The Homesman Page 3

  Mary Bee had listened. “Three, last year. I never heard a word of it.”

  “Things like that aren’t talked about. They’re just done.”

  She brought the pot from the stove and refilled their cups. “Bless you,” she said.

  “Bosh. Necessity the mother of invention, you know. Oh, I suppose someday we’ll have all the trappings of civilization, insane asylums and so on. But we’ve been a Territory less than a year, and building an asylum is one of the last things a legislature gets around to. For now, this is the best we can do. I must say, though, it asks a lot of one man.”

  “Eat your pie.”

  He was glad to, and soon applauded the banquet by sitting back in his chair and groaning. “Best dinner I’ve had in a month of Sundays. Bless you.”

  “I dine like this every day.”

  Neither smiled. They sat through another silence looking at each other. Each surprised the other. His hair was a bright, startling red, and salted. She had a woman’s eyes, but her big, square face was based on a man’s square jaw.

  “Where will you head now?” she asked.

  “I’d better go see Sours, the poor boy.”

  “I’ll go over to the Belknaps in the morning. I’ll take a hindquarter of the antelope.”

  Dowd thought. “Tell Vester to be at Kettle Church a week from today. In the afternoon. We’ll hold the drawing then. I’ll tell young Sours today, and I’ll see that Petzke and Svendsen know. A week from today.”

  “Vester won’t do it.”

  “He must.”

  “If he loses the drawing, he won’t,” said Mary Bee. “He’s lazy. He’s ignorant. He’s a whiner. Theoline’s the one. She’s been his backbone.”

  The minister frowned, pushed back his chair, rose, and began to wrestle into his coat. “He must. He’s responsible for her, just like the others. I could say several things about him myself, but I will not be uncharitable. The Lord wouldn’t like it.” He tied his coat closed with twine. “Do what you can with him tomorrow,” he appealed. “I’ll appreciate it.” Winding his muffler, this day around his neck, he stepped to the door. “I’ll go get my gallant steed.”

  After a minute or two, Mary Bee put on her coat and went out into the warm wind. Dowd was just leading his nag from the stable. “I’m full as a tick,” he said. “I doubt Rocinante will carry me.”

  They smiled, and once again clasped hands. “I’m so glad to find you hale and hearty,” he said.

  “And I you,” she said. “My love to Mrs. Dowd, if you please.”

  “Surely. I’m sorry to bring such sad news. If you please, don’t dwell on it.”

  “How can I not?”

  “Because it happens out here. It just happens. Every winter. Last year three, this year four. I’m surprised there aren’t more, conditions being what they are. I don’t know how any of the women bear it.” He took up the reins and hopped aboard and looked down at her soberly. “I don’t know how you do it, my dear. Honestly. Living alone, I mean.”

  “I can do anything,” she said.

  “I believe you,” he said. “Well, let us lift up our hearts. A melodeon. Spring,” he reminded.

  “Yes, spring.”

  Alfred Dowd rode away in the direction opposite his coming. After half a mile he stopped and turned in his saddle to see if Mary Bee Cuddy was watching him go. She was. She waved, and he did. His wave was a salute.

  • • •

  She saddled Dorothy, her trusty mare, the next morning and rode the two miles to the Belknaps, the antelope haunch, wrapped in sacking, tied on behind her cantle. Vester came out to meet her. She gave him the meat and advised him to hang it high in his stable or the wolves would have it. Then she said she’d just heard yesterday, from Reverend Dowd, about Theoline, and wanted him to know how shocked she was, and how terribly sorry. Vester said so was he. She inquired as to Theoline’s condition, and he said the same, crazy. He still had to hand-feed her and carry her to the outhouse and mind the girls and do the cooking and whatnot until he was tuckered most of the time. Mary Bee dismounted. What in the world had caused it? Vester shifted the haunch to a shoulder and said he had no idea, but he’d been troubled about Line as far back as last fall. She complained about the weather and losing their crops. She talked little and ate less. And she got the notion God was angry with them, so the baby coming would be crippled or have a harelip or something bad. Oh, and she had headaches and was cranky. Mary Bee shook her head and started for the door of the house. Vester said no, she wasn’t to go in, he didn’t want anyone gawping at his wife in such a state. Mary Bee swung round, vexed, and said she was the dearest friend Theoline had, and she would see her no matter what. Vester cursed. She told him to hush up and take care of that meat, and opened the door and went in.

