My mouth moved with hers, soft and warm, for only a moment, before she pulled away and covered her lips with her hand.
“Oh God,” she squeezed her eyes closed.
It was over so suddenly that it might have been all in my mind, only the tingling in my lips, the heat in my face, assured me that it had been real. She had kissed me. I had kissed her back.
“It’s nothing,” I said, moving back and getting to my feet. I had to get away. “Don’t trouble yourself over it.”
Laura stood, straw clinging to her dress. My arms remembered the softness of her, and the comforting smell of skin and cotton, dough and smoke, still lingered in my nose. My admiration and interest in her mixed up with something else. Something I’d felt once before, in the garden behind the pharmacist’s small house.
“James, I’m sorry. I just want…”
“You’re married,” I interrupted her, as she came forward. “Married and a mother.”
She looked down, cowed.
“You deserve better than him, but you are his wife, and you shouldn’t cheapen yourself by indulging in adultery. I won’t help you. This was a mistake and one I hope we can put behind us.” The worlds tumbled out in a rush and I turned for the door, opening it to let the light flow in. “Goodbye Laura.”
“You’re wrong,” she said suddenly, taking a few steps towards me and catching the door with her own hand. “I made all my mistakes years ago, and this, this was no mistake. I’ve seen you look at me,” she said, almost gently, “since you arrived, all you’ve done is look at me. And the way you talk to me, the way you held me while Beth…” she took a breath, and I saw her strength returning. “It is your mistake if you walk away from me, because you want me as much as I want you.”
I let go of the door and fairly stumbled into the light. Missy, who’d been snuffling in the grass, came to me, then trailed off in the direction of home. I followed, my feet hardly feeling the ground, certain that the burn on the back of my neck was the product of Laura’s eyes, watching my every step.
Back in my soddie I sat on the packing box I’d left in one corner as a chair. I wanted to scrub the feel of her lips from mine, but no matter how many times I rubbed my sleeve over them, her touch remained. The imprint of her body was on mine.
I had let her get too close. I had forgotten the point of my presence in Indian Territory; I was there to hide and live out my life away from Charles. To do that I had to keep up the pretence of James Clappe, which meant I would never again have female friends. I had been a fool to think that Laura could fill that gap in my life. She saw me as the man I pretended to be, and unknowingly I’d tempted her into a desperate advance. No, I could not let that happen again.
For the rest of the day I forced myself to concentrate on sewing myself a new shirt. Soon, God willing, winter would lock up the land and provide the perfect barrier to Laura’s company. By spring, she would have lost the impulse to betray her marriage, I was sure.
Still, as I undressed and laid down to sleep, I remembered the desperation on her tear-streaked face. My heart shivered for her, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I had my own life to protect, I could not take responsibility for hers. If she wanted to run from William, she would have to do it herself. I squashed the part of me that knew it wasn’t that easy. Not for her, with her children.
Still, I did not sleep.
Chapter Twenty
Laura
William got Jamison’s soddie up only a day before the first winter storm arrived. The screaming wind threw rain against the shutters and down the stove pipe to sizzle on the coals. It soaked the walls until damp oozed in. Besides going outside to feed the animals twice a day, William sat by the stove, smoking, working on a bench for beside the table, and playing Patience.
I had a pan of dough in the oven and Rachel was working with me on a rag rug like the one Martha’d made. Rachel cut strips from our old clothes, Beth plaited them, and I pinned them into a round, ready for sewing. William was watching us over his card game.
“I swear there’s at least a dozen other things that need doing,” he said, after we’d been going for a while.
“I don’t doubt it,” I said.
“I mean, the whole house is in need of a good clean, it’s like some animal’s den in here.”
I looked up at him, raising my eyebrows. “Well, you built a dirt house, you should expect a little of it to rub off.”
He glared at me, but for once I felt no more than a twinge of fear. If I didn’t want him to touch me, he wouldn’t. If he raised his voice or his hand to me, I would give him as good in return. No one else was going to save me. I didn’t know if I was brave or just too worn out to feel afraid.
“Thomas, how’s that work coming?” I asked.
He was sitting on his tick, our Bible laid out on his knees.
“I’ve almost got it,” he said, for I’d set him to commit a psalm to memory. “Only, this part I don’t understand. What does this word mean?” he spelt it out for me.
“Iniquity? It means, sin,” I said, “all the sins that keep us apart from God.”
“Oh,” he found the word on the page and read the lines around it, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble, my eye wastes away with grief, yes, my soul and my body. For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing. My strength fails because of my in-iniquity, and my bones waste away…does that mean that sin makes us ill?”
“I suppose, in a way,” I pricked myself with the needle and shook my hand. “Sin makes us sick at heart, even if we don’t know it. That’s what I would think it means.”
“Do you think they’re sad because of the sin?”
I honestly didn’t know, my own Bible studies had ended years before, I could no longer remember the part he was studying. I’d begun to think of the Bible as a collection of stories anyhow, stories that had as much to do with me as the Indian’s fables. They didn’t comfort me anymore.
