Fervent Charity (5 page)

Gustie looked over her shoulder. “Which one?”

“This one.” Lena fingered the outline of a horse against a background of light brown material. The horse was worked in a feathery stitch that resembled light brushstrokes in shades of blue, orange, yellow, and black, intermingled so that they gave a kaleidoscopic effect, changing depending on the angle from which it was viewed and the play of the light.

Gustie broke into a radiant smile. “Oh! I know who made that.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Well, who, then?”

“Jordis.”

“Oh. My!” Lena was once again teary-eyed. It had been that kind of day. However, between the tears and the chatter, the laughter and good wishes, something had disturbed Lena. She had seen something. A moment of observation had opened a door, which closed again before she could get her mind around it. She was left with a feeling of unease, and it was maddening that she retained the feeling but not the memory of what had triggered it.
Probably nothing,
she thought.
It’s just this house.
The place might be clean and uncluttered, but it was still Ma’s house, and things had happened here, leaving their haunts in the walls and the floors and no amount of scrubbing and airing and letting in the light would get rid of them. Nothing but a match would do that. Lena pushed the unease to the back of her mind and visited with her neighbors.

The women tended to gather in the living room around Lena, while the men, after paying their respects to mother and child and filling up their plates, ended up outside, where more tables and chairs had been arranged. Will stayed out there most of the day, and Lena hoped and prayed that nobody had brought any whiskey to pass around. Who in this town didn’t know Will’s problem with the bottle?

She needn’t have worried, because Alvinia had spoken to Carl, who had in turn dropped a word here and there among the men that no one was to let Will Kaiser near a drop of whiskey. Alvinia had been stern in her warnings. Nothing and no one were to mar this day for Lena. Hadn’t she been through enough in the last couple years? Alvinia also made it known to Carl, who somehow got the news to Harlan Gudierian, that the horse doctor was not welcome. Maybe it wasn’t fair, Alvinia conceded. Harlan had been asked to attend Lena that day of Gracia’s birth, and maybe he had done his best…but Lena couldn’t stand the sight of him and really, neither could Alvinia. Fair or not, he should stay home.

Twice during the day, Lena withdrew to nurse Gracia in the spare bedroom upstairs. The first time, she was joined by Alvinia. She tried again to express her thanks, but Alvinia cut her off. “We had a lot of fun doing this, Lena. I didn’t know Mary Kaiser well before, but I have to say she worked like a trooper—on her hands and knees on the floors and then pulling out all of Ma Kaiser’s tablecloths and finding not one that wasn’t frayed or didn’t have a stain or hole, so she brought over her own. She brought her own flower vases and some pretty bowls and cake plates. I never knew she had such lovely things! Gustie was no slouch either. She brought us groceries and a jar of floor wax and another one of furniture polish and she worked right alongside us. I never saw such work and we all were laughing all the time. Why, I even saw Nyla smile once.”

“No!”

“Yes, I did!”

“Well, the place does look fine. What did you do with all the mess?”

“The boys took a lot to the attic. And if you look under the beds and in the closets up here you’ll find things.” Alvinia lowered her voice, though they were the only people on the second floor. “Some things, Nyla and Mary just got rid of. They say by the time Gertrude looks for it she won’t remember what all she had. What she doesn’t find, she won’t miss. Walter pitched in and helped a little, but Oscar didn’t do much. Just sat around and watched. He can’t do much I guess with only one arm.”

“Ho! That man can do plenty with one arm if he wants to! He has a good well business going, though he needs a hired hand to help him.”

They enjoyed their conversation in the quiet bedroom, away for the moment from the rest of the people milling around downstairs. Lena sat propped up on pillows against the bedstead, one leg folded under her and the other dangling over the side, Gracia lying in the crook of her left arm, which was supported by a pillow. This was the most comfortable way, she had found, to nurse Gracia, who was a slow feeder. Lena didn’t mind.

Alvinia sat a little distance from her on the bed, taking up a good space, her blue and white striped skirts puffing out all about her. Her face, with its pale eyebrows, blond lashes and pug nose was given definition by wide-set eyes and a wide, well shaped mouth that smiled often, revealing large white teeth. Good teeth seemed to be a Torgerson family trait. Today, her daughters had plaited her thick yellow hair, starting the braids forward in the French way and pinning them at the back of her head in a neat coil. Lena had always thought her such a pretty woman. As comfortable as Lena was with her friend, she knew she was not to be trifled with. Lena had heard about Alvinia’s rage on the day Gracia had been born. Mary said that for a month, the only men in Stone County who weren’t afraid to talk to her were Doc Moody, and, maybe, Carl. She was still cool with Will and absolutely had no time and never would for Harlan Gudierian.

