Hell's Half-Acre

by Nicholas Nicastro

  Bannerman massaged his hand.

  “I told him,” he said. “You heard me. I told him.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sword, Wand, Chariot

  MAY, 1871

  SOME FOLKS TOOK well to the plains. For most of the men, who had occasion to travel to town to sell their crops or buy supplies, the unrelenting openness was an opportunity to test themselves, and if they measured up, to write their own fates. Its vistas were unsheltered, but at least they could see the paths before them, and the distance to their goals.

  But their wives, unmarried sisters, widowed mothers and daughters found it harder to abide the solitude. Cloistered in their cabins, soddies and dugouts, the chasm of space between them and the horizon was as solid a prison as ever made out of stone and mortar. The poverty of faces and voices spawned loneliness akin to prisoners in solitary confinement. Some gazed for hours at drawings of human faces in Bibles, on pill bottles, and in mail-­order catalogs. Others trekked for miles, to within sight of railway lines. There, if they were lucky, they might see a distant train pass, and wring from the chugging, whistling artifice some semblance of connection to the rest of the human race.

  It was to these women that Kate tailored her ser­vices. As the days got warmer, she would collect her tarot, and a light meal in a basket, tie a sun-­hat on her head, and strike out across the prairie. If Junior was home, he would come after her, offering to drive her wherever she wanted. But four months of winter trapped in a cabin with his simpering devotion was already too much for her to bear. She would turn away and walk for a quarter hour before peeking back to check if he followed. Often he would still be standing there—­torturing himself with the sight of her receding back—­until she dropped into the hollow near the Brockman place and was free.

  With the mild temperatures and the surge of spring growth on the plain, her journeys were not unpleasant. Following the cow paths, she was well off the busier thoroughfares and seemed to have a broad green universe to herself. The fringe of her skirts dragged over the ground, raking the blossoms and enveloping her in their sweetly decaying scent. After the long winter she was desperate for the sun to thaw the cold, heavy core that weighed inside her. She removed her hat and unpinned her hair to warm across her shoulders. Ranchers watching from a distance stared, as did their wives at their wash lines and soap-­making. Later, neighbors would meet up and ask if they had seen the vision that had manifested beyond their pastures. They would agree they had, and with a pensive glance downward, needed to say no more.

  She had a regular customer, a settler’s wife who had seen her handbill at the hotel. She lived three miles away on the trail to Parsons. When Kate arrived at her place late in the morning, Sarah Mooney would greet her with a cup of tea brewed from sorrel or dandelion root and fresh cream she had skimmed that day. She had a small table set up outside, a tilt-­top designed for card games, covered with a muslin cloth. There, after exchanging pleasantries about the weather, Kate would fetch her tarot from its ribboned box, touch it to her lips, and lay out the Celtic cross.

  Interpreting the tarot was less like reading a story than writing one. Everything began with the proper kind of question—­never a simple yes or no (“Will I go back East?”)—­but a question that offered room for elaboration (“How might I decide whether to go back East?”). The various cards, the Major Arcana with their persons and objects and principles, the Minor Arcana with their numbers and suits, each suggested many possible answers, all of which may be qualified in combination with other cards and their positions in the Cross. The Chariot could imply the questioner is on a quest—­or seeking control over himself. In conjunction with Pentacles, it suggested an effort of self-­discipline; with the Hanged Man, it implied grace in defeat. Death never meant only what it appeared to mean. With the Fool, it could mean a fresh start is in the offing, while Cups placed an emphasis on making a proper farewell, as in coping with grief. Performing a reading was an act of creation, calling for all of Kate’s skills at association, of reading her client and her desires, of her surroundings, of the cards that served her well and those that hid in the deck, refusing to appear.

  She turned up the Moon.

  “The soul card appears in this position as the hidden factor. It suggests you suffer from certain dreams or yearnings at the root of your troubles.”

