Clyde and Beulah parted company; the boy turned his back on the moon and drifted toward the house at a slow, thoughtful pace, hands deep in the pockets of his trousers. Nettie Mae slipped into the kitchen, cognizant of nothing save a diffuse gratitude that at least Clyde was returning to his own bed, not following that girl through the moonlight toward an irrevocable tryst. There was still time to save him from ruin, but only if she acted quickly.
Nettie Mae didn’t wait up for Clyde. Her anger at seeing her authority betrayed would only cause her to go cold and sarcastic, and no good would come from such a confrontation. There was little she could say to Clyde, anyhow; she put no faith in her voice, which felt small and weak, a timid thing cringing inside her chest. Instead, she took her candle and climbed the stairs to her room. She dressed for bed, and by the time she had washed her face and hands, she heard the kitchen door open, heard Clyde’s boots pacing near the sitting-room hearth. She stood beside her window for a long time, listening to her son, who walked the floor below. Nettie Mae watched the moon rise ponderously over the cottonwoods, bright and vast and knowing.
At breakfast, Clyde ate heartily, but Nettie Mae only picked at her food. She would not speak of the vision that had haunted her all the long night through: the scene she had witnessed at the pasture’s edge. When Clyde left to tend his sheep, Nettie Mae lingered near the kitchen window, waiting until her son was well occupied in the fold. Then she crossed the field to the Bemis farm.
Best to have this business done and over with before Clyde even notices I’ve gone.
That cursed, unnatural moon loomed in her thoughts, coloring with a sinister light the memory of Clyde and Beulah together. As she pressed toward the neighboring land, resolve to end this trouble once and for all warred with an unexpected weight that dragged at her heart, making every step leaden and reluctant. Nettie Mae knew what she must do now—the course she must insist upon, if Clyde’s future and happiness were to be preserved. Yet there was no relish in the work. How strange, to realize she had come to enjoy Cora’s company, and she would miss the woman when she had gone. Yet since the night of the chimney fire, when Nettie Mae had confessed her deepest wounds to Cora and found unconditional sympathy—even the love of sisterhood—she had come to understand how dearly she had missed true fellowship and what its lack had cost her. Bitterly did Nettie Mae regret what must come next. She even mourned. But she didn’t fear the loss of a friend as sorely as she feared the ruination of Clyde’s future.
All too soon, Nettie Mae reached the Bemis property. She passed the garden, which was beginning to thrive as the days and nights warmed. She could hear the children playing back behind the house, and she sighed, grateful the little ones hadn’t seen her coming. If they had, they would have run to her with greetings, eager to show the little treasures they’d found—smooth stones and bits of wood that seemed to have faces in the grain. Nettie Mae would miss the children most of all. They had brought unexpected joy to her life and shown her just how bleak and colorless her days had been before they had come to dwell beneath her roof.
Slowly, reluctantly, Nettie Mae ascended the porch steps. The door swung open before she could knock; Cora must have heard her coming. She greeted Nettie Mae with a smile and a damp towel in one hand; she tossed the towel casually over her shoulder as she held the door wide.
“How good it is to see you this morning,” Cora said. “Come in.”
Nettie Mae smiled rather tremulously, following Cora to her kitchen. She sat at the table and accepted a cup of chicory-root tea. Cora sank down in the chair opposite with a cup of her own, already sighing in contentment, eager for whatever convivial chatter she thought Nettie Mae had brought along.
Nettie Mae turned the cup on its saucer, not certain how or where to begin. The cup and saucer were ordinary—simple white ironstone without any adornment. “Not the president’s china?”
Cora flinched, and Nettie Mae was assailed by instantaneous guilt. She had tried to keep her voice neutral. Still, it was little wonder that mention of the china elicited a painful wince. The last time they had spoken of the president’s extravagant gift, Nettie Mae had insisted no one would believe Cora about its provenance.
Cora recovered herself smoothly. “No; I’ve kept those dishes crated up all this time.”
“Are you still planning to sell them?” Nettie Mae looked up from her tea. She held Cora’s eye. “Still planning to move to Paintrock?”