Alvinia had saved her life, all right, and there was nothing Lena could ever do to repay her. “You’d have done the same for me,” Alvinia had said once, off-handedly, when Lena had tried to at least properly thank her.

“I couldn’t have carried you into the bedroom.”

They had both laughed out loud.

They were laughing now, about Axel Kranhold, the head of the town council, and his wife—both of whom put on airs as though they didn’t live in the same prairie town and step in the same horse manure on the streets as everyone else did; about Mathilda Langager who bragged and bragged about a son who was worthless, dumb as a post, and would likely never amount to a hill of beans. But it was gentle laughter, the kind you reserve for family eccentricities, because these very people were downstairs, had contributed their food for the occasion, and fashioned their squares for the quilt that Lena would cherish and would teach Gracia to cherish her whole life long.

It felt good to laugh. It felt good to feel good, to be in her best dress, to be surrounded by her neighbors and her friends, to be holding her own baby at her breast. It felt good to be completely happy.

The second time Lena went up to attend to Gracia, she found herself alone in the same bedroom. She had just changed Gracia’s diaper when she heard two sets of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. They stopped at the bedroom door next to the one she was in. That was Oscar and Nyla’s room. Through the open door of the spare room, she heard Nyla’s voice, petulant and cutting. “Did she turn you down again?” Lena peeked out through the space left between the door and the frame, where the door swung open on its hinges. She saw Oscar with his hand on Nyla’s arm. He squeezed it and made her grimace with pain, and then he pushed her ahead of him through the door. As it closed behind them she heard Nyla again, this time plaintively. “No, Oscar...” If she pressed her ear to their door, Lena knew what she would hear, but she didn’t want to. Anyway, what could she do?

Lena went back into the room, gathered up her baby, and walked down the hall, passing the closed door of Oscar and Nyla’s room as quickly as possible. When she got to the landing above the stairs, she stood for a moment, looking down into the living room. There it struck her. Nyla’s face, her accusation―
did she turn you down again?―
the hard look of ungratified lust in Oscar’s eyes. Now she remembered what she had seen. Another similar look. Oscar had been sitting by himself in the corner of the living room where he had an open sight line into the dining room. His eyes were hard, with a glittery cast, like the eyes perhaps of a snake eyeing a mouse. But worse. Snakes just got hungry like everybody else. This was more than simple hunger. Troubled by his expression, Lena followed his gaze into the dining room. The only person there at the time was Mary gathering empty plates and used silverware and keeping the table fresh and tidy. She was wearing a white blouse with three-quarter sleeves of netting. Tiers of silky fabric trimmed the bodice and stirred fluidly in the gentle breeze flowing through the open dining room window. Her blue skirt, though not tight, fit her well. Lena always noticed Mary’s beautiful clothing, but today she noticed Mary. A few strands of her curly black hair had escaped the loose bun at the nape of her neck and softly framed her face, which was flawless and with high color. Lena looked back at Oscar whose attention was now on a farmer next to him. They were talking about the well business. She thought she might have imagined what she had seen and then forgot it altogether except for the nasty feeling it had left behind. Until now. Lena saw now why Oscar was keeping himself and Nyla in Ma’s house, instead of going back to their own house a few miles out of town, not because of his devotion
to his mother, but because Mary visited Ma every day. And every day, Oscar was there.

Chapter 5: August 1900

G
leevie Pruitt downed his third
whiskey at Leroy’s Tavern and complained about that good looking squaw living outside of town there and how she was too goddam uppity for a woman, never mind a goddam squaw.

Leroy tendered him some advice. “Leave that alone, Gleeve.”

Gleevie was a drifter. He’d only been in Charity a month or so, and Leroy, while not much interested in managing other people’s affairs beyond sending a man home while he could still walk or before he started breaking the furniture if that was the direction he was inclined to when he got a snoot-full, was alarmed by what he heard in Gleevie’s voice—a rawness, and a recklessness born of ignorance. Leroy at least could try to relieve him of a little ignorance.

“Leave that alone,” Leroy said again, his voice laden with meaning.
He who has ears, let him hear.
Leroy was a church-going man.

Gleevie needed a shave and wasn’t in any case careful about personal hygiene, even when he was sober. This was his second afternoon running spent in the tavern. Something was wearing on him and it wasn’t soap and water. “She ain’t livin’ out there just foolin’ with them horses and makin’ a livin’ without gettin’ somethin’ on the side.”

“Now where’d you get a notion like that?” Leroy polished the top of his bar in rhythmic circles.

