Black Hills (9781101559116)

by Thompson, Rod

  Cormac still had an unrealistic hope that if he just kept digging and ignored the newcomers in the wagon they would leave him be, but that was simply not going to happen.

  “My name is Gertrude Schwartz,” said the soft voice above him, heavy with an unfamiliar accent. “I’m Lainey’s mother.” She pronounced it Schwartz. He had ignored the rustle of her dress as she approached in a weak hope that she would turn back and leave. Not going to happen, he realized dismally.

  The voice did not fit the strong face looking down at him: dark and piercing eyes over a hawk-like nose and high cheekbones with a small mouth formed with leathery skin. It would take a strong woman to wear a face like that and she pulled it off. Her body was stout and solid with no sign of soft flab, and she appeared to be comfortable inside of it. Soft eyes looked out from a craggy face. The sympathetic smile she wore was trying hard to make her face handsome and very nearly succeeded. In spite of what Cormac knew she was about to say, he found himself drawn to her.

  “I’m Cormac Lynch,” he answered finally

  “We wanted to come and thank you for rescuing Lainey,” she said, “and to apologize for her attitude. From what she told us, I am sure she treated you right poorly. She can be downright obnoxious when she puts her mind to it. She felt the way you dealt with the situation was very extreme.

  “My husband and I both told her that for one boy to rescue her from four fully grown men was nothing short of amazing and would have taken extreme measures. I think she understands.” She went on, “How did you do it? Lainey said you got them all with one really loud shot. We saw the bodies still lying there. What kind of gun does that much damage in one shot . . . or was she hysterical and remembering it wrong?”

  “No, ma’am. She didn’t remember it wrong. It was one shot, ma’am, but from both barrels of a double- barreled ten-gauge shotgun at the same time.” He paused for a moment and then decided to give her both barrels, too. If she wanted to know about it, he was just the one to tell her and see how she handled it.

  “I wanted them dead and didn’t want no discussion about it,” he said.

  Her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth rose only slightly.

  “Well then, you sure went at it the right way. Lainey said you told her they had killed your parents. What happened?”

  Cormac wasn’t sure he could talk about it. He knew he didn’t want to think about it, but figured when you kill somebody, or somebodies, some explainin’ was in order.

  “They tore the clothes off my mother and sister and treated them real bad. And when Pa came to help, they killed them all. They thought I was dead, too, but they was real wrong about that, and I made right sure they knew it.”

  She nodded. “I see.” Her face took on an expression Cormac couldn’t read. “I believe that hole is plenty deep for the likes of them. Climb on out of there, and I’ll help you drag them over here and dump them into the hole. Poppa is feelin’ poorly, or he would help, too.”

  Cormac got a horse and towrope from the barn, and Lainey showed up and began unbuckling their gun belts. “No sense in burying perfectly good guns. You may need them sometime. You want to see if they have any money?”

  “No!” Cormac Lynch was emphatic.

  She pitched right in then, and with three of them working, the burial went quickly. Lainey Nayle was obviously no stranger to hard work or a shovel. It occurred to him that maybe she wasn’t such a brat after all, and he realized for the first time that she sure was right pretty and had an awful lot of shiny red hair.

  He helped them get Mr. Schwartz into the house and into his mother and pa’s bed. Cormac’s pa had never let him get away with calling his mother Ma. He said it wasn’t showing her the respect she deserved. By then, it was hungry time again, and Cormac started to rustle up some dinner, but Mrs. Schwartz wouldn’t hear of it. “We’ll take care of this. You go light someplace,” she said, and then stopped to stare at the back door. She had never seen a cabin with a back door.

  A thinking man with an uncommon amount of common sense, John Lynch had designed the twenty by twenty cabin in an unusual manner. During his meticulous search for a home site on which they were going to spend a lot of years, he had made an unusual discovery. A short distance from a slow-moving creek, out of a small hill beside a large stand of cottonwood trees ran the main reason he had chosen this particular location for their home: an artesian well from which bubbled a year-round continual supply of clear, fresh, cool water from some mysterious source deep underground, pumped out of the ground by a bunch of little people called Artesians, also deep in the ground, according to his pa’s story. Even as a little boy Cormac didn’t believe that one. After first building a wooden trough to direct the water into a tank from which an overflow would then irrigate an area for Amanda’s vegetable garden, John Lynch designed a unique cabin that was to become the envy of every woman who had the opportunity to see it.

