Unhooking herself, she touched his leg. Gabriel’s flesh was rock hard. She traced her finger along the skin that was still alive above his thigh, and the dark hardened mass below. She took the lamp away from Vicente and brought it closer to Gabriel’s skin. She had to make sure the infection stayed frozen in place. No more pustules formed. The black webbed lines didn’t spread. They had faded away.
He was alive.
Lil Bit touched her father’s sweaty forehead. He was conscious, watching her the entire time. Staring at her hair. She pulled her tendrils back down inside her head. The bumps on her scalp were hot to the touch. But they felt good. So good.
* * *
Vicente helped Odetta lift Gabriel into the back of the chuck wagon. Odetta took the herd money and placed it underneath Gabriel.
“When we get to Nicodemus, I’ll have my brothers go back with you to return this money for my husband. Tell your rancher that he’s dead,” said Odetta.
“Sí,” Vicente said. Lil Bit could tell that he was afraid of Odetta. He spoke Spanish when he meant to speak English, and he stuttered a bit when Odetta spoke directly to him.
“I’ll pay you for going with us,” said Odetta.
Vicente couldn’t keep eye contact with her. Her living hair was too much for him. He saw what she had done to the monstrous thieves. They didn’t look human anymore. They’d stuffed the thieves in blankets and carried them out of town in the back of the wagon.
Odetta rode Bear and Lil Bit rode Daphne alongside her. Vicente followed Odetta’s lead with her own horse tied and following the back of the wagon. Lil Bit’s uncles were staggered a few miles ahead of them.
Lil Bit couldn’t keep her eyes off her mother’s profile. One of Odetta’s locks lifted towards her.
“What you thinkin’, babygirl?” said Odetta.
“I never wanted to forget what you looked like.”
“All you gotta do is look in a mirror, chile. I be right there.”
Lil Bit glanced back at Vicente and the wagon. He held his hand up and waved to her.
“He scared of you, Mama.”
“I know.”
“Can he live in Nicodemus with us?”
“If he want to.”
“What’s it like there, Mama?”
“Everything owned by Negroes. Hundreds of colored people living on they own land for the first time. And they free. That’s what it’s like.”
The sky lightened for a new morning and Lil Bit helped Vicente dig up the graves. Her mother tended to Gabriel. The digging didn’t take long. When Vicente was about to roll the last body into the ground, Lil Bit moved closer to the tall man’s face. His mouth was parted open. She picked up a small stick and stuck it inside. Wiggling it around, she dragged out a thick forked tongue. There was a bulging dark gland under the tongue. It still dripped blood. She noticed something else.
“Be careful, chica.”
“They have no teeth. No wonder they talked funny. See here? There’s a hole under the tongue, that’s where they spit. Their blood eats away the skin.”
“Bury it,” Odetta said.
Vicente trembled from the sound of Odetta’s voice. He gently nudged Lil Bit aside and shoved the thing into the grave.
“What were those men, Mama?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think they are like us?” asked Lil Bit.
“Those things eat people,” said Odetta.
“No, I mean… they have blood that injures people, and their mouths are made like lizards… and our hair can do things like their blood…” The words were not coming out the way she wanted them to.
“Let’s go, Lil Bit. There might be more of them around.”
Vicente grabbed the shovel and walked back to the wagon.
“Papa?” asked Lil Bit.
Odetta smiled.
“Weak, but he’ll be fine. You saved his life.”
They both climbed on their horses. Lil Bit eased Daphne a little closer to Bear. She thought about her book and the picture she saw of the woman with writhing scales for hair. If she and her mother existed, and those white men who ate human insides existed, maybe the book wasn’t made up. She side-eyed her mother for a few minutes as the horses settled into a comfortable trot.
“Where do we come from, Mama? The Medu?”
“When my grandmother was alive, she called it the bright lands. A place called… hmmm, how she say it… Rebu… Rebu Tehenu. A dry hot place. Like Texas. Desert country. She said we were something to see.”
