’s face was shaded by soot, streaked here and there where sweat had run down temple and forehead. But she remained where she was, throwing out handfuls of salt now and then, leaning into that dreadful pocket of hellish heat to peer up into the chimney.

  Nettie Mae did as she was told, propping the sashes of both kitchen windows wide open. She removed her apron and waved it at the ceiling, chasing smoke from the kitchen as best she could.

  “Mother!” Clyde shouted from the yard. “Mother, where are you?”

  Nettie Mae staggered to the open door and leaned heavily against its frame. She drank fresh air in great, shuddering gasps. Clyde had dropped a long ladder in the yard; Nettie Mae could see twin tracks through grass and mud where he had dragged it, all the way from the long shed to the stoop. He leaped up the steps two at a time and crushed Nettie Mae in his arms.

  “Thank God,” Clyde said. “Thank God you’re all right.”

  She pushed away from his embrace. “Chimney fire. We’ve put out the flames in the hearth, but there may be more in the chimney itself. There must be more.”

  Cora appeared at her elbow. “Is that ladder long enough to get you up onto the roof, Clyde? Good. Set it up and climb.”

  “We must get water up to him,” Nettie Mae said, “now that the immediate danger has passed. How shall we do it?”

  “Rope,” Cora answered. “Where will I find rope?”

  Clyde jumped down from the steps and lifted his ladder, swinging it ponderously toward the sod wall. He spoke over his shoulder as he worked. “In the long shed, on a shelf below the table. The length with a stripe of red in the fibers is good and long. It should reach all the way up to the rooftop.”