by Sara Dahmen
As she cuts, the door swings open, and two women enter the general. One is tiny, wizened, and spry and the other overly tall and big bosomed. They are chattering loudly, only to stop and pay their respects to Gilroy and Horeb.
“It’s the Warrens! Missus Elaine. And Toot,” Horeb greets. “How goes it at the Golden Nail?”
“Very fine. Bill is getting in an iron juicer so we can have lemonade this summer at the big July Fourth festival.”
“Ahhh. Trusty Willy has sent for a new contraption, has he?”
“You all know you want to try my lemonade, just like I made when those fancy railroad men came back in ’78.” The elderly woman’s voice is reedy but strangely cultured.
“Sure do,” Gilroy agrees.
She flashes him a smile marked by teeth stained with brown tobacco. Flushing, he abruptly turns to the stale checkerboard. Horeb glances at Gilroy with narrowed eyes, and then looks up happily at the other woman, who looks to be about the same age as Doctor Kinney. Horeb looks pleased. He has an alarmingly close view of the bottom of her bosom and seems very content with it.
“And Missus Elaine. You’ve had no luck trying to buy out the Prime Inn, so I’ve heard,” he mentions.
She shakes her dark, glossy head and folds her arms over her chest, but that only plumps her breasts higher, and Horeb’s eyes gleam. She frowns and then looks around for Kate.
“I need to look over our credit. I want to make sure my figures match,” she announces. Kate nods, finishes cutting my fabric, and heads over to the ledger. Horeb watches with open disappointment as Elaine walks away, Toot following. To avoid being his victim again, I wander to the seeds and sift through the small packets. Thankfully, I will not have to order out for them, as Kate has quite enough variety. Each small bag rattles with dryness. While picking out the seeds I had discussed with the doctor, I spy a case of metal goods. I go over to look at them while Kate finishes my parcels and recounts the numbers of the Rusty Nail Saloon slowly with Elaine Warren.
My fingers lightly graze the glass top of the case. It is filled with the finer things I would expect to see back home. Gold and silver glint in the sun streaking in from the large front window, glowing on dust that seems suspended in the air. Like me. Suspended in this new reality where I do not know half of what to make of things. Frozen in a body newly taken over by a foreign condition, feigning my reality to everyone I meet.
I block out the barbs Horeb is shooting at Gilroy, the muttering of the ladies at the counter, and glance at the watches. Theodore had had a fine watch, and I remember him taking it off carefully before we’d have relations. Theodore, and his fine chiseled face that so resembled James’. Theodore and his damned kindness. Theodore who thought my mind was unique and interesting. I’m glad I didn’t love him, but his presence is constantly with me. I wish I could erase it all. I wish I could be more like my sister Anne, and her easy way in society, her disinterest in learning, and her ability to laugh and charm.
Kate walks silently, even on the rough plank floor, and she scares me when she speaks lowly into my ear, “They are men’s watches.” The general is quiet again, and I look up and realize the Warren women have left.
“I know.” I rap the glass once. “My Henry had one just like that.” I point, then turn away.
She adds up the goods carefully in her large, thick, leather-bound book. The accounts fill over half of the yellowy pages.
“How are you getting by with the doctor, then?” she asks as she finishes her numbers with a flourish.
“Well, it’s only been two days. Barely. It’s all overwhelming. And I have so much to figure out. I’ll learn, though, I suppose.” I want to be strong and optimistic, even as I doubt my answers.
“Yes,” she gives a little snort. “Every woman’s dream, to keep house for a man.”
“I don’t mind having a purpose, whatever it is.” I say, and I realize my tone is a bit like a retort. Apparently, her surliness can rub off on me.
She relents slightly. “I don’t mean it particularly to you, Jane.” She uses my front name comfortably, as if we have been close friends for years. “I mean that it’s something I wouldn’t want to do. I’ve too much I want to prove. To this town and to myself.” Her declaration seems heartfelt, and from the silence of the two elderly gentlemen, it must be something worth noting and not teasing.