“I think anyone who has sinned and lost sight of God would be sad,” I said at last, accidentally catching William’s eye as I looked up. He was watching me. What was he thinking of, his sin, or mine?
Thomas nodded, though still seemed confused. He went back to his studies and I was glad that the matter was settled.
When I next glanced up, William had stopped watching me and was puffing on his pipe.
Winter already seemed so long. William hadn’t spoken of inviting Jamison and Martha for a meal, so I didn’t even have that to think of. No letters had arrived from home for months, and now, with the weather worsening, I would have to wait for spring.
Worse than the weather, or even Will’s temper - my monthly flow was four days late.
I could not imagine surviving another child coming into the world with Nora still feeding from the breast and the six of us already overflowing the soddie. If I was pregnant again I would be heavy with the baby by the time spring planting rolled around. That was an experience I didn’t wish to repeat, trying to pick roots and stones with my belly weighing me down.
“What are you looking so down for?” William asked.
“Oh just…wishing we could take the children to church, have them taught the Bible properly,” I said.
He sniffed. “They get enough of that here. And it never helped us any did it? Never taught us how to plant a row or skin a deer, that’s the thing to be teaching them.”
“But perhaps for Christmas, it might be the thing to go to church and see the people from town.”
He’d come back with word that they’d finished building one. It seemed the only thing to get us away from the house, just for a while. He seemed to consider it.
“Jamison mentioned going over for Christmas, that there would be celebrations and a church dinner.”
Food, his other vice, and one I shared. By the end of December we would be some way though our provisions, getting tired of the items we had in bulk, namely cornmeal and beans. I imagined a dinner set out for all the church goers, with p
latters of roasted meat, jugs of rich gravy and a pudding full of fruit.
“It might be nice to tag along with him,” I said, “catch up with the news in town.”
William drew the last coil of smoke from his pipe and set it aside. “Maybe.”
I left it at that, and rescued my bread.
*
The weather continued to worsen, soon the baked earth of the prairie had become a wallow beneath the rotting grass. The wind had teeth and claws and the new mufflers I’d knitted were put to a harsh test as Will, Thomas and I took to the fields. Slogging through mud, I picked turnips and cut the greens off with a long knife, separating them to be used as winter feed. At times I couldn’t feel my hands and at others my fingers felt as if they were on fire.
I watched William, two rows ahead, attacking the ground and the vegetables as if they had wronged him. Thomas trailed in his wake, collecting the turnips in the wash tub.
I wiped the mud from my hands onto my skirts, or at least, on to the gunny sack apron I’d put on over them. I couldn’t help myself, the need to get clean had my skin twitching. My nails were filthy, broken.
“Gee yourself up,” William shouted at me, “need twenty rows done before night.”
Thomas coughed. I heard the rattle of phlegm.
“We should stop soon, for a meal,” I called, worried for Thomas’ chest and needing to check on Nora.
William didn’t answer.
I hacked at turnips until I felt the urge to hack at my husband’s throat. Finally, he dropped his knife on top of the tub of vegetables, waved Thomas around to the other side and left me to follow on with my own basket. By the time we reached the soddie it was raining and I was soaked down to my skin. The thick braided sticks of the basket handle had cut into my already numb hands, my face was stiff from the cold.
William and Thomas had already taken their load to the barn, to get it out of the rain and I took mine there before dragging myself to the soddie door. Inside, I noticed that the stove was burning low. I’d expected to find my dough on its second rise but it sat where I’d left it.
I didn’t have the energy to get angry, didn’t even take off my boots, just walked over the sacks we’d laid on the floor to sop up rain and sat down on a chair. William was already seated and Thomas was taking his boots off.
“Nora’s been crying Ma,” Rachel said.
“Time for her feed I expect,” I looked over to Beth, sitting on her tick, a blanket around her. She’d been feeling the cold more than any of us. “Are you feeling better today sweet pea?”
“A bit,” Beth said. She had her doll tucked under her arm.
“That’s good, soon you’ll be able to come outside and get some air.” Though God knew enough of a cold wind was slipping under the door.
“Rachel, make up some coffee,” William said.
Rachel was sitting on the end of the tick, sewing dresses for her doll. She sighed as she put the work aside, but I ignored it. Next year she’d be out in the field, which would put an end to her high-strung ways.
I was surprised by my own bile; she was my daughter, if she was warm and pretty inside, stitching on her doll, I should be glad and grateful. I found that I wasn’t. I wanted to slap her for leaving my dough to over-prove while I slogged in the mud for fistfuls of frigid damn turnips.
I looked at Will. Already he’d started to let his moustaches grow in; shaving in cold weather was a chore for him. There was a tightness in his face and I knew the work was telling on him too. A harvest in high summer was exhausting, but in the cold and wet it was a miserable task.
“Days like this I wish we were down in Texas,” he said, a small smile tracing his mouth. There’s those that’re down in a pit of debt, have to let their slaves go to auction for hardly more than I paid for Stick.”
Stick pricked his ears at the mention of his name, but soon settled back down under the table.
I’d thought of owning a slave before, for the housework and to help in the fields. My family had never been able to afford one, and neither had William’s, even before ‘34, when such a thing was possible. Now of course, there were no slaves in England, and though the option would have been open to us south of Indian Territory, we couldn’t afford the land there.
