The Great Alone

by Janet Dailey

  Eva couldn’t see how her father could even think about leaving Grandpa here all alone, but her father kept saying that his first consideration should have been what was best for his own family and talking about how he might be able to find work in the gold mines of British Columbia. She wished one of them would ask how she felt. But no one ever paid any attention to what she thought except her grandfather. Eva suspected it would be different if she were pretty like her older sister. Her grandfather insisted she was getting prettier every day, but she looked and looked in the mirror and knew it wasn’t true.

  She pulled the blanket up to cover her ears and shut out the low voices in the next room. When that didn’t work, Eva tried to concentrate on other sounds, but the faint patter of the rain on the roof was a poor distraction. From the street came raucous laughter and loud voices. Probably American soldiers from the garrison, Eva guessed. She didn’t like them. They weren’t nice men. They were always drinking and fighting, saying bad things, and making fun of people.

  Their noisy voices grew louder until Eva was sure they were right outside her house. Suddenly there was a loud banging on the front door. Eva jumped at the sound, then froze and clutched at the blanket. For an instant there was stillness in the house as the talking in the next room stopped.

  The pounding came again, followed by a slurred voice shouting, “Anybody home? Hey, let us in! Don’cha know it’s rainin’ out here!”

  A second later, someone tried the door. Eva heard it thudding against the bar drawn across it, and sat up in bed, pulling the blankets around her.

  “They got it barred,” one of the soldiers complained.

  “That ain’t at all neighborly.”

  “Somebody needs t’ teach these breeds some manners.”

  The subsequent thud seemed to shake the whole house with its force. She could hear her father’s footsteps as he left the bedroom and passed her door. Throwing back the blanket, Eva climbed out of bed and hurried to the door in her bare feet. It sounded to her like those soldiers were trying to break down the door. She was frightened but not so frightened that she didn’t want to see what was going on.

  As she left her room, wood splintered under another heavy blow to the door. Her father shouted at them to go away. Eva crept quickly and silently along the wall until she could see the front door. Her father stood before it, holding an iron poker in his hand. As the door shook under a battering blow, she heard the cracking of wood and saw the exposed seam of yellow-white wood in the thick board that barred the door shut.

  When the soldiers rammed it again, the heavy plank snapped and the door burst open. Three soldiers tumbled through the opening, staggering to regain their balance. Their clothes were wet and splattered with mud. Their dark beards were matted and stringy like the hair sticking out from under their caps. As Eva stared at their reddened eyes, she thought they looked like maddened animals and ran to her father’s side for protection.

  “Eva, no.” Her father glanced down at her in alarm and quickly shoved her behind him.

  “Hey, looka’ that li’l girl in her pink nightdress. Ain’t she ugly.” One of them pointed at her.

  “Hey, li’l girl, you gotta purty older sister a-hidin’ back thare somewhares?”

  “Leave her alone.” Her father brandished the fire poker.

  “Listen t’ him,” the first soldier jeered, baring his yellowed teeth.

  “Yeah, it sounds like he don’t think we’s good enough fo’ the likes of his kind.”

  “Leave my house at once,” her father ordered as Eva cowered behind him.

  “Least you could do is offer us some’in’ to drink fore ya send us out in that cold and rain. He ain’t very hospitable, is he, Nate?”

  “Yeah, where’s yore liquor?” the one called Nate demanded, drunkenly swiveling his head around to look about the house. “I know ya got some. Neve’ knowed a breed yet what didn’t like his firewater.” He took a step into the room and her father quickly moved to block his way. “Mister, you best get outa my way afore you make me mad.”

  “Lev?” Her mother called to him from the rear bedroom.

  “Ya hear that? There’s women in the house.” The one called Nate gleefully rubbed his hands together. “I knew it. I knew it. I tell ya, boys, I can smell ’em.”

  “You go now and leave us alone,” her father ordered. “You are not welcome. Go.”

  “He’s a’mighty anxious for us to leave,” remarked the first soldier, the one with the yellow teeth.