  There was a back door just five steps from the water tank, a door that would provide easy access to all the water they would need for drinking, cooking, or bathing, and when both of the doors were left open in the summer, a cooling draft of air flowed through the cabin. With the Indian wars in mind, he built into each of the four walls two one-by-one holes from which to shoot, each covered with strong, tightly fitting shutters, and then he did something very unusual—he put in a wooden floor.

  In the side of the hill close to the well, he found a small cave slanting downward into the hill which he made into a root cellar by building shelves along the walls for the cool-storage of canned goods and such; finishing it by adding a secure door, enabling the cave to double as a storm cellar and refuge from the occasional tornado searching for a place to cause trouble. All told, the total home plan elicited much praise and made Amanda Lynch the envy of every woman who ever heard of it.

  Mrs. Schwartz and Lainey were a well-matched team. With few words and no wasted movements, they took over the kitchen. It was amazing how they seemed to know where everything was; maybe it was a woman thing. Was it instinctive? Did all women put things in the same places? He watched briefly. He had to admit that them being there was a comfort; he had not been looking forward to being alone.

  “Okay. Thank you,” he answered. “While you do that, I’ll empty the slop bucket. It’s starting to get rank.”

  Taking up the bucket from its place by the counter, Cormac walked out into the night. The bucket was for collecting all of the kitchen scraps and could get to smelling real bad, but the pigs loved it and would be all grouped up in the pigpen, bumping and pushing and oinking and squealing as soon as they saw him coming cross the yard with it.

  The evening was awkward and uncomfortable: the food was tasty, but unfamiliar, and the conversation was forced by Mrs. Schwartz and nonexistent with the girl. Later, sleep was evasive. It was strange to think of strangers sleeping in the bed his pa had built to please his mother, and a sullen teenaged girl sleeping in Becky’s bed on the other side of the blanket, which divided the room, with her head on the pillow cover his mother had made especially for Becky. Cormac wasn’t liking that much.

  He missed the even breathing sounds of his pa mixed with the softer and higher pitched breaths of his mother and accented by Becky’s cute little snore about which he had always teased her as being deep and obnoxious. In the darkness, he lay rigid and unseeing, staring at the ceiling, fighting back the tears and the sobbing that were struggling for release. Somewhere in the night, exhaustion overwhelmed him, his taut muscles relaxed, his tear-filled eyes closed, and his horror-saturated mind found escape. Cormac Lynch slept.

  In spite of his wishes, morning came again. The rooster announced the event as the sun was rising, the chickens began scratching around the yard for food, the cows bawled to be milked, the pigs squealed to be fed, the birds sang their morning songs, and the weeds in the fields continued to grow.

  “Oh, pipe down,” he called at the birds, and sailed a rock at them while on the way to the barn with the milk pails. He d
idn’t really want to hit one; he just wanted them to shut up. He was in no mood for their racket.

  As hard as he knew it was going to be to return to the potato field, there were potatoes that would rot in the sun if he didn’t get them picked. He had no time to lie around and feel sorry for himself. After a breakfast he ate little of, he called in the team and hitched up the wagon; the potato bags Becky, his mother, and himself had already filled were waiting to be brought in, and the remaining spuds, as his pa had called them, needed to be picked.

  Within the hour, he was joined in the field by Mrs. Schwartz and the redheaded girl. They didn’t say a word. They just began picking. When Cormac reached the end of a row and turned to start down the next, there they were: inexperienced and fumbling, but putting their backs into it. Cormac, his mother, and Becky had had the field mostly done, and now, with the help of Mrs. Schwartz and Lainey Nayle, all of the potatoes were in by suppertime with enough time left to do the evening chores: milk the cows, and feed the pigs and chickens. The corn and flax would be needin’ to be harvested in another week or so. There was a lot of work needin’ to be done . . . soon. Cormac gladly accepted when they offered to stay and help him get in the crops.

