Mattie

by Judy Alter

  Will Henry and Jim met me at the train with news that filled me with anger. Em had sold the cattle.

  “How can he? They weren’t his! Most of those cattle were taken in as payment for my services. He can’t sell them.”

  Jim tried to calm me down. “He sold them. At auction at Ogallala. They’re gone, Mattie, gone so far you can’t get them back.”

  “Well then, I’ll get the money!”

  “If you can, if you can. Knowing Em, it’s probably burned a hole clean through his pocket. Besides, I hear he didn’t get a good price for them. Took less than he should have.”

  Right there on that windswept train platform in Fort Sidney, all my old fears of poverty swept back over me, and I knew I had come back to Benteen to secure my future. I stared long and hard at the distant Nebraska horizon, blue sky meeting the gold and white of dead winter grasses frosted with snow, and I resolved once again that I would never be poor.

  “Mattie, you okay?” Will Henry looked puzzled as I turned toward him.

  “Yes, Will Henry. For just a moment there, I was remembering Princeton. I’ll get those cattle back . . . or a bigger and better herd.”

  He didn’t understand the connection between Princeton and the cattle, but it was all right as long as I knew.

  I went to see Wayne Bertram as soon as I got back. The news was not good.

  “I doubt, Dr. Armstrong, that we can get much from Mr. Jones in the way of alimony or child support. You can’t bleed a turnip, you know.”

  “No, but I want what’s mine. I want payment for those cattle and clear title to the house.”

  “Well, about those cattle. They were jointly owned, technically, and if he doesn’t have your half the money, we can garnishee his wages . . . but he has no wages. I hear, as a matter of fact, that he’s in debt to several people.”

  Em had done it again, worked his way and run off scot free! In the end, I got a simple divorce and clear title to my house and bank account. There was no mention of visitation rights and how often Em could see Nora.

  She pretended it didn’t bother her. “Aren’t you self-conscious, being the only divorced woman in Benteen?”

  “Yes, I am, Nora. But I think it’s for the best. Are the other children teasing you?”

  “No, not at all.” She denied it too quickly, and I suspected they were. But I remembered Lucy’s words. Nora could take care of herself.

  She proved it one spring day that year by riding out to Lucinda Fisher’s claim. She did not ask, simply took her horse and went.

  Finishing with the last patient of the day, I called into our living quarters for her and got no answer. Not at all alarmed, I put on my apron, began to see about heating a meat pie for dinner and finally stepped to the door to call her in from outside. Still no answer, but I was unconcerned until I stepped into our three-stall barn and saw that Jonesy, her five-year-old mare, was gone.

  Nora knows the prairie, I told myself. She’s been out there a hundred and one times. It’s just that she’s always told me before. Deliberately, I went back to the kitchen and tried to make my mind focus on a batch of biscuit dough. But alarming fears kept jumping in front of me. Her horse had stepped in a hole and thrown her. She’d met a drifter—they weren’t real common anymore, but we did have them. She’d been bitten by a snake, even though it was too early in the year for snakes. Finally I gave up and walked to Whittaker’s store.

  Sally greeted me with bustling cheerfulness, a floury apron around her expansive middle and her hair in straggling ends, sure indications she had been baking. But when she looked at my face, she dusted her hands quickly on her apron and reached toward me.

  “Land’s sake, Mattie, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s wrong?”

  “Nora.” I said it tersely. “She’s gone.”

  “Gone? Now, calm down, dear, she’s probably just gone for a walk somewhere.”

  “Jonesy is gone, too.”

  “Well then, she’s gone off on a ride. It’s most dark now, and she should be home any minute.”

  “She’s gone to Em, Sally.”

  “Now, Mattie, how could you know that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know how I know, but that’s where she’s gone.”

  Ralph was weighing some nails for a late customer over in a corner, but he had begun sending furtive glances toward us. Our whispering carried across the store but not distinctly enough for him to hear what we were talking about. Finally he broke loose to demand, “What’s going on over here?”

