Night Fires in the Distance

by Sarah Goodwin

  Charles had told me the rings alone were worth five hundred dollars. I knew they were precious and vital for my survival, but just looking at them made my heart thud fearfully. I felt, irrationally, as though he could see me selling them, and that he was more angry with me now than he had been before.

  “Seventy dollars.”

  I couldn’t stop the sound of angry dismay that burst out of me, mingling with Clappe’s rough voice, “They’re worth five hundred if they’re worth a cent.”

  He shrugged. “It has to sell to make the money, and I’ll be honest with you Sir, whoever sold your dear mother these trinkets was a shyster, the rings are more copper than gold and these are glass,” he pointed out the diamonds, “only thing real is the emerald, and the pearl, but that’s small, not a costly gem.”

  Of course, it never occurred to me to think that the clerk was lying.

  I was so hungry I couldn’t find it in myself to argue. I only nodded. The clerk counted out notes and put them in a pile.

  Standing there, in the dim interior of a country bank, holding that slim bundle of notes, I felt so small and stupid as the clerk gathered up my fake jewels. I’d travelled so far from home, knowing nothing of the world. I had only the vaguest idea of what I needed to buy with my small supply of money, let alone what to do with a plough if I could get the thing to a plot of land somewhere.

  I realised that I needed Laura, for her help as well as her company. The journey to town had reminded me of the terrible silence of being by myself, the emptiness of the prairie, without a kindly or familiar face to great me in town. I wasn’t strong enough to go somewhere else, live without my one almost-friend. Even if I had to lie to her, to everyone, for the rest of my life.

  The weight of my deceit was almost as suffocating as the heat. Every day stretched out before me, days where my choice would be loneliness or lies, and act or the silence of my own memories. Was it so different to what I’d left behind? To Charles and the locked doors of his house, the public engagements where I was never out of his sight, never more than a few steps from his side, my mouth unable to utter more than the most frivolous of pleasantries.

  I had to believe that there was more for me here than with him. That even if I was limited and not completely free to be myself, even if my poverty and need for aid would force me back to Deene’s who had wronged me, I would never again be under Charles’ thumb.

  I would rather perish alone under a lie than be imprisoned with him by the truth.

  Chapter Seven

  Laura

  The clerk was reckoning up with Will while I kept half an eye on the children. Our sacks of wheat and corn were carried by the store owner’s sons into the shed around back. We were making out good on the trade. Not as good as we could’ve, the crop was probably worth more, but there was only the one store. Their price was the only price.

  The store was also where the letters and parcels were delivered by passing riders, and I’d expected to receive something from home. Will usually brought back a letter when he returned from town, but this time there was nothing. I worried that my family had forgotten me, now I’d been gone for so long. I left my letter with the clerk anyway, to send out with the next rider.

  That morning I’d seen the creek for the first time in two years, with the shrubs around it and the birds in them singing. I’d been half-ashamed to find my eyes wet. Will hadn’t taken me to town before and it was the first time I’d been back over the prairie since we crossed it to where our house now stood.

  There was almost too much for me to take in, like I was seeing some king’s treasure trove instead of a line of buildings and a market half the size I was used to. People were selling silk ribbons, rose sprig calico, sturdy boots – all from a wagon. There were barrels coming off a cart, chickens scratching, men eating fried bread and drinking coffee at a porch rail. The air smelling not just of grass but like cigarettes and pipes, frying bacon and dough, boiling broth and greasy dumplings.

  The general store was full. It’d been a long time since I’d seen so many things all jammed into one place; broom and axe heads, barrels of crackers, candy and salted meat, nails and tacks in big boxes, bolts of cloth, shoes, boots, sacks, flour in its various grades, packets of paper, baskets of eggs, bunches of pencils, and over the counter, hung in pride of place on the wall, three ploughs.

  I looked long and hard at the new sod cutting plough. We had one already, an old and rusty thing that Will had traded from a family on their way back east. We’d put up a sack of cornmeal and Thomas’s old shoes for it.

