Justice (14 page)

Enid nodded. Apparently Julian had taken her warnings more seriously than she had thought.

The church was on the west side of town, and they were traveling east, so they had to drive right through Bentrock. As they left town, heading east toward Williston, they came to a narrow bridge over the Knife River. The river was not wide or deep, but cottonwoods grew thickly along and up the bank, so it seemed, as they approached the bridge, that they were about to enter a tunnel. Here, just before the bridge's planks, Enid's father stood. When she saw him she wanted to weep. He was wearing a dark suit, and he never wore a suit. He had dressed for her wedding.

She tugged on Julian's sleeve. “Don't stop,” she said. “You don't have to stop.”

“That's him?” Julian asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

Julian began to rein in the horses, and Mr. Garling took that opportunity to step into the road.

Julian pulled back hard on the reins. “Mister,” he said to Enid's father, “that's how my own father got himself killed. Stepped right into a horse's path.”

Mr. Garling stepped to the side and loosely gripped the
harness trace. “Oh, not these animals. They don't want to muddy their feet on the likes of me.”

“Go,” Enid whispered to her husband. “Just go.”

“We've got a ways to travel,” Julian said to Mr. Garling.

Her father said, “Enid, are you going to introduce me to the gentleman there by your side?”

She turned her head so she was speaking into the coarse weave of Julian's suit coat. “This is my father.”

“And I take it,” Mr. Garling said, “that this dashing gentleman is the groom.”

“Julian Hayden,” Enid's husband said.

“I'm familiar with the name. That's a name people speak with respect.”

“Now it's her name too,” Julian said.

Her father kept his hand on the trace and walked toward the buggy. “You're traveling east.”

“That's right.”

“I thought you might be taking her back to North Dakota. Back to Wild Rose. I thought your conscience might have gotten the better of you.”

Julian didn't say anything.

“I thought you might be bringing her back to her mama and her papa. Seeing as how we have not blessed this union. A man who marries a little girl away from her folks like that—well, sooner or later his conscience is bound to bother him.”

As her father spoke, Enid could feel his power increasing. It was as if he were casting a spell, enchanting them, and while it was happening they couldn't stop him. And when he was
finished, it would be too late. As it was for her already—she knew she should say something to refute what her father said, but if she opened her mouth no words would come out.

Julian didn't say anything either, though Enid knew that what her father said certainly enraged her husband. Julian reached down to the floor of the buggy and picked up the cigar box that he always kept there. Enid had seen once before what was in the box. Every time Julian killed a rattlesnake he cut off its rattles and saved them in that box. She hated the sight of them, and Julian often teased her with the box, threatening to open it in her presence.

He rested the box carefully on his lap and with both hands lifted the lid. He was moving so slowly, so deliberately, that Enid thought for an instant that this time he had a live rattlesnake in the box.

Then, in a motion almost quicker than Enid's eye could follow, Julian brought the pistol out of the box and pointed it at her father.

Everything was still again. Julian held his arm straight out, the small chrome-plated pistol aimed right at her father's chest. Her father's hand tightened around the harness leather. The horses, well trained and well behaved, stood right where they had been reined in. Only the cottonwood trees, their branches blushing a pale early green, moved in the wind.

The silence was so unnatural that Enid wondered why Julian didn't simply pull the trigger and release them from this moment's bondage.

Mr. Garling said, “A pistolero too, I see.”

“By God,” Julian said, laughing softly, “you are a talker.”

“Daughter,” her father spoke very slowly, “you could tell him to put that pistol up.”

Julian kept the pistol trained on Mr. Garling, but he turned his head slightly to look at Enid.

“I can't tell him what to do,” she said to her father.

She wondered if Julian would ever shave his mustache; if he did then she could be certain, in moments like this, whether that was a smile playing at the corners of his lips.

Her father spoke again. “If you expect me to bless this union, sir, I will not do it. Not even at gunpoint.”

Julian laughed louder this time. “Maybe it's your soul you ought to be thinking about blessing.” He transferred the gun to his other hand and picked up the reins. “What I expect you to do is to let go of my team. Let go and stand aside. I don't give a good goddamn what else you do.”

Mr. Garling jerked his hand away as if the harness leather was a hot wire.

Julian gestured with the gun. “The other.”

Enid's father backed up until he stumbled on the edge where the road's hardpan began to erode into the soft dirt of the river bank.

“Can you drive a team?” Julian asked.

It took Enid a moment before she realized he was speaking to her. “I never have,” she answered.

“Just grab hold of the reins. Not tight. Give them some slack. Bounce the reins up and down a couple times. They know what to do.” Then—was he speaking to Enid's father? —he said, “I never whipped a horse in my life.”

