The grass widow, p.9
The Grass Widow, page 9
She heard Joss’s voice like a profane echo from the other end of the house: What in the joe-fired hell?
Joss could protest, but she couldn’t dissuade the strongbacked men of Washburn Station who had assembled. Marcus Jackson was there with his five sons (Gideon, his eldest, had courted Joss for two years, and Marcus had fervently hoped the match would be made, for that would have given Gideon one of the best full sections in the Station. But as Doc had said, there was no talking anything into Joss that she didn’t want to hear, and Gid hadn’t had the words she was listening for).
Hank Richland was there, handing out scythe stones liberated from his father’s store. Ezekiel Clark was there with four younger brothers and an eye that was rapidly swelling closed. “Who laid the hand on you?” Joss asked.
“Called Pa out,” he said tersely. “Doc’ll be along directly, soon’s he sets an arm.”
Joss touched the swelling with a woman’s gentleness, and clapped his shoulder with a peer’s admiration. “You whupped your weight in wildcats there, Mister Clark!”
There were young men Aidan didn’t recognize; she would meet them during the day as she offered rare lemonade (Doc, when he came, brought a sack of lemons) to boys who took off their hats and wiped sweat from their eyes with shy grins as they accepted much-welcomed drinks: “Will Grant, ma’am.”
Will Grant fled, too shy in the presence of a handsome woman to linger for conversation. “Thank y’ma’am. Daniel Washburn. Yes’m, Flora’s my grandma.” He offered a hand to be shaken; Aidan pegged him a born politician. “Much obliged, ma’am. Nathaniel Day; we live past Jacksons t’ward the Post. Ma’s after gettin’ down to see y’all, but spring’s awful busy.” Aidan assured him that she understood about spring and chores that wouldn’t wait. “Pa’s pa was from up Maine,” Nathaniel added. “A silversmith, he was. No’m; I can’t recall the town.”
The hay fell under their relentless step-sweep, step-sweep, Joss and the elders handling the scythes, the younger boys raking the grass into windrows. Aidan despaired of feeding them all; Doc produced a quarter-side of beef and made a fire in the pit by the barn, and spitted the haunch. She squeezed lemons, and Doc drew water from the well and boiled up a sugar syrup on the stove to add strength to the drink.
The workers jostled for position when Aidan took a bucket of lemonade to the fence, but no one jostled enough to spill any of the precious potion. They were mannerly, introducing themselves if no more formal introduction had yet been effected, thanking her for her concerns for their well-being in the heat, brushing off her thanks for their assistance: “Ain’t but neighbors,” Gideon Jackson said. “Hay’s a hard row an’ we got ours in. One day more don’t matter to the pokeweed in the beans.” He lingered until the lad behind him protested; he gave Aidan a slow, dark-eyed smile, seeing the rise of her blush before he went back to his scythe. The haunch of beef was bones when they were done with it. Some of the workers had been accompanied by dogs, and those lean mutts snarled and gnarled over the remains as their masters returned to the field. Aidan and Doc washed dishes Aidan hadn’t known she had. “How did this happen?” she asked. “They’ll have
it done before dark. I know you had something to do with this.”
He wiped the last of the flatware and rattled it into its tray; he hung his towel on the wire over the stove and sank the dipper into a bucket of lemonade and poured for them both, and took Aidan and the glasses out to the porch. “Joss isn’t understood by many in this town,” he said when they were seated in the creaky cane rockers, “or even liked by some, but she’s respected by most. No one wants to see her go down.” Except Thom and Effie Richland and Ottis Clark, he added silently.
“What happened to Ezekiel Clark?”
Doc raised a mild eyebrow. “Boys call out their fathers. It happens every day.”
“Did he win or lose?”
“Oh, he won.”
“And how shall Mr. Clark respond to that?”
“I assume Mr. Clark shall respond with the healthy, albeit somewhat grudging, respect any grown man would afford a sixteen-year-old boy who sustained no more harm than a circumorbital hematoma in the process of breaking his father’s arm and dislocating his shoulder before leaving him eating the dirt of his own paddock.”