  “Yeah, if’n he likes it out there in the rain so much, why don’t he go?” suggested the other.

  The first one grabbed her father. Before he could defend himself with the poker, the other two soldiers ganged up on him and heaved him outside.

  “Papa!” Eva screamed and darted toward the door.

  A soldier grabbed for her and missed. She ran out into the rain, reaching her father as he slowly picked himself up off the muddy ground, holding one arm against his ribs.

  “Did they hurt you, Papa?”

  As he shook his head, she heard her mother’s voice anxiously calling for him. About that same instant, Eva heard the one called Nate declare, “Well, looky here. We got us a yeller-haired squaw.”

  A wild, panicked look came into her father’s face. “Eva, run to your grandfather’s house.” He seemed not to notice that she was in her nightdress and barefooted, or that the rain was already soaking her.

  “But—”

  “Go!” He pushed her angrily away from him. “For your mama’s sake be quick!”

  Her mother screamed. Her father charged back into the house, leaving Eva alone in the rain and the dark. Her feet seemed rooted to the wet ground. She stared at the open doorway through which her father had disappeared, hearing the lusty, laughing voices of the soldiers, the protesting outcries of her mother, and the angry shouts of her father. Something awful was going to happen, she just knew it. She was frightened. She had never been more frightened in all her life.

  She started running in the direction of her grandfather’s house, but she couldn’t seem to make her legs go fast enough. The muddy ground sucked at her feet, slowing her down, and her long, wet nightgown kept tangling around her legs making her stumble.

  No light showed in any of the houses along the street. They loomed dark and tall on either side of her, silent unfriendly shapes in the rain. To Eva, it was like being in a nightmare where she ran and ran and could never get where she was going.

  In the dark, she almost ran past her grandfather’s house but recognized it at the last second and turned up the path. She stumbled up the steps to the front door, her bare feet numbed by the wet, penetrating cold. She flung herself at the door, pounding on it with her fists and sobbing for her grandfather. Her own cries deafened her to any sounds coming from inside the house.

  When it seemed she had no more strength left in her arms, the door opened and her grandfather stood before her, a lighted candle in hand and a pair of trousers pulled on over his red flannels, the suspenders hanging.

  He frowned at her. “Child, what are you doing out at this hour?”

  She was shivering uncontrollably and her teeth were chattering from the combination of fear and damp cold. For a full second, she couldn’t answer him. He started to pull her inside, out of the cold and the rain, but Eva jerked away from him.

  “No. It’s Mama.” She tried to talk between her hiccoughing sobs. “The soldiers … They broke the door. Papa … he sent me for you. You’ve got to help. I’m … scared, Grandpa. I’m so … scared.” She couldn’t hold it back any more and began crying in earnest, blubbering out the rest, “What are the soldiers gonna do to them, Grandpa? What are they gonna do?”

  “Crying will not help them, Eva Levyena.” He crouched down, thrusting his arms through his suspenders, pulling them high on his shoulders and shifting the candle from one hand to the other. “You must be brave. Do you understand? You must go to your sister’s house and tell her of this. Tell her also th
at I have gone to your home. Can you do this last thing?” Eva nodded, her body still trembling wildly. “Then go while I fetch my musket, and be swift as the wind.”

  Her sister lived only three houses away. Eva turned and jumped off the stoop. At first her numbed legs didn’t want to function properly as she broke into a staggering run. She cut across the front yards of the intervening houses. She lost her footing on a slippery patch of oozing mud and went sprawling face first in the watery muck, but she scrambled to her feet, driven by her father’s admonition for haste that had been reinforced by her grandfather.

  A light moved in her sister’s house, its glow passing from one window to the next. Eva pounded frantically on the front door. Almost immediately she heard a man’s voice demand, “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me! Let me in. I must see Nadia!” Then she glanced over her shoulder, looking down the rain-blurred street. In the dark, she could just barely make out a man’s figure hurrying in the direction of her house. She was certain it was her grandfather.