“You’re a braver woman than me,” I give her. Kate actually smiles at this and I, again, think she is unusually beautiful. It is a good compliment to give her, it seems, for she becomes cheerful.
“Well, then, good luck with your planting. I’m sure I’ll have to stop by when I can to see how you’re getting on.”
And with that, I leave the store, uncertain if she is a friend or not.
Chapter 4
4 April 1881
No one seems to mind that I sleep at Widow Hawks’ house—or at least, no one has said a word against me to my face. Sometimes, I think I see slivers of glances as I hike to her house across the railroad each evening, but either I’m too new to bother with directly, or everyone is still holding out on a final opinion. Perhaps it’s obvious that it is my only choice other than one of the inns. Or they figure it is proper enough that I am staying anywhere but with the doctor, especially as I am not an elderly woman keeping house for him.
The hope that I will not be ostracized trickles through me, though I feel ashamed that I wonder at all. I should be thankful for the free bed, for her hospitality, however strange I find it, but I’m still scared sometimes. I don’t know her at all, and she doesn’t speak to me. And I do wish the doctor could have come up with another solution for my board.
I sit next to the fire near Widow Hawks, wrestling with the sewing in my lap. I know this is a peaceful process for some women, but I am too rusty to be able to sew aimlessly and just let my mind wander. I would like to be complacent about the stitches, but instead, I must concentrate.
I cannot believe I have been in Flats Junction for just two weeks. It is still all a blur, and it feels as though eons have passed. I am constantly considering my next step on how to properly keep house for the doctor, how to keep my garden watered now that spring has started in earnest, and soon I’ll have to do the laundry.
I’m still confused by the weather as well. The snow has decided to disappear with frightful speed, and there is news of devastating floods all along the Missouri. Fort Randall itself is struggling, Pierre is underwater, and Yankton and Vermillion are nearly washed away. Some craftsmen simply give up on rebuilding in those towns and are moving inland and into Flats Junction. A Jewish shoemaker and his wife arrived earlier this week from Vermillion by wagon, as the railroads are still down, causing a bit of a stir. Not because Isaac and Hannah Horowitz are Jewish, it seems, but because everyone is overtly glad to have someone in town to repair shoes professionally and to make new ones. I hear they have just settled into an abandoned old saloon and are already swimming in orders.
I met Sadie Fawcett when she stopped in for tea, unannounced, with her gaggle of children. She had no qualms telling me that she plans to have more, as her husband prefers a big brood, though I have yet to understand how a woman could stop having children anyway. She proudly informed me that her husband, Tom, runs the bank. A tall woman introduced herself to me as Anette Zalenski at the door of St. Aloysius after Mass. She was warm and welcoming and clasped my hands, saying she is glad to see the doctor has a new housekeeper. I liked her immediately, but there was little time to have a chat with her several children running in circles around the church and my need to make the midday meal. It felt completely fraudulent to attend Mass with the doctor, but it felt even odder to not go to a service when nearly everyone apparently attends one church or the other. It seems the only person who does not practice a religion is Widow Hawks herself.
I glance down at my hands. So far, I have made a bonnet and the bodice of the yellow dress. I hope it fits. I worry at how I will take it out when my body starts to swell with pregnancy
, and likely, I will need another few yards of cloth for a maternity dress. It is early yet, I know, and there will be many months before I really must take care of my appearance.
Good heaven! I’ll be in confinement here! I haven’t really looked at the women. No one seems to be hugely pregnant, so I have no notion of what is considered acceptable and proper here.
I don’t know the rules! I have no way to research and learn about the customs other than to fumble my way through them. I want to like it here in Flats Junction. I want to feel at home and at peace, and to scatter the unsettled feeling in my stomach so it disappears completely. If I was a weepy woman, I might feel relief with tears, but I know it will only give me a headache and red eyes.
