It hit me only then that Avelina might die. I honed my own malady for seventeen years before it promised the end. How could two days so diminish my titanic landlady?
I took the five dollars I’d earned on the portrait of Montgomery Elias and gave it to Tennessee. He pushed it back and said he was going that way anyhow, promising hell-for-leather until he reached Tilfert and called him home. However, by this time the rain was sheeting down and I worried Tennessee would not be able to traverse the rushing rivers and plains.
I tried to force broth into Avelina’s dry mouth, but she wasn’t having it. Shouting, “Out! Away! Leave me be! Arms and legs in the mud, they cut like kindlin’. Tell them to go. Just boys, ground up like meat!” I gave her water. I bathed her head with cool compresses. I kept the fire roaring.
Still, she worsened. She cried for Tilfert, she cried for Tommy, she cried for Da, her breathing ragged, face cadaverous, eyes unseeing.
“Avelina,” I begged her, “hang on. Tilfert’s coming. A day, maybe, and he’ll be here.”
Her face clouded. “A day?” She clutched at my hand, gasped, then looked at me, seeing me for the first time in hours. “Ned, you promise me. I don’t want nothin’ done to me if I die. Bury me as I am. No washing. No fancy dress. Promise, Ned. If I die, put me right into the ground as I now lay. As I am. Don’t let them touch me.”
“You’re not going to die, Avelina.”
She growled at me and I stopped short. She spoke forcefully, “Your promise. As I lay now, I’ll be buried.”
“All right. If it comes to that, I’ll make sure of it.”
Two hours later, every breath a struggle, Avelina simply stopped. I waited for the breath that didn’t come, the silence strange and loud like when a storm abates. I took Avelina’s hand, I shook her, I called her back, but she would not return. There was only an awful vacancy, the whole room emptied out, myself as well. So hollowed, I couldn’t get up, could not find my lost voice, my fugitive vigor, not a thought, not a tear.
It may have been an hour later, perhaps only ten minutes, when Tennessee came in, rivulets chasing from the brim of his hat, the corners of his mustache and from the hem of his coat. He took a look at Avelina, at me. He leaned over and shut her eyes, digging two pennies from his pocket and laying them on the lids. “Come on, Ned. You did what you could. Come on out here now.”
“Tilfert?”
“I sent word. He’ll be half a day behind, maybe more. There’s some tricky fords, but he’ll get here.” He led me into the rain, and we walked to the captain’s quarters. Tennessee knocked. The captain’s wife answered, her spinster sister hovering over her shoulder. Tennessee took off his hat. “Ma’am, Avelina’s passed.”
Mrs. Ellmore nodded. “Sister and I will be right there.”
Tennessee took my arm. “A drink’ll pick you up, Ned. We’ll drink to Avelina.”
I started. “I can’t leave her alone.”
“She’s gone, Ned. If you go in there, you’re the one what’ll be alone.”
“Go get dry, Tennessee. I’ll sit with her and wait for Tilfert.”
I went back into the little house, put another log on the fire. When the women arrived, the first thing Mrs. Ellmore did when she came in was hug me. “I’m so sorry, Ned. Avelina thought the world of you.”
The sister put a kettle of water on the fire and a stack of towels on the bed beside Avelina as Mrs. Ellmore shuffled through the dresses hanging on the cord along the wall. Mrs. Ellmore pulled out the muslin wedding dress. Holding it out at arm’s length, she sighed and spoke to her sister. “They were so happy on their wedding day. As … unconventional … as they were, I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such elation, Nattie.” She laid the dress on the bed. “One day I hope you find such happiness.”
Nattie sighed—“God willing”—and poured heated water into a bowl.
I watched the two, as comfortable in Avelina’s house as if it were their own, stirring Avelina’s fire, going through Avelina’s dresser, sifting Avelina’s soap into the water. “What are you doing?”
Mrs. Ellmore touched my shoulder gently, her pale blue dress delicate as eggshell, yellow hair braided and coiled around her head. “Preparing Avelina for burial, Ned.”
Mrs. Ellmore had a comfortingly pastel voice, but her sister’s impassive list—“Wash her, put her in her dress …”—reminded me of my promise.
