The Grass Widow (11 page)

’er, Doc? Don’t make no sense to save ’er from the grippe just so’s she can kill ’erself tryin’ to do three men’s work.”

“Goddamn girl’s just as stupid as she’s stubborn,” Ott muttered, “speakin’ o’ women you can’t peg.”

Doc tasted his beer. “No talking sense or anything else into Joss if she doesn’t want to hear from you. You boys know that. I’ll give you stubborn,” he aimed at Ott, “but she’s a far cry from stupid. She could give old Flora a run for her money, if she had to start with what Flora had when the old man bought the farm. All she’s lacking is hands.”

“An’ all she gets for a hand is a Yankee oven with a bun already cookin’.” Ott scraped up the cards to shuffle, aiming a sly grin at Marcus. “Cousin on ’er mother’s side, ain’t it? Guess some things run—”

“A word on Jocelyn out’n that ugly hole you call your mouth

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an’ I’ll sew it shut for you.” Marcus spoke the interruption genially, but Jocelyn Bodett’s clear head and quick hands were the only reason either his wife or James, his second son, had survived the birthing of the brawny mite who’d decided to come breech, and Marcus wouldn’t hear ill spoken of her. “Doc prob’ly lend me a needle an’ thread. Who cut an’ give you the deal?”

Grudgingly, Ott put the deck between them.

“See you’ve got your first crop tedded.” Doc didn’t direct it; both men’s meadows were cut and windrowed. “Your beans look good, Marcus, and a lot of them.”

Marcus won the cut. “Felt like a bean year.” He shuffled awkwardly, being mostly lefthanded since an unfortunately-timed meeting of a hammer, anvil, and the two middle fingers of his right hand some years back had virtually ended his job as farrier for Jackson Bros. Livery. “Get that hay in, sure like to see a couple days o’ rain next week.”

Doc took a swallow of his beer and squeegeed foam from his mustache with a finger. “That’d be just in time to leave Joss looking at a week’s work with the scythe gone for naught. Expect it’ll take her all week to mow it. Most of a week to get it in. Long job for a little hay.”

“My kitty, Ott! Merciful baby in the bulrushes, do I got to watch you every second? Throw them damn cards over here.”

He looked into his empty shot glass; Doc signaled Jack to bring the bottle. Ott emptied his glass in a quick swallow. “I’ll send the boys over tomorrow,” Marcus said when the glasses were full and Jack was gone with Doc’s Seated Liberty. “Got nothin’ to home that can’t wait a day. She ain’t got but eight, nine acres there. Get that done—well, maybe two days. One with a little more help.”

They waited for Ott to ante up his sons, but he studied his cards, chewing on his mustache. Marcus applied the hard side of his boot to Ott’s shin under the table. “Kick me again, son of a bitch, an’ I’ll settle your hash,” Ott said evenly. “I heared the question an’ you got my answer.”

Slowly, Marcus folded his cards. He took the shot of rye Doc had bought him. Even mostly lefthanded, he was still quick

with his right, and Ott’s drink was in his belly before the other man’s hand could close on the air where Marcus’s wrist had been. Marcus put the glass down, his smile asking an ungentle question, and Ott stared at the big-shouldered part-time farrier for a considering moment before he drew in his quills and let it go. Marcus stood to draw a handsome gold watch from his pocket. “’Bout time, was I to acknowledge the corn,” he mused.

“Tomorrow, Doc?”

“Early.” Doc stood, too, and they left the Bull and Whistle, leaving Ottis Clark chewing his mustache over an empty glass and the cards of a game that had been called.

Aidan heard the ruckus before she was well awake; she staggered from bed to peer bleary-eyed out the window. The barnyard was a jumble of horses dragging reins, the near end of the hayfield a beehive of men with scythes and rakes. “What in heaven’s name—?”

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 stepsweep, stepsweep, 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

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!