by Lucy Evanson
“I wonder what my husband would think of that.”
He snorted. “You don’t hitch up a show horse and an ox together,” he said. “Bill seems like a smart man. He must know that he married better than he merits. Neither of you are going to be happy in the long run. It’s really best for both of you.”
“Well, that’s nice of you to think of us,” Maddie said. “But my answer is no. I already have a husband, and I’m sticking with him.”
Eastman’s eyes narrowed. “I really think you should reconsider that.”
“I don’t need to,” she said. “Now, good day.” She stepped inside and quickly pushed the door closed, though not as quickly as Eastman moved. He managed to get a boot inside the door just in time, and Maddie was suddenly forced back as he put his shoulder against the door and barged in.
“You leave this house this instant, you hear me?”
His smile sent a chill down her spine. “But we’re not through talking,” he said, as he shut the door.
“Bill’s going to be back any minute,” she said, trying to force some iron into her voice. “He’s just up at Roger Abbott’s, buying feed.”
Eastman’s smile widened. “No, he’s not,” he said. “I expect he’s about halfway between here and Omaha right now. I heard you talking about that in the mercantile too.”
Maddie turned slightly and took a small step to her left. If he backs me into the far corner, I’m done for, she thought. He can do whatever he pleases and I won’t be able to put up a fight at all. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest like a cannon going off, and her breath had gone quick and shallow.
“So what else do you think we have to talk about, then?” Try as she might to control it, her voice was thin and shaky.
Eastman turned slightly, keeping his face towards hers as she took another small step. He forced a grin again. Maddie had never realized before how sharp his teeth looked. “I’d like to talk about your upcoming divorce,” he said. “You wanted me first anyway. And now that I’ve had more time to think about it, I guess I made a little mistake when I let you go.”
Another step. She was halfway to the door. Eastman turned again, keeping her full-on in his sight. He hadn’t come any closer, but that hardly mattered. The kitchen was so small that he could almost snatch her up from where he stood right now.
“Maybe we should go back outside and talk about it,” she said, with another step. “My girl is sleeping just down the hall here.”
He now matched her movement, and placed his big hand against the door. “Right here is just fine,” he said. “Away from prying eyes, you know.” He let his gaze run up and down Maddie’s body, and she had the distinct feeling that a snake would feel the same if it were to slither over her. “You know,” Eastman continued, “I think that you want to say yes to me. You just need a little encouragement.”
Maddie swallowed hard. There was no way around it; she would have to get closer to him, regardless of what might happen after that. “What kind of encouragement do you mean?” she asked, taking a final step toward the door. Her voice was a whisper now.
His eyes lit up as he reached for her, taking her by the hip and roughly pulling her against his body. “This kind,” he said, and he fixed his mouth over hers.
She grabbed his shoulders, desperately trying to push him away, but he was tall and strong—perhaps not as formidable as Bill, but certainly too strong for her to force off.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. None of this matters at all. The important thing is that right above my head is a shelf, and on that shelf is a loaded shotgun.
His hands slid over her, cupping her curves and squeezing her as if he were sizing up a side of beef. His kisses roamed over her face and neck, but always returned to her lips, where his tongue crept into her mouth like a slug onto a rose. Eastman’s breath was in snorts, like an animal, and she could smell cigar smoke and whiskey on him. Maddie kept her eyes shut tight, as though that could protect her at least in some small way, as if she could pretend that this was all happening to somebody else.
“Mustache.”
Maddie’s eyes flashed open at Tess’s voice. Eastman finally drew back, and she could see the lust burning in his eyes like dark flames. His hands fell from her body like tentacles freeing prey, and he turned to glare at Tess, who stood in the hall with her face lined from the pillow and her hair wildly out to the side. “I see you’re still around,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Didn’t your mother train you to stay quiet and out of sight?”
He had turned only for a couple of seconds, but it was enough. When he faced Maddie again, he was looking into both barrels of the shotgun.
His jaw dropped open slightly. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his voice higher than he probably would have liked.
“Get out of here, now.”
“You won’t shoot me,” he said. “Not with your daughter standing right behind.”
Maddie took a big step to the right, putting nothing but the wall behind him. “I said out. And if you touch me again, I won’t bother asking you to leave. They’ll take you out of here feet first.”
He smirked, but his eyes never wavered from the shotgun. “Shame about your girl only knowing that one word,” he said. “She’s kind of slow, wouldn’t you say?”
“Last chance.”
Eastman tried to show that he wasn’t intimidated, moving slowly and deliberately, but still he went. She kept the gun cradled until she heard the squeaking wood as he climbed aboard his runabout, then she stepped outside to watch as he drove over the rise and out of sight.
Maddie returned to the house, bolted the door behind her and then collapsed in her chair. She was shaking all over and her arms were covered with goose pimples, though she felt like she was about to burn up at the same time.
“Mama, mustache kiss.”
She took Tess up onto her knee and hugged her. “He did have a mustache, didn’t he?” Maddie drew her wrist across her mouth roughly, as if to erase any trace of Eastman’s lips on hers. “I like your kisses better.” She leaned back and let Tess rest her head on her shoulder as she gently rocked back and forth. In only a few minutes, her daughter was asleep again.