  Sally told him as calmly as she could, still trying to make believe that I was exaggerating, but Ralph, bless him, came to my defense.

  “I bet that’s just where that stubborn little baggage went,” he exclaimed. “Though heaven knows, I hope she can find the way.”

  “Ralph, can William ride after Will Henry and Jim? They’ll go get her.”

  “Sure he can. Right away.” He bustled off in the back to call William Snellson.

  The Whittakers came home with me and ate the leftover meat pie, still cold. We left the biscuit dough in the pan and sat silently over the kitchen table for a long while. In all probability, Nora, with her knowledge of the land and her confidence in herself, would be fine. With any other child, one might have agonized over her being alone and afraid on the prairie at night, but no such thought was appropriate if you knew Nora. In all probability, she had left early enough to arrive well before dark. But still I worried about the freak accident, and I was angry at her for having done this to me.

  “Would you have let her go if she’d asked?” Sally inquired.

  “No. I don’t think she should be visiting Lucinda Fisher’s house.” I said it firmly, without hesitation.

  “And Em doesn’t come here to see her anymore.”

  “He could. No one would stop him.”

  “He’d hardly be welcome,” Ralph said wryly.

  “He made his own choices,” I countered.

  “Yes, and they were the best thing that ever happened to you,” Sally said tartly. “But the problem now is Nora. What if she wants to stay out there or go visit more often? Will you let her?”

  “I don’t know. As I said, if she asked me, I’d have said no. But her going puts it differently. I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  But the question never came up. A silent and chastened Nora was brought home in the middle of the night by one tired uncle and one exhausted stepgrandfather. She said nothing to the Whittakers nor to me, but uncharacteristically, she came without being asked to hug me fiercely. Then, wordless, she turned and left the room.

  The Whittakers, sensing a need for privacy, melted into the night, taking with them my sincere thanks for their moral support. “Mattie, that’s what friends are for,” Ralph said. “You’re high on our list, and you call whenever we can help.”

  I felt again as I had the night Will Henry wanted to thrash Em. With friends like that, how could I help but have a full and happy life?

  As I turned back inside, Jim twisted his hat in his hands. “She was out there, all right. Hadn’t been there too long,” he paused, then added, “but long enough, I guess.”

  “Was she unpleasant about being sent after?”

  “No, Mattie, she was docile as a lamb, so quiet I thought maybe I had the wrong child. Course, Em, he wasn’t pleasant at all.”

  “He sure wasn’t,” echoed Will Henry. “Lucky I didn’t knock his fool head off, telling us we had no right to take his daughter, how you should take better care than to let her wander away. Made some cracks about you being too busy with medicine to take care of your child . . .”

  As I said wearily, “It’s an old argument between us, Will Henry,” Jim muttered, “Hush, now, Will Henry. He didn’t talk with his mind working right, and there ain’t no sense upsetting Mattie with what he said.”

  “Well then, tell her about Nora.”

  “What about Nora?” I asked anxiously.

  “She talked to us some on the ride home,” Jim b
egan, “probably more than the sprite has ever talked to me at any one time in all her life.”

  “And?” Was he going to make me drag it out of him?

  “She had a big shock back there. She kind of rambled, but the gist of it was that Lucinda Fisher couldn’t hold a candle to her own mother. Nora thought the lady was dirty, ugly, unpleasant, you name it. And she, well, she couldn’t puzzle out why her beloved daddy left home—and her—for someone like that. She cried some and told me, ‘Grandpa Jim, I don’t think I’ll ever understand it, if I live to be a hundred.’ I tried to tell her someday she might see it different.”

  “Why should she?” I asked harshly.

  “Mattie, you don’t want her to sour on all men, do you? Sure, someday she’ll see her daddy different, and you, too, and maybe she’ll develop some compassion for both of you. But right now she’s hurt, and she don’t think she can trust anybody. I maybe come as close to being in her good graces as any of us, and I intend to use that.”