The significance of Nettie Mae’s tone wasn’t lost on Cora. She blushed and looked away. With one forefinger and an absent air, she traced the cracks of the wooden tabletop. At length, Cora answered. “I suppose the road is dry enough now that we may make the trip to town.”
“Yes. I intend to send Clyde with the wagon soon. I’ve plenty of spinning to sell, and I must replenish my pantry after such a long winter. If . . .” Nettie Mae faltered. She swallowed hard, struggling to steady her nerves. “If you really do intend to move to Paintrock, it’s better done sooner than later.”
Cora sat in silence for a time. The rosiness of welcome had faded from her cheeks, leaving only a pallor behind. Nettie Mae sipped her tea purely for the distraction, for the excuse not to meet Cora’s eye. She tasted nothing of the chicory, its earthy spice. She tasted nothing but ashes.
Cora sighed again, but this time it was deep and sad. “It is best to go, I suppose. I still don’t know whether Ernest will take me back as his wife, or whether he will come back here to the farm without me. I thought if I stayed here, I might have greater hope of atoning for what I’ve done and rejoining him again. I thought if I could strengthen myself—make myself into the kind of woman who can care for a farm, care for her husband’s land . . .”
Cora’s hands disappeared from the tabletop. Into the apron pocket, Nettie Mae assumed. By now, she had come to know all the woman’s little gestures and habits—the concessions Cora made to uncertainty or fear. And how not? Friendship bred familiarity. Sisters could read one another like open books.
“I had hoped,” Cora went on, “with affairs easier between we two . . . And Beulah and Clyde have started the garden so splendidly—”
“About them.” Nettie Mae cleared her throat and straightened abruptly. The old rigidity had returned to her, the stiff armor of resolve. “It’s because of Beulah and Clyde that I think you ought to go, Cora. You must go. I won’t have Clyde’s life endangered by his lust for your daughter.” Heat rose suddenly in Nettie Mae’s chest, a fire of much-needed outrage. And fear, too—far greater than the outrage. It was all she could do to keep the venom from her voice. “I saw them, Cora. Your daughter and my son. Kissing. Last night.”
“Oh.” Cora covered her mouth with a delicate hand.
“I devoutly hope that you have already spoken to your daughter about . . . the things a woman must know. If you haven’t, now is the time. It may even be too late, for all I can tell, though I pray there is still time. I know only one thing for certain: Clyde and Beulah may no longer remain together. They mustn’t work as they have done, side by side, always in one another’s company. It isn’t proper behavior, anyhow, for a girl to toil on the farm as Beulah has done all these months: mending fences, culling the sheep, goodness knows what else. I grant you, it couldn’t be helped, our circumstances being what they were—the loss of our men, and that loss coming upon us all so suddenly. But we have gathered our wits now. We are back on stable ground. It’s time for both our families to return to propriety, as much as we are able. That’s why—” Nettie Mae hesitated, for the words caught in her throat. She had to force them from her tongue. “That’s why I believe your plan to move to Paintrock is a sound one. The sooner you set about that business, the better for us all.”
“But next winter,” Cora said. “How will you manage, with only yourself and Clyde to do the work?”
“We’ve the summer and fall ahead of us yet—plenty of time to plan. I’ll take a young man from town. Maybe two, if one can be convinced to sleep on a cot in the kitch
en. That Wilbur Christianson had a likely look, and Clyde seems to enjoy his company. Yes, I think that will be just what Clyde needs: friends of his own age, respectable men who can be his chums until . . .” She broke off, rotating the cup on its saucer. “Until he’s old enough to go courting.”
He was old enough now, she knew. There was no sense denying what she had seen. It was Nettie Mae who felt unready, she who resisted the change. Perhaps she would never be able to accept losing her son, no matter when the separation came, no matter what thief stole him away—a woman or God Himself. Either way, she would lose him.
One year longer, Nettie Mae prayed, stiff and miserable in her chair, refusing to look her friend in the eye. One more year as a mother, before my last child leaves me for a family of his own.