  How would Clappe cut his sod? Will wouldn’t loan our plough, Clappe would have to buy one, but how? He didn’t seem to have anything to trade, and though he’d given me pennies for food I didn’t think he had much coin left. Not enough to buy a plough at any rate, or a wagon to get it home. I’d thought he’d meant to borrow our tools and set himself up properly when he brought in his first harvest, living on game ‘til then, as we had our first year.

  “Rachel, mind you don’t mark those,” I said, noticing her as I thought gloomily on Clappe’s fate.

  “You said we’d have candy when we came to town,” Rachel said, turning from where she’d been stroking the toe of a new pair of boots.

  Beth pulled at my skirt and pointed to the jar on the counter that held red and green striped sticks of candy.

  “Ma, look!”

  I picked her up. “Yes I see them, would you like one, sweet pea?”

  Will turned a little and I caught the shake of his head.

  “If you wish very hard,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment from my voice, “you might get one for Christmas. Why don’t you pick out the buttons for your winter clothes yourself?”

  Rachel glared at me with Will’s sloe eyes.

  I’d been stupid to promise them candy, but the year before when he’d gone to sell our harvest, Will’d brought some back with him. I’d thought we’d manage again, the crop had seemed as good. Maybe what we’d grown wasn’t as good as before, or maybe the store owner had decided to widen his profits. Either way, we were short for it. The hope of the day dried up. Just once I wanted Rachel to smile at me and make my heart float, just like when she was a baby showing me her pink gums.

  Thomas was looking at a Winchester rifle that was hung on the wall. I knew he wanted a weapon of his own, but he was not yet old enough to shoot. His eyes were very round as he looked at it, fingers curling and uncurling at his sides in want. Still, when Will clapped his hands together and said it was time for them to go outside, Thomas went without a word.

  While Thomas watched the girls and the wagon, William picked out stove pipe lengths to go with the little iron range. It was a two holed stove with a bake oven cast of lumpy looking iron with sharp edges. It would be a fine thing to have it heating the soddie, and to be able to cook indoors. I pointed out sacks of cornmeal, the cheapest flour they had, brown and flecked with split kernels, Lord knew if I’d ever get it to rise.

  “We’ll take some of that as well,” Will said, pointing out a brown calico and a darker brown linsey woolsey. “How much’ll you need to make yours and the girls’ dresses?”

  I told him, watched the store clerk cut out lengths of goods for us. Brown to match the dirt. First new cloth we’d had since we came to the territory.

  Outside I helped William pile the wagon with our goods. Soon we were on our way back to the soddie. I hoped Clappe had found the piece of muslin with the bread inside it hidden by the house. He’d have been starving when he woke up, after having almost nothing the day before.

  I was vexed with Will, had been all day, not that he noticed. That morning Will had told me to get the children ready for a trip to town. I’d asked him what he thought he was doing, hadn’t he promised the day to Clappe? Will hadn’t seen fit to argue with me, he’d just gone out to get the wagon ready.

  Arguing with Will never came to any good. I’d packed up some lunch for the journey, helped get the harvest onto the wagon
and shushed the children as I helped them into the box beside the sacks. Clappe’d proved himself a heavy sleeper.

  I only hoped I could count on Will to get around to helping out our neighbour. I didn’t want things ruined between us. It’d been pleasant the last few days, having a new face around to see, a new voice to hear.

  The ride home was long and hot. I had my bonnet on, but the back of my neck burnt fast. With Nora in my arms and Beth close at my side, I was desperate for a cool drink and a breeze. Rachel sulked on the other side of me, thinking of candy sticks no doubt. Her new shoes were in the wagon, next to the goods for her dress, but what were warm clothes and sturdy shoes to her when she wanted candy? I didn’t know how she’d grown up so spoiled. Even when she was a baby and we lived with Will’s family, there had been no sweets or treats apart from Christmas.

  It was finally getting cool as we reached the soddie. For miles I’d been able to see that the tent was gone. Will’d grunted as he noticed its absence, but said nothing. The oxen pulled us on home.