Maddie carefully reached for her cup and took a sip. The tea was cold and bitter now, but it hardly seemed to matter. Safe and secure in her house, her daughter on her lap and her husband undoubtedly on his way home, it seemed as sweet as anything she’d ever tasted.
Chapter 9
“Sip, sip,” Tess said. She was kneeling at one of the water pans, holding a baby chick in both hands, trying to teach it to drink.
“Dip his beak in there,” Maddie said. “Just a little bit, like Bill showed you.”
Tess lowered the chick to the water and dunked its head beneath the surface.
“Not so much, honey. Just his beak.”
The chick shook a few water droplets from its fluff and peeped loudly, as if complaining about his sudden bath. Tess tried again, this time getting just the beak submerged, and then set him down at the pan’s edge. The chick moved closer and peered over the rim before chirping and stretching to take a drink on his own.
“See, you did it,” Maddie said. “Now he knows how to take a drink. Why don’t you bring over some of the other ones?”
Tess went off in search of other thirsty chicks while Maddie looked around the pen. Finally, it looked like she was caught up. All three pens had feed and water, eggs had been collected and
the wagon was even loaded for the morning’s deliveries.
She wiped the perspiration from her brow and looked up at the sky. It was clear and pleasantly cool. A perfect day, in fact, though it was passing fast. It was already midmorning and, aside from the chickens, nobody had eaten breakfast yet.
She latched the gate as she exited the pen, leaving Tess in pursuit of a trio of fluffy chicks who were running circles in the center, and went inside to prepare something to eat. She went to the pantry and stared at
the various bags and boxes.
Too long, she thought, rejecting one idea after another. Pancakes. Corn bread. Muffins. They’re all going to take too long. And if I eat one more egg alongside one more sausage, I’m going to heave.
She bent lower and saw that they had a few potatoes still in the basket. That’ll do. She grabbed three of them and brought them out to the table, where she broke off the few eyes that had sprouted, cut them up and tossed them into the skillet with a little oil and salt. After feeding the fire a bit, she soon had breakfast underway.
Maddie pulled out a chair and sat down, then decided to rest her eyes for a bit. It was nice there in the kitchen, with the low sizzle of the potatoes frying, the crackle of the fire in the stove, and the slight breeze coming in. Taking a moment to rest felt luxurious. Decadent, almost.
The next thing she heard, however, sent a shiver through her as if an icy fist had closed around her spine. From out in the pen, there was a sound unlike anything she had ever heard, and which she would hope to never hear again. Scores of birds—the full pen, in fact—had all begun to caw in alarm at the same time. It was a wave of cries that washed over the house like an ill wind and chilled Maddie to her core. And there, in the midst of it, her daughter’s voice, scared and shrill.
“Mama!”
Maddie burst out the front door and onto the porch, grabbing at one of the posts to keep herself from tumbling headlong down the steps. Her heart nearly stopped when she saw the pen. Tess was standing there in the middle, parting a sea of chickens that were streaming around her as they made for the near end of the pen. At the far end, the fencing wire that Bill had repaired so neatly had been snapped again; it hung in the dirt, limp and coiled. And there, simply watching the scene with terrible red eyes, was the boar.
It was a monster. It stood taller than Tess at the shoulder, with bristly black hair running a ridge down its back. Bill had been right; he had managed to hit it, but apparently that had only been enough to temporarily scare it away. Maddie could see the coarse hair matted with blood on the pig’s right side, and it clearly favored the left. The pig took a step forward, barely letting the right leg touch the ground, and the grotesque hop only made it look more horrifying.
It felt like she could neither speak nor scream. The air had frozen in her lungs and her blood had curdled in her veins. Although she was only two steps from the shelf just inside, it felt like a lifetime had passed before she was back on the porch with the coach gun in her hands.
The hog took another hop forward and bobbed its head with a snort, as if nodding in approval at the banquet laid out before it. The birds had all fled to the near end of the pen, blocking Tess’s way out, and Maddie felt her heart rip open as she saw her daughter simply standing there, tears streaming down her cheeks, her hands over her eyes as her only shield.
Lord, help me, what to do? The pen was a long oval, and the hog was still at the far end. Even if I were to shoot from here—and even if I were to hit it—there’s no way buckshot is going to do anything but make it angry. And I can’t even try that anyway. Not with Tess between us.
Maddie hurried down the porch steps and pointed the barrel toward the sky. “Tess, you run to me!” she shouted, then closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.
The terrible thunder of the shotgun, so loud and so close, made Maddie scream out. She had forgotten about both the recoil and the noise; between the two, Maddie nearly dropped the gun. It seemed like her ears had suddenly been stuffed with cotton, and she had a sharp pain in her bicep where the stock had hit her, but she forced herself to ignore that as she looked into the pen.
Tess was squatting now in the center of the pen, hugging her knees together like she so often did when she was scared of something. The hog, however, was not scared. It simply lowered its head and slowly moved it from side to side, like it was trying to decide whether to start with Tess or with the birds. The chickens were farther away. Tess was close. The hog began to hop forward.
