Fervent Charity (7 page)

The panting stopped as fear of an unknown horse and rider clutched the woman who stood before her. Gustie hastily uttered reassurance into the night. “Lena, it’s me. Gustie.”

“Oh!” A cry of relief. “Oh, what are you doing out here?”

“I guess I’ve come for you. Hand up the baby and get on behind me. I’ll take you home.”

“Not my home.”

“No. Mine.”

“All right, then.”

Lena, with Gustie’s help, pulled herself easily onto the mare’s back. She wrapped her arms around Gustie’s waist and leaned her head into Gustie’s back. Holding the baby in the crook of her arm and the reins loosely in her other hand, Gustie turned Biddie toward home.

“Lena, we’re here.”

“Oh.”

Gustie thought that Lena must have dozed even while holding her tight around the middle. She gave her a second to clear her head.

Lena slipped off the horse and reached up for Gracia, who had not wakened even while being passed from one set of arms to another and back again.

Inside, with the lanterns lit, Gustie could see that, while Lena had been out with little enough between herself and the night air, Gracia was bundled snugly in warm blankets. Gustie pulled the trundle bed out from under her own bed and rolled it into the main room, which was warmer than the bedroom. She took the baby out of Lena’s arms once again and laid her down on the bed.

Gustie poured milk into a saucepan. “When did you eat last?”

“I don’t know. I had supper, I guess. Will didn’t come home till about ten or eleven...so drunk and mean...he doesn’t usually come home at all when he’s like that. He was mad about something...something happened during the day... I don’t know what...that set him off, you know. He broke some dishes and then came after me.”

Gustie was aghast. “Did he hurt you?”

“I didn’t let him catch me! I grabbed the baby and ran out. I’ve been walking and walking, but I couldn’t go all night, and I was afraid to go home yet. So I started out here.”

When the milk was warm, Gustie poured it into a bowl and put a loaf of bread on the table in front of Lena. Lena tore the bread, put the pieces into the warm milk and ate with shaking hands.

“Why didn’t you go to Alvinia’s or Mary’s? You wouldn’t have had so far to walk.”

Lena frowned. “They already know enough about me.”

“Then, you should have come here right away. Whether I am here or not, you know the place is never locked.”

Lena nodded almost imperceptibly and pushed the empty bowl away from her. With the side of one hand she shepherded breadcrumbs into the palm of the other and dusted them into the empty bowl.

As Gustie helped her take off her shoes and lie down next to her daughter, Lena asked her sleepily, “What were you doing out there in the middle of the night for heaven sakes?”

Before Gustie could think of an answer, Lena was asleep. She pulled the blanket over her and went back outside to bed down her horse, again.

The next morning, after Gustie and Lena had finished their breakfast, Will appeared, cleaned up and sober. Only his blood shot and puffy eyes gave away his night of drinking. He had driven out in a borrowed rig. Gustie recognized it as belonging to Harlan Gudierian.

Gustie sat at the window holding Gracia in her lap and watched Will and Lena outside performing their ritual of contrition and forgiveness. In fifteen minutes, Lena came back in to collect her daughter.

“You’re not going to be warm enough.” Gustie gave Lena her wool coat. “Don’t get a chill on the way back. You were lucky not to catch your death last night.”

Lena looked lost in Gustie’s coat. Buttoning it up obediently, she said, “Thank you Gustie. You’re a brick.”

The Spittoon, Wheat Lake’s only saloon, lived up to its name. It was dark and dirty and smelled of stale tobacco—smoked and spat, sour beer and whiskey, and worse. And it was, more or less, home to Jack Frye. Losing his job as Indian agent meant that he also lost his dwelling—the back room of the agency building. Since then, he had slept in the bunkhouse next to the livery stables—a place for itinerant workers and those who were so down on their luck they couldn’t even afford the modest cost of a room in Mattie Olson’s hotel.

For a nickel one could rent a narrow bed in the bunkhouse for a week. No bedding—most men just unrolled their own bedroll on top of the straw mattress—Jack lay on the mattress and covered himself up with an old horse blanket he’d stolen from the stable. The bunkhouse was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. But it was better than sleeping in the rain or in a snowdrift. One pot-bellied stove in the middle of it served to heat up the bunks nearest to it in the worst months of the year. But in the worst months of the year, no harvesting was done and few people traveled. So, in the winter, Jack Frye mostly had the place to himself. Now, however, he had to share it with about fifteen other men whose presence he mostly ignored, and they tried to ignore him. They weren’t generally interested in drinking with him or listening to his woes. They had troubles of their own. He found one exception—someone who had limped in with a bottle of cheap whiskey (though the rules of the bunkhouse, clearly posted for anyone to see, were no drinking or spitting allowed on the premises) and drank it up in a cloud of curses.

“Shut up,” Jack told him loudly. “Can’t a man get some shut-eye?”

The man threw his empty bottle at Jack, missing him widely. The bottle landed on the floor at the foot of his cot and broke.

“Now you’re going to pick that up,” Jack snarled. “A man could cut himself on that.”

“Pick it up yourself, you old shit.”

Jack Frye wasn’t drunk at the moment. He had been lying on his bed, clad only in his grimy long-johns, dozing and contemplating the possibilities in the day ahead. Taking the insults of a young punk wasn’t one of them. He shot off his cot with a speed no one could have predicted and flung himself on top of this snappy young dog and began punching him in the face. Gleeve, who was drunk and taken by surprise, didn’t react. Jack hauled him over to where the broken pieces of bottle lay and threw him on his knees. “Now you pick up them pieces before I whip ya again.”