  I climbed down to help Beth and Rachel on to the grass. Thomas went straight to the barn to start fetching water for the beasts, and I unloaded the wagon, giving Rachel her shoes to carry. With Will’s help I took our purchases into the soddie, stocking the supply chest and putting the new fabric and trimmings away. Rachel had chosen gilt buttons for her dress, a whole two cents dearer than plain metal. Will, his bottle of whisky already paid for, let her have her way. You couldn’t predict who he’d favour or what he’d do with the promise of drink to cheer him. Rachel got her buttons and the rest of the children got nothing, not even a stick of candy to share.

  I’d be reusing the chipped buttons from an old frock, the make up the cost.

  The stove went into the corner, where it would stand once Will fitted the stove pipe. That night I would cook my last meal outdoors.

  “Would you look at that,” I said, running my hand over the sun warmed metal, “did you ever see a finer thing?”

  “It’s just a stove,” Rachel said, already shoving her dirty, summer tough feet into her new shoes.

  “Get your feet out of those shoes,” Will ordered, cheer lost on the long drive home. “I don’t want to see you in them ‘til there’s a foot of snow on the ground.”

  She pulled them off and stuffed them away by the door.

  “This stove’ll be keeping us warm long after those shoes have passed to Beth and are worn to holes,” I said. I could see that Will had found his bottle and was taking a few nips from it.

  “Tonight we’ll have a proper dinner,” William said, catching Rachel up and spinning her around while she squealed, his good mood restored. “Salt pork and cornbread and beans, that’s what we’ll have, my little hen.” He held her in his arms and scratched her face with his dark whiskers until she struggled, laughing.

  “But what about our candy?” she asked. “Ma said to me and Beth that we’d have candy when you went to town.”

  “Well, you see,” he said, lowering his voice a little, “Ma needed this lovely cook stove, so there was no money for candy – but you shall have some at Christmas.”

  My hands tightened on the bundle of wicking I was poking into a tin can. The lies tripped easily off his tongue when he spoke to the girls. The cook stove was as much for them and him as for me, wouldn’t it keep them warm come winter? Wouldn’t it heat water to wash them, dry their clothes, bake their goddamn bread? What would his bottle of whisky do for them, for me? Nothing.

  While the girls soothed the ragdolls they’d left behind, I fed Nora, trying not to let tears fall as she drew on my cracked nipple. Oh for some salve, I would have walked to town for it if I’d had the money. I’d asked Will for some coin as we’d passed a house with a sign in the window, offering medicines and balms. He’d only grunted that he didn’t have money to waste on ‘every little whim’ of mine.

  Once I’d patted Nora’s back and laid her down in her cradle box I tried to arrange my dress so as to stop it rubbing on my chest. Then I went to start a fire.

  Stacking buffalo chips and knotted grass, I struck a light to it and poked at the tinder until the whole pile caught. Beans and salt pork and cornbread he’d said. It was already growing dark. I was tired from the jolting of the wagon and my back ached with carrying Nora around the store.

  “Rachel? Come help me with supper,” I called. When there was no response I tried again, “Rachel? Come now, I’ll let you make the bread.”

  I went to the door of the soddie and looked inside. Rachel was sitting on her tick, dandling her rag doll by its yarn hair. Beth dozed on the tick, her thumb lodged in her little rosebud of a mouth.

  “Didn’t you hear me call?” I said, “I need your help with the supper.”

  Her mouth twisted in a set pout. “Why?”

  “Young lady, get up and get the cornmeal from the chest before I lose my patience,” I warned. My back tightened in pain. I could feel the milk on my raw teat sticking to my shift.

  Rachel dragged herself from the tick and flung her doll away, it slapped against Beth’s face, waking her. Her mouth opened, the wet thumb slipping out as she began to wail. Nora started to grizzle in her cradle box.