Cora spoke tentatively, breaking into Nettie Mae’s thoughts. “Do you really think I ought to leave? Is it truly for the best?”
Irritation flared up in Nettie Mae’s stomach—at the woman’s weakness, her inability to decide, for God’s sake, to be mistress of her own life. Where was the calm air of command Cora had exhibited the night of the fire? Why did she hem and haw now, all but pleading for Nettie Mae to make the choice on her behalf? Oh, Cora Bemis belonged in a town, surely enough—in a city. She hadn’t the strength for this life. She needed a man to guide her, to dictate every moment, every thought.
“I really do think you ought to move,” Nettie Mae said, wondering where she found the self-control to maintain a pleasant tone.
“I suppose it’s for the best, then.” Cora rose from her chair, as slowly as a crone, as if Nettie Mae’s words had the power to wither.
Nettie Mae also pushed herself up. Her knees trembled. For a long moment, the two women faced one another in the Bemis kitchen, still and silent among the sunbeams that danced with bright flecks of dust—an absurdly cheerful sight. The children laughed outside.
“It has been the greatest surprise of my life,” Cora ventured, “to find companionship in you. Dare I call it friendship?”
Nettie Mae kept her eyes on the tabletop and the cup of chicory tea—gone cold. “I never expected to find a friend in you, either.”
“I still feel as if I don’t deserve the kindness you showed me all those long months of winter, the kindness you show me still.”
Perplexed, frustrated by her own feelings—by her inability to name them, let alone express them—Nettie Mae turned her back on Cora and headed for the door. She paused at the threshold just long enough to say, “I’ll speak to Clyde this evening, and learn when he can take the wagon north.” Then she crossed the yard briskly, before the children could call out.
The walk back to her own home felt longer than it ever had before. Every step dragged through dew-damp grass; the sagebrush caught at Nettie Mae’s skirt with clawed fingers and held her, slowing her down. The land felt desolate, though it was spring and new growth flourished everywhere she looked. Never in her life had she felt so isolated, so small, and the prospect of a lonely year to come—and all the many years after, without company of any kind—stretched out before her, all the way to the flat and distant horizon.
This is right, this is proper, the decision I have made. I would do anything for Clyde’s sake, even cut off my own hand.
Cora may have proved a friend of sorts, but she was still a woman shadowed by shame, a woman whose morals were loose enough to mire her in sin. Her daughter was cut from the same cloth. Wasn’t it always the case, that children followed in the footsteps of their parents? What came before would always come again.
Though the spring day was warm and sweet with the taste of nectar, Nettie Mae remembered the bite of frost, the first snow of autumn. She remembered the dark furrow dragged through the snow, the coyote’s tail lashing as it struggled at the end of Clyde’s rope. She wrapped her arms tightly around her body, but Nettie Mae couldn’t stop herself from shuddering.
CORA
The frogs still chorused on the riverbank by the time Cora found herself in the garden, among the green and growing things, half-blinded by the bright morning sun.
She had hardly known what to do with herself after Nettie Mae left. For at least an hour, she drifted about the house, restlessly taking up one task after another, then abandoning her work again—the mending, the wash, dusting more cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. She had wandered out into the garden with a vague intention of pulling up weeds from among the newly sprouted onions, but now she stood as if stunned, staring dully at the plants around her feet, listening to the distant frogs.
So Beulah had been kissing Clyde. God send that the girl had done nothing more.
Cora could have cursed herself; she ought to have known this was coming, should have suspected it once Beulah and Clyde had begun working so closely side by side. She had no reason to disbelieve Nettie Mae’s accusation; Clyde and Beulah did spend far too much time in one another’s company—more time even than courting couples spent. And Beulah was growing up; there was no delaying the inevitable.
Cora bent, slow and clumsy with surprise. She pulled up a handful of weeds and cast them aside. Then she straightened and sighed, uncertain what to do next, what she ought to say to Beulah—if anything at all.
Beulah had lived on the farm nearly all her years. Surely the girl understood the workings of life, how lambs and calves and babies were created. What a woman needed to know, as Nettie Mae had so delicately said, was not the mechanics of the physical act, but rather the implications. The importance of reputation—of maintaining chastity so that no one may ever accuse you of wrongdoing, so you will never be tempted to do wrong.