  I was chastened. Sometimes I hated Em with such passion that I wanted Nora to share that feeling, even though I knew it would be destructive to her. It took someone like Jim to knock me back to my senses. And he did. I never, ever talked with Nora about that night, and she seemed content to let it lie. She did not ask to see Em again, and their visits became more and more rare.

  Jim, on the other hand, took to seeing more of Nora. They would ride together, searching for wild plums, rounding up Jim’s small herd of cattle on his claim or just exploring. He taught her all those lessons he had taught me years earlier, and she seemed to revel in it.

  One night when they had returned for a late supper, Jim sat in the kitchen with me after Nora had gone to bed. Will Henry was off courting, having met a young girl who lived about three miles from their claim.

  “Makes for a long ride for him,” laughed Jim, “but it’s time he settled down. I sure hate to lose that boy, but it’s his turn.”

  “Oh, Jim, you’ve been so good for him, and for me. And now you’re doing for Nora what no one else could.”

  He sobered. “You never needed that much, Mattie. Most of it came from inside you. Will Henry, yeah, I was able to do some for him. But that girl of yours, I don’t know.” He shook his head.

  “But I thought the two of you were getting along so famously.”

  “We are, we are. But there’s a corner of her that won’t open up to anyone. Not me, not you, especially, I suspect, not to her daddy. Nora’s going to keep Nora safe from all hurts.”

  I looked intently at him, hearing what was behind his words. From the time Em deserted, Nora would place her faith in no one, especially in no man, and that careful protectiveness would chart the course for her future life. In the back of my mind, I heard again that bell of warning . . . or was it doom?

  I began to work on my sanitarium. I drew rough sketches of what I wanted —a two-story brick building with windows marching evenly across the front and trees sheltering it from the prairie breeze. Inside, there would be wards for male and female patients and living space for Nora and myself, with an office for me and a huge kitchen in which to prepare what I foresaw as endless meals. I asked Jim to look at the plans, and he scratched his head.

  “You left me behind, Mattie. I could build you a soddie, or even a pretty simple clapboard house, but this is more than I can tackle. You’ll have to get someone who knows more than I do.”

  I was crushed. “Who’s that? Nobody knows more than you do, Jim Reeves.”

  “You might have to have somebody come down from Scottsbluff or Fort Sidney,” he said slowly, “and it’ll cost a bundle, this pipe dream of yours.”

  “It’s not a pipe dream,” I said fiercely. “I stayed in Benteen to build a sanitarium, and I will build it.”

  “I know you will, Mattie. I never doubted you’d do anything you set your mind to. But I want you to understand what’s involved.”

  “All right, tell me. What’s involved?”

  “Well, first you got to get the land. Where is this thing gonna set?”

  “On the edge of town, where I can see the prairie all day long.”

  “Okay. Who owns that land, and how are you going to buy it?”

  “I don’t know who owns it, but I’ve been trading, taking land when people moved on.”

  “A speculator, are you now?”

  “Jim, don’t even say it. I’ve never taken advantage, and sometimes I’ve helped a family. It was to both our advantages.”

  “How much land do you have, Mattie, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Seven claims, Jim.”

  “Ought to be enough to trade for a piece of town property. Have you picked the spot?”

  “Of course.”

  “I should have known. Want to show me?”

  So we saddled horses, and Jim and I rode together out about a mile beyond the last house in Benteen to a rising swell in the land where even in midday there was a breeze and the prairie seemed to surround you.

  “You love the land, don’t you, Mattie, you who I once dismissed as a hopeless city girl?”

  “Yes, I do, Jim, and it’s partly because of your teaching. Oh, I went through a spell of hating the prairie, wanting to run away. But it was me I wanted to run from, and now I’m glad I didn’t. I want to be where I can see and smell the grasses and the air.”

  He looked long at me. “I knew about that spell. And I guess I had faith you wouldn’t stay in Omaha, but I got kind of worried, me being the one who had suggested it and all. I’m glad you came to your senses, girl.”

