Was_a novel

by Geoff Ryman

  “Let’s pretend we’re going to run away and join the Indians,” said Dorothy.

  Will smiled again and shook his head. “Nope. I don’t want to pretend that. No point doing that unless you’re going to do it for real.”

  He was right, of course. It would have been fun to pretend, but pretend was for things that could never happen. But there were Indians, and they did have a land of their own, the Territory, and you really could go there. You don’t pretend something like that. You plan it. Dorothy was suddenly sure that she knew Wilbur’s secret. Will was planning to go there. It was a secret she would lock in her heart and keep safe away.

  Will was almost a man. He was calm and kindly like an adult, but he talked to kids. Dorothy knew that that was somehow wrong, talking to her as if she were anyone else, but she liked it.

  She could tell him about how mean Aunty Em was, how she made her do things, and Will understood and didn’t say anything to his parents, who would only go to Aunty Em and tell her what Dorothy had said. And he would tell Dorothy in turn about his parents. He made her understand that they weren’t mean. In fact they could be nice. But his daddy was drunk all the time and didn’t do anything, and the farm was falling apart and his mama was unhappy and kept complaining.

  “Craziest place for gloom,” he told her. “They just can’t wait to hunker down and be unhappy. And I can’t run that place by myself and I’m not going to. I don’t want to be a smelly old farmer.”

  “Uncle Henry smells,” said Dorothy. “I can’t stand it.”

  “That’s ’cause he’s got bad teeth,” said Will.

  “He tries to kiss me with his beard. And his beard smells too,” said Dorothy.

  They sat on the hessian bags listening to the gentle hiss of snow landing on fresh snow. It was nice, doing what they weren’t supposed to do, letting snow fall on them. The snow fell in big, light clumps that sat on their stockings.

  “Eskimos are Indians that live right far north, all the way up in British America,” said Will. “They make their houses out of snow.”

  Dorothy could see the Eskimo houses, sparkling in one of those bright, blue-sky days in winter. She saw an Eskimo town, their snow castles all lined up.

  “Doesn’t it get cold?”

  “Nope. You see, you get enough snow, it shuts the cold out, just like anything else.”

  Another wonderful thing. Snow was warm if you got enough of it. There was a logic that made the world beneficent. It was a nice world, if you were an Indian.

  “Indians are a lot nicer,” said Dorothy.

  “Except when they get mean and kill people,” Will reminded her.

  Dorothy scowled. That was the trouble with Indians. That was the thing that never made sense. Everybody liked Indians, even the adults. They bought Indian blankets. The Jewells had one up on the wall, and it was bright red and yellow in bumpy shapes. And they had an Indian buffalo hide on the floor, with the horns still on. Everybody liked Indians, but everybody was afraid of them too, and Indians tried to kill them.

  “Why do they do that?” Dorothy asked in a small voice.

  “’Cause this used to be their country and we took it.”

  “But they got the Territory.”

  Will was silent. It didn’t make sense to him either, even to him. They listened to the snow falling.

  “I used to think the snow came straight from God,” said Will, looking up. “Used to think it fell straight off Him in pieces. Asked my papa if His dandruff was snow.”

  “I used to think rain was God crying,” said Dorothy.

  “Then it just freezes over Kansas, ’cause Kansas is so cold.”

  “Let’s just sit here,” said Dorothy. “Let’s just sit here so the snow covers us up and see if it keeps us warm.”

  They let the snow settle over them. They sat shoulder to shoulder and watched themselves turn white. Then they heard Mr. Jewell shouting. He was far away in the fields, standing in the snow, a small dark smear, like charcoal. He was angry. Shouting for them to come back inside. What the blazes did they think they were doing?

  “Your daddy swears,” whispered Dorothy.

  “Does a lot of other things as well,” said Will, with a grunt, and stood up.

  It was like the two of them were putting on masks. “We’re terrible sorry, Mr. Jewell,” said Dorothy. “We weren’t cold. The snow would keep us warm.”

  “You get on into the house,” said Mr. Jewell to his son. You couldn’t move around adults without doing something wrong.