Enid did as he told her. She was startled when the horses responded immediately and stepped forward in unison. Enid wanted to look back at her father one more time—was that a new suit he was wearing?—but the horse's hooves were already striking the boards of the bridge, and she thought she needed to watch the road.

Julian called out to her father, “You let us know when you want to pay us a visit. Our home is always open to family!” The wheels rumbled across the bridge, and Julian shouted once more, “You know where to find me!”

Enid doubted she would ever see her father again.

Just after sundown the wind shifted and began to gust out of the northwest. The temperature fell, and a light rain slanted down. The rain soon turned to snow, and Enid had to wrap up in a blanket to shield herself from the sting of the icy pellets. When they finally rolled into Williston, Julian said to her, “Well, we made it, Wife. The prairie didn't get us this time.” Enid was so cold the hinges of her jaw felt frozen, and she couldn't even get out the two words she had in mind to say:
This time?

They checked into the Lewis and Clark Hotel, and after thawing out in front of one of the two big parlor stoves in the lobby, they went into the dining room, almost deserted on that Saturday night.

Enid was ravenous, and she ate a steak as large as Julian's. For dessert the waiter brought Julian a large slice of chocolate
cake, which he ate but found unsatisfactory. “Should have brought one of them pies from the wedding,” he said. “Can't beat the cooking of the Roosian girls.” Neither of them said a word about meeting her father at the bridge.

With the meal Enid had her first taste of whiskey. She was reluctant to take a drink, but Julian insisted. She knew he wanted her to drink so he could do what he had in mind to do once they went upstairs. She was embarrassed to drink in public, but Julian assured her that anyone who saw her would know she was just trying to take the chill off the night.

Enid had seen men toss whiskey back and then shudder as if they had stepped into icy water, but she swallowed the liquor with ease. Of course, Julian mixed hers with coffee and sugar, but still, the whiskey seemed to do nothing but warm her chest. After her first cup she asked for another, and by the time they went upstairs she felt as though she had finally found a way to take a step back from her own life.

Their room was on the north side of the hotel, and the wind made the window vibrate and hum in its casement. Julian pulled the shade and drew the curtains. He turned to Enid and said, “You can prepare yourself right here. I'm going down the hall for a moment.” His voice sounded deeper, thicker, than it normally did, but Enid attributed this—as she was ready to do for every departure from the usual—to whiskey. When he left the room he locked the door behind him.

Enid undressed slowly, and as she did, she folded each item—her blouse and skirt, her petticoat, her corset, her
chemise—and put it in the armoire. It was important to her that Julian not see any of her undergarments. She had brought a union suit, and tomorrow if it was still cold, as she expected it would be, she would wear that. She congratulated herself for having packed it. Then she put on the nightgown that she and her mother had bought. Her flesh still felt sensitive from the cold, and the nightgown's crocheted yoke chafed her chest and back.

Enid lay down on the bed and adjusted the pillows behind her head. She looked down toward the foot of the bed, and it seemed unusually far away. Was this bed longer than most, or was this an illusion, the effect of lying alone in a bed large enough for two?

She could face what was to come. How bad could it be? If what happened between a man and a woman in the marriage bed was so unpleasant, there wouldn't be as many children in the world as there were. Besides, this was the day when she had looked at her father while he was in the sights of another man's gun. She had been ready for what would follow. She hadn't screamed or wept or pleaded for her father's life or tried to wrest the pistol from the man's—why couldn't she say it?—from her
husband's
hand. Instead, she had sat quietly on the buggy seat and thought the coldest thought of her life: if you are aiming at the V where my father's tie enters his vest, you are aiming too high. If she could bear up under the weight of that moment, she could certainly bear the weight of a man's body on hers.

Enid closed her eyes. The darkness swam with motion,
tilting and turning in one direction and then another, but she believed this sensation, too, was caused by the whiskey. She moved her head off the pillow so she could listen for her husband's approach with both ears. Then she realized: she was listening for the thud of his boots, and he would not be wearing them.

W
ESLEY Hayden unfolded the letter from his mother in order to read it one more time. The train was crossing a trestle and swayed from side to side even more than usual. He steadied the page on his leg. He had received the letter a week earlier; it was dated November 17, 1927:

“Dear Wesley, I'm so pleased that both my boys will be home for Thanksgiving. As you grow older and stray further from the nest, I worry about the day when neither you nor your brother will return for the holidays. I know the day will come when you and Frank will have your own homes and families but until then pardon me for selfishly wanting you here as often as possible.”