  Kate measured the impact of her words on Sarah’s face. The other perceived her looking, and hastened to agree, “Yes, I won’t deny it.”

  Next, Knight of Cups. “In the position of receding influence, the seeker of sensation, of beauty . . .”

  “Of love?”

  “Of giving in to love.”

  “Oh dear Lord.”

  “Which corresponds with Two of Swords here, the card of thwarting, that testifies to something that is spoken but not heard . . .”

  “As by a husband?”

  “I don’t see him yet, but here—­” and she turns up the Empress in the sixth position, “We welcome the great lady, who promises a certain reward in the future, should you choose to act.”

  “The choice is mine?”

  “The cards do not predict, but only instruct.”

  Just then a piglet wriggled through a gap in its pen and ran under the table. Sarah stooped, cussed and grasped. This broke the uncanny air that had briefly settled around them. All too quickly in Kate’s eyes, the woman surrendered the gleam of possibility that had momentarily lit up her chapped face.

  On her way home, Kate was two bits richer and twice as heavy of heart. A reading that had gone well always filled her with regret of her own limitations. Before the great, unfathomed abyss of meaning, she was a mere child collecting pebbles on a beach. There were unscrupulous practitioners, to be sure; Almira still believed the cards to be nothing more than a quaint sort of scam. But with every cry of affirmation from a client, with every honest dollar earned, Kate felt more obliged to be worthy of the skill she had developed. Invest nothing in the cards and one profited nothing. But take them as a matter of science, a syntax of pictures and symbols, and the prospect of true clairvoyance glittered, not so far away. Slowly, with due caution, she came to believe herself more worthy of the title she had adopted, Professor Katie Bender.

  A man rode toward her. From the cut of his shoulders and the straightness of his back she had an inkling of who it was. At this suspicion she was chilled at the back of her neck and flushed to the cleft of her collarbone. Her pace slowed; she had an urge to flee, but to where, in that immensity? A bitterness filling her mouth, she set her jaw and forced herself forward.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Bender,” Leroy Dick said, doffing.

  “And to you, sir.”

  Gray eyes looking at her, shining beneath dark, dashing parentheses. Features gently weathered, like battlements of some castle host to great and daring deeds. And oiled boots, shining by the ministrations of a faithful woman. To be that wife, the cherished helpmeet, overcome with devotion at the mere sight of his boots standing in a closet—­

  “The choir is improved with a genuine contralto.”

  “I’m pleased to contribute,” she replied, voice audible but quavering. Her throat felt suddenly dry, as if she had recently battled a fire. Afraid he would see through her, she would not meet his eyes. His horse, as if aware of her discomfort, stepped backward and fetched to the left, obliging him to rein up.

  “Well, good day, then,” he said, finger to hat brim.

  “Good day.”

  With that, he continued on his way, and Kate stood for a moment, collecting herself. For there was no question now that she was lost. Like Isaac Newton’s key to the Philosopher’s Stone, lost. Lost as she was alone and unrecognized in her time.

  When she became conscious that she was walking, she was in sight of the Bender cabin. Sometime in the course of her wandering the sky had clouded over, a listless drizzle jeweling the bluestem. She mov
ed on, but in the meandering fashion of a drunk or distracted person, half seeing the cow pies and soggy hoofprints that swallowed her pointed boots. She envisioned Leroy aloft again, riding the prairie, but with her mounted sidesaddle and harbored in his arms. On her finger, a ring, and against his shoulder, her head. She closed her eyes and breathed the vigor about him, the odor of his pure, honest rectitude, the goodness in strength and strength in goodness.

  Almira was behind the cabin, washing a shirt in a basin of creek water. She had been working it hard, pressing and abrading until her arms ached and the muscles burned beneath her pendulous breasts. She stepped back, drawing her wet forearm across her mouth until she tasted the soap. And then she saw Kate standing there, watching her.

  “Du.”

  “We’re going to have to stop all this,” said Kate.