  “I been doing some thinkin’,” Cormac told the Schwartzes and Lainey a couple of weeks later. “Ole man winter’s fixin’ to come blowin’ in here ’fore long, and when he sets his mind to it, he can get right ornery. Now, the way I see it, Mr. Schwartz needs a place to be still for a while, and you folks got no place to live. This is a good, paying farm, but I can’t work it by myself if I work thirty hours a day. Pa did a right good job of layin’ it out, and the buildings are strong and built to last. Why don’t you just stay on here? If it doesn’t work out, you can pack up and move on. If I decide to move on, I’ll sell it to you.

  The farm had been laid out in an efficient and well-ordered manner with attention also having been given to its appearance. It was a good-looking farm. The buildings were indeed built to last and the crops located for easy rotation to leave one section to go to grass every year. When it was plowed under in the fall, it would rot and the soil would be rich and rested for spring planting. His pa always plowed all of the fields deep every fall to let more of the melting snow and spring rains soak down into the subsoil. It was an excellent piece of land and an excellent offer for the Schwartzes.

  Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz didn’t hesitate. They looked at each other briefly and Mr. Schwartz offered his handshake. Cormac accepted it and an amiable working relationship was created on the spot. Lainey Nayle, on the other hand, was a different story. She spoke to Cormac only when necessary and even then with thinly concealed hostility.

  Mr. Schwartz mended slowly. The first week, he remained weak, and though he insisted on taking care of all of his own personal needs, Mrs. Schwartz constantly hovered close by. Cormac noticed that whenever she was away, Lainey always seemed to find something near Mr. Schwartz that needed doing. The third week saw him starting to come out of it and progressing rapidly after that point; first helping with light chores and housework as soon as he could walk, then, as his strength returned, moving outside to more strenuous tasks.

  His first name was Herman, but it didn’t feel right for Cormac to use it. John and Amanda Lynch’s training to respect his elders ran deep; to him they would always be Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz. There was no way of knowing what had made Mr. Schwartz so weak and poorly. He had been stomach sick, very hot, and had what a lady doctor they had met on the trail called dyspepsia. The doctor had given Mr. Schwartz some medicine that eased his stomach pains while he waited for it to go away, if it ever did. Mrs. Schwartz believed a lesser man would have probably died. Cormac Lynch was to learn that most of the people coming over from the “old country” were workers.

  Herman Schwartz was not as big as John Lynch had been, but he could get a bunch of work done before the sun went down of a night. By the end of week four, he had regained his full strength and proved to be a strong and willing worker, as was Lainey, in spite of her stubborn attitude toward Cormac.

  On the morning after the Schwartzes had agreed to stay, Cormac slipped out of the door with the lantern to do morning chores just before sunrise as he had so many times with his pa. By the time he reached the barn, he realized Lainey was following along behind.

  He stopped walking. “Good morning,” he said, surprised.

  “Morning,” she responded in a dull, matter-of-fact tone. “Don’t let me slow you down,” she told him while motioning with her hand in a dismissing manner for him to continue. “I just want to see what you are doing.”

  With a shoulder shrug, Cormac filled a bucket up with grain and spread it around the ground near the chicken coop repeating, “Here chick, chick, chick. Here chick, chick, chick,” as he did so. After filling their shallow water trough, he threw a couple of buckets of corn on the cob into the pigpen. “Here you go, guys. Here’s breakfast. Come and get it,” he told them. Then he added several deep and guttural oiyeenk, oiyeenk, oiyeenks. He finished that chore by emptying another bucket of corn into the sty and two five-gallon buckets of milk into their trough.

  Looking at Lainey, he told her, “Be careful if you get around this building. It’s called the pigsty. It’s for them to get inside during the winter or whenever they feel like it. Right now there is a new mama pig in there with three suckling shoats, and she’s right cantankerous. She’ll know I’m no threat to her piglets, but she doesn’t know you yet. She’ll come after you in a hurry.”