And it won’t fix a thing.
I’ve already made a mess of things by talking to Dell Johnston of the Powdered Pig Saloon, mentioning how odd it is that there’s a place called the Powdered Rose just down the street. He shouted so loud, he turned purple. Everyone on Main Street had stared, but no one had explained until much later. Sadie Fawcett told me that there is a feud between Dell and Fortuna, the bordello matron, but she didn’t elaborate about what.
And someone shot someone else by the livery yesterday, but the doctor didn’t give details when he came in from that calamity. He just washed the blood off his hands and sighed very loudly as he cleaned his instruments in the surgery.
Widow Hawks seems content to continue sharing silence tonight. I do not know yet if she understands English completely. She sits amicably next to me and fingers her own weaving and arts. She may not speak English, but I notice articles in her home that do not seem to fit. There is a silver hairbrush, half-hidden by wools in a basket, and a small locket hanging from her neck on a gold chain. But I do not ask questions and try to respect her tranquility. We still do not take any meals together, but sit by the fire for an hour or so in the evenings, and divide the place for sleep.
My mind turns again to my task at hand. My sewing skills are so incredibly poor and take so long. My time of mourning isn’t over, but it’s already obvious the threads of my smudged grey and black frocks won’t hold up. The hems are already ripped to shreds. The doctor has not said anything about my raggedy dresses, but it’s just one more thing to make me feel disgusting all the time. I’m thankful for his silence; likely he has forgotten when I was to stop mourning. He even told me I should stop with the Eastern theatrics of mourning for months. The notion is so very improper, but I am unbecomingly eager to give up the black cloth.
The night quickly turns old for me, so I make my way to bed.
Chapter 5
5 April 1881
In the early morning, I wake to vivid nausea. It is a constant churn. Waves of it overpower me until I am able to stumble outside and relieve my stomach. I kneel in the earth outside Widow Hawks’ home, heedless of the dirt and dust on my nightgown, thankful I did not retch in her home, and hopeful I did not wake her. Strangely, the nausea does not immediately subside, so I wait, a hand to my head, shaking and lightly sweating.
She is silent as a cat. I start when her hand first comes around my forehead. Waiting a beat, she then lifts me up and brings me back inside to the embers of last night’s fire. A fat blanket is thrown around my shoulders, and then she bends to wake the flames so any chill I feel is quickly gone with the heat and the coziness of the wool.
There is silence, except for the crackle of new wood thrown on the flames. Widow Hawks comes next to me, crouching. I marvel at her easy gaits and bends at her age, which must be close to fifty. Her coloring makes her appear ageless.
“Does he know?”
Her voice is low, with a melodiousness that is oddly familiar. There is an accent to her words—I hear it immediately—but her English is pure. I want to smile with happiness that she has finally accepted me enough to speak, that I am worthy of her time. She may misinterpret my grin, though, so I bite my lips.
“Henry? No. He didn’t know. He . . . he died even before I knew myself.” The lie comes, practiced in my head, but spoken aloud for the first time. I cannot look at her as I say it.
“I do not speak of your husband. I mean the doctor.”
I pause, suddenly realizing that she has appropriately guessed the situation. How could she know so quickly? Weakly, I shake my head negative. She is quiet again, then says, gently,
“You ought to tell him, so he knows to give you rest.”
“No,” I say, disagreeing with her. “I cannot be a bother to him. It’s my job to care of him, his kitchen, and his house. He has to think I am worth keeping on as a housekeeper instead of one that is only an expensive trouble.”
“He won’t send for another.”
“But how will he not? I must work as long as I can, hoping he will be kind enough to keep me after he knows of my condition, and to let me stay after the babe is born. Some homes in Boston don’t mind if their cooks have little ones. He will have to put up with a babe in his house all day. I cannot imagine he will be happy with it, bachelor that he is. I must let him see my worth for a while yet. It’s too soon to say something.”
“I will speak to him,” she says, as if that will handle it all.