  The door bar made a grating sound as it was slid back. A second later the door was opened and her sister’s husband stared at her with doubtful recognition. Eva briefly noticed that he was still dressed in his day clothes. Then her glance went past him to the yellow flame of an oil lamp that her sister held, her face illuminated by its outreaching light.

  “Nadia,” she cried and quickly dodged around Gabe Blackwood to run to her sister, unaware of the muddy tracks she left or the water that dripped from her.

  “Eva, look at you!” her sister exclaimed in shock. “Whatever possessed you to go traipsing around in this weather without dressing properly. Why, you’re soaked to the skin and you look like some homeless little mud urchin. Let’s get these wet clothes off of you. What was Mama thinking when she let you go out like this?”

  “Wait,” Eva protested. “It’s Mama.”

  “What’s wrong? Has she taken ill?”

  While she had the chance, Eva blurted out the whole story, the words tumbling over themselves in her haste to get them all out before Nadia could interrupt her again. Her fear increased when she saw the look of horror and distress that spread across her sister’s face.

  “Gabe, you must do something,” she cried.

  His jaws were grimly taut as he snatched his coat and hat from the wall hooks and headed toward the front door. “I’m going to the mayor’s house. I’ll drag him out of bed if I have to.” He paused on the threshold, pulling on his coat. “Bar this door when I leave.”

  “Hurry, Gabe.” As soon as Nadia had secured the door behind him, she turned to Eva, who was so cold she couldn’t stop shaking. “Let’s get you into the kitchen.”

  An hour later, Nadia had rekindled the fire in the iron cookstove, stripped Eva’s wet and muddy clothes off her, taking care not to soil her own dress, scrubbed away the mud, wrapped her in a blanket, and plunked her on a chair in front of the glowing stove. All the while Nadia had plied her with questions, making Eva repeat everything that had happened, the things the soldiers had said, and the reaction of her parents.

  Although the warmth made her limbs tingle again, Eva felt little comfort. She was too conscious of the agitation her sister couldn’t completely conceal, the way she started at every sound and kept looking apprehensively in the direction of the front door, as if anxious for her husband to return. She poured tea into a cup and heavily sweetened it with honey, then gave it to Eva.

  “Drink it,” she urged, but her attempt at a reassuring smile appeared brittle. “We need to warm you inside as well as out.”

  “Why hasn’t Gabe come back? He’s been gone a long time.” Eva was feeling scared all over again. “What do you suppose has happened?”

  “I don’t know,” her sister retorted sharply, her own nerves wearing thin from the strain of waiting.

  “Grandpa knows I’m here. Why doesn’t he come?”

  “Drink your tea and hush.” Nadia sipped at the tea she had poured for herself, but Eva noticed the faint tremor of her hand as she lifted the cup to her mouth.

  “Something bad has happened. I just know it,” Eva declared. “Maybe Mama and Papa are hurt. Maybe they need us. Don’t you think we should go find out?”

  “No, I don’t. Gabe said to stay right here until he came back, and that is exactly what we’re going to do. Besides it’s still raining outside. It would be foolish to go out when we have only now gotten you dry.”

  Stung by the curt reproval, Eva hung her head. Sometimes it seemed that she never said or did anything right. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m … scared.”

  “There is no reason for you to be scared. Everything is going to be all right,” Nadia insisted. “You must stop letting your imagination run away with you. If something terrible had happened, somebody would have already been here to tell us. As it is, the men are obviously handling whatever the trouble is.”

  The sudden pounding on the front door caught both of them off guard. Eva nearly jumped out of the chair, but the blanket that was wound around her restricted any movement and caused her to spill most of the tea down the front of her.

  After an initial start of alarm, Nadia set her cup on the table and smoothed the front of her dress in an attempt to regain her calm. “You stay right here, Eva.”

  “But what if—” It was no use. Her sister had already left the kitchen. Eva listened tensely to the soft rustle of her long skirts and the quiet, even tread of her footsteps. She heard her sister’s inquiry, and a man’s muffled answer, then came the sliding of the bar in its grate. One set of booted feet stamped into the house.