“Avelina’s last request was to be buried as she was, no washing, no fuss.”
Mrs. Ellmore pursed her lips. “I would no more think of laying her to rest without caring for her first than throw her into the snow for the wolves to eat.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I knew her too, Ned.”
Nattie concurred. “A woman knows what a woman wants.”
I supposed that was right; she certainly seemed certain. Even now Nattie was combing the rag of Avelina’s hair with hands so white and fine, Avelina looked all the more brutish.
Genetics were cruel. If anyone should have lived it should have been my giantess, and the candy women standing beside her melted away. I didn’t want to see it and struggled to my feet and toward the door. Mrs. Ellmore stopped me. “Ned. We may need help turning her. She is such a big woman.” She paused. “We will make it circumspect.”
What could I do? I reseated myself against my sudden and unreasonable resentment of her prettiness. Nattie drew Avelina’s curtain. I stared into the fire and wondered if I was shaken, how would Tilfert bear it?
I was staring at the door where rainwater seeped under the jamb when Mrs. Ellmore shrieked. There was quiet, then a sharp whispering between the two women. When Mrs. Ellmore spoke it was in a strangled sort of voice. “Ned. Come here, please.”
I pushed aside the curtain. The two sisters had unbuttoned Avelina’s blouse and shift, untied her corset. Mrs. Ellmore pointed. “Can you explain that?”
I had not actually seen a woman’s chest before, but I had to admit it was not what I expected. Avelina’s chest was hairy. I thought of Quillan proclaiming, “She’s not a woman, she’s an ape.”
Nattie, her face turned away, grated, “Tell him. Tell him to check down there.”
I was confused and terribly embarrassed. “I don’t understand.”
Mrs. Ellmore pointed. “Down. There. Look for it.”
It took me a dense few minutes of staring down there to understand what I was to look for. When the sisters read the understanding on my face, they stepped away from the bed. Nattie drew the curtain with a sharp snap, leaving me alone with Avelina. I mumbled apology as I lifted her skirt, feeling a monster to dishonor my friend this way and wanting nothing more than to find it missing. Yet there it lay between her legs, woolly and unmistakable. I lowered Avelina’s skirt and sat down heavily.
Mrs. Ellmore flung open the curtain. “I was right, wasn’t I?”
I looked up at her. “Right?”
“She is a he.”
She said this with such vindictiveness I was alarmed. “Mrs. Ellmore, please, let’s keep this between us. No one need know.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Bayard. She—he—will not be buried with the godfearing souls in our little cemetery. My lord, and they were married. A travesty before God. This is an abomination. That, that Tilfert”—she spat out his name like poison—“is an abomination.”
I felt panic well. “Please, Mrs. Ellmore. Let me take care of this, keep it quiet.”
The sisters glanced at each other. Nattie raised her chin and one eyebrow. “Mr. Bayard, how is it that you hadn’t realized previously?”
“Like your sister, it hadn’t occurred to me. There was no reason—”
“My sister wasn’t living with these men. Is there perhaps another reason you would like this kept secret?”
A hundred thoughts filled the hollow places of ten minutes previous. Most concerning my own well-being. I knew what Mrs. Ellmore and her sister were intimating. Others would think the same. It seemed suddenly ludicrous that I hadn’t seen what stood, wrestled, spit, grew ha
ir, right in front of me for all these months. Had I known? What did this mean? How far would it go? I stood and paced the floor.
“Mr. Bayard?” Mrs. Ellmore pressed, her voice ominous. “Do you truly wish to keep silent?”
I was trapped. “No, ma’am. I don’t.”
“Then perhaps you will alert the men to the situation and do me the favor of explaining it to my husband.”
CHAPTER 10
The storm was persistent, neither giving in nor stepping up throughout the night. The men waited until the small hours for the show that was to come, huddling and feeding fires, then finally putting their cold feet and icy revulsions to bed. They would not see Tilfert arrive, would not see his terror of too late, or the fresh horror of sorrow.
I’d sat at Avelina’s table all night, getting up to add wood to the fire, though Avelina would never be warm again. Dawn had been trying to work through the heavy clouds for some time when Tilfert burst through the door like he’d been flung a far distance. He read Avelina’s death on my face and stumbled against the door. The door slammed, the roar of the storm hushed. Tilfert’s immense frame buckled. He grabbed at the jamb for support and stared for some time at the wood grain.