“Please, don’t,” I beg.
“Yes,” she nods sagely. “And he will be happy to take care of you and the child.”
“I don’t wish to ask him to do that.”
“You won’t have to. He will. He is a good man. Now back to bed for you. I will wake you in time.”
I try to protest further, but I know my arguments are weak and half-formed and stupid. She does not seem to hear my protestations anyway.
I allow her to tuck me back into bed where I sleep, dreamlessly at first. But then, I am filled with odd, earthy dreams of pregnancy, lifelike and lustful. One dream is Henry, holding the child I carry, and I am confused, for I know he is dead and the babe isn’t his. Another dream is of Kate, beautiful and glowing in the sunset. And the last is of the doctor himself, looking down at me. Inscrutable. Displeased?
Widow Hawks wakes me at the last vision, so I leave this morning with the strange thought in my mind. I am almost afraid to walk to the doctor’s house and see him, but when I find him, he is his usual jovial self.
As I set him breakfast, I broach the subject of his office. Anything to keep my brain from scattering to the corners of my fears and insecurities, and the gnawing discomfort I feel knowing Widow Hawks is aware of my condition. She even took the lie I gave her.
“As I have most of the house straightened, I was hoping I might help you in your study,” I announce, pouring more coffee into my mug.
“How so?” He peers at me over the rim of his own drink.
“Well . . . I’m wondering if I might act as secretary a bit? It’d be the thing a nurse does, and you asked me here with that in mind, didn’t you? I could put things to rights, the papers in order by last name or family, and have everything easier to find. That way, perhaps, when you are out, I could access things. Only in an emergency, mind you. To help?”
He gives a little chuckle. “You needn’t ask so gingerly, Mrs. Weber. It’s a grand idea.”
“I have some knowledge of the profession with my husband’s illness,” I continue, encouraged. “We tried many things to cure Henry.”
The doctor’s eyes narrow. “What kind of treatments? What kind of doc did you see?”
“Oh—everyone we could afford. We tried a homeopath, though they were going out of fashion with their odd ideas of treating symptoms with a drug that will also create the same symptoms.”
“I’m aware of what a homeopath does.” The doctor waves a hand, leaning forward toward me. “I was apprenticed to an Eclectic who leaned toward the homeopathy, but he was one who tried a bit of everythin’.”
That explains some of his diversity. I know that Eclectic doctors use everything from modern advancements to herbal supplements. Henry preferred those types of physicians over the sterile, clinical men of the large hospitals who probed him with specul
ation instead of care. He also refused to see traditional doctors steeped in the practice of bleeding out a patient. None of it mattered in the end, of course. And none of my research and reading, done in the lamplight of night, and expressed with careful consideration in the face of skeptical, dismissive doctors, helped either. I’d done a poor job of tending my husband in health by not caring for him deeply, and an even worse job trying to keep him healthy in sickness.
“Did you find some relief for Mr. Weber in all the time you nursed him?” he asks with a scientific earnestness, then seems to remember himself. “Ach, I’m sorry, Mrs. Weber. I forget it was recently you lost him. Come on, then, I’ll help with the wash-up so we can march into the office mess together.”
Upon taking the dry cloth from the peg near me at the washbin, his arm brushes mine, and I keep my eyes on the suds and my hands so that I do not have to look at him. I’m uncertain in his presence today. I wonder if it is the uneasiness of my dreaming last night, or the way he speaks to me of doctoring, as if I am his peer. But there is this, which I’d forgotten: that I can offer help as someone who knows a little bit of the medical trade. I’m confident of what I’ve read. Perhaps that might help convince him to keep me on when he discovers my pregnancy.
“What nation is Widow Hawks?” I ask, by way of conversation, hoping I’m asking the question properly.
He carefully lines up the clean forks with the others. “She will say she is Sihasapa. Folks ’round here call her Lakota Sioux too, or Blackfoot, which is more precise.”