  As the lye in the soap burned the scratches on her arms, Almira slung them about to soothe them in the breeze. Her eyes trained on Kate.

  “You say I must stop the washing?”

  “Don’t pretend not to know what I mean.”

  A short distance away the Bender men worked among the apple trees they had planted in the spring. The grove was not so large as to constitute an orchard, but big enough for their purposes. The trees were young yet, too small for grafting, and the men spent great effort in grooming the soil around them, sculpting it into neat and regular rows. Rows, they figured, that were wide and tall enough to conceal what they needed to conceal.

  When Almira looked over, John Senior immediately and wordlessly sensed her distress. Dropping his rake, he summoned Junior and hulked in the women’s direction.

  “So it stops, and how do we keep ourselves?” said Almira. “We sell apples, maybe?”

  ”There are other ways. I’ve advertised my ser­vice at the hotel. I had a very good reading this afternoon.”

  “You and your games. They are good for pocket money, no more.”

  “You’re wrong, as you are often,” Kate replied, sounding more of the aggrieved daughter than she intended. As the men came within earshot, she met Junior’s eyes, bidding for his support. He responded:

  “She’s real popular with the ladyfolk, I’d be prepared to swear. They think the world of her and they pay cash money too. I’ve seen it.”

  “Free me to do it all the time and I’ll show you something. Take me to Independence and let the word get around.”

  “At fifty cents a mark?” Almira snorted. “A dollar? We came out here for that?”

  “It’s a level business, so they can’t persecute for it. That’s something,” said Junior, to which Kate added, “The longer we do the other, the more dangerous.”

  “That is barely nothing! Do you have anything to say about it?”

  Almira looked to the old man, who wore an expression like someone who had just lost a lot of money at a game of chance he didn’t entirely understand. Confronted with this instance of overt, frank communication between human beings, he became confused, and then annoyed. He turned and went back to his spadework under the trees.

  “Hau ab, Feigling!” she cried after him. To Kate, she rumbled: “You are crazy. Read too many books, this is what happens.”

  “You can’t do it without me, so this is how it will be.”

  The old woman, near the end of her resources in English, muttered in German as she attacked her laundry.

  The argument not so much won as adjourned, Kate retired to the cabin to remove her dusty walking clothes. As she stripped to her camisole, she rehearsed sotto voce what she would say when the subject was brought up again. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed Junior through the window, smoking and watching her. In this instance, she didn’t turn away, and she didn’t lower the screen.

  Outside, Almira approached John Senior as he tortured the soil, watching until he ceased ignoring her.

  “Was?”

  “What is there without her?”

  Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he plastered the strands of his unkempt eyebrows across his temples. “Just wait,” he said.

  IT TOOK ONLY a few days for the first test of Kate’s determination to arrive. They knocked without any need for prompting, as the crepe black of a moonless prairie night cloaked the trail—­a grown-­up man and a boy. She opened the door and found them dressed in similar fashion, in woolen greatcoats and brimmed felt hats, faces expectant and smudged with dust.

  “Are we too late?” asked the elder one.

  Kate had not expected someone to show up unsolicited. She stood with her mouth open for a moment, unable to conjure the words that would send them packing. In the interim Almira appeared, hands knotted together, her face cracked by what might have been a reasonable simulation of a smile.

  “You are not too late. Kommen Sie.”

  The strangers came in, glancing about as Junior stood frozen behind the counter, unsure what to do, and the old man took prudent refuge behind the canvas.

  The father was gray-­skinned and hollow-­eyed, but the youthful architecture of his face was reflected in the boy’s, which had a sweet and full-­lipped femininity. They already looked like victims.

  Almira invited the father to the table. “We have a soup savory enough to warm your bones,” she said, bidding him to the far seat, by the canvas. His eyes were still on Kate, though, as relief battled with confusion; he seemed to like the words, but was unsure about the music. Kate froze him with her eyes, saying, “It is late,” until Almira lost her patience and growled “Warum lässt Du ihn nicht in ruh?”

