Widow 1881_Flats Junction Series

by Sara Dahmen

  “Sweet mother,” he lightly swears, burying his face in my bosom. His voice is muffled. “Is it always like that?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I say, clasping him. “It has never been like that. I would hope so.”

  His head comes up and he chuckles. “Me too.”

  Chapter 47

  28 October 1882

  We walk to the station, with my belongings smashed with his in my brass-cornered, battered trunk, his new medicines balanced on top, and the rest of our things in the small carpet bag. I wonder if everyone who sees us can tell we are newlyweds. A few who know me hail call out, some using my new married name.

  Aunt Mary waits for us at the depot. She is too old to cry over our departure, but she tucks a lace hanky in my pocket and gives Patrick a little kiss on the cheek. She is glowing, as if she is the one who was married.

  “My sweet niece,” she says fondly. “I am so happy for you. Many blessings!”

  She turns to Patrick and gives him a strange, shrewd, appraising look. Then she nods, once, and says off-handedly, “It was a good choice.”

  His eyebrows go up, and I jump in. “I think so too, Aunt Mary.”

  She smiles, and the moment is gone, as if she has made her final judgment on our entire situation, clasping Patrick’s hands in goodwill, telling him to take care of me and our future children, that she will write.

  I cannot stop thanking her and she waves me off, as if I am the one who gave her a gift. I will miss her very much and know there is a good chance I will not be with her again in this life. So, I am weeping as the train pulls out, and I wave until I cannot see her any more.

  Chapter 48

  31 October 1882

  We arrive in Flats Junction on the five o’clock train. There is snow on the ground. Patrick says it can come in October sometimes, but nothing is frozen yet, and the road and platform are mucky.

  The minute I step off, I hear a voice shout. “Jane! You’re back?” Swinging around, I find Jacob Zalenski driving a wagon of corn and waving a hat in my direction.

  “I am!”

  “I’ll tell Anette. She’ll be glad!”

  Patrick bumps down the stairs, just as Horeb Harvey ambles by. “The sawbones is back, is he?”

  “Aye. You’re still alive, are you?”

  Horeb smirks, then notices me. His tiny green eyes widen. “And you too?” His narrow shoulders hunch, and he scurries up the road toward the general store.

  We follow Horeb’s footsteps at a more leisurely pace, and as we pass the mercantile, another voice rings out.

  “Mrs. Weber! Jane! You’ve come back!”

  It is Kate. She comes down the general’s stairs toward us, her eyes bright. Patrick tenses next to me, and his steps falter. To avoid her innocent smile, I twist the box of medicinal vials, my gold wedding band clanking against the wood.

  “And Pat.” Her voice is guarded. “You’ve returned as well.”

  “I have.”

  “Then you’ve found Jane and convinced her to come and keep house for you again? Good! I’ve missed my friend.”

  She seems to not mind he has stopped courting her, and for a brief, wildly unclear moment, I wonder if he misspoke to me. Suppose he never ended their courtship?

  “Let me help you.” She relieves him of the satchel, slinging it over her shoulder.

  Patrick and I glance at one another, but our tongues seem stuck. I can understand his hesitancy. There doesn’t seem to be a good way to explain we are married. Many of the townsfolk thought the doc would wed Kate. Will people take sides? Mine versus hers?

  “Jane! You’re back!” Sadie Fawcett waves heartily from her family’s wagon. Mitch Brinkley is in town, but he is juggling Petey while Alice is in the post office. Old George Ofsberger tips his fingers from his rocker. Clara Henderssen, walking with her elderly mother-in-law, breaks away from her children to embrace me. The familiar, pungent scent of Alan Lampton’s pig farm hits my nose. The only difference is that Harriet Lindsey is obviously living with him now, given the bloomers hanging on the line. There are so many dear, friendly faces here that I am suddenly overwhelmed with happiness. Who cares about all the dust, grime, and fatigue of travel?

  Yes. I’m indeed back. It is enough.