  It was the last time Dorothy saw Will.

  The funeral was held in Zeandale village. Uncle Henry, Aunty Em and Dorothy all squeezed up together on the front bench of the wagon. Now that Dorothy had been scrubbed and boiled and shorn for months, she was clean enough to sit next to Aunty Em. They huddled under lap robes and put their feet on stones that had come red-hot out of the stove. Their toes were warm, but everything else stayed cold.

  Across the iron-gray fields, there were scarecrows. Aunty Em had planted them over the buffalo wallows to warn Dorothy. They were as well dressed as the rest of the family. In the icy wind, their sleeves moved, as if beckoning.

  The first stop was the Jewells’ farm. Bob Jewell was holding the family’s mule while they got into their cart. Bob Jewell looked raw, like stripped meat, all gray and red and splotchy, with the undefended look of someone who was not used to washing. Mrs. Jewell was fat and helpless, wallowing in flesh and grief. Aunty Em took her arm as she walked toward the Jewells’ wagon, and silently kissed her.

  “Now you just let us all do everything, Mary,” said Aunty Em. “Don’t take it on yourself again. This day is for you, above anyone else.” Aunty Em did not look at or talk to Bob Jewell. Aunty Em and Will’s older brother, Harry, helped Mary Jewell up into the wagon. Max glared at Dorothy.

  It was the cold of the Devil, hard as a sword. Their fingers, their toes, their eyes, were gnawed by the cold. Dorothy’s eyes ran with water, stinging with cold. Aunty Em got back into the wagon and thought Dorothy was weeping for her friend. She patted her hand.

  “We must learn to love what God takes away,” murmured Aunty Em. She was recognized by everyone to be a good woman. No one would ever believe that she wasn’t. Dorothy let her think what she liked, and scowled.

  Dorothy was trying to feel what she was supposed to feel. She knew she was supposed to cry and carry on and need comforting. The thought of Will made her go hard and cold like stone, and that worried her. She knew she was supposed to feel more than that. The thought of mourning made her feel weary and stale. The ride there and back would be boring, and she would have to be good. She began to rock back and forth to occupy herself.

  Aunty Em held her still. “Try to bear up, Dodo,” she said. “We’re nearly there.” They were not nearly there at all.

  Dorothy hated the whole business. Ahead of them for miles she could see other wagons, lined up along the road, going to the funeral, as black as beetles.

  There was a picture frame behind Dorothy’s knees. Each time the wagon slipped on the icy road, it knocked against her legs. It was a flower under glass, a flower made out of Dorothy’s own hair. It made her feel sick.

  “That will be your present to Mrs. Jewell,” Aunty Em had told her. She had written a note on it. “From a young friend,” it said.

  Dorothy had made another present of her own. She kept it folded up inside her mitten. She would give the present to Mrs. Jewell herself, try to tell her, if she could, why Will had died. Nobody had given Dorothy a chance to tell her, even though Mrs. Jewell had said she didn’t understand why. Dorothy thought she wanted to understand.

  Dorothy had seen Zeandale ahead of them as soon as they had left the Jewells’ farm and got onto the road. Zeandale seemed to creep toward them forever and never get any closer. The gray road
, the gray sky, the gray earth, did not seem to change. It took on close to an hour.

  All there was to Zeandale, the village, were a few houses and a post office store. EVERYTHING FOR SALE, said a fancy sign outside the shop. Tin tubs and pans and horse clothes were hung around the porch. The schoolhouse looked like any other building and had no steeple. Wagons were gathered all around it.

  Dorothy knew Aunty Em didn’t like having to come to Zeandale. She knew Aunty Em would be looked down on by the people here. She knew it from the stiff-backed way Aunty Em climbed down from the rickety wagon and from the way she folded up the hides, with a series of smart snaps, as if they were something rare and precious, to be protected. She stowed them under the seat quickly, so no one could see them.