  The three girls, Junia, Aggie, and Vernelle, were waiting. They leaped at her like little animals full of fear, hugging her waist so hard they almost threw her into the stove; and they were crying, and it was all she could do to keep from crying with them. She wouldn’t allow herself to look yet at the bed. After a time, taking their shoulders, she told them to go into the back room, she wanted to talk with their mother, now, please, girls, go, and snuffling, they obeyed. They were good girls.

  Mary Bee looked round. The place was a shambles. Then she went to the bed.

  Theoline Belknap lay on her back. Her eyes were fixed on a corner of the roof. Her hair was a rat’s nest. Her wampus was food-stained. Her feet were bare and filthy. Each of her wrists was tied by a picket rope to an upper bedpost. Mary Bee untied the near rope, then leaned over her and untied the far. She sat down on the side of the bed and rubbed both wrists, raw and swollen.

  “Theoline,” she said, “this is Mary Bee.”

  “Undo,” responded Theoline.

  “Undo your arms? I have, dear.”

  “Undo, undo.”

  “Do you know me, Theoline?”

  “Undo, undo, undo, undo.”

  Mary Bee bent and turned the woman’s face toward her. Theoline’s eyes remained fixed on the roof.

  “Line, dear, I’m Mary Bee, your friend.”

  “Tha.”

  “Don’t you know me?”

  “Tha,” Theoline said. “Tha, tha, tha, tha, tha, tha, tha, tha, tha.”

  Mary Bee looked away and sat a spell. Inside, she went void. At length something flared in the void like the strike of a match in pitch-dark. It was anger.

  She rose, pulled the hung quilt aside, and went behind it to the girls. She knelt. She opened wide her arms and swept the sisters into them, close. There were still some sniffles. “Now listen, girls,” she said. “Your mother’s very sick, but she loves you just the same, as she always has. You must love her, too, and help her as much as you can. Here are some things you can do for her. I’ve untied her arms. I want you to undress her, heat some water, and give her a nice bath, with soap, face to feet.”

  “Right on the bed?” Junia asked.

  “Right on the bed. Wash and dry her hair, too, then brush and comb it. Then find clean clothes for her, and underwear—they’re probably in her trunk—and dress her again. And while you’re doing this, smile at her and say kind things. Do you know a little song you can sing?”

  “We know ‘Away in the Manger,’ ” offered Vernelle.

  “That would be fine,” said Mary Bee. “And when you’ve finished all that, do some chores for your father, too. You are now the ladies of the house. Sweep it out. Wash the dirty dishes. Take the bedding outdoors and air it. Show him how grown-up you are. Will you do that? For him? For me?”

  They nodded, gravely, awed perhaps by the number of their assignments.

  “Good,” she said. “And remember—love your dear mother.” She let go of them and stood. “Now, you get busy as bees. Give me your foreheads.”

  They raised their faces. She kissed ea
ch one on the forehead, then left them. Passing through the front room, she couldn’t bear to look again at Theoline. Outside, Vester had hung the meat and stabled her horse and was returning. Mary Bee noticed she had clenched her fists. It was anger again, flaring higher in the void. It must have found kindling. She must damp it down before it reached her heart.

  “I’ve untied her.”

  Vester scowled. It had irked him to stable her horse. He had not thanked her for the antelope. “Who said to? No tellin’ what she’ll do.”

  “I assure you she’s harmless. Besides, you may not have her much longer.”

  “How’s that?”

  “That’s one reason why I’m here. I have a message for you from Reverend Dowd.” She opened her fists into hands and began to explain the necessity for a homesman, but Vester soon interrupted her. He knew all that, Dowd had told him. Very well, she said, the drawing would be held at the church next Tuesday, in the afternoon, and he should be there, the other three husbands would be. Vester asked what drawing. Why, to decide which one of the four would take the four wives back east, across the Missouri, to Hebron, Iowa, whence they’d be escorted home. Whoever lost the drawing would take them back, the other three husbands would supply wagon, team, and supplies. That was the way it was done last year, when three women had lost their minds over the winter, and Reverend Dowd proposed to try it again this. Vester stared at her, then stated flatly he wouldn’t do no such a thing. Christamighty, he knew Petzke and Svendsen—the one was a damn Dutchman and the other a Norskie—Sours he’d never heard of—and he wasn’t hauling their women anywhere. She could tell Dowd to find another fool. Mary Bee said he must be there for the drawing. He was as responsible for his wife’s welfare as the others were for theirs. Vester said he wouldn’t, and nobody could make him, this was a free country. “Then what will you do with Theoline?” asked Mary Bee.