  The last chore was to sit on one of the one-legged milking stools and milk their three cows. With their own two feet on the floor, the one leg of the milk stools made a secure tripod place to sit. Two of the cows were black-and-white Holsteins and one a brown Jersey but all were plentiful givers and filled several one-gallon pails that would then be emptied into the two-handled milk can. Four cats and a couple of kittens materialized from out of nowhere to sit near the edge of the lantern light to meow over and over. “Good morning, cats,” he said to them cheerfully. “Who’s first?” They all yowled some more. Cormac turned a teat in their direction and covered their faces with fresh milk, which quieted them long enough to clean themselves with their paws and cry for more. Out of the corner of his eye, Cormac could see Lainey smile.

  While milking the Jersey last and glancing at Lainey, he told her, “If you learn to milk, be careful that this one doesn’t kick over the . . .” His intended statement was demonstrated by a swift forward kick from the cow’s strong hind leg that sent his milk pail flip-flopping across the dirt floor, splashing milk in every direction.

  “Damn,” he said simply as six balls of furry felines scampered happily to lap up as much of the spill as they could before it soaked into the ground.

  For the first time Cormac heard Lainey’s laugh. It was a nice sound.

  The next morning, Cormac was surprised to find the lantern not hanging on it’s hook or visible anywhere nearby. It was more surprising to step outside and hear Lainey calling, “Here chicky, chicky, chickys. Time for breakfast. Here chicky, chicky, chickys.”

  He stopped when he had rounded the corner of the house enough to see her feeding the chickens and could see the prepared buckets of corn waiting by the pigpen. He took and exhaled a deep breath while shaking his head as he had seen his pa do many times, and as he had heard his pa say many times, “I will be damned. I’ll never understand the female of the species.”

  He had one cow milked and was working on the second when Lainey grabbed a milk stool and sat down by the last Holstein.

  Cormac listened in silence as she grunted, sighed, and made frustrated sounds in general until finally she had to talk to him. Disgustedly she asked, “How do you make these darn things work?”

  Smiling to himself, he paused to enjoy the moment before answering. “Squeeze your fingers closed one at a time from the top down in order. It forces the milk out the bottom. Try it a few times and you’ll get the hang of it.”

  A few minutes later, h
e smiled again when he heard her happy yelp immediately following the clear sound of a milk-squirt hitting the bottom of an empty pail.

  They finished milking and settled the lidded milk storage cans into the tank of continually flowing cold artesian well in the special area his pa had made just for such a purpose before going in for the breakfast they knew was waiting: bacon, eggs, flapjacks in gravy or molasses, and lots of coffee. A meal prepared by Mrs. Schwartz to last hard-working people until dinnertime.

  Their accent, as Cormac had previously noted and which Mrs. Schwartz now explained, was from Germany. Lainey, it turned out, was from Ireland, which explained why she spoke differently, and why her last name was Nayle instead of Schwartz.

  “No, I do not have an accent,” she told Cormac nastily one day. “You do.” She described the soft manner in which she spoke as speaking with an Irish lilt.

  After supper of an evening was the best time for them to talk, and it was explained to Cormac by Mrs. Schwartz during one such conversation that during a sudden severe ocean storm on the boat trip over, Lainey’s parents, Connor and Jasmine Nayle, had been accidentally knocked overboard by something called a boom that had been poorly tied. She had no other family, and for some unknown reasons, although the Schwartzes wanted and were impatient to have children, it was not meant to be. As soon as they arrived in America, they eagerly adopted her and began thinking of her as their own and they as her parents. Lainey, not speaking to Cormac unless necessary, as was her habit, remained silent.

  In a distressing and repeating dream, Cormac had wandered, unsuccessfully searching for his family’s graves. In reality, he had visited their burial site and talked to them many times, but in his dream, he could not locate them: their graves were unmarked. He would fix that. With time on his hands during a three-day rainstorm, Cormac worked in the barn and cut three crosses. With his pa’s big knife to do the carving, one of his mother’s books to show him appropriate letters, and Becky’s favorite pencil to lay them out, he had painstakingly carved each letter with care.