“No!” Maddie screamed, and she started running. The pen was a good distance from the house, though. Besides all the ground she had to cover, there would be the latch to fumble with at the gate, then the mass of birds to wade through before she would reach Tess. The pig had no such obstacles.
“Run to me, Tess!” she screamed, though she knew it was useless. Her daughter was paralyzed with fright, and she couldn’t have been expected to save herself in a situation like this. It was her mother who was supposed to save her.
Hop. The boar couldn’t move quickly, but it was fast enough. She could see that its tusks were yellowed and very long. Hop.
Her ears were still plugged, but Maddie could hear two things burrowing through the dullness that had enveloped her: the terrible, snuffling breath of the boar as it leaped ahead, and the single word that Tess wailed: Mama.
Maddie came to a halt and raised the shotgun again, pulling the other trigger and sending a boom echoing across the hills. Sparrows lifted from the trees down by the creek and flew off along the water. The smell of gunpowder fouled the air around her. The boar didn’t seem to notice.
She began running again. I’ll never make it, she thought. It was as if her feet had been cast in iron now; for every step she took, the monster seemed to take two. She hadn’t even reached the gate of the pen yet, and the hog was practically upon her daughter. I’ll never make it, but I’ll be damned if I’m not going to try.
Her hand was already on the latch when she heard something from behind. The noise was sharp, short, and very loud. Not like the thunder of the shotgun, but like the crack of a rifle. Everything before her changed in an instant, though nothing made sense. One second she was running through a thicket of birds, racing toward her daughter, and the next second the boar was slumped heavily in the dirt with blood pouring from a hole where one eye used to be.
Maddie stopped and blinked several times, unsure whether she was seeing a dream before her or the answer to a prayer she hadn’t had time for. The hog was dead, definitely dead, bleeding out into the center of the pen, and Tess was unhurt. Untouched. Tear-stained and red-faced, but otherwise perfect.
Maddie scooped her up, nearly crushing Tess in her embrace, then turned toward the house. There, still standing atop the driver’s seat of the wagon, was Bill, with the Henry rifle yet at his shoulder and his finger yet on the trigger. Both his gaze and the gun were still trained on the hog, though she heard him say something to her that she couldn’t catch. The gunshots were still echoing in her ears.
It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that he’s here. And with that, she promptly began to cry. She barely found the gate again; her vision was ruined by the tears that were pouring out, but by the time she’d left the pen Bill had come down from the wagon to meet her.
He took both of them into his arms, holding them close, covering each of them with kisses. For several minutes he held them, none of them speaking, which suited Maddie just fine. What had happened—or, rather, what had almost happened—was too terrifying to speak about.
“I’m sorry,” he finally murmured. “I’m so sorry.”
Maddie slipped one arm under his and pulled him closer. “Sorry for what?”
“For not killing that thing the other day,” he said. “None of this would’ve happened if I’d shot him that morning.”
“Don’t say that. At least you got the other one,” she said. “Can you imagine if two of them had been here just now?”
He snorted, as if still unhappy with himself. Maddie let Tess slide to the ground, and she then laid both hands alongside Bill’s face. “I don’t want to think about what would have happened if it weren’t for you,” she said. “Don’t ever say you’re sorry about today. Today I know what being blessed feels like.”
She leaned closer and kissed him on the cheek, then again on the mouth. He put his hands on her waist; she could feel his warmth through her dress, and though their kiss was brief, it was enough to remind her of how she’d felt only a few days earlier, when th
ey had kissed for the first time.
“I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Me too. I’m feeling a little blessed myself right now,” he said. He looked away for a moment and sniffed the air. “Are you cooking something? Or burning something?”
“The potatoes!” Maddie rushed inside and yanked the skillet off the fire, though the damage was done. They were still nearly raw on top, with a nice base of homemade charcoal on the bottom. She dumped it all into the scrap bucket and returned outside to find Tess in Bill’s arms.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful and all, but I thought you weren’t coming back until the evening.”
“Normally I would have,” he said. “But before, I didn’t have any reason to hurry. Now I do. I was up driving real late last night and real early this morning.”
Maddie reached for his cheek, letting her fingers trail across his stubble. In addition to the fact that he clearly hadn’t shaved since he’d left home, his eyes were bloodshot and slightly puffy. He looked like he was probably as happy to be home as she was to have him.
“So what was your reason to hurry, exactly?” she asked. “If it was my cooking, I’ve got some bad news.”
“It wasn’t that,” he said, and he reached for her with his free hand. “Well, not just that. It was a little of this.” He leaned close and kissed her. “And maybe a little of this,” he added, with another kiss. “You didn’t have any problems while I was gone?”
“Aside from the pig, you mean?”
His eyes twinkled as he grinned, and Maddie realized just then how she had missed his smile. “Yeah, aside from the hog,” he said.
“Other than that, we had no problems at all.” Of course, there was that slight thing with the other pig, she thought, but the shotgun actually convinced that one to go away.
“That’s my girl,” he said, kissing her again.
“Kiss,” Tess said.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about you,” Bill said, giving her a peck on the cheek before lowering her to the ground.