I gave him the only thing I could. “She went easy, Tilfert.”
He turned. “Gone.”
“The ague.”
He gazed at the curtain. “She there?”
She was rigid. He could not pry open her fingers. He rested his forehead on hers and sobbed, shouted raw repudiations as he stroked her face. He had a moment. But that was all. I had to warn him.
“Tilfert. They know.”
“Dead.”
“They know Avelina’s a man.”
“Nobody knows nothin’, Ned. Nothin’. My sweet Avelina. God damn, gone!”
He would not be distanced from his sorrow and sobbed for a good half hour before they arrived.
Private Anderson, new to Fort McPherson, was the first in the house. He was followed by four enlisted men: Boyer, Simmons, Ladd, and Cole, all tousle-haired and half buttoned like they’d come to Avelina’s for pancake breakfast.
“Tilly!” Anderson leered. “You’ve been keepin’ secrets, haven’t you?”
Tilfert ignored them but for his silence.
“Ned tol’ me and I couldn’t believe it. I said, Naw, not Tilfert, he wouldn’t do something as goddamn filthy as buggering a man, much less bein’ buggered, but I looked, we all looked, and your Avelina’s got a cock like a mule.”
Boyer started singsonging, “He wound up a clock with the head of his cock and buggered his pal with the key….”
Tilfert looked away from Avelina and glanced at me. I shook my head, imploring him to understand.
Anderson continued. “Well, a piece of meat like that don’t lie, but I’m still not willing to believe you’d grind the glory hole, Tilly. Mebbe you’re the bearded lady from the freak show, and you an’ Avelina there just got mixed up. Fergot the cock wears the pants, the cunt wears the skirt. Is that what happened, Tilly?”
Tilfert remained silent, kneeling at Avelina’s side. Boyer took a step forward and kicked Tilfert in the back. I shouted, “Hey!” but he ignored me and asked Tilfert, “What do you got in those pants?” Tilfert hardly moved but, white-knuckled, clutched Avelina’s sleeve.
Anderson mock-whispered in Tilfert’s ear. “We allus liked you, Tilfert. Really liked you. And if you are set up right, we’ll all have a good time.” He stood up. “And if you don’t, there’s gonna be trouble.”
Boyer kicked him again. “Take ’em off. Let’s see what’s there.”
Tilfert stood up with a roar. The men took a step back, their hands going to belts and pockets. What they hid in their pants would kill a man.
I yelled, “Get out! You’ve had your fun.”
Anderson shook his head. “We’ve not had any fun for a long, long time, Neddy, boy. But we’re gonna today, one way or another.” Anderson nodded and the five jumped Tilfert and, with a stew of cursing and punching, pushed his face to the floor of the cabin, pinned and tied Tilfert’s arms behind him.
I stepped forward and shouted again, my voice miserable and thin-sounding. “See here, that’s enough!”
Anderson slapped me, and I fell back against the wall with a crash. “There’s enough rope for two, Turpentine.”
I should have taken my chances, launched myself into him, brought on the masculine punch against the insult of the open hand. But I was afraid of the transformation of these men. Dogs turned to wolves, and I fled into the rain to the captain’s house, shouting for help. By the time Captain Ellmore answered the door, Tilfert was trussed in the back of his own wagon.
The captain called to Boyer over the hiss of rain, as if the men were going out to rodeo or race horses, “I expect no harm to come to that man.”
Boyer saluted. The captain shut the door against me and returned to his bed.
The men drove into the waterlogged prairie, hooting and prodding Tilfert with names and boots. Tilfert, though not gagged, was silent.
As the wagon sloshed into the grass, the storm took a deeper breath into full fury, the wind shrieking, a curtain of rain blowing the dark morning to deep dusk. In the pall, Tennessee raced from the bunkhouse to the mess. I followed him in. “Help me! They’re going to kill him!”
Tennessee looked uncomfortable. “Shit, they’re not. Calm down.” He pulled his hand through his wet hair. “Besides, he has it coming. Get his lesson taught to him, then he’ll move on outta here.” He put his hat on. “Maybe he won’t be so quick to plug the rooster next time.”