  Kate laid a hand on the back of the boy’s collar and replied, “Ich lass’ dich nicht sterben,” and then to the father, “Brockman can take you. He’s close by.”

  The father went behind the table, and examining at the dried grease stain on the canvas, shuddered. Then he circled around the far side of the table and took the boy in hand.

  “We don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “No trouble! No trouble!” cried Almira. But her tone conveyed emergency instead of reassurance, and had the opposite effect to what she intended. The father shrank toward the door, jabbering apologies as the boy, clinging to him, made low mewing sounds of fright as he stared at the gap between the canvas and the wall.

  The old man was standing there, eyes blazing, grasping his hammer. If there was any doubt left in the father’s mind, this display solved it.

  “If it’s all the same, we’re leaving,” he said. “Good evening.”

  “Go, then,” spat Almira. “And may starvation make you suck your child’s bones!”

  THUS KATE SACRIFICED on account of her feelings for Leroy, which brightened and ventilated the baroque labyrinth her heart had become. She felt drugged by these purities. The more she thought about them, the less steady she felt. She went about on legs that seemed to belong to someone else, working on principles she had no feeling for. Walking to her appointments, she became so engrossed in her thoughts of him that she stumbled down the wrong cow paths, adding miles to her trips. At the grocery, she started tasks and forgot they were in progress, as when she started to make butter by scalding fresh milk on the stovetop. Almira discovered the brown, feculent substance that remained, letting out a cry of disgust she never showed at a genuine bloodletting. The old woman’s rebuke struck her as something far away and amusing, hardly audible under the music of that perfect syllabic ­couplet, Leroy, Leroy.

  At the hotel, she made beginner’s mistakes—­mixing up orders, dropping plates—­that she hadn’t made while she was a beginner. Her task was made more difficult by the thought that he might walk in at any moment, with that carefree jangling gait of a figure sewn together loosely, bound by sinew and strength and the easy grace of a man who attracted women as easily as he stepped and breathed and shone his gray eyes before her desperate, distracted hopelessness. Puzzled, Alice Acres whistled and shouted across the dining room, “Looks li
ke a girl in love, if I don’t know better!” On hearing that, Kate’s solicitous and heavily armed admirers sunk into their drinks and swore they’d shoot the lucky bastard who dared take her away from them.

  Sunday ser­vices were the only time she was sure to lay eyes on Leroy. She prepared for church by scrubbing her face, then patting it with a powder laced with arsenic that give her skin a faint metallic glow. She arranged her hair so it tumbled from beneath her hat and across her shoulders in flexuous waves. She kept Junior waiting in the cart for so long he fell asleep, then cursed him for his slowness on the trail. They arrived at Harmony Grove late, rushing into the chapel after the ser­vice had begun, causing the congregants to turn in mid-­soing. When certain of the men kept staring as Kate took her place in the choir, their sisters and wives swung their elbows to force their eyes back to their hymnals.

  After, at choir practice, she had planned to position herself in the front of her section, right where he could see her. But when the moment came she became suddenly shy, thinking perhaps that the time had not come for her to be worthy of him. She stood in the back instead, burying her face in her sheet music, until the urge to peek got the better of her, and she looked up. Leroy was there in his usual majesty, in easy command of the space around him, beating the time with his large, callused, yet graceful hands. The sight of him caused her to feel a hollowing within that was unnerving, thrilling. She planted her eyes back on her music.

  Back at the cabin she felt she could postpone no longer: she had to hear what the cards said about her future with Leroy. But she couldn’t do something so consequential in front of Almira. After sweeping out the front room, she leaned the straw broom beside the counter, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, and struck out across the trail with the deck concealed under her apron. The old man was in his usual place on Sabbath afternoons, sitting in the shadow of the cabin with his Bible open on his lap. She gave him a glance as she passed; his eyes flitted up at her, seeming to take her in but blankly, as if unable to focus beyond the distance to his verses.