Aidan traced the condensation from her glass with a fingertip.
“Can Ezekiel go home?”
“That’s up to Zeke.”
“And if he opts not to?”
“Then Ottis owes him a sound horse and saddle, a double eagle, and a handshake.”
“But no open door?”
“It’s usually extended. Ott Clark’s a hard man.”
“Should we—”
“He’s a good lad and well liked. If he leaves his father’s house but wants to stay in the Station, he won’t go lacking a roof over his head. I’d not recommend it be this one.”
Aidan understood, but she grumbled: “And we the ones who could most use the back of a boy strong enough to put Ottis Clark on the ground. What shall I feed this hard-working crew
for supper, Doctor?”
He stood. “In my buggy, dear lady, I have a shoat who had the unfortunate luck to be vested of an evil disposition. James Jackson walloped him between the eyes with the flat of an axe Friday afternoon, and not a moment too soon; it seems his intent was to make a meal of one of his smaller brethren—Jim’s brethren, not the shoat’s. Earlene’s done the dirty work; Sir Shoat is at the parboiled point. We need but spit him close to the coals and give him a spin now and again.”
“I just had one last night,” Joss protested.
“It’s drawn. I’ll be hanged if I’ll waste such a great lot of hot water. Get in.”
“An’ I’ll be hanged if I know why you waste such a great lot o’ hot water anyway,” Joss grumbled, peeling out of sweat-damp clothes behind the screen by the tub. “A rinse in the trough was plenty for me an’ less work for you.” She was just as worked as she had been the evening before, but not nearly as weary for knowing it was done; all that was left was to get the hay into the barn. Gideon Jackson and Hank Richland, both as true as the sun in the morning, had promised their presences on Saturday, earlier if it smelled of rain; Ezekiel Clark, grown from a boy to a man that day in the eyes of most his peers and all of his elders—
and grimly unimpressed by his newly-won stature—had matched their offer. “I done fit for it,” he said. “Might’s well see it through. I’ll be here, Joss.”
Aidan offered Joss a fresh bar of soap and a washcloth once she was settled into the water. “You’ll sleep better with the work off you.”
“An’ you? It was no work feedin’ that army twice, I suppose?”
“I’ve bathed.” She’d bathed out of a basin in the sink, Doc on the corner of the porch guarding both doors against untimely visitors. She knew she would sleep tonight; she wasn’t sure about Joss, who had been out to the meadow four times since dinner, marvelling at its clean-mown stubble and straight windrows
of tedding hay. “Your towel’s here over the screen, and your nightshirt beside it. Can I get you anything else?”
“No. I’m...fine. I’m fine.”
Aidan was halfway to the table and her daybook before Joss spoke. “Aidan—”
She turned.
“Thank you.” Joss’s voice seemed almost reluctant. “You say you had nowhere else to go, but I know you didn’t have to stay, an’ I’m glad you did. Not just for the help. That’s grand, but I—I just—”
“I’m glad to be here,” Aidan said quietly. “I truly am, Joss.”
“I don’t know that you’d counted on quite such an education.”
“Anyone who counts on their education is bound to be surprised.”
“I hope I never surprise you too much.”
Tiredly, Aidan smiled. “I don’t know that you can, Joss. I’m fast getting beyond the point of surprise.”
May, 1876
I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
Song of Solomon 5:2
CHAPTER SIX
Dear Mother & Father (Aidan spoke aloud as she wrote): I trust this letter finds you both well & that you will accept my apologies for not having sooner informed you of my safe arrival in Kansas. All was not as expected when arrangements for my visit here were made. I am deeply grieved to tell you that Cousin Jocelyn passed away 21st March due to an outbreak of influenza that also carried away her beloved husband Harmon & their sons Seth & Ethan, within six days of one another. Their daughter Jocelyn, who is called Joss, met me with the news & graciously asked me to stay despite her deep sorrow at her loss. That very day she also was stricken with the influenza, but owing to most modern attendance by Doctor R.J. Pickett of this village she has recovered her robust health & now goes vigorously about her chores.