  “Now, Dorothy, the people here don’t know us, so we got to show them that we’re worthy of respect.” The truth was that people in Zeandale did know them and only too well. The people here knew how small the house was and how poor the farm. In Manhattan, Aunty Em was still a Branscomb, the educated daughter of a local dignitary. At least, that was what Aunty Em thought. No one from Manhattan was ever invited back to see the unimproved homestead or the unimproved Henry Gulch.

  Aunty Em swiped at the shoulders of Dorothy’s black dress and pulled down hard on the bottom of the jacket. The dress was slightly lopsided. It had been one of Aunty Em’s own.

  “It was a sacrifice, cutting down this dress, but it was for your friend, Dorothy, and I was pleased to do it.” Aunty Em’s eyes flickered toward the Jewells, who were helping their mama toward the church. Aunty Em knelt down and smoothed the collar and shoulders and looked into Dorothy’s face and breathed out wreaths of icy vapor.

  “And you mustn’t talk, child, not a word. We look at the good, Dorothy, and we turn our eyes from the bad. What Wilbur did was the greatest sin anybody can do. We are burying that sin today. The good men do lives on after them.”

  “Yes, Aunty,” said Dorothy. The rule was: When you don’t understand, agree.

  Aunty Em pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes into an expression of cramped sweetness. She stroked Dorothy’s face. “You are my own sweet sister’s child,” she said, with misgiving.

  “Yes, Aunty.” Dorothy’s toes and fingers ached with the cold and she wanted to get inside.

  Aunty Em was still scanning her face for imperfections. “Can’t see a shadow of that man at all,” she said. That man meant Dorothy’s father.

  “Yes, Aunty,” said Dorothy.

  The funeral was being held in the schoolhouse. Zeandale had gone to the effort of building a church, but the roof had blown off in a cyclone almost as soon as it was finished. Aunty Em kept an eye on the front door. When the Jewells finished maneuvering themselves through it, she stood up, and finally, finally, she and Dorothy could go inside. They walked together hand in hand; Uncle Henry followed with the framed hair flower. The Kansas earth underfoot was frozen as hard as rock. Dorothy tripped and stumbled; Aunty Em hauled her up by the hand. No one was to fall.

  Dorothy knew that there had been some kind of trouble. There was a graveyard in the hills outside of the town. Some people had not wanted Wilbur buried there because he had killed himself. Dorothy wondered if they had done something to the ground to close it against him. Would God freeze the ground to stop someone from being buried?

  They went into the schoolhouse, and it was colder inside than outside. The little stove had been stoked that morning, but all the heat rose up into the ceiling. As thick as a muddy river, currents of cold air flowed about their feet. The walls were white; the windows were white. The mourners had to sit on the school benches. The place was full of adults all in black like some giant species of insect. There were children, too, some of them from Sunflower School, where Wilbur had gone. They were all real quiet and hung their heads and scowled. Dorothy knew that scowl. It was the Indian scowl. You made it when something didn’t make sense.

  There was a wall of memorials. In midwinter, there were no flowers. There were woven pine branches and pillows stuffed with potpourri and scrolls with writing on them. Aunty and Uncle filed past them. They looked a long time at each one. Dorothy wondered why. Uncle Henry pushed the frame at her.

  “Put yours here, Dorothy,” whispered Aunty Em. Dorothy leaned it against the wall without ceremony. She was glad to be rid of it. Aunty Em pushed her shoulders. Down. Like at prayers, Dorothy had to kneel. So she did. Then Aunty Em tapped her on the shoulders and she stood up. You just did what you were told. Then they went and sat on the cold, cold bench, next to people they didn’t know, and Dorothy knew she would hate it. It would be long and full of words and nobody would be allowed to move. Dorothy started to rock. Aunty Em stopped her. The Jewells went to the front bench and sat down together.

  Dorothy watched Mrs. Jewell. She rocked too. She rocked from side to side, and she was shaking, like some old cart on a bumpy road.

  “Is she rocking ’cause of the cold?” Dorothy asked.

  “Sssh,” said Aunty Em. Of course you weren’t supposed to talk, but Dorothy had thought one question would be allowed, about a nice woman who was cold.