My daughter cannot understand the importance of reputation out here, so far away from the world. She needs the town—needs an ordinary life. Nettie Mae was correct about that.
Nettie Mae was usually correct, about everything.
Cora could only wish God had endowed her with the strength and resolve he had given to Nettie Mae. What she wouldn’t have given for a fraction of her neighbor’s self-confidence, the power that allowed Nettie Mae to live in isolation, without fear or sadness. Even before Cora had dwelt beneath the Webber roof, she had admired her neighbor’s ability to meet each day with the same fearless mien. True, Cora hadn’t known Nettie Mae well before the disaster, the fateful—and fatal—business with Substance. In all the years past, her conversations with Nettie Mae had been cordial but brief. A visit to the Webber farm to trade a few wheels of cheese for a good hank of yarn or a jaunt across the pasture to borrow a little sugar until the next trip up to town. But even in the smallest of interactions, Nettie Mae had seemed an edifice like the mountains above, constant and unshakable, never succumbing to any hardship—not even time.
Time had caught up with Cora. And with her girl.
We must go with Clyde when he drives to Paintrock, Cora decided, and there we will remain. And if Ernest would rather have the farm than me—well, so be it. I must think of Beulah now, not my own heart. The girl still has hope for a future and a good reputation, so long as her mother doesn’t spoil it. When we reach the town, we’ll take up at the church—or in some charitable woman’s home—until we’ve sold the dishes and can rent a place of our own.
Cora wouldn’t allow herself to consider what might happen if there were no homes to let in Paintrock. It had been well over a year since she had visited the town herself. Her recollection of its more populated streets was vague at best, and kept merging with memories of Saint Louis—the cobble streets, the flat sidewalks that always kept one’s boots and hem dry in a rainstorm. Most of all, the homes, the families everywhere. Hundreds of homes—thousands. She would have had no trouble finding a suitable home to rent in Saint Louis. She could only pray that Paintrock would afford some likely shelter, and hope her decision was a sound one.
Cora abandoned the garden, as she had abandoned countless other tasks that morning. She returned to her kitchen and stepped into the pantry. There stood the sealed crate, at the rear of the narrow space, below
the shelves that held the remainder of last autumn’s preserves. She approached the crate slowly, frowning with what might have been caution, and laid a hand on its lid. Even after deciding to remain on the farm and keep good company with Nettie Mae, Cora hadn’t unpacked her china. The crate had remained untouched, nailed securely shut. Perhaps God had whispered in her ear that she must leave, no matter what her heart now desired—leave for the sake of her children, and for Nettie Mae’s sake.
Yet this newfound certainty that she must leave Nettie Mae behind, just when a delicate and lovely peace had grown between them, filled Cora with heartrending regret. Their friendship was still new, tentative, but she had sensed the possibility of a greater bond, a greater love to come. Something small and fragile had unfurled in the space between them, nurtured by the laughter and camaraderie they had shared in the days since the chimney fire. For eight years, Cora had hungered for society. Now that she had found it, she didn’t wish to leave the familiar gray farmhouse after all. Paintrock might be home to hundreds of people, but they were all strangers to Cora. And Nettie Mae was . . . if not a friend, then at least a trusted neighbor.
Restless, Cora left the pantry and the waiting crate. She paced the kitchen, then her cramped sitting room, and found herself at the window, staring over the pasture toward the sod house. That house had once seemed distant and cold, as had Nettie Mae herself. Now it was the rock of Cora’s life, her only bulwark against isolation.
If I were as brave as Nettie Mae, I could do this without fear.
But Cora was not brave. She wouldn’t delude herself with pretense. She was what God had made her, nothing more. If the Creator had granted her a small portion of Nettie Mae’s courage, then Cora would never have fallen prey to her own lonely heart. She would have sent Substance packing when he approached her with his shocking proposition. Ernest wouldn’t have landed in the jail, with his soul forever burdened by the sin of murder.
One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow: A Novel Page 42