“I asked you graciously? It’s a sin to lie to your parents.” Joss got away with tipping her chair back at the table; anyone else
who did so on that oiled dirt floor received Aidan’s coldest look.
“I seem to recall behavin’ as boorishly that day as a human body possibly could.”
“You were ill and grief-stricken. I had precious little excuse for my own rudeness. Hush, now, and let me do this.”
I have fallen quite in love with Kansas. It is a place of exquisite beauty & I should not mind to spend my life here, saving how awfully I should miss my loving parents.
“Speaking of lies,” she added dryly, not looking up to see Joss’s bitter smile.
Though Joss tells me that the land changes rapidly west of here, the Missouri River Valley so reminds me of my own dear New England. The air is sweet & pure & the earth as black as any I have ever seen yet an hour’s ride away the soil is as red as rust! A most amazing place!
What it does not seem to offer is tea. We should be most grateful if you might send us several tins as Cousin Joss, Dr. Pickett & myself should be bereft without our thrice-weekly ritual of high tea. If one cared to dabble in merchantry, I suspicion his profits on tea alone would most handsomely buy his tobacco & brandy!
“Tell ’em to send it by the case,” Joss suggested, pushing her luck by rolling a cigarette; Aidan, disenchanted with her affection for tobacco, had finally asked her not to smoke in the house.
“Bein’ a tea dealer in this town o’ sorry merchants would be a right nice supplement to our income.”
“Someone might think to take up the ice trade, too,” Aidan grumbled. “I daresay we’ll be lucky to see a tin of tea without a ride to Leavenworth, knowing my father. If you light that stinking thing in here, Joss Bodett, I’ll pitch a proper fit.”
We are attentively protected by a Cavalry troop quartered at Fort Leavenworth & commanded by one Captain Argus Slade, most recently of Philadelphia, who honored us with a personal visit. He
humored my request to learn how to fire a pistol & spent quite too much time ensuring my success. He is terribly handsome with his flowing moustache & dashing uniform, & seats his fine steed superbly. Should he call again, perhaps he might humor a request for the benefit of his equestrian expertise to improve my notoriously poor seat.
“You need a bigger shovel,” Joss drawled, “to spread manure so thick. The attentive Captain, may he rest in peace as soon as possible, more resembles a toad on a stool than a knight on a steed—an’ you’d have as good a seat as any cowboy if you’d only wear trousers when you ride. Not that you should ride at all, in your condition.”
Aidan blushed. She was used to Joss’s swearing, and could even do some of it herself now, but her cousin’s casual use of such words as trousers (and her insistence that chickens had breasts and thighs, not white and dark meat) could still raise a flush to her cheeks. “I’m not even evident, and I certainly shan’t wear sit-down-upons. It suits me for them to think I’ve an interest in staying here, as I’m most certain it suits them.” Aidan dipped her pen. “But I couldn’t write this in the morning without vomiting most dreadfully, I fear.”
“If you long continue your admiration of the pestiferous Captain Slade, I fear I shall be required to join you at the dreadful end of the porch.” Her mimicry of Aidan’s accent was ruthlessly accurate; Aidan gave her tall cousin a gentle shove. Nimbly, Joss saved her own balance and righted the tipped-over chair. “Can I smoke this in here? Just this once?”
“No. Next you’ll have your feet on the table.”
“I’d never! But I enjoy your company so much, Aidan, an’ you won’t be done for hours at the rate you’re tellin’ fibs. Please?”
It was hard for Aidan to resist the appeal in the dark eyes, playful as they were; she managed. “Out, Joss. I fear I must insist.”
We’ve cut our first crop of hay—in April! The rhythm of life is so different here, at once faster and slower. I imagine the lilacs have blossomed all across New England by now. We importuned Dr. Pickett
0
for the largest of his volunteers before he applied the bush-hook to them, as we had none in our yard here & he has both white & purple. We put four small bushes about the house, & while I may never see them bloom, it should serve to make more fond my memories to know lilacs blossom here for my silly insistence. I fear my dear Cousin Joss must find me frivolous at times, but she so graciously accommodates my Eastern desires.