  Kate runs commentary on the past weeks, full of her usual news and gossip. “Some Indians were seen passing nearby, but none came to town. Shouldn’t wonder, there’s no reason for them to make a stop, they’d be reported fast enough for being off reservation. It wouldn’t be Widow Hawks’ family anyway. Might have even been Crow. And Alice thinks she’s having twins. And one of your neighbors, Anna Pavlock, has gout.”

  We walk, stiffly formal, regardless of her chatter. As we turn onto East Avenue and approach Doctor Kinney’s house, I am only half listening to Kate. To think his house will be my home for always! The permanence is deeply satisfying. We pass the Wu brothers as they trek out for a long day in one of the Brinkley fields. Mrs. Molhurst glares from her kitchen window as we march toward the porch.

  Kate opens the screen door. It creaks a bit now. She places the bag inside and turns to us, her face blooming. I wonder if she thinks Patrick left only for lectures, and perhaps thought about her romantically with the distance. Her entire body quivers with this energy. She is just as beautiful as I remember.

  My husband does not seem to notice Kate’s obvious intention. He is too busy peering into the rain barrel and checking on the garden. I peek at what’s visible and cringe. It is mostly a tangled mess of old weeds and vegetables gone to seed or rot.

  “So,” Kate says to me. “I am not sure if you know, but Widow Hawks has left town for the reservation.”

  “I know it. I wish she’d consider coming back.”

  Kate gives a swift laugh and flicks her hand. “Why? She has no home now, and you’re here to replace any work she might have. I am glad to see you, Jane.”

  “I’m glad I am so welcome,” I say carefully. Kate stands for a minute. She sneaks glances at the doctor as he comes up the stairs, opens the screen, and takes the trunk in. He disappears into the dimness of the house. Kate suddenly looks a bit nervous. I do not blame her. Patrick’s attitude is one of indifference. I am sure part of that is because he is no longer pining for her, and the other because her disregard for her family so disgusts him. Still, his reaction must be disconcerting, and Kate is more sensitive than most.

  “Janie.” He comes back to the door, opens it slightly, and holds out his hand, smiling a little at me. “Give me the medicines and your little bag. I’ll take it up to the bedroom.”

  “Oh!” Kate’s exclamation makes him pause. “Jane doesn’t need to stay here, Pat. I’m sure I can find room. I mean, there’s nowhere else other than one of the inns now, and that is expensive after a while.” She turns to me with a friendly air, as if offering a favor. “We don’t need your reputation turning right away.”

  She says this easily enough, but she barely hides the glowering inside. She is reminding me how it would not take much to start tongues wagging if I were to stay at this house, unmarried and unattached, with no chaperone. She alludes to her power in this place, even though she herself never really seems to do much with it. Suddenly, my welcome to Flats Junction doesn’t feel quite so wonderful.

  “Well,” I say carefully, moving so I am on the same step on the porch, though she still towers over me. “I thank you, Kate, for the offer.”

  “Yes,” Patrick interrupts, and gives her a smile, but I can tell he wishes her to be gone. “Yes, that is very good of you, Kitty, but no need. Mrs. Kinney and I are perfectly happy sharin’ the house and a room.”

  “Of—” She stops halfway through her nod. Her gaze swings wildly to me and then to Patrick still standing in the darkness in the house. Empathy rains into me.

  I’m sorry for her.

  Her bitterness is a loneliness she is starting to wear. I watch as her face registers sadness and anger.

  “That is . . . Jane?” Her eyes find my finger, wher
e the gold glints in the afternoon light.

  “Yes, Kate. We’ve married,” I say gently. I will not apologize for my marriage, and even though she has proven herself a flighty and unreliable friend, I also don’t wish to hold a grudge. Flats Junction is too small a place for such resentment on my part.

  There is a moment of silence. Then her old shine comes back, and she tosses her hair.

  “So that’s how you brought her back, Pat? You bought her off with a ring?”