  I took two strides across the packed dirt floor and grabbed Rachel’s arm, hauling her out of the soddie. With one hand I lifted the skirt of her dress, with the other I slapped her sharply across the backs of her thighs, twice. I pulled her dress back down and spun her around. Her mouth was a thin line, but her eyes were large and wet like a dog’s.

  “Don’t you ever pretend you don’t hear me, Rachel Deene, when I tell you to do something, there’s a good reason for it. Now go quiet your sisters.”

  Her little face bunched up and she tore away from me, off towards the barn, “I’m gonna tell Pa!”

  “You come back here right now, or I’ll spank you again, with a wooden spoon this time!”

  She rounded the soddie and disappeared. I kicked out at a chunk of firewood in the grass. “That goddamn child.”

  Never had she failed to mind me, though she had a habit of being contrary. I hadn’t had to raise a hand to her since she was a tiny child. Then I’d struck her only to keep her out of the hearth, or from eating buttons or stones, the way children will, as if they’re born with the determination to die as soon as possible. A child who wouldn’t listen to me was a child in danger. If a wolf or band of Indians should come to our door and she didn’t pay heed I shuddered to think what would happen.

  I went into the soddie and lifted Beth, holding her though it pained my back. Nora had snuffled herself to sleep. I took Beth outside and put her on the grass a little way from the fire, took out the bowl and the skillet, the cornmeal and salt pork and carried them outside as well. I showed her how to stir while she wrapped her pudgy hand around the spoon handle.

  “One day soon you’ll be doing this all on your own.” I hoped that she would be more of a help than Rachel, or that my eldest daughter would mellow soon. It was hard to have no one. Sometimes I almost wished Thomas had been born a girl. He would have been a great help.

  Thomas appeared at the edge of the circle of firelight, carrying a bucket of well water. It was as though he knew I needed him. He set the bucket down and went to the soddie, brought out the plates, jug and the bundle of knives and forks.

  “Rachel’s crying by the sty,” he said, face lowered as he filled the water jug.

  “Why?”

  “Pa slapped her.”

  I felt a twist of vicious satisfaction in my belly, followed by the ache of shame. I stroked Beth’s hair and bobbed her on my knee. Why couldn’t they grow like wheat? Fingerlings one month, full stalks by summer’s end? Why this slow rearing? My children as much use on the dry, empty prairie as a fistful of flower heads.

  “Take your sister,” I said to Thomas, “and watch the beans don’t burn.”

  I poured the cornbread into the skillet and went to find Rachel. She was by the sty, leaning on the sod wall.

  “Come on
back to the fire now, it’s not safe out in the dark, you know that.”

  I put my hand on her thin shoulder, my shame lessening when she didn’t squirm away from me.

  “Ma.” She turned her face up to me, pointing at the pig in its pen. “He’s not moving.”

  Chapter Eight

  Laura

  “It was that fucking Clappe bastard.”

  “Will,” I hissed, holding the lantern high and watching him as he crouched in the sty with his butchering knife. The girls were in the soddie, our dinner getting cold outside.

  “He can’t take a little disappointment, so he goes and he kills my goddamn hog?” He jerked the knife down the belly of the beast. “If I see that bastard cocksucker again, I’ll kill him.”

  “It wasn’t him,” I said, “it must’ve been an animal, or an Indian.” If there was one thing Will hated more than other men, it was Indian men.

  “Savages, just left it here to rot like it ain’t worth nothing, a whole year of scraps and hauling water, spoiling.” He handed me the knife so he could lift the carcass.

  I was the one who’d fed that pig, shovelled shit from its sty for the garden. I said nothing. Will was already roaring mad, adding to his temper wouldn’t improve our lot any. The pig was almost spoilt, the day had been hot, the flies had already been on it, but, if we got it into brine and soaked it there was a chance of saving the best part of it.

  Thomas was filling the barrel as we carried the carcass, he’d poured the salt water in, and we sank the pig into it and sealed the lid on tight. Only time would tell, but if in a month I was hauling up green pork, stinking and dropping maggots, I too would be kicking at walls and shouting for all the world and the Almighty to hear.