“Your dear Cousin Joss takes eternal delight in your Eastern frivolity.”
Aidan had to smile back at the laughing affection in her cousin’s eyes, a smile that lingered despite her displeasure with this letter. “Go have your smoke, dear cousin, and let me finish this horrid exercise. It seems easier to ride to Leavenworth for tea than suffer this.”
“You’ll not ride so far even in Levi’s. You do intend to see our lilacs bloom, don’t you?”
“I intend to fill this house with them, and never mind silly superstition. And I shall ride to Leavenworth if I so decide.”
Joss grinned. “Let me know when you plan to go. I want to see you try to saddle Charley.” She dodged the swat Aidan aimed at her as she passed and struck a match on the doorframe, pausing there to light up.
Aidan smiled as fragrant smoke drifted back into the house. It was the repartee she enjoyed more than the tobacco she disliked, though the smell of it in the mornings could make her stomach roil uneasily; that was why she refused Joss the privilege of smoking in the house. But it was comfortable of an evening to sit on the porch while Joss had her smoke; she was graceful with it, and it seemed as if that smell on the evening breeze might let all to sense it know there was someone here who would brook no trouble...and it was oddly stirring to discover that rich scent in her hair, and on her breath, in those times when chance or quick affection brought them close to one another.
Her gaze lingered at the door as she remembered how long she had watched that morning as Joss started an arduous day
of splitting wood. It hadn’t been long before she had broken a hard sweat, and there had been something compelling about the widening line of wetness soaking the back of an old shirt with its sleeves and tails torn away, something magnetic in the power that coiled and sprang with each swing of the axe, and the flash of pale skin at her waist as that tool reached the apex of the swing. When finally she sat to rest in a breath of breeze Aidan had turned from the door, sensing that to be caught in her attention by those dark eyes would be like being found at something intensely personal. Now, seeing the winking fire of that cigarette and the handsome profile of the smoker, some warm, alien thing stirred in her belly. “Away from the door, please,” she called gently, blaming her sensitive digestion, but it was a moment after Joss had stepped from the porch before she could bend to her letter again.
Given the circumstances, all is well, my dear parents. There is much hard work to be done, which Cousin Joss & I share as equitably as we are able. When something simply demands a man’s strength we importune our friend the Doctor, & if he cannot manage it he sends round someone who may—most often our neighbor Gideon Jackson, who is handsome as any black Irishman and delights in proving his youthful manliness to me! With few exceptions I find the folk here likeable & generous, & sympathetic to our situation; most gladly lend a hand if able—with the exception of procuring tea! Never would I have dreamed that such a simple matter could be made so tiresomely complex. We eagerly await your generous gift in that regard. Hoping this letter finds you both in good health & spirits, I remain—
Your loving daughter, Aidan
“Just send the damned tea,” she grumbled, blotting the page before she folded the letter into an envelope. Doc would take it whenever he came round next; it was written, and that was the labor of it.
Joss watched from the door as Aidan addressed the letter, able to imagine that fine hand laid across the paper; her own writing
was legible at best. There was so much that was so different about Aidan, she mused; good penmanship was but the tip of it. She was refinement, even with her new habit of swearing delicately, and she knew things Joss had never thought to imagine: last night the northern lights had shimmered in the sky; Joss had called her out to see, and she had said—what? “It looks how the strings of the orchestra sound when they’re tuning for the symphony.”
Joss had heard two fiddles played lively at a barn dance, but she couldn’t imagine forty of them all in harmony—or pianos in parlors, or fireplaces in drawing rooms, or gents retiring with cigars after dinner (though her banishment to the porch for her smoke seemed close). She had no concept of a debutantes’ ball, or shaking white-gloved hands with senators, or dining with the President, all things Aidan had known in her nineteen years; Joss at twenty-four couldn’t imagine prettily-patterned paper on the walls, or running water in the house, and until Aidan had railed at her about the kitchen floor it had never occurred to her that her house might have boards underfoot (their board porch was, on the post road, considered an Eastern frivolity).