There were of course, concerns that abolition would take hold here. I’d heard talk in Ohio and knew that New York State had freed its slaves some years ago, even before England, though some were still indentured. Myself I didn’t think the idea would catch on, it was different here than in England; they needed the slaves too much, especially down south.
Rachel poured coffee and brought it over, along with a basin of warm water and a piece of soap. William and I washed our hands and I got up to fetch the bread I’d made the previous day, now a little dry, along with a dish of chokecherry jam.
“Rachel, would you punch down that dough before you sit down to lunch?” I said. “It’s already had far too long to rise.”
“Damn your lazy ass, child,” William exclaimed, startling me. “You’ve hardly a thing to lift your finger to sitting in here all day and still you don’t have the sense to do one chore?”
Rachel’s cheeks burnt, and I avoided her gaze. I couldn’t offer her my support because I wanted to shout at her too.
“By the time we get back tonight, I expect this place to be clean and tidy, and for you to have set things out for dinner. And if I come in that door and see you with a doll, or a trinket in your hands, I’ll spank you ‘till you can’t sit about all day. Understood?”
“Yes, Pa,” Rachel said, and took herself over to the bowl in which the dough had risen like a large mushroom.
“You should chide her more,” William said, “I know she doesn’t pull her weight.”
I lifted my hands helplessly. “She’ll learn.”
“Not if you don’t make her.”
“I’ll keep more of an eye on her in future,” I said, then got up and went to where Nora was dozing in her cradle box. I had to wake her, there’d be no time to get a feed done otherwise. She was growing well; her belly rounded and her little arms and legs putting on fat. I stroked her fine hair and held her close. I still feared the cold and the wet would snatch her from me before spring came. Leaving her while I worked outside was getting harder to bear.
My clothes were still damp when William stood and headed back out into the cold. Thomas stuffed his feet into his boots and followed me. It was still raining lightly and we had to unload the basket and tub before taking them out to the field to fill them again.
“We’ll soon have them all in,” William said, walking along side me with Thomas trailing behind, “then it’ll be time to bring up the potatoes.”
I looked back at my son, held out a hand, as if he was a small child in need of my touch to comfort him. Our eyes met, his a mirror of my own, then he looked away. I turned back to the muddy field and the cold rain, neither of which could dampen my spirits as much as Thomas had.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cecelia
From the soddie I could see Laura and her husband in the far distance on a square of brown earth hemmed in by rolling, wet grasses. Their tiny figures like dolls, bending and rising and dragging miniature baskets with them.
I’d made myself a little two sided shelter that rested against the back wall of the soddie. It provided a place for me to hang the second deer I’d ever killed. The thin timber of the roof kept most of the light rain off of me, but some still managed to blow in around me, my hair was pasted to my scalp with hot sweat and cold drizzle.
Carving up a deer was the hardest and foulest chore I’d yet encountered on the prairie; Thomas had described it to me, but actually performing the process was much worse than he’d made it sound. The rain kept most of the insects away, but a few flies remained yet and buzzed around me as I started quartering the deer, a task that soon had cold-hot needles of pain shooting through my shoulders, what with the reaching up and the sawing back and forth.
When I
cut up the middle of the hanging body, the wound dripped blackish blood onto the ground, and the smell of part-digested grass made me gag. I didn’t want to reach inside and touch the bluish purple organs that hung on cords of fat and thick veins. My eyes watered and I stifled a sob as I put my hand in. It was still warm inside.
Cutting up the deer had already taken the best part of the day and left me so sore in the back and arms that I couldn’t do any more. There was nothing for it but to move the rest of the carcass inside and work on it again in the morning. It would not fit in the smoke house as it was. I spread sacks on my makeshift table and laid what remained of the deer on it. The bucket of offal I left on the bench outside; maybe Laura and her family could eat those things, but I couldn’t. I saved only a small portion, for Missy’s supper.
I washed my hands and arms in a bucket of water and used it to sluice down the bench. I still didn’t feel clean. Since the bath I’d taken in the creek on my way to town, I’d had only poor, quick washes, standing in my tub with an inch or two of hot water around my ankles, washing myself down with a rag.
Inside, I dispensed with my breast band and put on the cleanest of my shirts. Soon I’d have a smoke house full of meat, my work had accomplished that much. A good evening’s rest was my reward.
Unfortunately ‘rest’ was something my mind had great trouble with. At least, it had done, since Laura had kissed me. I could still hardly believe that it had happened, my skin went cold whenever the memory resurfaced, but with it came the worry that Deene was hurting her. I was afraid for her, but also afraid of her. I couldn’t separate my disgust from my concern. It all seemed to mix together in my head until I hardly knew what I felt.
God, I didn’t want to think about it, to think at all.
It was too late, of course. Lying under my blankets, feeling the lumps of cornhusks in my tick, I thought of her lips against mine. The warm shadow of her body again echoed through me. I imagined the comfort of that, of her touch and… I was half wanting it and half wanting to tear myself away and run into the darkness outside.
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