I threw my belated punch then, but Tennessee took hold of my arm. “Turpentine. You can’t help Tilfert. He’s fucked it all up himself, and if you try you’ll fuck yourself too. Just keep quiet, keep your distance.” He let go of my arm and walked away, turning as an afterthought. “And the next time you go after me, I’ll give you what you’re asking for.”
I returned to the house and watched the puddle under the door creep in until the fire hissed with the moisture, thinking I should bank the door to keep the water out. Avelina would be aghast at her floor turning to wallow. So careful with a floor, why couldn’t she anticipate what would happen? How could she have done this with Tilfert? How could she have done it to me? I watched water rise to the chair legs until I heard shouts rising over the wail of rain.
“Republican’s over the banks! She’s flooding!”
Avelina’s house at the far perimeter of the fort was on the low point. I woke from my miserable reveries and pushed open the door against ankle-deep water, Avelina becalmed and oblivious to the deluge rising around her bedposts.
Every hand was at work, desperately filling feed sacks with sand, lugging the heavy wet bags to the stockade fence, and piling them into a dike to hold the river at bay. I saw Anderson hefting a bag to the fence, Cole, Boyer, and Simmons shoveling. I surveyed the area. Tilfert was not to be seen.
I confronted Anderson. “Where’s Tilfert?”
Anderson grinned in spite of the bag leaking mud down his neck. “Walking the pourdown, pecker in hand, naked as a jaybird. By Jasus, he was hell fer fightin’! Gave Jonsson a month of recuperation, an’ Bailey a broke nose.”
“Naked, in this?”
“Son of a bitch’s hairy as a bear. What a sight.” He threw off the bag and headed back for another. “We left him his boots. By the time he gets his coat back on maybe he’ll have learned something.” He bent and hoisted another bag with a groan. “Joke’s on me in the end, ain’t it? Who’s actually being punished here?” He laughed and shook his head. “That bastard Tilfert ain’t the one toting wet sand, that’s for sure.”
The water continued to rise; we struggled to contain it. The rain poured down. Bags were filled from the high side, dragged to the low. Another hour, another foot of levee. The river could now be heard over the pour of rain, a menacing boom of boulders loosed from the grassland and knocking against one another in the river like giant marbles.
Mrs. Ellmore and her sister were routed from the captain’s house to clamber through mud to safety, clutching heavy wool blankets like shawls that immediately peached with water, tripled in weight, and decanted over their yellow heads.
The river pulled at the sandbags, sucked them from the tenuous rim, and the entire company headed for the hill, choking. With water falling and blowing in sheets, little space remained for air, for light. Huddling in the rain, shrunk like wet cats, we waited.
A coyote swam by, twisting in the water; a silver chest rattled in the wake. Mice and rats washed onto the bank, only to be kicked back into the moiling river.
The captain’s house torqued, its foundation foundering, and Mrs. Ellmore sagged and whimpered.
After what seemed a season, the storm shuddered and, finally, took a breath and did not exhale. Instead, she lifted her gray skirt and allowed some small light to dance across the poles and timbers tossing down the muddy river, disappearing into haze.
Tennessee blinked into mist. “She’s letting go.”
Another section of the mess hall surrendered to the muddy Republican. For though the rain hesitated, the river yet raged. A ridge beam, tossing in the flood, rammed Avelina’s house. The house shuddered and lifted. Another log battered the tilting walls. The water chewed dirt until land loosed its hold, and the little cabin upended and bobbed with a creak of pegged beams, as if the cabin were a moored boat.
Tennessee shouted, “Man in the river!” A figure spun in the roiling water, banging against bank and flotsam, rushing through eddies and rapids, striking the cabin, partnering runaway logs.
The body was facedown, yet there was no mistaking the buffalo back, the curling hair streaming behind. Even in the wide torrent, he was a gigantic man, his big arms languid beside him as if he were transfixed with a world the rest of us couldn’t appreciate. I plunged knee deep into the water but Tennessee grabbed hold of my hair and arm and hauled me back. “You ain’t gonna drown for a dead man!”
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