“No wheres. I just figured it out,” Gleevie boasted, full of his own brilliance. “I don’t want nuthin for nuthin. I’m willin’ to pay, but I’m goin’ to get me a little, that’s all.”

“Don’t look for trouble. Go on now. Sober up and forget about it.” Leroy refused to sell him another drink, so Gleevie left the tavern, swaying as he went.

Leroy motioned Hank Ackerman over. “I think you should go tell Dennis that thresher that’s been hanging around here is looking for trouble.”

“You worried about the squaw?” Hank asked.

“Nope.” Leroy made more circles with his bar rag. The surface of his bar gleamed. “I expect she can take care of herself.”

“Yup. I expect she can.” Hank took a swallow of beer.

“Don’t know about Pruitt though.”

“Nope, don’t expect he knows his ass from a hole in the ground or his own shit from shinola.” Hank downed the last of his beer and left the tavern in a leisurely search for Sheriff Sully.

Gleeve Pruitt was no man’s fool. He’d been smart enough to leave Arkansas and too smart to go south where there was nothing but cotton fields—no fit work for a white man. No, he went north and hired on to a ranch in Nebraska, but the work was too hard, and he was too good to spend his time eating dust and staring up the butt holes of cows, so he went on farther north. He got to the Dakotas in time to hire on to threshing crews and made enough money to keep going and to stop for a drink when he needed one. He had decided to hang around because, while the work was harder than he’d expected and the money not as good as he deserved, the food was good on the farms where he worked, he didn’t have to work in the rain, and he could leave whenever he wanted to and move on to the next crew, which is what he’d done two days ago when the foreman caught him napping in the hayloft when he was supposed to be working and fired him. Didn’t matter. There was another crew a few miles east and he’d hire on there. When the oats were harvested there would be wheat, barley and then corn to pick. But he was too smart to work for dirt farmers any longer than he had to. Gold would be his fortune in the Black Hills. It was only August. There were three months of work left in this place, and by that time he’d have enough money to winter in Lead and get work in the mine. He’d heard that a single fella with money in his pocket could have a lot of fun out there. In the meantime, there was some fun to be had in these parts too if you were man enough to find it.

Jordis was raking out Moon’s stall when the mare whickered from the corral outside. Then she heard hoof beats. It wasn’t Gustie returning because Moon wouldn’t sound off for Gustie, and she’d have heard the rattle of the spring wagon. She didn’t rush out to see who it was. The barn door was wide open so anyone looking would know where to find her. She finished spreading straw on the floor of the stall. The straw shone bright gold where the sun struck it in narrow shafts through the window. She turned around. A strange man was silhouetted in the opening to the barn. She waited for him to speak.

When he did, it took her a moment to figure out what he had on his mind. She burst out laughing.

He came closer.

She said, through her laughter, “Go away. You’ve come to the wrong place for that.”

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’ll pay you what you’re worth. You should be glad to get it.”

“Are you crazy?” She closed the door to the stall and brushed her hands against her split skirt.

He took another step closer and pulled some crinkled bills out of his pocket so she could see them. Then he unbuttoned his pants.

Jordis still looked at him in disbelief. “You are crazy.” Then she got a whiff of him. “You’re drunk, that’s for sure.”

His pants began a slow slide down his hips. He hooked a finger through a belt loop to keep them from falling all the way down and impeding his forward progress. He came to within three feet of Jordis and then it was she who closed the distance between them. In a motion too fast for his bleary vision, she produced a long knife and he felt the point of it in his gut and her strong hand twisting his shirt tight at his throat.

“You wouldn’t use that,” he said, his bravado now being choked out of him.

“I would just as soon kill you as smell you, White Man.”

It was the way she said ‘White Man,’ like it was the first cut of the knife in his belly, that chilled the whiskey right out of his blood. He snickered and tried to back up, as if it had all been a joke. She wouldn’t let him.

Then she did. He backed up, turned and started for the door. As he got to it, he saw propped up against the wall, a pitchfork. He grabbed it, turned around, half yelled, half choked, “No squaw does me like this!”

He lunged, the pitchfork ahead of him like a jousting spear. Then he had one leg shot out from under him.

Dennis Sully, Sheriff of Stone County, stood just outside, holstering his pistol. Gleevie howled from the barn floor. “You shot me! Owwww! Goddam! Goddam! You shot me!”

Dennis walked in and lifted Gleevie’s leg up to view the damage. He let the leg drop and Gleevie howled some more. “I got you in the meat. In six months, you won’t even limp. Now get the hell out of here. And I mean out of Charity. If I see you around here again you won’t get out of jail till you’re an old man.” Gleevie struggled to his feet and, cursing all the way, hopped and hobbled out of the barn.