“In Africa?”
“Yes, somewhere there.”
In the rising sunlight Lil Bit stared at her mother’s plump lips, her glossy black ropes of living hair, and her blue-black flashing eyes. Mama was nothing like that old mythology book said. Nothing like it all.
Odetta shook her tresses, and every lock spiraled out, dancing around her face and defying gravity.
“We Medu, babygirl. Be who you be.”
Lil Bit threw back her hat. She let her scalp throb and pushed out. Every dark strand from her head tasted the morning air, never to be hidden again.
Never.
Art by Eric Orchard
Lone Women
by Victor LaValle
* * *
1914
Montana
Adelaide Henry and her steamer trunk had come a long way but still had much farther to go. They’d left the family farmhouse in Redondo behind, burned down to its foundations. They escaped on a San Francisco–bound steamer; a second ship from San Francisco to Seattle, then the locomotive inland. Now there were just two more days on Mr. Olsen’s rattletrap wagon. Soon Adelaide, and that steamer trunk, would finally reach the small cabin. Their homestead. Their hideout. Their exile.
She checked the padlocks on the trunk every time the wagon hit a hard bump, which meant at least once an hour. When the Mudge family joined her on Olsen’s wagon she checked the padlocks every ten minutes. The Mudges. A mother and four boys. The oldest looked to be seventeen and the youngest about six. The boys all wore blindfolds. At first Adelaide thought they were playing a game, but the blindfolds never came off. It was everything Adelaide could do to keep from lifting each one and peeking at their eyes. A mother and four blind boys headed for the wilds of Montana. Adelaide’s anxieties about her own homesteading were put into perspective.
The Mudges huddled down in the wagon just like Adelaide. The winds out here were stronger than sea currents. At one point a gust got hold of Adelaide and actually lifted her to her feet. Nearly flung her out the wagon. Mrs. Mudge didn’t move to help and the four boys couldn’t see anything with the blindfolds. Mr. Olsen, up driving the wagon intently, hardly even turned back when he told her to be careful. If she’d actually fallen out she felt sure she’d be dead and then the Mudges and Mr. Olsen would have the Seward steam trunk sitting right there in the middle of the wagon. How long before curiosity got them to open it? Before they pried the padlocks apart? Adelaide couldn’t help imagining the violence that would come next. A vision of the six year old with his stomach torn open – really just a memory of what her mother had suffered in the farmhouse – made Adelaide go tight.
They overnighted in a derelict hotel. One empty entranceway, one empty parlor, ten empty bedrooms. Adelaide had expected to find a few strips of cloth, a broken chair or two, but everything had all been sold, stolen, or withered away. Like fools, no one had brought lamps or matches in their travel bags. The supplies were sealed up tight in the boxes buried in Mr. Olsen’s wagon. Late night hardly seemed like the time to scavenge their resources and besides they were all exhausted. The wagon had tossed and crashed the whole way and each of them, even the children, limped as they moved inside. The darkness outside became worse indoors. Not even the stars in here to guide them. To Adelaide every room felt fathomless and she felt truly alone.
Suddenly it was too much. Adelaide fled out into the wind. Her only companion here in the wild country was that steamer trunk, and wasn’t that
funny? She reached the wagon and crouched behind it. The wagon, even when weighed down with hundreds of pounds of baggage, rattled as easily as an infant’s toy.
She would have to go back inside, impossible to spend a night in the open. Still she didn’t think she could go back in, couldn’t sleep, without some sense of protection. She had no gun. She had brought something else, though.
Adelaide climbed up into the wagon and produced keys from the inner pocket of her heavy skirt. She unlocked two of the padlocks on her trunk then hesitated at the third.
“Know what happened at this hotel? Before the town shut up for good?”
Mr. Olsen appeared beside the wagon. She dropped her keys, they thunked on the floorboards. Her fingers clawed for them in the dark.
“Man named Vardner got hanged right on the front porch,” Mr. Olsen said. “He rustled cattle and got caught. Thieving is serious business around here. Understand me?”