  The Preacher came in. He was a young man, slightly plump. He had come in from Deep Creek to preach. People coughed. He looked up at them.

  “Thank you all for coming in this terrible weather. I think it is a measure of Kansas sympathy that everyone here managed to show.”

  They were told to sing. Dorothy tried to look behind her at the people singing and was turned around. Then they said a prayer. Dorothy had to make sure that Aunty Em heard her say the words. It was one of the worst things Aunty Em had found out when she came, that Dorothy did not know her prayers.

  The power and the glory

  Forever an never

  Hay men.

  Dorothy didn’t know what they meant.

  Then the Preacher spoke.

  “This is the saddest of occasions,” he said. “The death of a young man in a way that in a less generous community would have precluded Christian interment. It is something that is hard for all of us to face, most especially his parents, who must be wondering how and why they failed him. All of us share that sense of having failed. I knew Wilbur Frederick Jewell as a boy and as a young fellow approaching manhood and knew him to be a well-mannered youth, who gave no outward sign of the worm within. We must all of us, in the privacy of our thoughts, come to our own conclusions about Wilbur. But in this memorial service, we must remember his virtues and pray that they weigh heaviest in the scales of justice when his soul is judged in Heaven. Perhaps the prayers of those who love him and the true love of the Lord Jesus can atone and win forgiveness.”

  It went on like that. Mrs. Jewell shook so much the pew rattled. Aunty Em clicked with her tongue. Dorothy could feel her aunt go harder and fiercer. There were more songs and another prayer. They all bowed their heads and prayed for the young man’s soul. Dorothy didn’t know that one, so mumbled, looking sideways to see if Aunty Em was angry. She looked angry, but Dorothy thought perhaps not at her.

  Finally it was over. Why did everything have to last so long? Mrs. Jewell was making her way toward the church door, with the speed of clouds on a rainy day. They all had to sit for her. Dorothy’s legs wanted to move, and started to twitch, and once again, of course, Aunty Em stilled her.

  They waited while other people went out one by one. People shook hands with the Preacher and then spoke to the Jewells, offering a few words as if from a high platform looking down. Or they looked embarrassed, nodding, shaking hands, and then left, ducking for some reason, though the doorway was not low.

  Dorothy felt her own secret gift, folded and crisp, inside her mitten.

  Aunty Em patted her and then pushed her: now it was time to move. Dorothy swung her legs around and jumped down to the floor. The school students were ahead of them. They were the very last. Dorothy c
ouldn’t wait to be gone. The students had little to say. They ducked the most and gathered outside. From somewhere far enough away came the sound of laughter. The Preacher stood next to Bob Jewell, hands clasped.

  “A cold day, young man,” said Aunty Em to the Preacher. “And an even colder sermon. Perhaps when you are a bit older, you will also learn to be wiser.”

  The Preacher was not used to being criticized. He looked dumbfounded.

  “I simply mean,” said Aunty Em, “that it is not your job to increase the grief of the bereaved.”

  “I’m sorry if I left that impression,” he said.

  “It is not to me, but to the young man’s mother that you should perhaps address a few more kindly words,” said Aunty Em. “I may say that it would not have happened in our congregation or with another preacher.”

  The Preacher chuckled. It was a very nasty chuckle. Dorothy thought: Why is he laughing? He chuckled and shrugged.

  Aunty Em took Mary Jewell’s hand. She took it and then suddenly seized it hard, a different gesture altogether. Then she moved on.

  It was Dorothy’s turn.

  “I’ve got a present for you, Mrs. Jewell,” said Dorothy.

  Aunty Em turned. What present?

  Mrs. Jewell leaned over, with her great breathy wrinkled weight. Dorothy unfolded the piece of paper from inside her mitten. The present was a drawing. Dorothy passed it up to Mrs. Jewell.

  “Thank you, Dorothy,” said Mrs. Jewell. “What is it?”

  “It’s an Indian,” said Dorothy. “I only had a pencil so it had to be a Kansas Indian. That’s gray. A real Indian would be red.”

  “That’s very nice, Dorothy, now come along,” said Aunty Em, advancing.