  That stumped him.

  She started for the stable. It was a tiny triumph, but the anger burned in her unabated. In the stable she glanced at a swelling on the flank of the ox next to her mare, which had to be warbles, which needed coal oil. When she led the mare out Vester had followed, whining. He swore he wanted to do what was best for Line, but what if he went to the drawing and lost? Heading east with a load of women, being gone for weeks, who’d see to his stock and his girls? Mary Bee said she would. Well, what if he wasn’t picked? He was so hard up he couldn’t chip in a sack of meal or a red cent for the trip. Why, he’d just been into Loup last thaw and taken out a chattel mortgage, and he had to get a crop in this spring or lose everything. If he had any more bad luck, he whined, come summer he’d quit and pack up his girls and goods and head back for Kentucky, where a feller had a chance. Couldn’t she get it through her head how he was whipsawed? If he was picked in the drawing he wouldn’t go, and if he wasn’t, to his shame he couldn’t ante up a thing—either way he come out behind. Just what in holy hell was he s’pose t’do?

  She heard young voices singing in the house, singing “Away in the Manger.” What she’d have liked to say was oh, Vester, all we have brought out here to this wilderness is our lives and a little seed of civilization. We have planted that seed. Unless we tend it, it will die, and if it dies, we are no better than brutes. Taking these poor women home is civilized.

  Instead, she said, “Go.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Tuesday,” she said.

  Now he was angry. He hadn’t budged her.

  “I won’t.”

  “Then I’ll go in your place,” she said. “I’ll draw for you. If I win, I’ll provide what you can’t afford. If I lose, you’ll start east with your wife and the other three. You have to.”

  “Damn if I will!”

  “They’ll make you.”

  “I’ve got a long rifle!”

  Mary Bee mounted up, reins in one fist. “In the meantime, love her.”

  “Love ’er! After what she’s done t’me? I give ’er no cause t’go crazy!”

  “You gave her another baby.”

  “The Lord’s will!”

  Now her anger blazed, and Mary Bee Cuddy felt the heat of it in her heart. “It wasn’t the Lord bedded her!” she cried. Her look after that was like a cut of the reins. “Vester,” she said, “you are a damned poor specimen of a man.” And she nudged Dorothy with a knee and rode off.

  Vester Belknap cupped both hands around his mouth and hollered. “I am, hey? Leastwise I don’t dress up like a woman!”

  • • •

  This day it turned cold again and spit small, sparse flakes as though it disremembered how to snow.

  This time Charley Linens and John Cox and Martin Polhemus picked up Henry Caudill on the way. Henry was a good man with a gun. When he joined them he had a package wrapped tight in white paper. They asked what that was. He said sulphur. They asked what it was for. Henry said for just in case. The four rode south and west toward the Kettle River until they came to Andy Giffen’s stovepipe and a curl of smoke rising from it, then down into the ravine, keeping well upside of the stovepipe. Here they tied horses to a runt tree, and slipping rifles, sneaked down the ravine into a thick tangle of gooseberry bushes that faced Andy’s dugout from maybe sixty yards off. When they figured they had enough cover of the bushes, they readied rifles and let Charley Linens take the lead. He shouted.

  “Moore!”

  The door and window of the dugout were closed.

  “Briggs!”

  He was talking to himself.

  “Hey, you, jumper!”

  That did it. As they watched, the door opened a crack and the window a crack.

  “This here’s the same bunch was here the other day!” Charley shouted. “Andy Giffen’s friends! Andy’s due any day now, and we want you off this claim! We got four guns to your one, so you be smart about it. Come on out with your hands up and we’ll see you on your way, much obliged, no harm done! Come on now!”

  They waited a minute, two.

  “Shit,” said Martin Polhemus.

  He raised up on his knees, poked rifle barrel through the bushes, set stock to shoulder, and fired at the dugout door. Then the rest did the same, some firing at the door, some at the window. It sounded like a battle. The ugly horse in the stable took fright or fury at the gunfire and started snorting and screaming like a woman in labor. But they had bitten off more than they could chew. Briggs or whatsisname was as rapid with a rifle as he was with a handgun. He jumped from door to window and back again and that barrel would snake out an inch or two and he’d fire and snake back and they never thought a man could be so accurate aiming and firing so fast. His bullets clipped branches close to their faces. They went by like a hot breath. John Cox got a twig in the eye and said “Ow!” and stopped firing. So did the others.