Gleeve hesitated. His head was foggy from drink and the punches. Jack punched him again, this time hitting his shoulder.

Gleeve picked up the three pieces of bottle, got to his feet and limped out of the bunkhouse.

Jack didn’t think about the man again till the following afternoon when he was hunkered down in his usual corner of the Spittoon, rolling a cigarette, and he noticed the same fella. In the dim saloon light, he recognized him by his limp. The fella ordered a glass of cheap whiskey and started drinking, leaning on the bar. The more he drank, the louder was his voice till Jack could plainly hear him complaining about being shot for no good reason for just having fun with a squaw. A good lookin’ squaw, as they go, with the damndest thing by god—a knife in her boot, but that could only add to the fun, but for the interference of a sheriff who should know whose side to be on. Jack perked up his ears, then got up, stubbed his cigarette out on the floor with his foot, and strolled to the bar.

“Naw, she don’t live in Charity,” Jack amiably corrected the man he had so thoroughly pummeled just the day before. “Snuce, hit me again.”

Snuce was the bartender and the owner of the Spittoon. He got his name from the tobacco invariably pouched in his lower lip, and the dribble of brown always seeping out of the corner of his mouth. Nobody remembered anymore what his real name was.

Snuce poured Jack another drink and slid it toward him.

“Well, that’s where I got shot,” said Gleeve, eyeing Jack from under his hat and thinking he should know him from somewhere.

Even in barroom light, Jack could see that the man’s face was swollen and purple. He congratulated himself on a good job.

“She was right there in the barn,” insisted Gleeve Pruitt, “and Charity’s where I seen her all week, buyin’ oats in the livery stable big as you please, and buyin’ stuff at that O’Grady place with money and they was waitin’ on her like she was good as any white woman.”

“Yeah, she goes there sometimes. But she lives out here on the reservation. That one is trouble. How’s that eye? I popped you a good one, huh? Not bad for an old shit, huh? No hard feelings?” Jack stuck out his hand. Gleeve hesitated while he put it all together in his mind, his black eye, his bruised face, his calling the old man a shit before having the old guy’s fists in his face. He put out his hand cautiously. Jack gave it one good shake, took his fresh shot of whiskey, and went on, “You think she done you something? You should hear what she and that skinny old maid she’s with all the time done me. You should hear. Boy.”

Gleeve was all ears.

As Carrie had predicted, the wedding ceremony was over by the time Gustie got back to Shoonkatoh. She wandered the mission grounds among the multitude of strange faces, and though she was greeted with friendly smiles, she felt out of place. She saw the bride and groom and decided it was time to pay her respects, then find the people she knew.

The young couple was seated on a blanket surrounded by well-wishers. Sarah LaBourteaux, now Mrs. Clayton Nighthawk, wore a dark blue dress with white cowrie shells sewn in rows across the bodice. A belt of white shells trailed down from her waist, and a silver cross hung on a silver chain below a dentillium shell choker necklace. Clayton, in rawhide trousers and a tanned leather shirt, looked happy and shyer than his bride. Gustie made her way quietly to stand before them. “May you have a long and wonderful life together,” she said as she presented her gift, a china bowl with a garland of flowers painted around the rim. Sarah smiled and ran her finger around the bowl’s smooth, delicate surface.

Gustie left them to look for Jordis. She found her at Little Bull and Winnie’s fire playing with Deborah. The Lesners’ two horses were tethered nearby, their sores anointed with yellow salve.

Gustie reported what there was to tell about the Lesners. She took the baby from Jordis into her lap. Deborah gurgled contentedly.

Gustie remembered the baby’s naming ceremony. Father Flagstad had performed a baptism according to the rites of his church, but afterward, Gustie and Jordis participated in another ceremony, during which they gave the child a secret name. An old Sioux custom held that it was good luck for a child to be given a name by a two-spirit person. The day was precious in Gustie’s memory, unlike Gracia’s baptism day, which would also stay in Gustie’s memory, but shrouded in forebodings. For, as much as they had tried to make that day happy for Lena, their efforts still tasted like pretty frosting on a stale cake.

One event in particular cast a shadow. In the late afternoon, when only a few people remained sitting around the living room, sipping coffee, reviewing the gifts and listening to the Larson sisters, Minna and Kate, explain the story behind their quilt designs, Lena, though tired, was still basking in the glory of this once-in-a-lifetime occasion. Gustie, knowing that Lena had had few such days in her life, hoped they could make it last as long as possible. She slipped out of the living room taking some empty plates with her to the kitchen. She intended to brew fresh coffee, but the stove had gone out and the match tin was empty. While she was in the pantry, scanning the shelves for a box of matches, she heard someone come into the kitchen. It was probably Mary. She would, no doubt, know exactly where Gertrude kept matches. Gustie stopped at the entrance to the pantry, Mary and Oscar were at the sink. Rather, Mary was at the sink and Oscar approached her from behind. Gustie watched in silence, shielded by the pantry door. Oscar’s right arm went around Mary. His hand, outspread, paw-like, pressed below her pelvic bone drawing her in close to him. Gustie heard his ragged intake of breath and saw Mary stiffen. She could see them both in profile. Mary looked like a doe in the grasp of a predator.

Gustie was about to step out and put an end to this scene. If necessary, she would borrow a page from Lena’s book and hit him over the head with a cast iron skillet. She’d seen Lena do that to Jack Frye once. It had been extremely effective. But then Mary collected herself and side-stepped out of Oscar’s one-armed embrace. She turned to face him. Gustie held her breath.