Justice (12 page)

Enid did not reveal to Julian that her father believed she was capable of prophetic visions, but she did tell him that her father was certain to oppose the marriage. Her father had pampered her, she said, and he would not want her living on a ranch in Montana. He had always tried to protect his daughter, and he would not want her living in a region that he thought rough, crude, and untamed.

She hoped that when she told Julian about her father, Julian would say, “Well, from now on
I'll
be the one protecting you.”

He did not. He threw his head back and laughed. Then he said, “Your father's a smart man. He's absolutely right. It's the Wild West!” Then he looked at her with an expression she hadn't seen before. He squinted his eyes as though he were trying to make out her features in a darkened room. “He'll play hell trying to take you away from me.”

He was so sure of himself that she searched for something to say that would take him down a notch. “Don't underestimate Papa. Ask my mother. She'll tell you.”

He only laughed again.

Julian Hayden brought Enid to Montana two days before the wedding. He wanted to show her his ranch and the town of Bentrock, and he wanted her to meet his mother.

He had never represented his ranch to her as anything but a hardscrabble spread, so Enid was not shocked or disappointed to see it. The ranch lay in a little valley—hardly a valley at all—a wrinkle, a fold in the earth, marked white by an alkali bed. Running through the valley was a stream whose span Enid could step across and whose flow she could outcrawl. There was a horse barn and corral, and an open cattle shed. There was a shack that had been the original building on the homestead, and growing out from that tiny shack was the beginning of a new two-story house. The house was framed up,
and the first floor was finished, but the second floor was nothing but studs and rafters. A ranch wagon and two buggies cluttered the yard, and harness and tack hung from the barn wall and corral posts. The outhouse stood on a small rise about sixty feet from the house's back door. Julian said that since a blizzard two winters ago he kept a rope strung between the house and the privy, so you could be sure of finding your way out and back again. None of the buildings was painted, and their wood had weathered to a windburned gray. Vegetation consisted of a few patches of coarse grass in front of the house, and a stand of five or six spindly cottonwoods growing along the banks of the tiny creek. Otherwise there was nothing but rocks, sandy soil, and sagebrush. Yet Julian pointed to every broken wagon wheel and rusting barrel ring with such pride that Enid felt she must try hard to match his enthusiasm for what would be her new home. Before they left for Bentrock he waved his hand around the ranch and said, “And if you give me enough sons, we can make this place into something that will have them all whistling with envy.”

Enough sons, Enid wondered. How many sons would be enough?

Julian's mother lived in a cramped apartment above a bakery in Bentrock. The aroma of baking bread rose from the ovens below and filled the three tiny rooms day and night with a heavy, warm, yeasty smell that settled on your tongue as well as in your nostrils. Enid would stay there with Mrs.
Hayden until the wedding, an arrangement that Enid thought would give her an opportunity to find out more about her husband-to-be. Who would know him better than his mother? But Mrs. Hayden was not at all what Enid had expected.

She was a remote, somber woman who had none of her son's vitality or good humor. She dressed in black and Enid's first impression was of a woman in mourning. She spent most of her time sitting in a rocking chair staring down at the street below. To virtually every question Enid put to her, whether about Julian or the community or herself, Mrs. Hayden simply turned a squinted eye in Enid's direction and offered a brief, cryptic answer. Enid asked her if she liked Montana, and Mrs. Hayden said, “This is my home.” Enid suggested that their first days on the homestead must have been very difficult, and Mrs. Hayden said, “Harder than some. Not all.” Enid tried to find out what the people of Bentrock were like, and Mrs. Hayden pointed out the window and said, “They're out there. Not much point in me telling you.” And when Enid said that Julian seemed an ambitious man who was certain to go far, Mrs. Hayden clacked her teeth a few times before replying, “Not far from his mother, that's sure.”

Enid had hoped to tell Mrs. Hayden something of her own life, of the many places she had lived, of the occupations her father had tried, of her concerns about living a settled life, but since Julian's mother asked her no questions, Enid felt uncomfortable volunteering information. Instead Enid thought she might win Mrs. Hayden's favor by working around the apartment, by dusting the furniture, sweeping the carpet, and by scouring the kitchen and bathroom fixtures. Mrs. Hayden
didn't acknowledge Enid's efforts but continued rocking in her chair while Enid worked.

Strangest of all were the meals Julian's mother prepared for Enid and herself. Mrs. Hayden served oatmeal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but supplemented the mush at noon with sliced stale bread (no butter or jam to moisten it), and at the evening meal she fried a few slices of side pork. Buttermilk was the drink at every meal. Obviously Mrs. Hayden saw nothing unusual about this fare, for she did not apologize nor comment on it. She set the portions before Enid and took the dishes away when they were empty.