  They sat back on their buttocks in the snow. They were scared. They knew what they had to do, but how the hell to do it was the question.

  “Goddam him,” said Martin Polhemus. He was breathing hard and sweating.

  “Boys, listen,” said Henry Caudill, who was a soft-spoken man. “We’ve got us a mossback here. We can’t shoot him out. He’s got sod and wood between us. So why not smoke him out? That’s why I brung that pound of sulphur.”

  He told them to let loose again. While they did, he’d run up the ravine, get his sulphur, climb on out, and drop it down Andy’s stovepipe. They looked doubtful. Henry said give it a try. He said back where he came from, mountains down in Missouri, that’s how they got a bear out of a hole, smoked him out. Then when he came out bellering and half-blind, they’d kill him easy as falling off a log.

  “Why not?” said John Cox, rubbing his twig eye. “I’m cold and hungry and it’s a long ways to supper.”

  “I don’t want any of us shot,” said Charley Linens.

  “Him neither,” said a grim Martin Polhemus. “I want that sonvabitch strung from a tree.�
��

  So they gave it a try. Three of them blasted away at the dugout again while Henry Caudill peeled off up the ravine. Then they hunkered down in the gooseberry bushes and waited and watched the dugout and could see nary sign of movement. The afternoon began to die on them. It grew dark sooner in the ravine than up on the flatland. Then, suddenly, the dugout door swung wide open and the window, too, and thick yellow smoke billowed out from both and they expected to see Briggs come out coughing and half-blind. But he did not. The dugout disappeared completely in a yellow cloud. Martin Polhemus hitched up and fired off a couple rounds into the cloud, and to their disbelief, a couple more banged right back out of the cloud and sliced the bushes close by.

  That made Martin Polhemus so mad he rose up and took a chance. “You et enough smoke yet, Briggs?” he hollered. “You had enough?”

  The jumper hollered right back. “You damn dumb sodbusters! Go on home!”

  Martin sank down and swore a blue streak.

  Henry Caudill slipped back from on top and they bunched up and looked at him, squatting.

  “You still want him out of here?” he asked.

  They did.

  “All right,” said Henry. “We can’t shoot him out or smoke him out. You come by my place next week and pick me up. I’ll have Thor Svendsen with me. Strong as an ox. But he’s maybe got some gunpowder.”

  “Gunpowder?” they all said.

  “Why not? That’s the sure way. We’ll blow him out like a stump.”

  “I’ll bring the rope,” added Martin Polhemus.

  “Rope?”

  “He ain’t blown dead, I want him down by the river. At the end of a rope. Dancin’ a jig.”

  • • •

  If the reference was to religion, it was called “Kettle Church”; if to education, “Kettle School.” It served both purposes. A building bee enlisting every man and boy in the neighborhood had erected it in a single day on a rise not far from the river. Logs for walls were hauled from the river bottom, chinked with blocks, and pointed up with clay. The roof was made of sod and branches. Mary Bee Cuddy’s hundred dollars bought the niceties: a door, two window frames and glass, a stove, a carpentered pulpit for the preacher, a dozen slates and sheepskin erasers, and a grab bag of books. Every second Sabbath, winter permitting, and this one had not, Reverend Dowd held services of a sort he called, with a twinkle in the eye, “non-denominational Methodist.” But the wider function of the building was instructional. School was divided into three terms of eight weeks, fall, winter, and spring, although this year the winter term had been canceled for reasons of weather and love. The children could not come for cold and snow. Teacher could not come because she had married at Christmas. She was Miss Clara Marsh, late of Vermont and early to the plains. Rather than the result of love, however, marriage for her was probably the lesser of two evils. This was a subscription school. Her fee was a dollar a child per term, plus her keep, and with seventeen scholars signed up, she should have had, by the end of the fall term, seventeen dollars. She did not. She had ten dollars in hand and seven in hope. Worse, she had spent the term boarding and rooming with the parents of her pupils, moving from sod house to dugout, sleeping three to a bed with wiggly youngsters, subsisting on a diet composed in the main of cornmeal mush, corn samp, corn cake, corn dodgers, and corn bread, which had undermined her constitution. Marriage, therefore, even to a balding widower who needed a workhorse wife, might have seemed to Clara Marsh a sensible alternative to poverty and broken health. She was asked. She said yes. There was no winter term at Kettle School.