  “Oh! Aye.” I can tell his next remark will be cuttingly, damagingly sarcastic, and I jump in, placing a hand on the screen to silence him.

  “Yes, you’re right. He brought me back as his wife, as I’d come no other way. But it was not a compromise.”

  She snorts, a delicate sound, but one of disbelief anyway. “Distance made the heart grow fond, I suppose?”

  “Jane is the reason I went east, Kitty. I need her—love her.” His admittance is unexpected. A joy glows deep in the bottom of my stomach.

  She scoffs again, and then looks between us. Her shoulders harden, and she seems more hurt than angry. Without another word, she walks off, and I know her feelings will likely be vented on anyone unlucky enough to walk into the general this morning.

  “Come in, Janie.” Patrick’s voice is gentle, and he opens the door wider. “Come home.”

  His words make me close my eyes for a moment. Then I follow him in, and the familiar sights and smells of the house fill me. I have missed the occasional drip of the spigot in the surgery, the smell of prairie grass, the creaks of the wood.

  He does not give me much time for remembering before he picks me up as a bride and carries me up to his—our—bedroom. We devour each other as I have so desperately wished to do the entire train ride out.

  Afterward, he draws a bath and we take turns washing the travel grime away before falling to the mattress again for well-needed rest. It is a wasted day, without much housework done, but Patrick does not seem to mind, so I will not, either.

  At night, I stay awake a bit longer. My return is too surreal. I will wake and find it is not the doctor’s arms around me, or his leg between mine. I am almost too afraid to really sleep well.

  But sleep comes. I drift off just before we are awakened in the wee hours of the morning by a pounding on the door.

  It is one of the cowboys. Manny, it sounds like. One of the best horses is sick at the Svendsen ranch, so my husband ruefully pulls on his clothes and heads out after a quick, hard kiss.

  Chapter 49

  1 November 1882

  He does not come back to bed, so I rise with the morning light, pull on a serviceable blue calico from the East, and make the coffee. The kitchen—my kitchen—is just as I remember it.

  “Mrs. Kinney.” He comes in, cheerful as the sun, no matter how exhausted he looks, and I can tell he is delighted to call me such. His eyes are intense and happy, and his arms come out on their own accord to grab me around the waist, pulling me in for kisses and a squeeze.

  “Paddy,” I laugh. “Breakfast is ready.”

  “I’d like to say forget breakfast, I’ll have you instead,” he quips gamely. “But I’m half starved. What’ll it be?”

  “I’ve got flapjacks started. First batch is in the oven.”

  He pulls them out eagerly. “It’s like the first mornin’ all over again. Flapjacks!”

  I pour out coffee. “Is it very cold out, yet?”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head and placing the hot food on the table. “Yesterday’s snow’s mostly gone already, but winter will come quick enough. Soon we will have many a cozy night while stayin’ in around a fire. Good weather for makin’ babies.”

  “Patrick!” I swat him with the dish towel. He grabs it as he used to do before, and brings me close, planting a kiss on me.

  “I thought you wanted children.”

  I close my eyes against his nearness.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, we ought to get started,” he says. “But first I need to eat, and those look delicious.”

  We sit down and he tells me about the horse that had to be shot. Danny Svendsen is stewing on what ailed the animal. Patrick himself needs to look up the beast’s symptoms in one of his old veterinary books. And we need to head out to the Brinkley’s this morning to check on Alice’s condition. I am very eager to see my friend.

  “What about Marie? You said she was expecting?”

  “Aye.” He sighs. “But I won’t go unless she or her husband asks me to stop by.”

  We discuss how to best help Sadie manage her pregnancy, and talk about the lack of vandalism in town since Widow Hawks left. The notion that her presence spins violent acts gives me pause. I have a hope for her to still be part of our lives, but I need to be aware of all the pieces. As he guzzles down the coffee, he asks me to check on old Mrs. Pavlock’s gout.

  “She likes the chatter, and today I’m too busy for it. You don’t mind?”