Adelaide looked up at him. “But I wasn’t trying to…”
Mr. Olsen nodded though his eyes showed he wasn’t listening. “You climb on down now. Get inside and get to sleep.”
“I lost my keys,” she said.
He gestured for her to move and she did.
“I’ll find them in the morning. If you dropped them like you say.”
Adelaide Henry walked inside the hotel, crossing the threshold where a man had been hanged. She crossed the parlor and climbed the stairs. She found the door to the Mudges room, closed, and patted along the wall until she found the next open door. Inside she unfurled a flannel blanket she’d kept in her travel bag. She folded the blanket over to double the nominal comfort.
In the morning Mr. Olsen rapped at her door lightly.
Once Adelaide rose and opened the door he stood there smiling. “Found ‘em.”
Her ring of three keys sat in his palm. She snatched them up. “I told you,” she said.
He dipped his chin. “Never should have doubted you.”
After she dressed, Mr. Olsen met her at the wagon with a bowl of beans and a wooden spoon. She ate quickly even though the beans were hot enough to scald. Mr. Olsen watched her.
“Out here you’ll be earning your hunger every day.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“Me?” he asked with feigned nonchalance. “Hours already. Had to let the horses out to graze. Had to find your keys. Then there’s the Mudges. They’re gone.”
Adelaide stopped chewing. “Gone where?”
“Went ahead, my guess. Wagons come through most days. If there’s space drivers’ll always give a ride.”
“To five people?”
“Does seem like a lot. But anyone would have sympathy for a mother and four blind children. They left all their things so I’m bound to bring it to them. After I get you to your claim I’ll keep on.”
Adelaide nodded, ate more beans, but tasted nothing. The Mudges are gone. She wanted to scramble over Mr. Olsen’s shoulders and check her steamer trunk. The Mudges are gone.
A mother and four children.
She decided to believe that they’d gone ahead or even turned back, gone home. Either option was better than the third. She was able to maintain this fantasy until they struck camp and Mr. Olsen helped her back into the wagon. She almost didn’t want to check the steamer trunk, but knew she must.
The third padlock had come off. She found all that remained of it: a portion of the curved shank. It had been stretched until it snapped.
And now the Mudges were gone.
She tested the steamer trunk and felt the familiar weight inside. Wherever it had gone, whatever it had done, it had returned. Mr. Olsen tried to make conversation on the second day of the journey, but Adelaide couldn’t bring herself to speak.
When they passed through a small township Adelaide bought a replacement padlock.
* * *
The first Sunday after Adelaide took possession of her Montana cabin, she heard the snort of horses. She’d been working in the wicker rocker, stitching the holes that had developed in her gloves from digging up soft coal for the stove. Now she moved to the stove and began a fire. She brought down the teakettle and filled it with water from a jug. Tea for a neighbor, that was just polite. The nearest homesteader, a woman named Grace Price, had come to visit three days ago with her five-year-old boy, Stan. It had felt more like an inspection than a friendly chat. If Grace and Stan were back, then Adelaide must’ve passed the exam.
But when she went to answer the door she found two men standing there.
Two cowboys.
Each one rangy as fence wire, their cheeks and foreheads a brownish red from years of outdoor work. Their fingertips all stained brown. Both wore denim overalls and boots. The cuffs of the overalls were threadbare, the soles of the boots worn thin. The man at the door had a clean face and the one behind him, a little older, wore a beard. When she opened the door they removed their hats.
“We don’t mean to surprise you,” said the clean-faced cowboy. He smiled and his teeth were small, stained. The one behind him nodded gently. “But we heard you were out here all on your own.”
Grace had been talking, it seemed.
“You make me sound like big news,” Adelaide said, laughing..
The man with the beard gave a short laugh. “Ma’am, you are this week’s headline.”
The teakettle blew on the stove.
“You were sitting down for tea,” said the younger man, hinting disappointment.