Mrs. Hayden retired early and for that Enid was grateful. As soon as she heard her snores, Enid rose from her own bed—she was to sleep on the hard horsehair couch—and took up Mrs. Hayden's post by the window. What did she find to look at all day? What would the night disclose?

Enid directed her gaze first in one direction and then the other. A U.S. Land Office. The Merland Brothers General Store—Dry Goods and Groceries. The Stockman's Bank of Montana with its stone eagle above the double doors and in its upper windows a sign advertising Rasmussen and Son, Attorneys at Law and Notary Public. Whirtle's Confectionary. The Austin House Hotel. The Royal Theater. The Silver Dollar Bar and Billiards. If she leaned out the window she might be able to see the cupola of the courthouse where she and Julian were issued their marriage license, and beyond the courthouse's dome the spire of the church where she would be married.

Bentrock resembled other towns she had lived in or near
all her life. The wooden walkways. The dusty streets. The gaslights. The dogs barking back and forth in the distance. She was certain that after only a few moments at the window she could close her eyes and in her mind reproduce every business, every store, every gilt-painted sign in every darkened window.

When she heard footsteps, she opened her eyes. A man was leaving the bar and his boots beat a slow rhythm on the sidewalk's planks. The night was so still Enid could close her eyes again and plot his progress by ear. She tapped her finger on the windowsill in time with his steps. The rhythm reminded her of a song, and she softly hummed its melody.

She became suddenly self-conscious, and this time when she opened her eyes she saw someone she was certain hadn't been there before.

Directly across from her, sitting on a barrel in front of Merland Brothers, was an Indian. The evening was cool, and he was wrapped in a blanket so mottled it could have been a dirty, moth-eaten patchwork of fabric or fur. He was hatless and his long hair hung in lanky strands, partially covering his face. Nevertheless, Enid could see that he was old, and by the way he wavered back and forth on the barrel she concluded that he was either drunk or fighting to stay awake. While she watched him, his face turned upward and he seemed to be staring at her. His gaze was so blank she wondered if he saw her. Was he in a trance? Was he looking past her, at something in the night sky that commanded his attention?

Enid slipped from the window and back to her bed on the couch. She lay awake for a long time, fighting the impulse to
go to the window again to see if the Indian was still out there. At some point she thought she could feel that he was no longer there, and she soon fell asleep.

In one of her dreams she was at the window again, but she did not look out on a street deserted and dark but lit by high noon's sunlight. And she was not looking for an old Indian sitting on a barrel but for her father, who was, she was certain, about to appear on Bentrock's Main Street.

While she watched he actually appeared, charging down from the east in a whirlwind of dust. He drove up and down the street in a rickety buckboard pulled by an entire herd of animals—cows, horses, sheep, deer, antelope. Even in the dream she thought she would have to ask her father how he managed to hitch so many animals of so many kinds to a wagon. Julian would want to know, she thought; this information would be useful for her husband to have for his ranch. Then she realized that the wagon and team were her father's latest scheme: he had invented a way to make these animals work together and pull a wagon. At last, she thought, he had hit upon something that might make him rich.

She was sure that her father had come for her, yet he showed no sign that he was looking for her or even that he knew she was in town. He didn't stop in front of the bakery and climb the narrow stairs to the apartment. He didn't stand on the seat of his buckboard and bellow her name until she answered. He didn't stop anyone on the street and demand his daughter's whereabouts or ask where he could find the man who was going to marry her. Soon Enid realized that he wasn't there for her at all; he was simply advertising his new
invention—this team of animals and the elaborate system of ropes, harnesses, webs, and pulleys by which he kept them all together. Then this dream flowed into the next. A driverless motorcar drove down Main Street, and her father and his team weren't there at all. There was only the motorcar, spinning in a tight circle as if it were a horse tethered to a snubbing post, and while it churned up a cloud of choking dust, Enid forgot about her father and wondered—could a motorcar actually do that?

Enid was surprised to find that the wedding would not be held in the church, but in the yard between the church and the cemetery. Julian had made this arrangement because the church was small and he wanted as many people as possible to attend the ceremony, and because he had once quarreled with a minister (not the one who would marry them), and from that day on he stayed out of churches if possible.

An outdoor wedding suited Enid. The weather was pleasant enough—in fact very warm for April—when it could as easily have been snowing. She remembered going to Easter services, one of the few occasions when Enid herself attended church, just the previous year and having to step through snow to enter the church. Today, only the wind marred the day's beauty. It blew hot and hard from the south. Since that part of Montana had not had much snow the past winter and since the spring had been dry, the wind was able to raise enough dust to dim the day's sunlight and to deposit a thin
layer of silt on every unmoving surface. And when a hard gust came, you needed to turn your head to keep the bits of blowing sand and grit from your eyes. Enid's mother had bought Enid a new pancake hat for the wedding, but when Enid saw the wind's force she put the hat back in its box.