  I don’t, glad to help him right away. My role as housekeeper and part-time nursemaid falls completely back on my shoulders, and I find I am more than ready for all the tasks. It will be worth the hard hands, the calloused feet, the dusty hair, and the back-breaking hauling if only to do all of it with my husband.

  Suddenly, he reaches for my hand. I stop eating and look up at him. His eyes are bright.

  “This is how it will always be now, Jane. You and me, and God willin’, children. Together at this table. And in our home. How did this happen?”

  “Well, you chose my letter when you advertised for a housekeeper. And then we fell in love.”

  He chuckles. “You make it sound simple.”

  “All ended well, Paddy.”

  “It did,” he agrees, and then smiles at me. “I don’t know if it can get better than this.”

  I know how it might, for all the trouble it may bring. “I was thinking . . . We ought to go fetch Widow Hawks. Esther. I don’t like the notion of her at the reservation. She’s our family. Whether we build her a new little place, or have her come live with us, I feel as though we should bring her home to Flats Junction.”

  Patrick sits back, relaxed and considering. “Well, there isn’t much room here. Perhaps we could have a little side room off the kitchen, or a cottage in the yard. Or yes, figure on a way to build her somethin’.”

  He obviously likes the idea, and I plunge in further, dreaming aloud. “It would help when the babies start arriving, to have an extra set of hands around. Then I can still cook and clean and help you with the office and the patients. Neither of us have family around to help as it were, and we’ll need it.”

  He’s nodding, agreeing. “We’ll make plans to set right off to get her before the weather turns nasty, though it’ll be tight. We can leave as soon as I finish all my rounds in the next few days.”

  “Kate won’t be pleased with us,” I warn, and he gives a half-contrite grin.

  “I don’t think she’s a mite pleased with us anyway, gettin’ married and all. But she’s cast off her own family. We’re adoptin’ Esther as grandmother for our babes. It’s a grand idea, Janie.” He smiles again, and then sets out for another trip to visit patients so he might catch up on the town’s long list of ailments.

  I watch him leave, his bag in hand, to help ease discomfort and fix what he might. He is mine, and we have created a life, a family, and a purpose here. It is enough.

  Chapter 50

  9 November 1882

  I am painfully tense as we make our way to Fort Randall. Though renegade Sioux are no longer roaming the plains and picking off travelers at a whim, the journey is still tight with danger. There are wild animals, from wolves to the rare bison, the uneasy fall weather, and of course, the occasional group of self-named cowboys who are more like pirates.

  We have joined a small wagon train that will continue further west. Flats Junction is still on one of the old trails, the buffalo jump always doubling as a traditional stop. We joined with the freighters going to the fort an
d the handful of settlers hoping to get to the Black Hills before winter. It is safest to go in such a group, and we are thankful for the men and women in the wagons around us. The grass undulates, reminding me once again of the ocean, though I do not long for it as desperately anymore. The afternoon light is rich with golden color, even as the days are cooling and nights are colder. The people call to each other, hailing one another’s children or shouting at horses or cattle.

  Our own group is silent. Kate has joined Patrick and me and she is stonily quiet, which keeps us from having our own light chatter.

  I did not expect her to come with us. Swallowing my discomfort in her presence, I had asked her to accompany the doctor and me to Fort Randall, where we are told Sitting Bull is kept captive. We hope to hear word of Widow Hawks there from the Sioux who scratch a living around the edges of the Army location. I thought Esther might actually agree to return to Flats Junction more readily if she could see Kate still held some sort of affection for her mother. And I wanted Kate to prove to me, and to Patrick, that she is not without redemption.

  Her immediate response was to shut her door in my face. She is angry with me, of course, for marrying Patrick, for settling back into Flats Junction as if I’d never left, for wanting her mother to come back.

  I waited until I was in the general to buy goods to ask once more. She will not refuse to serve anyone, regardless of her feelings or mood swings, and when I had dallied long enough until we were alone, I had begged her to reconsider.

  “You’re asking too much of me,” she had snapped.