  Certain that her sister wouldn’t have admitted anyone except her husband, Eva wiggled off the chair and rearranged the enfolding blanket to waddle into the front room. She just had to know if her parents were all right.

  “… mayor and I got there, it was too late.” Gabe shrugged out of his wet coat and hung it on the wall hook along with his hat, all the while speaking in low undertones. “We found your grandfather lying unconscious. One of the soldiers had hit him over the back of the head. His head hurts, but that appears to be about the extent of it. He had tried to scare the soldiers off with that old musket of his, but the powder was wet and the gun wouldn’t fire.”

  “What about Papa and …”

  As Eva watched from a few yards away, Gabe took Nadia by the shoulders and held her in front of him. “Your father is a very brave man. He must have put up an admirable fight, but he was outnumbered. Those … soldiers gave him a brutal beating. Nothing serious. His only injuries appear to be a few cuts and some severe bruises, maybe a couple of cracked ribs.”

  “Mama? Did they hurt her?” Nadia clutched at his jacket lapels.

  Gabe hesitated a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he murmured at last, faintly shaking his head. “I’m afraid they violated her.”

  “Oh, no.” Nadia pulled back from him, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “I swear to you they’ll pay for committing such an unspeakable act.” His voice vibrated with anger.

  “I must go to her.” Nadia started to turn away.

  “No.” Gabe checked her movement. “She doesn’t want you there.”

  “But I must,” Nadia protested. “She needs me.”

  “When I mentioned I would bring you back to stay with her, your mother almost became hysterical. She doesn’t want to see you—not now, at any rate,” he explained reluctantly. “At the moment, your father is the only one she wants with her.”

  “Poor Mama,” she murmured, and Eva heard the little sob in her voice. “I hope you locked those vile men in irons and threw the key in the harbor.” As her remark was met with silence, she stared at her husband, searching his shadowed face. “You did, didn’t you?”

  “Nadia, you know the mayor has no authority over the military. He had no choice except to turn them over to the sergeant of the guards. But I am personally going to see General Davis in the morning and demand that these men be court-martialed and impr
isoned for their crimes. I promise you they will be brought to justice.”

  “I hate that man. I hate those soldiers.” She pressed her knuckles to her temples. “I just know I should be with Mama.”

  “Believe me, it’s best that you stay here. Your little sister is going to need you. I think it would be better if you explained to her what happened. Where is she? Did you put her to bed?”

  “No. She’s—” Nadia turned and saw her standing there silhouetted by the long pool of light from the kitchen. “Eva, I told you to wait.”

  “But I wanted to hear.” She took a quick breath, gathering her courage. “What does violated mean? Is it something very bad? Is my mama going to die?”

  “No! … No, she isn’t going to die.” Nadia added more calmly, “It only means she was hurt, but she’ll be all right.”

  “What did they do to her?” Eva frowned.

  “They … hurt her.”

  “You mean they hit her like they did Papa?”

  “Something like that, yes.” Her sister nodded.

  That was the only explanation Eva was given. Within minutes, her sister bundled her off to the spare bedroom, insisting that she go to sleep.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  The morning sunlight filtered through the thinning layers of fog, giving an iridescent shimmer to the mist that drifted outside the windows of the military commander’s office in Baranov’s Castle. Gabe brushed past the orderly who held the door open for him and walked briskly to the massive desk. It, like most of the other furnishings in the house, was a holdover from the Russian administration and, like everything else, showed signs of neglect.

  The chair behind it creaked as the general dragged his booted feet off the desktop and sat up straight, but he didn’t bother to stand when Gabe stopped in front of his desk. Nor did he make any attempt to button his uniform. Despite the sweeping brush of his mustache, there was something Lincolnesque about his narrow, gaunt-cheeked face with its full brown beard. But from the way the general had winked at the drunkenness, brawls, and thievery of his men in the past, Gabe knew the resemblance to the dead President was purely physical.