“I was expecting Grace and Stan,” Adelaide said.
Adelaide stepped back inside to get the kettle off the stove. She shut the door on both men because her bed was right there, unmade. She didn’t want them to see it. She set the kettle on a stove plate to cool. When she opened the door again the bearded man was already walking toward the horses.
“You’re leaving?” Adelaide asked.
The younger man said, “We came to see if you were free.”
The bearded man returned, leading not two horses but three. All of them saddled.
“We hoped.” He paused. “I hope you’ll come out for a ride.”
Matteus Kirby – who insisted on being called Matthew, a proper U.S. name – took her out for a wonderful afternoon. His uncle, Finn, rode a few lengths behind the whole time. She’d thought of them as cowboys but the men worked on threshing crews. Matthew’s uncle operated the straw-burning steam engine, and Matthew worked as a separator man.
In the next weeks Adelaide was visited by other men like Matthew and Finn. Word spread about the new “lone woman.” Adelaide had come out to Montana for the seclusion, but her seclusion quickly ended. Most men asked her to come on a ride, bringing a saddled horse for her. They might take her to a ranch, where they lived and worked, and she’d spend the evening eating dinner and making conversation. She realized they were all just profoundly lonely, and grateful for her time. She enjoyed the time with them, too. They were often a better option than reading one of her novels all over again. Adelaide spent fewer evenings penned up inside her cabin, watching the locks rattle on her steamer trunk, listening to the wind howling outside the shack and something else howling within.
* * *
She enjoyed the company of nearly all the men, but Matthew was special. One evening he invited her to a dance nearby. She agreed to go because Finn was bringing Grace Price and Stan. It felt, in a way, like a grand family outing.
Because of the cold and a layer of newly fallen snow, the dance was held in a granary. The place was actually smaller than the home on the property, a two-story palace with four bedrooms, but the granary had been cleared out so it made a better dance floor. A corral sat on the property as well, with nine horses, and a large barn. Adelaide understood this family had done well. The husband and wife had each filed for a homestead so between them they’d proved up on 640 acres. Matthew joked that he could file for a plot alongside Adelaide’s and they could amass a property that was just as impressive. Adelaide laughed along but she guessed Matthew
was sincere.
They all wore their rough clothes for the ride. Adelaide and Grace kept their dresses for the dance in bags on the backs of their horses.
Musicians had been brought in to play;a woman on the piano and her husband on the fiddle, a guitarist came down from the mountains for the night, and there were rumors a man was on his way with a horn. They’d put cornmeal on the granary floor and by the time Adelaide, Grace, and the boys arrived people were dancing. Adelaide and Grace changed in the main house and returned to dance with their dates, while Stan ran off to bop around with the other kids. This dance would go all night. When the children got tired they’d sleep in the main house, girls on the second floor and boys on the first.
Adelaide shared many dances with Matthew. Sometimes she and Grace traded and Adelaide enjoyed herself with Matthew’s soft-spoken uncle. She always addressed him as Mr. Kirby. He, in turn, only asked questions about “Mrs. Price.”
But most of Adelaide’s time was spent alongside Grace. No one could dance for that many hours. Every little while the men would go off to yap with other men and the women would be free to make conversation. Grace brought Adelaide around to meet all the women who’d come. These were her closest neighbors and almost all of them were “lone women,” even if only on paper. Some, like Adelaide, had been lured out by Mattie T. Cramer’s “Success of a ‘Lone’ Woman” – Adelaide was unsurprised to hear it had been reprinted in newspapers around the country – and the women now referred to its many exaggerations with mingled humor and chagrin.
It was in this way – with Grace leading her around like a protective older sister – that Adelaide came to shake hands with a very pale, sharp angled woman and immediately lost her breath.
“Mrs. Mudge?” Adelaide asked.
The woman, who’d only been paying the faintest attention during the greeting, tensed for an instant. No one else would have noticed, but Adelaide held the woman’s hand, and for that instant, the grip tightened like a bite.
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History Page 43