  I laughed to hear that graying old man call me “girl” when I was in my forty-fifth year. But it made me feel good, and I was full of the future.

  “I’m glad, too, Jim.”

  Building the sanitarium seems a blur now. It took nearly five years—Nora was gone from home before I moved into it, but that’s another story. The first thing was to acquire the land, and that turned out not to be so difficult. The days of homesteading were gone, and land that close to town, of course, did not lie in the public domain, but by trading and selling, I was able to purchase it and keep two of my claims to run some cattle.

  Will Henry married his sweetheart, Nellie McCann. She was a good choice for him, stocky and sturdy from hard farm work all her life, plain, not pretty, but cheerful enough to keep Will Henry happy. She would work hard, keep a good home and probably have lots of babies. It didn’t matter that she and I had virtually nothing to talk about, and she inevitably seemed tongue-tied around me, though I knew from Jim she could, at times, be talkative. They moved out to my old soddie, still standing though in need of some repair. Will Henry took over the management of the new cattle I had bought and began to build himself a small herd. I knew that he would be all right for life.

  Jim became my consultant on the sanitarium. Age had crept up on Jim, though. I had no idea how old he actually was. Ever since I’d been in Benteen, it seemed that he’d had no life apart from taking care of Will Henry and me. He’d never looked at another woman, never traveled, never done anything just for himself, except maybe to work on the claim, which he loved. He’d made a middling success of that, not remarkable like Jed Gelson but enough to make a man proud. And now he was a little too old to work so hard.

  He was lonely, too, without Will Henry. He’d ride into town and sit for hours at my kitchen table, penciling in sketches and what he called elevations. He turned out to be a credible if unschooled draftsman, and by the time we went to Scottsbluff to seek a builder, we had fairly firm plans drawn, though without the architectural details that would lend permanence.

  Building in those days was a much more happenstance thing than it is now, but still, as Jim pointed out, my project needed someone who had some knowledge of architectural principles.

  We found him in Eli Able, a giant of a man whose name seemed to suit his talents. Ralph Whittaker had sent me to Scottsbluff to see a man named Newman Smith, who had built one or two buildings in Benteen, many more in
Scottsbluff. But Smith wasn’t interested in taking on another project in Benteen.

  “Too far away, ma’am,” he said politely. “I got too many things going on here.”

  I turned away, obviously dejected, for I knew no one else to go to.

  “Tell you what,” Smith called after me. “There’s a fellow might like to help you. Takes on one project at a time; don’t seem to care where they are. Likes to travel across the country, footloose and fancy-free. Name’s Eli Able.”

  “Where would I find Mr. Able?”

  “No telling. He lives across town in a boardinghouse. Here, I’ll give you the address. But he spends a lot of time in O’Brien’s saloon just down the street. You might try there first.”

  “Thank you.” I wasn’t exactly pleased about finding a man to build my sanitarium in a saloon, but I thought at least I would talk to Mr. Able. When I told Jim the story, he said, “Well, I’ll go into the saloon and find him for you.

  “You will not, Jim Reeves. This is my business, and I’m perfectly capable of it.”

  He chuckled and without another word drove the buggy to O’Brien’s.

  It was dark inside and smelled of stale beer. O’Brien’s looked to me like the kind of saloon that had seen its heyday, with gambling and dancing girls, during the latter part of the last century and had simply existed, getting a little seedier each year, ever since. O’Brien himself looked that way, if that was him behind the bar—a shrunken, tired-looking man who paid me little attention as I walked in. He stood staring, as though lost in thought, a dirty towel on the bar in front of him.

  I peered around the dark room, making out one or two tables of men silently sipping midday beer but seeing no one who might, I thought, be Eli Able. A tall, dark man hunched over one end of the bar, but I paid him no attention and approached the bartender.

  “Pardon me, but I’m looking for a man called Eli Able.”

  Wordlessly, he jerked his head toward the tall man. Unsure, I looked again at the bartender, but he nodded his head as if to say, “Yes.”