Jordis did not look pleased to see Dennis. “I could have handled him.”

“I know. But if the stupid sonofabitch was going to get himself killed today, I thought it was better I did it.”

She didn’t like it but had to accept that if Gleeve Pruitt was killed by an Indian, he was just a poor white man in his cups. If the sheriff shot him, he was a drunk who probably needed killing. “I assume you meant to hit him just there.”

“Yup. Woulda rather hit him some other place, but his back was to me. His ass was too big a target. Didn’t seem sporting.”

They heard groaning and complaining as Gleevie mounted his horse, then the soft clopping of hooves fading into the afternoon.

“Who is he?” Jordis slipped her knife back into her boot.

“His name is Gleeve Pruitt. He come through about a month ago to get work on the threshin’ crews. But he seems to spend more time at Leroy’s than in the fields. Anyway, if I see him hanging around Charity again, I will lock him up.”

Jordis picked up the pitchfork and put it back against the wall. “You want some pie?”

“What kind you got?”

“Apple and rhubarb. Lena baked this week.”

“Lena’s pies.” The sheriff smiled. “Well, maybe I’ll have a little of each.”

“Come on to the house. Gustie should be home soon. I’ll make some coffee.” Jordis led the way out. Emerging from the dim interior of the barn, her eyes quickly adjusted to the bright afternoon, and she saw Dennis’s horse Fever. He was lathered. Dennis had taken the threat to Jordis seriously. Then she smiled. No, he’d taken the threat to Gleeve Pruitt seriously. A solitary bird sounded his musical notes against the faint percussive buzz and ratchet of insects that drifted off the surrounding prairie in the drowsy dry August heat. “Why don’t you stay for supper? You can turn him out in the pasture,” she nodded to the saddle horse. “He can drink from the trough.”

“Poor Jordis.” Gustie smiled over her coffee cup. They had just finished a satisfying cold supper of smoked fish, potato salad, pickles, bread and butter, during which Jordis and Dennis had related the details of Gleeve Pruitt’s visit. “No one will let you kill anybody.”

Dennis raised his eyebrows.

“We had a run-in with Jack Frye a few weeks ago,” Gustie explained. “She didn’t get to do anything to him either but scare the living daylights out of him.” Gustie got up and refilled their cups.

Dennis chuckled. “I’d ’a liked to seen that.”

“Gustie intervened on his behalf,” said Jordis without amusement. “Otherwise I would have turned him into fish food.”

“Well, pity the poor fish. And none of ’em would ’a been fit to eat after, so I guess Gustie did a public service.” Dennis stirred cream and sugar into his coffee. “This is sure better’n Fritz’s coffee. Course, his is better’n mine. You want me to talk to Frye? Give him a warning?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” Gustie said it dryly, a smile in her gray eyes. She collected the supper plates and brought the pies and fresh plates to the table. Jordis cut wedges and served. To Dennis, she gave a slice of each.

Dennis felt comfortable in this house. The place was clean and shiny but not fussy, and he felt he could stretch his legs and lean back and breathe. Which he did. “What’d he do exactly?”

“Nothing,” was Gustie’s answer.

Jordis disagreed. “He was blocking your way out of the alley. He was threatening you.”

“I didn’t feel threatened. Just annoyed.”

“He was being disrespectful.”

“He wasn’t dangerous,” said Gustie.

“He has been. He has never paid for what he did to us. You do know that, Dennis?”

“Yeah. I know it.” He ran a squarish hand over the top of his bald head before applying himself to his dessert. “I know life ain’t fair. Not one damn bit.” He took in the floor-to-ceiling shelf of books that covered almost half of one wall. Gustie had been a school teacher. The same bunch of fools who paid his salary had fired her from the section school. He’d only heard about it after it was done. He couldn’t have prevented it had he known, but it still stuck in his craw. Gustie seemed to have fared none the worse for it though. In fact, she’d gone from being as poor as a flea on a mangy dog to being well off. Rumor had it she’d inherited some money from someone back east, but nobody knew for sure, and Dennis had never asked because it wasn’t any of his business. He was glad she was doing well. It was hard to see good people, dependent on the whims of weather and luck, scratch out a living. And Gustie had been generous. He knew that for a fact, too. She didn’t call attention to herself and, as far as her being friendly with Indians, he couldn’t see anything wrong with that either. And Jordis was a full blood, smart as a person gets, and a looker. He understood Gleeve Pruitt’s desire. Just didn’t hold with his methods.